Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Date: 108SC

Solar Hour - 13

Pilot ID: 00644-A

Registry: Abbot

Coordinates: [REDACTED]

Outskirts of Ptolos, Exonil

When I do wake, it is to the visceral sensations of the flesh. Again. A cruel reminder of my sorry state. Chills, fits. They come for me in my restful hours, tearing me from the comfort of unconsciousness with visions of the past 30 or so solar hours. 

My whole body jerks in my prayer circle. The floor beneath me is slick with my own sweat. My clothes damp. I can feel the heat abound in my cheeks and my chest as I push myself up off the ground, trying to will my body into physical compliance. It has become better suited to the lack of gravity and carefully controlled internal climates of ship cabins, not this dry heat and static-filled atmosphere. My internals treat every waking second like another opportunity to remind me of this fact. 

I sit upright and pull my knee to my chest as I look out over the wastes. I watch the pebbles and dust rise into the air on tides of electricity. I can still see the smoke of my failed landing maneuver in the distance, which means I am not yet far enough away. Soon the reactor will vent its remaining fuel, and I need to be clear of it before that happens.

The city is close now. I remind myself of the fact again and again like it is some salve that will put to ease the pain that festers in the space where my other leg should be.

I’ve almost made it. I’m almost home.

The small, plasti-print home I rest in is mostly rubble. I believe the barely intact platform over my head is actually a floor (or once was), and I am sitting in what would have been the foundation (and still is). I pull the shawl off of my shoulders and set about erasing my circle, reciting the holy verses in reverse as I do so. As I was taught once. 

Nive.

Phon.

Alds.

As always, the reverse begins with the saints. The Exoprophetics ( praise be to their holy commune ).

Stiir.

Vif.

Er.

I bow my head as I move from the circle’s interior to the middle ring of equations. A small sorrow it is, I think, to remove such delicately balanced arithmetic. I was quite proud of it—the variables each with their own symbolic coefficients. But there will be other prayers. 

I hope.

Becoming All of binary sacred, that fire synapses their may still longer. I intone to myself. Wired remain blood their may long. 

I wipe clean the last of the circle and pause. My fingers ache. Well, all of me aches really. It feels trite to complain about the dull ache in my joints given the severity of my recently sustained injuries. I finish the verses. 

Machine of commune holy. 

Progeny of machine. Exoprophetics. Be praise.

Exogenesis. Be praise. 

I wrap the shawl back around my head as I speak the words. I am tired. So very tired. I chase off the blasphemous and wanting thoughts that ask where my ever so deserved blessings are. I chastise myself for such thoughts and push myself up onto my one remaining knee. I grab my bag, sliding it across the dusty floor to myself. Then I pull myself up using the solid metal length of my rifle and press on towards that great city and the holy wreckage beneath.

Sister-Diviner Reverence intercepts me as I approach the outer wall only a few solar hours later. “Reverence” is not her anointed name. But looking on at her metallic beauty, the graceful interlocking of her components, I do not yet feel worthy to refer to her by such a holy title. She is touched . And I feel impure standing in even her shadow here with the great star Alos watching overhead. 

“You’ve returned!” she calls as I cease my hobbling forward and sink to one knee before her. I swear I am sweating out the last of my body’s moisture. I exhausted my hydrating resources mere fractions of solar hours into today’s journey. “I beg your permission to lend aid.”

I press my head down to touch the earth. It is cool here in the shadow of the wall, and I almost long to curl back up and sleep once more in the shade.

“Oh thou holy vestige. Oh thou touched by divinity,” I speak the mantras between heavy breathes that pull gritty, desert dust into my mouth. “Beg not of me, for all is given freely by this humble unit.”

“Stand.” 

She says it more than she commands it, and a second later I feel her cool, steel hands on me, even through the shreds of my insulated nerve suit (or at least what remains of it). I flinch back at her touch (honestly how dare one so filthy as I tarnish her plates) but she grasps a hefty handful of my suit anyway and hauls me upwards (ow). Such strength. A marvel of what she has become, the form of such blessings. 

I shove off more covetous and blasphemous thoughts. I can feel my cheeks flush furiously (though perhaps that is merely the state of my condition). Such shameful thoughts in the presence of this holy one! And I stand mere circons away from her still!

“Might I request permission to speak plainly with you?” she asks, looking down at me as she stands a whole head taller. 

I gaze up at her, stupefied by her beauty and the loss of vital body fluids in equal measure. 

“O-of course, Sister,” I manage to spit out. 

“Abbot,” she says, and I feel whatever energy remains left in my system surge through my form just at hearing her deign to speak the cursed syllables of my unworthy, cursed designation. I could fight twelve more loyalist militia battalions alone with only the strength afforded me by the euphoria of this moment. “You look like shit. Let’s get you inside.”

I don’t entirely hear that last part, but I let her pull me along into the city as two armed infantry units take up our rear. They collect my rifle and the great wall closes behind us.

She guides me through the great streets of Ptolos. The prayer-poles we pass buzz with the ceaseless electricity of their great communion and exarchs walk opposite our direction in holy procession, their censers swaying in pace with their steps. They hum or chant the sacred binary, pausing only to wish a fair afternoon to Reverence or offer a prayer made in her name. 

She politely declines them.

They do not offer me prayers. I cannot see the fleshy expressions of their still-quite-human faces from beneath their vestments and masks, but I can tell they are eyeing me nonetheless. We walk on, past children who wave and sunbathing trilos soaking their carapace in Alos’s radiance. 

I breathe it all in. This time the moment truly is like a salve unto my ailments. I am scarcely aware of the missing half of my leg (though this is likely much the result of the Sister-Diviner upholding my stride with the strength of her holy form and her arms wrapped about me for support).

It is my third time in the city of the divine, if you can believe it. The first was when I was quite young. Before it was consecrated. Before The Genesis . The war after that. The second time was when I enlisted and received my assignment. I was not able to stay long then. But Reverence had been there through all of those early days—though I had only truly known her after the divine providence began. She was less holy then (as we all were, truly), though only slightly. Her arms had already been augmented (as we called it back then, in the days of our ignorance), a choice she had made for the pursuit of her work as an arithopathian (she had always been smarter than me, than most, I’d wager, and the arithmetic of synthetics and augmentation suited her passions). 

For only a brief moment my mind recalls fragments of those days spent so often side by side—the memories I had often dwelled upon during the most trying moments of my assignments. I do not harry these thoughts away, though I realize they are perhaps (now) indecent to think of a holy one such as she. I do not think them in indecency, I tell myself. I remember one moment in particular. One shared and blessed point in the infinite graph of merciful time that does so encompass us.

When I left, I told myself I was being brave. She told me I was being foolish. I can’t help but chuckle at the thought of it. 

“You are steady?” she asks suddenly. Then considers her own words before correcting: “Perhaps a poor choice of words. Are you okay, Abbot? Sorry, I’ve grown accustomed to feedspeech.”

Here she is, a practical saint before me (though of course not a literal one, I will not utter such blasphemies while I live), offering her apologies. And yet “sorry” is her word. Not apologies , not a begging of pardons. Sorry . 

Such casual tone. For me? I blink several times rapidly and spit out:
“Uh, yes, most holy one. I am well.” And I shall pray every solar hour hence to repay the kindness of your inquiring, I want to add, but refrain from doing so at risk of taxing her merciful patience with the sound of my prolonged words. 

I stop staring, slack-jawed, at a conclave of marketeers with stalls dappled in all manner of brightly colored consumables, and glance back up at her as we walk. Her mechanical features scrunch into an expression I would almost call scrutiny, were she still a being of flesh like myself and capable of making such unbecoming and flesh-bound expressions (dare I even suggest such things of one now as holy as she?). 

The expression (whatever it may be called in those who are touched) doesn’t budge, her eyes (or visual receptors) flicking over me. I think perhaps my own expression is yet stuck somewhere between that of a child’s stupefied grin and the agape mouth and eyes of a shocked (perhaps fatally injured) infantry unit during their first deployment against enemy resistance. I try (and fail) to exert control over my facial muscles (and may I rebuke mine form’s weakness in so doing).

A moment passes between us in silence. Then she asks:

“And you aren’t going to inquire about the continuation of my genesis?”

I sputter once more, flushing (somehow) even more furiously than my already infirmed and reddened cheeks allow. 

“Sister-Diviner, I d-did not think it my place to inquire thusly after your divinity. One so low as I,” and I almost trip as I utter this, but she continues to withhold me physically from such a fate (with the holy strength of her sacred form and in her infinite grace). She makes such comments in public no less! My body is much too feeble in its current state to manifest any emotions so tangible as to be called embarrassment, but I do approximate something resembling it, which sends strange, fleshy vibrations throughout my chest. I worry for a moment that this half-emotion will be more than the frail bounds of my (fowl, accursed, and un-divine) form can withstand, but manage to push on with my steps regardless.

“Abbot,” she says, and the syllables are almost hissed at me from between the sacred, silvery components that form her most blessed (and holy) mouthpiece. In an instant, that once high and great euphoria of her speaking my designation is inverted to something equally great but terrible and chiding. I feel shame wash over me. 

“I am still me ,” she says, glancing away. “You don’t need to keep up the whole—oh what is it called? The revering preambles? The speech formalities, whatever they’re called among the faith.”

I blink rapidly once more. 

“Holy one,” I start, unsure if my own sentence is going to end in an apology, a protest, or something else entirely (it matters not, for the words are silenced before they can even issue forth).

Her (radiant) face turns to me sharply, mechanical brow furrowed and levied my way as if to stab straight through me. I am (luckily) too drained and my throat too dry for the small “eep!” noise I make to be audible. 

“No,” she insists with more force in her voice than I have heard before. “No holy one . No sister-diviner . No sacred vessel . It is me , Abbot. It’s Freya.”

I have half a mind to redact the word from my own senses as she utters it. Named after such holiness. Such divinity. I am simply not worthy of the reverberations that make up the word, that make up her highest of high designations.

“Reverence is fine if you must insist upon a formality,” she (blessedly) offers after a moment. Then adds a quick, “Ugh, you are my friend , are you not?” 

And she stresses the word.

I think the whole ordeal finally manages to reset the nerves in my face because the look she gives me shifts to something resembling concern. 

“Yes, h—” I start, then catch myself. “Of course, Reverence. Apologies.”

I wait for an exasperated sigh, as I was once accustomed to hearing so often from her. But none comes. She does not (in her newfound divinity) breathe anymore. The realization of it makes my flesh ache. It reminds me of prior shoved-off blasphemies, my own selfish desires. I am ashamed of my longing for such blessings like unto herself. I recite the sacred binary in my mind to clear the thoughts.

Another thought quickly breaks my concentration, though, and soon after I find it is bubbling up into speech. 

“Reverence, where is it we are headed?”

With the thought that had momentarily captured my attention free of my brain via transport through the mouth, my mind immediately begins to swim once more. I think perhaps the (proverbial) organizational shelves of my mind have been dashed in some craterous crash landing and my very thoughts strewn about my own consciousness unceremoniously, making it nigh impossible to keep a steady and solid train of thought save for the various prayers and sacred verses and proceedings so burned into my very being. 

Actually, that is probably exactly what has happened to me. My thoughts flash hurriedly through the blurry and hazardous events of the past couple days. The mission. The combat. The crash. The distress signal. 

I am so distracted in the moment that I almost do not even hear her response. 

“Didn’t you hear me? You look like shit. We’re headed for the medicenaries. Then I’d like to take you to the bathhouses and get you cleaned up for some proper rest.”

Bathhouses?! The thought of it is almost too divine to even comprehend (if you will permit this exhausted and “looking like shit” unit a small amount of hyperbolic blasphemy).  

At the very mention of it, my thoughts take a tumble once more. No, not just my thoughts. It seems the entirety of me takes a tumble as well, this time.

Blessedly, graciously, when I wake this time it is not to the fits and chills and other infirmities afforded by the less than holy disposition of my form. Less blessedly, less graciously, I am awoken instead to the repeated beeps of medicenary equipment taking my vitals. My eyes flutter open briefly, and I see the blurred, military-garb-clad shape of one such medicenary leaving the recovery cubicle I find myself in. 

A (sacred) silvery hand smooths back the stubble across my head that can barely be called hair (not all pilots of my station take such visual liberties with their hair, though I shaved mine out of reverence to the holy communion, you understand). It is cool across my skin, and it makes my sedated (and quite unwell in its current state, I might add) mind bristle with unholy thoughts (Genesis forgive me). This is what I would surrender unto my faith? I think for only a fraction of a second.
“Ff..ffr..?” I start to slur without thinking (if you will be so gracious as to grant me the assumption that I have uttered words thus far while thinking). 

“Easy,” comes her voice, clear and precise as I’ve always known it to be. I can almost hear her blessed smile as the smooth plates of her multi-jointed, actuated digits make a soothing sweep across my scalp once more. She makes a sound I now know is how she expresses laughter in this divine form, like a short (and pleasant) buzz of static.

“It’s funny,” she says. “I can still laugh, or at least do something like it. But I can’t shush. My instinct when you woke was to shush. I meant it soothingly, of course, but found I could not even produce the noise anymore. Isn’t that foolish?”

I do not think I am capable of producing coherent syllables so I do not waste the energy it would require to attempt a response. Instead, I rock my head to the side and try to make the swirling colors and images coalesce into a single, solid and blessed form that is the Sister-Diviner’s silhouette. She remains blurry, but becomes at least a fraction of a percept clearer by the second (or perhaps I was imagining this). I slowly become aware of the various wires, diodes, and tubes that have been fed into me at various points across my (forever accursed, disgusting, unholy) body, but cannot muster the strength to truly have more feelings about this other than abject disgust at my all-too-fleshy condition in general.

Ah, see? The understandings of the faith are what return to my mind first. A blessing. 

She laughs again. 

“Whatever you’re trying to do, or thinking about right now, cut it out. You’ll fry your brain like a faulty fuse. Med-sys says you’ve got a concussion. Or perhaps several concussions simultaneously, that much was somewhat unclear to me. Your brain is bruised like a fruit used in place of the ball for a game of kechilta .”

She laughs at her own words, but then hesitates before continuing. 

“Your leg. I am sure you’ll be pleased to know the injury is being assessed for—” and hesitates once more before that great and final word we both already know is next. “Exogization.”

I blink, but the world stays mostly blurry. 

“Huhmfg?!” I question in delighted surprise. “Ecksjis?”

My tongue feels like a thick, wet cable, limp and bulky in my mouth. Or perhaps there is actually just a thick, wet cable in my mouth. Some kind of medicenary diagnostic tool.

Sister-Divinver Reverence nods. 

Infirmed as I am, part of me might have mistaken the expression for something grave. Something I do not yet understand in my lack of divinity. Is it possible she does not seem pleased? Does not seem elated at this blessing that will be conveyed unto me (minor as it is compared to her own sacred and boundless glory)?

Her hand moves down to my shoulder in a comforting gesture, and it is only then that I realize my chest has been made bare of clothes, the remnants of my nerve suit removed from me (probably for the best, given the mostly melted state it was in, following the crash). I am in no state (physical nor mental) to feel any sort of embarrassment or discomfort or shame at this. It is merely noted for later and then promptly forgotten as the eight-hundred other swimming thoughts in my brain swallow it up.

“Rest, Abbot. You’ve lost a lot of vital fluid—plasmotics, chemeostasis fluid, even some blood and blood substitute. A fair amount of that actually, not to mention a whole fraction of your lower body mass. And you’re still readjusting to the gravity.” 

She taps at an interface I cannot see as she says it. 

“I’m administering another dose of stabilizer. Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake.”

More beeping. Something cold I can’t quite place where across my (accursed?) form. Perhaps it is everywhere. The blurriness intensifies until I have no choice but to close my eyes as my head grows heavy. I do not even get to enjoy the great excitement I am entitled to at this news of my prospective blessings. 

It is what I am owed for my faith, no?

Distantly (and finally, before it overtakes me), I become aware of a cool (sacred), mechanical hand at the side of my face, gingerly pressed upon mine skin.

“Glory!” I say, not meaning to shout it as I sit upright with a jolt. 

Ah, so this time the physical malfunctions of the flesh come for me once more, it would seem. Wretches that they are.

