Chapter 3 - The Sylph
1473 Words
The moment the Sylph touched his chest, Ellis understood what Prasad had meant by disorientation.
His feet left the floor. Not slowly, like floating in water. Suddenly, like someone had cut the strings. His stomach lurched, his arms flailed, and then he was tumbling through white space, completely weightless, completely out of control.
The Sylph laughed. The sound vibrated through his bones.
“You humans,” she said, circling him like a ribbon of smoke. “So attached to the ground.”
Ellis spun head over heels. He grabbed at empty air. “A little warning—”
“No.”
She struck him in the chest — not hard, but with enough force to send him pinwheeling across the chamber. He slammed into the curved white wall, bounced off, and careened toward the opposite side. Before he hit, she caught him. Her body was cool and insubstantial, like being held by a gentle wind.
She pressed herself against him. His paper-thin clothes meant nothing. He could feel every shift of her form — now solid, now gaseous, now something in between.
“You’re here to collect,” she murmured against his neck. Her voice had dropped an octave. Less wind chimes now. More thunder, far away. “So collect.”
Ellis had expected to be in control. He was a scientist, after all. This was data collection. A procedure. He would observe, participate, and document.
The Sylph had other plans.
She rolled them both through the air, a slow spiral that made the white room blur into a smear. His back arched involuntarily. Her hands — if they were hands — traced his ribs, his stomach, the inside of his thighs. Each touch was cold at first, then warm, then hot.
“You feel like—” he started.
“Like what?”
“Like weather.”
She laughed again, and this time the laugh became a gasp, and the gasp became a kiss. Her mouth had no tongue, no teeth, just pressure and temperature and the taste of ozone before a lightning strike.
Ellis grabbed at her. His hands passed through her shoulders, then caught at her waist, then slipped again. She was there and not there, solid when he pushed, vapor when he gripped.
“Stop trying to hold me,” she said. “Let me hold you.”
She wrapped around him from every direction at once. He was inside her. She was inside him. The distinction blurred. His lungs filled with air that tasted like her. His skin tingled where she touched. His heart pounded against his ribs, and he felt her heartbeat — did Sylphs have hearts? — echo in response.
The first orgasm came without warning.
Ellis had experienced orgasm maybe ten thousand times in his life. Alone, with partners, quick ones in bathroom stalls, long ones in expensive hotel rooms. He thought he understood the shape of it. The build. The peak. The fall.
This was none of those things.
This was a vertical drop from a great height. This was the moment before a car crash, stretched into an hour. This was every nerve ending in his body firing at once, then firing again, then forgetting how to stop.
He screamed. Or maybe he laughed. He couldn't tell the difference anymore.
The Sylph tightened around him. Her form solidified — breasts against his chest, hips against his hips, legs tangled with his legs. For one impossible second, she looked almost human. A woman with pale skin and dark hair and eyes the color of a winter sky.
Then she opened her mouth and breathed into him.
Cold air flooded his throat, his lungs, his blood. He felt it in his fingertips. His toes. The back of his eyeballs. The cold became heat. The heat became pressure. The pressure became a second orgasm, still rising while the first one hadn't finished falling.
“Again,” she whispered.
“I can't—”
“Again.”
She rolled them. He lost track of up and down. The white walls were the floor, the ceiling, the horizon. He was everywhere and nowhere. His body was a instrument she was playing, and she knew exactly which keys to press.
The second orgasm crashed into him while the first one was still shuddering through his spine. Then a third, stacked on top like waves in a storm. Then a fourth that started in his stomach and radiated outward until his fingers cramped from clenching empty air.
Ellis stopped trying to count.
Time became meaningless. The chamber had no windows, no clocks, no markers. He existed in a white eternity, wrapped in a creature made of wind, coming apart and reassembling over and over.
At some point — ten minutes in? an hour? — she slowed.
“You’re still conscious,” she said. She sounded almost impressed. “Most humans pass out after the third.”
Ellis tried to speak. His throat was raw. “How many… have there been?”
“Seven.”
“Seven.” He laughed weakly. “That's a record?”
“For a first time? Yes.” She pulled back slightly. Her form was more solid now, almost fully human-shaped. She looked down at him with something like curiosity. “You're not just enduring. You're feeling. Most of them try to fight it.”
“Why would I fight it?”
The Sylph tilted her head. The gesture was eerily human. “Because pleasure is frightening. Especially this much.”
Ellis considered that. He was floating in a dead scientist's body, having just experienced seven consecutive orgasms at the hands — if she had hands — of an air elemental. He should have been terrified. His heart should have exploded. His mind should have shattered.
Instead, he felt clear. Sharp. Like someone had cleaned a dirty window in his brain.
“I'm not afraid,” he said. And meant it.
The Sylph smiled. It was the first time he'd seen her make an expression he could read. “Good. Then you might survive the others.”
She kissed him again, softer this time. Her lips were almost warm.
“One more,” she said. “For the sample.”
“What sample?”
“You'll see.”
She pressed her forehead against his. Her skin was cool. Her breath was mint and lightning. And then she pushed — not physically, but somehow deeper — and Ellis felt something inside him unlock.
The eighth orgasm was different from the others. Less explosive. More tidal. It rose slowly, filled every corner of his body, and then stayed there, lapping at the edges of his consciousness like a sea that had decided not to retreat.
He floated in it. Drifted. Let it carry him.
When he opened his eyes again, he was lying on the floor of the chamber. The white floor. Solid. Stationary. Gravity had returned.
The Sylph was gone.
In her place, floating in the air above his chest, was a small glass vial. It was filled with a shimmering liquid that shifted between silver and clear, never settling on one color. A label on the side read: SYLPH – PROCREATION FLUID – VIABLE.
Ellis picked it up. The vial was warm.
The door hissed open. Prasad stood in the doorway, holding a tablet.
“Eight minutes,” she said. “You lasted eight minutes. Subject 004 managed four on his first try.”
Ellis sat up slowly. His muscles ached, but not painfully. More like the pleasant soreness after a long run. “How do you feel?” Prasad asked.
He thought about it. The pressure in his ears was gone. His lungs felt larger, somehow. More elastic. He took a deep breath and noticed that the air tasted different. Richer.
“I feel…” He paused. “Lighter.”
Prasad made a note on her tablet. “That's the pressure tolerance upgrade. Your vascular system is already adapting. We'll run tests in an hour.” She nodded at the vial in his hand. “Bring that. Harsh will want to log it personally.”
Ellis stood. His legs held. He walked toward the door, then stopped.
“The Sylph,” he said. “Is she… okay?”
Prasad raised an eyebrow. “She's sleeping. Sylphs need rest after mating. She'll be hungry when she wakes up.”
“Hungry for what?”
“Wind. Storms. The usual.” Prasad gestured impatiently. “Come on. You have six more specimens this week, and the Gorgon doesn't like to wait.”
Ellis stepped into the corridor. Behind him, the chamber door closed with a soft click. He didn't look back.
He didn't need to. He could still feel the Sylph's breath on his skin, and he suspected he would feel it for a very long time.
- Writer
