Metamorphosis Reimagined

     She was my muse, first coming to me in a feverish dream when the heat pressed down on my body, and the ocean failed to send a breeze across the whole of Cyprus. She teased me coquettishly; shooting looks from beneath lashes so dark they could have been crafted from the night sky, her eyes the net with which the stars became ensnared. Selene doused this impish nymph in her light, and I watched her dance. For the whole evening, I sat in the shadows of my subconscious, hypnotized by the sway in her hips. 

     The next morning, I began. With marble almost as pale as the ethereal woman I now obsessed over, I began to chip away, bit by bit, in my effort to force the stone to fall away and leave her in my embrace, smooth with all-knowing eyes and a smile that swallowed secrets. I would release her, and she would be mine.

     Months passed. Each evening, she encouraged my consumption by fire, dancing for me just beyond reach. I could almost hear her laugh on a highly anticipated breeze that never arrived. Each day, I revealed more of her, pulling muscle and sinew from metamorphic rock. She always teased and kept me from touching her at night, but her succulent fullness proved to fit perfectly into the undulating movements of my calloused hands where she stood stationary. 

    I never stopped to consider she was not mine to keep, no matter how perfectly I rendered her from the emotionless block before me. I worked in a studio provided by my benefactor in the furthest corner of the museum he paid me to help fill. As I ran my hands over the swell of her belly where her womb would hide, and let my fingers travel to the perfect breast topped with a nipple so exquisite that it begged my mouth to suckle ravenously, I heard his steps coming. I tried to move to cover her beauty that was only meant for one, to keep her innocence a gift bestowed on me alone. No eyes but mine should gaze upon the curves of her anatomy that I studied each night and released from rock more each day. I did not move quickly enough.

     “No, no, dear boy!” he bellowed into the silence. “Let me see. Stop prancing like a child who needs to piss, boy. Step aside!” He took careful steps around her, touched the concave area where her clavicle peeked through, and made almost inaudible grunts of appreciation for her rounded haunch. “I’ll tell you this much, son. If you ever find a woman with an ass this ripe and ready, claim her before anyone else can!”

    I felt my hackles rise as I tried to mask how his intrusion on her decency filled the pit of my stomach with a rage I had never felt before. If he noticed, he didn’t show it, and he turned back to her and studied her as he sucked on his lower lip in careful consideration. “How long before you will have her finished?”

     I tried to speak and had to clear my throat before any noise would come out. “I’ve been working on her for just over three months, sir, and I’m barely halfway finished.”

     He turned to look at me before placing his focus on her once more. “Ah, yes, well, I’m certain one can not rush perfection. And she certainly is the ideal, yes?” His enormous paw of a hand clapped me squarely in between my shoulder blades with an equally hard guffaw, and I had to balance myself as I inadvertently stepped forward. 

     “Yes, sir. She is most certainly the ideal.” I doubt he heard the dismay in my voice as I resigned myself to the reality I would lose her the moment I truly had her. Slowing myself could not be an option, though. I needed to feel her in her entirety more than I needed to hide her in the recesses of my mind, where she danced for only me. I needed to make her corporeal. There was no other choice. 

     That night, the salty drafts from the sea returned and broke the sultry stillness of midsummer. Yet, it didn’t calm the ardor of my dreams. My tortured flesh burned and yearned as I sat and savored every second spent with her. I felt the chilled air from far away as she danced, out of my reach, playful and alluring. She knew her translucent linens only feigned a modicum of modesty, I could tell, so the way she would turn and pose was a provocative and well-executed seduction. Never was there ever a more perfect example of the female form. Never had I craved someone the way I longed for her.

     I continued to work on freeing her from the defenses of the slab, beginning the moment Helios awoke until long after Selene bid him goodnight as she mounted her throne. Touching her emerging femininity never quenched the thirst that was built within me each night as she pranced across the landscape of my latent mind; it only served to parch my soul more. I worked tirelessly here in my domain, where these blocks of marble gave birth to fantasies and unrealized desires. 

     The oceanic winds returned fully as the days became shorter. I worked in my studio by lamplight, and when Selene rose high enough above us, my beauty stood on her pedestal in a blinding display of glimmering brilliance. On more than one evening, I would fall asleep at her feet and slip into the world of reverie where only she and I existed. I felt the eager embers of my fanaticism grow as I watched her dance. My arms ached to hold her. I could almost taste the sweetened flesh of her mouth. With unwavering watchfulness, I longed to devour her beauty until I consumed her and made her a part of me, moving together in a frenzied oscillation until we could writhe no more.