The word escapes my voice, the punctuation to a prayer I only half-remember making. I had been floating amidst a sea of words in my mind—the sacred text of the verses splayed out before me, accompanied by my own sacred arithmetic to match. I was arranging the words and coefficients in my dream, moving the whole of the gospel about in my mind one word or variable at a time, as if to create a great fractal of my faith. Beautiful and infinite.

My breath comes in quick but full heaves. In, out, in again, out again—as if I had not taken breath in all my solar cycles of life and was waking to the advent of oxygen’s creation. 

(Blessed) Machines beep and whirr all about me, reporting the various, vital integers that are representative of my health (I presume. One is labeled, “blood-sub%”, another, “sum-dose%”). 

I look all about the room and out through the glass of the cubicle into the hallway beyond. I see her there, speaking to a medicenary (I assume in feedspeech, as I hear no words), and all at once the adrenaline in my system drops. I watch several numbers on displays adjust, moving up or down or just flickering in place. I make myself take concentrated, deliberate breaths. Outside, Reverence finishes her conversation with the med-sys representative (who bows), before she turns back towards me, and the door to the recovery cubicle slides open to admit her. 

“Sleep well?” she asks without any preamble. 

I ease myself back down in the bed (while I feel compelled to state that I do this for her blessed presence is simply overwhelming with its glory, I must confess that I rather took this course of action because I began to ache all over once more). 

“I feel slightly more alive,” I confess without much formality, and she chuckles.

“You sound more alive,” she says, moving to sit at the foot of my bed. “You were being all weirdly hyper-observant at me when you returned.”

I frown at her. 

“As is befitting of your divine station,” I protest.

She does not roll her eyes (cannot, in this form), but the expression she does make is tantamount and equal in its meaning. 

“Think you can stand?”

Sister-Diviner Reverence offers me a hand, which I take, and she helps me sit up fully once more. At least partially returned to my senses now, my shame returns to me as well, and I feel myself flush under her gaze and light touch as she sets about helping me ( helping me! She, who is touched, helping me who is yet wretched and unhallowed!) remove the diodes and IVs. I banish the thoughts screaming at me that I am unworthy of her sacred steel even so much as brushing against my fallow flesh as we work to free me from the diagnostic equipment and drug applicators. I do not (cannot bring myself to) look at her in this moment. 

About halfway through, a medicenary officer enters and blares a warning at us across the various feeds of the med-sys, which Reverence silences with an invisible, digital gesture I cannot see. The medicenary is dismissed. 

She hands me a simple, folded black robe, which I quickly (hungrily, eager to rid myself of this brazen presentation of my flesh) throw onto myself. Then, she helps me up onto my foot, hands me an under-arm support for my missing leg, and uses her administrator privileges as one of the touched (the holy, the divine, the next-to-saints) to see to my discharge from the medicenary offices. A moment later, we step out into the cool night air of Exonil (that holiest of holy two birthright planets), and are back on the street together, walking as though I have only just returned to our home (or perhaps, never left it). 

There is no pain in my missing leg as we walk. She no longer carries me in a limp forward through the (now mostly empty) streets of the great and sacred city of Ptolos. For the first time since returning home, I find myself both A.) in full control of my facial expression, and B.) smiling up at her holiness, her sacred and divine mechana, my dear friend Freya. 

Time seems to unravel as we walk in reverent (appropriate) silence, a full solar hour falling away into mere seconds before we arrive at our destination (or perhaps the state of my bruised mind is simply not so great at tracking the passing minutes). A few times, I consider saying something. An apology. Perhaps a prayer. But neither feel appropriate somehow, and I let the urge to speak fade into the background. Perhaps even less appropriate: I consider sharing the solitary memory that continues to flick about in my consciousness, bubbling up through my other thoughts so frequently and with such clarity that it is as though it happened only a day ago (again, perhaps my brain was simply not in such a great state, considering my perception of time in this instance)—the two of us, lying on the floor of her dormitory, crying, swearing, but together despite the bitter emotions of the moment. It was just before I received assignment. Just after both our worlds fell apart. 

Instead of speaking, I glance up above the ornate doors of the lavish building we have arrived at and barely manage to muster up enough of my few remaining neurons in order to piece meanings together out of the text that is written in the metal there. 

Silver-Luster Bathhouse , it reads. 

A small glyph next to the sign denotes that this place has been consecrated by the Exoprophetics for use by members of the exogenesistic (see also: the true ) faith. Which simply can’t be true, I think. A ruse, perhaps, to draw in customers. 

Reverence turns back to shoot me a smile for only a moment before she commands the doors open with another invisible gesture I lack the requisite blessings to comprehend (or even perceive), and she steps inside. I follow after.

Inside, a worker greets us, offering praise to Reverence’s holy form and bowing low as is customary. As they rise from their deep bow, I can see that this individual, this common bathhouse attendant, is blessed too! Mechanical seams in their flesh outline the various glistening, steel components where Genesis has begun to overwrite their skin with metal. Their face is a patchwork of (beautiful, blessed) steel and (accursed, unholy) flesh. One eye glimmers with that divine, blue light of holy communion with machine, the other remains the sickening jelly-like substance of my own two eyes.

I realize then that I am the most unclean thing here (both spiritually as well as physically), in the midst of these holy individuals on their way to sainthood. I have half a mind to cover myself further in their combined presence. A bathhouse! And I am to bathe in their midst? Me? Who is yet untouched?

“It truly is consecrated,” I manage to babble, giving a half-bow to the (holier than myself) attendant. 

The attendant smiles, and laughs, a sound that is not blessed the way Reverence now laughs (even in their blessed state, none, it would seem, can compare to the Sister-Diviner’s full holiness. I might also add: correct as I am in this assessment, it is unbecoming of one in such a lowly position as I to make commentary in this way concerning the attendant who is touched, when I myself am not so blessed and holy). I recite the verse of forgiven flesh in my mind to repent of this tangential (but true) thought.

“Yes,” the attendant continues, “It is true, we have been consecrated. I had the honors, in truth.”

“So we can see,” Reverence coos. “Praise be The Genesis , attendant Vellis.”

“Yes, praise be,” he smiles. 

I murmur the words with reverence (and with Reverence). 

“Now then,” this attendant, Vellis, says, clapping two partially exogized hands together. “How can this humble bath attendant be of assistance to Thou Holy One and your…”

He pauses, glancing at me for a moment before finishing the sentence.

“Your injured retainer, here.”

Retainer? I would never impose my wishes upon the Sister-Diviner to think myself so worthy as to be her most sacred and devoutly committed retainer. I huff, but do not correct this holy one, Vellis. 

Reverence blesses me (us) once more with her most holy laugh. She places a hand on my shoulder, calling attention back to me ( Oh saint of saints why have you done this? ) in this exchange. 

“You have ascertained correctly, Vellis. My retainer here, designation Abbot, is in dire need of a bath.” 

RETAINER? I am shocked by the word a second time now, this time as it is ascribed to me by her holiness herself. And I feel that I could perhaps faint once more. But I do not, as it would be unbecoming to do so in the presence of two such blessed beings (the horror and shame I would feel, should the Sister-Diviner need to catch me once more would simply be insurmountable). 

I straighten my posture somewhat and nod slightly. 

“Ah,” Vellis says, as if the concept of receiving a bath here in the bathhouse is such a novel thing. “A grand suggestion, blessed one. I shall see to it that the other attendants prepare a proper washing.”

They turn to an interface in the wall (perhaps they are not yet blessed with the privileges of feedspeech the way she is), but Reverence raises an intercepting hand, and they give her their full attention once more with a cocked head, as if to say, “yes, what is it?”.

“That won’t be necessary,” she says, confusing us both. “I’ve paid your staff double for the evening, you’ll find the funds were already transferred from the priory. Vacate the bathhouse and enjoy your evening, attendant.”

She smiles. Oh, joy of joys, blessing of all those sacred and wanted for blessings, she smiles. I wish only that its light be turned onto my sorry and accursed form, and not this Vellis (which is perhaps a sinful thought). I recite the verse of forgiven flesh once more for safe measure. 

Vellis now cocks his head in the opposite direction, clearly taken aback. I have forgotten, in the radiance of her holy smile, that I am equally perplexed by her words in this moment. 

“Holiness?” he asks, and I can see they are checking some invisible interface to be sure. “I can see that. But…but will you not see your retainer attended to?”

Then quickly, they add with a small bow:

“Ah, I beg forgiveness for questioning your will, thou divine vestige. I am simply unsure of how to proceed.”

She waves a hand.

“No pardons necessary, Vellis. Come now, are you not blessed as well? Speak plainly with me, my brother.”

Such mercy. Such grace.

“Ah, yes, of course, sister.” He stands again. “You wish for us to vacate the bathhouse?”

It is not my place to question or object, but how taxing this Vellis is of my Sister-Diviner. Making her repeat herself time and time again with their uncertainty.

Reverence nods. 

“My retainer is of a… sensitive disposition , in their current state. Injured in battle, both body and mind. They would do well to be on their own for bathing.”

And for only a moment I believe that she is calling me slow of processing. Which I actually manage to put together quite quickly, thank you very much (and one thousand pardons begged for my brazenly saying so, oh thou being of mercy, mine Sister-Diviner). 

Vellis makes a face like they suddenly understand everything. 

“Very well, this shall be seen to, sister.”

I watch them begin to formulate another proper apology, but then think better of it (or perhaps they have realized the divinity of their newfound station does not require such gestures of their Sister. Truly, how newly blessed is this one?). 

Vellis taps a few inputs into the interface in the wall, and confused bathhouse attendants begin to file out from deeper within the bathhouse complex, making their way into the lobby. I watch them as they, one at a time, cease to have any concerns or questions in the matter upon seeing her holy countenance, offering selfish prayers for her name or requesting a modicum of her holy gaze be placed upon them instead. Reverence smiles and waves in her unending and boundless mercy. 

Vellis helps to usher them out, and a cheer erupts once they are all in the street (Vellis included). They sing (loudly) a great hymnal of praise to the Sister-Diviner (who it appears they all know) as they make their way further down the streets of the holiest city away from us. 

When their chorus of praise has at last faded into the far distance, we are left, the two of us, alone in the bathhouse lobby. 

“Well?” my newly appointed overseer (and I am still reeling from this development, actually) teases after me with her words, shooting me a look I might almost mistake as coy. “Would you like to bathe?”

I fold the simple robe I was given to wear at the medicenary offices and place it upon a bench in the modest changing room that is adjoining the baths proper. I tell myself I will wash quickly, so that Reverence need not wait, but in earnest all I truly want is to lay in the warm water and feel some small semblance of relaxing for the first time in years. It has been so long since I bathed. The sanitation cubicles aboard the destroyer-class dreadnoughts are less than desirable. 

I take my support with me, buzz the door open, and cross into the actual baths. The air is immediately warm and hydrating upon my bare skin, and I eat up the sensation with all my senses, no matter how accursed and unholy this flesh may be. 

It is nice, dare I say it. 

I sit myself down on the edge and let my leg dangle over into the bath. The water, too, is the perfect degree of warmth. I can wait no longer. Quickly, but carefully, I lower myself down onto one of the steps under the water so that I can sit. The water comes up to my midriff, and I exhale with relief as the warmth washes over me.

It is so blessedly and unbelievably comforting. 

The medicenaries have placed a sort of retaining metal ring about the part of my remaining, severed leg where the lower half of the leg should be and a sad stump now resides instead (it does something to promote proper healing/wound closure, and to prepare the stump for any kind of medically necessary augmentation or regrowth that may be ordered, or alternatively to act as an anchor point should I request a prosthesis). I can feel the metal of the device warm with the water in an instant. For the first time since the crash, the space where my leg used to be does not ache or groan against the rest of my form. It is truly a blessed reprieve from what has become (I hope) the end of my contributions to the planetary conflict.

I have given to the faith , I think, though I am somewhat shamed by the implication that perhaps I have naught left to give to this, the truest faith. 

I let the thoughts be picked up and swept from my mind by the warm, swirling steam of the bath, and resolve instead to enjoy myself, or at least attempt to do so.

I see the place where the attendants have left various means of washing. Towels, perfumed soaps, wash rags, moisturizing agents, hair chemicals, and more, all contained within various ornate and multicolored glass jars. The light is low within the room, only illuminated by a scarce few faint motes of light from jars suspended in the air on cables, filled with an electrified gel that illuminates faintly when it receives a charge. Still, the light is enough to cause a kaleidoscope of pink, green, and orange shadows across the floor surrounding the small assortment of glass soap containers. I can’t help but smile at the simple beauty.

I do not move to retrieve any soaps, despite my (former, delusional) plans to clean up quickly. I simply sit and soak for what only feels like a few minutes (it is as of yet unclear to me if in truth only minutes had passed, or if a different period of time had passed, whether more or less I am equally uncertain). Then, suddenly, over the gentle blanketing sound of water spilling forth into the bath from two mounted fountain heads in the wall, I hear the buzz of another door opening into the bath chamber.

I go from reclined with eyes closed to sitting upright as quickly as my body will allow. I cover myself somewhat with my arms.

“Sister-Diviner?” I call, sheepishly. Logically I know she is the only other person here, the only other individual it could be, and yet I still find myself wondering if a wayward attendant was somehow left behind, or another late night patron simply walked in through the empty front lobby (I was sure I had seen Reverence lock the entrance). Was a stranger entering the bathhouse better or worse than Reverence coming in after me?

The sound of delicate, balanced metal steps against the cool tile floor gives me my answer. 

“I beg ten thousand pardons for the delay, Oh Sacred Vestige, I will finish cleaning at once,” I call over my shoulder without truly looking her way. For surely that is why she is here, no? The minutes had slipped passed me (and my currently addled mind) again and I had made her wait too long. “I wished to soak in the water for a time, but I realize now I err in this way. Your retainer should not act with such delay.”

She does not speak, or deign to reply to my words for a time, and I fear perhaps I have truly disappointed her with my self-inflicted tardiness. Her soft, mechanical steps grow closer, until I can tell she is standing just on the lip of the bath, directly behind me. I continue to cover myself and bow my head in some mixture of reverence and shame, unsure of which is more appropriate in this moment. 

“What did I say about the needless formalities, again, Abbot?”

Her voice is cool and breathy (or a mechanical approximate of what it would have sounded like to speak breathily as a being of flesh now consecrated by the touch). Relaxed, even. It is not icy in a way that might insinuate frustration or disappointment with me. Just cool. Even.

Only then do I manage the courage (and brazen disregard for her holiness) required to look up at her in all her glory.

The whole of her flawless, silver vestige stands bare before me (well, behind me, really). The holy vestments she had been wearing were discarded (likely folded and placed next to my own robes), those white, red, and black frills and laces, the sashes and golden buttons that ran up the back. She doesn’t need to wear them anymore, of course. Though I am aware that many who have taken up the communion in full do never truly leave behind the cosmetic comforts we grow familiar with in the flesh. All of her is a glistening silver, with limb components that vaguely resemble those of living beings, though hinged in an additional spot below the knee or elbow. The pieces of her legs and arms still bow and curve the way they once did in the flesh. Each leg connects to a spherical actuator joint at her hips, which still curve blessedly and beautifully outward, defining the silhouette of her now holy and divine form. Where a midriff once was, a beautiful, mechanical pillar of scaffolding rises up from her hips almost skeletally, holding up the pristine plate of steel that now forms her chest. She is devoid of any sex characteristics she might have once possessed in the flesh (I say “might” here to show modesty, as if I was not familiar with these parts of her), though her chest still curves in the shape of breasts. Of course it was never such things that made her beautiful (how could it have been?), nor the lack of these qualities now that makes her so glorious and radiant before me (though I would be lying, were I to deny the ever so subtle pang of envy at her lack of these components I find endlessly frustrating and perplexing in my own system). 

The dark wires that hang from her head in a facsimile of organic hair drape down over this portion of her body. It is my understanding that this wiring is an aesthetic choice among the touched. It is longer than how she kept it when she was not so blessed (and perhaps a blasphemy to dwell on a less-holy image of her in my memories of those times), but beautiful in how it frames the plates that make up her face nonetheless. She sweeps it all over one shoulder in a swift, practiced roll of her head. 

