The Great Eye Speaketh!

Natsumi took a deep breath. Inhale and slow exhale. She could contain this and keep herself from overflowing with energy. She needed a way to distract herself. Yeah, that was the ticket. The thing in front of her. The giant eyeball. She searched her own memories between each breath.

“Do I…” she mused. “Know what this crazy thing even is?” She inhaled. In the depth of space? There was no air in space she told herself. No, no, no. She shook her head. “Okay… remember… This is some wacky thing in Catherine’s mind. It’s not real.” She pronounced it aloud in the hopes that the words would wake her from this strange vision.

“Eye resent that, child!” a woman’s voice echoed into the fore of Natsumi’s thoughts. The voice rattled her brain and Natsumi inhaled deeply. Her breathing stuttered as she exhaled. She tightened her fists.

The voice continued in a husky tone, enunciating each word with dramatic flair and a real jubilation for poetics and speech. “Eye am real! Those memories are mine! And trust that beyond the speed and distance of light I doth exist… Well, presently in this ocular form.”

“Nice try mind voice,” Natsumi said trying to repress the skull-shaking voice. “Pretend I don’t hear,” she commanded of herself. “Ignore the big space eye.”

“No, no. You shan’t ignore me. Iris too much to chance this cosmic tryst.”

The goofy word usage broke Natsumi from her own concentration. She cracked a small smile but bit her lip to keep her mirth from spreading. “Wha? Hold up Shakespeare-in-the-park, what do you mean 'cosmic tryst?'” This was all still in Catherine’s mind. Right? “…And are you punning at me??”

“Eye, my child! You’re quite the pupil of literature. Oh such fun we’ll have trading bards!”

“You mean ‘barbs’… oh, oh no. We’re not gonna do that. Who are you?” Before she allowed the great space eye to speak Natsumi added, “And no more puns!”

In the recess of her mind, a giant huff blew like a gale threatening to make her lose composure, but she tightened her fists and held it together.

“Where is your vitreous humor, child? Very well, I am… (ah! ‘Twas not a pun that time, you see…) I. Am. The Goddess of all Creation. I go by many names, but you may address me as—“

“For real? You made all of this junk out here?”

“Ye, yes, for real. Please refrain from referring to the entirety of everything as ‘all this junk out here.’ Though it may not look it, eye am quite sensitive...”

Then those arms that she saw. The blackhole. Those were her memories? Than what did this ocular planet have to do with Catherine? “...What's your deal with Mommy Dom-me?”

“Mommy Dom-me? A fowl play of words, my chick. She and Eye, we are but two birds of a feather. She, no sheep; I, no shepard, but rather we, a flock, together.”

The punning was causing cracks in Natsumi’s own concentration. “Is this a bad time to mention that I don't care for Will-eye-am Shakespeare?” It was contagious. She found herself punning too. “Why am I here?”

“Oh, that's quite a dirty bit of word play!” The eyeball mused. “Why are you here? This I can answer! In the beginning, there was the fire and the light, and...” she interrupted herself. “Er... Oh, perhaps I am delivering the wrong Billy of goods. Since you are artless, I trust there was no existential, metatextual query made on your behalf.”

If anything the eyeball’s groan-worth punning was bring her down from the high Catherine’s touch had given her. There was nothing better than flat comedy to bring her back to a place of physical and mental stability.

“Yes, La Dominatrice, has summoned me to steel your wits. Though you fail to lend me your ears, shall I forthwith lend you my strength?”

“I'm not weak. I... might need some sleep. Nothing a five hour energy drink can fix, ya know?”

“You neither hath the luxury of time nor this libation. If I were not this sphere, perhaps I could puppet you to triumph. In my kindness, and with my daughter's blessing I shall lend you her service.”

“Daughter?”

“Ah, behind you.”

“Oh crap! That space birb!” Natsumi gasped and glanced over her shoulder. In trying to keep herself together and talking with the dumb punny eye, she forgot about the space bird soaring towards her (as only one might soaring through the vacuum of space).

“Yes, my first birb, eldest and most diligent, a rage against the dying light.”

Fire whipped around Natsumi but the heat didn’t touch her. The wings of the giant bird soared over her. The creature turned in a gentle and long arc across the starlit cosmos and circled about Natsumi like a vulture. She wriggled unable to really gain any purchase with the emptiness of space to escape the bird and eye. She watched, defeated, as the bird spiraled in towards, but before it touched her, the visage of the bird disappeared. She watched as the wings flamed out and the fire transformed into the shape of a woman more like a space mermaid with a long flickering candle for her hair.

Natsumi stared for a beat, breathless at her sight. “Hey,” she said at a last.

“Hello,” the space mermaid said with a curt intonation in her voice.

“Is your mom always like this?” Natsumi didn’t know what to ask her, but figured it was good enough to gauge what she was like.

“Always,” the cosmic maiden answered with the same bluntness.

Natsumi’s mind rattled. The great eye spoke. “How rude! Ah-hem!”

The fiery mermaid left a trail of sparkles and embers as she circled about examining Natsumi, and Natsumi gaze followed her. In her mind she was consumed with hundreds of questions that were squashing out her former ideas about whether this was a real place or not.

“My daughter,” the eye said, her voice echoing through Natsumi. “Take good care of the young goddess, and I duly suspect she will return our kindness with interest and of our interest.” There was a bit of a laugh at the end of that statement. Natsumi wondered what the catch was. Oh, it was certainly there in the vaguest of terms, and she had a feeling this would not be the last “cosmic tryst.”

“Yes mother,” the maiden said.

“Well then, our time together was well spent, yes? Fare thee well, artless child. This is that such sweet sorrow, the pleasure and the pain to preoccupy all my morrow. Now, away with thee! And from defeat, seize victory!” Natsumi rolled her eyes. “Your mom’s a lot.”

“This I am aware,” the maiden said with a less serious voice. Natsumi had a feeling that they were going to get along.