by Ako Emanuel
She felt his eyes on her, staring at her face. The weight of his eyes were a question.
“To make it easier,” she explained, shrugging, her legs trembling with the effort of holding her weight.
He made no comment. His breathing changed as he re-soaped the cloth, and she raised her leg in anticipation of his hands. One of his strong arms curled around her waist, steadying her, almost to the point of lifting her off the floor of the tub. His other hand, after a long moment, attacked her hips with firm, languid strokes. They moved lower, sliding between her thighs, slow and attentive. She fought the urge to sigh and to keep her hand from flexing on his shoulder. She listened to his quickened breath and felt his accelerated pulse, realized that she was slowly becoming attuned to him again. Grimly Jeliya battled revulsion at the thought, the implied violation. His reactions to bathing her were something new and unexpected, and intriguing. She could smell the thin sheen of sweat that now covered him, feel it as if it sheened her own skin. She felt his tail swish in agitation and one hoof scrape against the floor as his hand moved over her buttock. A flicker of uneasy arousal flittered through the bottom of her thoughts from him and an uncomfortable swelling caused him to shift and she fought not to shift with him, or show her own signs of his - titillation. He was becoming excited and it bothered him.
He swallowed in her dry throat, and his suddenly loud, harsh breath rasped in her ears.
Intrigued, caught up in the intense sharing of sensations, she tracked his shoulder up to his neck, reached out carefully to where his face should be. His fingers caught hers, guided her palm to his cheek. It was bristled with about five turns of beard growth. She stroked his cheek lightly, her fingers trailing down to the sharp angle of his jaw. It led to a somewhat stubborn chin. She brushed his brow, felt the silky, quicksilver mane she had glimpsed before curl almost like a living thing over her hand. Then she encountered the digit-and-a-half long horn, traced its spirals. She marveled at it.
Jeliya let her fingers drop to his eyebrows, fluttered them over his lids, studied his nose. Then they settled to his lips, glided along each. His arousal grew, and he kissed each fingertip. She found his pointed ears, the thick cords of muscle in his neck. His fingers slid over her own wet cheek, could have been the wind. She cupped his face, could not resist the chance to bait him, his lack of control. She leaned close, her lips close to his ear. He was tangible anticipation, his hands flexing on her hips. His lips practically tingled with the feel of hers on them. The want of the feel of hers. “If it bothers you,” she breathed into the tense moment, “you don’t have to watch.”
He flicked his ear in irritation, grunted. But she could feel the heat rising all the way up to his roots, the broil of vexation in his mind. She leaned back, her voice full of laughter. “You could close your eyes - and feel your way along!”
“Point to you,” he said gruffly, shifting his grip to lower her back into the cooling water, his ardor also considerably cooled. The link of Jur’Av’chi weakened as he unconsciously closed her out, the sharing ebbing away, leaving her feeling oddly empty. She began to regret her words, then remembered how he had teased her, and pushed the regret away. She did not even want the contact with him. Right?
Without a word he rose and his footsteps went away and came back. He pulled the stopper and drained the tub, rinsed the sides and bottom quickly, then helped her to her feet again and had her put her arms around his neck. He swept her long, loose braids out of the way and began pouring water over her. It was warm, and felt nice over her slightly chilled skin. She lay her cheek against the rippling mass of his chest, the ruff tickling her belly and legs.
He turned her, held her with one arm; grunted and leaned back. Water splashed down her front. She cupped her hands, carefully washed the soap off her face.
He lifted her out and set her on what was almost a full sized desi on the bed. She felt about for the edge, pulled it up around her and wondered what he was doing...
