Red Thread of Fate Ch. 01

Its creator had intended to provoke thoughtful reflection with its grotesque iron base, crudely cast and melting down to a point stabbed into the loamy earth, or so she assumed. Every time she passed the work of modern 'art', however, Isabel Aphelion felt nothing but mild disgust and discomfort, pondering who in their right mind up in Urban Planning had approved its placement in DeNay Park. Today, on this particular balmy, clear May night, she stopped and actually pondered the question.

"What's the point? You don't tell a story," she muttered in a gentle alto, lightly accented English more familiar at this point than the Greek she'd spoken as a child. The heels of her short-rise, red leather boots thudded quietly on the concrete as she circled the...sculpture? Statuette? An industrial disaster recast as some post-globalization expression of agony? Or...she paused, considering.

From its iron base, it transitioned into a largely flat, mirror-polished wafer of bronze through which holes had been punctured, like the toothmarks of some vicious predatory mammal. A trio of chains, one painted a greasy white, another pallid blue, the third a sort of greenish-brown that reminded her of stomach contents, were bracketed from top to base.

Isabel could see herself reflected in the bronze: hooded, dark brown eyes staring back with captious disdain, thin black leather jacket hanging open off her slender shoulders. Like a camera, her mind caught the image and analyzed it, parsing it apart; could she see a representation of her own existence, expressed herein? What if that was what the 'art' had in mind, to bring her perspective on her own life, independent of whatever mania overtook its creator when they cast it?

What if...the iron base represented the bleak dark she'd risen from only months earlier? What if the bronze facing, bitten through and punctured, was the life she'd desperately clawed in the shadow of industries she'd despised, living a life where she could only see herself reflected back and drained of color? Like a pretty dragonfly preserved in amber, trapped amidst wealth and splendor but never to partake of it...well, that was far too generous, she was more like a mosquito; skinny and undesirable in her eyes, as she'd always been...and yet.

The top of the...object reminded her of an alien tree, and it was kind of wondrous. Filaments of silvery, brightly polished metal strung with colorful streamers reflected the light shining from tall poles, interlaced with each other in the manner of branches that sought to embrace one another rather than spread forth to devour the sun's light.

It was a silly thought, but one that made her reconsider the grotesquerie, and even appreciate that moment of reflection, for her life had become somewhat otherworldly and brightly colored as of late. The age old specter of loneliness and isolation, unbanishable even in the face of a series of unsuccessful relationships with men and women, had fallen silent.

She gazed at herself for a moment longer, considering how her body still tingled from Ascher's attentions; the love-bites upon her neck...the satisfied ache in her loins...the warmth of his seed inside her, slowly 'defiling her panties' as she'd put it. She seriously considered taking a detour to Yusuf's place as her impulsive mind carelessly suggested 'MORE', but she'd been a terribly hedonistic thing over the past couple of days, and a night in her own place was necessary for once.

When Isabel reached her 27th story apartment overlooking Tokamok Avenue and the Grandview Bridge, she turned on the lights for the first time in a couple of days; a great deal of effort had been sunk into making this place livable, and every object - boots and purse, keys and pepperspray - had its place in cheerful little rainbow baskets sitting in cubbies near the door. Plush silver carpeting opened into her small kitchenette and living room.

Her ex-girlfriend had taken the cat, so this place was quiet as any apartment could be in The City; the hum and thrum of its endlessly churning, chaotic life outside her window and through the concrete and rebar was an endless drone like locusts in the Mytilene Summer. This place served a monastic function, where she could simply...be her lonely self unjudged. Isabel's mind was still welded to that unpleasant metal sculpture, considering it again as she kicked her boots off and hung her jacket from a peg that held a number of colorful scarfs. What did it represent in her life?

Her bathroom was a simple affair of pure blue tile, and a Christmas bonus had gone toward the actual copper bathtub she'd installed herself. As Isabel shed her clothing, shower water rapidly steaming the mirror, she regarded her reflection, slowly disappearing and becoming indistinct amidst the hot vapor.

