September 9th, 2032
I had a dream last night after Sylph had her way with me (that was super fun by the way). I was in the Consensus, my whole body was, and I wasn't overwhelmed. I should have been as my dream represented it as a beehive, but they were friendly bees and I belonged there. But not exactly a beehive. It also felt distinctly like a library. The walls of honeycombs were all filled with books, though they weren't all hexagonal honeycombs. They seemed to shift in geometry as dancing bees brought books to and fro. At the end of each parallel wall of book-filled fluidly shaped shelves was a board of holographic markings that flowed like honey into different shapes as bees busied themselves moving books around and dancing their dances of language. The bees had a classification system! Librarians love nerding out about classification, at least I do…
It was time for pancakes! And bacon, that was also kinda important. At least whenever we made pancakes growing up, part of their making was to use the extra bacon grease in the batter and to keep the cast iron skillet non-stick. Also you had bacon and now bacon flavored pancakes!
I got up with my alarm with enough time to get ready for work, but there wasn't enough time to do both pancakes and work justice so after some quick texts to the library fam I was told I just had the day off. Considering I hadn’t taken a day off all year except for the few times I had a cold I didn’t feel bad. I put on a nice soft robe to go get started.
Sylph joined me shortly after, still wearing nothing and proceeded to be a very fun distraction the whole time. I'd have flashbacks to the night prior every time she would look at me a certain way, say something with just the right tone, or touch me pretty much anywhere. That or all the times she'd just up and share directly some aspect of what happened and my knees would go weak all over again.
"I swear Sylph, no pancakes for you if you do that again while I'm cooking. I could hurt myself" I pointed at her menacingly with a spatula.
She just sat there, completely naked except for the smug expression she wore, and winked at me!
I shared with her every happy memory I could piece together of the consumption of pancakes. All the flavor, all the scents, all the fluffy goodness, and added all the wonderful happy context of who I happened to be sharing them with at the time, but then the thought of all that being locked away in a vault of her own making. I sent this to her and waited, spatula still thrust threateningly towards her.
The smug finally faded from her face to be replaced with something appropriately apologetic. She stood and walked to me, ducking around the cooking implement to stand before me in her glorious state of undress. "I apologize, and I promise to no longer imperil you or the pancakes." She hugged me and her hand slipped into my robe to give my butt a light squeeze. "Forgive me?"
"Yes, you can still have pancakes." She received a peck on one cheek and a spatula swat on another as penance. Sylph made the cutest little "oof" sound and her face turned very red. She narrowed her eyes at me to which I responded with a wink and got back to cooking. She'd get me back after breakfast at some point and I looked forward to it.
* * *
Eventually I had flipped enough flapjacks onto a plate for us to eat a simple breakfast of pancakes, bacon, coffee and orange juice. I arrayed everything out in front of the still nude Sylph who was just asking to get sticky syrup somewhere she didn’t want it. I would volunteer to lick it off as needed of course so probably not a huge deal. She carved herself off her first bite of pancake and tested it in her mouth.
“Mmmmmm! You always introduce me to the best things.”
“I could easily say the same of you.” I said as I poked her in the nose with a strip of bacon.
It was then my phone started buzzing.
- 07:50 - LillyVale: So Marin, please tell us how dinner went last night.
- 07:51 - CairnRocks🪨!: Yes did your family shun and dismiss Sylph from the house and disown you out of disgust?
- 07:52 - Marinara: Lilly, what have you done to upset the pile of rocks this morning as they are being exceptionally unruly?😜
- 07:54 - LillyVale: We have run out of coffee and the gremlin in their brain that normally piles them up has been on strike.
- 07:55 - Marinara: Tell them I’ll make sure there’s always plenty of coffee here for them when you visit
- 07:56 - CairnRocks🪨!: I am here you know, you could talk to me
- 07:58 - Marinara: You may also tell them that everyone loved her at dinner and also she loves me. I know this as she told me herself last night and then did wonderful things to me to prove it❣️😏
I turned to Sylph. “Could we get a picture of us to send to Cairn and Lilly?”
She looked at me confused for a second and pointed at her nose and just face in general. She was still very much in her dryad-like alien form.
“Um, with your human face of course… oh and also I can crop out your tits or you could put something on I guess… not that I really want you to as I would be happy to look at your tits whenever… oh, also not that I don’t adore this face.” And now I felt guilty. “Oh gosh I’m asking you to not be you for my benefit again.” I hung my head dejectedly.
Sylph just giggled at me and began the shift back to looking human. “Marin, this is me no matter what face I wear.”
“Why did you shift back last night when we were… when you were doing very nice things to me?”
She giggled and bit her lip. “There are certain sensory advantages to my less human skin. It allows me to feel things… more.” She shivered and shared with me what my touch feels like on her greenish skin. I shivered in response. “I very much enjoy feeling as much of you as I can get.”
“Oh… I may have to look into that for myself at some point.” I made a mental note to add that to my list in my journal.
Sylph tickled her fingers up my arm raising goosebumps in their wake. “Your skin seems very reactive to my touch as is, are you sure you could handle it?” Her mouth pulled into a teasing smile.
“I’d throw myself into it valiantly or die trying if it meant feeling more out of you touching me.” I flipped my hand to gently caress the underside of her forearm earning my own goosebump production on her.
By this point her face was human again. “So time to take a picture?” She nudged my phone and also my attention which was lost on her skin. “Feel free to leave the tits in if you’d like.” She added with a wink.
