The first things she noticed were the sounds. Before even becoming aware of the sun’s warmth on her cheek, she woke up hearing music: High-pitched squeaks, twitterings, warbles, songs. The world was coming alive in her ear; every sound was brand new to her. She woke up in rapture. Around her the forest too was awakening.
Then she felt warmth. And pressure on her flank where she’d been lying, all along the side of her hip and ribs and breast — these new yet intimately familiar body parts, achy and tender from her prolonged sleep. She stirred slightly, feeling the air connect to her skin, feeling the unfamiliar goosebumps dimpling her skin.
The next thing she knew was scent. Though she had no words to describe what she was smelling yet, she knew that the earthiness of it appealed to her. She smelt moisture. She smelt dirt. She smelt musk, her own (though she did not know that yet) and someone else’s, pungent and salty and deeply moving like a long-forgotten song. She wanted more of the smell. The smell made her insides feel soft and hungry.
She opened her eyes.
Green.
Green assaulted her senses, making her jolt upright and open her eyes even wider as she pushed her arms into the soft soil and moved her brand new body into a sitting position. She felt all her muscles. Her buttocks and her palms were digging into the ground, feeling every grain of sand; her shoulders felt loose, her stomach still and vast like an inner ocean, her breasts soft — nipples already peaking in the moving air. Her toes dug into the dirt and for a moment she was distracted by the sensation of soil between her toes. Then she looked up again. There was another Being. Right in front of her, looking intently at her, was a Being.
The birdsong stilled and the forest faded as she looked into the eyes of the Being. Without knowing why, without even knowing where she was, she knew without a doubt that she loved what she was seeing with her entire body. Something liquid and electric shot into her groin and her throat made an involuntary sound, a sound flowing right from the core of her: a moan. The very first sound she ever made was a moan of desire.
The Being moved slightly towards her, lifted an arm, then lowered it again. She looked at his arm, at the delicate meeting of bone and sinew over the wrist, at the fingers, at the small hairs dappled all over his limb. Her gaze moved on, to his shoulder — light brown, the muscles beneath the skin jumping lightly as if barely held in control by its owner. She wanted to lick that skin, to taste it beneath her tongue. Were it not that her curiosity was even greater than her desire, she would have moved forward and sunk her teeth into his flesh.
“You’re here,” the Being said.
The Being’s voice was like new wood, tender and melodious and slightly green. She arched her back at the sound.
“I’m here,” she replied, and then almost tumbled over in surprise at the sound of her own voice. If the other Being’s voice was like new wood, hers was like water, bright and clear and playful. She loved her own sound so much that she gave another moan, then lay back down in sheer delight at the surprising enormity of it all. She stretched out her fingers. Behind her she felt a tree and spent a few minutes exploring the sinews of its bark, stretching her arms out behind her as the Being sat and looked. She liked how the Being was looking at her. The hot electricity at her core was spreading, already she felt it warming between her legs with a wonderful discomfort; even as she looked playfully away her hips began moving in tiny thrusts into the air. Knowing nothing, expecting nothing, she explored the tree behind her while her thighs and her hips moved of their own volition.
“I didn’t know,” the Being said.
“You didn’t know what?” she responded.
“If you’d come,” he answered.
She sat up again. She was becoming aware of the birdsong once more, and of the different scents, and the colours. Each of these on their own would be enough to intoxicate her; all together she had no idea where to pay attention. She knew that the world was beautiful. She also knew, without sparing it a second thought, that she herself was beautiful. Knowing this, feeling this awareness pooling in her body, she turned towards the Being, breasts and belly alive to the pull she felt towards him.
“Of course I came,” she said simply.
