Chapter 3

2076 a.d. – The last day of Autumn

The Festival of Lights

The goddess leaned against her consort's bare chest, his arm around her waist. They stood naked on the balcony of the manor watching the southern crystal sun. In the last several hours, it had dimmed enough to be viewed directly, and was emitting very little heat. In another hour or so, it would go dark; the beginning of winter.

"The transformation from day to night is phenomenal," Jeff told her animatedly. "You can actually see a lot farther around at night than you can when it's all lit up by a sun. There are lights everywhere!"

Béla looked down at the foundation of the new university on the other side of the hedge wall. The construction was going to take four years; one section each year. The foundation for the first section was already complete.

In the last five weeks, construction had been occurring at an exuberant pace. Her bard could get anyone enthused about anything. He and the project foreman had the same purpose as the rest of the construction workers: an education for the children of their community.

The site was quiet, now. The workmen had left to prepare their own homes and farms for the coming winter, harvesting and storing their crops, turning the soil before it froze to prepare it for the next crop, setting up heating elements in their homes and farms that magically drew their energy from beneath the ground. No more construction work would be done on the university until after spring planting.

Jeff had spent the last several hours making love to his goddess in the courtyard behind the manor, savoring the final hours of the warm sun on their bodies, both enjoying the touch and feel of each other. He would never tire of being mind-linked to his goddess while they made love. He could feel the sensuous effects of each touch on her body as she radiated her sensations back through him.

Finally, the crystal sun was so dim that neither of them could tell if they were looking at it or the spots it had left on their retinas. As they continued their vigil, lights began to appear around them. In a few minutes, there were thousands of lights. Béla gasped in wonder, comparing it to a sky full of stars in the deep desert. This was even more beautiful. It was alive! The Festival of Winter Lights was beginning.

A half-hour later, Béla was fuming, ready to bite someone.

"This does require some decorum, Goddess," Bard Geoffrey told her, trying to keep his patience with her resistance to being pampered and prepared.

Several of the servants who had come with the manor were fussing over the goddess' hair and face. Béla was getting ready to just fly out the window; figuratively, in this case. She wouldn't actually abandon her consort and leave him to explain her unexpected absence to several hundred guests. This was her official 'coming-out', after all, and everyone expected to greet her.

"I'm almost five thousand years old and I don't need a 'welcome-me-to-society' party!" Béla growled, coming up with yet another excuse for what was actually a bad case of stage fright.

"From what you've told me, Goddess," Bard Geoffrey replied, keeping his voice controlled and sociable, "you are not quite four years old, Earth time, which is how we measure years, here, also from what you've told me, because of..."

Béla turned and glared, stopping her adoring consort in mid-sentence, then, voicing a deep, long sigh, closed her eyes to let a handmaiden vigorously begin brushing her fresh-washed and dried, silky dark hair.

After a time, the ladies-in-waiting were done with her. Her consort looked at her, radiating pride and admiration. He walked his goddess across the room to the mirrored wall behind the entrance and let her look at the results of the pampering she'd been forced to endure.

Béla stood in front of the mirror. The stately queen who stared back at her had an odd look of surprise on her face. She was dressed in a strapless, clinging, light green, stylishly long gown that didn't quite wrap around her body. It was almost transparent with an incredible network of veins cleverly worked into the fabric. A two-inch gap started under her left arm and went down past her hips, revealing her perfect skin all the way down her left side. It also revealed her complete lack of undergarments.

She twisted back and forth, watching her left leg play peek-a-boo behind the fabric. There was nothing holding the front of the dress to the back on the left side at all. Instead, there was a springy tightness that held the garment in place, clamping it securely around her bodice from her breasts to just below her waist.

'I could fall asleep standing up in this thing and it's so springy it wouldn't even let me slouch, ' she thought to herself.

Her hair was piled on top of her head and pinned with a jeweled crescent which reminded her of a diamond-encrusted crown. She hadn't even known her hair was long enough to do that with it. Then she realized that a lot of what was on her head wasn't hers, but had been pinned on to accentuate that overly brilliant piece of crescent jewelry. The stately queen in the mirror, surprisingly, laughed. Béla heard her own voice making the noise.

There was something wrong with her eyes, so she stepped closer and gazed into the eyes in the mirror. They were large and black, just like they'd always been. There was something wrong about that, but she couldn't begin to guess.

'My eyes have always been black, ' she thought, feeling slightly confused. 'What was I expecting?'

Then she realized what it was. Her eyes were made up to accent the blackness of her pupils. She hadn't seen makeup like that since her days in Ancient Egypt, after she left Sumer. The goddess turned and looked at her consort. He was admiring her beauty and the way she carried herself in that daring gown.

"You don't look at yourself very often in the mirror, do you, Goddess?" Jeff asked her, amused at her reaction to her own reflection.

