I could not keep all of her warm with my arms, and so I pulled the fleece, dried now of the rain, around us. To the placid, rhythmic sounds of the sea she slept quietly in my arms, endearingly, breathing deeply, her hair spread over my throat, my breasts, my arms. As if a tightly wound spring in me had fully released, I too slept, a brief lovely sleep, my awakening euphoric: Laurel, sweetly asleep in my arms.
A freshening breeze had risen when she stirred, and she pressed into me, further seeking my warmth; I tightened my arms and she sank again into sleep, but only a few minutes longer; she stirred again and awakened. She plucked at the fleece around her, gazed at me with sleepy, startled eyes.
“It’s turned very cool,” I murmured, shivering as a vagrant breeze chilled me. I drew the fleece more closely around us and stroked her hair.
“What time is it?”
“I don’t know,” I said, disoriented, glancing helplessly at the sky. “Perhaps . . . four.”
“Good.” Smiling, she rose onto her elbows and settled her body onto mine.
Sometime later she murmured, her voice a pleased purr, “Did I make you warm?”
I could only smile in answer, and as she still stroked my face, my hair, I asked with a suddenly dry throat, “Would you . . . be with me. . .” Then, fearful of what I would suffer if she did not reply as I wished, I said merely, “. . . tonight?”
“Yes,” she replied, and as this beautiful word reverberated in me she added, “Of course.”
I pushed on as bravely as I could, “Would you be with me
. . . after that?”
She gazed at me and again spoke the beautiful word.
“Laurel,” I blurted, “I need you so, I love you so much—”
Tears welled, spilled down her cheeks.
“Dearest one,” I whispered, stricken. “Laurel don’t, I love you so—”
She held my face so that she could look into my eyes. “I love you more.”
I murmured later, my lips pressed against her hair, “Take whatever time you wish to reflect, but I want Minerva to record Laurel and Megan as Joined.”
“Yes.” And to this most beautiful of all words she added, “I wish it too, Megan. Now. Right now.”
We dressed and returned to the house, where I signaled Minerva in her history chamber. Standing with Laurel, our arms about each other, I informed her of our intention. She seemed surprised, as I had expected, and also somewhat distracted.
“Of course, Megan dear. But you must surely come here in person for so momentous and symbolic an occasion. Could you come in . . . half an hour?”
As Minerva’s image faded from the lumiscreen, Laurel said, her face puzzled, “Given your stature, why would she ask you to wait?”
“I don’t know,” I said, not caring at all, leading her to a chaise where I pulled her down with me. “I only know we have half an hour in which . . . to find something to do.” I kissed her then, and soon opened her tunic.
A brief time later she took my mouth from her breasts and whispered, her words coming between swift breaths, “It’s time
. . . to go to Minerva.”
“It can’t be,” I protested.
“It is,” she said. “Never would I stop you for any lesser reason.”
And so I joyfully stepped into the hovercraft with the woman I loved with all my being, to whom I would soon be Joined.
XIII
Journal of Laurel
15.1.17
My hand in hers, Megan and I ran into Minerva’s history chamber. And stopped in surprise. A solemn group confronted us—the Inner Circle.
“Minerva,” Megan said reprovingly, her face tensing in displeasure.
“I had no choice but to reveal your plans,” Minerva protested. “To have such an occasion as your Joining accomplished in commonplace and quiet fashion would have cost me my head.”
“At the very least,” Hera emphatically confirmed.
Megan walked to the group and confronted them with hands on her hips. “No,” she stated.
“Megan dear, only a small celebration,” Vesta protested, her eyes coming to mine and beseeching. “Certain things have already been made ready. Food, wine—”
Megan said sternly, “This is ours, and private.” She turned to me for support. “Laurel?”
Diana had broken away from the group, had come to me. Before I could speak in agreement, she leaned to me and said in a low voice four words—the same four words she had spoken days ago to first reveal Megan’s status on this world: “She is our leader.”
