Erotic Fiction by Medea

The Book of Water

	In a basement shop, hidden along a side alley in the old downtown area 
of the city, sits a bookstore.  The location is terrible for attracting 
passers-by, but the owner, Cassie Stevens, doesn't mind.  It keeps the 
tourists away, she says when friends ask why she doesn't move it to somewhere 
more favorable.  The store's collection is mostly used and rather eclectic.  
There are sections for literature, history, mythology, and religion, as well 
as the occult.  The occult books are what attract most of her customers, who 
enjoy being able to pick up an interesting novel to read at the same time.  
You never know what you'll find on the shelves at Onyx Books.
	The selection is impressive, but the tastes of her customers often 
disappoint Cassie.  She keeps a variety of new-agey texts in stock--not 
because she likes all of them them, but because they sell.  The same goes for 
glossy mass-market spell books that any halfway-knowledgeable person knows are 
a joke.  People are forever trying to bring her yet another copy of _1001 Love 
Spells and Potions_.  There are already three on the shelf, and it's a popular 
book, but not one of the spells work, which might explain why it always shows 
up in someone's hands on Saturdays, the store's buying day.
	For people who are willing to dig a little further for the real stuff, 
Onyx also provides a very thorough assortment of more reputable books, 
including some of the more rare volumes.  The most rare items that the store 
buys tend to remain in Cassie's private library, though.  There are some 
things she doesn't want going to the wrong person.
	One particular Saturday in fall, she'd turned down not only two copies 
of _1001 Love Spells_ before noon, but also _Animal Spirit Summoning for 
Dummies_ and a copy of _Lizard Magic_ that was covered in some sort of sticky 
residue.  It was getting late into the afternoon, and Cassie didn't expect to 
get much more business before closing.  While she didn't mind walking around 
at night in this neighborhood, enough of the customers did, so she tended to 
close around dusk, even in the winter.  She had left the counter to reshelve a 
few items when the door opened and one more seller walked in, carrying a large 
cardboard box.
	The customer was a woman in her forties, wearing dark clothes and 
looking very tired.  She set the box down onto the counter with a thud.  
Cassie hurried back over to help her.
	"I want to sell these books," the woman said.
	Cassie opened the box up and started to look.  "Hmm, some good 
mythology collections... we don't buy romance series, but I'll take the 
tatting patterns.  Let's see, what else is in here?"  She began separating the 
books into two piles.  "What's this?" she said, unearthing a small, thick book 
with a faded cloth cover.  She opened it up.  The book was hand-written like a 
journal, but in German, and her quick glance was enough to tell that this 
wasn't an ordinary diary.  "Where did you get this?"
	"All of these belonged to my mother," the woman told her.  "She died 
last month, and it's been so hard, sorting through her belongings.  I don't 
really care how much you'll pay for the books, I just want to be done with it."
	"I'm sorry about your loss," Cassie said.  "I'll take these," tapping 
the stack with the unlabeled book.  "How does $20 sound?"
	"That's fine."
	"Would you like cash or a check?"
	"Cash."
	Cassie wrote down the purchase, and then pulled a bill from the cash 
drawer.  "Just out of curiosity, why did you come here to sell those?  It's a 
little out of the way."
	"This was my mother's favorite bookstore.  It seemed like the right 
place to go."
	The woman quietly put the money into her purse and left.
	Later, after the store had been locked up and Cassie was sitting alone 
in her apartment, which was really just a series of rooms off the back of the 
store, she pulled the book out again and began to try to figure out what it 
was.  Opening to the first page, she read, "Das Buch des Wassers, 
Abschrifterin Margot von Kreuzburg.  Okay, that's The Book of Water, then..."  
She looked up Abschrifterin in a translation dictionary, pulled from a nearby 
shelf.  "Oh, transcriber.  Hmm, this must be Margot's handwriting."  She 
turned the page.  "Einleitung.  The introduction?"
	Over the next few hours she worked out a rough idea of the contents of 
the book.  The first few sections were dedicated to the discussion of various 
sorts of Wassergeister (water spirits), followed by a series of spells to 
invoke them, and then descriptions of how the book's author, whoever that had 
been originally, had made use of them.  There wasn't anything to identify the 
author, or explain Margot's involvement in this.  Cassie wondered if Margot 
might have been the woman's mother.  She made a note to look up the name 
online, and see if it was connected to anything else that might be relevant.
