It was a beautiful day at the beach, and there was a beautiful girl on the beach. (Lots of them, actually.) Lucky beach.

The beautiful girl in question was hardly the only person there; it was hot out, and clear, with only a few puffy clouds in the sky, so of course people were streaming past in an effort to stake out a good spot or get their bikini'd bottoms in the water. A few passers-by noticed the sexy brunette with the pout and the laptop-- the sort who went to the beach particularly to notice such things, but certainly not a majority. Places like this, there was so much competition, you really shouldn't expect better, even if you are the Goddess of Love.

Amor, with sizzling curves clad in a red-and-white polka-dot bikini that would look sort of 1940's if it weren't, um, a bit skimpy, had parked her very fine derriere in a little red and white lounge chair, next to a red-and-white towel with a red-and-white beach bag on it. There was a little umbrella (can you guess what colours?) shading the towel, but not the Goddess, whose olive skin gleamed with the slight sweat-sheen of a woman who felt that sunscreen was for pansies. Her red-pedicured toes curled happily into the hot sand, and matching red fingernails-- stylishly short-- tapped ineffectively at the laptop. Even her lipstick was red, and unsmudged, but she wasn't the fussy sort of woman who didn't go in the water; her hair was damp, beach-wild. It had sand in it.

So, unfortunately, did the laptop, which was why she was pouting. It was one of those pretty little Macs, perched in the enviable position of the Goddess's lap, and it just purely refused to connect to the internet. She poked it. It sizzled.

"Oh, oh, oh!" Amor exclaimed, in the slightly-too-loud tones of a woman who hopes to be overheard, and offered assistance. "Why won't you work?"

Where the pouting girl in the cherry-spotted bikini touches it, the laptop grows unreasonably heated beneath her skin, though whether this is due to her mistreating the machine or its being in the hands of a real live goddess (and one adjudicating over something so scorching as love, no less) is up in the air.

The Mac shakes on her lap, like a wet dog after a bath, hissing out what could have been a sigh, had it come from a human larynx, along with a plume of bluish smoke. All in all, it looks ready to explode, but as abruptly as the fit started it settles down again.

Silt trickles from the nooks and crannies and the gaps between the keys, as the computer forcefully ejects the grit that’s gotten into its internal cavity. Regular laptop behaviour is rather bypassed from that point on. A second passes wherein nothing happens, before an innocuous window pops up of its own volition on the screen, with all the trappings and sophistication of the outdated DOS system.

Amor. Bold text scrolls fast across the black background, the cursor blinking significantly after the period, as if to imply the scolding tone of a supervisor. You know when you get sand in your bathers? It is unpleasant. Invest in a better casing, if you must be at the beach. What spoils you will only function so long as you care for it well. If words alone are any indication, the god of technology is aiming for sounding longsuffering.

The cursor tick-tick-ticks sullenly, and then concedes: A lot of coordination today. Is that shade of lipstick #dc143c or just plain #ff0000?

Amor shivers, slightly, at the heat, but doesn't quite startle or let go; she'd been expecting something to happen, and besides, she likes heat. When the thing starts going crazy and hissing and smoking, she watches it carefully, because it's a Mac, and she doesn't entirely trust it not to explode, although maybe vibration was a new feature? Usability, right, and if it had been vibrating more steadily and for a bit longer she'd have tilted her hips forward and made the best of a strange situation, but when it started to pour sand she was inclined to believe that her ploy had worked.

When the DOS box pops up on the screen, her eyes widen, and she smiles in triumph. She hunkers down a little further in her lounge chair, stretching long legs out in front of her and burying her tosies deeper into the sand, and takes a moment to enjoy being so chastised. She has to bite her bottom lip to keep from laughing, a charming little facial expression that actually doesn't get lipstick on her teeth, although it should. There are some perks to being a Goddess.

Now that she has the God of Technology on the line, what to say to him? Best to start out with common courtesy: 'Thanks! The poor thing must have itched!' was about to be her next line, but then he continued.

"Ooooh!" she coos with excitement. He'd noticed! She straightened her posture back up with a wiggle, and poised her manicured fingers over home row to reply.

Thanks! The poor thing must have itched! The colour is Lady Danger by MAC cosmetics, or Red Stallion on a painting palette. It usually only occurs naturally on human anatomy when they're extremely aroused or mortally wounded, and tends to be associated with blood and flowers. I could be more specific if only I could Google the hexadecimal codes, but I don't think I have a good connection here. Why don't you pop on over and see for yourself?