I swallowed, and then said, “Please allow them, Megan.” Her green eyes widened. “You want that? You truly do?”
I hesitated, seeing her distress. But Diana had said: She is our leader. “Please allow them,” I repeated. “Only a small celebration, for this very special day of our Joining.”
She said, her eyes softening, “If you wish it.”
“Come with me, dear,” Diana said, taking my arm.
As Diana led me off, Megan looked at me yearningly. “Soon,” I called, wanting—as she did—nothing in this world but to be together in these moments of our unfolding love.
Diana held up several swatches of white fabric and quickly selected lace. “This, most assuredly,” she said.
“It is Megan’s color,” I objected.
“And now yours as well.” She wrapped me in a section of it. “Trust us, Laurel. We love her, we wish only to make you beautiful for her.” Head cocked to one side, she studied me, lifting my hair from my shoulders. “Yes, yes,” she said distractedly. “I’ll be but a few minutes. Venus will dress your hair.”
Her blue robe swaying gracefully with her walk, Venus came to me, arms filled with a variety of short-stemmed blossoms. She smiled perfunctorily and set to work, holding locks of my hair this way and that before beginning to insert and pin flowers. The silence between us was constrained, awkward. I finally said, “I have never . . . worn my hair in this fashion.”
“It becomes you, and will become the dress which is being created for you,” she stated in a tone forbidding argument. Then she posed the most extraordinary question I can ever conceive of one person putting to another: “Orgasm with her,” she asked, “is it wonderful?”
Utter astonishment bludgeoned voice from me. Then memory ambushed me. Most vivid and intimate memory . . .
Venus had been scrutinizing me. “A reply is unnecessary,” she said softly. She pinned one additional blossom and then walked from me. “Make her happy,” she said in a manner that made her words not a wish and much stronger than a command.
Vesta came in. I embraced her, kissed her cheek. “Thank you,” I said fervently to this benefactor who had so successfully pleaded my case with Mother.
“Make her happy,” Vesta said, the same words Venus had spoken, but this a tender wish given lovingly.
“Vesta,” I said uncertainly, “now that our Joining has acquired some formality, is there behavior—are there customs the women of Maternas—”
“Not really, Laurel dear. Most often the two exchange a gift of symbolic or sentimental value, but even that is not a formality.”
“Thank you,” I said, knowing that I had something of both symbolic and sentimental value to give to Megan.
Diana dressed me. A knee-length white lace dress fitted closely over my breasts, opening at my throat; lace sleeves clung tightly to my arms, flaring open at my wrists into a delicate nebulous fabric that reached to my fingers.
“It is time,” Diana said, fitting sandals to my feet as I stared at my reflection, the reflection of someone who seemed very young and more than a little frightened.
They took me to Cybele’s main square. Flaming torches lighted the early evening sky. The platform used for the ballet on Anniversary Day had again been erected, and held flower-banked banquet tables and musicians—and also Mother, resplendent in her green cape. All around me on the balconies and bridges of Cybele were the women of Maternas. Diana led me—so stunned I could scarcely wal
k—to the platform, to Mother.
“It was to be . . . a small ceremony,” I stammered to Mother.
Mother waved a hand. “Phosh. If there must be ceremony what does it matter whether large or small?” She indicated a place on her chaise. “Sit down and talk to me, my dear. Megan will be right along.”
Obediently I sat, but it was soon clear that it was Mother who wished to talk. “Of those I have loved in my long life,” she told me, “I love Megan more than any. You will make her happy, won’t you?”
“I’ll try with all my heart, Mother.”
Mother patted my hand. “It would annoy me greatly if you didn’t, my dear. And when I become annoyed—”
There was a rising murmur from around us and I glimpsed Megan and quickly stood. I knew that Diana had indeed dressed me well when I saw Megan’s eyes come to me . . .
Her white shirt was of brocade, with a high collar, her boots of sculptured design, rising just above the ankle; close-fitted lustervel pants, tied with a white sash, burnished her long legs as she walked to me.
