Elusive Creature

Stones slipped just beneath the skin, smooth surfaces pressing against dermis, soaking up subcutaneous warmth; opals and moonstones and quartz, agate and topaz and jade all shining in the body’s light, chunky beads filling skin with texture beneath your touch.

Once you asked why she went to so much effort, all those tiny cuts and carefully treated scars, all those beautiful things hidden away for no one to see. She always healed so quickly, but she still felt pain, and it always seemed like one or another of her gems was infected.

In answer she turned off all her lights, pulled the curtain tight over her apartment’s single tiny window, and stood naked before you, limned in sourceless light, a glow seeming to spread from each lump beneath her skin.

You, confused, cast your attention across her body—but she caught it and drew it up, up to the trickles of light streaming down her shoulders, up to the Thing shining down upon her, its gaze confused and broken, its power lured into empty rock instead of fertile mind.

She always did heal quickly, so perhaps that’s why you never saw her wings’ scars.