Isabel Aphelion had never considered herself any great beauty. It was her opinion that her jawline was too severe for a woman, her eyes too tired, her collarbones overly defined for lack of body fat. Vanta black eyes were heavy with dark circles - less than before, admittedly. Stoic and serious, her lips nonetheless were a natural rosey shade, holding back the enigmatic hint of a smile. Dark brown, curly hair tumbled in unruly ringlets when it was humid, tied by a green silk ribbon.

She'd been self-conscious of her body, although...after Mizrah's and Ascher's praise and attention, she was starting to view herself differently. 'Skinny' shoulders were now 'delicate'; disappointingly small breasts were 'pert' and 'firm', 'delightful' as Ascher had put it. The flare of her hips was now 'ripe', and she couldn't help but feel a rose-tinge of self-admiration as she gazed upon the short thatch of groomed black hair covering her mons, the juicy, plump impression of her labia between her slender thighs.

Strings of her lovers' cum stuck between her vulva, her clitoris and her legs. There was no denying it - stepping under the water, sure she was alone, she sighed into the hot stream. "I love them. I love their cocks, I admit it." Them.

Them. There was that word...not 'I love him / his cock'. That was just it; what she'd intended to just be some impulsive fun and release after the disaster of the Great Breakup almost a year ago had run away with her. If the sex was good by itself that would have been nice enough, but...they were so sweet to her, and she'd had so much fun with them both. Reaching for her mango-scented body wash, she dipped her fingers -

-FLASH-

- into a handful of oats, holding them in a wary palm as the enormous equine head swung toward her with fascination, marble-black eyes reflecting Isabel's unsettled visage. Ascher's hand found her fingers - almost a half-foot taller than her but she noted they're only slightly larger than hers - and he guided them toward the mare's lips. "It's okay Isabel, she's not going to bite you, are you Tornado?" They were only able to do this because he helped build the stables, so the owners adored him and gave him free reign of the property. The horse's lips tickled against her palm, and he brought her other up to touch the side of the mare's long face. It was Isabel's first time, seeing or touching one of these beautiful creatures, and she felt skittish until she looked back to his kind, comforting smile...

-FLASH-

Isabel was slick with tropical-fruit scented suds, recalling in detail that first, perfect outing with Ascher Ryazansky. He was in many ways a paradox - one of the more imposing men she'd dated (if one could call it that) but possessed of the nurturing kind manner that attracted the adoration of children and small animals; humble in his own way, but also one of the most well-read and well-traveled individuals she'd encountered...and to be frank, she liked the powerful muscles he'd built on his shoulders, arms and torso; his back was a fascinating study in crags and sinew.

Sweat and grit, the intercourse she enjoyed today rinsed from her, swirling down the drain as she roped her curly hair together over one shoulder, watching as the traces of their lovemaking disappeared as well. The tingling heat of desire still radiated through her loins, and she couldn't help but close her eyes, brushing her fingers across her lower belly. Isabel was better with numbers - especially probability theory - than people, having double majored in finance and mathematics; numbers were trustworthy, they couldn't lie. She'd stayed up a few nights, calculating the chance that she'd have met even one of them; Isabel murmured -

-FLASH-

- admiration and enjoyment as he entered her from behind, and she splayed her knees wide and lewd and needful on the bed. One hand reached forward to hold on to the headboard, the other stroking her agile fingers along his wonderful, thick curve as she guided him within her. "You're so beautiful," he'd whispered, his touch gliding up her ribcage and the side of her breast to her shoulder. She'd groaned and sighed her enjoyment, toes curling as he stretched her tight, peach-pink sex and finally bottomed out within her. "Wow...wow you feel, really, really good inside of me," she remarked with characteristic blunt observation. "Your cock, it's got, haaanh oh that's really nice, it's got this great...curve...easy for you to hit ohmygod right there, that's it, deeper, ohh, anh! ANH!"

-FLASH-

"- extremely low likelihood of this ever happening at all, and what do you do Isabel?" she rambled quietly to herself, staring down her soaked visage in the little mirror hanging beneath her shower spigot, "you don't just choose one of the two amazing guys in your life, you decide you just have to have both. Self-sabotage much?"

She comforted herself with the weak truth that nothing was official, they'd never stated they were monogamous (in fact she knew both still had other people they saw and didn't even know if it was on the side, or if she was actually the side-piece).

