ADC: C2 – A Fate That Binds
Introduction:
A tempest in time took her to him, then him and her to here, a cabin by a lake, in a valley, in a mountain, in a place that no map remembers.
Be forewarned, these writings may trigger some issue or issues that you have, either by the language used or it’s content in general. If you are one to get bothered by every little thing, just close it now and step away from wherever the hell it is that you are reading this.
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Chapter 2 – A Fate That Binds
Morning comes, very different to her this time. The scent of strawberries, fruits and freshly cooked fish tease at her nose and stir her taste buds. The sounds of footsteps and toil ring unfamiliar against the usual quiet as the fragrant wisps of jasmine and rose petal tea sensuously entice her awake. She starts to rise but her body relents. It’s endeavour is done and she is spent. The weeks worth of toil now make their plea but she refuses to surrender to it. She fights the fatigue and attempts to rise once more but the patchwork bedding gives her no purchase and she slips back to the bunk with an ungraceful thunk.
He hears the rustle of cloth and crosses the room with unsteady but determined steps. A wooden platter, with a variety of food and drink carefully arranged upon it, teeters on his palm. It shakes tenuously with every uneasy foot fall, but it never leaves his hand.
She sees him up and energetic and smiles. Her arms push on the sleep-shod bedding and she struggles to her elbows’ prop as he approaches, refusing to give in to the heaviness that grips her. The blanket falls from her breast, with no hint of embarrassment. She has, after all, been bare in his presence since the day they arrived. As he’s been to hers from that same fateful moment out of time where they met.
He places the tray on the chair and takes a seat on the bed next to her. He sidles to the headboard, positioning himself behind her and affectionately helps her sit up. She braces her back to his chest and relishes in his warmth. They flow together just like the way he gathers it should. He doesn’t know why he feels this. It’s just a comfortable, fluid endeavour, like water flowing over polished rock in a smooth rolling stream.
They stay together this way, for a spell, enjoying a meal made from both of their harvests. With every bite he gives her, she smiles. With every sip of tea, that he puts to her lips, she catches his eye and a quiet affinity travels between them.
The shadows shorten, as the sun crests just across it’s apex, and start their stretch anew. A rabbit chews on grass just off the weathered treads of the porch. The wind is still. The air is gentle and calm. The two, unorthodox companions lean side by side quietly looking out the open door on to the hidden little world beyond.
The evening blanket draws up in silence until three words finally break the lull.
‘Where are we?’ he asks. “I not know even ‘when’ we are.” she muses, the fact that he speaks Mericanad is of little surprise to her, given their circumstance. And, knowing the affinity of this place, she gets the feeling they’d understand each other even if he didn’t. ‘When?’ he puzzles. “When, where, what celestial, what verse.” she half jokes, “I have pieces, you have others, if we talk them together, maybe, will help us both.”
‘I hope so.’
“What the last thing you, amember?” she asks.
He searches his thoughts to find the last thing he can recall, but his brain is foggy and dark. He closes his eyelids and his eyes search behind their curtain for even the tiniest semblance or clue. He lets his mind drift, to gather his past, but even his own life seems distanced and blurred. There’s a glow, just a lighter darkness against the black at first, then a thin vertical gleam, like a door opening just a crack to a dawning sun. It flies open like it’s under the rush of a child in need of a drink and it comes pouring in with a noiseless bang and all is awash in it. The fog shifts and pounces into clarity. Shapes and colors begin to take form. And then, the world, just, snaps. His body tenses and arches against it, his eyes get tighter at the sights in his head. A paralyzing pain wracks through every nerve of his body. A single flash of a moment burns into his thoughts. He remembers throwing footballs with his brother, in the yard, the feel of a mothers love as she kisses away the hurt. And then, the source of the pain makes itself known. He screams and lashes out, his eyes snap open. ‘Oh god, the people, what happened to the kids?’
