Dustmoon, 3271

“With this Arhnaikuri I vow to record and safekeep the things most important, the things my progenitors must understand and keep sacred, the knowledge that will pass down through the generations, and in its study enlighten them. [This is the traditional Friebsachs opening vow, found on most monoliths.] But this everlasting monolith will not record earthly, temporary, vulgar things. You will find no instructions here. No pithy regrets, lost hopes, no solemn dictations of e’er past-useful histories. No vapid aphorisms will pockmark this stone. Nay, these tricks and baubles would debase thy visage, would erode thy heavenly glow for our progeny. Thus, instead of recounting my own modest and unimportant life, I dedicate this record to you, my Venus, so that antiquity may know thee long after we two are gone.

O Venus, how can I begin to describe my love for thee? O’er the grandest mountains and through the deepest oceans, one will find nothing so grand as thee. No painting can match your beauty, and no poem e’er scribed can invoke your kindness. Your grace, your elegance, your shimmering spirit is oft the envy of kings and queens the world over. O, thy beauty! Your raven-dark hair, it is as a sea of stars, your dulcet voice would drive any opera-house mad, your lithe and supple body, how it would be conspire’d to be stolen by every forest nymph. To thy beauty, Venus, I have always been devoted, for thy love, Venus, I have always pined.

O, I still remember clearly the first time I fell in love with you. Allow me one personal aside, for it warms my heart so. I shall drop this flowery language for the moment – it ill befits being used for a lowly one such as I.

Now: It was the day of my Ghokaghola. [adulthood ceremony, held 5 days after 5^th birthday. It commemorates the beginning of one’s chosen career and marriage-seeking.] I was so tired of these parties – every Ghokaghola my parents planned for my brothers had been a ridiculous, ostentatious affair, and mine was no different. They planned them without our input, and they were only ever concerned with showing off their wealth, and gaining yet more admiration and respect from the rest of high society. That they did – leaving no time or attention for me. The speech I had prepared was cut off, and I received not one word of congratulations from them, busy as they were chatting with the county treasurer. I ordered three more shots of liquor and left without a word, slipping out unnoticed.

Stumbling home, drunk and angry, I decided that today I was going to do what every adult had warned me never to do: breach the walls. Damn the elders. Damn my parents. My father was not a wall-breaching forager, I was not educated in it – but that day, something told me I had to do it, and show them all that I could be more than a dusty archive administrator. I spoke of that career with such lofty words to the bored crowd. Damn them too. They wouldn’t have cared if I was going to be a maggot wrangler.

My Venus – perhaps, spurned by their disinterest, I was drawn to you unknowingly, before ever seeing you, before ever being able to distinguish your muffled booming voice from the other giants. A breach portal on the floor level was unguarded, so I covered myself in my robes and slipped out. There, in the blinding radiance of the gods, I saw you for the first time. Ah, Venus, our first encounter! I will paint it with the most beautiful strokes I can envision.

First, I saw only your shimmering visage, stretching across the shining white bathroom tile. It was a pool of impressionistic color stretching down into the unknown, the mesmerizing pale color of your skin. Nearly blinded by this phantasmagoric light, I looked ahead to find the rounded spheres of your toes, each one soft, red-blushed, and inviting, capped with thick, pink-painted nails that looked like the awnings of a veranda in a gentle, warm, coastal summer. Your smell was of lilac, elderberries, jasmine, peach… All the sweetest fruits and muskiest flowers; the perfume seemed to roll off your supple skin like manna from heaven. I looked up then, up your pillars of calves, shins, thy soft and round knees, your plush and pillowy thighs, which were like two milky buns of sweet pastries, between them your – well – your black hair over your – well, the curly… gentle meeting of two folds of [a word is scratched out]

Your navel, dotting the light swell of your slender stomach like the stamen of a flower. The gentle hills of the underside of your breasts, hanging from your chest like ripe apples, shy but ready to be picked with a tender touch. Further yet above, your face. Your indescribably beautiful face. Your shining walnut-color eyes, your plump glistening lips, your shining black hair, falling all around your shoulders. I have not the words to describe your face – it was that of a goddess, an utterly perfect visage, unmatched by all models, all sculptors, the envy of painters all.

