Continued, The Arcane Arts
From: Rawlins.T.M
To: Storer.Ellsbeth
Subject: Obscuration
Ellsbeth,
It has been mere moments since you left my office, and already, embarrassingly, I am pulled away from work that is overdue and instead find myself writing to you.
Some voice in my mind—pride, fear, common sense—tells me I ought to preserve dignity and wait until morning to send you a message, mild in its flirtation and measured in its tone.
But other voices are louder, and there seems little point in denying what is patently obvious: I want you.
To a degree I cannot explain or even understand.
So I will instead turn to the topic that supposedly brought you here this afternoon, which we somehow never quite got around to: obscuration.
(Don’t worry, I will come back around to the other subject.) To understand obscuration, you need to start with the most fundamental question.
What is it? Mysterious, certainly. A manipulation of the subtle forces that guide human thought and behavior.
The unconscious, as Freud would have called it.
Science gives us tools to understand some of those forces—psychology, biology, sociology, and more.
We know that every thought and feeling and choice arises from the complex interplay of countless factors.
Years ago, I came to believe that obscuration was effectively impossible.
Because our fates are written by deterministic forces, and we don’t even understand how those forces act upon ourselves, much less anyone else.
Obscuration, therefore, is like trying to play a symphony without any sheet music, on an instrument you can’t even see.
But today, I think otherwise. For two reasons. One is simply you. A force of nature, with the right combination of talent and intelligence and youthful audacity to unlock its secrets.
The second is because I am, at this moment, compelled to admit to the susceptibility and flexibility of the will.
Whatever just happened between us demonstrates how the most staunch rational resistance can be melted away by ineffable forces we cannot explain, whether those are magical or merely what we call chemistry.
I certainly did not intend for any of this.
Yet here I am, marveling at how desire can become a prism, perversely shifting my perception; the familiar office around me is warped through the lens of want.
I will never again see my office chair without the glorious image of your thighs opening upon it, while every surface around me seems notable chiefly for the absence of you.
The desk is littered with books and papers, when the only thing that belongs there is your body, covered by nothing except my own.
The bookshelf, strangely, looks like it was designed to press you up against it, to pin your wrists to the wood while I watch pain and pleasure intermingle in your eyes.
The familiar floor beneath my feet suddenly seems made for you to kneel while I cup your chin and incline your face to look up at me.
Even my own fingers, at the moment, seem notable for the utter lack of your skin they are squeezing.
They flex and tap the keyboard, wishing only to play, again, the instrument of your body, to trace a line from your lips down across the perfect terrain of your chest, and your belly, and beyond.
To tease you to the breaking point and then conquer you with a fingertip.
Have I gone too far already? It is only a fraction of the depravity that springs to my mind now that you have burrowed under the skin and unleashed something inside me.
I did not know this was possible at any age, least of all mine; I did not imagine anyone could feel this way, least of all me.
Yet here we are. Proving, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the power of mysterious forces that sway the will, as my own bends powerfully toward you.
Yours,
Rawlins