Slowly, Lorne took Xianfu’s shaft into his mouth, sucking firmly. As the hard member ran over his lips, he rubbed the end against the roof of his mouth, playing at it with his tongue. He could feel Xianfu’s pulse in his lips.
Xianfu shuddered, occasionally letting out a gasp. He had a feeling of freedom, of being uninhibited - and he didn’t need to do anything. He felt at the center of Lorne’s world.
It was an oddly humbling experience. Someone wanting to make him happy that much.
Lorne’s head bobbed quicker while his hands stroked the bottom of Xianfu’s manhood. He carefully gauged his lover’s arousal.
“Lorne …”
“Yes.”
“I’m … close.”
“Really?” Lorne thought for a moment. “Good.”
“Wait …”
“No …” Lorne kissed the head of Xianfu’s sex. “No, I think you need to relax.”
Languorously, he took Xianfu’s manhood into his mouth.. With agonizingly enjoyable slowness, he sucked at the member gently, his lips tight. His hands moved quicker.
“Big … Guy …”
Lorne pulled his mouth back, hands still stroking. With a groan, Xianfu climaxed, eyes closed blissfully. Lorne continued his ministrations until his partner flopped back on the bed, enjoyably spent.
“Oh, gods of Xai …” Xianfu breathed.
“I have wanted to do that … anything like it for so long.” Lorne stood. “Let me get some towels.”
“It’s OK, I don’t think I can move.”
Xianfu heard Lorne leave the room and return moments later. He felt his belly and groin being gently toweled off.
“When I recover … you are next.” Xianfu grinned. “You are so very next.”
“Oh, I feel so threatened,” Lorne curled up next to Xianfu.
“I … where are your pants?”
“Got rid of them. Didn’t think I’d need them.”
“Good guess.”
Lorne Thompson looked out of his bedroom window, out at the moon that hung in the sky of Xai. It’s features were different than the moon on his own Earth - another difference here.
Xianfu stirred next to him. “What’s up?”
“Thinking. I wonder what …”
“Slate and Garnet are fine.” Xianfu’s smile was a swift flash of moonlit ivory.
There was the sound of a phone ringing, as if on cue. Lorne scuttled across the bed and seized the phone from the nightstand.
“Yes? Why … oh. Oh. No. Sorry. I … OK. Yes. Fine, fine. Goodnight.”
Lorne hung the phone up.
“That was Slate, I just know it,” Xianfu said sourly.
“Yes.” Lorne sat on the bed with a creak of springs. “We were keeping a spare bed for Riakka when she had moved, but she’d given it away.”
“They broke their bed.” Xianfu stated. “They broke the bed.”
“Yes, you know what this means?”
“Well, they’ve obviously consummated.”
“Yes.” Lorne nodded. “That and we can’t make fun of Jade and HuanJen anymore …”
“Oh, forget it.” Xianfu scooted over to his lover. “Lets see if we can destroy some furniture ourselves …”
INTEGRATIONS
December 12, 2000 AD, Xaian Standard Calendar
There was a part of Xai that seemed to be forever.
The Crossworld spun its course around the sun. People came to the world, and went, lived and died there or elsewhere, all in motion. Xai was the where-we-all-go, the place-of-crossing, the eternal frontier.
For a place of so much transit, it’s traditions were bound into its culture, the reinforcement of the world’s people. As the nexial twentieth century headed for a close, half the residents of Xai had not been born there. Traditions and culture were the only ways to tie people together, to prevent conflict, and to ensure the forever of things.
Ideas reaching back into time. Foundations. Whys and hows.
And there were those who maintained the foundations.
The Guilds changed. Thirty years ago the Traveler’s had been placed under control of the other guilds, and twenty years before that they’d been the most powerful of Guilds. The Gendarmes had been all but mercenaries centuries before, and in present time were treated as respected keepers of law. The Mercantile Alliance was barely a Guild, and no one could quite remember when it had been founded or even if it had been founded - there was a terrible suspicion that people had just assumed it existed until it actually did.
