Pure Requiem - Aja James Page 0,17
talk at all during dinner. I just listened to the banter between the boys. Both because I love the way they interact, and because I didn’t want to draw attention to myself and spook Erebu on our first…date.”
I try to focus my mind, deepening my breathing in an effort to calm my body’s reflexive rejection of her touch.
“Is that what you’re calling it? A date with your son?” I quip.
She’s kneeling at my feet, rubbing the sponge over my calves now. She pauses in her labors to look up at me. I can tell from the projection of her voice the exact angle of her face.
“You know, it’s rather like a matchmaking appointment. The way villagers used to get two people together through a third party. I suppose humans still do it today, though Sophia mentioned during one of our conversations that nowadays, for the most part, they’ve cut out the middleman. There are ‘apps’ now that can bring two strangers together, and you select what you want from a menu of characteristics. It’s all very bizarre to me. How would you know who your true love is until you’ve met them? How can you simply ‘order one online’ by choosing from a list?”
This sounds perplexing to me as well, causing enough confusion to relax my body again, until she says, “Although, Sophia also mentioned that humans don’t use the apps for Mating. They just want to fu—”
She breaks off in a fit of coughing, choking down the rest of her sentence.
I understand the gist of it.
Dark Ones are extremely sexual. Fucking is their forte. Lust for violence, blood, power, treasure, and simply lust drive their existence. Many would assume that Pure Ones are the opposite, that until we meet our Eternal Mate, we are asexual. This is far from the truth.
But what is true is that I know I am not meeting her physical needs.
I must overcome this. I must.
She finishes with my legs, not going much past my knees and puts the sponge away. I can hear her lathering her hands with the soap for my hair. The smell of the “shampoo” is different from the body soap.
“Why do you say it was like a matchmaking appointment for you and Erebu?” I ask, as I dip my head to give her better access. This part I do enjoy, even though there is not much hair to wash.
I can hear her smile again as she answers, “It’s like Benji is the matchmaker, and Erebu and I are being brought together for a first tentative meeting. I think I might be the awe-stuck swain in this scenario, courting the most beautiful girl in the whole village, perhaps across the whole continent.”
“Hence the speechlessness and food demolition?” I tease.
“Oh indeed,” she agrees. “But I haven’t told you the best part yet.”
She’s rubbing her hands through my hair to rinse the shampoo out. Now she’ll start on the “conditioner.”
Ishtar grasps these modern habits easier than I, though we are both rather technology challenged, in many ways by our own choosing. For example, I do not understand why I must put oily substances back into my hair right after I’ve washed it. She tells me it helps make the hair healthy and shiny. If that is true, I think it only works with hair that is healthy to begin with. “Conditioner” will not transform my short metallic tufts into silk.
We’ve both isolated ourselves from the world. I didn’t have a choice, and Ishtar chose to shut herself off. In fact, she spent many years over the millennia in her animal form, away from civilization. After the Great War and the Purge of the aftermath, she lost faith in humanity.
But since she found Inanna again, and now Sophia and other female members of the Dozen, she is no longer isolated, no longer alone. She enjoys the sisterhood. The radiance of her joy reminds me of the bright, engaging, passionate nature she used to exhibit as a young girl, and then a young woman. I love this about her too.
“Don’t leave me in suspense,” I urge her on.
Her fingers linger in my hair, scratching lightly across my scalp, her touch more caressing than task-oriented. I close my eyes in almost-pleasure, the simple, undemanding kind.
“Remember the comb I gave to our Binu when he visited Dark Dreams?”
Yes. I remember. It was one of the two gifts I gave her on her twenty-first name day. The night before I broke her heart.
“He brought it out after dinner