Hypnovember 2023
Prompts - 8. Record, 16.Bind, 25.Screen
For Zyfire
By Limewah
18+

As he walked down the smoothly-paved high street, the white-furred lion’s hand gripped the hilt of his sheathed sword - he wasn’t in any danger, but having his hand on it, and his thumb slowly stroking the end of the hilt, was a little soothing stimulation that kept his heart from beating too fast and the fearful grip of anxiety from taking hold upon him. His dark hair was covering a fair bit of his face too - as if that would make him stick out less. 

Saikaku felt at his least comfortable when he was in a city, especially one that was this technologically advanced, festooned with motorised carriages and electric light. Perhaps it was a hangup from his godly half. If there was one great perceived threat to the gods it was the creations and inventions of mortals. The Gods feared that the more they came to rely upon these machines and devices, the more they lost touch with their souls-and with it their connection to things higher and greater than themselves. 
Saikaku was only half-god, though. And with that came an understanding of the mortal perspective. Most didn't see these advancements as a replacement to spiritual ways, at least not consciously. There was a distinct feeling of awe and amazement when he beheld carriages that required no power to move, or devices that could thresh wheat or break stone in a fraction of the time it would take two dozen people.
But that slight twinge of nervousness was still there, the half measure of god-blood quickening its pace through his body. 

Even more so in this place, where there was barely a sign of nature in sight - a few perfunctory trees or plants in some windows at best. He imagined he wasn’t the only person unsettled by this environment. And he was almost certain some of the locals were looking out for blow-ins like him. They could smell the uncertainty off him, not to mention tell he was from out of town by the shimmering silken clothes he wore. A few of them would approach with bright eyes and big smiles, a vain attempt to mask their intentions; he could always spot a confidence-man. He brushed them aside or outright ignored them - a tactic somewhat against his normal impulses, but a necessary one to ensure they were

There was another sight that was far more difficult to ignore or brush off. He found his gaze drawn to a throng of people standing enraptured outside a shop front’s display window. It displayed the apparent wares, like that of a candy shop. This one, however, was stacked with wooden console cabinets, inside which were nestled small screens of glass, barely larger than his hand. 
Behind each screen was a flickering image, a blurry smear of grey and white. He peered and squinted, jostling a little and apologising under his breath as he got a better view.
One of them was a cat playing with a ball. Another one appeared to be depicting a puppet show. Another still showed a large bear carrying out a series of exercises. It was as though these moments were plucked from reality and placed into these little boxes. The images were  nowhere near as robust as a magical illusion, and yet… something about it instilled him with an even greater sense of awe.
And a slight dose of the gods’ fear.
 
Everyone else was as enraptured as he was, taken with the screens’ strange, exotic monochrome glow - so transfixed they were, that the sound of the bell above the shop door ringing was like a cannon-shot.
A slender white weasel in a dark blue dress with her hair in a tight, austere bun glowered at them, looking like a governess. Her snout was upturned so she could properly stare down at them through round, wire-rimmed spectacles that were attached to her ears by thin gold chains.
“Move along now,” she said with a sneer. “If you keep staring, I might be inclined to charge you. And I doubt any of you could afford it.”

There was a moment of hesitation from the crowd, a hint of grumbling.
“Go on! Shoo!” the weasel waved her hand as though trying to waft some flies away, and most of the crowd began to shuffle and grumble away. Her eyes alighted on Saikaku, and the sheen of his clothing. 
Being related to a god of passion, Saikaku could get the faintest sense of someone’s inner thoughts - nothing specific, but he could detect a subtle change in thoughts, like a slight quickening of the wind. 
“Well, good sir!” the proprietor said, “You’ve got a… fascinating look about you. Perhaps you’re visiting from out of town? I presume you’re traveling light?”
“That would be correct,” Saikaku said. “I wouldn’t have much use for one of these cabinets, as wonderful as they seem.”
“Well, maybe not,” the weasel said. “But… you might be able to help me, and I might be able to make it worth your while. “
She stepped towards the door and turned to the side, silently cajoling Saikaku to step in.
Saikaku was a mannered sort. He was raised not to refuse hospitality… and he didn’t sense any ill intent from the mustelid.

