Moon, Jellyfish, Woman

The sky was full of flinty stars around a cold moon, wet as a new lamb. The earth staggered up in its violent darkness to a horizon of shadows clawing at the sky. Far out, the ocean and the sky went gently together, black and endless. She walked, wool shawl pulled close around her shoulders, making her way carefully along the cliffs.

She looked down the raw face of broken vertical rock to pools of brackish water, where eddies of salt and freshwater coiled together. Even in the black night ocean, she could see jellyfish tangled in the tide, drifting in black water, thin as bolts of lightning and pale as the moon. The jellyfish drifted, shimmered, and floated. She touched her mouth, fingertips cold. Could animals be artists? Did they know they were beautiful? Were they making beauty out of their bodies the way dancers did, or thoughtlessly, like knots of lace caught in the wind?

She watched them for a long time until the cold in her hands sank into the bones, and she could taste the salt of the wind. Before turning for home, she looked over the cliffs that locked heaven to earth. In the clouds, shadow figures moved and drifted, a motion she recognized with her body, like a lover tracing her lower lip. Something in the sky shivered and drifted, and for a moment, the moonlight was obscured.

.

Her house was swaybacked, hidden in tough grass and twisted trees. It glowed bluish-white like an old bone in the night. When she stepped inside and lit the lamp in the hall, it soaked the stone floor in steamy light. In the kitchen, she filled the kettle and turned on the stove. She filled a cup with loose dark tea, the broken crumbs of flower petals, and thought about the jellyfish.

Jellyfish are found all over the world, from surface waters to the deep sea. They’d lived on earth for more than 500 million years before she saw one, invisible or not. They were one of the oldest complex life forms in existence. Floating ancient and alone, there were so many things about them no one knew. Not even her, even though she could see the invisible ones. Invisible, not dreams, but real and floating like clouds in the sky, drifting in currents of air along the shoreline. Real, even if only she could see them.  

There are so many questions she cannot answer: what are they, and why can she see them? Is she the only one who can? So many questions she has no way to answer and has never really put into words, except perhaps to whisper to them softly:

Who are you…

Where did you come from…

She wonders if there are other invisible creatures she can not see, but others can, if there are other people who can see her jellyfish. As a child, they only whispered in her vision, glimpses of smoke or shadows in the sky. But as she grew older, as her body blossomed, so did the jellyfish, growing in clarity, floating in her private skies. drifting observers, blushing spies...

The kettle made low bubbling sounds, steam drifting out of it, growing steadily more frantic. But for now, she only listened and watched the steam gather at the window. Out her window, over the cliffs in the distance, massive in the sky as the moon, a jellyfish drifted. In the dark, they cast a dim light from their centres like angels, lit from just under the surface of their transparent membrane skin, trapped moonlight scattering around inside them.

When the kettle boiled, she made tea, steeping it for a long time. Watching out her windows, she sipped the tea slowly, letting it burn her tongue a little, just to feel the sharp tingle. For as long as she could remember, she assumed the jellyfish were nocturnal animals, as she saw them mostly at night, waiting up late to catch sight of them. She isn’t sure if she sees them more at night because they are mostly invisible in sunlight, hard to find in daylight, or if they are nocturnal.

It would be too simple to say she was in love with them, though she is indeed full of love. There is something else between them, the living transparent clouds, the giants in the sky, and their small woman waiting by her windows.

Getting in bed was one of those steady rituals, made of many small closed circles of tasks. For a while, the little house was awake with bathroom lights filling the sink and tub, the laughing sound of water as she washed her face and brushed her teeth, and brushed out her hair.

Perhaps, she is bewitched. They feel full of magic as they are full of light. It would be wrong not to wonder if she was mad. However, if she is mad, seeing giant cloud-like jellyfish is the only symptom. They are, she knows, impossible. They turn her heart into a fluttering bird. She is transformed. Magic or madness. But it doesn’t change a thing.

It is enough that they are.

When she sees them, it is always moving; there is the pleasant lurch of pain and longing (can she even tell the difference?). Slipping between the cotton whisper of bedsheets that smell like salt and wind and the astringent of rose soap, she hunted sleep across a long, still hour. For a little while, she watched the sky out her open window, moonlight spilling across her bed like milk. She watched until she drifted onto the shores of sleep. When she closed her eyes, the sky was empty.

