SYNOPSIS:

  Welcome to the Unknown Cosmos. Where time and space are irrelevant.

  And imagination reigns.

  "Welcome To Mellemer"

  RYST

  Nayth’s left hand was in my right, fingers intertwined with mine. All around us the knee-high grass susserated in the breeze as our bare feet sent up puffs of dust from the soft path beneath them.

  I raised my smiling face to the pink light of our sun above, warm, soft, and full of life.

  We’d decided it was time to go somewhere else. Maybe you’re wondering where we were? It was our world, the place of mine and Nayth’s. Not like anything you’ve ever known.

  Because it isn’t known. We were in the Unknown Cosmos, and we’d been there for a while. If you could count “a while."

  This is where it gets difficult to tell our story to those who haven’t yet experienced timelessness. Let’s just say, it’s mind-bending. Consecutive days? Sure, we can have them, should we desire. Do we? Well, we had coffee on the beach and croissants with peach jam. Then we walked on the path I just described. That was consecutive, wasn’t it?

  I’ll try to keep explaining it like that for you so your mind can follow a story. It will help you, I think, but it was so much more than that for me and Nayth.

  Peach jam? Were there peaches on our world? Well, I wanted peach jam, so it was there. Croissants? Nayth had tasted his coffee and wished for a buttery, flaky pastry, and it was in his hand.

  The coffee? We’d smelled it on the breeze because we’d been thinking of our nephew Euri and his girl Portia, and then we’d both had coffee cups in our hands. Of course we wanted to drink it; it tasted like home and family and the warm comfort of humans in love.

  Does that give you a better idea of what I mean about chronological order? We could choose it. And we often did. But we weren’t confined by it. We weren’t limited by anything unless we chose to be. So, we often did. Otherwise, we just were. As in, we had a “we.” Self. But that self wasn’t defined until we gave it definition.

  The definition I was now living within was my human shape I’d had in the Known Cosmos: waist-length wavy brown hair, olive skin, and turquoise-green eyes clad in a shirred, cream baby-doll dress with a pale pink silk ribbon below chest, skirt falling to mid calf.

  My husband still looked like himself: dark chocolate skin, 6’3”, and sexier than sin, dressed in a collarless pale green linen shirt, open at the chest, and navy baggy trousers. Yeah, like everything you’d want to crawl all over if you were lucky enough to get the chance. I was lucky. Often.

  We chose our forms because that’s what we wanted, but at that moment, coffee on the beach forgotten, we wanted something new. To see another world of the Unknown Cosmos. It was time to explore.

  Nayth’s hand in mind, we closed our eyes and sent our senses out. Floods of information. All eternity. All that was. All that could be. Our chests heaved, and we expanded out. Beyond the bounds of our world. Beyond definition. Vast. We focused on a teal light, and I lifted my left hand towards it.

  Definition was forgotten. We became teal light.

  Plunge!

  Wet. Seaweed all around us, entangling us. Or was it legs and arms? Nayth wrapped around me. I remembered to have a mouth as his tongue found mine. Arms. I had arms, and they wrapped around him.

  I formed legs and what was between them as Nayth pressed against me.

  I smiled against his mouth, “Ahtah."

  We crested and broke.

  We weren’t alone.

  We were like two notes of a chord, and the whole world around us was a harmony, a song of deep ocean waters like nothing I’d ever heard.

  Eyes blinking rapidly, our minds tried to make sense of where we were. Murky. Wet. But we were breathing. Water, but my hair behaved as it did on dry land.

  I stretched my neck as I got to my feet. I was once again clad in my cream dress, my husband's fingers intertwined in mine.

  A step forward.

  The murkiness dissipated, replaced by a golden glow and pale green seawater around us. Then we felt her, and we knew her at once.

  Selles.

  Her presence was just at the edge of our minds, and as we focused on her, she appeared before us. I smiled at her beauty.

  Turquoise hair past her waist. Clear eyes. Sharp face. Skin like a silver fish with rainbow iridescence. Curves that looked sculpted from the sea world around us.

  No, Selles didn’t have legs. She had an arching tail that went out behind her: a solitary line of thick muscle and scale.