Hopefully that'd get Lynx here, if indeed it was Lynx she was talking to. Who else could it be? But, to be on the safe side-- and because she's Amor, for goodness' sake-- she adds:

a/s/l?

Like an itch just out of reach. He has always been too matter-of-fact to be misinterpreted by anyone who has spent time in his company, but that won’t stop Amor from digging for buried innuendo, if the fancy takes her. Very poetic. I’ve heard it referred to as Street Corner Red. They have come a long way from dusting their faces with lead; you have to give them that. ‘Them’ being the buckets and spades in the gods’ sandbox.

A foray of error messages are struck up out of the blue, agreeing with her verdict on the connection, and then are wiped out of existence by an invisible purge. I have an adequate view from here. That’s true, but the unfortunate laptop is labouring under the harm already done to it by the goddess, and the last feat it needs is to endure the energy output of another deity. For its sake, Lynx will come.

He arrives without ceremony, just a signal hopping from one place to the next, and does a good job of blocking her sun as he looms over her. Unlike Amor, he doesn’t have a single drop of charisma to his name, but he is magnetic nonetheless (in an admittedly less figurative way). It’s not every day one sees thunder on a sunny day at the beach, yet there he is. Stiff in the neck and broad in the shoulders, and Lynx even says, “You rang?”

The sunshine does a million tricks at once with him, bounces off the whiteness of his skin like it is reflective snow or filters straight through it with the ease of light through a windowpane. Bits of wire clasp together strands of hair the colour of bleached bone, and he’s indulged in a hint of the natural, having dark ‘roots’ show that he could whisk away at a moment’s notice.

The circus of charms dotting one of his ears from cartilage to lobe jangles, as he tilts his chin down to take in the length of her. It’s a routine observation, short of the appreciation an idol of lust deserves, confirming the adequacy of his prior view and that this really isn’t necessary. The only things beachy about him are the bare chest under the Day-Glo yellow parka (collar flipped up like some young punk) and his un-sandalled feet on the sand.

In response to her dash of chatroom lingo, he says, “Old enough, either/or, and everywhere. Expecting company?” Lynx nods at the shaded towel and its chivalrous umbrella.

Street corner red! She should maybe be scandalized, but she's too busy being wide-smile and tummy-tingles happy about the compliment-- poetic! Which, well, of course she was. There were books and books of poetry that fell under her category, and she adored them all.

Poetry, though, was probably not the best approach to take with Lynx. (And 'adequately' was hardly the proper way to regard Amor!) She was about to try to think up some other bait when, indeed, he popped into existence. Well, well! A man of many surprises.

She beams up at him, swelling her chest ever-so-slightly for his little up-and-down, even if he didn't mean it like that. He would, eventually, if she had her say in things. She looks at him, too, and takes her damn time about it; it's the kind of viscerally judgmental gaze that would make most anyone blush, and when she's done, her smile shifts to one all filled with sexual intent. Amor is one of those women who can pull off that Male Gaze, and she clearly likes what she sees.

She stands up, placing the laptop on her vacated seat, and the care she takes to do this gently is a little offering to the God. (The care she doesn't take to be modest about how she's bending is a different sort of offering.) Then she swivels on the ball of one foot-- a little dancers-move that ends up burying her toes in the sand again--and takes a long-legged strutty step towards Lynx. She stands real close, like she tends to do.

And, a tactile creature always, she puts one hand on each of his shoulders. She feels a bit of a spark-- she always does, being Amor, but this is stronger than usual. Whether it's from his electronic nature, or the way all her preferences are ringing little alarm-bells of happiness in her head, she isn't bothering to guess. She even leans in a little. Tilts, really, is a better word; she's got her back arched, and her hips are probably the closest part of her body to him.

None of this probably took nearly as long as it feels to Amor like it did; the seconds are all stretched out and wobbly to her, so when she answers his question, she thinks of it as 'finally' answering.

"I wouldn't dream of expecting anything," she purrs. "I was just staking my territory."

She doesn't quite wink, but it's implied.

"Speaking of which. I have a question. A technical question."

Useless to conjure up capillaries that are as touch-sensitive as they should be—Lynx wouldn’t be the type to blush if he had them. (His veins are bright though.) A conceit he shares with Amor is the total absence of personal space, and he can often be found edging ‘too close’ without realising, although his hips aren’t as prone to arching in greeting.

