SECTION 3
SUPERPOSITION

Devotion is a chemical reaction that wells up in the guts. Little heated kidney stones. I have this all the time lately and as long as I can remember it's been making me frantic. Got to get moving. Got to do something. Time's running out. He has an intense expression and enjoys the way I'm feeling along the ley lines of His wool but maybe I have let Him down by making him wait for me. Got to make up for that. Head is spinning and stomach is on fire again. More.

I feel my trembling fingers up the length of His bent-back calves and knees and thighs and up His stomach and I trace the images of Gods past time and I stare into Him and feel small and powerless and good. Marbles tumbling in me. Poking out against my skirt.

Bedsheets on my knees are rough but not burning. He lays back on the headboard with His fluffy rear posed on two pillows and beckons me forward and gives me chills. Chills aren't welcome. I am panting from the heat. Do you want something? Yes. Press on my stomach. Yes, like that. That feels excellent. I give Him a massage and a pet and a rub like He is prone to primal desires same as me. Leaning over Him. Darling you are hard again. Yes, I know. I don't need help. I'm happy like this. You look very pretty today. I love how you're dressed. I like how I'm dressed too. The skirt is A-line and the rest of the dress has a color that matches me well. Blue or cyan almost. Yes, cyan. I remember where we found this one, even! And He should realize that I was the one who picked out the tights. Black nylon close against my groin and toes. I pulled down the waistband so I can bob erect in the air. I like tights. Have to grunt to let out air. What now? Keep doing this. So I keep doing it and pressing and feeling the ripples in His skin, the spots of slight fat and wool of His stomach, His sides, where His ribcage is and where His hips begin and end. I have much of my weight leaned against Him and His expression has become known to me. He is smiling and satisfied and He is nodding as if he knows something I do not. Is he here? Is he going to interrupt us? No, of course not. There will be no interruptions. And if there were I would not ignore you or make you stop. Thank you. Of course. I would like you to move up with this now. I have to lean further over Him and my legs go against His groin and His penis and I can feel Him growing harder against my fur but I cannot get into all that because I am devoted and I am doing what He asked. Yes, exactly. Hands on my chest. That feels special. Your arms too? Yes, shoulders, armpits, neck. Yes. Good. Devotion is a chemical reaction rolling over and devotion is my ears perking up and pay attention, pay attention, do as He asks. Palm along His pecs and His nipples and His biceps, all this musculature which is hidden beneath His wool. I glide my fingers through that wool and need air. My arms are shaking. Keep going and don't stop, darling. I can feel that you want to stop and masturbate. Don't grind against me. Keep massaging. Do it. I exhale without inhaling and squeeze His shoulders and feel His neck and where His head begins, the sides of His head, and feel along His muzzle and bring my fingers to His horns, tracing them as they revolve around the sides. Helical and beautiful. Don't kiss me but kiss my neck. Suck up to me. Good. Good. And I am drooling. Sides of my muzzle coated in saliva and my teeth clenched and He refuses to embrace me, letting me close to His warmth but not close enough, and I am desperately, desperately erect with no end in sight. Fuck. Keep kissing me now. My head is buried in His wool. Keep kissing, darling. Devotion is Godly. Devotion is to be of divine origin and to reach up into the heavens and put yourself as an object in the cosmology of reality. Devotion is a star.

He has many lines of travel that go up His limbs but my favorite line goes from His eyes to His feet as if He is an embodiment of my obsession, as if He is the Platonic form of a foot fetish gone haywire. I named Him after His feet and He knows more nowadays that I am always ready to go down below Him and humiliate myself. Devotion is shaped like kink. But right now I am devoted to His intense frivolous desire to have hands all over Him. Real hands. Hands that are in His domain. My thumbs against His windpipe, gentle but not too gentle. Yes, like this. Are you thinking about feet again? You are the easiest person to predict in the world. That's not fair. I knew it. I have my hands on your throat. Only because I want it, darling. Fine. Keep massaging me there. It feels good to have you here. I wanted this. I wish I'd come sooner. No, no, this is perfect. Yes, like that. Darling you're poking me in the stomach. Sorry. No, it's good. Now you can frot a bit. Thank God. Not too much, now. I don't want you finishing. Alright. Fine. Keep kissing me there, darling, don't stop. Don't stop until I tell you. Rhythm, now.