Her hands opened and closed in sleep. The night was full of gusting summer wind. A dark night during which she dreamed of black water licking at wet rocks, wet skin. Outside, jellyfish wafted along the cliffs, glowing their limpid light toward her pale house like it was a beacon on the horizon, drawing them like a flame.

The jellyfish slid through the dark, all its motion smooth as water, its body an iridescent bell moving like a ghost through mist. The jellyfish’s tentacles wavered and moved, shimmering, vanishing into invisibility before they could brush the earth. It swam forward on a wave of low, cool mist. Its tentacles were a mass of plump and billowing banners. Some thin as string, others thick as rope, bright heavy cords of smooth silk, long tendrils ruffled and gleaming like velvet, fat tentacles of light billowing softly, reaching out in the dark. They fanned apart and waved hungrily, coiling and braiding together, unwinding, coiling again. As it moved forward, light drifted around it.

In the moonlit darkness of her room, she slept, hair a tattered fan on the pillows, body warming, a shine of sweat on her brow, the round of her shoulder, under the blankets, her skin flushed, in places slick. The atmosphere in her room diffused, and her limbs loosened in sleep. In her dream, black water grew warm like a bath and tasted like salt, tart dry wine, a kiss, a kiss…

Pale light filled her window, fell across the floor, the bed, spilled across the sheets, and filled her palm.  Her body responded to the light like touch, and in the depths of her sleep, she moaned softly. In her dream, she floated in blackness, and in her bed, her sex flushed slick, wet, flush so even in her dream, she sighed with the sudden weight of want—the close promise of pleasure.

The jellyfish glowed, a blister, a pearl; it drifted toward her. Each breath sounded like the sea crashing in her chest. The rise and fall of the tide, the opening and closing of her heart. Her body resonated like a shell, a spell, sleep closing deeper, so her limbs were soft, her breathing slow and easy. A trace inside a dream. In her dream, her body humming, a sweet, sharp buzz like she’d been stung. The jellyfish’s tentacles blew softly in the wind, lifted with grace, a feminine softening of the ruffles into a rosy glow, borne along with the mist out her window. The gorgeous tentacles unfurled, poured gracefully through her window.

The wanton languor of her sleep only grew heavier at the proximity of the jellyfish. The ropes and ribbons of their limbs shimmered like water against her ceiling. The tentacles reached for her, finding her quickly, gently slipping under her sheets and blankets. So careful and tender, seemingly aware of just how to move so as not to jar her sleeping body. Everywhere the tentacles touched her gleamed. Ornate and delicate patterns bloomed where the iridescent tissues brushed the heat of her skin. Brightening the pale membranes, graceful and tousled patterns coiling like smoke, turning the pale tissue to radiant ivory, blush rose pink.

The tentacles cradled her like a pair of hands, lifted her gently, sheets slipping away from her skin. As they lifted her, the tentacles coiled around her, sliding around her ribs and waist, down her legs. Deep in the jellyfish heart, colours bloomed in the dark: pale ivory, passion fruit, plum, and blush. The tentacle tips dug into her like fingers as they carried her into the night. In her dream, colours flashed on the water, and she shifted and moved in the shallows of sleep. Pleasure creeping along her skin, a lover’s touch…

...

Why did she see them when no one else did? Why did this one flock to her bedroom window and reach out to touch her? Why, when she opened her eyes and found herself held by an almost invisible form half a dozen meters in the air, didn’t she panic? Did the jellyfish produce some kind of calming toxin that her skin drank so even waking felt like a dream? Did her love for them defuse over all things, even fear?

Their touch filled her with a spark of knowledge, some faint charge, lying in a night cradled by tentacles. She knew she was safe, and as she watched, it began to shimmer and the tentacles holding her grew slick and wet. A warm, glassy fluid slid against her skin, squishing where the flesh pressed into her.