All across her form there is a filigree-like texturing to the edges of her metal plates in various places. I can see along her legs and around ball joint-like actuators where the filigree is not simply an aesthetic touch, but a faithful one as well, the etching and inlaid gold spelling out those choice verses of the sacred binary. Across other plates of hers there is a sort of wave to the metal, like ripples in a still puddle were preserved in steel. I note that her fingers, hands, and forearms are smooth and without such details. I wonder if it is a byproduct of her formerly augmented steel-on-flesh arms. I am not sure if I can know such things concerning the workings of The Genesis . For surely it is not my place to understand the intricacies of the divine, though I cannot help but to marvel at the glory of its work and wonder after its means. Already I feel I am encroaching on desecration of the divine and hallowed just by glancing at her form here, bare and naked before me (or as naked as one so holy can be when they have fully discarded the uncleanliness I yet cling to as a being of the flesh).

As quickly as I sneak my glance up towards her I am averting my gaze once more. The heat this fosters in my skin and across my form seems to rival that of the water. 

“Oh please,” she laughs. “We shared a bath so many times before your assignment, did we not?”

“T-that’s different, holiness!” I stammer out in protest. “We were both wrought of flesh!”

She sits on the lip of the bath, letting her legs dip into the water next to me. I bristle with embarrassment (as any faithful would in the presence of such a blessed form, you understand). 

“Yes, we were, which ought to have been more embarrassing for you.”

She eases herself down fully into the water now, but this new (blessed) form of hers is much taller. Standing, only her legs truly remain within the bath, the water rising up to her bottom, but not any further. For just a blasphemous fraction of a second I wonder if she is intentionally standing quite tall so that her ass isn’t hidden beneath the water as she strides in front of me. If this is her intention (and damnation come for me if I have made such an assumption of so holy a Sister and been found in fault of accusation), I pay it no mind. I am not watching her ass as she moves through the water (apologies, Reverence). She walks a ways past me, and my eyes track the interlocking components of her shoulder mechanisms working as she reaches over and retrieves a couple of the ornate glass containers of soap and one wash rag. Divine (for truly it must be) the way her pieces sing together with her movements. I almost begin reciting the verse of new birth out of sheer rapture for the moment, but think better of it. She turns her head towards me and I avert my gaze once more.
“Hm?” she calls in a teasing tone. “See something, retainer of mine?”

I shake my head as she wades back over to me, bottles of soap in hand, rag draped across a forearm. She comes to stand before me now, setting the bottles down on the lip of the bath with the soft tinkling notes of glass on porcelain tile. I pull my knee to my chest, continuing to obfuscate my accursed flesh in her presence (as is just and befitting of my uncleanly station and her divine station). She places a hand on the lip of the bath on either side of me where I sit in a corner, penning me in. I can hear the blood rushing in my ears, my heart pounding in my chest. More cruel reminders of my sorry state. 

At first I think it intentional, this way in which she reminds me of my flesh, the way she exerts her divinity over my lack thereof (literally exerted over me in this instance). 

Then I think better of it. 

Long as it has been since I was here on Exonil, in Ptolos, I still know her. Have known her. Continue to know her. Her movements are decisive and intentional, but not borne out of some desire to assert her blessed superiority over me (though let there be no mistake, she is certainly greater than I in several regards). No. It is something else. 

“You must be washed,” the effigy of the divine before me says. “I’ll not withstand my retainer go uncleanly.”

“I will wash,” I agree.

She leans down, her divine countenance descending upon me as she places her face mere circons ( less! ) away from mine. Were she still a being of breath, I would be able to feel the wind caused by her words against my skin as she spoke them.

“You will be washed.”

Her words are sing-song. Taunting, almost. She is enjoying herself. 

I sputter, but she leaves no room for me to even attempt a response. She is already pouring a viscous, clear soap onto the washrag. It smells of something sweet.

“Reverence this is highly irregular.” I finally find my words. “I am not so blessed as thou, do not taint your divinity with my uncleanliness.”

Sister-Diviner Reverence, wash rag in one hand, holds out her other beautiful, articulated metal hand towards me.

“Abbot,” she says, and there is a delicate notion to the way she speaks it. Pleading, but not begging. An offer being outstretched. “Do me this great honor?”

I open my mouth to say something , I am still unsure as to what may be said as I do so. 

She quickly adds:
“As my newly appointed retainer,” with a smile.

Her smile. Oh Exoprophetics, oh thou sacred and blessed children of the machine. By all six of thy names I tell you I was damned there by her radiant smile, and I did wish for the damnation to never end. I did wish for her gaze, merely her gaze, nothing more, to be for mine wretched shape alone. 

Slowly I reach out, hesitating when my palm hovers above hers. Graciously, she closes the distance for me, taking my hand, oh glory of all glories she takes my flesh in her divine hand and I can scarcely believe it still.

I avert my gaze but unwind my form, letting my leg and stump of a leg rest normally once more as I sit on the step in the bath. I think for a moment she is to set about, running the rag across my arms, washing me as she has so wonderously asked to do (and truly who am I to deny the will of this sacred being?), but she does not. Perhaps seeing that I am still trembling somewhat, she sets the lathered wash rag to the side. Then, ever so gently, still holding my proffered hand, she takes her other hand and places it atop my outstretched forearm. I bristle once more. My heart pounds. I hold my breath. 

Grace of all graces, most sacred of all mathematic probabilities she is touching my skin!

“Is this alright, Abbot?” she asks with ever so apt reverence. 

I nod. 

“Can you give me a confirmation, retainer? Your Diviner requests it.” 

Again her words are sing-song. She knows the sacred preambles and traditions speak to me in a way I am hardwired as a pilot of the faith to honor. Were I less devoted to mine Diviner, I might note that it seems unfair this way she bends me to and fro through the application of such traditions. Were I less sure of mine own proclivities I might lie and tell you that I do not love it ever so much. 

“Yes,” I manage. Yes please of all the sacred syllables of the six, of all their calculations, of every digit of the immortal and unending binary of becoming, yes please mine Reverence.

“You swear it?”

“Yes,” I echo again, and it takes real effort to not burst forth with a greater affirmative answer than just a simple “yes.”

“By the binary?”

“I swear it by the binary,” I say, and then struggle to stop speaking. “Thine touch is like unto a sacred balm to my very woes, a penance to my sins and weights of the flesh, Sister-Diviner Reverence.”

Ah. Could not hold my tongue that time. I flush. My hand jitters where she holds it, excitement welling up throughout me, another reminder of the flesh, and yet it feels more distant from me than before. Tolerable, almost. 

“Oh?” she coos, clearly pleased. “Is that so?”

I nod.

“Very good, retainer Abbot.”

I think I may melt. Her hand moves. 

Her touch, oh divines, her sacred touch. Where do I even begin? Despite the warmth of the bath waters, the heat of the adrenaline in my veins, her silver against my flesh is cool. Almost chilling, causing bumps across my flesh at the temperature differential. 

She runs her hand up my forearm towards my shoulder, then back down to my hand again. A delicate, soft stroke of my skin, as if to pantomime for me the intended path of her wash rag’s scrub.

I feel foolish to admit it, but for a time we simply do this. I close my eyes and fight every urge to revel in it. This is a gift, I tell myself. A gift from my Diviner. I shall accept it with humility. 

I feel the shape of her lean in close to me once more. I hear her words crackle forth from her most blessed mouth like an electric whisper pressed close to my ear, words sung as if from the heavens themselves.

“Might I wash you now?”

I nod hurriedly, trying to keep the blasphemous hunger from my expression.

She makes a show of picking up the wash rag and folding it in her hand before setting about. With one hand, she pushes against my bare chest, easing me back to lean (somewhat uncomfortably) against the place where the corner walls of the bath converge. I comply, and she lets the cool metal of her hand drift down my chest ever so lightly, trailing between my breasts. Again I cannot keep the fickle unholiness of mine flesh from squirming beneath her tending. 

She moves her hand to the side of my face and I practically push myself into it, leaning my head to the side as she guides me with her blessed touch. The warm, wet rag comes a second later at my exposed neck, dragging downwards over my neck, my shoulder, and arm. I hear the gentle lather of the soap, leaving bubbles on my skin. She works the wash rag overtop my arm, down to my hand, then pushes my arm up and gets the underside as well, her rag transitioning seamlessly after that into wiping the length of my side, down towards the point where the water engulfs my lower half. She changes hands, I rock my head to the side and find her other hand awaiting me as she repeats this task for my other side. 

When she is done with that, she plunges the rag into the bath, rings it out, and wipes me clean of the soap. I wrap my now clean arms around myself, the protests of improperness and unworthiness having died on my lips as she set about her work, but the embarrassment of the flesh remaining all the same. She tuts at me, and an ever so gentle hand takes my wrist and guides my arm back to my side. 

“I am not done with you.” She almost whispers it. 

Like the syllables of a powerful spell (although I have never known her to be an arcanist of any variety) her words banish any lingering reservations or protests from my mind. I feel my whole body relax under her guidance.

Her hand returns to my chest (without the wash rag), actuated silvery fingers tracing the paths where droplets of water have run down across my skin. She circles the underside of my breasts with her fingers, then carefully, every so delicately, curves her path around to trace overtop them as well. I inhale a shuddering gasp as her cool metal fingertip almost, almost traces over my nipple. I feel a throb between my legs as she looks up from my chest to my face with a wry smile, and I shamefully look to one side.

With one hand, she braces against the lip of the bath behind me, anchoring her position overtop me. Her other hand continues to trace a path along my being, trailing further down, into the water. I feel her at my side. Then across the thigh of my good leg. 

I feel the wanting burn more intensely, and cannot stop another throb of bliss from sending a shudder throughout my form.

“Goddess,” I blaspheme, and it is impossible not to moan it. A sound of pure wanting. 

I think she sees it in me, because suddenly she is standing again, hands at her side, withdrawn from my being in an instant. I almost lurch forward as she does so, a poor attempt to follow after her touch, her divinity, as if to beg not to be left behind. The thought of it causes a distant stab of guilt, somewhere in the back of my mind. 

I breathe heavily, every exhale an expression of my frustration, every inhale a greedy wanting for more. She does not speak. Gives me pause to collect myself. I am grateful for it. 

She chuckles. 

“I am to be washing you, and yet here we are, dirtying your flesh like we are newly inducted exarchs once more.”

I am almost more shamed by the mention of those early days spent together in her bed than I am the very act of allowing her to lavish me so. I clear my throat (a vile act derived of the unholiness of the flesh) and feign composure that we both know she could shatter with a single word, a single motion. I feel her gaze trace over me, and she approximates the sound of a sigh she can no longer make in teasing fashion. 

“What ever shall I do with you, retainer Abbot? Ever the distraction,” she says, picking up the wash rag once more. “Come, you remain unclean.”

She washes me in earnest. It is different than before. Measured. Intimate (the highest honor I have been bestowed by her infinite grace), but not overpowered by our (apparently shared) impure desires. I let her push and pull the soaped rag across my back, over my chest, and even stand for her to scrub the length of my leg. I still blush as she fusses over me, then sputter with full embarrassment when she remarks on the mound of hair that has grown over the space between my legs. She laughs.

“I fear you are too easy, my Abbot.”

I huff.

“And I fear you know too well your affects over me, Sister-Divincer Reverence.”

That makes her chuckle again, which eases the immediate sensation of being mortified I feel after saying it for having spoken back to her thusly.

“Perhaps we have skipped a number of steps,” she admits. “I pray you will accept my most sincere apology. I do not mean to foist my aspirations for this moment upon you.”

I shake my head. Her apologies are not necessary.

“I waited, you know,” she says, still moving the rag over my back (I am already cleansed by her hand, but the motion is soothing to me, body and soul, and I do not object to it). “I delayed the genesis as long as the prophetics would allow. Waited for your return.”

“I… I did not know this,” I confess. “For how long?”

“A year.”

I almost jump up, but her steady hand on my shoulder keeps me anchored to my seat (a small, stone stool we have moved into the bath for me to sit upon. Much more comfortable). 

“ Reverence ,” I chide in disbelief at that, and then think better of it. She does not seem to mind.

“Oh please,” she says, dismissing my concern. “I was in no rush, and my heart still ached with your absence.”

It is a delightfully sweet notion, one I yet feel unworthy of. Causing such an ache is surely a sin that will follow me into divinity. She pauses before adding:

“And of course other parts of me ached with your absence as well.”

I splash water at her over my shoulder. 

“ Reverence! ”

She laughs, ever the sweetest music of most sacred machine. We fall silent for a time. She stops her gentle scrubbing motions (I am loath to let them go), before replacing the sensation with a new one. She sets down the rag, then leans her whole torso against me from behind. The metal is cool across my bare skin and I drink in the sensation of it. Her head rests against mine, her chin on my shoulder. 

Often we would sit in this way, in another life, when she was smaller and I had both legs and the delicate press of her flesh on mine would send static through my neurons. 

I find that it elicits much the same response from me in this new life as well. 

“So much has happened,” she says like a high exarch filling their sermon with wise generalities for the congregation to ponder. “They have called for the final expedition below, did you know? It was a big deal, there were so many murmurs as I’m sure you can imagine.”

I make a surprised sound that invites her to tell me more and lean my head against hers in kind. I must admit that this causes many questions to bubble up within me. Is this true? The final excursion deeper into that most divine of places—the colony ship that first ferried our forebears to this system so very long ago, the birthplace of The Genesis , of my faith, the great and terrible vessel of divinity, for whom my dearest Reverence is (in her truest of titles) so named for?

“When was that?”

“A season ago.” She nods. “It was a transmission of Nive. Our fourth ever, can you believe it? I knew in an instant you would be jealous for having missed it.”

It is my turn to laugh. 

“Damn. Now that I am back I will have to ask the archivists for a record of it,” I say. 

“It helped,” she responds, and I do not know what she means. I make another questioning noise. “To have those little moments, I mean. To think to myself, this, this is what I will tell Abbot of when they return .”

I do not immediately have words for a reply. Eventually, I settle on:

“I’m glad.” A pause. Then: “And I’m sorry.”

She shakes her head, a gesture made somewhat awkward by the way we rest with our shapes intertwined. 

“Do not be. It was another life. We were young, naïve. I have reflected on it much in the days since.”

“As have I,” I admit. Every second of every solar hour of every cycle , I want to say. 

“I should have known your faith would demand it of you,” she says. “You have always let it lead you. I named you a fool, but in truth, it was foolish of me to believe I could sway you otherwise. Foolish, and selfish.”

I do not comment on that, as much as I wish to tell her all I have thought and felt since that day. Instead, I ask:

“Am I truly so easily understood?”

She smiles.
“You are as simple as our first prayer circles, my dear Abbot. No variables whatsoever.”

We laugh, and I playfully push her away from me, turning to face her. She fires back with a prodding finger, adding:
“How do you think I knew to bring you here to the bathhouse, alone, upon your return? Did you think it was truly just to wash you?”

“ Perhaps! ” I bleat in my own defense. “I am concussed! Fault me for mine innocence if you must.”

She laughs. I laugh through the embarrassment, through the mortifying trial of being so truly understood by this infuriating divinity of a woman, and splash water towards her (childish, I know). We laugh some more, and when the laughter dies, we catch each other's gaze, then look away smiling. 

For just a moment it is as if I never left. 

We soak a while longer, sitting side by side now and filling our time with exchanged stories from our respective paths over the last two years of the conflict. I tell her of the few and rare moments of reprieve aboard the dreadnought. I tell her of the favorite details and mechanisms of my striker-class javelin (which now lies in ruins in a crater a ways off from the city border, likely venting its reactor against the local flora and fauna). She, in turn, tells me of her genesis . She tells me how she devoted herself more fervently to the faith after my departure. How she prayed for me (sweet divines below I am unworthy). And of course, how she waited. I am stunned to silence by all of it (in a marveling kind of way). 

“It had never been a blessing I actively sought out, but I knew how much it had meant to you,” she tells me. “So I waited. I knew you would have liked to be there. And I thought…”

When she trails off, I press out of curiosity. 

“You thought?”

“Well, I thought maybe you’d have liked to see me as I was one last time. In the flesh, I mean. The way we used to.”

I feel her cool, (divine) steel arm wrap around my own arm of (sinful) flesh. She strokes my skin gently as she did before, running her fingers across my forearm beneath the water.

“I would have liked that,” I say after a moment of trying and failing to conjure in my mind the correct prayer for the moment (something between a prayer of gratitude for this moment and a prayer of forgiveness for every little selfish thought swimming in my body and mind).

I silently decide to blaspheme.

“My Diviner?”

