SECTION 1
ID

Dizzy sensation wakes me up.

Again my world is all sensory. Again it is devoid of memory. In this moment I have only a flood of emotions and senses to give me context as to what it is, as to what I am. Again I don't know whose bed this is, but because I'm in it, I wake up in my own bed. The comforter is six thousand pounds heavy and so is the blanket, the fuzzy blanket that reminds me of Him. The bed is big enough for two, but I'm alone. That dizzy sensation returns, that dizziness like I've been stood for all my life, but I'm tossing and turning now, I can't go back to sleep. I'm panting and drooling against the pillow cases and desperately, desperately hard. I can't figure out the layout of the room from memory.

Memory. Memory. I don't have any of that. When I try to reach back at former thoughts, I think of Him again and then get caught in a loop failing to masturbate with limp hands and limp arms and I'm so, so dizzy now, hanging around and flipping around and flopping onto my stomach. I don't remember the layout of this room. Is this my bedroom?

No, I

haven't had a bedroom

in some time now.

Throughout His house are two dozen unmarked bedrooms, and I am in one of them. Now that memory comes striking back. It's a thorn in my head, and again my world is all sensory, my world is all pain. Memory of last night is just pain and booze on my breath and orgasm still resonating, still reminding me, still a faint chill on my spine.

I turn onto my back and try and breathe and stare at the ceiling. There has to be some kind of grounding rhythm that I could align with that would take me out of a morning stupor. Do I remember how I used to calm down? And then instinct tells me, no, you never calmed down without hands around you. The ceiling is all twisty where the wooden beams meet. From so far below, it looks unintelligible, like a network of snakes all coiling together to form foundation and bedrock for His house's roof.

For a second I think it's pelting down rain, but there's morning sun. Then there's dusk light. I check my watch and it's spinning. I feel so dizzy again and turn over and fall into black.



The mornings are psychedelic in His house. Eventually I find myself having fallen out of the bed and onto the carpeted floor, where the wool again reminds me of His wool, but it's enough of a change in sensation to wake up, and for the world to start pooling into the bottom of my brain again. Sometimes His house does this to me. I lose track of where I am. Then, only after an hour of clutching and crawling to the edge of the bed, falling face-first to the floor, I realize I'm home.



By and large His house is Euclidean in nature; the walls don't curve in on themselves impossibly and the layout doesn't, to my knowledge, change. The lights turn on because of electricity because of a turbine in the basement fed by a hydroelectric dam and all of this is, I think, easy enough to imagine, but I've not seen the dam even through the highest window in the attic, and I can't identify anymore if we're still in Michigan or if we've ended up someplace else, because I don't recognize the landscape. When I stare up at the ceiling, the disorienting height of the rooms can make me think it's taller than it really is, but I know the measurements, and I know that there aren't any tricks at play with the world itself.

The ceilings in the bedrooms are twenty-seven feet, four inches above the floor. The ceilings in the hallways are twenty-nine feet, four inches above the floor. When I stare up at them, they feel the same amount of endless. Looking up doesn't remind me of where I am in His house.

The carpets are a soft wool. I first briefly thought they were His wool, but He has told me that they are not, that they are just soft. Maybe it would be strange if they were not just a reminder, but an actual link to his touch. Maybe then I would hold the carpets close instead of Him, but then I can't suspect that for long, because the carpets do not feel my heartbeat and do not match my breathing and they do not hold my penis softly with inhuman digits, and the carpets don't kiss me. The carpets smell like nothing, instead of smelling like flowers. But I am against the carpet right now and it's making me hard, because my world is all sensory, and they feel close enough. The memory that He is not here in my presence right now doesn't strike me.

A few minutes pass and then it does strike me. I am not basking in the morning light with Him, I am nakedly dry-humping the floor. Those things are a little different.



My robe is a cool-blue, folded up nicely in the corner of the bottom drawer of a dresser, of which there are four in this room alone. Memory saves me from turning the room upside-down. But still memory excludes the whereabouts of my slippers, only offering vague hints here and there—and memory struggles to escape last night and the booze and semen and wooziness, so I don't ask memory any more questions.