They pulled taut, closing with even pressure all around her, tighter and tighter. She moaned, fully awake now but body humming with a dreamy pleasure, skin alive and still somehow numb, tingling. Her nightdress grew damp and warm against her skin, and her sex throbbing with a sudden, horrible intensity. If she wasn’t so totally held, tentacles around her wrists and arms, gripping her ribs, her hips, scooping around her ass, keeping every part of her…she would have tried to touch herself. Instead, she only shuddered, moaned again as the tentacles drew tight, slid down her body, dripping with clear fluid. Bioluminescence stalked over her body along with the slick slither of the tentacles.

There are so many questions about them that she could not answer, so many things she didn’t understand. Questions she cannot answer. And every single one of them fell away in long shivers of pleasure as the tentacles slid between her legs, cupped her ass. The tentacle slid against her labia, the silk of her nightgown slick and wet, her sex slippery, everything shimmering. More tentacles slid around her thighs. It lifted the silk and lace hem of her dress away from her hips, skin and silk and transparent slick ribbons of tentacles dripping, glistening.

The slick, thick base of a tentacle slid past the dripping lips of her labia, so long and firm, sliding for endless seconds, and she exploded into shivers of pleasure. Pleasure glowed like wildfire all over her.

Every inch of tentacle moved with firm, even pressure over her body. But nothing so wonderfully perfect as the tentacle firm between her legs, now waving and wavering, so she was panting, breathless.

At the core of the airy, translucent sphere, the jellyfish shone brighter, its presence a present moment. Touching and stroking her with many banners and strands of its body, everything dripping with long drooling strands of fluid, bright with moonlight. She fought against it only so much that she could thrust and writhe with it, pull more pleasure from her body, from its touch. She lifted her hips in the air, threw herself forward, and they threw themselves together into each other. An irresistible collision.

Soon the jellyfish held her so tightly she was unable to move. She could only feel and shiver as the riffled ribbons and slick, solid tentacles writhed over her body, touching her in ways she thought impossible. Rippling and undulating, moving with steady, sleek, solid pressure and little stirring motions, taut pulling like thin threads, hard tendons like a rope. The slick fluid dripping all over made her skin more sensitive, flush and tender with sensation. With a sudden tug and the milky sound of tearing fabric, her nightdress was ripped away. Vanished in long strands of pulling silk, and the wet, slick sound of drenched fluid pulling away from her skin.

It fluttered away, discarded and forgotten. The tentacles explored every inch of her freshly naked skin, covering her in slick shimmering shine. They travelled down her spine, some had firm suckers that closed and pulsed around her skin, suckling at her, leaving red half-moon marks over her.

Tentacles wrapped around her hips and thighs. Pulled tight. Others continued roaming, curious and alive, active over her body. With their coiling and teasing, sensation rolled all over her. There was feeling everywhere at once, a steady but frantic overstimulation that made her breath ragged and her heart pound. And still, when one of the muscular tentacles thrust its way inside her. Even in the haze and glittering fog of pleasure, the sudden force was a bright spark of pain. An unexpected sharp answer to a dull wanting ache, she was only aware of when it was violently satisfied. She moaned, clenched around it instinctively, so she felt every vivid moment of the tentacle pulling out of her.

As it fucked her, hard, it began to curl and flare as it moved in and out of her, creating a sensation she’d never imagined could hardly comprehend. It shoved itself inside her over and over, filling her in ways she’d never imagined. Filling her, overfilling her. She arched into it, involuntarily pulling against and into the tentacle restraints and moaning.

She knew, inside the massive, unimaginable scale of pleasure suffusing over her skin, that this massive, impossible creature was dangerous. That it was using her in some way, she could not possibly understand that she was small and helpless and should be afraid. And she was. She was alive with fear, but there was more. There was the shattering static of pleasure, wrenched out of her, intolerable and solid, and she loved every moment of it. Even she fought against it, clenched and tangled herself to try and force the pleasure away, stop the delicious flex and roll of her muscles. The tentacles touched her everywhere, and everywhere they moved, responded, bloomed in pleasure which echoed through her.

Amazed, she stared up at the massive jellyfish. The way it shone in the moonlight, the vicious dripping mist floating around it. Effervescent, dripping and shimmering, it slipped down the tentacle’s length, dripping on to her, falling in long strands thin as spiderwebs, waving in the night.

