Inscription: Strawmoon Stalking Venus chapter 5 by Paok

Strawmoon, '3

 

[From here on and increasingly so towards the end, the chiseled letters grow indistinct and hard to decipher. The Lillecian writing system is a syllabary of swooping, curling, and intricately intersecting strokes. It is therefore difficult to chisel, and Tristan’s poor penmanship from here on, quite common among Lillecians of his age, indicates failing eyesight, rapidly worsening motor coordination, rapid deterioration of the brain, or all three.]

 

Did you know that most giants now believe in something called “Womenism”? I learned this while reading through your books. Scribes have translated a great deal of them, and I read them voraciously. It helps me understand you and your culture better.

 

Supposedly, there exists a rift in your society between the women and the males – not entirely unlike our own – and your women have gone to great lengths to get better treatment from the males. The result of this was “Womenism”. “Women” means women. “Ism” means religion. So “Womenism” means a religion that worships women. I suppose I must be a Womenist then. I read all the books I can about it, to make sure I love you and devote myself to you correctly.

 

My love, you see, is not base, it is not vulgar, it is not sexualized, and it is not an obsession. It is certainly not a mental illness. It is pure. My intentions are pure. Ashley’s book says that my conception of you is warped, but how could that be? I know and understand every little bit of you, because I watch you all the time. From the nook when you sleep. From the chandelier during meals. Inside the speaker during your parties. Behind the keyboard. Inside your purse. All I do is watch. I don’t force myself on you. I cannot affect you, influence you, or wield power over you. How could I? I am just a mote of dust compared to your splendor. I am not a danger to you at all. I could not possibly control you. Being such a meek and gentle thing, I suppose Womenism comes easily to one such as I.

 

The opposite of Womenism, the dominant religion before it, was a thing called “Maninarchy”, another interesting giant’s word. “Mani” means male, the opposite of “fem”. “Archy” means arches. Scribes are confident that “archy” is used here to mean “arms”, so in sum, “Maninarchy” means “the arms of males”. It seems that women resented being subjugated or controlled by males. It reminds me of my own backwards culture. Other Lillecian males are such brutes. Compared to them, I am gentle, caring, and kind. I am ashamed, sometimes, to be male because of it.

 

Because I am a Womenist, I know that sexualizing you is a fraught subject. Unlike my culture, giants have a whole array of sexual taboos. Sexualizing your breasts is extremely wrong. Sexualizing your thighs and hips is almost as bad. Sexualizing your buttocks is a gray area, and your feet, face, and abdomen are off limits too. Your sex itself is, of course, the most forbidden part to sexualize. It debases you when males look upon it with lust.

 

In the end, all the different parts of your body are wrong to sexualize, except your neck. That is the sole part of you I can admire without being a Maninarchist hypocrite. So I have drawn countless pictures of your neck from a distance, as you lay sleeping or relaxing. I am not a great artist, but I am proud of them. I hang them all around my apartment, and they are so pleasurable to look at. I often spend delightful hours gazing at images of your neck while smelling candles made from your lipstick. In this way, I culminate my love for you without sexualizing you.

 

And in doing so I never imagine myself in your carnal love, no. Someone else. One of your partners. An unnamed Lillecian. Something entirely faceless. I am content to watch you, my love. I do not dare touch you. I would never want to make you uncomfortable. Believe me, my Venus, I have never laid a finger on you. I have attained great heights of devotion in your shoe, in your food, even in your shampoo bottle. But touching you is off-limits.

 

I’ve read that Maninarchy is still believed in by many giants, both women and males. But that can’t be right. From what I’ve observed of you and your interaction with males, they are all delighted by you. They smile at you, you smile at them, they even hold the door open for you and wait for you to pass – an immense sign of respect in our culture. I have certainly never seen one hit you or drag you across the floor – if I had, I would have been filled with rage. The literature on Maninarchy is not entirely clear, perhaps the books I’ve read described the distant past? There is clear mutual respect between your sexes. Maninarchy has been difficult to understand, but I think I get the gist.

 

O Venus, how conflicted I felt then, when Ashley pleaded with me. I know I could have saved her. Part of me wanted to save her. But your punishment was inarguable. Oh, Ashley. I have her here. Yes. This is what was embedded in the crack of your shoe. No trace of Ashley was left but her foot. The bones are like fingers. I arranged them into circles, stacked the circles, and fixed them together with string and glue, fashioning a pipe about the length of my hand.