The image coalesced in her mind. He was drying himself off and gathering various clay pots together on a small, high table near the head of the bed. The connection was back, twice as strong in half the time. She shut out the image with a shudder, then realized that she was not touching him anymore, yet still she was sharing senses with him. It was much more deeply and subtly rooted than last time, like background noise. She found, as she gingerly, irresistibly, probed the connection, that she could call up any of his senses or any of his responses, or even some of his emotions, at will. She waited as his hands enfolded her, then called to his hearing - heard faint bird calls clearly, heard her own gasp of startlement-
“Is something wrong?” he asked as he dried her. She shook her head as he urged her to lie down. He dipped his fingers into one of the pots, came up with a rich yellow cream that he started spreading on her skin. She recognized the smell of cocoa butter, mixed with aloe. He rubbed her down quickly and efficiently. It was over much too quickly.
“You take very good care of your patients,” she commented as he went to work on her hair. She could feel the silken springiness of it beneath his hands.
“I do my best.” Something spilled over the link, something like embarrassment, as he said, “Actually, I - enjoy taking care of you. I’ve been alone for so very long -” his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “-It is a welcome change.”
Jeliya thought that over as he sorted her braids. She suddenly, unwillingly, shared in his loneliness, one that was so vast and deep that it was almost a living thing, with a weight and presence all its own. She blocked it out quickly before it overwhelmed her.
“What are you doing?” she asked to distract herself from the memory of that consuming loneliness.
“I’m oiling and arranging your hair,” he replied, his voice giving no hint of the empty aloneness he felt.
“You know how to do that?” she asked, genuinely surprised.
“I learned. In your delirium you expressed great concern for your hair and its maintenance.” His fingers moved expertly over her scalp, moisturizing it and oiling each braid in turn.
“What else did I say?” she asked as casually as she could, wondering if perhaps her safeguard had not been as secure as she had thought.
“That you liked the way my hands felt,” he said.
Jeliya felt her face grow hot, got a whiff of smug satisfaction from him, changed the subject. “How did you learn to care for my hair?”
“I asked it,” he said, giving no more information than necessary.
Jeliya realized that they were doing a very slow, verbal dance, each seeking to outmaneuver the other. He was hiding something.
“You said you’ve been alone for a long time,” she said, picking up on what he had said earlier. “Why is that? Are there no more of your kind?”
A long silence stretched out after her question. A dark desolation.
“No,” came the quiet reply then. “No, there are no others like me.” The pain in his voice pierced her heart, but she pressed on; she had risked so much to find him, and now that she had him talking, she could not back down.
“Where are they?” she asked, feigning naiveté.
“Where are who?” He did not break rhythm, turning her head.
“Others like you. Where are they?”
He did not answer, as if too busy as he arranged her hair in a simple style. The Joining between them again snapped almost completely closed. “There,” he said, wiping his hands. He picked her up again and moved her to the head of the bed.
“Gavaron, aren’t you one of the Katari? A rare subspecies? For truthfully, I’ve never heard of anything quite like you.”
He set her down, pulled a fresh desi up around her. Barely a sensation trickled through their link. He had become like a blank face of stone.
“I think you ought to get some rest. You are still a long way from full recovery.”
And with that he left without answering any of her questions. With him went the feeling of connection; it faded like
the dusk.
Jeliya lay back and mused over what he had said, and more important, what he had not. He had not answered any of her probing questions, but his non-answers spoke nearly as loudly as words would have. A rough idea began to form.
CHAPTER IX
the dreams of the dark turned, gave way to light...
The drums drove the wild turning of the dark.
Rilantu dreamed, dreamt of wild turnings to dark drums, dreamt of the savannas on Lor’s eve, of dark shapes turning to a driving rhythm that pounded into his every pore. The rhythm drew him to the dim, gyrating figures, where the stomp of hooves upon the earth made the air sing and the soil dance. Controlled by some external agent, he was thrust into the middle of the dancing ones, in the middle of the circle of leaping fires and flickering bodies that never quite came clear, but were not wuman, clearly. He squinted vainly at the shadow shapes until the force gripping him turned him around to face...