Moaning, she convulsed against her bonds. Held hard and fast against the thrust and fuck of the tentacles inside her, writhing all over, her breathing was desperate and frantic and ragged, her heart pounded furiously. Every inch of skin is erotically stimulated every moment. There was no stopping it, the pleasure was beyond involuntary. Her back arched, her hips rolled. She came with a sudden, spontaneous wave of relief and shattering amazement at the scale of incredible pleasure that ripped through her entire body. Her mind lit up, her body spasmed, warm, trapped, and so viciously wonderfully filled. Her legs tightened, and her mouth tried and failed to moan. The sensation was incredible, and she wanted it to last forever, to be the last thing in the world that she felt.

Mouth open, panting, she watched the jellyfish respond. It was filled with a brighter light. An elegant shimmer of bioluminescence, the same sparkle as a red tide event, when ocean waves are floodlit from within with blood. It shone like a dripping red moon, translucent, even its tangle of legs, rising and falling in some invisible wind, was lit from within. As she came, her hands opened and closed in time with the spasms of her sex, and the light that flooded over her, arched neck, curled fingers, came dripping from the swollen lips of her cunt. The light flickered and flowed with her sensations. It was feeling her, she realised in some haze of impossible pleasure logic, aware of the jellyfish as she could be of any lover's pleasure. Their bodies blur from one intense expression into another.

...

In the morning, she awoke, naked and sticky, sore all over in a tangle of still damp sheets that smelled like the clean salt of the ocean and night air. Small, round and crescent-moon bruises and long red welts covered her body. Gently, carefully, she touched herself all over, feeling out the heat and tender places, the peeling dry residue on her skin, the fresh slick wetness between her legs. She brought her fingers to her mouth and tasted herself. A sour, sweet, familiar flavour and something else, the salt of the sea, the sharp, clear, bright stone taste of the earth, something dark and ancient that made her think of the jellyfish’s light, the occlusion of moonlight. She shivered, pleasure sparking on the roof of her mouth, a flutter in the deep of her cunt. A moan curled around the fingers in her mouth, and she fell back against the pillows, drunk and delirious on some delicious chemistry of memory and magic.

It was a dream, her rational mind tried to insist as she winced in the shower, washed away the dried flaking fluids, and hissed at the heat on her welts. Her rational mind could insist all it wanted, she thought, tilting her head back and letting her hair fill with water. It could insist forever, the same way for years it told her the jellyfish weren’t real. But all the rest of her: the parts that were kind and introspective and thoughtful, the parts that felt beautiful, and the brightness of bruises, that saw love and joy, knew it was real. It happened.

Walking the cliffs at sunset, she wondered if there was a way to express gratitude. Her eyes lit upon the horizon, where the stone cliffs and the sky went gently together. Every time she watched, waiting to see them dancing out over the ocean. An easy, loose wanton kind of joy born of the want to touch and stroke. For days, she didn’t see them again. But still, she woke every morning and hoped she would, that she would see them drifting with the tide or the clouds. The truth was, she missed them, which was a strange sensation. She still wasn’t entirely sure what happened. When the marks faded, it was harder to believe it hadn’t been a dream, an impossible, beautiful event of her imagination.

And finally, one night, she did see them again, down the cliffs on one late summer evening weeks after she worried perhaps she’d never seen them at all. For weeks, it had been too hot and dry; heat smashed against the earth in whiplash whirlwinds. It wafted down from the sky, reaching into the depths of the earth, along the cliff edges. A steady wind of residual heat. The heat was all twisting nerves, even along the edge of the ocean, too hot to sleep or sit still.

It was only then, in the dark purple gloaming, that a gust of cold breeze came off the water. The wind charged with the perfumes of the ocean and heat. The cliffs and water moved together like sensual animals, pale at first like a ghost moon in an afternoon sky, leaving a sweeping wake in the ocean.

All around her, the black of night fell. When the jellyfish turned and began to approach the cliffs, she looked up at the stars and the moon. She smiled, the tension in her jaw relaxed, and her eyes were bright and watchful. She walked to the cliff edge, and the wind pressed the spray of the ocean against her face. She walked to the edge to meet them.