He went over to the far side of the room, while I pulled off my clothes. I stretched out on the furs, aflame with anticipation. Iscane came back to me and handed me a tall glass of red wine. He stared at me in appreciation. ‘It seems almost pointless to say it, but you’re lovely,’ he said.
‘So are you.’
He smiled. ‘Wait, you’ve not seen everything yet.’
He gave me a show, disrobing slowly and sensuously. One of his nipples was pierced with a silver ring. He turned his back on me to ease off his trousers, displayed his perfect buttocks to me. I wanted to bite him. Then he turned around and I saw he wanted to be ouana. He was larger than Malakess and a tremor of uncertainty went through me.
‘Iscane,’ I said.
He came to the bed, straddled my prone body and pushed his hair back over his shoulders. ‘What?’ He leaned down to nibble my chest.
‘Be careful with me.’
He laughed. ‘Roon, of course. But what do you mean?’
‘I’ve had problems with soume, a childhood injury.’
He frowned. ‘Oh, poor you. Would you like to be ouana?’
‘No, just… take care.’
‘Direct me,’ he said. ‘We’ll take it slow.’
And slow it was, almost too slow. He had me writhing beneath him with need, yelling out his name. I felt stretched, but not torn. The slight ache was actually delicious. At the end, he allowed himself to be more forceful; it was intoxicating. Aruna with Ysobi, I realised, had never been like this. I’d been obsessed with him as a har, but my problems had been too great for aruna to be anywhere near what it should have been. And with Malakess, I’d still been getting over Ysobi. Our aruna life had been decorous in comparison to the free abandon characterised by Iscane. He and I felt more like equals, and there was a lack of reserve and inhibition in him that made things easy for me.
‘Doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with you!’ Iscane declared.
‘Don’t stop. No, there’s nothing wrong. Iscane, don’t stop.’
‘I’m yours for as long as I can maintain a stalk,’ he said, which sounded incredibly funny to me at the time. I was still laughing when the next peak came, but almost delirious by the final wave.
Afterwards, we lay side by side, drinking the wine and talking. I knew that probably within only a few hours, all of Iscane’s friends would hear about what had happened. I hoped he would deliver a good report.
‘Have you ever gone double flower?’ Iscane asked me.
‘No, what’s that?’
‘You haven’t?’ He laughed. ‘Wonderful. Wait till you see.’
‘But what is it?’
‘Pike mouth first.’
‘What?’
‘Pike mouth, you know? On each other?’
‘No…’
He sighed, but was smiling. ‘Hmm, seems I have a lot to teach you. This is pike mouth.’ He leaned over me and took my ouana-lim between his lips.
‘Oh, that. Yes, I know what you mean.’
‘OK, we do it to each other.’
He manoeuvred himself so this was possible. This was something I’d never done before, and it was as if we were one creature, a serpent eating its own tail, but that was not the treat he wanted to share. It was just the preliminary. Once we were both high on aruna, Iscane pushed me onto my back and slowly lowered himself onto my ouana-lim. ‘Use your hands on me,’ he said, guiding my fingers to his flowering ouana-lim. After that, he did most of the work. Ouana and soume at the same time. I hadn’t believed such a thing was possible. When his soume-lam contracted to meet my peak, aren also jetted out of him and he uttered a shout that sounded like a cry of pain. His soume-lam gripped me like a metal fist. I was showered in his glowing fluid, and I’m sure it encouraged my own flow. I seemed to peak for longer than usual.
‘That is double flower,’ he said, still panting upon me. His hair was dark with sweat. ‘And before you ask, yes it does hurt a bit, like a needle through the groin but it’s a pain you want again and again. Want to try?’
‘Well… yes… but now? Already?’
Iscane laughed. ‘You’ve spent far too much time with first gen. Welcome to the world of youth. Flowering again post peak makes it even more powerful. It just takes a little longer.’
And so it did. We were soft in each other’s mouths for a while, but I felt extremely tingly and when the hardness happened it was sudden and almost brutal. Iscane guided me onto him and took my ouana-lim in his hands. It was the most strange sensation, and not altogether pleasant. The ouana-lim’s instinct is to retract into the body when soume is stimulated, but when it’s aroused, it can’t do that. It’s impossible to describe exactly what it feels like but it kindles a need that you are sure can never be satisfied. A peak with a distinctly different flavour built inside me, and when it cascaded through me, so my ouana-lim synchronised and experienced its own release. Iscane was right. It hurt as if my body was being cut in two. But it was the most powerful physical sensation imaginable.
‘Did you like that?’ Iscane asked me.
‘I’m not sure like is the right word,’ I said. ‘It’s… well… I see what you mean.’
‘With three or more hara, you can imagine what can be achieved,’ Iscane said. ‘But that’s a treat we must save for another time. Let’s have another drink. Before we sleep, I want you to roon me senseless, in single flower. There are a few more tricks I can teach you to make me lose my mind with pleasure. Can you keep up?’
I laughed. ‘Your stamina is pretty amazing, but I think I can just about survive.’
‘Good.’ He pushed me off him. ‘Move over. I need to open another bottle.’