My length is barely gliding above the surface of His stomach and ribs, just gliding. Tickling. I didn't say stop. And you're starting to leak and you haven't finished massaging me now. Sorry. Don't apologize just keep it up. Apologize with your actions. I kiss Him and curl my head around His neck and the base of His horns, and I spread my hands wide so as to reach His shoulders and His wrists—then back down back down back down to His chest and belly and hips again, now leaning my furry chest into His wooly one, arms down. Feels like the world can't see us. Dim bedroom dim lights dim house and His arms go around me and my back is suddenly all His. Darling keep that delicate touch and continue what you're doing but massage my penis, now. Do not touch yourself because I will caress you and you will finish on my command. Yes. Please. Do not beg now. Do as I ask. So I do as He asks and put my hands against His length, buzzing and leaking; my hands are sticky in an instant and the sheer notion of touching a naked Him as I grind worthlessly against His wool is electrifying and altogether so uncomfortable. Don't think of your body now. Think of my body. Don't think of your body now. Think of my body. Don't think of your body now. Think of my body. Don't think of your body now. Think of my body. Asphalt liquefying below me and the rains are getting unfathomably strong and I wandered too far from the party and they lost track of me, flashlights in the mist. I'm leaving footsteps and they're getting fainter all the time and along the right side all the rocks are turning up with earthquakes and I land on my shoulder and the skin scrapes off and a streak of blood goes wide along the edge of the concrete hello red red red and think of His body now. Devotion is a bird screeching in a tree. It has a brain parasite that has rewired all of its functions a new way around. Can you see me from all the way over there? Shut off your thoughts and both hands around His penis and squeezing your body against His and I warble and I squeal and the asphalt eats me again it's sunny out going wide again eyes shut devotion is pain in your legs making you kneel for His dick every time He asks devotion is spreading your asshole for Him devotion is jerking Him off now now go, go, don't stop. Just like that, darling. Just like that. You're doing excellently. Yes. Yes. Darling don't stop, please. Please. Kiss me. Kiss me and think of me. Kiss me.

His heartbeat through the veins of His dick into the palms of my hands. He is breathing so hard that I am on a waterbed. Bobbing up and down with His ribcage. Choke me please. Please, I did everything right. Choke me a little bit. I'll try. You have me in a bit of a bind, sweetheart. Arms around the back of my neck and pressing down and muffling me into His wool until it's all black. I'm close now and want you to keep going. Please. Here comes that asphalt again.

Round the corner. Sun spots in His wool. Eyes shut and forgetting everything.

Devotion is not losing sight of the goal.



I've been painting a lot lately.



The anatomy of a man is most apparent from above as His caretaker, His observer. A painter is Godly in some way unseen. I can't see Him from down here. I want to see Him as much as I feel Him. I want to know who He is. I want to exhaust His mystery.

At this point I have pulled back, woozy and half-conscious, and I have put my furry muzzle against the tip of His penis, and His legs are around me, resting on either shoulder, and I am just breathing on Him. I can smell His precum and sweat and all the smells drool onto my nose and He is in my head begging, begging, please, you are just being obnoxious now, fuck's sake, please use your tongue darling, please. You are so beautiful stop teasing me now.