  Something powerful surged through me.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Erotica—that mystical force. It was strong here in this new place.

  Selles was overflowing with raw creative power, and I could tell she didn’t mean to overwhelm us. Nayth disentangled our hands and wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling my side against his. I wasn’t the only one feeling overcome with the mer near.

  Selles nodded and moved backwards. It had no effect.

  We closed our eyes and concentrated, pushing away the mystical force of erotica. Also unhelpful.

  Transform it, I thought, and Nayth helped me focus. What did we want to do with all the passion in the waters that surrounded us?

  Explore, we decided together. And desire reshaped itself into curiosity.

  Selles smiled at us and approached again, lifting her arm.

  “Ryst, Natan, welcome to Mellemer.”

  We followed Selles, her gliding, us stepping along a sandy path, and my awareness caught other presences. Millions.

  I narrowed my focus on Nayth and Selles alone. As we passed undulating olive-green weeds growing upward out of the seafloor, I felt Selles’s mental openness.

  Should I desire it, she would show me anything I wanted.

  I stopped forward progress and reached my right hand to her silvery arm, laying my palm against her flesh. It was cool and smoother than I expected, but ridged with scales. Touching her was like coming alive for the first time, senses sharpening, elation surging. My chest heaved, my heart skipped, and I wanted more.

  And more.

  Selles was unaffected by my presence. I dialed back the mystical force of erotica and focused on her thoughts.

  She enjoyed my perception of her and liked sensing us.

  In her mind, I was amethyst in human form. I cocked my head.

  Yes, to her I was a lavender crystal. I looked down at my arm. It was its usual olive tone, smooth and human. I returned my focus to Selles.

  When she saw me, her perception wasn’t my outer skin, it was me—the truest me. Amethyst that flowed in a human shape. My heart glowed purple, and my being was full of silver light. Ryst Nova. Crystal Supernova.

  Suddenly I was more than a woman walking on a sandy path of Mellemer, I was Vast Ryst (or Crystal Supernova, as Selles thought of me).

  I remembered to be my narrow self.

  My thoughts shifted: Nayth? How did Selles see Nayth?

  Not me. How he projects himself. I perceive you as you wish to be known, she whispered into my mind.

  And she showed me. Nayth was garnet contained in a man-shaped body, barely. All around him swirled golden light. Natan Carmidee. "Gift of Knowing."

  That was my Ahtah, wasn’t it? My heart filled with warmth, and I remembered to focus, not get carried away into Nayth again. We walked on.

  The city spread before us: people like Selles, children, men, women, fish, and other creatures. Spiral-shaped buildings co-mingled with undulating plants, all growing upwards to whatever was above.

  We found the Mellemer gathered, feasting in a courtyard. There were no seats, just tables that seemed grown out of the seafloor. Twisted vines of weed shaped into long shelves with platters of all shapes and sizes, covered in delicacies smaller than my hands.

  Oh, I suppose you want to know what Selles’ hands looked like? Webbed, with four very long fingers. No opposable thumb.

  She lifted a shell to her mouth and slurped the fruity gel then nodded to me. I copied her and had my first taste of Mellemer: thick, sweet, tart jelly.

  My eyes closed. “Ummmm.”

  Nayth did the same, and we both had to focus on curiosity again because the sensuality of it nearly knocked us over. Selles snickered at us. To her, it seemed like we were primed for the full force of creative power at work in Mellemer.

  Nayth and I laughed, and so did a million or more Mellemer voices around us. Oh! They were overjoyed that we’d come exploring, bringing new scents, new shapes, and new life with us.

  I wasn’t used to letting a chorus of voices into my telepathic senses, but in this world, that’s all there was.

  For here, in Mellemer, every interaction led to creation. And we’d come bearing legs and opposable thumbs. What newness awaited them?

  They’d find out by interacting with us. We were at their party, and we were an inspiration for what they would create in the days to come.

  I sensed all of that from our hosts. But it wasn’t unwelcome.

  Three children approached us, holding out planks of lime green, amber, and deep blue gel. I’d seen the young ones offering food to adults close to them, so I knelt to copy them.