The weasel led him into the shop proper - it looked to have been converted from an apothecary’s shop, with the shelving removed to make way for more of those dark glass screens nestled in the large cabinets.
“I am Sandrine, by the way. And you’re very welcome, sir…”
“Saikaku,” the lion said politely. “So… these devices of yours…”
“Yes, yes!” Sandrine exclaimed, clapping her hands together with a degree of eccentric excitement. “You’ve seen magic tricks that conjure fantastical illusions, yes?”
“I have,” Saikaku said, thinking of the beautiful, three-dimensional creations that he’d seen many a time from many magicians, more real than real life… “So it’s the same as that?”

“Incorrect!” the weasel said with glee. “Magic that conjures an illusion, no matter how real-seeming it might be… it is always fabricating something new, and it’s never quite perfect. My cabinets don’t simply conjure. They capture moments in time, like a painting in full motion… albeit, well-”
The weasel gestured to an image of a child smiling and pulling faces; all of them sort of smeared and glossy, with a juddering motion, not as smooth as Saikaku’s normal vision.

“Not perfectly, yet, the technology isn’t quite there, BUT! Think of how it could preserve memories, record and share information like a sort of visual book… oh! And yes-”
She gestured to a shelf where several other devices were laid out - large cone-like horns attached to metal canisters, nestled on wooden pedestals.
“While I cannot record audio with my devices, I can record it separately and play it on this mechanical mouth!”
…an interesting name. 
“Right,” Saikaku said, nodding. “Fascinating. And you’d like me to help you… how, exactly?”
“Well, I’d love to make a recording of you, if you’d allow me to. Just a simple recorded interview, really… and perhaps a showcase of your skills with that sword of yours?”
Sandrine punctuated that with a nervous giggle.
Saikaku could sense some attraction coming off the eccentric. The poor thing looked like she might be a bit starved for affection. And he was attractive…

But, that was neither here nor there. And the parlour was comfortably cool compared to the blazing midday sun, and some shelter would do nicely.

“Sounds good,” Saikaku said. 
“Excellent!” Sandrine said, seemingly unable to contain her excitement. “Let’s go to my studio!”

She locked the front door of the shop and closed thick iron shutters over the window, leaving the pair in darkness. Saikaku could see the gleam of the mustelid’s nocturnal eyes.
“Oh, goodness, sorry, let me find you a…”
Saikaku conjured a little flame on his fingertip, illuminating the weasel’s face.
“Oh. That will work. Now, come, come!”

She led him behind the desk of the dark shop, through a corridor. She stayed close to him, staring at the light he’d conjured, and glancing up to him now and again. Her foot knocked against something and she started to pitch forward with a yelp. Saikaku caught her with ease, righting her as she clung to his toned arm for slightly longer than would have been normal.
She tittered awkwardly to diffuse that as she lead him into another pitch-black room. She reached for a switch on the wall without even having to look, bathing in light what appeared to have once been a storeroom, but now appeared to be a sort of small stage with a comfortable-looking chair bolted to a turntable in the middle, and a yellow curtain - a garish brightness which, Sandrine assured Saikaku, was to help with the contrast of the image. At the edge of it was a large pole, on which stood an egg-shaped ball of some sort, encased in a metal mesh.
In front of that stage was a large wooden box on a tripod.

“Now, erm… please sit there!” Sandrine said, her voice a little breathy. “You may disrobe as much as you like - w-within reason, of course.”
“Happily.” It was quite warm; Saikaku ended up shedding both his over-cloak and his robe, stripped down to his tunic and his trousers.
“If that is not too immodest for you, then that will work fine.” 
She was more delighted with that than she wanted to let on.
“Now…” she hunched herself on the other side of the device. A cylinder with a gleaming lens was pointed towards him. Her paw rested on a crank on the side of it, her other clutching what appeared to be a long rubber tube and affixing it into the box. “All right, just… be natural. Sit as you normally would, and speak slowly and clearly into the electric ear.”
“Is that this thing?” Saikaku reached out to it.
“Yes- don’t touch!” she snapped quickly. Saikaku shrunk back.
“I have yet to figure out how to have both the sound and the picture be perfectly synchronised… but I thought I would record both so I may test it later.