Devotion is reading between the lines of his words and melding them into a gray mush and knowing that He wants me to continue making Him wait. Devotion is being willing to do this until the stars burn out and devotion is eight inches rubbing up against the comforter begging for release but I am not allowed and devotion is utter restraint. Devotion is the heat wave turning lakebed into saltbed. I am kissing Him until His length goes into His belly and He is now rolling around a bit in bed, rocking back and forth, staring at me with an expression of agony in silica. Please. Darling please. I am so close darling, you're not pushing enough. Let me finish. His legs curl around my neck harder and He contorts so as to push me into Him and soon I am suffocating on His precum and His scent, and kissing until my head feels numb. The hours are passing. Ticking along with the clock. He is seabound on tense waves floating back and forth waiting for me to lick Him but all I do is touch my goat lips against His base and suck up fluids. Devotion is half-suffocation that makes you forget yourself. Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Two parts falling in halves down the bedside in streaks of blood. Darling I'll choke you. You're already choking me. Harder. Harder. Please make me cum already. The wool of His thighs starts to crowd my vision and He squeezes and He chokes me with His legs more, more, more, my muzzle is shut tight by the pressure, my cheeks are compressed, all I can breathe is His air, His breath, His rising and falling belly. Kiss me. More. More. Yes, finally—finally I am getting close, please.

I love you, darling.

Sorry. That was an accident.

It's okay.

I'll push harder now. I promise.

Devotion is something special to me. Devotion is acknowledgement that one's self doesn't matter holistically and that other things deserve a part of yourself. A little section of your soul excised out and used in perpetuity for another purpose and that purpose is theological in nature, it is Divine. It doesn't matter how you phrase it. Devotion is a God in front of me and He has a part of me and always will, and devotion is dedication, and devotion is worship via sacrifice. It's all sacrifice all the time. In the tattered pages of the books of His library a great number of ways to commit sacrifice are written down in steady script.

Although in spite of His godhood by necessity I am fascinated by the way His head sinks and He appears dizzy and His vision gets all full of spin. He is a deity but an intensely material one. He savors the physical world and the physical sensations of the world at a higher degree than I can and so the devotion is in search of a higher purpose anyway. I'm sorry for taking my time but I'm so lost in thought about you. Oh, I'm aware. Darling I would very much like to cum right now, because I am as close as I can possibly be and I want you to just please—you are so beautiful and adorable and I want to cum on your face, please. I'm supposed to be studying your ley lines some more. Yes, well, you say that, but maybe you've done enough work on me for now. I think that's enough edging for the morning. My brain is on fire. Yes, I can feel it pretty clearly! Darling you've done marvelously. Let me give you some release. And then if you'd do me the favor of giving me the same. Of course. Anything. Oh, sweetheart, you need this, you're babbling out loud. Am I? God I just want to grind like this. Head like sand. As much as I'd like that we're going to be here a while if that's the way we go. Also your pantyhose are getting in the way of your base a bit, aren't they? A little but I like the feeling. Naturally. Am I disappointing you if we just finish here? Darling

you did all I asked

and more.

So I kiss Him and fall on Him and grind and squeal and moan and all of me is just melting into Him and trying to devote, devote, devote, trying to worship Him, but I am so lost in the physical sensations that, as He insists, I eventually am too shaky and needy to proceed, and He is plenty happy to begin studying me instead. I am not as close to climax as He was so it does not quite bring me to finish just from him floating above me to caress my thighs and my taint and my chest—God, His hands on my chest—taking measurements the same way, but measurements of the soul, measurements unspoken and unknown with no unit. Fingers in my fur. Pressing against my ribs. One hand has thrown aside my skirt and is digging into my pantyhose to jerk me off—it is probably His hand—all precum and nylon and fur and heat like marbles rolling around in a piston shaft and He smiles from ear to ear and He kisses me again from above and my toes and fingers curl and He delivers me the divine. Orgasm feels like an earthquake. Feels hot and explosive like a house being torn apart at the seams. Devotion is not letting up the kiss and devotion is giving Him the satisfaction of feeling every yelp through His embrace with me, and I drool into His tongue, and He sets against me, and He is throbbing against me, and devotion is allowing Him to float up by my face while I swirl around in a typhoon or perhaps a hurricane swell, all cum-stained in my own mess. Darling, kiss me here. Kiss me right here, now. The tip of His penis fits into the small of my muzzle before I realize it and I kiss and suck and tongue Him until He melts and shoots seed against the back of my throat, and I pull him out, dripping with saliva and precum, until He can splatter against my face and mottle my fur. Fuck. Hah. Darling that's good. So good. You look beautiful. He's still dripping cum after fifteen seconds and I massage Him with my tongue to get the last bits out and I can see His belly rising and falling in upside-down cellophane with the motion of His breath.

