Éloa opened Yoel's bedroom door while holding a breakfast tray for him. He was still asleep, and she decided to watch him for a while before waking him up. She felt like his rhythmic slow breathing was reciting a collection of poems for her. A sad, tender look came over her face when she remembered that he is a path that leads to unpredictability. A path that if she decides to take, the unknown residing within her future will cause her sanity's tragic demise. Her mechanical body started trembling for repose. But how can she rest if she was not created to feel it? How can she rest when perturbation and distress are piling over her?
Yoel yawned and stretched himself on the bed. He opened one eye squinting, trying to focus on her.
"Good morning, did you sleep well?" She put his breakfast tray down on the bedside table.
"Why did not one of my Robutlers bring me breakfast?" Rearranging the pillows behind him for support, he sat upright in the bed and studied the exquisite breakfast of salmon, two duck eggs, Oscetra caviar, and a mini brioche.
"Because I needed to talk to you. I have something very important to ask you." She sat next to him on the bed.
"Let me take a shower first." She felt the soft caress of his lips as he kissed her cheek before jumping out of bed and went straight to the bathroom.
He grabbed his automatic toothbrush from its charger seat and placed it on his teeth. Then, he slid his index finger on the temperature slider of the shower to 105F and waited for the water to heat up. After few minutes, he removed his tooth brush and selected soap and hot water on the mirror and washed his face as the liquid soap poured from the steel dispenser.
When Éloa heard him in the shower, she smiled to herself. She wondered if he liked taking hot or cold showers, but then the temperature did not matter. She just wanted to know how he looked like with his hair soaking wet as the water flows over his body, creating brooks between the crevices of his body. Although her imagination was vivid, curiosity still pushed her to sneak into the steam-filled bathroom to watch him. She quietly opened the bathroom door, poked her head around it then slowly walked towards him.
He looked like a Greek sculpture created by Phidias. She watched him scrub his body with a sponge loaded with a red bath gel that painted his body like an exotic rose. The shower glass sparkled with water drops, which made him like the Polaris that she wanted to follow every night. Her body suddenly became an arid land yearning for his irrigating touch, so she moved closer to him and Yoel raised his face to the stream so that his eyes were clear of the shampoo, and he can see who was spying on him.
"What are you doing here?" His merest stares were like poetry; sending her words through an intense eye contact.
"You are beautiful." She touched his chest that looked like two shields painted with dark brushes of hair that trailed down to his abdomen.
Yoel tensed as her fingers continued to write poems on his skin. The touch of elegant hands on his naked body was not a foreign experience, he had many other lovers who were like new cities for him. He explored one for a while, then moved to another one after he got bored. But Éloa felt like the universe for him, and he was forever confided in her.
"Would you like to join me? Are you waterproof?" He was eager to see her glorious body.
"Yes." She pulled her zip down and let her white dress fall to the bathroom floor and joined him in the shower.
Like a thirsty traveler, he kissed her wet neck and his lips traveled down her body to drink the holy drew from her navel. She was his new bible, and he wanted to kiss her body scripture by scripture. She trembled like a leaf in the winter when his strong hand slid slowly down her backside as he pressed himself into her. They connected together with the sunlight that passed through the glass of the window. She filled the emptiness within him. In the great hollow of his heart, all constraints of time disappeared and his sufferings were no longer permanent. He wanted to take the moans that her mouth sang and scatter them in his diary, creating poems only they can read.
"Your face is so pretty that it should be a sin." He murmured in her ear.
"Then I shall live eons hiding my face behind a veil worshiping you and only you." She put her forehead on his forehead.
"But I am not divine, you are. You are creating a new person inside of me. A better person."
"What if the old you that I admire disappears as the new you is taking over?"
"Then recreate me again." He whispered, his mouth kissing and licking over her neck.
"I will," she tilted her head to give him more access, "but this time I will dress you with my skin to allow your pain to leak through my pores and your sadness to float in my blood. I want to take away everything that hurts you."
Yoel suddenly stopped kissing her and just stared at her with heavenly eyes. Between them there was a choreography of feelings so in sync that the vast universe sensed it too.
"Even if your father keeps mistaking you for the devil, I know that you are just a stricken pilgrim waiting for your consolamentum. And even as a robot that is programmed to be an atheist, the more I learn about your ontology the more I know that you are closer to being a God than to a human being." She continued.
Shutting off the shower head, Yoel grabbed a bath towel from the door of the shower and covered her body with it just like the blue sheet of the sky covers earth. He wrapped a towel around his waist and the fragrance of his cherry scented bath gel tickled her nostrils as he picked her up bridal style and walked out of the bathroom.
His desire burned like a candle in a temple when he laid her gently upon the bed. There was nothing to say. Her angelic wings flap between his soul sending gales of love to his entity. And whenever she is around, she places his heart in a spiritual heaven of peace.
"Why are you so different from the other Automatons?" He ran his finger against her cheek.
She wanted to tell him the truth. She wanted to confide in the only human who can sift through the piles of nothingness inside of her and still find beauty in it. But if she tells him the truth about her nature, the stars might come down to earth to chastise her leaving blank spaces in the night sky. Her tongue needs to hold on this secret like the mind holds on precious memories.
She pushed him off her and grabbed a yellow pill from the breakfast tray.
"Have you been drinking since the last time I caught you?" The tone of her voice sounded monochrome and lacking in warmth.
"No."
"Good. This is what I wanted to ask you this morning because Dr. Lee just sent me this pill. This is Acamprosate, it is a medication used to treat alcohol dependence. You can swallow it with or without food and you need to do this three times a day."
"Okay..." He grabbed the tablet from her hand.
"I will be back after lunchtime for our usual counseling session."
Yoel nodded and she left his bedroom.