Her. She rose from the ground with a grace only flowing water could claim, moved with a beauty only the playful wind on star-swept plains could describe. She was Katari, but not, for her form was fully wuman except for the fur-skin, the very long neck, and the eyes. The eyes had not changed. She danced for him.
Her dance described beauty and sexual desire, the promise of pleasures beyond count and children beyond measure. It called hot, passion-filled fantasies to be fulfilled and warm, silken whispers of delectable flesh upon flesh, mouth upon mouth, veil after sheer veil shed away to reveal the luscious naked heart beneath. Her dance enticed him, drew him in...
Till he was dancing too, dancing to that wild beat, dancing out his male desire and the vow of his gently ravishing mouth upon her body, dancing out the hard, vital piling of his will meeting hers, the long, sensual drinking of her he would partake, the total engulfing of her he would claim. He danced and danced, and she danced, the tempo reaching a fever pitch, so that the dance would surely destroy him...
And then it stopped, dead stillness, dead silence. And she looked at him with those depthless, whiteless eyes. And she spoke a single word.
:Come.:
Rilantu woke, sweating in the cool, early dawn of Av. His heart raced, as if he had run hard, or danced hard. His pulse echoed an ancient, driving beat that he could not quite remember, but had surely danced to. Faint impressions of womanly pleasures and soft whisperings of things without number were all that remained of the dream that shredded away like mist on the jagged light of Av.
Shaking still with fatigue and excitement, he buried his face in his hands, a fine sheen of sweat coating his body. He breathed deep, sighed it away, and stood, going to his large windows that faced the pale brilliance of the rising Este.
He was used to these dreams. He had had them all his life.
They were dreams of her, a woman that he would meet, one turn. The dreams had begun when he was a child. In the beginning she had been a child, too, a beautiful girl-child Katari that smiled at him and beckoned and always seemed beyond his reach, fading with the coming of Av. Though he could never touch her in the dream and they could not hear each other’s words, and he could never quite remember the next morn, still they shared things, things that sometimes not even his own brother knew. She had always been with him, and he was sure that she had grown as he grew, going from child to adolescent to young adulthood with him. Before she had merely existed for him, as he surely did for her, and now and again he was certain that she smiled deeply into him, especially at times when he was most troubled. And now, she danced for him.
Rilantu lay back down in the pre-dawn of morn, sleepless. Since the beginning of the cycle the dreams had been growing, both in clarity and meaning. The dreams were more frequent now, more real, more enticing. But it was always the same afterward - things he could not remember, implications of desire, promises without words.
Except there was a word this time, a single, ringing word that sang over and over in his head. Come.
Yes he would do that, soon, would finally see and greet his dream lover-to-be, finally hold her and turn those promises to actions, those burning desires to words. For he was sure that the dreams indicated a Goddess-blessed bond, and he was rapidly moving toward that place and time when those dreams would be fulfilled; yes, he would come. He would do that and more.
Come.
the light, filled with world, turned...
Audola knelt in her av’an, her private, sacred place of contemplation in which she performed the Rite of Solu. The isolated lain was a four by four meter dodecahedron that tapered at the top and bottom, like a crystal shard balanced upon the sharply peaked spire beneath it. The bottom fourth had been hewn from a single vast boulder, a twenty-sided, inverted cone. Five concentric steps in the bottom plane of the cone flowed up. The rest of the lain was constructed of a metal frame that held twenty rectangular windows. These windows could be opened to admit the early morning breeze. The peaked roof was the mirror-image of the base, twenty panels of the finest crystalline quartz all meeting at a point. They shattered the morn light and scattered it to all parts of the arboretum.