They sat staring at each other for a long time. The Being had an earnest face — eyes dappled brown, jaw firm, neck strong with his adam’s apple bobbing at his throat. She wanted to smell his throat, so she did, moving forward in one simple motion and burying her head in the crook of his neck, inhaling deeply. Their bodies were touching now and everywhere they touched felt like the start of a fire. She started breathing differently, more shallow, inhaling him as best she could while becoming increasingly aware of the need to touch and be touched rippling all over her body. The Being was breathing just like she was — ragged, hungry — but suddenly he pushed her away, keeping his steadying hand on her as he looked at her in seriousness. She saw that his mouth was beautiful, full-lipped and slightly open. She tried moving forward again but he stopped her.
“What is your name?” he asked her.
That gave her pause. What WAS her name?
“Eva,” she said eventually. She tasted her own name in her mouth. ‘Living one’, she somehow knew it meant. Because she was alive, so deeply alive in this moment to the delight of her existence and her frustrated desire already unfolding like a force inside her body. She wanted. She was alive and she wanted.
“What is yours?” she asked, after a while.
He looked abashed. “I didn’t choose it like you did yours,” he said. “It’s Adam.”
Adam. She tasted the name on her tongue. She tasted the red dirt and the sweat and the suffering they would yet know together; she tasted his hunger and his anger and his desperation, the toil and long nights and losses ahead of them. She tasted their life together.
And it turned her on — so much so that her hand moved between her legs of her own volition. It was damp there, and warm, and very very tender. She moved her hand gently through her folds as she looked at Adam, feeling the different parts respond uniquely to her touch.
“Adam. I like it,” she said simply. Her eyes continued their journey down his body — his chest was flat and had some hair on it, and his nipples were smaller than hers, darker too. Underneath them a trail of soft hairs traced to his stomach, which was rippling, which was moving now as his hand copied hers and moved between his legs. They forgot to look at one another’s faces as their eyes fixed on the other’s centre. His centre was very different from hers. His hand was enclosing flesh where she had none — a strong corded piece of flesh, thick like a branch with an arrow head on top where his finger were stroking, where he was pulling skin over and under, covering and uncovering the tip where a small drop of liquid was now pearling. She understood nothing but knew that her body was responding, that the small button between her legs was swelling and that her entire body ached to hold her centre against his centre. She rubbed herself. Heat was building.
Their eyes met. She saw his desire and she saw that he felt shy and she found herself speaking. “You’re very beautiful,” she said. “My body wants to taste your body.”
His hand started moving faster now and she began making involuntary sounds as she watched him, as her own hips started thrusting again into her palm. She flicked the bright swollen button at her core back and forth with her fingers, faster and faster as she looked at his tense body, at his beautiful hand on his beautiful axis, at the muscles in his neck tensing and rising, as he let out a high groan and moved forward suddenly, back arching and buttocks in the air, sudden moisture spilling from his groin and landing white on the sand between them. He stopped; she didn’t. Then she did, when she saw that something had changed for him.
“What happened?” she asked. She still felt warm and molten. Her hand was still between her legs, feeling gently around now. She felt a cavity, and plunged her fingers into it. It felt like coming home — she opened her legs and gave a small sigh as her fingers explored her own inner walls. The hunger inside of her was unabated, but her need to understand Adam was just as large.
“I don’t know,” he said. He was leaning back; his face was flushed, body relaxed. He was looking at her with warm attention. “But it was the best feeling I’ve ever known.”
“Have you known many feelings?” she asked.
“I’m not as new as you are,” he replied. His face was so earnest, she thought again. Already she was looking forward to teasing him. He carried on: “But I haven’t had this feeling before.”
She hesitated.
“I think,” she said. “I think that I would like that feeling too.”
He looked intrigued, then scooched forward towards her. She smelled the scent again, now, and recognised it for what it was — the musk of Adam’s body, sweaty and alive in a way that moved her to her very core. She wanted him everywhere around her. She wanted to grab fistfuls of his body and bring them into hers. She wanted to lick him all over. She wanted him to lick her. She wanted his tongue right over her molten core. She’d been alive all of half an hour, yet she knew this already about herself: This wanting, this energy, this heat — this was her essence.
