The Great Game 🎲 Kollarum
Venus & the Fly
Meant to Be
Horsefly was probably the horniest creature in the entire Kraslika. But when he saw Venoozia his stinger stopped its frenzied twitching. His whole body was calmed, from his five buzzing antennae to the hundreds of tiny suction cups that lined his posterior tarsal pads, which were constantly on alert, primed to eject from their centres exact degrees of watery glue onto the surface of whatever they touched.
Up until this moment Horsefly felt that he’d been living his life in a blender, being diced and sliced by every strange desire he couldn’t control. Yet everything changed the moment he set his eyes on Venoozia. Now he felt that he was being poured into a long, flat martini crystal. He felt that he was lingering in alcoholic splendor while the flavours of the moment waltzed and tangoed in the languor of a long afternoon.
Venoozia on the other hand saw Horsefly and immediately woke up from her usual torpor. Sitting at her reception desk on the 17th floor of the Kohlkutter Security Agency (in downtown Kollarum), she spent hours dreaming of things that floated and hummed, tranquil in the quiescent waters of her subconscious.
She stared all day at the elevators hoping someone interesting would step onto their floor. There was a sign between the elevators, with a quote from an obscure poem about the beauty and danger of women:
The Wanton, though she knows its dangers / must needs smear Kohl about her eyes / and wake the interest of Strangers / with long-drawn, hoarse, erotic Sighs. — Edward Gorey
In one of her more inchoate fantasies, Venoozia imagined herself back in the Pink Sea universe, swimming in the thick turquoise and emerald swamp that formed the downtown core of the city of Pinksy. Her lithe, serpentine body swam like a water eel in the turgid liquid when all of a sudden a large bright bird darted in the air above her. She couldn’t see if it darted up or down because at that precise moment she saw Horsefly standing in front of her. He went from the elevators to the reception desk in a sixteenth of a second. This was slow-motion for a Dalitian, yet it was considered the polite thing to do when visiting other galaxies. Otherwise, it looked like the Dalitian had appeared out of nowhere, which was a scary thing to see at any time.
Horsefly was eight feet tall (not counting his stinger or wings) and his body was rock-hard in places and like pliant leather in others. His thorax and abdomen were jet black, offset by wavy patterns in navy and silver. His head was bright green, with a sheen of gold. He reminded Venoozia of the dangerous-looking Fallarian insect she’d seen on a package of fire sticks. Yet this magnificent beast had twelve wings of various sizes. His two large wings allowed him to soar over large distances at speeds of over 200 kilometres an hour, while the ten small ones allowed him to manoeuvre with agility, darting in confined spaces in a split second. The speed of his movements in confined spaces was like that of a hummingbird, yet his body was large and powerful, graceful and equine, sumptuous and irresistible.
Horsefly flitted up to her desk and hovered there for several seconds before telling her that he had been invited to this office for an interview. Venoozia had difficulty responding because she was mesmerized by his stinger. It was muscular, ribbed, erect, a full sixteen inches long. The satin folds of her 18-foot long, slender body instinctively wanted to form a coil, with her six tongues lining the tunnel she would make to devour his agile prothorax, his tapered thorax, and finally his glistening green wings. At the end of the tunnel, just where the tip of his stinger would come into contact with her labial cranium, were the lips of her brain.
Venoozia stared at Horsefly for about twenty seconds. She didn’t know what to say. How could she blurt out that she knew they were meant to be?
🎲
Next: 🎲 A Tale of Two Worlds
Table of Contents - Chart of Contents - Characters - Glossary - Maps - Story Lines