God of Marriage Saga: Intermission 5: Vitamancy?
Imported from SF2 with no description.
_No, it was a neologism. _I finally decided.
Not an antithesis to necromancy.
What I'd been doing was trying to understand the birth of the new into the old. I'd been trying to get down to the essentials of what a transformation fetish was. Vitamancy, I'd called it. Divination through life. To 'grok' life processes. But that wasn't quite it, either.
It had to do with literal 'birth' of one shape from another, you see.
Genetomancy? Progenitomancy?
What... was I trying to do, on the face of things? Come up with a conceited term, for the conceited?
Embed a new conceit into the old. That's it. Yes.
Fleur smirked. "You're trying to have word sex."
Was... there a good point to that?
Of course there is, but you'll never get it right, one malefic voice muttered.
I took note of it, of course, but discarded the sentiment like junk.
No... I was clearly doing something wrong. Making a mis-step. If my end goal was to create a tool to transform myself, or others with, didn't I need to understand why I was trying, in the first place?
I blocked out the thoughts that occurred to me to belong to Tamura Reiko, or at least those that orbited around my response to her existence. I wasn't ready for that kind of musing, yet. For starters, she was a very, very dangerous organism for a human to meddle with; And moreover, summoning my own thoughts about a shape-shifting predatory parasitoid was distraction enough on its own, without entertaining the full implications of Parasyte or even Parasyte: The Maxim.
No... there was something 'transcendentally' complicated about the full implications of those stories, so it would have to be shelved at least momentarily. It was trouble enough thinking about 'what' I was thinking about, without the fear of predation, and the thoughts of being minced up and eaten, getting mixed in.
Wasn't that always the problem, though? I wanted to change from one organism into another, in a way that could be simulated beautifully through art. But wasn't the artistic rendering an oversimplification, both of the processes and their relationships to one another?
On the face of it, I could still change freely, in fantasies, sometimes. Still hold onto some sense of what was changing being 'me', and being consistent in its changes.
How was I trying to change, again? Not just in what way, but to what end?
To avoid death, a part of me thought.
To seek an attractive mate, another part thought.
Right... so I was trying 'not' to be horrendously disfigured and minced up into meat for a hungry predator, while seeking to procreate. Typical. Animal.
"Why is it that you find me so attractive, then?" An ominous voice asked.
No, no... we're not going to do you. I thought.
"Do me how?"
I flushed. There was no way, on any level, that I found her 'physically' attractive. Tamura. Shapeshifting... deadly... imitating a human and going unnoticed with relative impunity...
Fine, you're 'functionally' attractive. I conceded. And yet, so simultaneously, functionally repellent. That must be where I was having problems. The notion of seeking some kind of empowerment, in the very thing that would destroy me.
Gavrill Madaraki must have been a preparation for this, in some way. Dangerous women with mutable bodies. A power fantasy.
The funny thing was that, on some level, this is what I wanted to become.
"Christ, are you so utterly and ineffably confused?!" came what seemed to be Gavrill.
No, it wasn't confusion. It was the process of transformation, or its potential, that I sought. Or the ability to 'direct' it, without falling to pieces or being put through a meat processor.
"All for your fluffy widdle girlfriend?" Gavrill taunted.
Was that it, really? So... had I been playing at a deliberate game of self-confusion, out of despair?
"Coupled with romantic longing," Fleur noted.
It... was something I had to let go of. A forgivable mistake. It wasn't as if I was literally seeking out some inner predator to devour my intellect, or free will, or something.
I put my foot down. No. I wasn't.
And for the moment, I didn't need to let the story become 'that' many layers of meta, either. Here was I, in my world of characters and memories about them. I had a quest. I was studying their relationships, to me. I'd just needed some weighty and pretentious topic, to start with, right? An epic quest regarding an unresolved mystery.
Who fell in love with the nine-tailed fox?
Which, never-mind for the moment. It was time to deliberately lose the plot.
I was not, after all, pursuing an inner predator to devour my intellect, or free will, or something.
Not anymore, anyway.
"So... Vitamancy?" Aerith nudged me.
We'll put it on the shelf for now, with shape-shifting inner predators.
"Ahem." Fleur Amani, the attractive, romantic werewolf counterpart to Aerith Gainsborough muttered. And I made the connection again. Shape-shifting inner predators.
... right. It wouldn't be that simple, then.
I staggered about for a bit, mentally, like prey that was ready to be brought down. And then the morning alarm broke me from my thought experiment.
I decided that the safest thing to do was not to shout for Lupe, but to be very, very mentally quiet, for awhile, and to try not to ponder all the sharp-teeth and lady bodies that lay around me.