“Did, you, jus, vision a moment?” she asks curiously, reaching a compassionate hand up to his face. He recoils from her touch, sees her gaze, calms and accepts it. His blood slows and the pain fades. He ponders her question. ‘Maybe? I don’t know! But I remembered, something.’
“The moment we meet?”
‘The moment we met? Maybe? Again, I don’t know, but I think I saw the moment that I died, or should have… What is this place? Heaven? Hell? Or—something else?’
“No, not afterplace, not died, whisked away. A bad mess. Could have been, but not dead, the children are safe, I think…” He wants to ask her how she knows, but he somehow feels that she just does. Her eyes furrow a little, she looks at him with inquisitive eyes then she smiles and nestles her head back to his shoulder. She gathers her words and then gives her own witness. “I can tell how we meet.” she tells him, almost like it was a happy secret. “I was in…a… ughh, a thing I can’t— ex-plain. E’en now with the time to thought it out. So I tell. Okay? It was like a bubble that stretch far behind me, like a whirly wind of energy that was closed afore and round me. On the other side, I see you and a place, what’s the word? when a place or face I feel like I know?”
‘Déjà vu? She gives him a look that tells him that’s not right.”No, not dream word, nother word. Everyday word.”
‘Familiar?’
” Yes! yes, familiar, Where you was, was familiar, but, strange to me. The people were in old dress but much like my people. There was a loud man. Angry. Hateful. A brightness and then… a force of hurt. You took most the ex, exp… hmm, the hurt, the push and pieces, protecting the other ones… I think, I feel… felt that. Then you in the veil with me. Time whooshed on the other side of it. We witness in a second. People come. Some helped the others go away. No not right, bad time… get away. Some people put healing cloth and carry them in metal carts with bright lights. Then it like we, snapped back, like we reach the end of a stretchy… and it went back to where it held it’s feet, or past it. Or maybe even somewheres else.” She twists uncomfortably at her recollection then settles back into his warmth. “What day’s that, what place that?”
He looks out the door vacantly and tugs at his memory. ‘May 9th 2022, New York City and… people, are what happened.’ He senses she doesn’t quite understand. Hell even he doesn’t quite understand and he lived it. ‘One group of evil bastards, against a polar opposite group of evil bastards, with innocent people stuck in between. I swear, no place will ever come to peace as long as one person wants to be called a leader. Or tell someone else how to live their lives because ~they know best~.’ She smiles, “Yes we have them too.” He shakes his head throwing off those thoughts, ‘Wait, if I took the blast, how am I alive?’
“I guess the bubble pulled you in in-time and this place has many herbs, root and sap that can heal.” She brushes her hand through her hair and pulls it to the side of her neck, letting it fall over her shoulder and across her left breast. It cascades around it like a silk shell, cradling its flesh, framing her nipple in satiny gold threads. “So! That Earth. Afore the breaking. I thought it ‘nother. The colors, the lights, the towers and buildings, so alive, so beautiful, so much.”
‘The lights, were, unfortunately, as beautiful as the people were ugly.’ he sighs , then realizing he doesn’t even know her name, he finally makes her acquaintance, ‘I’m Joe by the way.’ He offers his hand, she takes it and holds it firmly in hers, “I’m Solata, Solata Lunata of…” she slips into thought,”… of whatever, this place name, I guess.”
‘This place is part of your name, but you don’t know it?’
“When I’m from, you take the name of the place that’s home as part of your name and this, the first place I stay, in a long time, to feel like home, for me. But like you, I am strange to it.”
‘So, this is Earth?’
“Mayhaps. The star picture’s familiar. I don’t know for sure, but it seem, we both from there, different times held us. You are before the breaking, I am from many years passed it.”
‘The Breaking?’
“That’s what the ‘storicals call it. A time when people and earth just broke, life lost it’s, hmm, glimmer. There was no more us, ‘just pockets of mes’ my father say. He was historical, he teach me. If I member what right, it was 2030 your reckoning …” She continues talking, steady and calm, describing the events as she can remember, fighting to structure the words she had lost the habit to use.
