Fanfiction: Joy on Earth
Universe: G1 cartoon. Connected to Know the Mystery.
Rated: PG-13 for xenosexuality and the notion of sensual spirituality.
Pairing: Hound/Womanly Deity.
Author's Note: If you recognize it from Transformers canon, it belongs to people other than me. If you recognize the rest, I say 'Blessed be thou!' and give all credit to the late Doreen Valiente. A version of this was originally offered as an entry at Mecha Erotica during the 2008 anniversary challenge. 2230 words.
Hound.
Hound heard his name, or rather, he thought he heard his name. His radio was silent as it had been all afternoon since Trailbreaker received the summons back to the Ark. His audio receptors registered the sounds of the birds and the animals, a deer running through the forest as the sun set, the wind in the leaves of the trees near where he sat. After Trailbreaker left him for the emergency mission, he completed the circuit of their patrol route alone. He decided to mix it up a little then, thinking Prowl will never know, and let his wheels take him through the countryside and past all his favorite parts of northwestern Oregon, ending up at the ocean.
Hound was relieved that he was not also needed back at the Ark: had it been an all-out battle, or a search and rescue mission, both of them would have been recalled from their patrol. Hound reasoned the emergency was relatively minor and there was a planned response that required Trailbreaker's unique ability to create and manipulate force fields.
Hound?
Again, he heard it. There was no sentient being nearby to have spoken his name. There was a group of humans gathered several hundred meters from him down the shore, but they were occupied with a bonfire. It's just imagination, he decided, and went back to his study of the setting sun. He enjoyed the variety of Earth: he could sit in his jeep mode on the coast, within view of craggy rocks to the north, a long sandy stretch south, open water westward providing a spectacular sunset, and the shadows between trees behind him. He had driven up the sandbar from a park service trail a few breems past, deciding he'd watch the last of the sunset. The humans, who must have taken the same service road earlier and turned south from its end, paid him no mind at all. Women must find safety in numbers, he thought, counting over ten of them.
This evening the moon closely followed the sun: he found himself fascinated by the tiny crescent over the water. It would set in minutes. The last rays of the sun faded.
The deer had changed course and was running toward the water; he heard it approaching through the trees. Other animals were chasing it, he could make them out now, too.
Dogs, he thought with a hint of disgust. For all that he enjoyed Earth more than most of the other Autobots did, he was having trouble accepting that nearly every living thing on the planet lived by killing other living things. He could understand plant-eaters: most of them only damaged plants in eating them, not much worse than how he damaged the plants he drove over-
Hound!
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of his name again. No, he decided, I didn't hear it! That was purely in my processor! His audio receptors passed no signal to his CPU, his name registered directly.
Hound! the voice, or rather, the signal that should have been generated by a voice, insisted. Join the hunt!
The deer - a buck - ran by him in an arc, coming only far enough out of the trees that he didn't have to continue dodging them. He is running from me, passed his processor, yet I mean him no harm-
Join the hunt!
The compulsion of the words started his engine. Hound chose not to roll forward. The deer disappeared back into the woods just as the pack of hunting hounds broke free of the trees on his trail. They seemed to have lost the scent momentarily and spread out along the forest's edge, sniffing among all the plants there. It cost them valuable seconds, Hound was sure, and in his spark he cheered on the running buck, wishing the animal to live another night. The light dimmed fractionally and the shadows deepened. The sliver of moon stood out starkly against the sky.
The canines were not interested in Hound, as if they did not see him there. Most dogs he had encountered found his tires fascinating because of the traces they picked up from where he'd rolled since his last wash. He had only a moment to ponder on that oddity, and the unfamiliar energy field of these particular dogs, before his sensors were assaulted by a greater one.
Hound? rang again through his mind, more curious now than commanding. His primary sensors detected no other sentient being in his vicinity. Yet all his circuits, every minor system, sang with energy that grew by the astrosecond. The humans had started to chant softly while he monitored the progress of the stag and his pursuers.
He primed his weapons but did not transform, consciously in view of the people. Just because they aren't actively watching me doesn't mean they don't see me. He thoroughly scanned the area.
A dog howled: it had found the point where the deer reentered the treeline. The chase resumed.
What manner of hound are you?
His energy field was brushed purposely, as if a field were directed past his, questioning.
The Other tested his field a second time, more gently, just as his optical sensors detected movement in the trees from the path the deer and the dogs had followed. He trained his senses there in the twilight.
"Hound is my name," he vocalized neutrally at low volume, "not my type."
That Other emerged from the shadows then, and he identified the shape of a young woman. Somehow, She was the source of the disturbance of his field and the energy signature his sensors found. He was certain that She was also the source of the signal in his CPU. Despite having nothing on which to base his decision, he placed his weaponry in stand-by.
You are not of the Earth, She said as She approached, not a Creation I expected to encounter here.
Hound felt Her field resonate with his. Or did his shift to match Hers?
He was transfixed there, and suddenly felt confined by his beloved alt-mode.
She agreed: he could feel encouragement to transform as a palpable message from Her before She spoke again. As a sign that you are really free, you shall be naked in your rites.
Before the last word registered in his mind, he was in his primary mode, bipedal and unarmed, before Her.
