Hermaphroditus

Mother told me long ago that there are two types of love. The love one has for their parents, their creators, and the love between a man and a woman. It is most unadvised to get these two mixed up, she said. I didn't understand. What if you are both man and woman?

"Well, then. Just love yourself."

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She has abandoned me.

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I watch the boy in the courtyard of this village. He paces up and down, his male friends talking to him excitedly. I watch the girl in the bakery. She flutters her eyelashes, and giggles and converses in hushed, excitable tones with the older women. Is this love between a man and a woman? I study the male, I study the female. I want to feel what they feel.

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I learn to flutter my eyelashes and paint my lips. I learn how to carry a sword, to wield it. I learn to swagger and brag. I learn how to clean and cook. I learn to speak. I learn to how to be heard. I learn that modesty is desirable in women, and bravery is desirable in men. I must be all these things.

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Women are graceful. Their manners are refined and devious. Their bodies are soft and delicate, made to create and sustain life. Men are coarse. Their language is bawdy and honest. Their bodies are harder than women, with strange differences and odd behaviours. Women are the keyhole to their key, I think. A man has a key and a woman has a keyhole. I possess a key and a keyhole. How will anyone ever unlock me?

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I must hide what I have. I must hide either my manliness or my womanliness. Both at once seem to terrify them. Mother always said Illusion was my forte.

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I pretend to be a woman. I show only the slightest flesh, and mask my face in paint and veil. I dance, I laugh, I flutter my eyelashes, I gaze longingly at a boy I catch gazing at me. Other women ask if I'd laid with a man before. I am not sure what they mean, so I say no. They chuckle softly, tell me to go talk to the boy. I do so. He seems frightened of me, even though I have tried so hard. But it is a different fear.

I lay with the boy that night. He tells me it is his first time too. The feeling is so pleasurable, my mind becomes difficult to control. The rhythm is intoxicating and I smile and gasp. It reaches a peak, and the boy closes his eyes. When he opens them, he screams. Illusion is difficult to maintain under such duress. I silence the boy and dine on his body. I feel nothing, but I must continue hunting this way. This is...diverting.

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I try being a man. It is slightly more difficult. My breasts create small bumps in various attire, and it's draining to hide them for lengths of time with magic. Some of the other men harass me over my face, my slimmer frame. Some of the other men I catch gazing at me. Many of the women want to talk to me, give me gifts, ask me to walk with them, ask me to take them somewhere on horseback. I ask them why often. They laugh at my questions. They call me innocent. Pure. I have never been called pure before.

I bed a noble's daughter. Her flesh is like silk, her body is so warm. She moans my name as I spill inside of her. She is beautiful, with glistening eyes and soft lips. She tells me she loves me, that she wants to run away with me, away from her father. She kisses me again, but my hunger triumphs over my lust. I rip out her throat with my teeth, splattering us both in blood. The taste of it, the warmth of it, the sight of it on her breasts. I feel...something. Is this pleasure?

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I am above them. I see the same petty squabbles between men and women. I see the same atrocities they commit on each other, again and again and again. I grow tired of their love. My body is a dumping ground for it. It is useful, however. Some of them will gift me anything for the use of it, for the pleasure of it.

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I suppose I shall only love myself.