His eyes drift to the hearth and get caught in the focus of a single ember, floating on the updraft from the fireplace. It twirls and swirls in tight circles, pulling him in. Pictures get painted in his mind, either by the flow of her words or some other force entirely. Or maybe, hints of both. Staring at the ember he drifts into them and sees.
The world was very different in many ways, but not so different in the ones that mattered.
Pictures of war, a brutal war, fills his head with places familiar. Diseases and famines and radioactive events and almost three eighths of the world population was gone in a year. A little less than a third were left when there were no bombs left to drop and none left who could build them. In the calm in the eye of the storm, people started to change. In 20 short years all babies were born different than before. Some were more aquatic, some more adapted to mountainous terrain, some were able to change their coloring, others were hermaphroditic, some egg laying. There were even those who could sense by touch better than sight or see at night better than the day. All very much looking as their ancestors did, just tweaked, in subtle sometimes imperceptible ways. There were smaller groups, splintered here and there, who could shift the energies of nature to their will.
It didn’t take long before the ones with physical differences came together, to challenge the ones who could scry the essence. ‘It seems to be what humans do best,’ he thinks, as the scenes play out, ‘fear and hate, then group together in like mind and go after what you don’t understand or what causes you envy or, maybe, you see the potential of it and want to take it and control it for your benefit.’
Noticing the power at the others command, and fearing them, they chased them out of towns or killed them in the night. But there were those who would not be taken so easily. Some went to solitary places away from the hordes. Some, grouped together in secret and fought back. And, more wars ensued. Villages and cities all over the planet were again razed and afire. Many died on both sides, many others were tortured, or maimed, or enslaved.
And fate, well she was not always kinder to the ones who left for more peaceable pastures.
He finds himself hawk-eyed, looking down on an unfamiliar stage.
A dirty road in a village, outside a marketplace. A disheveled, thirsty child stands beside a haphazard fruit stall. A clean but tattered dress is all she has to her person, “…of House Ziata,” she says, through dry cracked lips, to the shop keeper. ‘Stupid Girl, There is no House Ziata.’ comes the retort from the angry woman. “It is my name none the less.” she replies. A twisted hand thrashes through the air biting into the face of the girl. A trail of blood trickles from her temple, where a jagged nail has left an ugly gash. ‘Your family is dead, and good riddance,’ her words ooze out, saturated with spittle and vile, ‘abominations get no food from me, you can starve or die a more painful death. Either one, would suit me fine.’ she hisses…
A gentler hand touches on his cheek. His head shakes, the door shuts and the scene snaps out of view. Her eyes lock into his with a curious, calm, but very surprised look. A look that’s understanding in nature, yet puzzled, in an analytical way. “No one before the Breaking had vision,” she thinks, “or did they? Or… maybe this place?”.
‘Sorry, I…’ he struggles for the words.
“Been a-place you never been? Seen what you not see? Know what you not known?”
‘ Yeah. That pretty much describes it.’
She strokes his cheek playfully, “Sorry about the face hair. I needed it not be there. Easier to keep wounds clean til they sealed ” His hand feels the hair that’s built up, two maybe three days growth, ‘You did me a favor, I like this level of scruff better.’
“Me too,” she giggles, roughing her fingers through the short, brown and grey stubble.
‘You were saying? and I promise not to do that again.’
“You can’t promise yet silly, it takes practice to shut it, but it does help one learn things of places and people.”
‘So, this happens to you too?’
“I can do, yes, I think father give to me, but I can shut it off and on. Took learning but I did. It helps one know the nature and the nurture.” She waits and watches. Looking him over while he collects himself. She muses about his visions some, then she remembers what they were piecing together. “Hmmm, Where we are?” her neck stretches side to side, “Oh yeah, I was picking crowberries and leafs to eat, then there was light, dark blue bolts crack down on the earth. BOOM, I just sat awatch, it was so beautiful. Then, one grab me and pulled me into its energy, it swirled,” her hands move in patterns drawing the imagery on the air, “and flash around me…”
His mind fogs, his eyes close against the dizziness, his head drifts forwards and he’s standing in a world much like the one before.