 

Every night, during my bath, I fill the pipe with warm lard and place it over myself to continue her punishment. I use her as I gaze at the image of you. The sole image of your face in my abode; my one guilty pleasure, here only, above the bathtub, to stare at while sinking into the hot and steamy waters. Under your beautiful eyes I feel content, and I feel compelled to carry out your will. This woman in my right hand denounced you. She tried to replace you. How you loathed her. Thus, now, she helps me worship you. As I use her, under your approving gaze, I feel the bones being purified of her heresy with each seminal prayer that erupts through her.

 

Ah, a knocking at my door. May Venus step on you.

 

It is probably one of the archivist messenger boys, coming to ask for my Arhnaikuri again. It is almost finished. But it will not be delivered to them – rather unto you. In it I am placing all of my records of you: my documents, drawings, and everything else. Details of your days, your habits, your preferences, your changing schedules throughout the years... Why should I give these things to other Lillecians? They wouldn’t know what to make of them. They might even destroy them. Instead, I should give them to you. It will be proof of my love.

 

Ah, I am so sure. I’ve made up my mind. I will show this monument to you. Forget the Kuwazada [death celebration]. Forget my chained, starving death on the mountaintops: it would be a death fit only for a beast of burden. No, my Kuwazada will be spent with you. I will give you all the things I’ve recorded and you will know my devotion. No one else would appreciate these things but me and you. It is a connection we have! Ah, to think of you reading these words. It is difficult – my hands fail me – but oh, it will be sublime!

 

Ah, I should write you more poems. Many of my finest poems still remain unwritten, waiting for you, but I have been thinking of another one, composing it in my mind. I have been saving it for this moment. One final poem for you. Here it is:

 

You are my ever brilliant gilded ethereal goddess

O, You are the starlight that fills the galaxy brimming with scintillating quasars

O, You are the divine protector of all things beautiful and virtuous

O, You are the rejuvenation of the hardened soul

 

My love for you is a succulent peach plum

A limpid river of effusive joy

A transcendent fusion of this insignificant soul into your magnificence

Eternally intertwined

Like lithe elegant cranes flying over the effusive golden sunset

Casting shimmering peaceful umbras over the sleeping verdant valley

Promising endless bounty and abundance forever

 

My love for you is my reason for being

You are the energy that animates my every motion through life

You are the muscles that hold up my spine

My love for you is a red-hot gremlin

It grows inside my chest, it gnaws, it bites, it tears my ribs

Stuffing my veins with bubbling acid

Burns me from the inside and bursts out

My body alight but not consumed

 

You know, that was not the poem I meant to write. I am old, you see. Sometimes I cannot control how my hands move. Let me try again.

 

You are the shining effervescent jewel of the heart

Your brilliant coruscating gleam fills my soul

You are a jeweled beetle

I am a maggot

 

Ah, it’s hopeless now. It’s not coming out right. I had so many more poems for you. I had music. I had speeches. They were fully formed in my mind, such beautiful, delicate things. But they’ve slipped between my fingers. I no longer possess the ability to write them. I try writing them, but they simply cannot live up to the perfection in my imagination. If only I’d written them years ago, when I was still able to.

 

I’ve reviewed my writing of the past two months. It’s clear I no longer possess the storied way with words I once had. The words fall off me and disappear before I can seize them and fix them to the stone. And how feeble my hands have become. It takes all of my strength to write these words.

 

We Lillecians don’t live as long as giants. We age so rapidly at the end of our lives. I am afraid my body is no longer fit to serve you. My senses are dull. Moving is more and more painful. Thinking is harder and harder. The only thing I still feel sharply and brightly as ever is my love for you, my Venus. If you can receive this monument and acknowledge me at last, it will be worth it.

 

My Venus. My true love. My everything.

 

What do I do now? What can I give to you with this husk of a body and this flickering mind?

 

Before recently, before I began aging, those bygone days, I would help you as much as I could. Oh, I wish I could still help you. Now I’m hardly able to leave my home. It hurts my whole body to walk. Hunched over this obelisk, I need to contort myself into a specific pose, or else the chiseling hurts. I’m nearly out of painkillers.