One Guild however had always seemed to exist. Guild Esoteric.
The first people to arrive on Xai were those inclined to peer between worlds, if not walk between them, and those lead by them. Shamans and mystics and visionaries and mad geniuses were those to pass through the portals. The Holy Men and Wise Women and people with second sight and sixth senses were not so much the founders of the civilization of Xai, but they were its godparents.
Others came as people found their way through the portals, through the trails blazed by the shamans and mystics. The loose alliance of clerics and diviners and whatnot persisted and maintained - no matter how many worlds they came from, they knew they would loose Xai if the various elements did not stand together. They were used to seeing around corners and into cracks in the future, and they saw knives and discord.
And so, slowly, confusedly, Guild Esoteric emerged. They were the first Guild, a fact undisputed for centuries upon centuries. From them sprang the Traveler’s and others, for Guild Esoteric maintained the understanding of people’s connection to the world and each other. Out of many faiths, many differences, there was one pressing need - to minimize the friction caused when infinite cultures rubbed together and when they encountered the Otherworld.
Those who had only a few years experience living on Xai assumed the Guild was the end-all of the clerical and mystical profession. Others knew better, that there were those few outside the reach and the alliances of the Guild, just as were those few ourside the other Guilds.
One of those organizations outside of the Guilds was the Panoramic League, mystics and artists, spinners of stories and dancers who told the future, jesters who found what you didn’t know. It had existed for centuries.
In the winter of nexial year two-thousand, the Panoramic League was coming to Metris, the capital city of Xai.
The Panoramic league was ending.
Some things are more eternal than others, after all.
Jade Shalesdaughter was indulging in peace and quiet.
Jade did not seem a peace and quiet kind of person. One of the genetic variants of humanity called Vulpines, she was almost a menacing figure - a black-pelted woman with white-furred hands and ears, inhumanly green eyes, and foxlike features. On her earth, her people had live their lives away from humanity, part of a centuries-old conspiracy of information brokers.
She was the apprentice to the Zone Cleric HuanJen, a mixture of a social worker and a supernatural troubleshooter. Some days she would hold hands, the other days she’d assist with exorcisms, and most days she could swear enough to melt the ears off of any local idols.
She didn’t seem to be the kind of person to like peace and quiet as she rarely experienced it.
Which meant that she indulged in it whenever possible. That was one reason she enjoyed visiting her friend Garnet.
Garnet had a house. Garnet had a husband - Jade’s brother Slate. After her recent marriage, Garnet seemed to be an odd anchor of stability, an anchor Jade found she rather enjoyed. The smaller Vulpine was a red-furred lightning bolt of domestic tranquillity.
The two Vulpines sat in a living room (with matched furniture, Jade noted, indicating some domestic progress from when they’d gotten the house), drinking tea and talking. For Jade, this was a change of pace from her regular life - which did involve tea and talking, but also quite a lot of other things that had worn on her lately …
… and one in particular, a black-cloaked figure …
“The pla
ce looks great,” Jade commented, focusing on the living room. She leaned back into the couch, her cup resting in her hands. She could smell something chemical - Garnet had just cleaned.
“Yeah. Well, hey, everyone helped out.” Garnet smiled, blue eyes twinkling. “I am so glad everything is in order.”
“And you and Slate …” Jade’s grin was bone-white. “I can tell. I bet he’s taking less cold showers.”
Garnet scowled, then laughed. “Yes. I … do you know this is the best I’ve ever felt. About everything?” Ever?”
“I believe it.” Jade sipped her tea. There was butter in it, a tradition that had evolved when sugar was more expensive. “I hope I didn’t interrupt …”
“No.” Garnet waved off her sister-in-law’s concern. “I was just going to take a break from the usual and watch a tape.”
Jade nodded. “What you get? I … Garnet.”
Garnet looked down and mumbled something. Jade’s eyes narrowed.
“Garnet …”
“The XWF.”