The most beautiful girls at my Ghokaghola, those daughters of nobility, they were gussied up like whores, they flaunted themselves at me like succubi. In conversation, they invented pablum observations about books they read about in newspapers. They pretended they hadn’t even realized I was from a wealthy lineage, as though it wasn’t the only thing they cared about. These whores were like mealworm larvae writhing in filth compared to you. They deserved nothing. You are altogether a different being than them; none can hold a candle to you. You are a goddess. My Venus.

Happiness bloomed within me like a flame, and I was a pilgrim finding refuge in a snowstorm. In that moment I was content to leave, carrying in my memories only this unearned glimpse of your angelic – no, deific – grace. This vision on the floor tile alone could have warmed my soul forever. But grace was not done with me yet. There, on the cool ceramic, you noticed me. Your eyes fell upon me. You turned your head to me. Yes. You saw me. You tilted your head in wonder. I still remember the expression on your face – happy, surprised, curious… Oh, Venus, even in remembering it I swoon!

Then you knelt down. The mountain of this divine body knelt down to inspect meager little me. Between your ankles the opening [words are scratched out] and you lowered your finger to me. My heart hastened – were you truly reaching out to me? Your fingers, like your toes, were great pink-capped boulders. Now I could see all the ridges of your perfect skin. I reached out – gingerly – timidly – and grabbed on.

Climbing you, my goddess… The warmth of your skin, the sweet smell… It was a heady intoxicant. As soon as I grabbed on, you lifted your finger up to your face, quicker than I was prepared for. The air howled and buffeted my ears. I lost my sight for a moment. Then, I saw it. I was in front of it. It filled my world. Your eye. Your indescribable eye.

All the sensuous pleasures and marvelous sights thus far described – though alone they would be more than enough to fill the most ponderous monk’s life with meditation and awe – all pale in comparison to your eye, Venus. I found myself beholding a vast sphere, radiating interwoven strands of all myriad colors. Your eyelashes were the canopy above, and they were the brush below. I was reminded of the marvelous pictures we saw in astronomy class. The great field of stars dotting the intergalactic threads, cosmic spiderwebs and ultraviolet dust clouds. All this was made real. All the interwoven spindles pointing to the center. The black hole. The center of gravity, your impossible pull. This impossibly black void, bearing down on me, demanding my supplication and devotion. Its awesome power dug out my heart then and there, leaving only the glowing, pure, hot jewel of love.

I wished only to sink into your iris forever, whether my body be contorted into impossible shapes by your gravity, or whether my soul be set afloat and drifting within its sea of loving darkness forever. As the colossal aperture shrank, grew, and focused, I felt in my quivering bones that you saw me, you saw all of me, in a flash I knew that you understood me. And you accepted me. You loved me.

Emotionally overwhelmed, my body seized up, and my mind was close to shattering. I could not stand any more of it. I must have felt exactly what the ancient writers of scripture felt when they beheld God. Many were driven to suicide. I was only a little stronger than that. To my eternal shame… I turned and jumped. I fell gently to the floor, unharmed like any insect, and ran as fast as I could. I felt, I suppose, unworthy to see you, or perhaps to be seen by you.

Alas, my goddess did not have her glasses on, so it was a foolish worry. I could have lingered on your finger, but forsook the chance.

Nobody asked where I had been, and nobody noticed my absence from my own party, save for the most sycophantic of my suitresses – I wasn’t bothered. Everything back home seemed like a mirage. I was in a haze that lasted for days. I rebuffed all the congratulatory gifts and letters sent to me. I was in an anxious fervor that did not let me rest or sleep. At all hours of the day and night, my imagination just kept replaying those few minutes, which changed the course of my life.

Often I wonder what might have happened had I lingered on your fingertip. If only I had closed my eyes, or taken deep breaths to calm myself, and had not run away. If only I had let you investigate me. What would you have… But I never dared present myself to you again. I wasn’t worthy of it.