 

I wish I could help you again. I wish I could tidy your desk again, even though it would take all night and exhaust me. I wish I could still wash the last spoon for you before sunrise. I wish I could still move your car keys to the right spot when you mistakenly left them somewhere.

 

I sorely wish I could still watch as you fall asleep. The ravages of age take even small pleasures like that. Even the memories dim with each day. Now every moment is accompanied by pain, like a house guest that refuses to leave no matter how long you beg, plead, or shout. Morning, noon, and night. Never solace. Never peace. “Hey you! Hey you! HEY YOU!” I can’t sleep anymore.

 

When you’re gone, I get so lonely not hearing your voice, not being able to see you. I talk to Ashley. She keeps me company. She understands me. She supports this ailing body.

 

All things I have, I have from you – and none other.

 

I wish I could still keep guard over your health and spirit. When you were sick, or when you were in poor spirits, I would slip natural Lillecian herbs and remedies into your food. When you were sick, I would give you Goloma to aid the healing process. When you had trouble sleeping, I would give you the somnulant Lobu Kenk. When you were stressed, unhappy, and anxious, I lamented that you could not restore the balance of your mind, and procured Fir berries to help you. The times you spent all day and night studying, I gave you Yimvyrei for your memory and concentration. For your hair loss, your gastric troubles, and for your loose bowels, I increased the amount of Goloma.

 

I spent huge sums of money to buy enough of each medicine and tincture to provide a big enough dose for you. I bled my wallet dry. I stopped seeing a doctor myself. Even if I could still afford to buy your medicines, I’m not able to climb and clamber the way I used to. I couldn’t give them to you.

 

[Goloma: A groundcover lichen that produces melarsoprol.

Lobu Kenk: Bark from a micro-bush containing eszopiclone.

Fir: A fungus, cultivated as food by Lillecians, whose “berries” contain fluoxetine.

Yimvyrei: Coffee bean extract, containing caffeine.

 

These chemicals, taken together, cause serious health problems, including jaundice, alopecia, liver failure, and bone degeneration, albeit not in Lillecians. Only in humans.]

 

I have given you absolutely everything I ever had. Your happiness has been my happiness. Your smiles have been my smiles. Your tears have been wept by my own eyes too. When you loved someone, I loved them as well. Other female Lillecians never warranted a glance. Children would have been distracting – a wife would have replaced you. Other males were worth less than dirt. It was only you I had my eyes on. All I need. Venus.

 

Everyone I once knew is dropping dead like gnats.

 

I avoided my parents and brothers’ funerals. Instead I prayed to you from a distance. You will outlive us all many times over. Our lives are insignificant in comparison.

 

They lead dull lives not even worth noting, not even footnotes in the book of history. None else share in my ecstasy, none understand it.

 

My bed is your scraps of clothes, my food is grown from your sweat, my walls are the discarded boxes of your garbage. It fills me with anger to use something made by somebody else – I can’t bear the thought of sharing my life with anyone else.

 

They tell me it’s wrong. That I’ve wasted everything. No. It is worse to live in self-denial.

 

That’s how they live. Without love. Their smiles were disfigured, disgusting. They didn’t deserve happiness. They wouldn’t understand it. They lived for their images. For their facade. Their status and wealth were worth more than their spirit. Transient simple pointless things. How could they understand you? Only I have experienced this sublimation transcendent. This eternity I have glimpsed.

 

How this damned hand shakes and throbs with pain. I can’t control my letters anymore. Damn! If only I’d had more time. The verses I could have written… I live only a fraction of the life you’ll have, Venus. It is disgustingly, viciously cruel.

 

But I am proud of this: I rebelled against my station in life. My predestined future. My desires were at odds with my culture, my society, in a word with others – and even, at times, at odds with myself! All the others, I spurned. They. Their words meant nothing. Their rules and expectations were bad. But you, Venus, are LOVE.

 

You are LOVE. You are. Love.

 

Have I been a good worshiper? Have I devoted myself to you enough? Correctly?

 

Was I supposed to give you more? Was good made more give you?

 

They tried to keep me from you. Anything that keeps me from you is wrong. Anything from keeps you me wrong. They failed. I did not fail. Never did I fail. I failed not. Fail. Fail.