Isabel wasn't even sure if that was what she wanted; her love-life had been a series of monogamous relationships but after her most recent brush with the abyss, she'd been carefully casting aside parts of her old self, like discarding an old outfit, bit by bit. Lathering her long legs, she thought about the other man she'd spent part of tonight with, running the razor up -

-FLASH-

- the fretboard, the guitar howling in his hands in tune with the way he roared into the mic. His voice filled the whole venue of the concert hall like no other singer, shredding the instrument in his hands with what she easily recognized as a rare kind of skill. The audience -adored- him and his bassist, his drummer, but when he stomped a boot on the amplifier and sent the crowd into paroxysms, he'd only had coal-dark, sultry eyes for her. When the song ended and they screamed and cheered for an encore, he beckoned her to join him up there on the stage, and caught in the typhoon wind of her own impulse and his grandiose personality, she floated to him...and melted in his arms when he kisses her in front of them all -

-FLASH-

Such public displays were also, hitherto, simply not her style and the old Isabel might have taken issue, but the newer, less restrained, primal Isabel heard the unspoken message; the rocker could have chosen whom he wanted from that crowd but he was claiming her for himself; after all, other guys had talked to her that night and one had even been so bold as to give Isabel his number. It was a display of her claim over him as well, that she were better than any girl in that audience so it was foolhardy for them to even try.

The after-party had been an absolute riot down in the Foundries, meeting his legion eccentric friends with their extreme personalities; his personality was bright as a lamp on a storm-wracked night, drawing people in like asteroids hooked by a neutron star.

She drank a bit more than usual and let loose, dancing into the night with him and gleaming with sweat running down her willowy body; she'd grown slick with his, his hips tracing a heated path against her own, fingers running through his rough stubble as his lips smiled against hers -

-FLASH-

- biting down and tugging on her nipple as she crossed her ankles over the small of his back, coaxing him to enter her flushed, swollen sex ever deeper; she bent against him like a sunflower in a storm. "Fuck me baby, oh ffffuck I saw the way you were making every...girl...and guy, who hit on me, so jealous, you jerk!" It'd been somewhat toxic, but also kind of hot in that it led up to this point; he was long, and his girth was opening her wonderfully but what -really- made her thighs tremble were his piercings. Isabel had never had sex with a guy so adorned - she'd never even dreamed it, and when he entered her deeply it was to touch a place she didn't even know existed, from which pink, throbbing heat arose. "It's just cuz I really like you, Isabel," he'd answered simply and sweetly, and oh how she came -

-FLASH-

-back to this reality when she opened a cereal bag with too much force and send cornflakes skittering over her kitchen floor instead of into her bowl of yogurt and fruit. Her brain was stuck on the both of them, and Isabel simply couldn't decide which of them she wanted to choose, or if she even wanted to choose, or if she could. This was (one of) the curse(s) of her existence, that in her impulsive desire to be impulsive, she'd found herself in a dilemma and once again couldn't make a choice...because the simple truth was that what she really wanted?

It just wasn't possible. Not for someone like her. Her fantasies weren't meant to come true, and even when life conspired to drift her close to her desires, it just as quickly yanked the rug out from beneath her feet, sending her tumbling back into the ever-ready, merciless embrace of banality and sorrow. "Roughly eighty-seven thousand six hundred hours, or five million two hundred and fifty six thousand minutes..." she rambled off equivalences for the ten years she'd spent out from under her mother's crumbling roof as she swept up food detritus.

She was just still too hot and bothered, and even though she'd had sex twice today with the two men she liked so very much (and four times the day before), Isabel was still in the grips of this infernal heat. It was likely because her greedy, insatiable id sensed that it was ever closer to satisfying fantasies best relegated to stuff she read or watched that nobody needed to know about...material her mind drifted toward. There was no way she'd be sleeping without getting off again, so after cleaning up and wolfing down enough food to keep herself from starving, she settled into her bed.