A girl in a nice dress, no more than 9 sits crossed leg on a marble floor, reading a book about a small man, with big feet, who went on a journey with a wizard and a ring. It’s an old book, a relic, a fiction or fantasy her mother said they called it, if only they could see the now she chortles. She’s softly swaying to the sound of her mother’s humming as it drifts up the stairs and surrounds her.
It’s a familiar tune, one that soothes in his mind.
There’s a cracking, not so much the sound of some thing being broke, more like a tearing in ones own core, or the breaking of an energy. There’s a presence here now. A thing, iced with malevolence, yet volcanic in it’s spirit and hate. The girl wants to run to her mother, but there’s a wall of energy that pushes her away. The house erupts in fury, but she safely settles on the grass outside. She sees the last whisps of gold and green essences, colors she knows were her mother’s and father’s, as they drift away. She knows what they did, in their last breaths of life. Tears start to form, in her piercing blue eyes, as she watches the energies flicker and fade into her skin…
“Joe.” The wall falls again. His eyes glisten, he blinks and shakes the web from his sight. “Too much, too fast, give you, really bad mind ache. Take a breath, lax.” she cautions.
He breathes in deep and exhales. She feels him press up against her back then settle away. He’s warm and soft against her lower back. The wind leaves him and the tension flows with it. She wiggles back, a little more, to regain the contact. She giggles as his short hairs tickle the sensitive skin of her seat. “Are you okay? We take a break and walk?”
‘No, I think I can handle some more. Let’s keep going.’
“I sorry I not speak right. I not practice in long time.”
‘You haven’t spoken in a long time? Why?’
“I live in forest, no one to speak to but air, plant and creature. They not best talkers, not with speak.”
‘You’re doing fine Luna, practice away. I can understand you very well.’
She reaches to the chair and grabs a mug in her left hand. A warm green light, barely noticeable, shines as it passes from the clay then imbibes itself in the liquid inside. Steam starts to rise and drift above the rim. Delicate fingers pinch a bit of willow bark between them and sprinkle it into the now boiling water. “Drink this, it’ll help keep the mind ache down.”
He sips the hot tea, it’s medicinal but palpable. While he drinks she continues her tale.
“The whirly wind of light slowed, and I see you. I feel this… fear, I feel it coming off… you. But the fear, it not for yourself, it for the others. I felt same once, a long time ago.” She pauses at the memory, her eyes glisten with the hint of tears but the water never falls. It’s been a long time since she had the comfort to conjure those memories. Her chest rises as she steels her resolve. “I reached to you, to push you the way, to shield you, but when I touch you, you swallow in with me…”
His back tightens, his eyes clench, his lungs suck the air in with a deep hard gasp.
The pain explodes through a little girl’s mind, as the lash rips through her flesh. The girl is frail, thin and torn. Her ankles and wrists bleed from the thorns of the vines that bind her obscenely to a cold metal table.
The man with the whip is slovenly, sadistic and cruel. Spittle falls from his mouth as he thrashes at the tied up waif, whose legs he’s between. A carnal fury ebbs from his eyes as he plows himself, half limp and pathetically, into her ass.
Her screams stopped a while ago. He gets no satisfaction from this. He needs their tears, their acknowledgement and their pain for his pleasure. He tires of his sport and gives her one last lash with the thorny switch, spits on her back, and turns away.
Blood flows off her ribs to pool at the floor below her. It mixes with the excrement and fluids of his past playthings.
Footsteps plod, heavily, up stone stairs. An iron door slams shut with anger and frustration. The room goes quiet, it’s cold and dampness, looming. Time passes with no tempo.
‘New meat,’ a different voice shouts.
‘Ooh these three are fresh,’ the pig man seethes.
‘And they have no ways.’ the other happily intones.
‘they’re gonna be delightful fun. Toss em in with that, thing, that should prime their fears nicely.’