So when she slants toward him, it’s close sans the 'too', and he leans back purely to not have to prop his chin on the top of her head. His eyes are full of sleet as they meet hers, not unkind but barren, a kind of snowbank in her glomming hearth. Her eyes go so far as to be dizzying. Poetry does not fall under Lynx’s jurisdiction, but Amor has stars where there should be nothing but corneas, and when he is named after a constellation, a facet clicks there that safety recommends should not.

The eye contact skitters away, flits between the laptop, her manic hair, and then what he can see of her toes that aren’t swallowed by sand. Strictly speaking, there’s no inherent bashfulness about him, but he has to lower his lashes to glance down and that on its own can make him look boyish.

She talks of territory coyly; he can’t discern whether she means the spot her towel is laid out on, or she is staking some claim on the god himself. “Why the beach?” it makes him ask. “Hoping to give them fodder? A line about drinks, where we are, ‘sex on the’.”

When he hears the water gushing behind him, he doesn’t try to be attentive anymore, craning his neck to mull over the waves. Spread out as it is, the sea appeals to Lynx as much as a wanton lover might to Amor, and screams of pliability and its achievement as one giant conductor. He could wade in and broadcoast to the beach-goers.

Question time snaps his eyes back to her, even if it leaves his mind behind with the lapping tide, and now she is showing off with how well she can enunciate emphases, while his voice is drillingly singular in contrast. His lips part on the beginning of a reply, but he waits for her to continue. He’s sure ‘technical’ isn’t meant to be said as saucily as all that.

If Amor were a naturally more modest or insecure type, she'd be pleased that he hadn't flinched or backed up. As it is, it doesn't occur to her to question it, although the eye-contact intrigues her. The chilliness is no surprise-- she knows who she's dealing with, and it's one of the reasons she's so heavily invested in this nonsense-- but she does sense something unusual in the length and intensity of the stare; she's certain that he hadn't just settled down to wait for a prompt-- that something had clicked. Such a knowledge is her birthright-- beingright? She just wishes she knew what.

If she did, she'd capitalize on it. Perhaps she'd let them shine a little brighter, or shown him his own constellation, or Lyra, or Venus rising. Perhaps she quote lines from one of her favourite poems:

I mean a kind of awe
attending the spaces between us—
Not a roof but a field of stars.

There are so many lovely poems about stars.

But she hasn't a clue, so her eyes merely show bits and pieces of Deep Field South. Amor's version isn't the unbroken black seen by the naked human eye, nor the huge glowing radiance of the Hubble telescope's picture. Something in between: perhaps what a God might be able to see, if et tried. Amor reverts to this often, particularly when she's searching for something.

She's searching now--for some sign that her attempts have been successful, that the next ones will be-- and she finds it, in his lowered gaze, the sudden sharpness of his attention: there, gone, and there again. She's so pleased by him that she answers his question too quickly, too honestly: "If you like! But really, I just like the beach." It's rapidfire, a little bit staccato, but she's not making fun of him; she just tends to be expressive.

And then she bites her bottom lip; darn, what a waste of an opportunity for innuendo! But even Goddesses can get overexcited and misstep.

He doesn't look like he's going to offer to answer the question, but she doesn't need that kind of prompting. She kisses him.

Like everything she does, she does it with passion and style: pressed up against him, as much bodily contact as she can get, her arms snaking around to clutch at his back, her body hot to the touch. Her lips, her tongue-- skilled and hardly shy, but not particularly lustful. Testing, more than anything.

Her question had been, do you taste like batteries? You know, when you put a 9V battery against your tongue, and it tastes funny, and you get a little shock. She hadn't said she was actually going to ask the question.

A breeze ambles up from the seaside, and shucks fine particles of sand from him that have stuck there not from spending less than four minutes on the coast, but as a parallel to the grains that got into the (unforgotten) laptop. Trust that his empathy is limited to the spawn of production lines.

Multiple belts crisscross through the loops of his trousers, which are made of some despicable material that looks and smells but isn’t plastic, and don’t excel at keeping them up past the tops of his hipbones. The able-bodied Amor being right up against him is not helping. If she presses any closer, she’s going to feel the trinket piercing his concave navel along her own stomach.

Compromising, Lynx dodges her astronomical gaze to address her less troublesome eyebrows, “I don’t see the use of it now. In the future, when this stretch of sand is converted into glass, for which there are many uses, I could agree.” He sounds confident that this is the fate of the beach, as though he has already foreseen it happening and given his signature for the deconstruction. Or, as he will promote it, upgrade.

