Erosia

In the dominion of Erosia, existence itself was bound to the carnal act. The cities glistened with towers wrought of crystaline lustre, and the parks shimmered with lanterns whose glow waxed and waned like the breath of lovers. The very air quivered with sighs and gasps, as ordinary as the chirp of sparrows at dawn.

The Law was stern and inescapable: “He who will not revel, shall wither. She who hides her flesh, betrays the Breath of Life.”

Thus nakedness was not shame, but decree. The streets were paved with silken fibre, supple to the tread. In aerial carriages, their seats were fitted with humming rods, whilst the dashboards flickered with endless moving-images of salacious congress.

Even the greeting of strangers was fleshly: a swift descent of lips, a service rendered at the threshold of acquaintance.

From such soil sprang Albita Rodríguez, a maid of warm complexion and dark, smouldering eyes. At her eighteenth year she awakened to self-touch, that lonely lightning that makes a girl into a woman. Yet her heart, and all her bliss, found one name only: Tobi.

Tobi was tall and ebon, with laughter that drummed like festival drums, and a manhood mighty enough to make myth tremble. To Albita, he was not mere desire but the world entire.

At the School of the Crimson Dawn, where youths studied the Sacred Kamasutra as if it were Euclid’s geometry, there taught an elder, Master Aristeo. His beard was silver, his eyes keen as a hawk’s, and his voice carried the solemn weight of cathedral bells.

“Sex,” he declared, “is bread and wine, breath and blood. Fear it not. Fear rather the hollow heart that feels nothing. Each thrust is a covenant with eternity; each orgasm, a whisper of the cosmos in thy chest.”

Albita hearkened, enthralled, yet within her breast stirred doubt:

What if Tobi speaks true? What if the very joy they preach is but the fairest of chains?

One eve, in a park where the lamps pulsed like vulvae afire, Albita encountered a wight uncanny. Naked he was, yet draped in symbols arcane; his gaze burned with both perversity and wisdom. He called himself simply Sex.

“I watch thee, maiden,” quoth he. “Thou art not as the rest. Thy delight is not obedience, but enquiry.”

“Who art thou?” asked Albita.

“I am the memory of mankind’s lusts; the erect word, the lore made flesh. I ken that thy love for the dark man is no mere rut, but rebellion itself.”

Albita quailed, for never had her secret yearnings been uttered so nakedly.

Tobi led her unto the fellowship of the Celibates, rebels clad in raiment stolen from museums. Among them were:

• Yara, blue-haired warrioress with whips that crackled like storm-fire.

• Lucen, sky-rider and scrawler of seditious sigils upon the clouds.

• Eran, pale youth with sorrowed eyes, once ravished by the constabulary.

They spake round a fire of trembling lamps:

Yara: “They name us sick, yet who is sicker: she who loves in cloth, or he who enforces coupling by law?”

Lucen: “The State would drain us unto death, milking every spasm.”

Eran: “I saw my mother bent beneath the rod of the guards… I’ll not see thee share her fate, Albita.”

And so Albita’s heart was knit to theirs.

The governments of flesh branded them heretics. The constables arrested any who clothed themselves; such souls were dragged to the Brothelatoriums, where bodies served as batteries.

The Celibates fled in sky-ships. Their pursuers unleashed beams of pearlescent seed; the rebels sat astride seats shaped as pricking phalluses, while their cockpits flashed with ceaseless debauchery.

Lucen roared o’er the din:

“Grip tight! These damned rods will unman me ere the chase is done—yet by heaven we shall pierce their line!”

Albita clung to Tobi, his staff of flesh throbbing against her thigh, her loins afire with love and dread.

In the shadowed mountains stood the Altar of Life, hewn of sweating stone. A voice spectral thundered:

“Life was born of lust. Death fattens upon it. What wilt thou choose, children of clay?”

Albita stepped forth, tears upon her cheeks.

“I would dwell in a world where sex is not servitude but love. Where I might desire Tobi for the joy of it, not by compulsion.”

The hermit Sex appeared once more, intoning:

“Not the abolition of flesh, but its redemption. In thy yielding shall dawn the new covenant.”

The Altar shivered with light. Alone beneath the stars, Albita and Tobi stood, bare as truth. She beheld him and knew naught else in all creation.

They kissed—at first with tenderness, anon with hunger. Albita mounted him slow, taking him inch by holy inch, her hips grinding like prayer-wheels. Each sigh was psalm, each thrust a litany.

“Thou art my life, Tobi…”

“And thou art my eternity, Albita.”

Their bodies sweated, their tongues entwined. When the climax smote them, it was as though the heavens cracked open. The kiss endured—wet, breathless, unending—as if their very souls drank of one another.

The Altar burst with radiance; across Erosia, folk felt the truth: that sex could be love, not yoke. That a kiss, fervent and free, might be salvation.

So Albita and Tobi, twined and panting, beheld each other with awe. And in that last kiss—deep, lingering, clothed in sweat and tenderness—they embraced not mere survival, but the covenant of love and flesh eternal.