Isabel had been touching herself more often than usual, especially now that she was embroiled with her lovers - again plural, not something associated with good, orderly Orthodox girls...not that she was one anymore. Clicking the light off, music softly playing on the little speaker at her bedside, she centered herself by closing her eyes and running her fingers over her trim, flat lower belly underneath the sheer, black tank top to sleep. In the theater of her mind, she took a front-seat view before the screen of her imagination and imagined strong yet gentle hands stroking her...

...one of them, pale palms rough from handling tools, the other dark, long fingers skilled with a guitar. In the realm of her fantasies she imagined them on either side of her in this very bed, Ascher's tall, powerful frame on her left cradling her, Mizrah's tanned, warrior-hard body on her right, warming her for them both. In her illicit, forbidden sexual fantasy, she leaned back and gazed upward into Ascher's beautiful eyes as he teases her open patiently, melting at the way they smile back at her.

In her fantasies, as in real life, he's classically handsome in the way of her people, in fact, with his dark, bronze-and-copper streaked fade and dark facial hair; not a hint of Greek in his ancestry either. His lips are thin and expressive, soft and salmon-pink and kiss her sweetly, and although he has the same long, straight Aegean nose as her old principal, he's fair-skinned. Isabel's fingers trailed from his strong, defined shoulders and her imagination didn't need to fill in the details of how the line of his triceps curved around his arms - a well-built, powerful man, she easily superimposed the real-life imagery of his V-shaped torso over her, between her legs. The silhouette of his curved manhood with its proud crown hung between her thighs - delightful to her eyes and fingers, with his thick shaft and round fullness of his glans; the first circumcised one she'd enjoyed in fact, she guided him against her clit -

- and in real life, drooling a bit of warm, water-based lube over the tip of a curved, dark blue toy, she vibrated herself with a sigh and a quiet moan. Isabel's hand cupped her breast, thumb running in a circle over her nipple before the tapered end of her vibrator slowly entered; she realized she didn't need the lubrication as their semen, still hot and swirled within her, eases the path. Her cheeks flush, it feels amazing, so...

...she sinks back into her fantasy, picturing Ascher's manhood pulling forth from her, dripping with her pleasure; she next imagines herself climbing into Yusuf's lap, devouring him with her senses. Desert dark with bristly, short black hair, his deliciously wicked smile made her think of some king-of-thieves with an aquiline aspect. He's ripped and lean like one of those MMA competitors, and she was unable to keep her hands from the hardness of his abs and the intriguing scars that covered his body - here a burn, there a pockmark from a bullet. The pillar of his manhood - the second circumcised man she'd been with - glinted with his Prince Albert, the clasp kissing her vulva. She dripped upon him as his beads dissolved her higher reasoning -

- and she was already penetrating herself with the dark flesh-colored cock she bought the other day, the one with the studs and texture. It's nowhere near as good as Mizrah fucking her but it builds her, ever so steadily, toward the orgasm she knows she'll need to relax. "Fuck me, ohh god yes, oh fuck me baby..." she whispered, imagining him looming over her with his beautiful, tiger-strong body, pumping that simulacra of her lover's cock in and out of her sex ever faster. She lifted her hips, glancing over at the other toy lying nearby...she reached -

- for him in the sex-soaked depths of her mind, running her tongue from his low-slung testicles up, underneath the base and moving in gentle zig-zag motions along the curved swell. Ascher straddled either side of her shoulders, giving her incredibly intimate access to his manhood as Yusuf's cock gave her that rhythmic deep stroke she loved. His hands held her hips still as they bucked and thrust upward to meet the angle of his adorned manhood, her moans becoming impassioned cries as Ascher's glans popped free from her lips, dripping his potent, rich payload on her tongue as he edged along orgasm -

-"AHH! AMmmphh -" she muffled herself with a pillow, pressing it over her face as her fantasy, the stimulation of her vibrator working its magic between her legs and the dildo against her lips (now splayed against her cheek and the pillow). When the sudden intensity of it all passed in throbbing waves through her pelvis, and she managed to pull the cushion from her flushed face, she dared to let her mind wander. She'd...very briefly discussed some of her sexual fantasies with the both of them, and had offhandedly intoned that she'd dreamt about being with two men - neither Mizrah nor Ascher had objected, though she hadn't told them exactly what she wanted to do with them. That, of course...