Page 1 of Touch

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Love’s arrow strikes the man first. It punctures his heart, cracking the outer layer like porcelain, as if a protective covering has shattered. At the impact, he curses and stumbles into a wall. Triumphantly, the arrow slices into that vulnerable organ and then disappears.

The woman is next, the jolt of Love’s weapon shoving her toward the man’s bed. The lovers’ gazes collide. Their mouths slacken, their eyes glaze over, and their hearts shift from admiration to adoration. The female opens her arms, inviting the man in, and he leaps toward her with such fervor they topple fully onto the mattress.

Love stands in the corner and smirks, watching the pair consummate like rabbits. Hands pull on locks of hair. Nails scratch, teeth bite, and moans inundate the room. Their hands fumble as they slam their bodies against each other and tear off layers of clothing.

So avid. So predictable.

While the couple rips through buttons and zippers, Love counts her arrows to make sure the two ejected weapons have reappeared in her quiver, then she leaves the couple to their pleasure. The precarious part is sneaking through the first-floor window without the noise alarming them. It was open before, but the man had closed it earlier to block out the alleged chill. It’s tempting to thrust up the sash without a care and snigger atthe lovers’ bafflement. A window cannot open by itself, they will think.

Love is in the mood to play. Nonetheless, she forces herself to behave for once. After the work it took to manipulate this tedious couple into a bedroom, she’s not about to ruin the moment.

Bracing her hand on the window, Love eases the sash upward, and the hinges squeak. She halts and glances over her shoulder, yet her latest toys are naked and busy, the woman’s legs hooking around the man’s pumping ass, both of them groaning under the sheets. The brunt of their fucking produces a rhythmic thud, the headboard slamming into the facade.

Marvelous. She ducks and slips outside, then closes the window and wiggles her fingers in a mock-farewell to her targets.

Strapping the longbow to her back, Love sucks in a breath. It’s winter. The sky is a gradient of white and gray, with a teasing sliver of blue. Ice covers every frostbitten porch along the residential lane while thickets of snow, potholed with footprints, conceal the sidewalks.

The woodland village of Evershire is shaped like a celestial. The five-pointed star of streets meets in the center, where a gazebo stands. Traveling down one of the lanes, Love impulsively twirls through a mortal, her invisible body slipping through theirs like a gust of air. The poor thing gasps in confusion and drops their packages.

Further along, Love passes familiar faces. Husbands and wives, humans with crushes and grudges, and mortals with amorous hopes. Seducers. Sinners. Saints. Matches she’s created in the past three months since The Fate Court assigned her here.

Multitudes of emotions brim from the townsfolk, imbuing her sensory powers. Like an assortment of flavors on her palate, Love tastes their sadness, delight, bitterness, fear,and desire. She cocks her head, fascinated by how wholly and completely they allfeel. True, this renders them malleable targets, easy for her arrows to manipulate. And indeed, anonymous dominion over the weaker species is gratifying.

Yet it also leaves her restless, occasionally hollow, and rarely satiated. To that end, the effects are rather taxing.

Love grunts, dismissing the offensive sensations before they take hold. Nearby, the bitterness of a quarrel echoes. Outside the library, a couple is bickering like a pair of infants.

“Can I talk?” the man growls.

“Can I finish?” the woman shrieks.

Such a pity. Without Love’s intervention, the fight will escalate. Resentment will build, and things won’t end well, resulting in a flawed match.

Yet even when lovers argue like this, life seems less… vacant. In between moments of discord, there’s still room for mirth, affection, and a bonding touch. That must be pleasant.

Love sneers. Pleasant? It’s all she can do not to berate herself for the asinine thought. Thank the almighty Stars, she hasn’t done something futile like get attached to one of her mortal playthings.

She departs the scene. There’s no point in fixing the dispute. The mismatched humans shall either resolve things temporarily or inevitably end their relationship.

On the village border, her evergreen forest awaits. The woodland is seasonably calm, dormant and at rest. She bounds over a mountain of snow, the hem of her black dress scarcely covering her bare ass.

Under her shoulder blades, two impacted wings flutter, straining to be set free. In some respects, the human myth about Eros is correct, including the existence of these stubborn appendages.

Love stiffens her joints, refusing to let the plumes spring from her back. Instead, she locates the first suitable trunk and scales its height with her hands and feet. Vaulting from branch to branch, she races into the snowy wilderness, outpacing the wind.

Her loyal tree appears. Love vaults, extends her arms overhead, and catches one of its higher branches, lifting herself onto its surface. Keeping a lone arrow on hand, she stashes her bow and quiver inside a gap within the trunk, then reclines across the branch. The bark’s rough texture abrades her spine, her legs hang off the sides, and her feet swing like a pair of bells.

Carefully, she extends one arm vertically and windmills the arrow between her fingers, envisioning the chaos that would ensue if she accidentally struck herself with her own weapon. It takes a mere slip of one’s aim to render the wrong targets lovestruck or an impulsive reflex to make their hearts bleed out.

She evicts the heinous possibility from her mind and focuses elsewhere. Sweeping her fingers over her lips, she imagines what it feels like to kiss and fuck, indulging as the human couple is presently doing in the man’s bedroom. To brush her mouth over a smooth, husky, waiting one. To share a touch of affection. Such an intimate thing.

Involuntary longing pricks her chest. For all that Love can sense human emotions—taste, smell, and hear them—she cannot identify with their tactile experiences. Thus, she wonders what it’s like to embrace, and to be embraced, like that.

Love hisses. Incessant fixations and scandalous pipe dreams. Existing among mortals often does this to her, spiriting away Love’s reason and making her yearn for impossible things. In The Dark Fates, she is ridiculed for this obsession. Envy, Sorrow, and Anger are the harshest regarding the subject, whereas Wonder is the only one who’s gracious toward Love, though the female has her reasons for that.

In any event, deities embrace out of camaraderie, respect, or lust. It’s not natural for a goddess to have urges beyond those.

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