I don't go barefoot. I am the sort to wear stockings, and there are nylon ones in the dresser. My world is all sensory and this one, this one, of tight fabric and sleekness and comfort, is the one that takes me out of time, place, thought. They are colored black. They were sewn and then adjusted for me by Him, such that they fit my anatomy. So was the robe. I stretch these thigh-highs up my legs—I feel my two toes on each foot slide into the place where they belong, snug, and then the rest of it is snug, and I feel happiness that is completely divorced from reason and buildup. I feel arousal and safety.

Sometimes my world is all sensory and sometimes it's not. This morning I ponder for a moment where I am and how I am and why I'm shaped like this and why I'm sitting on the edge of a bed that isn't mine. Memory is just begging for some time off, but I am begging for answers.

Memory tells me I am in here because I want to be.

Memory is struggling to elaborate.

I remember knocking on a door

I remember knocking on His door

I remember knocking on a door and seeing the most beautiful, unfathomable, hypnotizing figure floating three inches off the floor. This was in Michigan—the place where I think I might still be. I was trying to deliver something to this address off a rural road upstate and He, in all of his glory, wasn't human. He wasn't like me. He looked overwhelmingly sad. He looked like He was exhausted just to get up and reach the doorway. I was in awe and dropped the package and before I knew it, He was going to close the door, and I was going to forget all about Him—I remember this thoroughly—and I didn't want that. The sensory part of me, the terrified-to-be-alone need-to-hold-somebody part of me, reached in and I grabbed His hand, and suddenly He was real.

His hands were real. His hands were warm. Warm, warm, warm.



Memory gets tired and I stop asking questions. For a short while I just get to feel body heat coming from nowhere. Actually this is what gets me about my own memory as it falters and short-circuits, which is that it's like a winding trail bordered by pitfall traps. I can so easily get caught up in thoughts that, whether comforting or terrifying, stop me in my tracks; I could think hard about how I got here and basically piddle around with the same few snippets of nothing, and I could think for a moment about His body and fall down the drain. I have to be particular with when I let myself go there, or I won't make it anyplace at all. Note the precum stains on the carpet.

I resolve to stick to this morning from now on. I am dressed up; I like to wear something form-fitting under the robe, so I wear panties that don't quite have enough room, and the stockings, and I feel ready and warm enough for the rest of His house.

The door to the bedroom is sixty pounds heavy. The brass handle is cold and stiff, yet it swivels on its axis with infinite smoothness. I can feel through my hands a click, when the mechanism unlocks. The tonnage of this door starts to move when I push. It starts and then persists and all nine feet, eight inches of height gives way to the hallway.

The carpet feels softer out here against my toes. I can tell that even if I were to sprint, it would be hard to hear my footsteps. Most of the transitory places in His house are carpeted. It reminds me sometimes of an airport, with the same feeling that I could fall over and settle down anywhere. I always sense I'm experiencing a very long overnight layover. There isn't another soul in the hallway, but I can see either side where it bends from here. The great dark oaken arches split the hall like a spine running through the west edge of His home, with either end simply leading back to the heart of the building.

Owing to the fact that the bedrooms have windows, this hallway doesn't. So again I am divorced from time. It could be anytime and anyplace.

But it doesn't change Him or His life where it is. And my body feels like it's morning. My brainstem suspects it's morning and so is adjusting my limbs to be more passive and is letting the rest of my cerebral cortex wake up slowly. And my brainstem also wants caffeine, and it suspects that now is the time. Memory tells me where the coffee maker is. Memory also lets me know I don't have to make it, but memory keeps thinking of times in two kinds of shitty apartment where I did have to make it, and memory puts me back there for a second.

Then I'm in the hallway again. And I am moving towards the heart of His house, and after sixty-eight footsteps and after rounding the bend, I feel a rubbing sensation against the back of my neck.



