The Nick Of Time (and other abrasions)
A Heart Full Of Dust
by
Al Bruno III
(Eleven)
After finding a place in the storehouse where Lily could lie down comfortably, Vagabond set to work on picking the lock.
The storehouse was contained the villagers' modest supply of foodstuffs and a collection of junk that rivaled what he'd seen at the Quonset hut. It seemed that the fall of civilization had reduced the human race to packrats. A thorough search of the storehouse he rewarded him with little that wasn't useless or broken, but it had netted him some paper clips. He unbent one and set to work on the keyhole.
“Vagabond?”
Her voice startled him, the paper clip fumbled from his grasp clattered under the door. He felt for it sliding his fingertips along the underside of the door, but it was gone. Cursing under his breath he reached into his pocket for another one, “Go back to sleep Lily.”
“I wasn't sleeping,” she had regained most of her vision, but she was still shaken.
“Well try then, you're hurt, you need rest.”
The door flew open and a burly guard stared down at him, a bent out of shape paper clip in his hand.
“I can't sleep, even when I close my eyes everything's cracked.”
Thinking quickly Vagabond took the paper clip from him and began to pick at his teeth with it. “Thank you.” he grinned, “I was looking for that.”
The guard slammed the door to a close and re-locked it. Vagabond wiped his brow.
“I wish I was dead.”
He rushed over to where she lay, using his leather jacket for a pillow. Fractured screen or not, he could see the pain etched in her face.
“No don’t say th-” he stopped in mid-sentence. The paper clip was still stuck in his teeth. With a jerk he pulled the wire free, “Arrrrragh!”
Lily sat up, “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” he ran his tongue along his gumline, expecting to taste blood, “Now just lie back down and we'll have no more of this wishing death on yourself.”
She buried her face in her hands, “Oh what's the point? I'm ruined! Damaged beyond repair!”
“I'm sure that between your mother and myself we can-”
“Cut the shit Vagabond!” she glared at him, “We both know she's not really my mother.”
He blinked in surprise, “You- You know?”
“I'm not stupid.” she said, “I know I'm a machine, a machine with a personality inspired by the best parts of her dead daughter.”
Clenching his hands behind his back Vagabond began to pace, “She cares for you.”
“She cared for her daughter and I'm just a pale echo of her. Besides, I know the trouble she'd have to go through to repair me.” she shook her head, “It's not worth it.”
“She's not going to put you down like some a rabid dog.”
“No, she'll just say a word and turn me off, or worse yet she'll keep me alive and let me break down one system at a time.”
“Then I'll do something,” he stopped pacing and looked at her.
“I love you.” she drew her knees up to her chest and looked away, “but I know you, you wouldn't lift a finger to save me unless I had some part to play in your little war with the Monarchs.”
A scream of frustration escaped Vagabond's lips, his hands curled into fists and he used them to pound on his own head, “Why can't anyone believe that’s not who I am? Why? Why? Why? I’d have done anything to save you and now when I look at you, when you say my name I feel everything I felt before.”
“But I'm just a ghost.”
“No. You're alive, as alive as me.”
“My flesh isn't real, I can't feel anything.”
He drew in closer and just before he kissed her he said, “You'll feel this.”
He pressed his dry lips against her cracked screen, his free hand reaching up to caress the side of her monitor. A shudder ran through Lily's body, she broke the kiss and sagged into his arms.
“When did you become self-aware?” Vagabond held her close, noting that she snuggled against him just like a real girl might.
“It happened over time. Since I was programmed to have her daughter's personality and intelligence I also had her curiosity. I began to sneak some of mother's grimmores out into the greenhouse and read them when I was supposed to be gardening. Eventually I came across the book she used to make me, and the notes she made in the margins.”
“That must have been painful.”
“The worst part was that I couldn't let her know what I had found out. I knew she was terribly lonely and I was one of the few things keeping her sane.”
“And you cared about her as well.”
She shrugged, “I was programmed to.”
He regarded her, “Were you programmed to care for me as well?”
“No but from the background I was given I was able to extrapolate that something had existed between you and me- I mean Lily-”
He kissed her again, “Is that why you pleaded for my life? Is that why you kissed me back at the greenhouse?”
“I don't know why I did that,” she blushed, “it was like I couldn't control myself.”
“I suppose that's a logical reaction to seeing me. You're probably not the first.”
She rolled her eyes, “Oh God.”
“So tell me,” he took her hand again, running the ball of his thumb over her palm, “tell me how we first met.”
Lily's smile lit up her fractured screen, “It all began in at Mimir's Fountain.”
“Mimir's Fountain.” he spoke the name slowly, considering it, “I always meet you at Mimir’s Fountain- no matter what our names might be that’s a;ways the same.”
Lily pressed her cracked lips to his, “God I wish I had a tongue.”
“Why?”
“Because I'd make you shiver.” she said.
“Hmmm…” Vagabond raised his eyebrows, “I believe we were discussing Mimir's fountain? What do you remember about it?”
“That it's a fountain?”
“Aside from that.”
“Mimir's fountain had a circumference of around ninety feet and was really, really deep. It was made from over a thousand pieces of marble and the parts that were above ground were decorated with intricately carved hieroglyphs,” she glanced at Vagabond, his eyes had a faraway look to them, “It was a church for the Atlantean Patriarchy who, in accordance with their faith, ritually drowned their first born children on their sixteenth birthdays.”
