Stone's Smile - TG

Axton's legs carried him down the road, almost on autopilot. Behind him floated a woman, little more than a girl, blond hair shifting to blue and green as she lazily floated behind him. Somehow she was always there, when he twisted a corner or ducked through a building, when he darted out a window or climbed up a set of stairs. Always the same distance behind him, just watching with a smile on her face; occasionally she seemed to do something else, checking her nails or her hair, but she never quite took her head from him. Nor did she ever seem to get tired – but neither did Axon; he should have been, but he wasn't. That meant she was allowing him to run. Making him run, perhaps, though that seemed hard to believe – hard, but not impossible.

"Do you ever get tired of it?" she asked, as if reading Axton's thoughts. That same faint smile was on her lips when he glanced behind him.

"Tired of what?" he demanded, running across the empty streets; he didn't know what she'd done to their inhabitants, but he'd seen what she could do first hand; the stream of flowers, toys, and crying babies she'd left in her wake continued to haunt him.

"You've been running for ten years."

His steps faltered for a moment, but his feet picked up again through habit, maintaining his balance as he shoved hard soles against unforgiving concrete, continuing to move forward. "You're lying; the sun hasn't even set yet."

"The sun never sets," she yawned. "Time doesn't move. You don't get hungry; you don't get thirsty. You don't get sweaty, or tired. There isn't even another person to distract your thoughts; just me you and the fear." She stretched languidly in the air about herself, lying her head back without bothering to look. "You aren't even moving."

"You're lying," he said, running; always running, his feet carrying him past buildings and windows, some of them familiar, some of them which he'd already run past; how long would it take, he wondered, to circle about the city and run past the same buildings more than once, or even twice?

"You're lying," he repeated, wishing his voice was more firm, that his eyes weren't roaming the graffitied walls for some sign of familiarity; but as he looked, the graffiti washed clean, leaving nothing but pure white buildings that glistened lightly in the sun; the sun which rested half a quarter above the earth, on the verge of sunset, without actually setting.

"Ten years," she repeated. "Ten minutes. And ten seconds; for eternity and for no time at all. It's funny how the human brain works, isn't it?" there was a teasing edge to her voice, but it concealed something hard; something that reminded him to respond and keep her happy. When she got bored, she'd do things; bring things into the world, destroy buildings, send them away, and start them again; bring human life back to the city, and then kill it all off.

"Are you saying that it only feels like a few minutes?" he asked; the sun beat against his flesh, suddenly hot, and bright, midway to the sky with its heat burning against his eyes as he ran blindly into it.

"I'm saying that we're in your mind," she corrected. "I turned everyone but you back; and slipped into your brain. You were hit by a truck afterwards."

"You turned everyone back?" Axton demanded, his voice momentarily catching as he twisted his mind back; he'd watched her turn people into toys. Little bears, bouncy balls, feathered birds that she handed to gleeful children, and laughed as they tried to tear their toys apart.

"I replaced the toys," she assured him, as if that was his concern. "But I'd had my fun; I'm not entirely a monster you know. I just like to let people know when they're making mistakes."

"You can't just-"

"Use people for my amusement?" she interrupted. "Of course I can. That's what they were doing."

A pebble rolled up to Axton's foot, its noise cacophonous in the empty city; glancing to the side, he saw a building silently collapsing; and another, and another.

"Everyone laughed, because I'd turned my hair pink," she reminded him. "They were using me for their amusement, right? Finding fun with something I did. So why shouldn't I do the same?  They have, what, another eighty years to remember it before they're dead anyhow?' she demanded. "They're back to normal."

"And I'm not?" he asked, watching a pebble sail over his head to crash into a building with a light "plink." The building tipped, hitting the one after, which hit the one after that; like a set of dominos, it all started to fall.

"No," she admitted. "You're not; but I didn't take you for any mundane reason like teasing. I took you because you tried to stop me; I thought that was… interesting," she admitted.

"Interesting? You were turning people into toys! Somebody had to stop you!" he twisted to the right as a building fell in his path, aware a cloud of dust forming behind him and her, parting in two to avoid getting her clothes dirty.

"Nobody else tried to," she pointed out. "But you didn't care how powerful I was; you drew my attention o you, and tried to keep it that way; and now you're going to die in a hospital bed; it's sad. But I won't save you."

"I'm not surprised." He ducked  a rock while she laughed; a rock that he hadn't known was there. Slowly, he became aware that he wasn't in control of his own body – that perhaps he never had been. It twisted and turned as she wished it, ducked stones and darted over rubble, doing as he wanted to only because she wanted it to do so. At her command, it moved to the right again, down an alley, the wall at the end already crumbling.

"What do you want?" he demanded, voice trembling, wondering if his words, too, were hers.

"I want your will," she told him. "I want that sense of yours; that something has to be done, and that you can do it; and I want it turned towards what you can do for me."