Or, no, that isn't what I would call it. Maybe it's heat against the back of my neck.



Or weightlessness.



Maybe it's pain.



I am missing some sensory information in my life and although my world is often all sensory sometimes it is filled with little holes. Sometimes people will describe what pieces of complex music sound like and I can process the words, but the meaning bounces off me because I am deaf, stone-deaf. Similarly this sensation regarding the back of my neck—where my brainstem is sending signals to increase my heart rate—is not easy to describe if you haven't felt it. Animals have a thousand different little piddly systems designed to sense the outside world and this one is unique. This system detects Him.

Now that heartbeat is going much faster.



When I am near, He feels my presence, too. He has indicated that the same feeling strikes Him in the back of the neck, and that it makes His heart rate increase. I can feel it, that gentle (ba-thump) against His chest, and felt through the palm of His hand, it is like I am holding His heart in my fingers. Ba-thump, I think. Simply the sensation in the back of my neck causes me to remember His heartbeat. His heart beats at ninety ba-thumps per minute. When I'm not around, when the house comes to a standstill at night, it is slower. It is around eighty.

He has a coy little fascination with His body and the measurements and all this. When I told Him I wanted to measure the house, He was surprised by it, and said He didn't remember the measurements either, and He grabbed me in his great big arms and helped me lift the measuring tape all the way up to the coiling, winding ceiling, and it's one of the best pieces of memory I have. It makes me feel as if, although I can't place myself when staring up at that mess, I can at least remember when I measured it, and when He helped me.

And then He taught me how to measure heartbeats based on the ticking of my watch. I can stare at the ticks of the second hand and tap my toe to that rhythm, and compare it to that which I feel in my wrist or His wrist, and make an estimate that gets closer and closer to the truth. When I'm in His presence, there are three ba-thumps in every two seconds, roughly. And when I feel Him in my presence, my heart is beating at about one-oh-five; there are nine ba-thumps in every five seconds. That one is harder to count accurately.

And all of this is just memory working diligently, filing papers, filling forms. Memory likes to know what numbers go in what places.



I don't have to make coffee, memory reminds me. And the walk is almost over, memory reminds me. And the hallway opens up so suddenly and my view expands to the great living room which resides in the heart of the house, which is itself a beating and thrumming and lively thing. With a roaring fireplace along the southern wall bordered by two transitive hallways to the front exit, with an open kitchen along the west wall where the cool blue lights make it look like a little oasis, and with lavish furniture in the center of the room arranged in such a way that it all feels cozy and homely. And the ebony wooden pillars and walls are complemented now with brighter woods that form accent-work along every surface to add depth, and between each exciting point of interest are endless rows of books which lay in intricacy within bookshelves embedded in these walls, and all at once it is a feast for the eyes. And my world is all sensory; and this place makes me feel small.

My eyes stick forward and I lurch to the kitchen. The carpet is softer here and yet more worn, as I can feel individual marks where furniture has been shifted around, both my and His attempts to reorganize to reach an optimal shape for the room. And then the kitchen floor tiles are chill to the touch, somehow exuding coldness like a furnace exudes heat, and I reach the coffee maker, which is this elaborate thing that is embedded in the wall and is made out of pipes and dreams, and is exuding heat like floor tiles exude chill, and I finally reach it, and hell, caffeine is finally in my life again.

The cup is so damn warm. So damn warm. Actually warmer than the touch of Him, so it is its own sensory experience. It is a tap-tap in the ear: I am more powerful than you. And I clasp the cup in my keratinous digits and return it to the marble counter, and then I pour in cream, and then I pour in sugar, and then I put it all back into the fridge, and then I have coffee I can drink.

It is then that I finally bring my eyes up off what I am doing and I see Him floating not far outside the kitchen's confines.



Here is what I have to say about Tabi if I am being completely honest: I love him entirely and wholly and I also don't know if I love him. I don't know what love means anymore.