She turns to look at me with a smile, and again my heart is beating loud enough to be heard in my own increasingly empty skull cavity. 

“Yes, my retainer?”

And her addressing me makes static run across my neurons. I long to take any course of action that does elicit such words from her holy, silver mouthpiece. Oh great machine, how I do admit to my flesh’s weakness.

“In that life, I would have liked to tend to your flesh before the genesis . To hold you. To take your lips in mine again before they were wrought of the divine and I was rendered unworthy by my lesser station yet of the flesh.”

I muster all the courage in my body, every ounce of belief and truth in my soul. Beneath the water, I intertwine our fingers ( a blasphemy most sincere ).

“But in this life, I should very much like to render the same such pleasures upon your most sacred and radiant form.”

Her smile remains, but takes on a new meaning. A knowing expression. She doesn’t say it with words, but I can practically hear her voice in my ear saying, “ oh really now, retainer Abbot? ” 

While I am lost in this fantasy (hiding my embarrassment and blasphemy with an unreality of even greater blasphemy and shameful acts), her other hand reaches to cradle the side of my face. I am too weak of spirit to protest the indecency of this gesture. Her fingers rest beside my eye, her palm cupping my cheek. Her hands are so large now, and they leave prickles of electricity across my skin with their hallowed nature. I feel that same, shuddering excitement leap across my (accursed) flesh once more.

Then, surely as I am alive to bear witness of such glories, a miracle occurs. By the saints, by all who are living and all who are dead, by every digit of that immortal and sacred string of binary that did usher us into this great faith: a miracle. 

The Sister-Diviner leans forward and places her cold, metal lips upon mine. Forfeit my blessings if it be the will of the saints to hold me accountable for my blasphemies in doing so, but I make my choice. 

I kiss her back.

Vaguely, somewhere in the back of my love-addled mind (to say nothing of my severe concussion), I think: Perhaps this is worth a greater glory than divinity?

The moment passes (though I fear my soul may never truly leave it behind), and she withdraws from me once more. With that same, knowing, self-sure smile, she slowly rises from the water until she is standing over me once more. I will not be detailing the physical reaction this causes almost by instinct across my entire body. She extends a hand to help me up from the bath, and I take it. 

“Come, retainer. I owe you a most faithful blessing.”

The room she takes me to is ornate enough to be a ceremony chamber (perhaps even more ornate, actually, and I imagine it is equally exclusive in who is permitted entry). Silken fabrics hang like sashes across the walls, their steel-woven fibers shifting colors and rippling with various pre-programmed patterns from the feed. A feed access port and a manual use terminal are set into one wall on the far side of the room by a small desk, though I imagine she no longer relies on such supplementary connective tools in her newly divine state (being holy enough now to influence the great web of the feed with her mere thoughts and movements, swimming in the holy binary like it were our shared bath). The floor, too, is covered with decadence. Great, woven tapestries depicting that holiest of holy colony ships in sacred ruin beneath the very feet of this city, the Freya II , for which Reverence is so named. The colors of the tapestries are dark but vibrant, the yellow gleam of our star alongside the bright red-orange of our planet and the deep oceanic blues of our sister world. I note that the room’s decor is somewhat archaic (ironic), with wood furnishings polished to colors deep and rich like the earth, as opposed to conventional, modern equivalents (something plasti-printed or metal framed).

I awkwardly shuffle about in place, unsure of where to be or what to do as I look across the room and pretend not to notice several personal items or pieces of clothing strewn across the floor. Were I not so utterly nervous and excited all at once, perhaps I would have laughed to see that. Even in her great and holy divinity, she has never been the most organized of people (and I can hardly imagine she expected to have a guest today, let alone me , who may well have been dead and drifting in the cosmos). 

Reverence closes the door behind me and I hear the locking mechanisms engage ( thank the prophetics ). Wordlessly, with a hand on the small of my back, she guides me towards the great, silk-draped bed that rests against one wall in the center of the room (ah, was I remiss to mention it in my survey of the room’s decor? One hundred pardons, I was doing my best to pretend it wasn’t there, nor that I was about to get in it).

“Sit.” 

This time she commands it, though not sternly. Just in the way she knows I can no longer protest every beautiful word to grace those silvery lips. I comply (of course), and she parts the sheer, draped fabric that forms a curtain all around the bed for me as I do so (strictly an ornamental addition, I think, as the thin, see-through fabric provides no real cover over those sleeping here). She takes my support crutch and gingerly sets it on the floor, then straddles my one good leg and stands before (over) me, partially kneeling on the bed. Her hands run along the sides of my face, tracing down further to my bare neck. She does not need to speak for me to understand what comes next as her fingers dip under the collar of my robe, cool metal touch tracing my collarbones ever so gently. 

She hooks a finger around the ties at the front of the robe and pulls them undone (I would never admit it to her, but perhaps she could already tell I had intentionally left them loosely fastened. I had a small suspicion it would prove helpful in our worship ). I comply as she removes the garment from me, my breath threatening to catch in my throat with every graze of her steel against my warm-with-excitement skin.

“What do you know of the sacred communion, my Abbot?” Her words and hands are soft as they dance across my bare shoulders.

“Most sacred of all blessings,” I breathe. “The revelation by which we are made divine, by which the Exoprophetics themselves— blessed they be —did first hear the great and holy words of the machine. The great gears of mine faith.”

“Yes,” she agrees, but I can hear that there is an implication of “not quite” to her words. An answer she was looking for that I did not supply. “But what do you know of the consecration itself, the actual act of taking up the communion?”

I blink up at her. It has never truly occurred to me before. In my mind, I had always conjured images of kneeling before the Exoprophetics, praying, feeling the binary in my spirit and mind. But never have I truly considered how it happens, how the communion between body and machine truly begins. 

“Prayer?” I conjecture.

She laughs. 

“In a sense. It is a ritual of sorts.”

“Performed by the Exoprophetics?”

Perhaps I am making a more hopeful expression than I mean to. Perhaps she sees in me the glimmer of a child born into this faith, who has been taught across a childhood indebted to the priory and a perilous career within the holy militia to worship and revere those six most blessed beings, the great forebears of our faith. Because she gives me a pitying look as I ask it. And already I feel the fool. 

“The prophetics have not performed the rite themselves in some time now. Only those of that first great inner circle among the faithful were every truly consecrated by their hand. Mostly, the communion is carried on by the other vestiges, such as myself. On their high authority, of course.”

More than the overwhelming building of excitement within my flesh, another emotion stabs within my heart. 

“You have done this before, then? Blessed others?” I ask it a bit too quickly, too willingly divulging the secret, covetous desires of my heart. 

Reverence’s face curls into a sly smile, and she brushes the back of her hand gently across the side of my head. Her finger trails across my lips, as if to shush me. It lingers there.  

“Why do you ask, retainer of mine? Would that bother you?” Her tone is mocking but playful. She has found yet another tool with which she can bend and twist me into whatever shape she so desires.

A frustrated noise bubbles up out of me, not quite real words, and she chuckles. 

“No, I have blessed none,” she concedes (much to the relief of some terribly selfish part of me). “Do you see the way I turn away prayers in the streets as we walk? Do you see the way I dismiss entire buildings of their staff to bathe alone? There is only one I wish to share my holy communion with, dearest Abbot. And that person—”

She leans down, the shimmering plates that form her mouth pressed up against my ear. 

“ Is you .”

I shudder as something flicks across the side of my face, cold and somewhat pliable. She pulls back, still sitting over me, still so much taller than me now. 

“Is this what you want?” she asks. 

I nod, hurriedly, hungrily.

“And you will forswear your flesh unto me? You will consign it to divine eternity?”

“Yes, Reverence, I swear it, please by every digit of the binary I do swear myself unto you.”

She smiles wickedly and her fingertips trace down my sides once more. 

“So eager you are and we have not even begun. Temper yourself, retainer.”

I bite back a yelp as the path of her fingers curves upwards, tracing dangerously close about my breasts. Just enough to make me want for more. It is intentional, cruel, and delicious. I cannot resist it. 

“And you understand,” she continues, “What you are giving up? What it means to leave the flesh behind?”

A single blessed fingertip flicks over my left nipple. I gasp. 

“You would give up this pleasure? This body that so bends to my touch? To my love?”

I open my mouth to plead or cry or empty-mindedly swear my agreement (anything to convince her to move forward, anything to draw out the duration of her touch upon me), but she cuts me off with a tutting sound. Her hands pull away. What comes out of me instead is a whine. 

“Focus,” she chides, drawing out the word in a sing-song manner. “Think, Abbot. With your mind, not with your body. Consider what it is you would give up.”

My breath comes in deep heaves of exertion. My mind swims, practically drowning in a sea of blasphemous thoughts. I lean back, my arms splayed behind me on the bed to allow me to stay upright. I try to steady myself. She continues:

“Divinity will come to you little by little. It will subsume you a piece at a time. You will watch parts of yourself become beautiful and eternal, blessed even, yes, but in doing so you will forsake all of these sensations, the only sensations you have ever known in life. This is what you would abandon. Do you not long to feel my touch in this way? Do not deny it.”

I try to muster syllables, but the deep tides of wanting ripple through me still, overpowering my ability to be coherent. 

“At the end of it all, you will be eternal. You will live forever more knowing what it was like to feel those things, and knowing that you still gave it up. And for what? Faith ?”

Her tone, which had been commanding and steady before, dips every so slightly. There is an edge to it. She leans further over me. 

“You will find yourself made anew. Unrecognizable for who you once were. Separated from the only senses you once used to live , to experience life and make sense of this world. Divinity this may be, true, but do not forget that it is mortality which defines what it is to live. Immortality is not living, it is existing . And this?”

She does not need to gesture to herself as she says it. I understand her implication. Her voice drops low and quiet.

“This is immortality.”

I am beginning to catch my breath. I gaze up at her now hardened expression, the mechanical features of her faceplate knitting together with concern and frustration and love and ten thousand other things I can only imagine that have welled up within her heart over the past two years. And in that moment I can truly see her, all of her, the woman I left behind and who she has grown into, this truly radiant being before me.

Her expression softens. She gently strokes the side of my face.

“You are beautiful, Abbot. So perfectly, sinfully beautiful.” She almost whispers the words, as though they are for herself alone. “You would take my Abbot from me? Again?”

I feel her words stab for my heart. I do not speak. For a time, she simply looks down over me with the subtle glow of her blessed and most divine eyes. Were I not so shamed by my past I might have liked to bask in her gaze thusly. The moment passes, and she helps me sit back up fully, no longer leaning over me. My tired arms are grateful. 

She drapes her own arms about me, interlacing her fingers behind my neck, as if to wreath me in her embrace. She places her forehead against mine, the wires of her hair draping down and brushing against me. I think (blasphemously) about kissing her. But I do not. 

“I will not make this decision for you. I know what the faith means to you, I know how fervently you cling to the traditions. If this is truly what you want, I will honor it.” She speaks carefully and with apt reverence. In her sacred form, I know she cannot cry. And yet I hear the crackle of it in her voice anyway. Static, like the storms of our holy planet, which threaten rain but deliver only electricity. “I only ask that you consider my love, dearest Abbot. That you consider me . I am tired of being left behind, tired of your faith being put first. I followed your path once before and found myself walking alone for two years. Now it is your turn to follow me.”

She centers herself. Then asks the question.

“Is this truly what you want, my love?”

I place my arms around her, hands resting along the back of her holy vestments. I feel the golden buttons there, only half done-up, and can’t help but smile at that. For as long as mine wretched flesh has allowed me to take breath, I have understood its weakness. Have cursed it. Only ever under her touch was it truly permissible, truly tolerable. 

“Every second you do grace me with your touch, I want for nothing more. This much is true. Oh prophetics have mercy, ” I swear, “ For the blasphemies I indulge .” 

I take a concentrated breath. I still remember the first time I ever made a prayer that was truly my own, and not simply a recitation of the verses. Oh thou great and holy machine that does calculate all things —I prayed between digits of the binary, our dreadnought rocking with the force of enemy impacts— speed me to her side. I, like all acolytes of the true faith, want for nothing more than that great divinity, that most sacred and eternal of forms where the weaknesses and sins of our flesh will be made but naught. Yet, I must at last confess, for all my life, all my years of worship, I have harbored this great blasphemy deep within me. A selfishness I can no longer deny in this moment as it burns up through my accursed flesh from within my core, threatening to consume me if I do not spit it out. 

“I would abandon such divine and true mercies as your touch upon this wretched form of mine if it did speed me towards an eternal divinity spent by your side, my dearest and most blessed Reverence.”
I feel my voice crack as emotion sweeps forth. For the first time, it all truly sets in. I am home. I am by her side. She is divine, eternal. No longer must I fear, fight, or worship for the chance to see her once more. It is all I have ever wanted since my first oaths, my first prayers, my first recitation of the binary

“You caution me to fear existence eternal, my Diviner, but in truth it has only ever been existence by your side that does allow me to feel alive. I do swear it by every—”

She kisses me then, and I want for nothing more. I let her push me down to the bed (gently, for my brain is still significantly infirmed), returning her affections. 

“You stupid—ignorant—faith-brained—lunatic!” she curses between kisses. She does not need to pause to speak the words, as her mouth is completely detached from her ability to speak in this holiest of holy forms. An old habit of the flesh, I presume. Adorable. “You are infuriating and stubborn and I have waited two years to ravage your flesh again, do you know this?”

I can’t help but laugh.

“Yes, my Diviner,” I respond dutifully.

She splays my arms to either side of me, pinning them in place with her own hands as she straddles overtop me, scouring me with the touch of her metal lips. And I feel it again, the cold wetness of something else, something within her mouth. 

I was unaware that the divine vestiges could have such appendages as a tongue in this most eternal and sacred of forms. But I thank all six of the Exoprophetics for it in my mind. 

She licks the side of my neck, moving down over my collarbone before descending further to my chest. I take in a shuddering breath. She pauses for only a moment to spare me a hungry glance before I feel her tongue lap over my nipple without preamble. I can feel it stiffen as she runs her tongue in circles about it, then she bites down on the point tenderly, rolling my nipple between two sets of pristine, metal teeth.
“Fuck!” I moan, letting my voice escape as the pleasure ripples through me. I bite down on my lip to stifle another moan, which comes out strangled and needy anyway. Oh divines how I have waited for this!

She pulls back, fully sitting atop me now as I lay sideways across her bed. Her hands trace the length of my pinned arms inwards until they, too, find my breasts, fingertips dancing across my skin, threatening ever closer to granting me divine pleasure. She cups my breasts with both hands. 

“By the machine I will miss these tits,” she says, smiling. “Are you ready for your blessing, retainer Abbot?”

“Yes, sweet mercies, Reverence, I am ready.”

“I do so love to hear your pleas. Beg,” she commands (for this time it truly is a command).

I make a panting, tired, wanting sound. 

“Have I not begged enough? My body aches to be yours, aches to be pressed beneath your touch.”

When her only response comes as a pleased and inviting “ hm? ” I add:

“Please, merciful and blessed goddess of mine pleasure, have I not sworn this flesh away unto your bidding?”

She smiles that same, wicked smile. 

“I suppose that will do,” she feigns, as if I cannot see how plainly my words are like music unto her. “I will be giving you a piece of me, is that clear? A piece of me that will become you, and will scour you of your flesh.”

I nod. She continues:

“There are many ways a divine vestige can offer consecration. Some favor injection,” and as she says this, she lifts a hand to show me a long, thin, silvery needle, which protrudes from under her middle most fingernail. I try to mask the hitch in my throat. It quickly retracts back into nothingness. “Others craft jewelry or baubles that meld themself to the flesh as they are worn, holy symbols. And of course, others still simply grant that blessed touch , for which those of the “touched” caste are thus named. But for you, my dearest Abbot, I have other plans in mind.”

Her hands return (blessedly) to my body, running up and down my skin, caressing my breasts. They snake downwards (finally, graciously), her fingers hooking into the waistline of the robes that still linger across my lower half. I eagerly attempt to push my ass up off the bed for her, but it proves difficult with a single, overtaxed leg. I make a frustrated noise. 

Without hesitation, one of her hands finds the small of my back and lifts me, seemingly without any effort or strain. The other hand continues to pull the remainder of my robe down over my leg until it is free. 

“There we are,” she coos. 