  A young boy with blue-green wavy hair to his waist and scaly skin of rosy gold held the green slab to me, and I bit a portion, chewing and smiling my thanks to him.

  Sour flavor burst over my tongue and filled my whole being, shocking my nose. The children roared with laughter as Nayth boomed next to me. He took a bite of the amber gel offered to him, and his eyes shot wide, blinking rapidly. His mouth puckered, and the kids’ gleeful notes rose in pitch, the nearby adults joining in.

  A tiny girl with pale pink hair and blue-silver scales offered me the blue gel, and I took a small taste, wary of their jokes. But it wasn’t a surprise. Or it was, but a good one. Sweeter than any fruit I’d ever tasted, my eyes closed as I savored a flavor I could not explain.

  I felt the child's mental presence, soft and kind, and opened my mouth once more as she fed me the remaining slab.

  Her mind smiled against mine, telling me she liked my pink ribbon. I unwound it from my dress and braided her hair, the ribbon interlacing with her strands and securing the plait at the end.

  Perfect, I whispered in her mind, and she swam away to show her mother.

  Already we change, whispered a humored male mind, and I looked up to see him.

  Next to Selles, he looked towering, but he was not as large as my husband. Broad-shouldered with sapphire hair and charcoal-green scales.

  I raised my eyebrows, and Selles explained.

  My sire, Melah.

  I hadn’t really thought about the structure of the society we had entered. From Selles, I gathered there was no hierarchy to bend to. She had been the first to approach us, so her family would take the lead while we visited.

  I looked at Nayth, wondering if we should stay, but Melah answered the thought before I even finished it. He held out a shell bearing a purple gel to each of us.

  We received the gifts and mimicked what we’d seen the couples near us doing.

  Nayth raised a purple plank of gel to my mouth, and I bit down. I smiled, and it zinged through my entire body. It was like a glow filling my whole being with fire. Need. Want.

  Why did everything in this world fill us to overflowing?

  Giggling, Selles led us to a golden building and placed her hand against the wall. There was no door.

  Until there was.

  Beneath Selles' hand. She nodded us forward, but did not follow for beyond the wall, there was no water.

  The air smelled of sea, but there was no salt on my lips.

  Nayth’s fingers found mine.

  Onwards? I asked

  Nodding. Keep going.

  The floor beneath my bare feet was smooth. It looked like polished gold, but I was uncertain what it was made of. I reached my right fingers to stroke the curved wall beside me—similarly sleek, but with a rosy hue.

  The hallway curved as we made our way upwards, always upwards, and the scenery didn’t change for quite some time.

  Within the walls of that spiral, I lost awareness of Selles and Mellemer. It was as though we walked in another plane of space and knew no time, though minutes passed.

  All was quiet and still, the only sounds our soft footfalls and slow breaths.

  Then there was no more curve, or hallway, or walls, just a wide open white floor. When our feet touched it, cool spread through me and something more. I blinked, gasping, as Nayth pulled me to him. We could no longer ignore it.

  Nayth’s jaw clenched; his whole being pulling him to me with madness. I burst into silver light and met Nayth’s golden fire.

  “Ryst!” he commanded, and there were no clothes, no nothing but his mouth on mine, erotica coursing through both of us. Everything shredded.

  Nayth wasn’t done. Something deep inside him tugged, and I felt it pulling me too.

  Desire.

  Painful.

  It was a shock to us both. More excruciating than any need we'd ever known.

  I slowed my breath, focusing on Nayth. There was something more contained within that inferno.

  He was a tempest, a storm tearing itself apart, and it needed a focal point.

  Nayth! Nayth! We have to focus. What do we want?

  His being writhed like a tumult.

  Focus, love. What do you want?

  Panting, he slowed. His mind sharpened, pushing aside the force of erotica.

  All become clear.

  We had to decide: where did we want to go next?

  A launching pad surrounded us. The Unknown Cosmos awaited our intent.

  I smiled and reached forward my left hand. I saw the golden spiral of the building in Mellemer, but knew we hadn’t been there for quite some time.

  We were already on our way to someplace else.

  I quested far beyond and saw a ruby glow. Nayth smiled and shifted.

  That ruby glow beckoned us forward.

  Onwards, we said together, and all became red light.