     Helios was high in the sky when I pulled her fully from the gleaming marble and realized there was nothing more to free. On her platform, she stood in perpetual frozen animation, her arms raised joyfully, and her legs propelling her into the beginning of a leap, each perfect toe pointed at the moment her feet were about to leave the ground. She stood partially dressed as her overgarment slipped off her shoulder and exposed one immaculate breast. While she twisted to rise, her skirt had fallen open to reveal her lean thigh and more than half of her full buttocks, the stone carved to cast her sweetest spots in imagined shadows. I stepped up to run my hands carefully over every delicious centimeter, slowly, relishing the feel of her beneath my quivering palms.

     An ache cinched low within my stomach and spread through my thighs, eliciting an electric current, causing my entire body to tense in anticipation. Not a single part of her body failed to fit perfectly within my hungry touch, as if she was my match in every way. And as I cupped her exposed breast in my hand, I looked at her face, her elegant features exuberant as I explored with all my senses, as if I had never witnessed her perfection before. I spent the next few hours memorizing how she felt beneath my skin. And then he came. I heard his heavy steps growing louder as he approached, and I placed a chaste kiss on her lips before releasing her and moving back to take her full height in. 

     “Magnificent, my boy!” his deep baritone rumbled. I felt him walk up to join me before stepping around her ever so slowly. “You’ve truly outdone yourself this time! She will look perfect in the garden room where my guests can see her dazzle in the sunlight.” He ran his hands over her in the way one might inspect a horse for purchase, and my anger was hard to contain. I swallowed and stood silent. I had known this day would come. He had her moved to her permanent spot beneath the oculus that allowed an exotic garden to bloom all year long. This was his crowning jewel, and she was the gem that sparkled the brightest out of all his collections. 

     I stayed in my studio until the evening caretakers began their unseen tasks, then I made my way out of the musty studio and into the open expanse. The windows in ornate homes where the wealthiest lived provided light as I walked before turning to take the long way home with my feet in the shallows and my mind surrounded by glittering stars. I brought her to life, and then I gave her away. None would ever compare to her after because none had compared to her before. 

     “Aphrodite, Goddess of Love, hear me.” The crash of waves on the sands gleaming in the evening light drowned out my voice. “I will never love again if I cannot have her. I will perish as surely as the sea foam fades along the shore. Please, have mercy on me, your lowly servant, this wretch that I am!” For a moment, I thought I heard a sigh carried on the gust of piquant winds that caressed my flesh. If I did, it was gone before I took the next step. 

     Each advance forward seemed to drain my energy more and more, and by the time I stepped into the small portico of my humble home, I could barely move one foot in front of the other. I slumped to the floor before I made it to my bed, and there I lay for three days before my benefactor sent workers to find me for abandoning my post. No one understood what could have made me sleep so soundly that nothing would rouse me. Physicians were called and paid for by my very own altruistic patron; still no one could figure out this frozen stance I had taken. The sculptor who became a statue himself became the subject of mystified conversation throughout the streets of Cyprus. And right after he had finished the most incredible work of art the world had ever seen!

     They laid me out on a bed of unbleached wool and linen sheets and waited for me to awaken. However, it was a feat I never pulled off. Weeks passed before anyone even realized my muscle was turning to stone. They pulled me from my bed and stood me before moving my limbs in an attempt to bring me back from wherever the gods had stolen me away to. Nothing brought recognition back to my eyes. Each day, I became slightly less aware and faded into a state of limbo where remnants of memories frolicked before fading away.

     When stories of my fate reached far-off shores and beckoned the known world to come witness the man who turned to stone, my benefactor knew exactly where to place me. I felt myself solidifying into the ultimate state of hardness right as his men settled me beside her. Her face was serene, her body turned towards mine. Even when we were finally together, she remained just out of reach. The muted evening light settled over us as the world fell silent for the night, and I let myself remember how she had whirled under the stars of my imagination. Before daylight dawned, I released myself to eternal slumber, and there I found her, impatiently waiting. Forever dancing, forever loved, forever by her side. Forever frozen in time as the world forgot and passed us by.