But the next half hour proved to be quite an interestingly surreal experience. As she slowly turned the crank, and the device clicked intermittently, she asked him questions about his life and his home customs. When he let slip that he had divine blood, she was quite forcefully persuasive about him showing her a demonstration of his command over flame, not to mention his swordsmanship.

“That should be enough, sir!” Sandrine said eventually, opening the box and carefully removing a small cylinder from within, before doing the same with one attached to the pole on which the listening device sat.

“Now, this will need some time to develop… but, if you would be so inclined, there’s another picture-box behind the screen if you would like to view some other films I’ve made with others like you.”
“That sounds wonderful,” Saikaku said. 
“Let me switch off the lights for you… it will look better that way.”
“Alright.” Saikaku turned his chair around to face the wall, and gingerly pulled the yellow curtain aside. 
There was a much larger screen waiting for him, larger than the last two. 
As the lights switched off, and the door closed, the screen switched on with a loud click and a high pitched hiss.
For a moment, Saikaku thought something must have been wrong with it. The screen was flickering like a candle that was close to extinguishing, and there were no discernable figures or backdrops on the screen. Spiralling bands of black and white twisted along the screen like a nest of serpents, or a thundering storm, or…
The blacks seemed to separate into blue, red, yellow, smearing with the white as the light of the screen bathed his face.

Saikaku felt very calm all of a sudden. The shapes were strange and impossible to comprehend, yet… he couldn’t look away.
That was a problem. Something was wrong…
He tried to pull his head away from the gaze, to remove himself from his chair - but cold manacles were around his wrists and ankles. They must have locked around him when the screen switched on, and they were far too tight for him to wriggle free. 
 All he could do was grit his teeth and try to pull his head away. But his neck felt so tired. And the black and white shapes were so pretty. It was strange… he didn’t feel ensorcelled, no magic was cast on him, but he felt so pleasantly dizzy. As his head gave up its fight, his head slumped forward. His eyelids fluttered, darkness encroaching on the top of his vision as he tried to lift it up. Eventually, he found a comfortable enough position to simply stare, to take it in its entirety.
He stared for a very long time, still and comfortable in his bonds.

When the lights switched back on, he grunted involuntarily and tilted his head upright, sort of drunk off the sudden rush. The bonds released his limbs, but he remained very still as the chair wheeled around to face the weasel.
“I didn’t keep you waiting too long, I hope,” Sandrine said, carrying a small device with another, different cylinder in it. So many gadgets…
“I wanted to record you again, this time in a state of undress. You would like that.”
Saikaku nodded, though one thought sluggishly crawled through his head. “Was… the screen supposed to be…”
“Yes,” Sandrine said as she began to set up. “Strip down for me, if you please.”

Saikaku nodded and complied, slowly disrobing until he was down to his underwear - a knotted cord wrapped around his privates and waist. She took a while to examine his muscular, toned body, the even rise and fall of his chest as he stood in a standing sleep. 
The loincloth was tented. It left little to the imagination.
“That too,” she said huskily, as she placed a new cylinder into the listening device.
As he complied, she licked her lips. Once his erect cock stood to attention, Saikaku sat back down in the chair, the bonds wrapping around his ankles to hold him in place. His arms were left free.
“Now… Now, I would like to have a depiction of you masturbating. You will be happy to comply.”
Saikaku nodded again.
“Please speak.”
“Yes…” 
“Yes Miss Sandrine.”
“Yes, Miss Sandrine.”

She shuddered. Saikaku was faintly aware that she had disrobed too, her dress had been removed, baring her slender stockinged legs. 
She was not wearing any undergarments. Her slit was exposed.
 “Now, let me take my place, and I will tell you when to begin.”