"There's no way I can sit down in this," Béla told him, ignoring his comment. "I'll slide right out of it sideways. What was the designer thinking?"

She squirmed in her sexy gown to demonstrate her point of view, expecting the garment to part where it wasn't supported. It stayed in place and moved with her, still clinging tightly to her torso.

Then Béla froze! She'd felt the gown move! On its own!

"This thing is alive!" she cried.

As she stood, frozen, terrified of what the tiniest motion might cause, she felt the gown snug itself around her waist, straightening out the wrinkles her earlier motions had created in the fabric. Béla stared at Jeff, terrified, holding her breath.

"It's all right, Goddess," Jeff said, reaching out and holding her shoulders. Trying not to laugh, he gazed into her terrified, tremulous eyes. His goddess was shaking in terror. Her mind was completely shut down, not radiating anything.

"It's called Boa," he told her, making sure his words got into her mind. "It's a plant fabric. It's harmless. It won't hurt you. It likes being worn." His goddess blinked rapidly several times. A moment passed before she spoke.

"It likes me?" she asked, her voice sounding tiny and insecure as she tried to wrap her mind around the idea that fabric might have an opinion about its wearer.

Jeff nodded.

"It won't eat me?" she asked, sounding the same; maybe a little louder and less terrified.

"No, it won't eat you, Goddess," Jeff was laughing out loud, now. He hugged her, laughing. This amazing, indestructible goddess could be terrified of things unknown, just like everyone else.

Béla gently disengaged herself from her consort's condescending embrace, embarrassed by her reaction to this new material. She turned back to the mirror, carefully studying her garment in the reflection.

"Where did it come from?" she asked.

"I don't know," Jeff said. "It's some kind of seaweed. I think it grows under water."

'This could be a life form from Earth that hasn't been discovered yet, ' Béla thought to herself. 'Or it could have come from one of the ice glaciers floating around the edge of the solar system, waiting for a place where it could grow. If that's so, then where did all those ice glaciers come from? A fragmented planet that once had oceans on it?'

Béla placed her hand on her stomach, flat against the fabric of the Boa, trying to feel what it was feeling.

'Warm, ' it radiated, seeming content to remain where it was.

Béla closed her eyes, concentrating harder on what the Boa was emitting. She had 'talked' to plants before, but not in the last thousand years or so.

'You're not really a plant, are you?' she asked it.

'Warm, light, touch, ' it replied.

'Where do you come from?' she asked.

'Wet, warm, light. Then cold, cold light, sleep. Then wet, warm, light. Now warm, not light, not wet.'

Béla realized she wasn't going to get any better answers than that. Although the Boa was somewhat brighter than a potato (it had distinguished the difference between the Present and the Past and a potato didn't do that), it could be describing the destruction of its world, or its survival through last winter.

'What do you eat?' Béla asked, starting to feel frustrated. This thing was still nearly dumb as a potato.

'Light, wet, move, ' it replied.

She had determined what she wanted to know. It was a plant. It absorbed plankton or whatever it touched as it drifted by in the water.

'I'd better make sure not to get this thing wet, ' Béla thought, 'it might decide I'm a piece of plankton. A big piece!'

She really wasn't worried about this thing trying to digest her. It didn't have the capacity. She felt silly about having been afraid of it. It was just a large piece of fungus, after all.

"Who decided to make clothes out of this stuff, anyway?" she asked Jeff.

"It came with the manor," Jeff told her. "The last owner had an odd collection of unusual items, including this living gown. One of your ladies-in-waiting suggested it when I asked her about what we should wear to this festival. She has no idea who made it. There are very few of them around, I understand. I get the idea that these things are priceless."

The goddess sighed. Her garment sighed with her. It seemed happy to be wrapped around her. She had been too afraid of it to notice its sensuality before, but she was beginning to notice it, now. She held out her hand for her consort to escort her to the grand ballroom.

"There is a good possibility that this little soirée is going to end up in a big pile of rutting bodies, you know," she told him as they paraded down the staircase.

She was already getting so aroused she was starting to perspire.

'Warm, wet, grow, ' her gown told her.

'Not now!' she commanded it. It was already closing the two-inch gap that ran down her left side.

"This thing is growing," she whispered to Jeff.

"Don't worry," Jeff whispered back, "it can't grow much. It's only a big leaf."

Béla had her doubts. As a result, she was a little more nervous and a lot less horny.

The floor around the bottom of the staircase was becoming crowded as guests became aware of their hosts' entrance. Béla picked up a thought about the 'living gown' and tried to reach the mind who thought it, but there were too many other random thoughts from admiring men and envious women. Béla had to shut down her perceptions for a while. There were so many people here, the bombardment of their minds was making it difficult to concentrate on her balance as she took the next step down the staircase in these tottering high heels.