"You're not the only artist in the house."

The beautiful sculptor spoke to her creation, running her dark hands over marble arms.

The statue stood uncomprehendingly. Quiet. Still. Nude. Not an ideal of femininity, but an average, slightly-overweight, soft woman in her late twenties. She was positioned with one foot in front of the other, not as if taking a step but as if standing stably. Her right arm was at her side, bent at the elbow, her hand in front of her and pointing delicately forward. Her left rested gently on her belly. Her head was tilted down, her gaze focused on the pointed finger, the hint of a shy smile on her face.

The sculptor walked her fingers over the highly-detailed spine. "You are beautiful and I love you. If only you were real." She gave an overdramatic sigh as her fingers caressed the stone buttocks and teased that perfectly-carved pussy. "Well," the sculptor said, picking up the white bedsheet and draping it gently over her artwork, "I suppose that's enough work for tonight. Good night, my love." With one final, slow, tender, even lingering touch of her artwork's breast through the thin sheet, the artist turned sadly away and left the studio.

And there, in the dark, is when it happened.

The statue breathed.

A soft voice echoed through the room. "You are my gift to my favoured creator."

Under the sheet, the statue blinked. "Who...?" Her voice felt strange. New. She struggled to figure out how to string words together. Her mind was slowly waking up.

"You are my gift," the voice repeated. Light flared in the room, and even under the sheet, the statue's eyes closed, feeling the pain of the sudden change.

And the statue moved. The hand that had been pointing moved to cover her eyes. It was instinctive, but it served to show her, to prove to her that she wasn't made of stone any more.

She heard a door close. She felt... alone.

Something was resting on her body. She could feel—she could feel! That was new—a soft, fluttering touch, something that moved with her, something that pressed on her, but didn't weigh on her. It was easy to move, easy to manipulate, and felt nice where it fell on her. Her slow experimental movement made her own fingers, almost incidentally, brush against her cheek, and she realized that the touch of her own fingers could be as good—better?—as the sheet draped over her. A hand pressed on her shoulder. Her wrists pressed together. She touched her own neck, her collar. Her...

Oh. There's a new sensation.

Slow, still stony, her palms pressed against her breasts. Oh, that was a much, much nicer feeling. Her eyes had adjusted to the light, but she hardly noticed, because she'd found her nipples. Shivers of pleasure ran through her body as she started to give into the passion that coursed through her blood. Born from love, a gift of love, the work of art gave herself to love, and her first conscious act became an act of self-love.

But she was born in love, and while she enjoyed the feelings that her own hands brought her, she emerged from her stony shape not just to love herself, but to love her creator, her artist. The sheet fell away, almost unnoticed, and revealed a studio, a whole world full of artworks: sketches, paintings, photographs, works finished, half-finished, unfinished. All of them very familiar, very... close, which makes sense; they all sprung from the same mind as she did. In a way, the woman in the grocery aisle in the pencil sketch, the two men sharing a kiss in the park in the photographic negative, the four painted people picnicking in the park, these are her family, siblings and cousins and ancestors and maybe even descendants, works created before and after and alongside her.

She was to be a gift to the one who made them all, she thought, moving on unsteady feet towards the door. Her first ever steps, shaky, uncertain, but careful not to disturb or damage the other artworks. She knew where to find the one who had given her shape, whose touch she could still remember on her new skin from the eternity when she was cold stone. Those places where her maker's hands had fallen on her, not as part of the creative act, but as admiration, adulation, those places still burned with that touch.

It took a moment to understand the doorknob, but she soon managed to make her way to the hall, and past the stairs, and to the room where she knew the only other person in the house would be. Sure enough, in a bed more than big enough for the two of them, the beautiful sculptor lay nude atop the covers, on her back, apparently fast asleep. She resembled several of the photographs, sketches, and paintings from the other room, which makes sense, to create self-portraits. But she was a stunning work of art herself, even in the shadowy light; slender, athletic, inviting. The sculpture recalled the way those articulate hands trailed over her stony body, and the memory of that touch provided a template for the artwork's ministrations to her maker.

Soft, light fingers played over the tops of dark feet, across ankles and shins and knees, gentle but not too gentle. Thinking to try something different, the once-statue put her lips to her creator's thigh, kissing and tasting lightly. She remembered the way it felt to have the creator's hands play over her pussy, and wondered if her lips or tongue might feel just as good, or even better. The first such touch brought a gasp of pleasure and a moan of encouragement, followed by hands in the sculpture's hair, lifting her up to meet her creator's eyes.

"I must be dreaming."

The first words she heard as a human, spoken by another human. The statue smiled up at her maker. "I don't know what a dream is."

For some reason, this makes the creator laugh. "Okay, Pel, I can't keep this up."

"What?"

But the illusion slipped away as the two of us started to laugh. I fell on Tia's tight belly, giggling, feeling her muscles twitch in that way I loved so much. But I was still hot from her touches, and from her hypnotism, and the beautiful Pygmalion story she had concocted for me, and I couldn't help but kiss my way up her belly and between her breasts, pausing to make her mewl as I sucked at her nipples, before kissing her full on the lips, deeply and passionately, and she kissed me back and before we could discuss in depth anything we were making out, and our hands were all over each other, and then I was back down between her legs and she was between mine and everything was beautiful and warm and fun and full of love and energy and magic...

We lay there in each others arms afterward, naked and sweaty and all smiles. She spoke before I did.

"So... how did you like that one?"

I sighed happily. "It was... well, hot, for one, but also really interesting."

"Yeah?"

"Looking at my own artworks in a different light," I explained, "As being one of them instead of being separate from them. They felt like..."

There was a silence in the room for a moment. Tia prompted me. "Like what, Pel?"

"Sorry, it's just... it's tough to explain. They felt like family. Like the sort of family I don't have, you know?"

She was petting my hair and holding me close. I hadn't realized that I'd started crying. Not sobbing, or gasping, just... But she knew. It wasn't like my home life was bad, not compared to some, but the distance of my parents and their disinterest in my work stung. For a brief moment, I'd had the illusion of being part of something bigger than myself, and it was the most beautiful gift that I could have ever been given.

Tia smiled mysteriously as I expressed all that, slowly, haltingly. When I'd finished, she kissed my forehead. "You are a gift to the creator of all those beautiful works of art. You just didn't know who it was for a moment."

I squeezed her tight. "Thank you for making me a gift like that."

We kissed for a long while, and snuggled for longer, before I asked, "Where's the ouroboros?"

Tia nodded towards the hall. The silver pendant that drove so much of our hypnotic play hung from the handle of the open door, glittering in the light coming up from the living room lamp. "You put it there when you walked in."

I raised a questioning eyebrow, and she grinned in reply.

"Alright, then," I said, carefully disentangling myself. "You showed me that you can make great art." I got to my feet. "Now let me show you what I can do."

Tia's eyes glazed over and her expression went blank as I slipped the pendant over my head. All that was left was a question of what sort of erotic sculpture to make of her.