To catch him off his guard is nigh impossible, since he never puts it up in the first place. Amor demonstrates what she does best—kisses, and he lets her, stilling and not interrupting (which means no reciprocation) whatever it is she’s up to.

As for what Lynx tastes like, it’s a muddle of things, none of them irrefutably delectable. Phenol and diesel, new pennies fresh from the mint, and yes, a bit of the acid that goes into big, bad motorcycle batteries, as well as a seiche of electricity, which has a taste just as anything else does, but most people focus too much on the sense of touch to pick up on it.

On that note, the sparks in his throat are something else to reckon with, and ricochet when mingling with her saliva. His eyes stay open throughout to dissect her face, scrounging for her purpose in this.

At length, he tires of the bland novelty of a tongue in his mouth and threads ringed fingers through her hair. It’s hardly a romantic gesture; he uses it as leverage to tug her head back and break away from her lips. “You need your mouth free to ask your technical question. Don’t you?” Knowing Amor, she could cook up a floating voice box to do it for her, and this occurs to Lynx because he’s very familiar with multitasking.

((Sorry this took so long!))

Amor rather likes the idea of a beach turned to glass-- the image flashes in her mind for a moment: a swirling, hard crust, hot and glimmering in the sunlight, people skating down it in old ice skates, sparks shooting up from the blades-- but she isn't currently interested in distractions.

Amor is actually inexplicably fond of chemical smells and tastes; she always smiles to catch a passing whiff of laundry detergent or gasoline or fresh hair dye. She'd never put those things in her mouth, but she certainly isn't entirely displeased with Lynx's sharp combination of inorganic things (though she makes a small surprised noise when one of the sparks gets her). It's different, is all-- certainly nothing like a human animal. Lynx is seeming less and less to her like anything human at all.

With his fingers in her hair, she thinks she's gotten through to him, but no, he's pushing her away. She's used to being tugged around by her hair, really, and anyhow she's not the sort of woman to pout; instead, her lips are slightly parted, their glossy red sheen utterly undisturbed.

"My question was whether you tasted like licking a nine-volt battery" she explains, but she sounds distracted; her Deep Field South constellations are glowing ever more clearly as she scrutinizes his expression-- what there was of it. She's certain she's missing something, that there's some key (or command) that will cause the reactions that feeling creatures should show. But then, she never expected this to be easy.

"Didn't that feel nice?" she wants to know, but it's a superfluous question, so she changes her mind: "What would?"

A floating voice box was not something that had occurred to Amor, although she might like the idea if it did. It would be really unspeakably gory, all by itself, and a bit useless without a tongue and palate and teeth and so on to make words with-- it would float there and vibrate bloodily at him, probably. She'd need an entire floating severed head-- an interesting idea, but that's the sort of thing that causes no end of fuss from passersby.

Distractions are a daily struggle for Lynx, or at least for those around him who would like to garner his full attention. Even now, one hand still in her hair to keep her from going anywhere, he is trailing the other’s electric fingertips along her brown arm up to her shoulder, lazily seeing if he can raise the skin there in little pinpricks, as an example of the pilomotor reflex.

Technology’s eyes are frequently faraway, frequenting other frequencies, weighing innumerable options against each other without pausing for thought. Few of them have to do with her, but given how many there are, that’s no insult. This brand of thoughtless thoughtfulness results in something of a tenantless look, the kind that warrants a rap on the forehead and, ‘Hello, anybody home?’ but then those eyes could narrow, surprisingly sharp, at any second. They are silvered and on her lips now—because of the shine, for the record, which acts as a beacon, and he wonders if he has gotten some of it on him. He wouldn’t mind.

Odds are, Amor is more human than Lynx, or else does a better job of imitation, and on that count he is not altogether disinterested in her. His is the purely scientific interest of a researcher with a guinea pig—the world is the wheel—but he stays his hand because if he wants a plaything, the streets are teeming with them. A goddess is not just another day in the lab; he’s aware she is observing him as he does her.

And he is one of a minority of persons stupid or strong enough to ward her off. No doubt he is copping the jealousies and bad tempers of next to every hot-blooded mammal in the vicinity.

Taste? That’s a new one. “And the lady’s verdict?”

He cocks his head at her follow-up questions, curious all over again. “Why do you ask? Are you marketing something?” Questions for questions is a wobbly exchange rate, but it does sound like a campaign or survey to him, and he doesn’t want to have to tell her that there is too much subjectivity in ‘nice’ for him to process. Lynx can give her other people’s opinions, complete with statistics for the past twenty or so years, but the difficulty comes with shaping his own.