“Late Bloomer”—an Erotic Speculative Fiction Story
Life is the flower for which love is the honey
Dellingr’s pale, indigo eyes weren’t blurring from the painfully glaring wide-spectrum Simu-Sun aerostat that Noboru Taiyō Group’s Shōmei Division had meticulously positioned, rigorously anchored above Aogashima Island’s Maruyama crater the year previous. Nor were they blurring from the gently fuming Biotic-Fabricates, Organo-Congregates, or Meso-Formulates drip lines Dellingr was perhaps less meticulously, maybe not as rigorously attempting to maintain.
Pressing their right-hand heel into their right eye socket, streaking their dusty cheeks with stinging tears, repeating, with a grating inhalation, a raspy exhalation with the left hand, left eye, Dellingr checked the Biotic-Fabricates, Organo-Congregates, Meso-Formulates….
Gefjun had said, more times than Dellingr could remember, the key to Gefjun’s Bio-Artistry was “a little bit of this, a little bit of that—and lots and lots of dashes”
Wreathing-Willows delicately genuflecting, leaves, stems, branches, languidly coiling, uncoiling, conjuring an octopus’s orchard.
Kaleido-Chrysanthemums pulsing with spectrums real or imaginary, hypnotically spinning petals flaring, ebbing, invoking a cosmic mandala.
Metamo-Roses twirling in and out of themselves, a maddeningly variegated botanical Möbius loop, summoning a glistening-skinned djinn.
Eye-Irises looking everywhere, seeing everything with their voltage-sparking clusters of photoreceptive anthers, mischievously deceiving their watchers.
And-Orchids hut-one, hut-two, hut-three-ing in strict order, weaving breathtaking geometry, seeding, sprouting, growing, and as quickly dying like a watchmaker’s dream.
Eclect-Lotuses, Trans-Pines, Muli-Maples, Evo-Azaleas, Recast-Camellias … Dellingr heavily trudged the length of their rows, soullessly walking beside their beds, mindlessly checking holographic displays without thought or care adjusting when absolutely necessary their Fabricates, Congregates, or Formulates.
“Words,” Gefjun had said, “aren’t easy. I guess it’s because I think I have a lot to give. More than enough for you, always enough for you.”
Dellingr’s washed-out azure eyes flooded as the memory bit down, drew blood. Gefjun pleading, begging; Dellingr howling, demanding, “I should be enough for you!” Over and over again, driving Gefjun away, forcing them out into that dying day, that furiously approaching night jammed with pounding rain, flaring lightning, and roaring winds.
The Recast-Camellias drooped, stems buckling under their semi-translucent bulbs; the Evo-Azaleas popped and sizzled, high-voltage stigma angrily shorting out, and the Muli-Maples thunderously groaned, seeds clumsy when they should have spun, descending like miniature ballerinas.
Dellingr tapped icon after icon, strolling then sprinting from planter to planter until the Recast-Camellias flawlessly played their black and white movies again, the Evo-Azaleas happily hummed their harmonic frequencies, and the Muli-Maples filled the air with pliés, relevés, and Chassés.
A hushed curtain pulled over Gefjun’s Kibō, their tsubo-niwa garden, a liminal space lying not between the public and the private but the made and the grown—and with the arrival of that suddenly ponderous quiet, Dellingr’s legs failed them, sending them crashing into the artificially ariated loam, the chemically enriched soil, the synthetically augmented ground.
Throat aching, lungs burning, Dellingr wailed as their hands dug deep, unearthing deep, dark, foul memories: the URGENT URGENT message, the shrieking alert sprayed in crimson laser light across the inside of the Kibō’s polyplastic tented primary workspace, the sound, the light, brutally slapping Dellingr awake, Shuyō dōro de no jūshō jiko—
“Main access road. Serious injury accident,” their mind instinctively translated, words looping, broken only by a name, the person who’d been driving the shuyō akusesu dōro, who was involved in the jūshō jiko, who died before Dellingr could get to Aogashima’s understaffed, undersized emergency clinic.
Dellinger’s pallid, aqua eyes neither blurred nor flooded but erupted with bitter tears, a cascade of steaming, brackish rain poking the artificial, chemical, augmented dirt beneath their scream-racked face.
A ghostly touch? A faint caress? A vague embrace? An indistinct stroke? An indefinite fondle?
Dellingr’s sallow, cobalt eyes closed and opened, each blink bringing increasing clarity. Yes, the Wreathing-Willows were tenderly touching their back. Yes, the Kaleido-Chrysanthemums were softly caressing their cheeks. Yes, the Metamo-Roses were daintily embracing them. Yes, the Eye-Irises were subtly stroking their hair. Yes, the And-Orchids were amiably fondling their chest.
No doubt, no uncertainty: the Eclect-Lotuses were kissing them, the Trans-Pines were snuggling them, the Muli-Maples were firmly holding them, the Evo-Azaleas were plucking away their clothes, and the Recast-Camellias were loving them.
“I’ve put so much into you and my garden; my passion, my life, my joy,” Gefjun had also said. “You and it, it and you; sharing one with the other. More than enough to go around.”
Below Noboru Taiyō Group’s Shōmei Division’s brilliantly shimmering Simu-Sun, Dellingr and Gefjun’s Kibō phytological magnum opus frolicked, cavorted, reveled, laughed, moaned, together—as Dellingr wept sparkling, gleeful, ecstatic, and overwhelmingly wide-eyed, blissful tears.
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Barely one hundred before nearly two hundred. Almost a thousand a month later, then slightly short of two thousand at the start of the next. Aogashima’s prefecture paid Dellingr an exceedingly formal, undoubtedly official visit to express the residents’ concerns over the rise in foreign tourists—whose yachts and massive cruise ships choking the island’s picturesque harbor.
Concerns Dellingr greeted with a seriously beaming grin, pledging to donate all the proceeds—sans necessities for Gefjun’s Kibō upkeep—to staffing Aogashima’s new, state-of-the-art-hospital.
And Dellingr was there as they came up from the docks, pointing out the Wreathing-Willows’ gracefully bowing shoots and leaves, showing off the Kaleido-Chrysanthemums’ mesmerizing bioluminescent firework displays, giggling at the Metamo-Roses’ endlessly captivating gyrations, applauding the Eye-Irises’ phantasmagoric soul-searching perceptions, and highlighting how expertly the And-Orchids’ resolutely marched to and fro.
Dellingr was there, among the Eclect-Lotuses, the Trans-Pines, the Muli-Maples, the Evo-Azaleas, and the Recast-Camellias—happier than Dellingr had been before the storm—for in every twinkling eye, euphoric expression, or admiring gasp was more than wonder, awe, or amazement, sharing Gefjun’s inexhaustible love.
Image Sources: M.Christian
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