I giggled and blushed. “Yeah, they’d likely appreciate that.” I made sure that my robe was open ever so slightly and took a very nice selfie of the two of us hand in hand enjoying our breakfast. It was artfully cropped such that only a hint of each of our nipples were visible just over the lower border of the picture. I shared that with my friends after giggling at the explosive responses to my last message
- 08:07 - CairnRocks🪨!: It’s disgusting how cute you 2 are🤮
- 08:08 - CairnRocks🪨!: Also very hot😳😳😳
- 08:09 - LillyVale: Marin, you have greatly understated how attractive Sylph is in your prior communications. That is very rude.
I read out their responses to Sylph as I got them and we giggled together.
“And they will be visiting in two days?”
I nodded.
“It was very nice meeting your family, meeting your friends feels like it will be wonderful as well.”
“I’m so excited! It’s been so long.” I wished I hadn’t let this have been a thing, but I was realizing the follow of unknowingly afflicting myself with isolation. I wasn’t going to let this be a thing that continued.
- 08:12 - Marinara: Sylph is so excited to meet you 2! And I’ve missed you both for so long!!
- 08:13 - LillyVale: We both knew you were going through a lot and also knew you’d pull through eventually.
- 08:14 - CairnRocks🪨!: That or we were gonna get The Triad’s #s and arrange a intervention😈
- 08:14 - Marinara: Well I'm sure they’d have supported that, here one sec…
I put Larry, David, and Jessie’s phone numbers in the chat. They should have them regardless of if it’s sneaking around behind my back to abduct me from a depressive spiral. They replied back with flight details and a promise to only lightly harass the triad.
I set my phone down as I was not paying enough attention to the naked alien in the room. “There. So Sylph, what would you like to do today?”
She had a gentle look on her face. “Well, if it’s alright with you, I was thinking of focusing on you today.” She smirked and trailed her fingers down my arm, but returned to the gentle smile. “That’s not entirely to say I wanted to focus on you affectionately, but also it feels like you're making great strides with the colony we pulled back out of dormancy. I would like to help you work through its capabilities.”
I began to get excited… in several ways, but mostly for fungus talk. “That was actually something I was thinking about too. I had a dream last night that actually gave me a bunch of librarian tinged ideas for filtering through the Consensus.” I sighed. “I really haven’t had much time to just delve into myself and see what I could do… but then I remember it’s still been less than a week since we met and I don’t need to feel like I’m in some hurry to do anything.”
Sylph chuckled, “Yes, I’ve noticed how much urgency humans like to place on things that need absolutely no urgency.” She got a distant look on her face and placed her hand on mine. “Marin. Do you feel like we are moving too fast?”
I wanted to shake my head and quickly deny this statement, but that was the urgent response only out of concern for her feelings. I took a second to really sit with it. “Learning of the existence of intelligent alien life cultivating planets for a giant space telescope was a lot, and that was fast. Having to adapt to an alien fungus accidentally planted in my brain, that was fast… But Sylph, you pulling me out of the funk I’d been in for years,” I gently cupped her cheek. “...that has been the best thing that has happened to me for a long time.” and then I kissed her.
Sylph leaned into the kiss and I could feel some tension drain out of her before we separated. “Thank you.”
“Sylph, you don’t have to worry about me all the time. Like I know I’m something of a mess, but I’m aware of my mess and I know how to process it. I promise I will tell you if I’m ever feeling pressured or uncomfortable. Please trust me on that… That’s not to say I don’t want you to tell me if you are worried though.”
She giggled, “I think we are doing well on telling each other about worries. There have been many. That being settled though, please tell me about your consensus filtering idea.”
I shared with her what remaining memory I had of the dream. The bees buzzing with information and the labeled rows of comb-shelves. Then I shared the wonders of faceted classification systems. My favorite being the work of S. R. Ranganathan and organizing topics by their Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, and Time. “If I could label facets of each discussion within the consensus, I could filter out what isn’t relevant to me and make everything more approachable.”
There was a smile on Sylph’s face and it looked like the same sense of awe I felt in looking at her. “That’s amazing! You have understood how things are organized within the Consensus far more than you know. Each of the facets you describe can be thought of as nodes of connection. These nodes form connections between topics that allow shifts of thought in one topic, to be felt by connected topics that share a similar facet. Change in one discussion actively shapes change in others. All you need is to have that filtering happen somewhere other than your own head.”
I couldn’t help but blush from the way she was looking at me. Like I was a precious jewel and she kept discovering new secrets within its structure. “I guess my dream processed more of reality than I knew.”
Sylph held my hand in both of hers. “Marin you did this, you continue to amaze me in how quickly you are taking to all of this.” She kissed my hand and all of me flushed red. “You are amazing. I love you.”
If I were a cartoon, steam would have been hissing out my ears from the heat I felt. Words were not working, no vocal response allowed. I instead shared just the raw feeling of my face and ears burning up and the love and awe I held for her.
She smirked at me and it only made it worse, but she eased off making me blush and began speaking again. “I was thinking of taking you back to the grove. If you were to establish a connection there, we might be able to generate a neural net within the grove to filter the Consensus for you so that wasn’t all things you had to actively do in your own head. Also the grove has a large repository of entangled connections to others of my people and directly to the biosphere and the Consensus. That would make it so you wouldn’t have to reach through me every time as well… Not that I mind the sensation.” She winked at me and the blush that had subsided returned.
“I’m sure we can find many other enjoyable sensations to make up for it’s loss. Would you like to join me in the shower?” I winked at her in return and earned a blush myself.
ChiriVulpes· Jan 21, 2022
