It’s nearing sunset when Lillith decides she’s done for today, and we gather our structures to return to the city. Lillith is nearly bouncing as we fly, and I have to laugh a little at her swooping, almost dance-like flight pattern. Her wings are really incredible. They use, well, light, to function. Regardless of what shape they take to an outside observer, whether leathery dragon wings or feathery angel wings, the underlying structure is that of hardened light. I don’t understand if it’s magic or just extremely advanced science, but the quote that keeps coming to mind is that one that I’ve heard so many times but can never remember where it's from… Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, or something like that. I find it completely fascinating.
When we get back to our room, Lillith gives Twila her gift. Twila seems quite content with it, and after a delicious supper of quesadillas and enchiladas from Lillith’s food replicator, we cuddle into bed together. Lillith bites her lip as she props herself up on one elbow, looking down at me.
“Wanting something, my beautiful girl?” I ask, gently tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She smiles, blushing sweetly as she ducks her chin.
“I, I was wondering if we could do some stuff tonight…” She says, looking adorably shy. I think I already know, but I ask anyway.
“Hmm? What stuff do you have in mind?” She giggles a little, leaning down to brush a kiss against my lips.
“Well, I’m in kinda an artsy mood tonight….” She trails off, and I wait patiently for her to gather her courage to finish what she was going to say. I raise my eyebrow at her when she doesn’t say anything for a bit.
“I was wondering if I could paint on you,” she says all in a rush. I grin at her and pull her down for another kiss.
“Of course. My body is at your disposal, my lovely painter.” I say, sitting up and removing my morphing belt. She bites her lip again as she watches and I can't help flexing for her, just to see her eyes widen in appreciation.
I am thankful that I didn't use all of my creation power yet today as I quickly form a metal sheet with rounded divots for paint, then fill them with various colors.
“How's that?” I ask, and Lillith claps her hands in excitement.
“Oh thank you!” She exclaims and I smile, laying on my stomach. “Could you make me a brush too?” She requests, and I form one with the flick of my fingers and hand it to her. I feel the cool wet paint as she starts spreading it over my back. Twila gets up and gets a cup of water, handing it to Lillith to rinse her brush between colors. I try to follow the feelings on my back with my mind, guessing at what she is painting on my back. A shiver runs over me when I feel her paintbrush dip even lower, smoothing wet paint over my butt cheeks and down my thighs. Twila giggles from behind me, watching Lillith work. I feel Lillith settle onto my calves as she begins doing what I can only assume is detail work on my thighs. Light flickers of the paintbrush, occasionally with her fingers rubbing or dabbing at my legs, make me want to squirm, but in a good way. Coupled with her weight on my lower legs, her body as naked as my own, I can’t stop myself from getting hard, but I do my best to ignore it. The last thing I need is to interrupt Lillith in the middle of one of the few things she has pushed through her shyness to ask for. I purr contentedly, letting the rhythm of her strokes draw me into a sleepy partial awareness. She moves up my back, doing more details I assume, since she’s no longer making large sweeping strokes. By the time she reaches my shoulder blades, I’m almost asleep. Lillith sits back on her heels and I turn my head to look at her. She giggles a little nervously.
“Do you want to see?” She asks, sounding shy again.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
“Yes, please. I’m confident that no matter what you did, I’ll love it since it’s from you.” I tell her, and she blushes. An image from her comes into my mind and I see my back covered in paint from her perspective. It’s an image of a sword, presumably my sword, painted along my spine, with a halo hovering above the handle of my sword, just below the base of my neck, and wings sprouting from either side of the sword. Underneath the tip of the sword, down my butt and thighs, are flames that look like they are licking at my skin. It’s incredibly cool, and I simply ‘stare’ at the image in my mind for a long time. Lillith bites her lip.
“So… what do you think?” She asks, and I look up at her with big eyes.
“This is incredible. I can’t believe you did this. It’s, woah. I would get a tattoo like this.” I say, and her face lights up.
“Really?” She asks, and I nod enthusiastically. She smiles, and I carefully push myself up onto my hands and knees, trying not to smudge the paint. But I know that once it dries, it will start flaking off and I don’t want it all over the bed either. I consider my options for a few moments. Before I say anything though, Lillith speaks.
“We should probably wash it off before it gets too dried on. I can always paint you again. Or, y’know, you could make a tattoo on yourself or something.” She comments, and my eyes widen at the possibilities. I never considered it, but she’s right that our shapeshifting could give us tattoos, or even different colors on our skin. It makes me smile, and I lean over and kiss her.
“Okay, we can wash it off.” I agree. “But I want your help tomorrow making it part of my skin.” She grins and hops off the bed. Her hands are covered in paint as well, so I turn on the shower for us. I can hear Twila in the other room cleaning up our paint supplies and I call a thank you over my shoulder. Lillith rinses her hands off in the hot spray of water, then begins washing my back. I watch the swirls of color going down the drain with a bit of sadness. Oh well though. At least tomorrow we can try it again.
After the shower we head to bed, the girls cuddling on either side of me. I feel Twila lean over me and kiss Lillith before both girls settle onto my shoulders. I wrap my arms around them and plant a kiss on each of their foreheads before we drift off to sleep.
When I wake, I do a careful rundown of my body, testing my various muscle groups with Alastor’s help. I enjoy feeling everything working correctly. I slip out of bed and smile as Lillith cuddles closer to Twila once I’m out from between them. She barely wakes up, just enough to feel chilled and want more cuddles it seems. I blow Lillith a kiss and slip outside, looking for my next meal.
It doesn’t take long to find where Ada’s uncles live. I choose one at random and drink my fill, then slip back out. He never even wakes up, and I’m back with Lillith and Twila before long.
When they wake up several hours later, Lillith gets breakfast for us, then we head back to the river.
Lillith and I spend the morning making more structures, then head back to our rooms. Twila isn’t there when we return, but Lillith and I start experimenting with turning our skin different colors. I thought I’d just be able to envision an image and have it appear, but my first try resulted in blotchy colors in the vague shapes I imagined, nothing like an image. It didn’t help that my natural skin color took over in places, making it even more fragmented that it was to start. Lillith is actually a little better at it than I am. She says she had some practice when she first arrived back on Earth changing her appearance and such, and the way she explains it, it's all the same ability, just applied differently. It's the first ability that doesn't come perfectly naturally to me. I’m eventually able to make my arm patterned in a way that actually makes sense. I found that it's much easier to change my overall skin tone than it is to make patterns or pictures. And the bigger and less detailed the image is, the easier. It’s not that it's exhausting exactly, just that I can’t make it do what I want when I want. It almost fights me in a way none of my other abilities have. Luckily, it doesn't take much latent power to keep it going once the image is set. It's just difficult to get the image to set the way I want it. Especially the finer details.
It takes most of the afternoon before I can make the outline of a sword appear on my arm with some orange flames near the bottom. I can’t do the wings yet, the feather details are too much. But I’m still happy with my progress. Hopefully, another day or two will be enough to create the full image. It’ll be tricky to get it onto my back since I can't see what I'm doing but I’m sure Lillith will help me. But I’m done experimenting for now. Lillith cuddles up close to me and fuck I can’t resist those eyes. I kiss her hair and then gently tip her head back so I can kiss her on the mouth. She melts into me and we cuddle together, kissing gently. She jumps when the door opens, and I look over to see Twila coming inside. I smile and reach out an arm to her. She comes over and cuddles with Lillith and I.