“I SAW HER across a smoky universe, wild and wanton and free in her creative destruction. I found her squatting over the carcass of a planet she had hunted down, arms deep inside it scooping out the meat of it. Streams of sweetly rancid mother’s milk ran from her teats and down her sides to mingle with the honeyjuice that slickened her thighs and her aroma, oh, the scent of her, filled me with a desire I had never known!
“Desire to rage across time itself in search of one spare second.
“Desire to comb an infinite beachhead for one perfect grain of sand.
“Desire to taste every corpuscle ever circulated to find the one perfect strand of genetic substance.
“I moved to her; to get the attention of such a creature as her, I arrayed myself in all my finery, and went to her. She looked up as I approached and in that second she measured me, shook me, pressed me down, and found me wanting her. She sniffed once and her mouths smiled small, sly smiles that made thunder in my belly.
“She gave a little, mocking laugh, turned, and ran.
“The chase was on.
“I stumbled and tripped through the universe, always one step behind, just missing her around an asteroid belt, or almost touching her and then having her slip through some small crack to another layer of subspace. I chased her through singing stars and cold dead voids. I chased her through the colour out of time. I chased her through fire and ice and nothingness and vast stretches of memory and the psychic collectives of countless planets. I tore apart worlds to locate her scent when I slipped the trail.
“I thought I’d lost her a dozen times and every time I was on the edge of giving up I would hear her teasing laugh and I would know that she still wanted me to chase her, to hunt her down. That the game wasn’t just in my head.
“Finally, on plains of psychotromic emotions from a race of long-dead people I caught her.
“I latched on to her and we tumbled, lying amid all the hate and fear that had resulted in worldwide genocide on a planet on the other side of the universe.
“There we made love.
“And as I entered her I understood: I realized that she was vast and so much more than I. This was Shupnikkurat, the goddess of life and fertility; from her was everything born and from her will everything give birth. Every moment of creation in every galaxy she was there. In every piece of artwork, in every dream, in every story ever told, every curse spoken, every time anything new was made there was her touch. Her mark is upon the very fabric of existence and I was hers, completely.
“That night, lying there, cooling in our sated lust, fluids drying under a dying red sun, we had our first child.
“It was a mewling little thing, all long limbs and spine and teeth. It kicked in its amniotic fluid between us, nipping at our fingers as we stroked it and knew the fulfillment of parentage. This was ours, the combining of us brought forth into existence, and as it found its feet we pledged ourselves to each other, for all of eternity and beyond.
“And now someone has taken her, trapped her on your plane of existence, and I need you to bring my love back to me.”