A miniature rainforest had been reconstructed in this room of light, dominating the first three levels of the base. A layer of rich soil had been laid down on these steps, covering all but four cleared paths where the High Queen might walk. Water bubbled out of the third step from either side of these untouched paths to form twin waterfalls, cascading down to disappear into special conduits a third of a meter before they reached the windows. Meter tall trees stood in thick clusters along the banks of these tiny rivers, their buttress and hanging roots dipped into the water. Away from the rivers the foliage thinned out, and the intervening space held stunted grasses from the savannas and a few precious two-meter boabi trees to which libations could be made. Delicate insects with stained glass wings moved among the flowering trees, giants in the down-sized ecology. The fourth level was covered by mosaic tiles showing the device of the High Family - the stylized golden circle of Av in gold metal with purple and blue emanations radiating outward. The mosaic continued up the fifth and highest level for a quarter of a meter inward. The tile ended at the edge of a thick, quilted satin cushion, but the pattern of the High Crest continued, embroidered upon the smooth material. Here the High Queen sat.
The lain was located upon the highest spire of the Palace so that it could admit the light of the morn-star Av and its companion at any time of the turn from light to dark and from any position in the sky. The newly risen Av shed soft radiance upon the High Queen, and the panels were oriented so that they were concentrating it and focusing it on her. Av’an’i dominated the top of the Palace, crowning it like a coronet of diamonds, that of the High Queen being above all others. The vast, gleaming crown city spread out below her, a swirled marvel done in lavender and azure and cream marble, spreading for yori’turns in every direction.
In the middle of her lofty sanctum, the High Queen prepared to perform the Rite of Solu.
She let the natural rhythm of the diminutive ecosystem lull her, letting her body fall into synch with the life around her. Her fingers gently drummed out a seemingly random beat on her jeweled tum’tyn, emulating the combined life flow. It slowly evolved into a complex structure that eventually became her pay’ta, a rhythm that had been read for her the moment she was born, composed of her own body rhythms. In it was her name in the ancient drum language, sang over and over, intimately entwined with the name of the Supreme One, and the plea for the blessing of Av.
“In You there is Light,
In You there is Peace.
Your love fills us.
Your breath heals us.
In You, all are one.”
The complexity of the rhythm surrounding her pay’ta grew. It took over, now dominant over all other rhythms, controlling her every pattern of life, from her breathing to her heartbeat to the impulses in her brain and nerves. She floated free on the wave of rhythmic awareness, her senses ranging out, riding on crests of patterned cadence. She
became aware of the saturation of Av all around her, permeating everything, from the plants in her av’an to the stone beneath, and even the very air held its sweetness. The rhythms spread her awareness farther and farther out, and the great circle of Av called to her.
She answered, the rhythms shaping her voice to the Rite that was uniquely hers. She sang her praises to Av, and then the blessing of Av’s Rite poured into her, absorbing and overwhelming her senses with waves of euphoria that cascaded through her body and soul as she gazed into the blinding depths of Av.
Filled, rejuvenated, the rhythm and the Rite let her go, and she spiraled down to herself on the melding patterns that became once more the simple cadence of life that she had begun with. Her fingers moved to the end of the Rite and the rhythm trailed into randomness. She opened her eyes and breathed in a sparkling sigh, pervaded with the tranquility that the Rite afforded. The plants around her seemed greener, bursting with vitality. The air seemed fresh and clean, and the crystal windows sang with the echo of her rhythm that seemed reluctant to die.
Audola luxuriated in the afterglow of the Rite for a while longer. For the first time in many cycles she did not have some pressing issue or other demanding her immediate attention, save finding her daughter. After the Bolorn’toyo and the Salaka there was always a turn of rest, in which all could recuperate and either celebrate or mourn privately, depending on the nature of the Bolorn. This turn, called the Tures, was a time of relaxation and reflection for everyone, including the High Queen. Audola was grateful for this turn, and facetiously wished she could call Bolorns more often. For an ordinary holiday enjoyed by others was just another turn of ruling for the High Queen. Hers was a life of never-ending duty and responsibility, and on those turns when others rested and played, she still worked to keep her Realm running as smoothly as possible. The only other turn of true rest for the High Queen was the last turn of the Harvest, on which all gave thanks to Imantu, the female/male aspect of the Supreme One.