“You’re so beautiful,” she said, taking my hands and drawing me to her; but there was a tumult of sound from all around us, and only then did she become aware of the preparations that had been made, the women gathered on the heights and tiers of Cybele.
“Be as gracious as you can, Megan dear,” Mother said serenely, as Megan’s face tensed and her eyes narrowed in displeasure. “Be grateful you don’t have to endure what I did.” Minerva had come up to us and Mother said to her, “Did I ever relate the story of when I married your father?”
“Yes Mother,” Minerva answered, “and it is time to—”
“I married him in the pleasure capital of Vega,” Mother continued inexorably, “and nothing but the best would do. Which consisted of the ceremony taking place in a cavernous monstrosity of gilt rococco stuffed with grotesque statuary and lined with fifty incompetent musicians, who played an appalling ditty which I was told was Earth’s traditional wedding march.”
“Mother,” Minerva said with a gesture signifying that everything was in readiness.
“A moron swathed in white from head to foot for Geezerak knows what reason chanted words over us, accompanied by a lachrymose violin and deafening drums, cymbals, and tambourines,” Mother said. “Then he threw a switch that released a collection of terrified doves that swooped down on us, and another switch that sent a torrent of flowers hurtling down at our heads, and still another that unfurled a roll of red carpet over which I fled to the door, closely followed by your father.”
Megan and I were laughing heartily, and Mother said to Minerva, “What are you waiting for, my dear? Let’s get on with it.”
Mother rose from her chaise and took my hand and Megan’s, escorted us before a table with a high slanted top. As Minerva took her place behind it, lumiscreens around us glowed to life. She opened the book of records I had first seen in the library on Anniversary Day.
I watched Minerva’s hand form words with a writing instrument I had never seen, the words appearing on the lumiscreens for the women of Maternas to see as she inscribed them:
Laurel and Megan
Joined in their Love
15.1.17
As she finished, the lumiscreens extinguished; and Mother joined my hand with Megan’s. Through my tears I could see nothing, not even Megan. I could only hear the thunderous sound from all around us.
Blinking my tears away, unable to speak, I released Megan’s hand to take the emerald ring from my finger. Then I took her hand again and slid the ring onto her finger, forming it to fit. “I love you,” I whispered.
She lifted the chain from around her neck, the chain holding the precious crystal she had found first on this new world, and lowered it over my head; the crystal rested between my breasts. She took my hands and kissed them, drew me to her and kissed my forehead. “I will love you forever,” she whispered, her arms enclosing me.
I slid my hands over the irregular surface of her brocade shirt until my arms fully embraced her shoulders. Uncaring of the witnesses to my love, I kissed her . . .
Music began. Megan’s arms tightened around me. We danced, her arms holding me close into her. I lay my head on her shoulder, aware only of her, her arms, her slender graceful body in my arms.
After a while she told me in a low, pleased voice, “I have never danced before.”
I asked with a sigh, “Is there anything you do not do well?”
She chuckled softly. “My hair. Demeter prepared it for this moment, took great pains with it. I don’t like it nearly so well as when you dress it.”
“It will be my beloved task every day from now on,” I promised. I caressed her slender shoulders, feeling her warmth through the ornate fabric. “I’ve been threatened with dismemberment at the very least if I fail to make you happy.”
She laughed. She had danced us into a shadowed corner, and her arms tightened . . . When she danced us from the shadows again my head lay once more on her shoulder—from necessity; I was weak from the sweet passion of her mouth.
Vesta brought us food, wine. I tasted nothing except the morsel Megan told me was delicious, feeding it to me with her fingers . . . We danced again. If I could not be alone with her, I was content holding her, being in her arms.
Mother came up to us. “You two might as well leave,” she grumbled, “since you’ll have nothing to do with the rest of us. Take the hovercraft beside the council chambers. The controls are set. A place has been made ready at Barney Lake, supplied with everything you need.” Mother reached for Megan, kissed both cheeks. “If I see you before many days from now, I will be most seriously annoyed.”