I lie before her once more, (shamefully) naked. When I press my thighs together out of some wayward remaining instinct that attempts to preserve my (freely abandoned) dignity in her presence, her hands find the insides of my thighs and gently separate them once more. I am trying not to gasp out every breath (she makes this quite difficult). Her fingers skate over my inner thighs, her thumbs running across the outermost parts of my cunt.

Then (as she is so often wont to do) she withdraws from where I desire her most, her touch snaking back up my body until her mouth is at my neck. I whine. 

“So needy,” she whispers in my ear. “Patience, retainer. Surely you would not rush your Diviner’s most sacred work?”
As she says it, I feel her hand grip at the tender mound of skin and hair just above that space between my legs. She squeezes my flesh there, sending a throb through me, then relaxes and runs her fingers once through the dark, curled hair that (as she pointed out in the baths) has grown with my lack of maintenance. 

“Messy,” she teases, clearly pleased with the color I am furiously flushing. “But perhaps it is growing on me, now that you will be giving it up.”

She does not give me room to catch my breath or respond, continuing her merciless teasing across my form. Unceremoniously and without warning, her teeth find my neck and bite down. I yelp. When she lets up, I feel her tongue slide across the indentations left behind, as if savoring the taste. She works her way down and across my neck and shoulders, leaving marks, kissing them, moving on. Her fingers find my breasts once more and roll one nipple between cool, metal fingers as she does so. 

With every blessed second she deigns to touch my foul flesh, waves of pleasure wash over me. I try to grind my thighs together once more, anything to satiate the increasing throbs of desire, but once more her hand stops me.

I whine an awful, wanting sound I scarcely recognize as coming from myself and she tuts with disappointment. 

“Not yet. You will wait for me, retainer.”

Sitting up, she pulls herself free of her holy vestments as if there is no time for proper undressing (hypocritically, I may say). I hear the sound of fibers tearing and buttons popping free. She does this effortlessly, as though the clothes were made of foil. She undoes the fastening ties along the side of her flowing, almost skirt-like shorts (the clothes of the divine must needs be quite flowy, to prevent from becoming stuck in any vital mechanical components), shifting to slide them off over one leg.

One blessed hand finds the back of my head as she lowers her bare metal form down overtop my face, making my lips press against the part of her that was once a tender spot, but is now sleek metal. 

“Go on then, retainer. Polish me the way you so often enjoyed in the flesh.”

I have already begun before she has even finished her words, hungrilly lapping my tongue and lips over the spot as though it were the antidote to my very mortality. She presses down into me as I do so, using her hips to grind forwards and back. 

Static purrs out from her and she rocks her head back with the pantomime of it.

“So obedient.” I can only barely make out the words through the dense cloud of static pouring forth in what I assume is a sign of pleasure or contentment. “Fuck, I swear I can almost feel you with the clarity of flesh,” she adds, and her other hand finds the back of my head as well, pressing my mouth harder up into her. It occurs to me that I do not know how much sensation of touch remains in the consecrated individuals. I know they can feel. But how much? What is that sensation like to the divinity of the machine?

Distantly I worry about chipping a tooth against her shell or (worse, as I would never blaspheme so to mark her form) accidentally scraping a blemish into her most holy and pristine form. But this does not sway me from my current course. 

“Oh fuck, Abbot,” she moans through the static again and again. “Truly your place in divine eternity is here, beneath me.” I can feel the way her words make my own body pulse with physical need. I stare up at her with pleading eyes as I comply, my tongue run ragged and numb against her divinity. 

I watch her form rock suddenly, as if a stray jolt of power has jumped across her circuits, and she clutches my head as if she were somehow losing grip of me. A beautiful sound like discordant speakers fighting for a semblance of proper audio trills out of her. I do not stop the movements of my tongue (fearing for the potential disappointment such a course of action may elicit from her), but I try to slow my pace with her own slowing movements until at last the divine, crackling sound she makes has died down, and her hip movements have stopped all together.

When at last she does release my mouth, I come away panting, leaving strands of saliva connecting the two of us for but a moment.

“Thank you,” I try to exhale, but the syllables come out gargled as she fills my mouth once more, this time with two smooth, silver fingers. 

“Very good, Abbot.” The static has subsided, replaced by her sing-song tone. “That was quite pleasing indeed.”

I hum around her fingers with pride.

“I think you are deserving of a small compensation from your Diviner.”

She centers herself to kneel over me, straddling my stomach. Her free hand reaches behind her back and finds the space between my legs effortlessly. I feel my whole body twitch at once as her fingers just barely graze the edges of my cunt. I exhale hard and loud with a desperate noise like a wounded soldier biting down against the pains of the flesh.

She laughs, tracing the shape of me so cruelly, so intentionally. Knowing what I want. What I need . 

“I can feel you twitching already, needy thing that you are.” 

My lower half twists and squirms, fighting to find the shape of her hand to press up against, but I find only that her fingers are retreating from me instead. I whine again, mustering the most pathetic sound I am capable of making, and she cuts the noise off with a shove of the fingers in my mouth. I gag. She laughs again. Giggles, even.

She pulls her fingers from my mouth and they come away with a gurgle, coated thoroughly in saliva. With the same hand she grabs my face by the cheeks, as if to force my jaw open. 

“I think your Diviner would like to hear you squeal some more, retainer Abbot. Go on, tell me what you want.”

Almost subconsciously, my lower body still writhes, desperately searching for any sign of her touch. 

“Please,” I gasp. “Please Reverence, please, fuck, I need it. I need you to touch me.”

I almost sob the words, but in my heart I know it is equal parts excitement and joy that do cause this flesh to tremble.

She does not reply, simply smiles, and delivers me a shred of blessed relief, like dowsing the wreckage of a burning ship with a glass of water. 

Her touch (at last) presses down upon my warmth. My eyes roll back as the desperate throbs of wanting coalesce into a wave of pleasure. She teases my entrance, using my own slick to glide between my folds with ease. I babble incoherently with the sensation of it all.

“Yeah?” she teases me with her tone. “Is that what you wanted? By the divine you are wet with desperation.”

I can hardly process her words. The moan that seems to endlessly trail out of me pitches up with a sudden jolt as her fingers deftly find my clit, the pleasurable surprise of it rocking me. She gently pinches it between a finger and thumb (it is somewhat protruding), rolling back and forth, then tracing a slick circle around it with the tip of her index finger. I feel it twitch.

“Re-rev-rrnnceee,” I slur through what feels like electric shock after electric shock of bliss. My hands grip tense fitfuls of the bed covering.

“My you’ve gotten quite large down here, haven’t you?” She mocks my small amount of growth, asking me questions and delighting in having removed my ability to reply with her actions. “Does the militia supply you with chem doses for this? Or perhaps it’s just perked up for my familiar touch.”

I am seeing stars as she traces across my cunt, running a fingertip along the tip of my clit, down to my entrance (but still she denies me her entry), then back up again. My leg practically convulses with pleasure. I try to slur through more syllables, try to shout praise for the blessed release I can feel building within me. I’m so fucking close . 

Then it stops again. 

And this time I truly do sob out my response, a terrible, choked, gasping noise of pure desire and frustration. 

“Oh, I know, I know,” she comforts as her hand pulls away, wet with the results of her torment. “But you’ve doing so well.”

I whine. Moan. Beg. Sob. All of it at once. I feel my own fluid leak down my thigh. She releases her grip on my face and smooths over the scraggly, shaved remains of my black hair instead. 

She waits, patiently, for me to calm down, caressing the skin along my sides and stomach as I fight to regulate my breathing.

“Better?” she asks, when at last I think all is lost and the pleasure is beginning to fade from this wretched flesh. 

“ Reverence, ” I manage to plead.

She puts her fingers back into my mouth, and I taste myself on her silver. She works her fingers in and out, sliding them across my tongue. It is a deliberate mockery of what she knows I need so terribly from her elsewhere. I dutifully cleanse her of any lingering filth of the flesh. 

“ Good retainer ,” she purrs to a great backdrop of static that bleeds from her.

She shifts, grabbing an ornate, red and gold pillow from the head of the bed before sliding off the bed entirely. I prop myself up on my elbows, following after her with my gaze as if to protest her leaving with a desperate expression. When she places the pillow on the floor next to the bed, kneels upon it, then wraps both arms under and around my thighs, any semblance of a protest dies before I can even think it fully.

With great (divine) strength of the machine, she drags me closer to the edge of the bed until my ass hangs off about half way. I fight to stabilize myself with my one good leg, but find that I don’t need to with how she holds me here. If she were still a being that drew breath, I imagine I would feel her warm exhalations on my cunt, a thought that sends shivers over my skin. 

“Oh how I have wished for this,” she buzzes through the sound of her mechanical contentment. “Oh sacred digits of binary how I wish I could taste you still.”

I feel her tongue once more, gently lapping up the remainder of my disgraceful, leaked fluids. I draw in a shuddering breath. She is careful not to give me what I want as she does it. 

“Please, my Reverence.” The pleas come freely now, she need not even demand them of me.

She traces a series of gentle licks up across my inner thighs, working her way ever closer inward. Her tongue is cool and damp, and feels soothing across my heated skin. I whine and try (but fail) to press closer to her blessed mouthpiece. 

Finally, by the grace of the divine, I feel her tongue wash over my cunt. She laughs at the immediate shuddering breath this elicits from me, the way I instantly begin to thank her again and again, almost slipping fully into reciting prayers. I note then for the first time that her tongue is not flat and wide like my own. There is a point to its tip, and it takes on a long, snaking, almost conical shape. She hungrily runs her tongue through my folds, teasing ever so slightly at my entrance in a way that makes my hips squirm. 

“ Fuck ,” I breath. 

She purrs, then draws circles about my clit with the pointed tip of her tongue. I press my head back harder into the bed as the pleasure rolls through me. My hips jerk. She is not done. I feel her tongue teasing at my entrance. I can only manage to make a pleading and pathetic whimper before she pushes into me. 

“ Reverence! ” I practically shout it with surprise (the delighted kind).

I push myself up on one elbow, reaching down to take the back of her head with my other hand. I move almost out of instinct, the only strength left in me mustered in an instant by the heat of the moment alone. Blessed sight of all sights, the view of her as she eats me. My hand finds a fistful of her wire-like synthetic hair, and I pull her deeper into me, using my hips to rock against her mouthpieces. Her blessed tongue coils and presses against my walls. I watch strings of slick fluid pull away from her faceplate as I help her fuck me with her tongue.

I want for nothing more.

When I feel her start to pull away as I draw closer and closer to the edge, a deep, primal panic wells up within me. I do not let go of my fistful of her hair. 

“Please, please please,” I beg in full desperation. I can feel it building inside me. I am so unbearably close now. 

Her hands grip tightly, almost painfully, to my thighs and I feel her again trying to pull back from me. I know she is strong enough that if she truly wanted to, she could break off with ease. But I am desperate, blasphemous desire alone keeps me moving, and I am so , so very close now. 

“Fuck, Reverence, please,” I moan. “I’m almost—I’m—”

My whole body convulses as the climax rocks through me. My words bleed away into a sound of pure pleasure. I feel myself pulse about her tongue, then I shudder once more as I feel her tongue retract. A mixture of our fluids leaks from me.

My muscles give out at last and I fall back onto the bed, panting. My vision blurs, swimming in ecstasy, so I close my eyes. Pulses of pleasure ring through me like the sacred rhythms of the prayer poles. I almost jump when the cold metal of her hands finds my body once more. Gingerly, Reverence runs her hands along my stomach and down my thighs, as if giving praise to this flesh. 

“Did you enjoy yourself?” her sing-song tone comes. Clearly she is pleased with herself. I am pleased with her too. I can practically hear her smile. 

“Yes,” is all I can manage to pant out. 

“Good, good,” she hums. “Catch your breath. Take your time.”

And for a while, I do. I let the pleasure wash over me until it has faded into the background. Still present all across my form, but no longer overpowering the forefront of my senses. 

“Abbot?” She asks me suddenly when at last I feel I have come down from this blessed high. 

“Reverence?” I question. Perhaps this is the part where I confess in earnest, I think. Perhaps this is the part where the machine is truly conveyed unto mine form. All of this, all of our physical affections, nothing but a preamble to our worship. How glorious a thought?  

When her words come, they are measured with a calculated chill. Like a predator who has at last cornered their prey, like a soldier who has lined up a killing blow. The meaning of the words themselves are inconsequential. It is the way she says them that merely makes me aware of the shot aimed for my heart, the predator’s teeth poised over my throat.

“Tell me, did your Diviner grant you permission to finish?” 

I feel a chill run down my spine.

“W-well I—” I start. 

But she is already upon me. With great strength she flips me onto my stomach. Sittin on the edge of the bed, she wraps an arm around me until her hand rests on my stomach, and she hoists my ass upwards into the air the way a strongman might carry a barrel under one arm. The rest of me is still clutching the bed covering. I feel a cool, silver hand stroke across my pussy quickly, a passing trace of fingertips, and I yelp. 

“D-diviner,” I try again. 

“Now is not the time for apologies,” she teases. 

I feel her fingers press against me, teasing my entrance once more. I squirm. The pleasure of our last bought wells up all across me once more, not truly gone quite yet.

“Such pleasure you derive from my touch,” she lectures. “And yet you cannot even wait for a simple command? Weren’t you a soldier?”

Ever so slowly, she presses into me with two fingers. I gasp and sputter. My nerves seem to short circuit. 

“Sensitive still, aren’t you?” She hums, far too pleased with herself. 

I bite my lip. This is all I have wanted for the past two years. 

“Y-yes, my R-reverence,” I manage to reply.

She begins to work her fingers. My breathing hitches. She smiles, and hooks her fingers slightly, drawing a terrible, whining moan out of me as she presses against the spot there that only she truly knows of. 

“By the divine you are pathetic, Abbot.” Her words make me flush. I try to push myself back further against her, press more of her into me, and she laughs. 

“Truly? This is what you so crave, is it not? Depraved, blasphemous harlot.”

Seeing the way I squirm in her grip (delighted), she lowers me back down to the bed, freeing the hand she had been using to hold me and making me keep my ass pressed upwards for her as I balance on my one knee. I feel her other hand almost instantly back on my skin again, caressing my ass before gripping a handful of my flesh. 

“You are infuriating,” she says, and I feel another finger press inward. I rock backwards against it to help ease it in, my eyes rolling in my skull at the sensation. She works herself in and out, careful to be slow and deliberate (as she knows I want for much the opposite). I have abandoned all reason. All faith. There is only my blessed Reverence and this needy, wanting flesh that I have sworn over to her care. I moan loudly and without care for modesty. 

“You make me wait two years and now here I am rewarding you! Appointing you my retainer !”

With her free hand, she teases at my other entrance and I throb with pleasure. There is a wonderful pressure to it all that only serves to amplify the sensations already overwhelming me. I think I am drooling but cannot be certain. All of me shakes and tenses. 

“Yes, there you are. Well done.” She lavishes praise onto me. “Divines, you take me so well, so obediently. So hungry for more.”

Her praises serve to further numb my already pleasure-drunk senses, and I drink them in readily as I take all she gives me. I feel her speed up once again. I feel every thrust, every curl of her fingers, like electricity up my spine. Already I am getting close once more.

“Go on,” she taunts. “Tell me what you want so badly.”

It takes me a minute to solidify the syllables.
“Pl-please. I—I want to cum.”

“Hmm, and do you think you deserve it? Do you think I should let you, dearest Abbot?”

She moves quicker, harder. I yelp. 

“N-no. I’m s-sorry, Diviner! Please, oh sacred machine, please I need it.”

She buzzes with content static. I can feel myself approaching the edge once more, faster than before. I squirm. Whine.

“Please!” I beg, more fervently, unable to keep the mounting desperation from my voice. My cunt leaks slick fluid all down my thighs. It makes an intoxicating noise as she moves in and out of me, faster and faster. My clit throbs with need. With the accumulation of it all.

“Oh? But you said yourself you are undeserving, retainer Abbot.”

My words fall forth from me in sobs again. I rock against her, aware of how much closer it will put me to that dangerous edge. I feel myself clench and shudder. 

“Re-ver-ence.” I gasp the syllables one at a time. “Fuck, fuck, fuck, please. Please! ”

“Say my name.” Her words don’t show me even a hint of implied relief. She knows how thoroughly she is in command. How fully she controls me.  