Here is what I have to say about Tabi if you have not met him: he is seven-feet tall, he is what would be called an anthropomorphic animal. He floats three inches above the ground, so that his delicate caprine feet do not land at any moment, though he can reach ground if he wants to. He resembles a white-wooled male sheep, a ram, though of course he has just two digitigrade legs and two arms, and opposable thumbs, and other remnants of the human form that make him function as such. His head is long and beautiful, with great inquisitive eyes and a pointed muzzle, and a nose that is lovely to tap, and great big ears that waggle as he hears new information. His horns curl around the side of his face twice, or maybe thrice just barely. His mouth curves in such a way that, at all angles and all times, it looks like he is smiling, as if he knew something you did not. His chest is big and fluffy; all of him is, all of him always is. He is covered in smooth, delicate wool, though it does not shed and does not need to be shorn. His keratinous fingers and toes are soft and rounded, such that they do not even threaten to break skin.

He is hypnotizing. Hypnotizing. I use that word a lot for him. When I think of him, my mind mentally wants to capitalize He and so on and treat him godlike, though when he is a form in front of me, I think of Tabi more modestly, as a friend, as a partner. Still there is this intense urge when he enters my mental peripheral to worship him, every inch of him, though especially the softs of his feet and hands, and his lithe thighs, and his asscheeks which can only be felt not seen, and his penis, which bobs playfully against touch, and his face, and every part of me wants to kiss him at every available moment.

And when I see him, and the world all coalesces, and I just have a warm coffee in my hand and no worries, and memory forgets about that shitty apartment once and for all, he uses those hands to speak to me.

"That coffee might be a bit bad," Tabi signs. "I heard rumbling in the pipes. We should do maintenance on it soon."

And I go flush and smile warmly, and I feel that warmth go through my whole body. And I sign back: "We can do that today." And my eyes light up to indicate enthusiasm. And all is good.



I have changed to physically become like Tabi as a result of his caretaking. Or a result of something. Or maybe cause and effect are not relevant.

But the crucial thing is that I'm not human either, I am also what would be called an anthropomorphic animal in much the same vein as Tabi. I stand shorter than him by a head—six feet six—and have a shorter, more pronounced and rounded snout. I resemble a black-furred goat whom walks on two legs, with two-toed feet and four-fingered hands, and I have never felt such euphoria to be alive in my body. Where Tabi's wool is fluffy along all but his extremities, I keep my fur kempt so as to not get irritated when I put on tight clothing. The grooming is a process that I have had to learn by trial and error. It was worth that effort.

I don't think I'm hypnotizing or any word like that. I think I am ordinary. When Tabi signs for me he does it because he wants to communicate with me. He is attracted to me, but I think he feels a great deal of affection for me just in the sense that I am here and another living person, and I enjoy his company, and that's a feedback loop that does a great deal for the soul. Actually Tabi has said he finds the idea of a soul very funny in a grim sort of way. Sometimes there is this air of cynicism about him.

But not now. Right now the air is tranquil with morning laze. I am quickly collapsed on the couch with my fluffy butt between two cracks in the cushions—the cushions are some kind of soft vinyl—and my legs up on the coffee table, and my stockings make me feel so warm, and my coffee is between my hands between my legs, and God, what a sensory experience. My world is all sensory and no part of my sensible brain wants to leave.

Tabi is here. He is sat on the adjoining part of the couch to my right, and he has stopped hovering so that he could lay down on the couch and read. He holds up the book with his mind. The book is called Djiban, and it looks hand-bound, and I can't see the author, but Tabi reads at a quick pace, his quizzical, expressive eyes narrowing and focusing with such beauty that I want to kiss him. He only looks at me now and then to give me a warm little smirk that I return.

Communications besides the romantic are transient by necessity. My hands are occupied with the coffee cup, but as I sip away the brew, the cup gets lighter and I can set it down. And he is laid down, so signing is a little awkward. Still, having that barrier in the way means we are very efficient and cool with our conversation, like murmurs during a massage. He signs, "Did you sleep alright?"

