The Props Master Prequel: Behind the Ivory Veil

He looks out at his dream world through watery eyes. An empty world—light, but with no light source—warm, but without heat. Everything around him is bare and barren. In this plain flatness, he cannot determine his own size. Is he large or small? There is nothing to compare himself to. The ground is hard and flat as far as he can see. The sky is invisible above him.

In despair, he sits and sings softly to himself, rocking back and forth with arms clenched around his knees.

A figure appears. It emerges from a horizon he had not seen before. He flattens himself on his stomach and crawls backward, away from the figure, yet it continues to grow larger—approaching. Perhaps it is a giant. He dares not hope for another human being. He is naked. Yet, he is alone and his aloneness reverberates in him and emerges as song. Even naked, he cannot stay forever alone. He slows and allows the figure to approach, circling him as he stays flat against the ground.

The woman—it is a woman!—is naked as well. With a wave of her hand, she beckons him to stand. Bile clogs his throat as he rises, and with him his shame. She is tall and graceful—taller than any woman he has known. Her body, proportioned with her height, is a tower of strength and beauty. He cannot make it past his knees as this goddess nearly passes by him, head held high. She turns over her shoulder to speak to him.

“Why do you kneel?” Her words are abrupt, shaking him. He would like to say he was kneeling to royalty and could not rise in her presence, for surely this is as close to royalty as he has ever come. But truth flushes like heat within him.

“I am naked.”

“Does not the air clothe you?”

“The air?”

“You have much to learn. Come with me.” She continues her stately walk and he hesitates only a moment before he follows. When fully erect in body and spirit, he sees that he is as tall as she. Yet following her shapely back keeps him hesitant in his stride. After a few steps, she turns to him.

“I did not ask to be followed.”

“You said to come with you,” he chokes. He is like a child and she is all of womanhood before him.

“With me is not behind me. With me is beside me. You have much to learn.”

He quickly catches up and walks beside her, not daring to look left or right or to speak. Her path is straight, but there is no sign of any change in their surroundings. They walk on through nothing, yet he is somehow comforted that he is not alone.

He glances at her and sees her from every angle, causing him to stumble and then regain his footing. Her auburn hair falls to her shoulders. Her eyes are deep set and sparkle so that he cannot grasp their color—sometimes blue, sometimes green, sometimes brown. They catch and break down whatever light strikes them. Her jaw is firm but relaxed. She glides in her walk like a cat, all her muscles working together so that none seem to work at all. In spite of the tremendous power in her limbs, she has the ability to expend no energy in using them. She breathes deeply, regularly, slowly. He watches her bosom rise and fall, taut nipples proudly displayed at the crescent of full breasts. He sees that her pulse is slower than his own and rebukes his rising passion. Unable to remain silent any longer, he speaks.

“Where are we going?”

“Going? We are not going anywhere.”

“But we are walking.”

“Yet we are still here.”

“Who are you?”

“I am who I appear to be.”

“What are you?”

“I will be what I will be.”

Her answers to his many questions only confuse him more. He phrases his next question carefully, afraid he is merely playing a game in his mind.

“If you can offer more information than simply the word ‘here,’ I would like to know where I am.” He adds, “Please,” as an afterthought. She stops to turn to him.

“Where in all the cosmos would you like most to be?”

“Home.”

“Then why did you leave?”

“I’m dreaming. This isn’t real.”

“What is real?” She walks again and he hastens to catch up with her. Distance seems only to be relative to their positions and he does not like to be separated from her. “You are still confused. You wish to protect your loved ones, but do not know how. Where in all the cosmos, in all your dreams, are the answers you seek?”

He puzzles over the question as they walk. She directed him to his own dreams. Where would he find all the answers? He envisions the City of the Gods, but it was at night in that City that he found his answer. The palace toward which he endlessly climbed.

“The palace of light. All questions are answered there. Perfect safety and peace are there. I go to the palace of light.”

“Be in the palace of light. It is your longing. It is here.”

He trips over the step in front of him—a step so perfectly the same noncolor as the long plain that he had not seen it. A few feet farther, he finds another step. His companion continues to glide next to him. He mimics her walk and breathes in time with her breaths. They rise, step after step, though seeming to get no higher.

“These are the steps of my dreams? The Northern Steps? Where are we?”

“We are still here, where you have always been.”

“I’ve had this dream before.”

“This dream?”

“You were never there before. I don’t know you.”

He looks ahead as the steps draw closer together, steeper. A brilliant flaring of light at the top sets the sky aflame, blinding him. He shuts his eyes and hides his head in his hands. “No!” he moans. The flame dies. There are no more steps.

She reaches for him and strokes his hair. He is more acutely aware of the nature of the touch and his own undeniable response to it. She draws his head to her breasts and he suckles greedily as she moans her pleasure. They are soft and warm and solid beneath his lips and hands—unlike any dream he has had before. He loses himself utterly in the unbridled sensuality of her caress. He feels her breath on his cheek, the close warm scent of her arousal. His passion explodes past his sensibilities and he find her lips pressed against his, muffling his roar of pleasure.