I melt on top of Him eventually and whimper out in joy and we hold one another like hands of clouds picking up dead animals from the bush, until my breath gives out and comes back, and I fall sober, and I fall limp, and devotion is a star, and devotion is a star, and devotion is a star.



I don't know what's been on my mind this whole time. Him, mostly.

All the shapes have lost their meaning.

He has a soft cloth—from somewhere, He always has something soft like this—which He uses to wipe all His cum off my forehead fur and He cuddles me and He is all the physical sensations in one great bottle of spirits; He lets me kiss Him some more and meet Him in an embrace but soon I insist that we get on with the rest of the day. Yes, of course. This was splendid and I'm glad you brought me aside for it. I can tell he's in the foyer and maybe a little antsy so I'd like to give him some affection if you'd like to come along? Maybe but I have been swirling with ideas. I'd like to go paint. Of course, darling. I'll come with for a little while. I shouldn't be resistant to see him. No, but it's alright if you are. I'm sorry for that slip-up during things. Hm? Nothing. I had an errant thought that broke a boundary. Right, I remember. No worries. You're always sweet about these things. Right, then. Just a minute. You managed to exhaust me with all your teasing, darling, so I need to rest. If not my body then my temperament. Hah.

I hold His hand and lay alongside Him and He does not tell me that He loves me.



My relationship with Him—Tabi is His name, by the way, I don't remember if I mentioned that—my relationship with Him is made out of walls and boundaries and maps and directions. My relationship with Him is not transactional but adversarial instead. Mind you, the definition of the word "adversarial" is not the same as how it feels when written down. I am not His adversary but nonetheless I am no longer really in a sort of romance and instead in a sort of quiet trial, back and forth. Trust is the only worthwhile substance and it's not a commodity to be sold. We share a world of ideas and honesty is our fabric and walls are our binds. My relationship with Him is about the do nots.

We do not use the word "love" for one another anymore. For my part I have done a very good job of this but as you could see He is not perfect and I'm trying to be more insistent about this rule, because of how much it can hurt when disobeyed. At some point I decided that close to love wasn't close enough and so I strayed away with it entirely and now our relationship is not about being in love. Or at least that is the idea. That is the letter of the law. Those are the words we etched into being. We also wrote that He is not to lie to me either—He is not to do the thing that He does, which you have noticed plenty, where he excises information selectively or tells half-truths. He is not to undershare and, in mirror fashion, I am not to block out information that hurts me just because. This was my own rule for myself. In addition He is not to follow me everywhere and He is not to feel the sensation of yearning when I leave the house without Him. And finally I am not to distrust that He is, now, telling me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help Himself. The rules are important, at least, to facilitating the phenomenon of change. When you reform a relationship of any sort after some time away, the whole landscape has to change or the same things will happen. By many accounts I have been terrible at avoiding past mistakes but I suppose not for lack of trying. This thing is different between me and Him. Different than before I first left at the very least.

Then again if I were urged to give an opinion I would tell you that it is not, in fact, very fulfilling.

What does that word mean anyhow?

Happiness is about contentment and a feeling of security and mostly nowadays I just feel free but I do not feel like I am secure. I had that once but I don't anymore. At night per my request I am delivered to the Room above His house and something dire happens that I know all about. Devotion is a commitment to a violence often ephemeral but often physical. Devotion is being cut down in a forest to build a house.



His house is intricate and at times overwhelming and, although in past days I have thought of it as exceedingly Euclidean, quite difficult to fully map out. I have done so but I have rarely told you all the parts in list form because I have been overwhelmingly caught up in things but now I have a spare moment traveling to the foyer with Him, so I will mention what His house is, what it is made of.