"Yeah," I sign back casually, after setting the cup down. "Well. No. I actually slept with a lot of tossing and turning. But I feel rested."

He gives me a long, knowing look. "The same here. They were difficult nights. But we do feel rested."

Another pause, and I stare up at the ceiling. In this room, the great room, the ceiling is twenty-four feet, six inches above the floor, and then it turns into the same gnarled mess of wood branches and columns as the rest of Tabi's home. However, unlike the rest of the house, this spot has a skylight. Smaller than the whole of the ceiling, yet large enough to let in great quantities of light, this skylight tells my brainstem—for certain—that it is morning. And it is not the kind of psychedelic morning-time that was confusing me during my bedrest, that made me spin-dizzy, but real morning.

The rays of the sun are streaming in at a low angle, bathing the western end of the room in golden light. And though the glass is ever-so-slightly murky, I can watch clouds stream by the bluish-gray sky. Some days there are so many clouds that sunlight struggles to find its way, but today it looks like autumn has been interrupted by a cold spring day come three months early, and there is no doubt that we are eating the best sunlight of our lives. Morning as a platonic concept is just screaming to me. It is morning. It is morning.

I feel like I've slept ten thousand years and ended up right where I wanted to.

Tabi notices my staring and has craned up his beautiful caprine head to join me. We are now cloud-watching at the bottom of the world. I eventually giggle softly and sign to him, "It seems like we got a break."

"It does!" he signs excitedly. Djiban keeps floating, and the pages hang freely. "It looks like it, anyway. We're in for more rainy days after this one. But the home looks so special with that light, don't you think?"

"Special is a good word," I sign. And I let out a long exhale only he can hear. "You should lift me up there so we can cloudwatch later." I motion later because we are doing our morning routine and it would be a bad time, but I really do want him to do it right now, though not enough to make a fuss.

And Tabi senses this, because he senses everything well, and so he flies off the couch and in a motion too quick to parse, picks me up like a bride and starts soaring into the air.



I do not know why Tabi can fly or control things with his mind, but it is a question I've asked him before and received answers for before. Memory gives me a shrug and says it isn't worth re-litigating. Tabi can fly and control things with his mind. This is just how it is.



And now I feel the indoor wind streaming past my face, and I feel my fur cooling down, and we float all the way up and I am laughing with dizziness as we finally reach the skylight. And now all of this far-away business of wondering where I am falls away; I am in some-place where the sky is beautiful. And Tabi has me in his great big arms, and I can feel his wooly chest against my body holding me tight. I am twenty feet in the air but I feel absolutely no worry beyond my brainstem saying you're very high up right now and I ignore it and my breath is taken away.

Tabi carrying me like this means he can't sign to me, but I can sign to him. I could also speak to him, but my confidence is so far gone that I would rather just sign. I motion that this is exactly what I wanted and he, in all of his glory, just gives me a grin. He knows. That's why he did it.

Our breathing is so close. I can feel his warmth and he can feel his; his breathing matches mine, or at least close. And I can feel his heartbeat from here. I can even count it. And our breaths are so close to the skylight, too, that it fogs it up a tad, and the sky is blotted out just enough to remind us that there's glass in the way, in case it were to start raining. And yet still from this angle we can see the whole sky, nearly horizon to horizon, as we sit suspended in the highest spot of the house.

Finally, after a moment to get my head steady, I can cloud-watch, like I wanted to. And Tabi has already begun doing the same. He huffs softly, looking up at a low angle to get a view of the skyline, and I follow his gaze, so that we can see things together. Wordlessly we are both able to find the same cumulus, a white spiral which is only barely a cloud, like the particles of water are still not determined to be one yet, but that at any moment the humidity and temperature may shift it into becoming something more solidly defined. It is shaped like a capital I, with streaks of white more solid and beautiful than others, and some parts so foggy they take squinting to make out.