 

I persisted, doggedly, triumphantly, for you. If you read this, and see me, if you thank me for everything I’ve done for you, it will all have been work it. Worth it. I’ll pass on to the next life in peath peace. Hope I hope that that life has had will you in it, too. It would be true utopia. Utopia utopia utopia utopia.

 

Now I must sleep. Sleep. Sleep. Dream of you. You.

 

[the following poem was written on parchment and has been glued to the monument. Its handwriting is only a little less poor than the surrounding text.]

 

Let me be surrounded by thy pink, feminine,

Rainbow beauty, honeyed milk

To drift afloat

In thy sweet sleep of slowly spinning galaxies

Drifting through quiet black oblivion

Caressing my mudcracked body

 

Or instead if your appraisal of this burning jewel’d diamond

If it be not to your liking

 

Kill me, gnash me, obliterate me,

Decimate, slice, rip, pull apart,

Smash me into distilled pure dead base elements

Until I am a soft bubbling clay

For you to reform

Rectify

Into your liking

 

My penance, to start all over again

Over and over

Whittle me away until you are pleased

 

I know you appreciate the things I do. I know you know of my deeds and appreciate them. How could you not? Why’nt?

 

Looking backwards pastwards, the happiest moment of my life were when you look in my direction. It remind me of the time I you on finger. The view of breasts sublime. I wonder what would have had happened had I not run. Run run run. I have think of that time oft en

 

Your visage decorates my home. I have had rubbed myself raw looking to it. Out at you, sleeping naked, sometimes as well.

 

All I think is Venus – Venus - Venus - Venus - Venus - in the day, in the night, when I pleasure myself is Venus

 

Devotion to you is more and more and more difficult and strenuity aches. My seed has all spilled – nothing more comes. It doesn’t get hard anymore. Only the head still bulges. Ashley doesn’t help. Her words unkind.

 

Ah, why did I run away… Why did I jump off finger? For years I staying there in that moment.

 

eating, sleeping, talking, working, laughing, sex, chatter. noise without Venus. worthless dirt, meaningless birdsong.

 

Every day I think about you every day masturbating all day im exhausted at two hours past midnight cant anymore I pass out asleep, I wake up, all over again, pleasuring

 

One last use for my frail body have I decided. I give everything I have left you. For you

 

I blush, I blush,

 

I cum

 

you? me? You are my star. Youare the moon.

 

I can’t, you wouldn’t listen, hear, forget. time close. Body. Time. Rerax. I need Y

 

why you are. why gone you. My Venus. My Venus. Venus. I can’t face this Venus. Venus. Venus. Venus. Venus. Venus Venus how I want

 

Venus Venus Venus! Venus! Venus! Venus Venus Venus My Venus. Venus Venus Venus.

 

One last dose of brain stimulants. The bottle is empty now. I was saving it for an emergency. This is an emergency. I don’t have much time left. This will be my final message to you, Venus.

 

Vigorous now. My hand is firm and solid. Your poem. Your serenade. A final testament to your magnificent beauty. This I can write for you. The final devotion of my life.

 

My goddess,

Venus,

My Venus,

 

You are the light that fills the galaxy

You are the protector of all things beautiful and good

 

Thy pink feminine beauty to drift afloat on

My back down, my belly up

 

I am your clay, reshape me

Start me all over again

Into forms most celestial

Reborn to sing the cycle of prayers anew

 

Do I please you now?

Am I worthy O Venus?

Have I done enough?

Have I been good?

 

I shall love you you shall love me

Bring me to thy breast and

Feed me thy milk and

Nourish and make me whole and let me

burp and

giggle and

stay

drift happily asleep without a care in the world

under the gentle shadow of your breast

 

everything assured

safe, soundless protected guarded safe

dreaming and asleep asleep asleep asleep asleep asleep asleep asleep asleepasleepasleepasleepasleepasleepasleepasleepasleep

 

 

_{Author's note:}

_{Thanks for reading this far! The next chapter, where we’ll finally take a look at Venus, will be the last big chapter. A short epilogue will follow, which I’ll upload at the same time.}

_{I find it fun when authors do this, so here’s a song I listened to about a thousand times while writing this story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8lsheUpsxQ}

_{It doesn’t fit the story perfectly, but it captures a certain mood. Maybe Tristan would have listened to it, imagining Venus is "Adam".}