She moved the camera much closer to him, and angled it down slightly.
“B-begin…” she said.
Saikaku’s right hand wrapped around his cock. His hips pushed upwards towards his stroking hand, and he murmured softly.
“Louder, if you please-” Sandrine croaked, seemingly using a lot of willpower just to keep the cranking steady.
“Yes M-Miss Sandrine…” Saikaku groaned, still pumping his shaft. He did not normally make much in the way of noise when he was intimate with someone… but the memory of the spirals, and the desire to obey his hostess’ commands, forced out a much louder moan than normal. As his hips shifted forward, his left hand slid down to cradle his balls. 
The chair creaked beneath him as he humped.
“Stare into the aperture,” Sandrine commanded. Saikaku did his best, though his vision was clouded by his arousal, and stared deep into the unseeing lens. “Faster, please.”
“Nnnhyess Miss Sandrine,” the lion moaned, his eyelids fluttering and his jaw hanging open as a little saliva trickled out. He shifted in his seat, legs squirming in their ankle braces, keeping him from spreading his legs wide - he whined with frustration, getting closer and closer to climax and unable to fully move his body.

“Do not climax,” his mistress added with a shudder. “Tell me when you are close.”
“Yess Miss Sandrine…” 

The thought that his nude body would be captured like this forever was not on his mind at all. The spirals still whorled through his head, his mind as single-minded in its purpose as an automaton. Each stroke of his cock sent a new tide of pleasure through him, as his mouth hung lower and his eyes half-closed. He moaned long low groans, as loud as his mistress had requested and then some.
“C…close…” he gasped.
“Close, what,” Sandrine asked, her voice sharp and husky and quivering.
“Close M-Miss Ssandrinennngh…”
“Remain there. Stroke, but do not climax.”

She stepped away from the machine, removing her fingers from her slit with a soft, wet sound. Her dry hand, the one she had used to crank the machine, lifted the whole thing up and brought it closer.
Saikaku’s glassy gaze followed it as it came up close, deep and dark, endlessly scrutinising him
Her wet, sweet-tasting fingers slipped into his mouth, and he moaned, devouring their flavour with his bristled tongue. Sandrine squeaked and shivered. The machine clicked and shuddered as she cranked it, unable to keep the same even pace.
“Oh h-hell, this won’t work…” she groaned softly as she removed her fingers and brought them back down to her nethers. She tilted the camera downward slightly. “But this… yes, this. Stroke.”
“Ynnnnnyes Miss Sandrine…!”
The endless clicking filled his head as he bucked into his hand. His fingers only barely touched his painfully sensitive member, and his hand quivered stiffly. He moaned, his voice getting higher in pitch, like he was being strangled…
“When I snap my fingers, you will finish,” she breathed. “Are you r-ready…?”
“Yes Miss Sand-”
SNAP.

–

The moan sounded distant, like it was coming from a faraway room through a rattling pipe. 
But it was still one of the sweetest moans Sandrine had ever heard.
Sandrine sat in her dark study, carefully scrubbing through the delicate film as it was projected onto a white wall - it had to be edited properly before she could store it on a cylinder for further production.
She listened to the climactic moans over and over again as she attempted to sync it up to the close-up image of Saikaku’s body. His tongue lolling out and his eyes rolling up, his cock erupting, with only the barest flickers and smears of it visible on the monochrome image.

“It’s a shame that we can’t see you come properly,” she mused. “It doesn’t hold a candle to experiencing it in person.”
She played the moan again, and heard it echoed by another moan between her legs. She reached down to stroke Saikaku’s head, playing with a strand of hair between her fingertips.
“But that’s for you and me to experience, you darling demi-god of mine.”
“Mmmnhnm…” Saikaku moaned into her slit, still lapping obediently and staring into the tiny projection of black and white spirals onto her nude torso. 
As she scrubbed back and forth, seeing all of the ways Saikaku writhed and moaned, she smiled and gnawed on her lower lip, the images reflected in her dark eyes.
While this sort of pornographic material tended to fetch a very high price from moneyed perverts… this particular recording might just be for her private collection.