“The Xaian Wrestling Federation?” Jade asked. The changes at the Communicants Guild had resulted in alterationsi n the Xaian media. The Guild had less freedom overall, but its parts had more - and television as of late had gotten quite experimental.
“I started watching … after that guy based his image on HuanJen …” Garnet began.
“The Exorcist. And his manager. The Black Fox.” Jade said wearily. When she and HuanJen had been caught in the public eye when handing a troublesome specter, one of the XFL members had based his image off of HuanJen, and his manager was obviously inspired by her. The Black Fox had been particularly bothersome to Jade - she had seemed to be something of an eye candy character.
Actually, Jade had been far less kind in her assessment when “The Exorcist” had first made his appearance, but she tried not to use her preferred descriptions in public.
“Well, he changed his look a bit, he hasn’t got that white streak in his hair, he’s got this red one, this yellow one, and this blue one. And to be frank, it’s a lot of fun. I mean it’s a soap opera, with an occasional fight. The writers have about twenty years of Entertainment Guild membership between them ��� they do all sorts of things, and there’s lots of in-jokes. “
“Of course.” Jade tried to imagine Garnet enjoying Wrestling. Jade had seen quite a few strange things in her life, and this wasn’t easy to deal with. Garnet did not correspond with words like “bodyslam” and “suplex” in Jade’s consciousness.
“Hey you should give it a try. If nothing else, there’s a lot of handsome guys in tights manhandling each other.”
“Invite Lorne,” Jade retaliated playfully.
“Why? he gets to manhandle Xianfu.”
“OK point,” Jade answered with a grin. “I just don’t get the wrestling thing. I dunno. I was never a television person anyway.”
“Hey, I know, I …” Garnet snapped her fingers. “News. Newscast. That reminds me, is it true about that guy who snatched a skull from the Ossuary?”
Jade’s reaction was not what Garnet expected. She looked very uncomfortable, almost isolated. Jade always had a hint of an overwhelming air, but now she seemed overwhelmed. Considering how Jade had reacted when the theft had been noted, Garnet assumed that she’d have been happy to hear the news.
“Jade?”
“Sorry. I just kind of said something about ‘I hope the guy would get hit by a car,’ and when it did …” Jade seemed smaller for a moment.
“I see.” Garnet tried to find things to say, and it didn’t work. Jade was hard to comfort as it was, and the supernatural was well outside Garnet’s sphere of experience. She liked to keep it that way as many of her friends not only touched on the supernatural, they fairly groped it. Jade had an especially noteworthy and casual attraction to anything occult that Garnet found worrysome at times.
Jade sighed. “Sorry, I … get these things occasionally.”
“Things?” Garnet inquired. Her own curiosity got the better of her.
“Syncronicities.” Jade smiled. “I’m sorta doing that test, kinda see how I’m doing on the supernatural side. Well, when you get deep, you get weird shit lining up … and I’ve just felt weird lately. When you look into some things, things look back at you.”
“Yeah, I heard HuanJen talk about that.” Garnet shrugged as if trying to get something off of her. She and HuanJen had had an interesting relationship, but there were moments, tiny moments, that his world was too strange for her. He she could understand, but his life was something she wasn’t sure she wanted to.
“Things line up, songs come on the radio you don’t expect, a book falls off a shelf opens to the right page, yeah. From what I read, it’s normal. Well, sorta.”
“Meaning?”
The black-furred vulpine shook her head. “I’m on my own here. HuanJen sort of points me or tells me what to study, but I’m on my own on this. I … the test I got sort of has been opening my mind. Other things seem to follow.”
“Right … I’m not sure I want to know,” Garnet admitted.
“I … really like it. I mean, its like being alive. There’s so much …”
“I know.” Garnet smiled. Jade had become HuanJen’s assistant, then apprentice, then lover, within about six months. Jade had embraced Huan-jen’s world as a Zone Cleric reverently. It seemed to bring out the best in her, though there were moments when Jade was reminded of how fast she’d changed her life. Garnet had seen this several times.
“Yeah.” Jade stared at her tea. “It’s part of hanging out with the Fortune Cookie.”