Cries and sobs get increasingly louder and clearer. Metallic clicks echo down the stone stairwell. The cage door rattles and slams against the wall. Three bodies stumble and tumble to the floor. There’s a sound, like sacks of wet flour being dropped from a cart and landing, unceremoniously, onto a slab of hard packed earth. Boomph.
There’s a gasp as air is sucked back into lungs. Six eyes, awash in horror, search through their panic for a safe space to hide.
“Hello,” smiles the little girl in a strained raspy voice, she struggles to be heard over their cries and wailings, “nice to meet you.”
Tear streaked, black and blue faces, turn to her and look at her like she’s crazy. But the contradiction of her tone, against the truth of their circumstance, stops their crying long enough for her to speak and be heard. Without having to talk too loud. She’s seen them before. Many moons older in age, almost in their union years. They hide from her whenever she is near. “Could one of you untie my hand please. They won’t hurt you anymore if I’m free.’ Her eyes are glazed with pain. Yet her words and tone, mixed with their fear of the men upstairs and the expectation of ending up in her position, fills them with a moment of courage. If they recognize her, it doesn’t show. Either that same fear blinds them to their recollection or the blood on her face disguises it away. They scramble across the floor to her side.
Three pairs of hands pull at the knots awkwardly. Their bruised fingers tremble as they work. Thorns cut into their skin but they endure. The rope comes undone from her wrist. ‘Thank you.’ she says with a soft honest hush. The smile on her lips recedes into concentration. They watch as she rubs the bond on her right hand. The ropes uncoil and twist, unleashing themselves from her wrist and then from both her bloodied ankles. She grabs the switch from the table side. There’s movement, in her grasp, it’s in harmony with her motion. The pieces of her bondage and pain writhe and merge, dancing tighter together. A snake, of twined hemp and thorny vine, takes shape. It eases to her face and brushes gingerly, sympathetically, at a wound under her eye. Then it rears back and accedes, with a cold determination.
Her face goes stone.
The girls huddle away from her, the fear of ‘her kind’ rekindled by the action and that look. They scramble under the cots and tables and hide.
The snake slithers it’s way across the blood stained stone floor, undulating up the stairs and disappearing beyond the gate.
Seconds pass and the silence is hungry.
The quiet breaks with horrific screams. Shrill howls that pierce the air and fill the night with the horrors of defilement and terror. It resonates through the rock, dust falls from the ceiling in its intensity. The echoes hit their ears like sledgehammers. The other girls cover them fast, but they can’t escape it’s volume or the sheer terror in it’s tone.
She does not cover hers, she’s immune to the sound. “So! You don’t like it there either!” she words, half in her mind, a little bit out loud.
A final cry of anguish is consumed in a gurgling choke, as a cracking of bones brings the screams to an abrupt and merciful end.
Metal jingles and crashes to the stone. A high pitched scraping rhythmically resounds with ascending volume, getting closer to the tortured girl’s cell. Shsching, shsching, shsching.
She stands defiant to the pain, naked and bleeding and, deservedly, unashamed.
The bramble snake reappears at the bottom of the stairs, keys to the cell, firmly interlaced in it’s tail…
“Joe! Joe!”
He snaps back to her words and his eyes fall upon her shoulder and back, before she’s fully turned to meet his gaze. His fingers go to her face, she leans into them. They trace a line down her neck to a point of raw, taut flesh, just above the nape. His face turns solemn. It’s a similar scar to the one he just saw, ripped into the child turned liberator, not seconds ago. ‘Did you get them out?’ he asks, on a whim. “Who?” she puzzles. ‘The three girls in the cage when you…’ he pauses, remembering the things that were being done to her, if it was her, and he phrases his response to be kind to her modesty, ‘got these?’. She gasps softly as his hand traces the biggest cicatrix, almost by memory, from the left side of her neck down her spine, then under her ribs to just above her hip. “I not be here if I didn’t.” She answers, matter-of-factly.