I decided, after weeks of inner turmoil, to renounce my station in life. I had always hated the path my parents had set out for me. I hated all my archival classes. I hated the cushy offices of the House of Records and the boring, humorless administrators who oversaw it. I despised the girls who sought after me, and though my friends always complained of jealousy for my would-be harem’s sheer obscene sexual appeal, your beauty now far overshadowed their mere fecundity. I realized there was a different way to live. A life centered around you. My old life was not what I wanted. Not anymore.

In the haze of self-doubt around my decision, I went to the museum. Any place would have done – indeed, I think I was merely wandering the streets. I had no destination in mind, I simply happened to wander in. The wing of the museum that held giants’ art caught my attention. Did you know that our knowledge foragers spend months-long pilgrimages scouring your world for its cultural artifacts? They copy books, music, paintings… Here in this museum were reproductions of many of the giants’ paintings. I spent a while looking at each one, wondering whether you had seen them as well, and how good the reproductions really were. That’s when one seized my attention, in a manner recalling your own force of beauty.

It was a haunting, ethereal, beautiful depiction of a giant woman emerging from a scallop shell. “Beautiful” as a word does it no justice. The woman is lithe, nubile, perfect… Of course, not as perfect as you. Her beauty and modesty are simply transcendent. Her expression, mysterious. At her side are two aides, rushing to cover her nude figure and protect her from the flying daggers of, I presume, other jealous, spiteful women. The name of this painting – translated from giants’ speak – was “The Creation of the Goddess”.

A most resplendent image. It is the only thing I have ever seen which has even approached capturing your serene beauty. It confirmed that no Lillecian females could ever hope to be as worthy of adoration compared to you, or indeed any other giant woman. In comparison, our own ideals of Lillecian feminine beauty appear like diseased, disfigured invalids, worthy not of adoration, but perhaps of punishment for their impudence before you.

I commissioned a large reproduction of this painting, and it hangs on my wall to this day. My own drawings of you have never lived up to it, to my regret. So it was only natural that I named you after this immaculate painting: Venus. This is the titular word in giants’ speak that means “Goddess,” and it is the only word of yours I know. A devotional name, to be sure. Not your real name. I am unworthy of uttering your true name, and I do not try to learn it from your conversations. No, it would be a betrayal. Instead, I call you by this name, an indirect conception of you that my frail mind can withstand. Venus.

The painting helped me find the courage to rebel against my predestined station in life. It was difficult to convince the forager school to accept a student who was already past their fifth birthday, and who already had an archival management degree. Wouldn’t I rather be a knowledge forager, they said, and bring back things more suited to my station (and class), like books, or paintings? But I could not be shaken. I was fierce, committed, and I argued with the school administrators passionately.

My parents were initially aghast, but when they could not break my resolve, they relented and gave me the pittance needed for my new degree. They shoved it in my hands, as if to say, “Take your payment and go. Leave us.” They were angry, disgusted. They didn’t understand. But neither did they try to understand. Their focus turned to my more industrious brothers, and eventually they began to pretend I didn’t exist. (Last I heard, one of my brothers married one of my former sycophants, a greedy and materialistic girl who, unsurprisingly, bankrupted him.) None of this bothered me at all. With you as my sole aim, I took my studies extremely seriously, and graduated in just one year, at the top of my class.

Ah, how their faces glowered when I announced I would be a forager. How my parents scorned me, then forgot me. How my brothers laughed. How quickly the girls lost interest in me – where was their interest in my hobbies and books now? Had they found someone else with whom to have insubstantial chats about all manner of fashionable topics that they had heard of, once? No matter; they would find someone else to seduce and leech off of.

And how people’s disappointment deepened even more when I brought back so little from beyond the walls, week after week. So little that the foraging distributors, out of pity for my squalor, sometimes didn’t even bother reporting my earnings to the tax authority. But, in truth, I foraged long and hard, and brought back a wealth of things that I kept for myself – treasures beyond a king’s wildest imagination. Not only memories, but precious jewels, the keepsakes you left behind for me. Treasures from you. I have built a whole world of you.

Ah, but I digress. Venus, O Venus, forgive this old man his recollections of his youth. I shall spend the rest of this Arhnaikuri singing songs of you, and recounting all the things I have done for you, in the highest poetry and sweetest psalms I can muster.