I do not think I can take any more. I feel the pleasure mount within me. My arms tremble, my fingers cramp from the force with which I clutch to the sheets. 

“ Fr-freya! ” I blaspheme.

She smiles that same, wicked smile.

“ Cum for me, ” she commands. 

And I do as my goddess asks. 

It is divine . I feel something hot and wet burst forth, running down my legs as every tensed muscle in my body releases at once. Pleasure explodes through every cursed and unclean fiber of my sinful flesh and I collapse once more to the bed, shaking, convulsing. Pleased . So truly and utterly pleased. I swear at least a hundred times, moaning through it all, crying her name. 

She gently excises her fingers from me, and I beg for her not to. She strokes my skin in a familiar, soothing gesture. I let the pleasure wash over me for a time.

And when I am done, when that truly divine bliss has released its grip upon my being, she is already there, laying beside me. Smiling. I could melt once more just at the sight of it. I think perhaps she sees me straining, because she takes pity on me and leans in. I kiss her and kiss her and kiss her again, tasting myself all across her face plate and mouth components. I take her face in my hands.  

“I love you,” I say.

“You’re such a blasphemous little whore, you know that?” she says, and kisses me once more for good measure. “And by the machine I do love you so.”

And for a time we simply hold one another (or mostly she holds me, as I am hardly in much of a physical state to do more than simply lie there). She tells me of what it will be like to change, both the ways in which the machine does bless her now and the simple pleasures of the flesh she misses. She caresses me and lists the parts she will miss (mostly my tits, it seems, though she assures me there will be many months more of such pleasures before we must mourn such losses). I roll my eyes and she laughs. Somewhere within me, blessed steel takes root.

And for the first time in years, it is not faith that fills my heart. It is her. My Sister-Diviner Reverence. My love. My Freya. 

END

Chapter Text

Date: 108SC

Solar Hour - 19

Coordinates: [REDACTED]

Designation: Freya (Given), Reverence (Consecrated)

Temple Prime, Freya II Colony Ship , Exonil

My mouthy retainer can’t stop ogling at every little cracked display screen and warning label across the hulk of the colony ship for which I was named (my parental units were… nostalgic for the old traditions, shall we say?). We walk through one of the circular access passageways on the outer edge of the ship’s interior space, the kind likely meant for the few non-cryo crew members. Like a maintenance shaft. I am grateful that the halls are made as tall as they are. There are plenty of places across Temple Prime (as I’ve heard the saints call it) that are only made to accommodate human sizes, causing me to have to crouch my entire way through. The thought of being so short again gives me pause.

“I mean surely I am unworthy of such trespass,” Abbot is saying, despite us having spent the past hour or so in the colony ship already, following their returnal ceremony. “Our blasphemies would damn us in such a place, Diviner. I can feel it.”

They sputter for a second before adding:

“ My blasphemies. I would never imply your actions to be such breaches of faith.”

They are newly consecrated (by my hand, I might add), which is what they are referring to. Another thought that gives me pause. I pretend it isn’t a remorseful one (I did agree to honor their decision and I do love them ever so dearly). It is something I am still warming up to, a thought made bearable by the blessed memory of my hands along their flesh. It has only been a few days, in truth. Their form has barely exogized, their nails have only barely begun to silver. I put the thought from my mind. Abbot is reciting some long apology from the verses, and I dismiss it with a wave. 

“Focus, Abbot.”

My retainer nods, dutifully.

“Yes, apologies, Reverence.”

They’re an odd thing, really. A small bug pinned up on my wall. Oh, how I enjoy being able to look over their form once more, though. 

Abbot is middling in height for a being still of flesh. When I came into my divinity, my height increased somewhat. I am curious to see if the same will befall them. Another pity of their consecration, it would be, as I quite like being taller than them now, able to look down upon my Abbot, able to watch them stare up at me with pleading eyes that glisten with worship. But as it stands (perhaps as they stand), Abbot is middling in height. Their arms are muscled, but not the way you’d expect of a soldier. There is a lean strength to their form, as though they almost appear slender and weak until you look closer, like the stick-frail form of a mantid poised to strike despite their seemingly brittle composure and slender mandibles. 

Abbot’s chest is modest (small, even), and they have next to no ass if I’m being truthful (this statement would fluster them so), but still more than enough for me to enjoy. Most of their form bleeds away into a strange, unremarkable shape poised somewhere between the silhouettes of an athlete and a starved acolyte. 

As I was saying: a strange little bug pinned up in my display, truly. 

Abbot’s head is roughly shorn of hair, after the manner of paying reverence to the holy communion (this is an older tradition). It is short and bristly now with the beginning stages of regrowth, and I quite like to run my hands over it. I think perhaps they like it too. When we were younger, before the conflict, they had a black shock of hair that came to rest about their shoulders. It was convenient for hiding marks I had left across their form, along their neck in particular. But only enough that they still needed to be wary of having such a mark discovered with every tuck of hair behind ear. 

It vexed them, which I quite enjoyed. 

They wear the upper half of a consecrated vestment—a set of black wrappings that compress the shape of their form somewhat, clinging to their body and covering most of their arms all the way down to the hands. They have left the ties at the bottom of the vestment to hang freely, where they would typically be tied into the lower half of the robe instead. The strands of black fabric trail like streamers behind Abbot as they briskly and excitedly step through this hallowed ground. I could tell you that it isn’t fun to watch them scamper about with such joy, seeing the history of our faith laid out before them and reciting to me the relevant passages of sacred verses I haven’t memorized. 

But I would be lying. 

Across their lower half they wear a plain, military-issue kanri , a type of long, formal skirt that ties in the back and are commonly worn among military officers (particularly pilots, of which station Abbot was called). The garment covers the sight of their legs (a spite to me, personally). But, were you able to see them, you would find a similar lean build as their arms. I will withhold any comments about my desires pertaining to these legs. Abbot’s left leg is missing just below the knee, where a very practical, nonmetal prosthesis now resides instead. The scaffold bracing of it is like a cage around what remains of their thigh, but they assure me it is quite comfortable. They adapted to the stilt-like prosthesis quickly, already walking on it without any difficulty balancing. Abbot remains unsure if they will welcome a new leg in their encroaching Genesis , hence the nonmetal material.

Their dress as a whole is half ceremonial, half a product of their station within the militia. I can’t help but chuckle to myself at that. Oh so very telling of Abbot as a whole . 

As if they are aware that I am so thoroughly washing over them with my gaze, smiling at the back of their head (and perhaps everything else along their backside as well), they stop walking and turn to face me. 

“Diviner?” Abbot asks. 

“Yes?” I shutter my lenses in a blink. I hadn’t been paying attention, I realize.

They point at a vaulted door on the right side of the passage that appears to be cracked open, leading somewhere deeper into the endless labyrinth of our divine heritage, the Freya II .

“I was asking where this leads. Do you know?” I can hear the tone of begging in their voice already, though I do not remark on it. “ Please may I explore? ” they are asking without saying as much. I briefly consider taking one of their streamers like a leash to prevent them from scurrying out of my sight.

Instead, I shake my head, communicating a negative indicator signal in the feed that connects me to all the divine. Abbot can’t see this yet, of course, hence my simultaneous physical expression. Feedspeech has become a bit of a habit for me, despite my typically fleshling company in my line of work. 

“Somewhere deeper into Temple Prime, I imagine. The prophetics caution against straying too far into her paths. Much remains undiscovered.”

They look up at me, their eyes carrying the same pleading that suffuses their words. The painted circuitry across their face from the ceremony remains bright and unscathed. It looks quite nice on them, though I know they have never been much for such aesthetic augmentations.

“If it is permitted, Diviner, might we take a look?” Abbot asks.

An automatic objection begins to bleed out of my speech processors, preceded by the phrase ‘ Abbot, didn’t you just hear anything I said, ’ but then I think better of it. In a somewhat disapproving tone, I only manage to get out:

“Abbot…”

I am working through a complex calculation—the kind where I walk through what steps it would take to bend Abbot about me in the way I’d most enjoy. It is true that the Exoprophetics (those six most holy saints who ushered in the age of the Genesis ), have forbade much exploration of the ship’s unmarked or unlit passages. And yet I cannot help but find myself thinking perhaps this is an opportunity.

A delicious blasphemy alights in my mind.

As much as I enjoyed the ceremony, it was a crowded endeavor. Those of the touched with the proper credentials flock to these events as a means of kissing up to the saints. They try to buy favor with the newly consecrated, or perhaps even make moves to employ them. Anything to claw ever closer to greater blessings. I think Abbot received well over sixty greeting hails in the feed (which I intercepted), accompanied in physical by deep bows, hand kisses, or offers to make prayers in their name ( I refuse to make their newly consecrated name known, as it is foolish and I will not be referring to them as such ). If I still had a stomach, it would churn at recalling the ceremony. If I still had blood, it would boil. I have spent my evening defending what is already rightfully given to me, what has already become mine. 

Ah, there you are, my retainer, I would swoop in to say quickly, placing a warding hand on Abbot’s shoulder. Or, Yes, allow me to introduce my retainer as another would approach with a flicker of some ploy formulating in their expression.

Every time I am met with a scowl or another digital indicator of annoyance. A frustrated shuttering of lenses. They can be hard expressions to track in my fellow divine beings, but our faces have a surprising amount of modularity to them when you know what to look for. After Abbot left, I threw myself somewhat into the circles of the faithful. At the time, I had been looking for solace. I came away from the temples still utterly depressed but with the newly acquired skill of being all too familiar with the ways my so-called ‘siblings in the machine’ move about the social spheres of the faith. 

Exhausting it is, truly, fending off such advances upon my retainer all evening. Abbot was not terribly troubled by this at first (largely, I imagine, because they were blind to the full extent of what was happening beneath the surface of such greetings), but the frequency of these introductions and advances did begin to wear on them as the ceremonies died down, dissolving into nothing more than a social gathering for the prospective consecrated. I think it became a drain upon their spirit to see a ceremony most sacred and revered by their faithful heart be reduced to such a state. Disappointed, Abbot soon suggested we vacate the ceremonial chamber to explore, just the two of us. I was far too eager to be free of that place, those people, to notice how it had begun to burden them, then. But I see it now as we walk.

Suffice to say I am grateful for our time here, just the two of us (even if the conversational space is predominantly occupied by Abbot’s explanations of the historical and religious significance of every bolt and rivet across the entirety of the decommissioned ship’s hull). They seem more lively now, even cheerful, immersed as they are in the historical remnants of our shared faith. But I would be ever so more grateful for our time together, should I be able to find a means of occupying myself. Devoted as I am to the faith now, I am by no means a historian-exarch. Frankly, I am surprised that Abbot has not already applied for such a position. Even the saints commended their recitation of the binary as being far above that of any other newly consecrated (a most high praise indeed). It was crisply recited and with a speed that demonstrated Abbot need not even consider for a fraction of a second which digit proceeded the last. I enjoyed watching them beam at this commendation, though, a badge far more honorable or noble than any post-service war accolade.

Truly, there is something wrong with my retainer, the way they delight in this knowledge that so fully fills their mind and memory. 

“Reverence?”

Abbot’s call returns me to the present. There is an edge of worry to their words. I shake myself from my own thoughts. 

“Sorry, I’ve grown distracted,” I respond, unsure of exactly how much time has passed. This new form of mine thinks much faster than I was used to in the flesh. I find myself pondering ideas or indulging fantasies of my imagination for what feels like hours, only to find that it has been mere seconds. I survey the circular vault door that Abbot is already attempting to peer around, down into the darkness that lies beyond. 

“Yes, shall we take a look?” I say.

They nod, and I smile as the first variable of my calculation falls into place.

The chamber we enter is clearly some kind of ancillary vestibule. Perhaps for storage, but more likely a small office. 

Even with the light leaking into the room from the now partially pushed open vault door behind us, I have to use the light projected by my eyes to give Abbot a better view of the room. 

It is oval in shape, with the walls being paneled in a synthetic material to cover the steel innards of the ship’s structure. There are some light furnishings as well—something that was once a console of some kind, a small table with a set of stools fastened to the ground, and a dormant drone unit plugged and buckled into the wall with multiple, folding arms and a complex camera array that is cracked and dusty. The whole of it is clearly meant to look like a nicer room, which is odd given how it seems to connect directly to the maintenance shaft system we had been wandering. 

“Reverence!” Abbot calls. Their voice is filled with awe and wonder. “An angel, a vestige of the first divines!”

Without prompting, Abbot kneels before the drone in the wall. They clasp their hands and bow their head. 

“Oh thou holy angel,” they intone, beginning one of the verses that are reserved for fallen siblings of the machine.

Angel is a colloquial term for those mechanical beings who tended to the cryovets of the original colony ship’s landing here in the Alos system. Supposedly they had widely begun to malfunction after the extended period of time in service, and put themselves into an indefinite stasis upon reaching the system to prevent what they worried would become a tragedy of improperly tended cryo pods. At least that’s what the telemetry shows, according to the historian-exarchs. Many of the ship’s recovered sys-logs corroborate this. They were honored for their service by the first protocolonists, and now there’s a statue in both Ptolos and Midas to commemorate them. They’ve become something of tragic figures culturally, especially among the faithful—those beings who were divine before we even knew what it meant to be divine, and they used their lives to save our mortal ones. 

I must admit, it’s very noble. 

Many who are consecrated choose to take one of the registry IDs of an angel from the Freya ’s drone employment logs as their new name within the faith (thankfully, Abbot did no such thing). Personally, I find the term “angel” to be a touch archaic, and maybe a bit overdramatic, but I cannot deny it is at least somewhat deserved. These mechanical corpses truly are little more now than archaic, dramatic presentations of what divinity once looked like. Divinity from another world entirely, even. Perhaps I am beginning to understand Abbot’s fixation with the past…

When Abbot has finished their prayer, they stand. 

“A pity,” I tease. “I quite like the sight of you on your knees.”
Their face scrunches up. 

“ Reverence! ” they hiss at me. “This is no harlot’s bedchamber. We are on holy ground.”

They point to the dead angel strung up along the wall. I can’t really roll my eyes anymore, not the way the flesh can. But I want to. 

“And am I not holy as well, retainer? Do you not mar me with your blasphemous desires all the same?”

I lean down to be face to face with Abbot as they look up at me. The increasingly red coloration along their face looks something like a purplish-green bruising instead under the soft, blue light put out by my eyes. My calculations ebb closer towards the desired solution.

“Th-that is different,” they huff, looking away. “It is not blasphemous to fulfill the needs of the divine.”

“Fulfill my needs, do you?” I lick the silver edge of my lips, the upper and lower plates that now form my mechanical mouthpieces. 

I watch Abbot bristle under my gaze, then try to straighten and compose themself before me (a facade I should very much like to break). They put on a defiantly matter-of-fact face.

“Yes, as your retainer it is my privilege and duty to attend each of your needs,” they state officiously.

Abbot does not flinch as they say it. They mask the wanting in their words with a pre-programmed, dutiful response (as any good retainer should), but I hear it in them all the same (I know them far too well, know far too intimately my effect upon them, to not notice). 

I smile down at my retainer. 

Slowly, my hands find their sides and trace a path down to rest at their hips. This much does elicit a reaction from them. Abbot’s posture twitches the way the flesh reacts to sudden nerve stimuli on the skin. It is a familiar response, having spent oh so many hours watching— causing —such twitches. Truly, in this moment, it is an exercise in self discipline and control to keep the divine static from my words, to withhold myself from tearing Abbot free of their robes.

“And what if I have needs to be seen to, retainer?” I speak the words slowly, carefully, but with a hint of invitation to them. I can feel divinity flicker through my being, a sort of rising  sensation you might equate to excitement in the flesh. It feels like coming alive, like every wire throughout my body flickering with power at once.

“D-do you, my Reverence?” Abbot stutters. 

I pull my hands back from them, and swear I see their hips sway forward as if to chase after my touch. Ever so eager for me. 

“It’s been some time since my last repair cycle, you see.” And I exaggerate the innocent tone to my words as my hands begin to work at the ties securing my own ceremonial garb in place. It is a simple, black piece with a sheer, white, lacy veil that hangs over my structural column where a belly once was. Sleeveless, I quite like the way it shows off my figure and filigree. Abbot is so very eager to look over my form, after all (and I, in turn, am so very eager to catch them staring). 