‘So why didn’t you escape before, if you can do things like that?’ His hand glides down to the small of her waist settling into the bend and resting on her thigh. She turns and settles back against him, taking his hand in hers and leading it across her stomach. “It only hurt for the first couple lashings and when he tore me… back there. Then words in my head telled me, ‘You be okay, a little longer, hush, no more tears, be strong, be brave,’ and I not feel it anymore.”. My only sort was to wait. Anything else I could do, have killed me too.”
‘I’ve felt the truth of it, little one. You were about a blink away from taking that chance.”
“But,” she shifts back to look in his eyes. “how could you feel my knowing? That, not part of the sight.”
‘Is feeling my fear part of this sight?’
“?I don’t think. No. Never afore anyway,” she settles her head into his shoulder, nestling back into the cradle of his arm, unconsciously tracing a circular scar on his chest, “I don’t member feeling, just seeing and hearing… ah well, more questions for the musements.”
She lays her head back into his shoulder, and shuts her eyes. The scruff on his chin against her forehead, causes a shiver to course through her. He wraps his other arm around her, she brings her hand to merge with his.
‘So let me put this together. You, were watching an energy storm and I, was getting blown up. You got picked up and hurled back to my time, in this vortex thing, then I got picked up by you, and this energy— then, we ended up here?’
“Yep, out there, in the stream, bare as the way we come into the world…”
‘Kinda like we are now.’
“Hyeah… I guess energy didn’t like anything but living stuff in it. Clothes gone. Even the bits in your skin left behind. Then, it was like a flexy band. You know when you stretch and then let go? Well it let go and poof, we here and the energy just gone.”
‘Good thing I didn’t have a pacemaker. Wait! How long have we been here?’
“Eighteen days, I think.” she says, point of fact. “I put a stone on… what you call that?” she points to the shelf above the fireplace.
‘The mantle?’
“Yes, the mantle, I put a stone there every sun sleep, but I may amiss one-a-two.”
The fire crackles, their eyes draw to it, there’s a pop and the logs settle.
“You pretty messed up. I think your brain think you rip apart. Which you almost was. On that side, but not inside. Inside, you just burnt a little here, and blood a bit there.”
He looks at his body and sees the places where fresh, tight, dark pink, flesh now contrasts against his normally olive skin and he realizes, it was a little more than just a little. His face gets solemn, his eyes fill with an awareness. The pieces of just what has come to pass, since they were settled here, come together. As much as he can fathom of it anyway. And even though, she has not spoken a word of what she’s done, he imagines all that she has forced herself through, to tend to him, to bring him back to health and to keep herself alive and he’s overwhelmed by the thought that she did it alone. He wonders if he could have done the same for her and marvels, how this, petite, graceful, sprite of a being, has done, for nearly three weeks, what would have been a hard pressed task for any three, or even four people he knew in his time, to have endured. Never mind seemed happy for it. His heart fills with admiration and awe and his countenance brightens. ‘What strength,’ he thinks, gripping her tighter in his arms, ‘what a strength and what purpose she wields… But why me? Why am I the one? Why is it me, here with her, right now?’
‘Thank you.’
“You welcommmhmm,” she stretches herself further into his skin and yawns.
The sun arcs and settles in the sky as they sit in quiet contemplation. Both aware of, but neither mentioning, the bond that seems to have been weaved between them. ‘By this place? Or her actions? Or the temporal storm? Or maybe, all of them together,’ he muses, ‘each piece honing a part of it into us. It feels like there’s, a whole here, not pieces, a whole.’
She settles herself more completely against him and hums a little contentment.
The day orb glows red in it’s descent, a comfortable calm creeps upon them with a promise of peaceful rest. They fall asleep in each others arms and, as they drift into the dream lair, more fruitful visions come. And so does that intoxicating pull.
