Don’t Bite the Sun by Tanith Lee (little red riding hood ebook free .TXT) 📕

or a long rest in a mind-darkening twilight, after which the cycle begins again, with all past memories wiped clean. So irrevocable, so unavoidable, so terrible, so dull, so doomed to a tragedy that was even too small, too dull, too doomed to be a tragedy at all. Don’t bite the sun, you’ll burn your mouth. I’d bitten ceaselessly, hopelessly, and I was burned, I was burned. I was a cinder.

I knew what was happening to me, and repeated aloud:

“The pet has officially cut me out of its circle.” After which I knew I had obeyed the rules and was free to weep.

PART FIVE

1

I lay around home for almost a tenth of a vrek, in a kind of stupor. I must have cried most of the time. When I started to come out of it, the first thing I noticed was how sore my nose and eyes were, and how inflamed my cheeks were where the tears had gone on and on streaming down. So I had a soothing face-salve pack, and soothing eye-lotion pads, and in about twenty splits I looked normal again, at least. Then this pop-pop came from the porch signal, and I switched on the image, and there was this derisann male, with long honey-colored hair and mustache, and a lovely, tawny, athletically slim body.

“Hergal?” I asked.

“It’s me, dear,” said this beautifully modulated voice, and that “dear” told me it couldn’t be anyone else but Hatta.

“H-Hatta?”

“Yes, dear,” said beautiful, groshing Hatta. “I heard all about it. I’m so sorry. Can I come in?”

And I activated the door and went down to meet him. We met in a goldish sort of hall, and he looked so derisann and sad for me that I just grabbed him and started howling my eyes out again. He was so good. He’s always so sweet really, Hatta is, I think he’s compulsively kind.

He put me on a couch and turned on the lullaby rhythm and the most soothing upper-tonal music he could find, and then he sat and rocked me gently in his lovely arms.

When I got a bit better, he mopped me up. I just sat and stared at him as he poured me fire-and-ice, and fed me small sugar grapes.

“You’re so wonderful, Hatta,” I said, and his hands trembled. “Oh Hatta,” I said, “let’s get married. Now.”

But he made me lie down for forty splits before he’d even let me say it again. Then he said, very softly:

“Are you sure, ooma? Are you?”

“Oh, Hatta,” I said, “don’t be silly. How could I possibly object?”

He kind of shook his head, but he sat and waited quite patiently as I had another face pack and got ready, and then we went out to his rented bird-plane, and shot off to the Ivory Dome. We promised to have love exclusively for the afternoon, and to come back and pay afterward as well, as you have to if you’re inside the annulment period.

Then we went to one of the underwater caves, green and shells and stuff, and had the most glorious love. I think when you’re shaky and recovering from something, you receive better. Anyway, it was groshing.

“Oh, Hatta,” I sighed afterward.

But he turned away.

“Oh Hatta, what’s wrong?” I asked. I got up and went around to the other side of the synthetic seaweed couch, and he was lying there, his eyes shut, great tears rolling down his face now. “Hatta, Hatta,” I implored, “ooma, what is it?”

“Can’t you see,” he asked softly, “how useless it all is?”

“What?” I said. “I thought you wanted me to marry you. I don’t understand.”

“No,” he said, “you don’t, do you?”

“But I loved every minute,” I said. “Didn’t you?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, “I loved having you, my ooma, and you loved having my body, my new, unreal joke of a body. I loved you, and you loved the shell of me.”

“Oh Hatta,” I said.

We were silent for a long while.

“I love you,” he said then.

“I know,” I said.

“And you love my body,” he said.

“Yes,” I said “and, Hatta, I think you’re so terribly nice and derisann and—”

“And you don’t love me, do you? Just the outside.”

“Yes,” I said.

And he wept silently.

And I got tosky again.

“Hatta!” I screamed at him. “Look, I just can’t stand this on top of everything else. I’m in such a chaos, I can’t cope with your chaos as well. Really, I’m sorry, but if you don’t stop I’ll go zaradann.”

He apologized, got up, said he’d pay the other half of the marriage-fee, and went away, leaving me the bird-plane.

And when I saw him next, he had four arms and scales. Poor, poor Hatta. If only he could learn to hate.

2

I booked Sense Distortion after the episode with Hatta. I think word of my unusually hysterical state had been passed on to the Committee, because I didn’t have to wait long. They even sent a little blue-and-pink sky-ship for me, all merry and gay and so on, and they played merry and gay and so on music to go with it.

“Ah yes,” they said when they saw me, and led me away by the hand.

So I lay down in the soft furry cubicle and waited to become a flower, and my last thought, I recollect, was, Where did this fur come from, a desert animal? And I vowed to dismantle the fur room at home.

And then I was in this still, morning forest with a pale sky, and I was a tall plant, gently waving and growing, my mind full of plant thoughts, receiving sunshine and feeling my molecules transmute it into green cells. This was very soothing. I was a flower for ages, and it should have done me good. After being a flower, I became a mountain, which was rather grand. I think I felt a bit like Assule, actually. Certainly I thought the sort of thoughts I bet he did. I am ancient and enduring, I am a god-thing, I am eternity. I ignored the