She turned to me, took my hands, kissed me as well. And whispered, “Make her happy.”
XIV
Personal Journal of Megan
15.1.17
Each with an arm around the other, we stood at the window watching Barney Lake become dark coral rippling, our world become silver. I took Laurel into my arms and touched my lips to her forehead, and began to take the flowers from her hair, cascades of silk tresses spilling over my hands.
“Perhaps it doesn’t seem the time to talk of it,” she said hesitantly, her lovely face upturned to mine and solemn, “but . . . Megan, will we have children together?”
“Yes,” I whispered, kissing her forehead, “yes.”
With a pleased sigh she lowered her head to my shoulder, her arms drawing me close. “But not for a while,” she said. “We’ll enjoy each other for a while before we begin having them.”
“Them?” I murmured, smiling. “How many did you have in mind?”
“I think . . . three.”
Tears in my eyes, I tightened my arms around her.
She murmured, her lips close to my ear, “Three beautiful little girls with dark hair and green eyes.”
“Two will have blue eyes,” I said firmly, “and gold-streaked hair.”
“One can have blue eyes. The other two—”
“We’ll have four then, two of each,” I said, and stopped her reply with my lips.
Kissing her throat, I opened her lace dress to kiss her shoulders. She stepped away from me and pushed her dress off her shoulders; it fell in a soft heap around her feet. I gazed, not attempting to touch her yet, treasuring her loveliness in the silver light, all curves and contoured shadows. She turned for me, slowly, standing for a moment with the full, swelling curves of her hips to me; then she stepped to me.
I reached for the gleaming crystal between her breasts to take it off her, but she stopped my hands. “I wish to wear it always,” she said. I nodded, knowing that never would I take off her ring.
She opened my shirt—but in tantalizing increments, her hands and lips exploring each exposure of throat and shoulder. She pushed the shirt from my shoulders but not off my body, so that my arms were pinioned in its sleeves; she kissed down to my breasts, her lips circling them, her tongue stroking.
“Laurel,” I whispered, eyes closed, my b
ody warm, weakening.
“Let me,” she murmured against my breasts.
My body was a fine network of filament ever more glowing as each nipple was exquisitely, repeatedly, taken.
She released my arms from the shirt and discarded it, then knelt to me, running her hands caressingly down my legs; she took off my boots.
Slowly, she slid clothing down, then off me, her lips inflaming me as they also descended, to my thighs . . .
I clutched at memory to control my weakening and the trembling of my legs . . . memory of how I had commanded escape from pursuing Earth ships, how I had confronted the monster GEM with so many lives at risk . . . But as her lips traced the triangle of hair within my legs I further weakened; and when her lips began to brush through the hair all sensation left my legs and I sank to my knees, and finding no strength there, further collapsed onto the fleece-cushioned floor.
She bent to me, hands gentle on my thighs. “Let me,” she whispered, and lay down between my legs.
Slowly, her lips brushed me again . . . And then she turned my bones to water.
Never at any time in my life had I been out of control, and as my legs acquired quivering life of their own from this inconceivable pleasure, I fearfully put my hands in her hair and took her sweet mouth away.
Her hands took mine. “Megan dearest,” she whispered, “let me.”
I gripped her hands; I clasped her in my legs. Her warm mouth again took tender possession of me. In my deepening ecstasy my legs trembled uncontrollably around her, my hands tightened vise-like around hers amid pleasure as pure as a note on her crystal reed. Able only to take swift breaths into me, my body an ever more rigid arch of ecstasy, I approached a dazzling edge and hovering there, tried to speak her name and could not. And within my stilled body it was as if our planet’s two suns had fused.
She cradled my head in an arm as she dried my tear-streaked face with her discarded dress. She held me close for a long time, then took my face into her hands and smiled and told me softly, her blue eyes merciless, “If you cry each time this night, you’ll have no tears left long before morning.”
Daughters of a Coral Dawn Page 20