The years they had passed, without witness, filter into them, like, a scent that revives a memory and stirs a flavor on the tongue, one you still taste long after you awake. They’re not their own visions that play in their minds though, it’s more like they were looking through the eyes of, someone, something, from the others time, not each others but not their own either. Something other, something that watched and learned. It was the type of seeing that leaves only a hint of itself in the senses. Well, not so much a hint as a tenuous connection to one.
It’s another scent that pulls her awake and away from that place where the visions played. Not just any scent, but his scent and hers, mixed together by the air around them. It guides her path and teases at a knowledge in her. Edging her on a journey she’s never been but longed to take. And now, because of this place and him she finds those urges rekindled. And now she has someone to share it with. Someone, she wants to share it with.
She shifts her body to face him and runs her hand up the inside of his leg, slowly. Just as she’s done, so many times, in those so many days before. It’s different this time, she can sense it, like the day is different from the night. For this is the first time her hands touch his flesh, without a wall of fabric between them. She can picture the trail of moisture from the cloth. She can see the hairs stand in the wake. The friction of his skin, burns in her mind and teases at the whorls on the tips of her fingers. She feels her way confidently, unhurried, but hungrily, up the inside of his thigh to his sex, knowing how he’ll respond to her touch, watching her desire come to life in her palm. She wraps her hand around him and feels him growing bolder to her play. His flesh tightens and thrums, filling up her grasp. She loosens her grip to encompass him. Hotter it feels, than she recalls and prouder it grows, each inquisitive rub rewarding her efforts with the promise of something, mystical. He is hard and tight and she can feel his blood pulse in the flesh of her palm.
With a unique and fluid motion, she slips her dress up and over the curve of her hips, rolls her long slender leg over his torso and slowly lowers herself onto him, teasing his warm, flush, flesh deliberately against herself, feeling his boldness parting the folds of her gate.
Minutes pass, deliciously slow. She relishes every second of the feeling of their contact. The inching and building of their energies continue as she feels him press firmly into her heat. She grinds down and slinks lower, there’s a gnaw and a tug and a reason to stop. She rolls forwards and back, the reason to stop disappears. She rises and drops likes she was jumping off a cliff. There’s a tearing that grips her with burning pain but her need and desire compels her on. Steadily, she continues downward. And, when at last, she feels the fullness of him inside her and the touch of his stomach presses into hers, she shudders and a tingly heat prickles up through her spine. Blood trickles and tints his skin. Her skin ripples with vigor. She smiles at the pain for it’s of her own making. The fine radiant hairs on her arms and legs stand up, like they do, to capture the sun when she’s chilled. She rises slowly and the pain becomes warmth and the warmth becomes energizing.
“So this is how it feels with not hate or cruelty.” she whispers in her mind, “This!— Is this where the joy in House Ziata came? Is this, what mother and father shared?”
Her dress scrapes roughly at the hardened nibs that push away tauntingly from the dark, sensitive circles of skin on her chest. It teases that delicate flesh with it’s gauzy fabric, sending waves of fire and energized, humming pulses through her bones, sinew and nerves. She rolls her hips back, methodically, then forward, an ecstasy rises inside her and a fury of blood, she didn’t know possible, begins pulsing and feeding her with a need to continue. The hairs of his loins tease her most sensorial of places, lifting her higher into her senses and pulling him within it. Her body shakes as she rises and sets upon him.
He wakes from his dream at the same place he left it. Inside her, fueled by her fragrance, urged on by her sultry, velveteen grasp, surrounded in an all consuming warmth.
The air of the room feels static and charged. It ripples with light. Sparks of blue and purple hues, arc and flash like fingers, pulling outward and around them.
He slides off her dress in a slow, deliberate motion. The passing of the fabric against her skin causes her body to shiver. Her nipples harden a little more passed comfortable, she gasps as the crochet plucks and taunts.
The energy around them intensifies, gathering itself in a pale blue drone.
He watches the flush pass across her face and is awash in her beauty and, thoroughly, lost in her charm.
‘She’s a wallflower’ he hears in the back of his mind, ‘She’s unkempt, I mean look at the hair on her legs and eww, those armpits .’, ‘Poor girl, doesn’t she know about make up?’.