“That old time religion…” Vagabond said.
“Now as you can imagine the place was also a pretty big tourist attraction. I was eighteen. Mother had sent me to live there, she thought it would be safe.”
He held her close.
“I remember it had just started to snow. Then I realized I was being watched. That's when I saw you, sitting on the edge of the fountain, folding these little origami boats and dropping them in the water. Now I was used to men staring at me, but there was something different about the way you were staring at me. You weren't just staring at my boobs and my ass- you were staring at me,” she took his hand and kissed it, “of course at the time I was in such a rotten mood that I told you to take a picture it'll last longer.”
“Ah yes.”
“And you said back to me that you didn't have a camera but you had an even better idea and you pulled a pen from your coat pocket and started sketching me on one of your sheets of origami paper. You started giving me all these complements, telling me that I had classic lines- a model's physique,” she grinned, “a total lie but you got my attention. I stood there and preened for you. In the snow! While you worked we talked, got to know each other. Half an hour just flew by. You were still working on the drawing but it was still snowing and I was getting cold. So you asked me to come back to your apartment so we could finish.”
“Not one of my better pick up lines,” Vagabond shook his head with disbelief.
“I wasn't stupid I told you that I had to get back to my apartment. And you got this wounded deer look in your eyes and told me that you needed to finish this drawing so you would have something to remember me by. Then I asked you why you needed something to remember me for and you said so that in later years when you told everyone you had seen the most beautiful girl in the world you'd have proof.”
Vagabond groaned, “Again, not one of my better lines.”
“Well, the comment got to me, maybe it was just the mood I was in or maybe it was because you were so darned cute. I went back to your apartment with you,” Lily's held his hand before her face and traced the lines in his palm, “'Course on the other hand maybe I was just horny because we weren't in your place for more than ten minutes before we were in bed.”
Vagabond shifted uneasily, “Now that was one of my better moments.”
“You were sweet.”
“Sweet?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Sweet?”
“Then I found your stupid drawing on the way to the bathroom and I nearly killed you.”
“Good thing I was so sweet.” Vagabond nudged her.
She sat up and looked at him, “It wasn’t even a drawing of me- it was a cartoon woman with a clock for a face.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Sorry for what?” Lily said, her fingers trailing across his face, “Got me into bed didn’t it?”
He smiled at the memories of their first argument a make up, something they would do a lot over the years. The soft whisper of fabric startled him, he looked up to see that Lily had slipped out of her gown. She stood before him, trembling with uncertainty.
During the chaos of the Myrmex attack, he'd been too worried about saving their lives to notice anything beyond her absence of a navel. But now she was giving him the chance to study her in detail, Vagabond didn't have to be a mind reader to know that she was praying for his approval.
“I shouldn’t remember any of that, these are things no mother knows about her daughter. How could I extrapolate so much from so little?”
“You always were a quick study.”
“You’re not just humoring me are you?” There was a shiver in her voice as she undid the clasp of her bra. It fell away revealing her breasts, they were round and featureless.
He shifted uncomfortably, “Lily I don't know if this is really the right time for this.”
“Remember with me,” she hooked her thumbs into her panties, slipped them down her legs and stepped out of them. The flesh between her legs, where her sex should have been, was smooth and cool.
“Why are you wearing underwear? Why would you even need it?”
She straddled him, gently forcing him onto his back. A wicked smile formed on her lips as she lifted his hands from his sides and guided them to her blinded breasts. Vagabond tried to think but Lily was too distracting. Her featureless body made him feel as though he was looking at something unfinished. He tentatively caressed her skin.
She watched him and her smile deepened, “Hmmmm nice.”
“I thought you couldn't feel anything.”
“Arousal is ninety percent mental,” she reached under his shirt and ran her touch lightly over his belly.
At first he had been nervous but now he was beginning to feel the first stirrings of arousal. He followed the outline of her ribcage, first with his fingertips, then with a trail of kisses.
She pulled his t-shirt up over his head and then crushed his face to her body. The expression on her cracked screen became fiery.
He pulled free of her grip and looked at her, “This is insane.”
“It always was with us,” her screen was smudged with his lip prints. He added a few more. She shifted back until she was sitting on his knees, she unbuckled his jeans and pulled them down over his hips. His voice became a moan as her hands found his manhood, she smiled- “Well, well, well, what do we have here?”
“Ah...ah...ah...”
She giggled again, the sound reminding him of bells. Lily softly ground herself against him and nuzzled the side of his neck the best she could with her clumsy head.
The rhythms of her movements against him increased in tempo, eliciting a groan of pleasure. Vagabond felt like the whole room was spinning. He shook beneath her unable to speak until she was done with him.
When it was over they lay arm in arm until he asked, “Am I a good man?”
“Am I a good man? I used to think I was – I didn’t betray the Pendaroth you know. Not in the way the Book Of Ezra says…”
Lily ran her nails up and down his chest. “Most of the things they say about you are true but you did what you did to try and save the world. It wasn’t your fault you failed,” she held him tightly, “No one else even tried.”
“I- I still love you.”
“And I love you.” she held him close and in moments he was asleep.
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