Looking back on it later, he would be filled with questions, but in that moment, it made perfect sense that a woman stood eye-to-eye with him in the sunset. The baying of the hunting pack receded through the trees. Twilight descended on them, but She stood out to his optics as if She were in a spotlight.
"I-," he started, faltered, wanting to explain himself somehow, "I- don't wear anything. To 'be naked' has no meaning for me." He felt oddly conscious of the limits of his plating and field, and Her presence near him. She was herself clothed, wearing a short, thin dress unlike anything in the cultures of Earth he had observed.
The sense of being unarmed hit him, and the sense of exposure outside his alt-mode, and he knew that his statement was wrong.
She spoke to him again, filling his sensors, occupying every bit on every data stream: Mine is Ecstasy of the Spirit...
Hound loved humans in general, but hadn't ever been attracted by the particular beauty of a woman before, always more interested in the wild places. He wanted to experience, as humans said they could, the innocence of nature: wind and sky and water and earth. He was perhaps the only mech in the Ark who missed nothing about Cybertron, built up and destroyed, rebuilt and civilized and beaten down again as it had been. She rested Her hands on his shoulders, and Her forehead against his.
That intimate Cybertronian gesture shocked and soothed him. Her field permeated his frame, merging with his own electromagnetic presence. He felt it as a balm, filling in cracks and gaps in his spark he hadn't even realized were there. Her dark eyes reflected the light of his optics in glints of blue. He knew without processing it that She read his every memory in that moment. He felt Her presence in his data banks, sorting, and was not alarmed: he could sense Her intent, and track the movement of every data bit. Images, sensory memories, the most droll history file, every record of Cybertron ravaged by war were relegated to archive files, replaced in immediacy by how it was in its prime, before he was sparked. Sense memories of beauty he never experienced, happy eras he never knew were suddenly his to enjoy, his to cherish, as real as the beginning of his patrol that afternoon with Trailbreaker.
He rested his hands on Her hips, finding them proportioned perfectly for his grasp. Her olive skin was firm and smooth, warm and alive; he could feel Her pulsing systems through that touch, and it made him acutely aware of Her hands on his plating, of the pulse of his pumps and the flicker of his spark. Her dark hair swirled against his neck and cheek in the light ocean breeze.
Somewhere in his processors he noted that not only was this individual taller than any human on record, but ran hotter, too: the few passengers he'd ever had always had core temperatures tens of degrees below his where Hers matched it.
...and Mine also is Joy on Earth...
Hound lost all sense of their surroundings, of the rocks beneath his feet, the stars over his head and the waves crashing behind him as the tide came in. She filled every sensor with the feel of Her body, the sound of their systems, the tingle of their merged fields, the smell of musk and willow. There isn't any willow within a kilometer of here, slipped through his mind, there and gone. His optics could see only Her eyes and the depth of knowledge and care in them. She kissed him, and he registered every taste he'd ever had, and knew the joy of each for the first time: good and bad, sweet high grade and bitter emergency rations.
...for My Law is Love unto All Beings.
One of the dogs howled in the distance.
"How is it Love unto All Beings if you drive those canines to kill that deer?" he asked. If he really wanted to step away from Her, he felt he could, but merely holding his head back a few degrees gave him all the distance he wanted.
Rather than answer verbally, She showed him.
Suddenly, he had the sense of movement, of being out of his frame, disconnected from sensors and power supplies. He did not feel the movement of air, he was the movement of air; he did not see light, he was light; he did not hear the dogs chasing the buck through the branches, he was the pack, and he was the deer.
He felt anxiety and excitement, dread and hope, desperation and desire.
He knew, in that moment, and understood. If the hunters fail to catch their prey this run, it will be that much harder to catch the next prey they start because they will be down that much more energy. If the prey fails to elude them this run, his life is forfeit. If the hunters choose their prey well, an aged or less healthful animal, then they benefit and the prey's life ends quickly, even if not painlessly or cleanly; if the hunters choose their prey poorly, the deer in his prime escapes to run another day.
From Me All Things Proceed, and Unto Me All Things Must Return.
Her words filled him with peace and he was back within himself, systems running both stronger and more efficiently than normal.
He was back on the Oregon coast, bathed in starlight and salt air.
He was back in the presence of the Entity who called his name without sound or transmission.
Hound hugged Her form to his, and She responded as if She knew what a mechanical being would find pleasant. She was solid; She was strong; She was full of energy. She stimulated all of his senses in the most enjoyable way, and somehow he knew how to reciprocate.
Hound had no sense of how long She graced him with Her presence, in his arms, his mind, and his spark, until it began to leave him. The time felt forever, yet it was fleeting.
For all that you are not one of my hounds, you are mine.
"Aye, Lady," he answered, feeling Her presence lessen. He thought of a hundred questions, but had time to ask only one. He hoped the answer would tell him everything: "How might I find you, call you, speak of you?"
Find me in every wild place of Earth, and in every place that friends meet, even your Ark, still in his mind, even as the energy that was Her true essence faded to background. She left a change, a measure of Herself in his spark. Queen of Heaven, am I called, and Queen of Hell. They are the same. Tonight, I am Artemis, and Diana: those who invoked me use them interchangeably. You would do well to continue to speak of me as Primus.