There is an arboretum to the south through a hidden door, and more gardens and even a greenhouse that way, extending outdoors further into the woods around the house. There are two playing rooms and a theater buried in the west wing, and a great study free from books that resides between the theater and a room dedicated to a microfiche. There is a second library for books He has not yet fully transcribed or studied; the foyer has walls of books that have been understood but more keep showing up in the Room below His house so more must be done with them. There is a hidden but beautiful loft raised to the second story which resides on the north end of His house, with enormous windows outlooking upon the sparkling forest still inundated in a heat wave. This loft has two sofas too pillowy and soft to resemble anything but a dream, and yet there's a faint chill in the air that makes you want to bundle up. On the eastern end is the entrance and exit and also behind a mahogany divider one can find a tremendous, cavernous stairway spiraling down—you can access this from the basement too if you'd really like—which leads into a buried plaza wherein He displays many pieces of architecture and discarded art all placed on pedestals and studied and framed and photographed. It is very difficult to find the places in His house that He does not show you to, but it still gives me comfort to know the etchings along the walls, the indicators of place. Along the darkened ceiling one can start to use the bramble of polished oak as a form of compass, always pointing westward. You can take a very long walk and get lost but never really learn where you went either. Funnily enough His house has many rooms that seem forgotten, like the Room itself below His house, but I don't think they're forgotten at all. I retrieved a great big sun hat from a costume closet between two columns in a winding northwestern alley-hall and when I showed Him he was uproar in joy because He figured that nobody else would find it and He thought I looked incredible in such a thing. Femme, His word, and adorable, and in my element, and that sort of wonder and splendor is why I am in love with my existence now more than I ever was in love with Him. He cut some holes in the sun hat for my horns and it fits snug and when I walk and study the world I wear it proudly. It didn't get forgotten but it went unused. I think that's a nicer fate. It was not alone in that closet but maybe it felt lonely sometimes.



But the route from any of the unmarked bedrooms to the central foyer is so easy to learn and often the only thing my mental memory can easily process; a right and then a left and we emerge into the home of all that is warm and all that is fascinating. He is always a reader and always a collector and this room holds so many books—how many is not important because the number is a kind of magic. "There are more books here than last time," I sign, but I am not sure I meant to.

"Is that just hitting you now?"

"Well, it always surprises me," I sign. "It feels like the room's getting taller."

"I don't know myself that it's not. You think of the house as very Euclidean but you know it can't be all that."

"Maybe. The measurements don't change."

"Surely measurements aren't the whole world." He gives me a long, coy look.

"Aren't they?"

His ear perks up and He turns away a moment, then back. "Hold that thought, darling. He wants us to come over."

I'm coming, I'm coming. "Maybe not for too long," I sign. "I'm already antsy. Hot rocks in my gut like I've got to do something, you know."

"You call that sensation devotion but it sounds like anxiety."

"It can be both."

The fireplace is lit. Two hickory logs burn slow and they're surrounded by a living well of embers and, although most of the heat is lost to waste and exhaust through the chimney, I can still feel a radiating warmth from over here with Him. He pauses a moment and is telling me so much with just a look. "He sounds... not great. Might appreciate a hug."

"Obviously."

"But you don't have to stay long. He gets you better than me."

Better than even I do. So we head over to the fireplace.

The hundredth-and-first tree is in a two-seat lounge chair curled up wearing a black robe and red stockings and he looks like he's going through one of those things—you have seen them plenty and they are ugly but they're uglier on the outside because it looks like he's been hurt very badly. I'm sorry and I don't want to patronize him and I'm trying to keep all my thoughts to myself but it reminds me of the phrase do we sleep for multiple nights? and he looks uncomfortable even though His house is made of comfort, and it is upsetting, and a part of me harbors a great deal of frustration for the hundredth-and-first tree in spite of everything wonderful he represents. We head over to the fireplace and Him and him exchange something verbally and He sits next to him, presence overwhelming, and eventually he stands up, he matches my height, and there isn't much communication necessary, we just embrace. Shared.

We do not talk to one another very much.