There was silence for a moment; the buildings about him made no noise in their falling; the stones and dust began to disappear even as they crumbled, rough white stones gone as quickly as they formed.

"I won't help you hurt people," Axton said, at last. "I won't."

She laughed behind him, her shirt blossoming about her; it had changed, at some point; he couldn't remember what it had been before – a blue blouse, perhaps – but it had shifted to the conspicuous leather that clung to her breasts; her hair was a pure white, like the stones, which reached out as if to hug him, but stopped just a little short. A strand flicked him once against the noise, before the mass fell to the floor about her floating figure.

"I want you to get me coffee in the morning," she told him. "Buy me toys. Keep me entertained, so that I can forget for a while what insignificant bugs I'm surrounded with; maybe you'll even keep me from squashing them." She smiled. "Take care of my needs; and I'll take care of yours."

"I… " Axton glanced at the city around her. "It's the only way I'm waking up, isn't it?" he whispered; his footsteps didn't stop, or even falter; but the will to resist left him, and the woman felt it behind him. "What are you going to do to me?"

"I'm already doing it," she told him. "We're in your mind; the buildings are your memories; and I'm wiping them clean."

He nodded mechanically; a puppet on  her strings, perhaps, but did it matter if it was the move he wanted to make? He wasn't sure anymore; he wasn't sure of anything; ten years or ten seconds; his own name even, he realized, with a bitter laugh. What he looked like.

Turning his gaze to his body, he felt a shiver travel through his hazed frame, the uncertainty of his being reflected in his body. He didn't know what he should look like, yet slowly the image was pushing its way into his consciousness; he had slender arms, almost hairless, with supple and pale flesh – yet he thought there should have been strong muscles, with firm skin.

His legs were slender, and long, gracefully carrying him across the ground, light as air instead of pushing off with thick muscles. His body, he knew, was slender, curving in at the waist before moving gracefully out for his wide hips; his bottom, he could feel, was cute and lush, filling the gentle… skirt.

His mind faltered, the final buildings cracking and falling apart, his body trembling violently as he tried to imagine the next part. "My groin…" he said, voice rough, and thick. "My… groin," he whispered, voice smooth and gentle. "Is… is…." It writhed beneath his clothes; the ground cracking beneath his feet; slowly something round began to penetrate the rough earth. Gray stone pushed beneath his feet, sliding up between slender hairless legs. He danced back, skirt moving to temporarily reveal the panties where he knew the front would be –

"Flat," she whispered, matter of factly, and again, with a faint little laugh in her voice. "I'm a girl"

The knowledge hung in her mind as nothing else did, joined by the heavy weight of her breasts, which he only slowly became aware of.   For a moment, that and that alone fit his mind, but the statue continued to climb its way from the earth of her fertile mind; the stone was pink. The hair of it climbed to the ground; its skin seemed almost soft, as if it would depress to a touch, as if its breasts were warm, and its smile was real. She smiled back at it, its presence the sole thing in her world; and from it, thoughts sprung.

"Mistress," she whispered, and meant it; but the statue's smile began to slip from its face, replaced by a frown, surprising her; she twisted her head about, but there was no one else there; just her and a statue, and the quiet words "Come to me."

"Mistress?" she whispered, reaching towards it, but stopping, her fingers outstretched but unable to come closer; thoughts and images filled her mind; pain she didn't understand, worries she didn't grasp; and anger, burning deep and bright that stabbed into her mind, a deeply rooted anger that wanted to lash out and destroy, but hardly seemed aware of it; and the expectation for her to come forward, completely blind to the feelings that kept the other woman at bay.

"Mistress?" she whispered again, blindly stepping forward, the anger and betrayal licking at her flesh; she didn't understand it, but she dind't have to understand it – she merely had to know that it was there.

Taking one blind step and then another, she let it slide off her pristine mind, just whispering her word again and again – "Mistress?"

Other words hung at the corner of her mind, but she didn't understand them; the concepts behind them were foreign. Nothing in the world mattered but the woman who filled her mind – she knew that, though it made no sense to her; she worried about that, but those worries were to be discarded.

"Mistress was… hurt?" she asked, touching the stone; it was soft, and warm, and the breasts depressed when her own touched them, her fingers slowly moving through the hair as she hugged the figure.

The anger and the fear and the betrayal scoured at her mind, and she closed her eyes to embrace it, knowing it couldn't hurt her; and when she opened her mind, her mistress was there, caught surprised in her eyes, trapped when she pressed her lips firmly against the other woman's.

"Mistress," she repeated, happily.

The hands shoved her away. "What do you think you're doing?" Lyla demanded, spitting on the ground. "Filthy human…"

"Fulfilling your needs," the woman remarked. "Do you have a name for me?"

"No." Lyla started to walk away; the woman followed with a smile; names didn't matter, anyhow.

She would fulfill her msitress's needs; and bring that smile back into place.