Those luminescent firefly eyes blink at me in the darkness, and Lady Night lifts a soft hand to touch my cheek with a breeze. The air around me is cool and the fireflies hang like earthly stars beneath the sprawling galaxies in the foliage. I only look behind me once, because tonight I can hear her voice, brushing against my thoughts, moonlighting in the music of the leaves. The melody is mine alone.
“Sweet Venus,” I implore the plants, “why am I alone? Why do I remain untouched by Cupid’s arrow, and impervious to the women whose gazes would pierce Achilles’ heel? Is this your choice? Is this my doom?”
There is no answer but the swaying of the trees, and so I fade back into mortality. The goddess is lost to me, and sends no other name in her place; I am Pygmalion – unembellished.
When I return to the home I have left unguarded by the wife I should have taken years before, I caress the tangled vines that creep along the building’s side. I shiver. My answer has come late; inspiration strikes like poison in my blood and the hunk of ivory, carved into the shape of a dove, is stamped on my heart. A name is written in my palm and I know that I will hold it there until I can give it to its owner.
Galatea.
Her face is crafted from the unfinished wing and her hair is soft as feathers to my touch. She has bottomless eyes and pursed lips, which will part like an oyster one day and impart to me her pearls. I shape her body with closed eyes but her image scars my thoughts, until I run from the room to bring a maid’s billowing dress and hide her inside it. She is flawless.
I open my fist and let her name fly free, a butterfly, towards her. It strokes her lips and I know that somewhere, she is whispering it. She is becoming Galatea, as white as milk, and when I look into her blind eyes, I can see her soul looking back: innocent, and unreachable.
It seems that I carry her with me to the market and that she stands beside me, shunning other men and berating the poor woman who dares to spark a conversation. I see her in the corner of my eye, no longer in maid’s clothing but in the shocking white of the upper class. Her beauty is immeasurable. I long to reach out and feel warm flesh and bone on my fingertips, but ivory is heartless, and cold as winter snow.
I buy her a manner of trinkets, so that the merchants call out to me and mock me for love. I deny it all and clutch the polished gemstones in my hand. I collect tiny rubies and amber rocks and examine swirling conches.
“Do you love her, Pygmalion?” a sparrow squeals. I nod, and the sparrow hops to my shoulder. “A wish, Pygmalion? Venus is listening.”
I am ashamed to say the words, but I pay for the sparrow and move on.
Later, I cannot say whether Galatea rejoices at the sight of her gifts. She is immobile, and I have to close my eyes before I can really see her, leaning in towards me. I breathe deeply, and kiss her, but it is like kissing the gemstones themselves. They are scintillating, but for all their wonder, they are without life.
“A wish, Pygmalion?” says the sparrow, circling Galatea, but still I am silent and can only wipe away a tear as it builds in my eye. Where is her soul now? Her eyes are too deep, and too blind.
“Venus is listening.” The sparrow begins to sing. It is chilling – a funeral lament, I believe. It is mourning my loss, and my stupidity.
Still it sings as I crawl into bed, defeated, with Imagination beside me, taunting me with the likeness of Galatea. She tosses feathery hair and murmurs my name, and I watch myself remove her disguise and bask in the full meaning of beauty. I strip away the ivory and the cold and replace it with a blush in her cheeks and moisture in her lips as she kisses me, and this time there is life. My sense cannot fight desire as she rolls over and I see the perfect curve in her back, without scar or blemish, forever young. We sleep the night together with a sparrow’s voice ringing in my ears, and in the morning, half-awake, it seems that I pull an arrow out of my heart. Once struck, I cannot forget.
“I have a prayer, my golden goddess,” I begin, stammering with nerves. “I wish for a maiden, like my Galatea, to stand beside me.”
“You do not want Galatea?” the sparrow screeches, laughing, for it knows otherwise. I am as transparent as the air itself, and my love is as dazzling bright as the Sun. It cannot be disguised.
I see a glimmer of movement and hear a final note as the sparrow shoots out of the house, leaving me alone with the statue. She is nameless to me now as I turn, for it seems I have given her name away to the goddess of love without care. What was once ours now belongs to another, and I pray that she will return it.
Nervous as never before, I renew my love for her with a kiss, and it seems to me that her lips redden before me. I kiss her neck, and a pulse beats back against me. I pull her close, and flesh protests, softening beneath my heavy fingers like clay to a potter’s hands. So I kiss again, and again, and each time a little more ivory melts away and a soul floods her body. She has become Galatea; I look at her and her eyes are watery blue with tears.
As the sun embraces her humanity, a sparrow sings for a new dawn. I am Pygmalion – complete.
-x-
Spoiler! :
) So, in your spoiler you wrote that you wanted this piece to be ripped apart - how can I possibly do that when, in my opinion, it's so perfect the way it is? What I'll do instead is just talk about what I loved about it:
Your writing - it reminded me of Shakespeare. It was clever and flowed wonderfully, creating really lovely imagery. 
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