‘Yes.’ he curtly responds, ‘that’s what they would say in my world, but she, is anything but. She is true and wild, unconventional and real, she is bold and calm, and unique, and she’s stronger than anyone I’ve ever known, and I’d love her, even in that place’.
‘And she would love you, even in hers,’ teases another voice, different in tone, unknown, patient, and whispered, ‘treat her well, she’s seen much, given much, as have you.’
He rolls her over and onto her back, careful not to break their bond. She wraps herself around him. her legs and arms pull him into her, feeling his weight upon her, feeling his breath on her chest and the scruff of his cheek against her neck. She clenches her sex around his, squeezing him and pulling him even deeper. He feels her strength surround him. Their bodies, entwined and one, continue their slow, amorous dance.
She lifts his face to hers slowly and pauses, just on the edge of their touch.
He brushes his forehead across hers and a titillating tension teases across his scalp. He sniffs deep and long. drawing in her scent, breathing it in fully, letting it fill him. His mouth toys just out of reach, then gambols a little bit closer. Their lips touch and spark. The static in the air pulses. He kisses with a hunger and a passion well beyond any he’s had to compare.
She matches and refuels it with her own awakened desire.
The blue haze grows brighter and hums more intensely, as they surge into each other more of their will.
One hand finds the small of her back, the other a warm, firm breast. He cups it and teases at the rigid flesh with his palm. The pliable pebble tickles and teases his lifeline.
She looks into him deeper, deeper than anyone has ever tried, and lets him, completely, in to the depths of her own. She rolls purposefully up and into him, pulling not just his sex but his ghost into her, arching and aching to push herself, and her own energy, more completely into him.
The haze becomes flame, circling their movements, in a ring of bright plasma and a steady, low, rumbling din.
Their lips part and tongues entangle and they breathe each other in, like they were the very air they needed to live. His fingers trace the scars on her ribs and when she feels his nails pass tenderly on the skin of her back, she shudders and can hold it no more.
The cool, blue fire surges and she feels the wall fall with a slow, rippling cascade.
Her release rages through her, from somewhere deep inside rising, from the place where his heat melds with hers.
It thrums up her spine, exploding out through every hair. He stiffens his back to his own need and slowly, steadily, teases in and out of her, straining to see her through to her end. Her hands clench his back, her fingertips scrape at his still raw flesh. She pulls him to her, and his own defenses fall, when she groans in his ear and finds it’s lobe with her teeth.
The blue flame turns almost white, then flashes out and all around them, as his climax flows hotly into her and her climax flows molten around him, melding their moments to one purpose.
Three more pulses and pushes, one more euphoric cry and they collapse, breathing heavy and into each others bliss.
The drone slowly wanes and the glow softly fades, as their two bodies, flushed with the knowledge of each others fate, twitch in their final throws.
He stays inside her, while they reclaim their breath, both entranced in the energy that surrounds them. They look into each other, feeling the truth of it, or a hint of it anyway, then laugh, a good and much needed laugh, a soul binding sound of honesty and joy.
“We should try that again,” she says “only next time, without the three weeks of horning me up.” Their laughter grows, filling the cabin with a joy and a warmth, it has not seen in eons. The little bird alights on the window sill. “Chirp, cheep, chirp chirp.” She looks his way and smiles. With one last cheery chirp he flaps his wings and flies away.
His mouth finds hers willing and slowly they kiss and tease, commanding the air back into each other. She hugs him then rolls him onto his back, lays herself on top of him and nestles her head to his chest. He wraps her in his arms. Cheek to cheek and ear to mouth, they drift into soft chatter, and uncontrollable giggles.
Moonlight dances across the lakes flowing ripples and spies through the cabin’s open window, glistening two bodies in its gaze. Bodies covered only in its glow, their sweat and the warmth of each others skin. The laughter subsides into comfortable whispers and they drift softly back into dream.