The hundredth-and-first tree still obviously knows how to sign and he's good at it and it's nice to communicate with somebody else who's actually fluent—well as close as I was last year—but it's uncommon that we talk at all. He's in my embrace and his fur is unkempt and he's hugging me so tight, his breath is an intense hoarse rush. Something went terribly wrong with his brain, it must have. And he pulls away briefly and he signs, "I'm having a bad morning. Not your fault or His fault. Just panicking and sick and crying."

"I'm sorry," I sign, on instinct. My hands are close against his. "Anything I can do? I was going to make you lunch after I went painting."

He just shakes his head. "No, I can't eat. Maybe I'll be able to eat later. You're very sweet. He's going to do his best, I don't want to stop you from doing your thing."

And some part of me seeps into guilt again. Always guilt with him. Envy and guilt mixed into one box. "You mind if I stay a bit?"

"Obviously not." He gives me this mixed, wobbly grin through tears. "We'll be talking a bit, is that okay?"

A beat. "I think so."

He means out loud.

He means the world outside mine.



In as straightforward a tone as I can manage: him and I exist in opposite spaces and take opposite roles. In the Room above His house I was born and he died. And He woke the hundredth-and-first tree back up. Right out of limbless eyeless death and woke him up and gave him life again and all this obfuscation and fog and blind love eventually resulted in some things happening to him, including the removal of his Deafness, a chunk of his identity just torn out of him. I have been him so I know that he does not like speaking out loud but now he does, all the time. And he does not keep his fur as well as I do. And he does not have sex with Him like I do, or almost ever. He is intensely physical but he has started to lose libido and started to get a fondness for touch, aimless and pointless touch just for its own sake. Whereas I study His body, the hundredth-and-first tree will just touch Him and feel Him and not understand Him at all.

More than anything he didn't start painting like I did. He didn't find a hobby and he didn't even start reading the horrible books that fill the walls and he doesn't cook anymore. He keeps backsliding, back, back, back. I need a name for him. I need something derogatory. Why do I need that?

Heated and hating and pointless frustration with somebody I won't get through to.

Not today and not ever. Feels that way now anyhow. I need to paint. Get some wrath out of my bones.



And where has he ended up? Staring into the fireplace and talking slowly with Him and only speaking sometimes but when he does speak it lasts a long time, and he curls up further, and tears stain his fur. I am frowning but I have no input because what would I say? And He is saying all the sweet things, I'm sure. All the things that make you feel better. They do make you feel better, if you'd just listen. He really does mean well. Or He means sort-of well. He will take care of you if you let Him. But that isn't what's happening. Of course not. The hundredth-and-first tree stares directly at Him and is experiencing a hellish sensation of some kind and has no respite from this moment. Then they go back and forth and back like a very weighty seesaw. Picture the scene easily: He is upright but the hundredth-and-first tree is recoiled into the chair as far as he can and he keeps asking plodding questions and crying and, from far up above in the heavens, He is recoiling but out of a feeling that He has damaged something because everything in His house is His responsibility to the most comical of faults, but of course it is His words that make this situation dire. Back and forth again. Are they yelling? Tastes lighter. An argument with hushed voices and raised tones. He's loosening his body language out of desperation hoping He will let up and of course He does—are they reaching an equilibrium? Then the hundredth-and-first tree opens his jaw and lets out something weighty and melodramatic, of course, and why the fuck am I still here standing here pointless doing nothing? I'm his anchor and I'm not half enthused to watch a miserable conversation like this. Get away. Paint. Paint. Paint. Get away.

He snatches my arm and then breaks his hold on me to sign.

"Can I come along, please? To the loft? I need a second."

"Yes," I sign, fast and stupid. "Of course. Are you and Him—"

No, no, shaking his head fast. "Him and I are just confused. I'm doing better. I just—would like to paint with you for a little bit."

I look over to my left and He is giving me a weak, exhausted smile. When we are deeply intimate and ludicrously close—within inches—I can hear His thoughts touch mine with soft static, but all I have is His smile. I can guess but I can never know. I can ask but I'll never feel.

Then He turns to face the hundredth-and-first tree and signs to him. "Love you," He tells him. "See you soon."

"Love you too."

Or something close.