“Like you’d give it up,” Garnet noted playfully.
“Not on your damn life,” Jade’s eyes flashed with unknown light, “Never. even with our next job. Which I need to get going to, sadly.”
“Yes.” Garnet cut herself off.
Jade rolled her eyes. “You heard something? Jesus, does anyone in this city know the meaning of the word ‘secret?’”
“Just rumors,” Garnet said brightly. She was ashamed to admit it, but she found Jade’s persistent surprise at the Metris rumor mill unusually amusing. Jade was a product of Colony, a society of information traders - and still was frustrated by gossip. It was an odd thing to experience - like seeing a bartender startled by drunkeness.
Jade drained her teacup. “Well, try and keep anything untoward from getting out. Me, I’ve got to go … take care of business. And, I’m sure you have an idea of what that is.”
“Of course. I have a … Panoramic view.”
Jade gave Garnet a playfully sour look. You couldn’t hate Garnet. She could annoy you, but you could never hate her.
Jade gave herself a moment to work up a small bit of despise for a few heartbeats.
Jade’s surprise at the rumor-web of Metris would have taken many blows if she’d taken more time to listen in on it.
Right now people were discussing many things.
They had just started discussing the Panoramic League in detail.
Jade walked through Metris.
The capital city of Xai (in that at least the major Guilds had their headquarters there) was an interesting place to travel in. It was very organized, just not in a way most human beings could easily comprehend - between the bicycles, the pedestrians, and the electric cars, Jade stuck with the Trolley system to go places. It got you places and it didn’t make you fear for your life, and in Jade’s book, that was the major definition of transportation.
She disembarked from the Trolley near Hixx’s Convention Center, happily intact, and ready to face what the afternoon would bring.
Admittedly she knew it would bring work, strangeness and weirdness. It also meant it’d bring her time with HuanJen, which she very much enjoyed. Even if her weirdness tank was full, she was always glad to have him around.
HuanJen the Zone Cleric, the exorcist, the Taoist Magician-Priest. Six kinds of bizareness rolled into one slender inoffensive oriental man. The man …
&nb
sp; … who’d given her a foundation for a new life and fallen in love with her as she had with him. The one reliable thing in all of her existence.
“Zero, please …”
The one reliable thing in her existence sounded annoyed. Well, almost annoyed - this was HuanJen.
She was HuanJen approaching her in the company of Dealer Zero. To anyone else they didn’t seem remarkable. HuanJen was a thin oriental man with a white streak in his black hair, dressed in a dark winter jacket. Dealer Zero was a trenchcoat-wearing man who appeared to be trying to hide within his long brown hair and bear. You could find far more exotic-looking people in Metris easily - several of them were Guild Leaders.
However, when you realized that Dealer Zero had been a diviner who had faced “monitoring” by HuanJen for violating Guild Esoteric rules, seeing them together was remarkable. Even after Zero had become part of the mixed group of mystics and clerics HuanJen belonged too, he still kept his to himself.
Zero seemed very much not to be keeping to himself. He seemed more animated than Jade had ever seen him - eyes alight, hands gesturing wildly.
“I just figure … hey Jade … I can be of some help,” Zero said.
Jade put a few elements together. Zero was trying to get involved in the latest assignment HuanJen had been given by Guild Esoteric. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, to work as a troubleshooter for the Guild on retainer, as sometimes HuanJen got too far into the spotlight of public awareness. Working for the guild specifically gave him a kind of blind spot to hide in.
A blind spot in general, but in specific …
“The answer is no, Zero.” HuanJen’s voice was a razor made of soft silk. “If we need you, believe me, we’ll ask you, but things must be done … by the book as it were.”
“You know, that sounds strange coming from you,” Zero grinned in a lopsided manner. “OK, OK. Just let me know if you need a diviner.”
“Hey, we always come to you first,” Jade jumped into the conversation. Zero had been slowly getting his reputation and confidence back and she figured it couldn’t hurt to give him a boost. It was also an underhanded way of shutting Zero up.
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