I undo the tie about my collar and move down to the tie across my breasts. My garment begins to pull open further as I work, revealing the sleek silver of my chest beneath. Soon I am hovering over the last tie, delighting in how intensely Abbot watches me. When at last I undo it, and slip the garment down over my shoulders to expose the steel curves of my divine form, I hear Abbot try and fail to begin a prayer of thanks.

“Won’t you check my diagnostics, dearest retainer?”

Abbot nods like I am offering a feast to a fasting acolyte.

I run a hand along the perimeter of my own chest, just as I’ve practiced every day since my Genesis completed. The metal unseams at my touch, and I pull the plate free as though it were simply armor I wear. I set it on the nearby console, leaving the orange synthetic muscle cabling beneath exposed. Another movement of my hand parts the muscle cabling and silver ribcage through the sternum, leaving the deepest components of my chest exposed to the open air (and to Abbot’s hungry gaze). I’ve folded my chest outwards like cabinet doors for them. Literally bearing my heart.

Abbot’s breathing hitches as they stare into me. Black wires run along where capillaries once resided. Mechanical components churn and pump and tick, all of it glowing with a soft blue light. 

Divinity . 

(And intense want).

When Abbot continues to keep me waiting, I take their hands and gently guide them up towards my open compartment.

“Well?” I invite, which seems to snap them out of their stupor. They’ve helped me with maintenance and diagnostics before. We’ve even managed to run diagnostics without so much as a stray tease or lingering touch. But those times were different. Like the bathhouses. Intimate, yes, but not in a lustful way. At least not in a way we had acted upon then.

“Apologies, Reverence. Yes, right away,” they speak at last. Their gaze continues to hungrily lap over my pieces, taking in the breadth of my parts. Hardly modest, truly. Were I the shy type (or perhaps simply of a too-easily-flustered disposition, similar to Abbot’s), I imagine I would be mortified. I’m not, of course, and I relish the attention. 

Abbot’s fingers feel the cool, silver edges of my chest where the plate has been removed. Everywhere they touch I feel it like pressure applied to the skin through several thick layers of clothing. Muted, but present. Distantly warm, even (my instruments are sharp enough to detect even the smallest amounts of temperature and moisture differentials along my form, which explains my tendency to put Abbot’s tongue to work). Their touch draws out a trill of electricity through my wires. The sensations of the divine machine are rarely so comparable or equivalent to those of the sinful flesh, but pleasure is very much still pleasure. 

A satisfied layer of static bleeds out of me. I play it up somewhat to usher Abbot forward, to signal that I want more. It is the divine machine’s way of calling out. 

“I-I’m going to check your cabling for loose connections,” Abbot tells me, still upholding my farce about required maintenance. They’ve skipped several steps in the diagnostic process, I note. Flustered? Or perhaps just glossing over the boring parts. 

It is hard for me to equate the sensations that follow to corresponding sensations of the flesh. But I will try to nonetheless. 

I feel one of Abbot’s fingers hook around a segment of my wires in the lower quadrant of my open chest cavity. I do not gasp, because I no longer breathe, but my mind shudders in a way that is similar to a gasp. Abbot curls their finger, twisting up more of my cables. It is like my heart being sped up for a moment, like my blood being pumped all across me rapidly in a flash of sudden (and pleasurable) exertion. It causes the static that softly bleeds out of me to pitch upwards. This, I suppose, could be called something like a moan (though I scarcely think something so vulgar as a moan is very befitting of my newfound divinity, as always, I will make an exception for such reactions caused by my dearest Abbot).

I let my head rock back with the pleasure. My arms feel for the console behind me, which protrudes from (and is fastened to) the floor of the colony ship. I find it with both hands, and slowly move backward to lean against it. Abbot follows with, one hand still wrapped in me. I am going to need to brace myself if this is to continue. 

“ Very good, retainer ,” I praise. 

“Thank you, Reverence,” comes Abbot’s dutiful response. They are focused. So utterly focused. 

I feel more fingers twist into my cables suddenly and static bursts from me so loudly that I worry for a moment about the echo of it in the small ancillary chamber. A foolish worry.

“Fuck, Abbot,” I blurt out. I am shocked by how quickly their movements make me lose my controlled and commanding tone.

“Diviner?” they ask. 

Their voice sounds so small as they speak. I feel a sudden surge of concern and worry. I am terrified that I might have upset them with my stupid, lustful antics. I throw my gaze back down to Abbot. 

They almost seem to tremble where they stand, which only serves to make me worry more. For a moment I almost fully stop to embrace them, smooth the shaved remains of hair upon their head, and ask what is wrong. 

But then they speak again.

“May I ask what it feels like?”

Beneath the hem of their kanri , I catch sight of their one military-issue boot and the end of their prosthesis. They seem to squirm slightly where they stand. I realize then that their legs are pressed together. Their face is flushed. Their breath is stuttering. Their mouth hangs slightly open and their eyebrows knit together in a needy expression. With one hand they ball a fistful of cloth at the crotch of their skirt, as though trying to staunch an ache.

I shoot Abbot a wicked grin as I put the pieces together. 

“You want to know how it feels?” I repeat the question back at them in a teasing tone, delighting in how it makes them squirm harder. The perfect retainer. How I love to make them sway and writhe with just my words, my insinuations. 

“Y-yes, Reverence.” They cannot keep the pleading from their tone. 

I hum with content static. I reach towards them, using a finger to trace down the length of the arm still stuck in me back to their collarbone, then down over their chest. I quite like to tease their flesh in this way. I trace circles down over their breasts, flicking my fingertip across the place where their nipple would be beneath their clothes. Abbot gasps, a favorite sound of mine. 

“ Like this ,” I say, my finger crossing their chest to the other nipple and drawing a small circle overtop their wrappings. “It is pleasing to me the way I run my hands along your deliciously sensitive pieces without giving you too much.”

Abbot bites their lower lip. The hand clutching their skirt clenches. I trace the side of their face, then take their chin, lifting their face to mine, inspecting the circuit of makeup they still wear.

“Needy thing, aren’t you?”

Abbot nods, face still twisted in a desperate expression.

“P-please,” they pant. 

“Hm?” I feign a lack of understanding. Oh how this is truly my divine calling, coaxing such noises and reactions out of my beloved Abbot. Oh sacred machine, how I long for an eternity of this divine blasphemy. “Please what, my dearest Abbot? Whatever do you mean?”

Their leg trembles. Their knee seems to teeter on the brink of buckling entirely under the weight of their desire. They breathe out a shuddering breath.

“I need your touch upon my skin,” they plead.
I pretend not to notice the static that still bleeds from me. I tut at my poor, needy retainer disapprovingly. 

“You need it?” I taunt, aware of how cruel it will seem and how desperately they will enjoy this. “But is it not your station to fulfill my needs, retainer?”

Abbot whines something awful. I feel their fingers, still tangled inside me, pull desperately, as if trying to make me an offer of pleasure exchanged for pleasure. I take the feeling of it across my form in measured stride, not letting on how wondrous it feels or how I long for more. 

I take their hand and gently untangle it from within me. They whine in protest until I bring it to my mouth and kiss each of their blessed finger tips. 

“Here,” I offer. I am feeling somewhat generous today. Perhaps their touch has softened me. It matters not. “Why don’t we compromise? You are, after all, consecrated now. Perhaps a small congratulations is in order, no?”

“Yes, yes please,” they beg. 

I have yet to even utter the terms of this proffered agreement and already they throw me their desperate, willing compliance. 

My hands trace their sides once more, descending until I am able to grab fistfulls of their ass. Abbot yelps. I lick my lips, then reach for the carefully tied series of knots that secure the kanri skirt in place. I catch a moment of hungry recognition flickering through Abbot’s eyes as they realize what I am doing. They let go of the fistful of cloth they had been clutching, and the garment falls to the floor a second later.

Beneath it, Abbot wears a simple undergarment. It is black, as most of their garb tends to be, and utterly unremarkable—devoid of any additional details, frills, or flourishes. Unimaginative, perhaps. Practical as ever , I think. It fits snugly ( deliciously ) against their skin, tight enough that I can make out the small bump of their clit. Under the light of my gaze, I can also make out the growing splotch of wetness along the fabric, the slight drips of sweat and slick along their inner thighs. 

Oh, how it does truly cause a fervor in me. Abbot whines and presses their legs together, as if to deny me what is mine by their own right (they did swear their flesh to me per the terms of becoming consecrated by my touch. More than that, however, I do in truth consider myself to be their lover, sinful as it may be within the faith. Damn me if you must, I care not).

“Spread your legs for me, retainer.” And it is a struggle to keep the excitement from my own voice now.

Slowly, they widen their stance. As much as they can while moving steadily on their prosthesis. I run the first joint of my pointer finger over the bump in their undergarment, and they gasp again. I feel it twitch. 

Oh, divines, this woman! I pray to myself (I have not the time to explain to you the complex expressions of my dear Abbot’s gender in my calling them such a thing). Sweet and merciful machine, forgive the speed with which I abandon the binary’s teachings for this delectable flesh. 

With two hands on the small of their back, I pull Abbot forward eagerly until they stand astride one of my legs. I press the metal bulk of my thigh up into them for just a moment, then withdraw, smiling as thin strands of their desperate need pull away with me. Abbot moans.

“Very good, retainer,” I coo again. I know how the praise goes straight through them, how it stirs their desires to hear such things from the divine they so worship.

They move to lower themself onto my thigh again, but I catch them, pulling my leg out of their reach.

“ Reverence! ” Abbot whines. 

They press a needy hand against their wet undergarments as if trying to fill the space my leg would have filled, and I pull their hand away. The desperation seeps fully through them now.
“Patience,” I chide, replacing my thigh between their legs, but not pressing it against them. “I am not yet prepared. Besides, aren’t you consecrated Perseverance now, Abbot? Surely you can withstand this.”

It is so foolish a consecrated name. Far too similar to my own. I know I said I would not make it known or acknowledge it, yet I cannot help but to tease. They will always be my Abbot, after all.

Moving quickly so as to not keep either of us waiting longer than I must (though I am sure it is plainly apparent how much I do so enjoy making them wait), I undo the clasps securing the lower half of my ceremonial robes. They come undone, and I slip the ornate, black shorts down over my legs, exposing my silvery lower half. I do not wear undergarments beneath. I usually don’t, actually, though I occasionally will don a cute pair when attempting to fluster Abbot with my appearance (a simple enough task).

I press on, calling upon the metal-weaving talents of my divine form once again. I trace the edges of my hips with one finger, and the plate over my lower half comes free. I take it in both hands and set it next to my other discarded plate resting against the console.

“There we are,” I hum, letting the mess of wiring and components in my hips and ass lie exposed and bare. 

Abbot breaths out. Another greedy, wanting sound.

“If you do your work dutifully, retainer,” I advise. “If you see to my needs properly, I will permit you to pleasure yourself upon my form. Would you like that?”

I press into their wet undergarments with my thigh once more as I say it, as if to illustrate my offer. Ridges of textured filigree rise up along the length of my thigh here. They are embellishments I requested when my Genesis was complete. Reminders of the binatic verses, some of my personal favorites. The one I press against Abbot’s needy cunt reads, “ Forsake fleshly desires and let divine machine embrace you .” A recitation of the saint Vif. I find it to be quite apt. I imagine Abbot does too, though perhaps for different reasons in this particular moment.

“Y-yes, yes of course my Diviner,” they moan eagerly.

I angle my form to lean comfortably against the console behind me once more. With one hand I stroke gently over Abbot’s cheek.

“So obedient,” I praise. “Don’t keep me waiting.”

Abbot’s fingers find my cables immediately, and tangle their way through the mechanical muscle netting and synthetic nervepaths along what was once my own pussy. Electricity courses through my divinity, like a pleasant buzzing in my mind. The shutters of my eyes fully press closed with the pleasure of it as they enter me, causing the room to darken for a moment.

“Mmmm, fuck.”

I fulfill my end of the bargain, and press the textured ridges of my scripture-riddled thigh up against them once more. Without a second of hesitation, Abbot’s hips begin to rock back and forth, dragging their cunt along me. The wet sound of it mingles with the thick cloud of static that I moan out. 

Divines, how I love it when they use me in this way!

It is a pleasure tantamount to worship. A base, primal dependency upon me for their bliss, their desperately needed release. The movements of their fingers in me begin to fade as Abbot becomes more focused on their own pleasure, grinding faster against me.

“Careful now,” I warn, lowering my leg out of reach and eliciting a depraved, needing sound from Abbot. 

Their fingers resume their work, and I make a pleased humming noise as I return their pleasure to them as well.

“Mm, yes, just like that, Abbot.” I guide them with my words as they hook around a particularly sensitive bunch of cables that serve a similar purpose as nerve endings in bodies of flesh. They twist the cables around the length of their index finger, pulling it taut and rolling it in their touch. My visual receptors begin to cut out for a fraction of a second as the pleasure rocks through my mechanical body, threatening to overwhelm.

I decide to repay this pleasure in kind. 

Hooking a finger into the waistline of their undergarments, I begin to pull. The fabric is cheap, and complies easily with the strength of my divine form as I tear the garment free, fully exposing Abbot now. They whimper as I press the slick metal of my thigh into their bare folds now. 

With my thumb, I reach down and stroke along the rigid shape of their clit. It twitches with want and pleasure, slick with their fluids. It has been this way as long as I have known Abbot, just a unique aspect of their biology, though later in our shared time together they began taking chem supplements to promote the growth as well. I admit, I am somewhat transfixed by it. I was when we were both wrought of the flesh, as well. 

Abbot’s head rocks back as I tease them, and I feel their fingers inside me tense and squirm. 

“ Freya! ” the moan to my utter delight. 

With a second finger, I pinch either side of their clit and roll it the way I know they find so pleasurable. Their body jerks and they moan loudly, rewarding me for this act immediately.

“Do you feel that cable between your fingers?” I ask in a cool, soothing whisper. “Do you feel the ridges of the modules connected to it?”

Abbot nods. I stroke my thumb over their clit again, shocking them with the sharp pleasure of it. 

“Do you understand?” I ask as their whole body rocks.

“Yes, fuck, yes Freya, yes,” they pant out the words, and I feel their fingers respond in kind. I moan in turn as Abbot’s fingers twist tighter within me. 

Fuck, I can feel them there, feel them pressing into me and through me. Abbot traces a strand of nerve-cable down to the base where it connects to my chassis and I almost crumple under their touch. By the divines, it is sensitive in a way I have never known. My arms spasm, which is a first for me in this form. Abbot is catching their stride now, grinding on me rhythmically and in sync with the movements of their fingers. A fleeting emotion parses through my processing, landing somewhere between panicked and delighted. 

I might actually, truly cum from this , I think. And then the thought is banished in another intense buzz of electric sensation pulsing through my lower body.

Abbot's movements suddenly hitch, a jerk that falls out of sync with their mounting rhythm. Then, horror of horrors, they halt completely. I open my mouth to object, then panic at the thought of such a thing, and manage to strangle the noise before it can become a tangible plea. I catch my proverbial, mechanical breath, a bit frazzled at the realization that I had almost just fully begun to beg Abbot to continue. A mortifying thought, hardly becoming of my station.

I am still trying to find some semblance of coherent expression that isn’t just “ why the fuck did you stop ” when Abbot makes an ever so quiet shushing noise, hands still buried in me, but held painfully still. 

I hear it then: the sound of boots along the steel walkways of the Freya II colony ship. Distant, mechanical chatter. I feel their presence grow closer in the feed as well, the invisible network of the divine that spans the whole of Temple Prime. Some of the consecrated are walking down the maintenance shaft towards us . 

Abbot looks to me with wide eyes and a mouth pulled into a pensive line, as if to say, “ What the fuck do we do?! ” 

Without much thought, I grab our discarded garments off the ground and pull both of us up against one darkened wall of whatever chamber this is. Still entwined in one another, we hold our literal and proverbial breaths respectively. I clamp a hand over Abbot’s mouth, operating more on the instincts that propel us in the bedroom than out of any survival or stealth knowledge (of which I have none). They do not protest, or perhaps cannot protest between not wanting to make a noise and their hands being still tangled within me.

The seconds feel as though they are hours. The sound of the footsteps draws closer. 

A terrible, blasphemous, awfully sinful thought occurs to me. The wicked equation in my mind could be solved. 