“You must touch me,” she said. And he did, reaching out an arm towards her neck and then stroking lightly — too lightly — across her shoulder, as if in awe.
“You’re really here,” he said, wonderingly. She groaned in response.
“Please,” she begged. He was moving too slowly. His hand was only at her clavicle, and already she felt her breasts rise up to meet his fingers. She needed…something.
His hands found her breasts. First he kneaded them tenderly, then she felt the heat building in him once more and his hands became more hungry. Then they found her nipples. She exploded into an agony of desire as he rolled and pinched them between his fingers; bolts of electricity were shooting down between her legs. She reached out an arm and felt his taut stomach, and below that the softness of his member slowly swelling now into her hand. She would die, surely, if he didn’t move his body against hers this very instant. She wanted those corded thighs against hers. She wanted his heaviness on top of her body. She wanted.
“Please,” she said again, and then she saw him smile. Perhaps, she realised, she wouldn’t be the only one doing the teasing.
“Do you like this?” he breathed into her neck, one hand still pinching a nipple while the other travelled down gradually over the expanse of her stomach.
“I don’t know,” she responded, truthfully. “But whatever you do, don’t stop.”
Of course, he stopped. He stopped and hovered above her for a moment; their eyes met and she understood what hunger meant — before, long before, tasting any fruit.
Then he lowered himself on top of her again, but this time his face went lower. He was kissing her belly button. She was moving her hips up to meet him. She was sweating and she was making sounds and then his face moved even further down and his lips met her centre.
They were hesitant at first, those lips. He nibbled a little. She let out a strangled moan. He raised his head and looked at her in amazement. “You taste like forest,” he said. She didn’t care what she tasted like, only that he should keep on tasting, and so she thrust her hips into his face. He bent down again and gave a tentative lick, across her hungry core. His tongue swept across the little button that was shouting for attention — she gasped and thrust, and he licked, and she thrust. Soon he was sweeping his entire face through her folds, tongue returning again and again to her swollen centre. A storm was building inside her.
And then he slipped a finger inside her. ‘How did he know?’ she found herself wondering for a moment, but the moment passed quickly because suddenly the tension inside her crested, and peaked, and her body convulsed into liquid warmth and joy, waves of relief washing over her as she returned — slowly — to the dirt and the sounds of the forest. He was still licking her, gently. She still felt hungry, but now with less urgency. She looked down at his dark hair and at those rippling shoulders. Surely whatever existence entailed — and she knew, even then, that existence would be strange — it would all be worth it, if this could happen to a being.
Adam moved up her body now, finally bumping his head lightly against hers as he rested half on top of her, half next to her. She felt the bones of his hip against hers. She was already moving again, nudging the hard warmth between his legs closer to her, certain that they needed to touch there where their essences were strongest. He was breathing hard in her ear. She was breathing hard in his. She moved her arm around and over him, over his long back, down to where he rounded into buttocks, and she pushed. She pushed his body into hers. She lifted her groin to meet him.
His shaft slipped through her folds. They groaned in unison. She pushed him closer to her again. Again he slipped past, and then she lifted her hips and caught him, and held him, and slowly, he slipped inside. There was a moment of contact, of resistance, and then he moved fluidly all the way into her.
And in that slippery motion the world was created.
They rocked, and thrust, and pushed against each other like desperate animals. She was laughing and then crying out, and so was he, and his arms were planted in the ground around her as his hips were pumping back and forth into her, she staring at the motion and the energy of him with something akin to grief, as her body opened and opened more. There was no longer one solitary peak of pleasure, but instead there were waves of expectation and ecstasy one upon the other, breaking and crashing around her ears as she came and went, joined and separated with him upon the forest floor, on this very first day of existence.
And afterwards she bit him, lightly, on the wrist, tasting herself and the world itself upon his skin. Then she pushed him down and sat on top of him, feeling their joint moisture make contact with his skin. She knew herself to be the most powerful being on earth.
“Together,” she whispered in his ear, “We will conquer the universe.”