	One of the descriptions towards the end caught her attention.  It 
sounded like the author had a rather trippy experience involving something 
called Heissfluss.  The text described the feeling of loss of physical 
boundaries, some kind of melting, and the tactile experience of interacting 
with physical objects.  She wasn't entirely sure if she understood the tone of 
the description, but it sounded rather erotic.  Cassie hadn't heard of 
anything quite like this.
	Onyx Books stays closed on Sundays, leaving plenty of time for a 
little research.  She started with a Google search on "Margot von Kreuzburg".  
The only result was an obituary, dated October 3rd.  It seemed that the guess 
about this being the deceased mother was correct.  Then she checked the occult 
literature indices for references to the book or the spirits mentioned in it.  
_Das Buch des Wassers_ wasn't listed anywhere, nor was the English translation 
of the title.  She had a little more luck with some of the spirits.  A few of 
them were mentioned in passing as part of the myriad assortment of minor 
naiads.  They all sounded pretty harmless.  No Heissfluss, though.
	She was reluctant to try a new spell without more information, knowing 
far too many stories of people who had gotten killed (or worse) by assuming 
that something was harmless when it wasn't.  On the other hand, the spell was 
almost certainly only perception magic, since actually changing form requires 
considerable power and skill--and her curiosity was eating at her.  She wanted 
to see what this was like.
	Cassie managed to hold off until after dinner, but finally she gave in 
and decided to try it out.  Checking the book for directions, she set a large 
bowl on the kitchen floor and filled it with water, then added a few drops of 
cinnamon oil.  She sat down in front of it, reciting the protection spell she 
always used before doing magic, "Emitte Spiritum tuum, Domine, et custodi me."  
Then she read out loud:
	Kommen Sie, Heissfluss, Wassergeist.  
	Schenken Sie mir Ihrer Gegenwart
	und bezaubern Sie mich mit Ihrer Begabung, 
	von nun bis Mitternacht.
She set the book down and plunged her hand into the bowl.  Suddenly everything 
seemed to dissolve, and she couldn't see anything.
	It felt a lot like she had turned into a puddle on the floor, which 
didn't seem terribly exciting.  Then she noticed a tingling feeling, somewhere 
around where her toes should be.  Out of reflex, she tried to move her foot, 
and noticed that it changed the feeling.  "Maybe I can ooze around on the 
floor a little."  She pictured herself trying to move in different directions, 
and discovered that doing so made it feel like her skin was being brushed 
gently with something soft.  "Ooh.  I like that."
	She tried different things to see how it would feel, like rolling in 
one direction or rocking back and forth.  It all produced a similarly pleasant 
sensation.  The more she moved, the more the feeling spread beyond the surface 
and permeated her.  She was starting to understand the description in the book.
  It was a lot like turning into an amorphous sex organ, if such a thing could 
exist.  Her sense of physical self was dissolving, making her feel less like a 
discrete entity and more like she was in some kind of erotic limbo.  She 
continued to wiggle in different ways, letting the feeling wash through her.
	Soon she was aroused to the point where she would normally be sighing 
and gasping, if the spell hadn't oddly removed the feeling of breathing.  The 
sensations felt wonderful, and she pulsed, reaching for that last bit of 
stimulation that would push her over the edge, feeling her climax build, 
focusing only on getting there--and then it happened like a waterfall, rushing 
through her and holding--until finally she relaxed, resting in the pleasant 
aftermath.
	Afterwards she must have dozed off, because there was nothing else 
until she became aware of being back in her body and sitting on the floor, one 
hand pruny from being in the bowl of water all night.  She looked up at the 
clock on the wall, which read 12:01.  "My, that was some spell," she said to 
herself, smiling.  Cassie cleaned up and put the book away for another day, 
and then went to bed.
	---------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:
The German incantation translates to:
	Come, Heissfluss, water spirit
	Give me your presence
	And enchant me with your gift
	From now through midnight
Heiss means hot in German (and has strong sexual connotations if you're not 
careful about how you use it), and Fluss is the word for river, flow, and 
flux.  So the spirit is named Hot River or Hot Flux, something of that sort.
The protection spell is 'send out your spirit, Lord, and keep me safe'.  
Thanks to oosh for help with the Latin.