Abbot still rests straddled over my thigh. Their wetness dribbles down my leg. I become aware again of the hand I have placed atop their mouth. 

Ever so slowly, I begin to move my leg. 

Abbot swallows down the gasp this draws out of them and shoots me a questioning look, their eyes wide. The footsteps are louder now. Distantly, I can hear a mechanical voice saying:

“Not anything so official, you understand.”

“No, of course not,” another voice responds. A fleshy voice, or at least not an individual so fully consecrated. My mind flicks back to memories of the bathhouse attendant, Vellis, who was partially consecrated in a similar manner, their voice a strange mixture of divine and mortal.

Abbot whimpers. Their cunt makes a slick noise against my steel skin. Their fingers grip fistfulls of my wiring and I shudder with pleasure. 

I am so infuriatingly close .

The footsteps stop. Oh divines, they fucking stop , and I know they stand just outside.

I can feel my circuitry pounding electricity through me like the thundering heartbeat of a pilot directing their ship headlong into a wall of enemy fire. A swirling mixture of taboo excitements intoxicate me. I press myself up harder against Abbot, whose eyes roll back slightly with pleasure. I clamp down against the static that threatens to burst from me and give us away.

I can feel Abbot’s heaving, desperate breaths against my hand. In the silence of the small room, alongside the quiet panic racing through us, it sounds louder than any artillery fire. 

“Is this supposed to be open?” the fleshy voice says, just on the other side of the vault door from us now. 

I grind my thigh up into Abbot, using my foot to drag the ridges of my leg’s filigree along their still-twitching bulge of a clit. I feel their jaw clench. Their exhales come heavy and rapid through their nose. Abbot’s fingers twist and curl inside me. They find a clump of synthetic muscle intertwined with nerve cables and stroke along it. The pleasure is so intense that static bleeds into my visual receptors . I see blurry spots across my vision, even as I shutter my lenses closed. 

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

I’m going to cum. The realization hits me all at once. I didn’t think this body was even capable anymore, didn’t think the sacred machine could bless my sensations any further. Fuck, Abbot is going to make me cum . The thought of it alone is enough to drive me over the edge. I feel every one of my artificial synapses firing at once. I feel the neural strain on my processing capacity drop into an error reading. Warnings flash in my peripheral view. The world discolors. I am using every shred of awareness left in me to will my body not to make a sound, as I have completely lost track of my own, digital senses and can no longer tell. 

“Much of the ship remains a mystery to us,” the voice of one of the consecrated says in the maintenance shaft. “But the prophetics advise against excursions into such unmapped portions. Come along, the galley is further on. There is still much to see, my friend.”

The footsteps pick up again, loud at first, then fading rapidly. 

I feel every one of my joints and actuators spasm. Another error chimes somewhere within me, but I don’t care. Pure, divine electricity radiates across my form. I lose track of Abbot’s fingers in me all together, my senses completely swallowed up in the sea of pure bliss. I cum, or at least I do the mechanical and divine equivalent. My mechanical body shudders, my hands clutch desperately at the ceremonial robes still wrapped about Abbot’s upper body. Abbot themself is sputtering as well, I realize. Their hips rock, dragging their cunt against my thigh on their own. A low whine bleeds out of them, almost more like the hungry growl of a starving animal. I become vaguely aware of a hot, wet fluid draining over my leg and splashing against the ground as they hump me relentlessly. Their growl breaks, giving way to a whimper, and then a depraved, sobbing noise that sputters out of them with every rock of their hips as their movements slow to a stop. 

We collapse into one another on the floor a moment later. Abbot pants. My wires surge with divine, blue light. We both twitch and spasm. For a time we simply let the pleasure wash over us, holding one another. Abbot grips fistfuls of my wiring with such force that some of my interior components have become dislodged from their housings, and now bulge out of my open compartments. Wires and cables cascade unceremoniously out from me, almost a mirror of the fluids leaking still from Abbot as well, I think. This truly will require a bit of maintenance.

I run a tender hand along their satisfied and exhausted pussy, and smile at the way they jerk back with sensitivity. 

“Freya!” they gasp again (though somewhat in annoyance), which only serves to delight me further. 

We realize then that we are not afraid to make noise now, or perhaps that we are no longer in danger of being discovered, or perhaps both. 

There are ten thousand words I want to arrange into thoughts. One thousand prayers, two thousand exhalations, three thousand praises for the sinful beauty of Abbot’s flesh, and so forth. I fail, however, to make any recognizable noise other than a laugh. 

Abbot pulls their hands free of me and slaps (weakly) at my chassis. 

“You absolute lunatic !” they berate me. “I am mortified! I am disgraced by our actions in such a holy place! I am—”

And they pause to pull our lips together for a messy, uncoordinated kiss.

“—utterly in love with you, you awful, whore of a divinity!”

I blink. It is a rare sight, in truth. Abbot, completely unfiltered and devoid of any religious preamble or pretense. I laugh again. 

“A touch hurtful, no?” I tease.

“ With a fetish for the unholy flesh, I might add,” Abbot continues. “Disgraceful! Utterly disgraceful. In front of the angel no less?”

They make a frustrated noise, then quietly add:

“I will never be clean of this sin, I swear it.”

Once more, I do not roll my eyes. Because I can’t. But I approximate the gesture.

“Oh come now, retainer,” I try, but Abbot doesn’t let me finish the thought, doesn’t even attempt to honor the formalities of our Retainer-Diviner relationship. 

“You think I can’t feel your fixation with me? By the machine, Freya, you are infuriating with your touch! It’s my fucking cunt you know, right?”

I try to object or jest or anything and find that I truly am empty of any response. My body still aches with the waning pleasure. The blessed sight of my half-naked lover beside me is all I can focus on. So I do not speak. I just nod, and let my dear retainer fuss about.

Abbot berates me some more (a blessing, truly), before pulling me in to plant several more kisses across my faceplate, smudging their ceremonial makeup in the process. I hum, content.

“Now help me tie my fucking kanri so we can go home and I can chew on your cables,” they demand, collecting their somewhat soiled skirt and their ruined undergarments. 

The thought of Abbot walking home, completely naked beneath their robes is enough to spur on more wicked and blasphemous thoughts in me. I immediately begin a new calculation, one that involves tormenting Abbot beneath their skirt for the duration of our trip home. 

I stand, help them up, and collect my missing body plates. We get dressed, peek out the vault door, and slip back down the maintenance shaft of the holy and most sacred colony ship towards the warm, shared bed that awaits us back home. 

As we walk, I silently pray to myself the way I have every day since Abbot’s return. Oh thou most holy angels of our faith, I pray that they never again will leave my side .

END

Chapter Text

Date: 108SC

Solar Hour - 25

Coordinates: [REDACTED]

Designation: Freya (Given), Reverence (Consecrated)

Upper City, Consecrated Residential, Exonil

We’ve had our fun. Our ‘blasphemous delights’, Abbot would say.

They lie exhausted and content next to me over top the (now filthy) sheets of my bed (our bed, I suppose). Only in these moments alone do I wonder if I am perhaps being too much for them. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s hardly a secret they are enjoying themself (a fact that I do rather enjoy relishing). I simply worry this is all a bit much to adjust to so quickly (to say nothing of their injuries as well, which they are still recovering from, or at least adjusting to). We’ve both waited so long, it hardly feels like we can bear to push these feelings aside to find a quiet moment for the more important emotions. The ones we perhaps need to address properly. The ones we currently vent, ignore, or pant between the more passionate minutes spent together.

It is late. Dark. Only the stars watch for us overhead. I hear Abbot’s gentle breaths as they rest, lying parallel to and facing me, curled slightly, knee pulled up towards their chest, prosthesis removed.

I do not sleep. I can approximate the sensation in this new form, but it is not true sleep. I cannot dream. Cannot slip away into unconsciousness, cannot swim in my own restful thoughts. I miss it, in truth. 

There are a number of things I miss. One of them has recently returned to me, though, and it makes it just that much more bearable to live without the rest. 

I lay on my side, watching them in their unconsciousness. Their skin is bare, and still glistens somewhat with the sweat of our exertion. I draw constellations across their body with my gaze, connecting the darkened spots where I’ve left marks. Their neck. Their tits. Their thighs. The large bruise on their ass (that one wasn’t entirely my fault, they insisted upon it). The indentations from my fingertips where I did grip their tender flesh as though someone would seek to pull my Abbot away again. 

I pause. That last thought causes something awful to stir in my synaptic sequences. Am I truly so wanting of them? So desperate to keep them close? Territorial is not quite the right word, but something like that. 

I think perhaps I am unwell.

And I think perhaps I have known it for some time now.

Abbot stirs slightly, babbling half words as they shift before falling silent once more. I try to not think of the so many nights and so many more early mornings when I would lie still with them like this. Watching. Smiling. Loving them. Days in the flesh, together.

When was the last time I was content, so? When was the last time I wanted for something other than this, something more or less than simply to have my Abbot beside me?

I consider a prayer—one of the verses for the grateful—but then abandon the thought with an internal laugh. Perhaps Abbot is rubbing off on me (and not just in the literal, sensual sense). I have, in truth, never been terribly faithful. I will not thank the divine for bringing them home to me. It is the divine machine that took them in the first place, is it not? The machine of war. The divinity of light-propelled torpedoes silently condemning mortals to nonexistence overhead. And truly how can our love be more blasphemous than that? 

It is I who brought them home, I tell myself. Not my devotion, not the faith, but my love. And this much is a lie, but I indulge the thought anyway. By my count, the faith never brought Abbot back to safe harbor, only carried them further out to sea. Yet was it not my prayers calling for their safety every morning and night? Was it not by my being that I did wish for this very moment again and again?

I feel divinity flow through my form, feel my components hitch and speed up. It is akin to the way the flesh warms with anger. 

I ask myself again and again, was it not I who brought them home? Was it not my tears? My sorrows? My sleepless nights in a bed devoid of their warmth? There were no divines, no consecrated saints or deities to rid me of my sorrows and pains. Where were the verses in my wakeful hours of rampant bitterness, my endless moments of isolation and premature mourning? Where were the prayers and the angels, the prophetics or their damned and fetid machine? All of me seems to scream: Is this not what I have suffered for?

It is another thought that gives me pause. 

I do not cry anymore. Cannot. And yet I thought I might have when I saw them there at the border of the city, just outside the wall. My Abbot, returned to me at last (though quite infirmed, in truth). I wonder again if I will do it now. Cry, I mean. Though I know I will not. Wishful thinking, perhaps. 

I shake myself from these thoughts. I can feel the way they vex me, feel the way they heat my components and make the divinity rush through me. It is not the same rush of mechana that Abbot causes in me. Which means I do not want it. I do not want to be angry at this faith, at this world, at the state of things. I have spent the past two years feeling nothing but anger at myself, at Abbot, at this cursed machine. I do not want to be angry anymore, I simply feel that I don’t know how not to be. Does that make sense?

By the machine this is exhausting. And again I think that I am quite unwell. 

I look over the sleeping shape of Abbot. I could watch them for hours, drowning in this sensation of disbelief, this still-dawning realization that this is real, that I am not alone anymore. I could drink in the sight of them endlessly, here as they lay next to me. It’s not in a creepy way, I swear it. I’m not a creep. Though I suppose I would understand if my actions pertaining to Abbot caused a certain amount of doubt in that assertion… 

That is different! I tell myself. 

Abbot’s form rises and falls ever so slightly with their breaths. There will be a day at some point in the future where they wake to find that they cannot—do not—breath any longer. They will panic, the way I once did when I crossed the threshold into divine eternity. And I will be there to calm their mind, to sooth the anxious thoughts, to hold them.

They usually sleep in a simple, pilot’s slip (when there is time and energy to allow for getting dressed again before bed). A sort of bodysuit that is made to keep you secured to your helm. I don’t fight them on this, though the need for any such military garb is hardly necessary anymore. I have a closet well-stocked whenever they do finally relent and start to leave the military drills behind (as if Abbot’s nature would ever allow for that). I should very much like to put them in something frilly. Or perhaps something sheer and revealing. If only to watch them squirm. 

I roll onto my back and stare up at the patterned tiles of my room, arms at my side. In truth, I’ve been struggling with this newfound refractory period called “sleep”. I have not needed to sleep for some time already. Typically I’ll spend my nights browsing entertainment feeds. Reading. Perhaps even tangling my own wires if I’m truly desperate and bored. On rare occasions I’ve even sought out the night events of the sacred city, though they’re far less blasphemous in nature than I’d like. Group vigils and prayers, prayer-pole choruses harmonizing with digital voices, and more. Not really my speed, personally. But my point is that there’s always something to do. It’s simultaneously quite freeing and boring to have so much free time open up to you suddenly. But the issue I struggle with now isn’t boredom. Not quite, anyway. I know quite well what I’d like to do. The issue is that it’s sleeping next to me on the bed, unable to participate.

I turn just my head to face Abbot, washing them in the faint blue glow of my divine features. 

By the divine, I hunger for them. Were Abbot awake to chastise me, they’d harp on my apparent fetish for the flesh. But more than the flesh, more than my silver on their skin or their own hands in my wiring, I hunger for their time. Their attention. I long to never spend another minute without their company, their commentary, their steps behind my own. 

Again I have a moment of revisiting prior realizations. I am probably quite unwell and also probably reacting in far too bestial a manner. Territorial, I had said. Perhaps ‘possessive’ is more fitting. Something akin to an ancient, fictional beast hoard treasure.

More than anything else in the entirety of our wretched dual-planetary system, all I want to do is listen to them babble. I want to speak with them, want to tease them and watch them choose in an instant whether to flush and squabble in embarrassment or to bite back at me with a half-blasphemous retort at my expense. 

And I cannot do so while they sleep. 

It is like waiting for a holiday to arrive, like watching the solar hours tick by in agonizing slowness until you can jump up and shout and celebrate. It is like having inspiration with no implements of art, beautiful weather during a busy day spent indoors, or a free night with no stars to watch. 

I stare at my inspiration, my starry sky, my celebration and beautiful weather. And I wait. Accursed sorrow of all sorrows, I wait. I trace the length of their lips with my sight (but long to trace them in other ways). I outline their form. I try to not rock with impatience like a needy animal. Ironic, it is, how I would so beg for their attention now, when they have not laid even the faintest of touches across my divinity. How little it takes for our roles to reverse when I am so infirmed in this way (that is to say, when I am separated from their consciousness).

I cannot help myself any longer. 

I lift a hand to trace the length of Abbot’s jaw. To smooth their shaven hair, the dark shadow it leaves across their scalp. I do so truly hope they will grow it out once more. Just one more time before we leave this body of theirs behind. One more time like we are ourselves again, like we are not so scarred by our sins and by this faith and by the faults of our world and its forebears. 

At my touch, Abbot mumbles my name. It is terribly cute, I’m afraid. I cannot help but smile. 

It is all I have ever wanted and more, this moment. I would give it all up again, in every lifetime, in every faith, just to have them here by my side, to feel them under my touch again in that blessed way we so often find our bodies entangled.

I can’t help but chuckle at how pathetic that all sounds. Here I am, this supposed vestige of the divine, a vessel of eternal life and all that is holy—defeated at the hands of waiting for my girlfriend to wake up.  

It’s terrible, isn’t it? Uselessly in love, just utterly worthless with the weight of it. 

And I adore it. Hadn’t realized how terribly I missed the days when these were my most pressing worries. Perhaps that is something else I’ve lost that has recently returned to me. I smile at that, which is yet a third lost treasure returned to me as well—the ability to laugh, to smile again. Perhaps I can delude myself just a bit longer, I think, and continue to lie to myself another night that I am fine, that all is well now that we have each other again. I think I should like that very much. 

For a time, I simply lie there and watch them dream. Their eyes flick about under their eyelids, trying to gaze at some dreamed thing I can scarcely imagine. They stir ever so slightly now and then. I register an internal request with my systems, a reminder to ask after their dream when they wake.

When at last I’ve managed to convince myself that I am not making up for any lost time here (not making penitent for any past sins, either), I press my lips ever so gently to Abbot’s forehead, then slide carefully out of bed. I can hear the night market a few streets down, lively as ever. If I am lucky, the vendors may still have some consumables available. I decide to make myself useful, slipping into some simple clothes as I reluctantly leave Abbot still dreaming in my room. I head for the market, trying to stay focused on planning breakfast instead of the delights that will come after it. 

END