I am reminded of me and Tabi, for some reason; sometimes so much of this world is undefined, while other parts are just barely defined enough for me to make out. There are some concrete things in my life, and some other things I can't get a grasp on at all. I am hard underneath the robe, and it's just beginning to poke against my panties enough to show visibly. I always get hard when Tabi touches me in any way. That's one concrete thing in my life.

I sign to him, "That cloud reminds me of us."

He gives me a puzzled look and then glances back. He wants to see what I see. He is an empathetic sort of person, or so I've always gathered, because when I express something, he always wants to share that point of view so he can understand it. And here he glances away, and his eyes narrow, and his pupils dilate, and then he glances back, nodding slowly. I elaborate, "It's a symbolic type of thing."

Tabi huffs in approval. And he goes back to looking at the cloud. And his expression, the part I can see, is more thoughtful. He is seeing the clouds for their symbolic shape now, instead of their real shape.

I think he was going to sign that it looked like a capital 'I'. Which is also very true.

And a few moments later, when he is lowering us back down to the couches, I feel my guts turn inward on themselves.

My breath is shorter. My stomach is winding up. A lump in me works its way up my liver to my ears and I do not explain my worry and my ache but these kinds of things never go away easy.



We eat, because it is the morning and eating is important. It is not an incredibly complicated breakfast but it is an incredibly filling one; I make us both three fried eggs in two separate pans and serve it atop two pieces of decadent, bougie wheat bread covered in sesame seeds and oats. While the eggs are frying I reheat some leftover hollandaise sauce—made in bulk on previous days—to drizzle over the homemade concoction in high quantity. Cooking is an activity that is indescribable. When I cook alone, it is nothing like cooking with other people, and in this particular case, that pang of discomfort is starting to snowball.

Two plates with eggs, toast, hollandaise sauce, and I serve them on the little four-person dining table sitting just outside the kitchen. And we eat. And I am trying to fill something—a hole in me that is leaking—but nothing is working. Instead, it is widening, and my breath is growing shorter, worse, less steady. And yet I have no idea what to do about it.

So I eat and drink coffee and get worse.



Tabi is back to reading, and I am back to relaxing between two cushions, but that disoriented feeling now has me uncomfortable with the status quo; I have the coffee in my lap but it is now warm instead of hot, and my stockings make me feel comfortable but they also make me feel embarrassed. Even in the presence of somebody this sexually active, crossdressing strikes me as an activity I should feel ashamed of enjoying. And this discomfort is intensifying all these feelings.

But I can diagnose this. Finally the thought comes to my head and I can diagnose this. This is just caffeine. Caffeine simulates a form of anxiety in the body. I am fine. It's just the caffeine.

At some point Tabi gets to a point in Djiban where he stops, setting the book on the coffee table so that he can rest and stretch out his legs, and I realize by his body language that he is sexually energized. He gives me a flushed little grin, and I return it on instinct, because he is beautiful and he makes me feel loved, and he signs, "I can't help but remember what we wanted to try doing this morning..." And he is referring to something kinky and now I remember and I want to be excited but I am forcing it, I am forcing my energy levels up.

I don't know what is making him so horny, and I envy it. I want this sensation to end. Soon I'll be over the hill, I tell myself. And then I realize my cup has reached bottom.

The fake-anxiety moves me forcefully to fill it back up again. I shuffle into the kitchen—the journey is so sudden I don't even look back at Tabi as I'm doing it—I watch the coffee machine rumble, I retrieve black coffee and make it cream coffee and add sugar. My right hand is trembling. My world is all sensory and I am erect under my robe but my body is jittering and thinking, and thinking, and thinking.

Actually, memory is who is at the driver's seat for a moment. Memory cleans the table of all the other muck and makes me set down the coffee cup on the kitchen counter, and memory is asking me to please, God, double-take. Double-take for a moment. This isn't the caffeine in me stirring, this is something real, this is something in words. I am trying to tell you something, so listen, says memory. Glance over at Tabi and stare into his loving eyes and then remember, remember, remember.



Earlier, Tabi signed that he had the same difficult nights as me.



What does that mean?



Did we sleep for multiple nights?