You’re a Mold Doll.

At least, that’s what the general public and the news outside of the city call you. Nobody really gets the whole ‘Spore Bar’ thing outside of town. You didn’t really get it either until you admitted yourself.

Not that you even remember what it felt like not to know.

It was a beautiful feeling when you joined them. You thought it would be gross, but it was pleasant. You inhaled the sweet, cloudy air in the velvet-lined lounge like petrichor from dew, surrounded by Dolls fawning over you like a child over a newborn sibling. The room was - still is - incredibly well-kept for how much mold flies about inside of it, ringed in golden filigree and decorated in flowing curtain dividers and beautiful paintings from worlds you’ll never see. You felt the tingle in your lungs, then the sunny warmth as a fuzzy burn set into your muscles.

You’d never been so aware of yourself before that moment, but as the spores inundated your cardiovascular system and invaded your anxious little mind, you suddenly knew it so well. The mold gave you a truth that you could never have imagined. You could feel and name all of your bones and muscles and organs. You could point to them, too. It was like somebody connected nerves to everything, and dialed all of those nerves to fuck yes. Just the feeling of air filling your lungs and the beating of your heart, tissue rhythmically kissing tissue excited you.

Then came the pleasure. Oh, gods around, the pleasure. Your entire body was an erogenous zone from that moment on, and the sensations never seem to dull. Running your hands over the velvet cushions, you couldn’t help begging the other Dolls to come and touch you. You wanted them to feel how you felt, and you finally understood why they were so excited to let you feel it, too.

The world outside - the metropolis full of solitary folk flitting about outside of those airtight walls - called people like you ‘sad.’ People with no hope, nowhere to go, giving into a shorter life of company and care. You knew then that they didn’t understand. It was more than a last resort. It was enlightenment and community and liberation, all in one. It was you who was free, and the rest of the universe was the cage.

“They’re so pretty,” a voice in the back of your head mused, and a pair of dainty, fuzzy, moldy hands caressed your cheeks. You leaned back and looked to the ceiling, and met the quad eyes of the apian woman behind you. Though it made little sense to you in that moment, you knew instantly that the voice belonged to her gorgeous, elderly regality. Her brilliant golden wings were dusted with snowy spores, and she was milky white behind her eyes - you got a fantastic look, because she came in for a kiss, smokey and meaty in taste. White-flecked nectar dripped from your lip as she pulled away, and it was in that moment that you no longer regretted consigning your life to this place.

Another Doll, who you realized with then-impossible acuity had been curled at your feet for some time, stood and flexed her long, beautiful wings, and a clacking chirp rung from her abdomen at the side of you. You saw her tremble as you felt the hissing, vibrating organ within their chitin dust mold all over her insides, slapping rancorously at her guts and weakly chattering. You’d never met one of her people before, but you identified immediately that she was in love, and she verified this by sitting upon your lap and looking down into your eyes with her own big, solid red, wide-set pair. And then she kissed you too, though it was more like a nuzzle at your open mouth, and you felt all four of her arms rubbing over your torso and pressing below your stomach as the blurry bliss spread over the insides of your cheeks and you felt the grit of the spores in your throat. Then her slender insectoid fingers met your sex, and you cried out gratefully.

“I love you so,” said somebody, covetously, in a deep and gentle voice, and you were sure instantly that they meant it. Their words were like ambrosia to you, felt in the midst of such beautiful, throbbing heat. Their voice made you feel safer, enough to dispel the last of your worry. You would have called it patriarchal, you think, if your worldly context had not been blown so wide already. “And I’m so glad you’re a part of me.”

You saw so many things flash before your eyes as the pleasure came to be overwhelming; the great tree at the city’s center, a hive of buzzing, squirming, dancing insects, a long day spent sunbathing upon the bark of a magnificent old tree with auburn leaves, a thousand-year rest all in an instant. You came as you awoke from your millennium dream, and cried out into the lips of the woman above you who groped your chest and brushed your jawline with her antennae. The palms of her hands were softened with white fuzz, and the sides of her face were decorated with alabaster shelves of fungus, like meaty sideburns. She smiled and batted her ivory eyelashes and helped you through your hazy orgasm. More of your sisters stroked at the goosebumped, spore-coated skin of your arms and kissed your supple skin. They worshiped you for your choice, and simultaneously, you prayed to their grace, minds as one.

Since then, sleep has never been an issue - but you wouldn’t have been able to stop enjoying your sisters to drift away, anyway.