This morning, I awoke before Iscane did. He was lying on his belly beside me, one arm cast across my chest. Gently, I eased myself from under him, and rose from the bed. I went to his kitchen area to get myself a drink of water. Unaccountably, I felt depressed. As I sat drinking the icy water, gazing out of the yard below, I remembered a dream I’d had. In it, I’d been taking aruna with Iscane, soume beneath him. Then I’d seen movement in the shadows beyond the bed and saw that Malakess was standing there, his face grey and constricted with grief. I was overcome with shame and remorse, and then it was Malakess upon me, deep inside me. ‘I loved you,’ he said. ‘And you have forgotten me already.’ And then it was Ysobi above me. ‘You won’t forget,’ he said. ‘Not ever. I am you.’
I couldn’t remember any more of the dream. Perhaps that had been it. The fact was, I now felt strangely guilty even though I knew I’d done nothing wrong. Iscane was a free young har, as was I. Malakess had left Kyme. There was no reason why Iscane and I shouldn’t be intimate. It was part of life. Yet still that sad dream ghost haunted my mind. My heart ached with longing, but it wasn’t for Malakess. I loved you… so much. As I stared out of the window at the snow covered land, I was suffused with a memory of Jesith; the smell of the place, the ambience. I was filled with a sense of Ysobi, as if he stood towering behind me. When he’d held me, my face would always rest against his chest. I’d listened to his heart beat. Then it all came back to me in a powerful rush. The coldest wave.
The night I told him how I felt.
I think he already knew, of course he did, but I knew that if I didn’t speak my heart I would literally explode. I’d sat before his chair on the floor. He held on to my hands as I spilled it all. He stroked me with his thumbs, and he looked at me with such tenderness, hardly even blinking, for what must have been over an hour. That was the worst aspect. If he’d been indifferent, or just concerned in a teacherly sort of way, it might have been easier. But that look. No har had ever looked at me like that before, and I doubt they will again. Within his eyes was this unspoken thing. Such tenderness. There is no other way to describe it. When there was nothing more to say, he’d pulled me close and I’d got to my knees to rest my chin on his shoulder. ‘I am here for you,’ he’d said, but not in the way I wanted. ‘I will always be here.’
But of course, he wasn’t.<
br />
As I recalled that night, which I had tried to bury so thoroughly, I began to weep; those gut deep choking sobs that are the end of all hope. Every har in Jesith believed I was a scheming fool. They hadn’t been there. They hadn’t seen. Sometimes I’d doubted my own sanity, because I remembered that night so clearly, yet it was as if I’d only dreamed it. When things had got too messy, Ysobi had made the decision to abandon me. I think that hurts me more than the fact he didn’t want me. He hung me out to dry. How could I ever forgive that?
Now that I’d let these feelings out, they wouldn’t stop flowing. I couldn’t stop weeping. I didn’t want Iscane to see me like this, and even if I managed to pull myself together, I had no doubt that the psychic reverberations of the aruna we’d shared would mean he’d intuit my every feeling for next day or so. Somehow, taking deep breaths, I got control of myself. Leaving Iscane a note to thank him, but claiming I needed to be back at Huriel’s for a lunch engagement, I left his apartment.
Outside the world was blindingly white and untouched. A few harlings were out playing in the pristine snow, and in a field nearby three young horses galloped through it, drunk on life.
Lunilsday, Frostmoon 25
In just a couple of short months my life has changed so much it’s as if I’ve woken up in a different universe. My supervisor at the Library, an under Codexia named Crytah, is, as Iscane predicted, responsible for me hardly ever having a moment to myself, in both a working and social sense. I now have dozens of friends, and many of them I know intimately. Aruna is as much a part of socialising with these hara as sharing a meal. Life is a dizzying whirl and I am caught up in it, and yet some part of me isn’t there, not really. I feel like I’m faking it. Fortunately nohar seems to notice this, but then the young hara of Kyme – or at least those associated with the Academy and Library – don’t appear to pay much attention to the more serious aspects of life. My first impressions of fusty academics were misplaced. While the older hara might be like that, the second generation hara aren’t. They are hedonistic and carefree at night, yet able to work hard during the day. Their openness about aruna, and their fascination with experimenting is not only educational but liberating. It’s difficult to feel inhibited around them, because despite their lustful behaviour they are in another way very innocent. Their frankness and wonder has charm. And they think I’m one of them, but I’m not. It seems that even as I grow, becoming more established in Kymian society, I am in some ways becoming more estranged from it. Perhaps I am really going mad and splitting into two people in my head.
As to what I am, I still don’t know. I find myself thinking of Ysobi and then Malakess quite a lot despite my aggressive attempts at exorcism. Huriel and I are working on my next level of training – Acantha, the first tier of Ulani. The strange thing is that as I learn to observe myself more, I feel I know less about myself. Knowledge is a strange thing. The more you have of it, the less you seem to know. Huriel says this is normal, part of my development. He occasionally gets letters from Malakess but I’ve not received one. I don’t suppose I should expect to, even though I didn’t want us to become so estranged. So many times I’ve thought of writing to him, but something stops me.
I sent another present to Jassenah, just some trinkets I picked up, and a short while later I received a letter from him. The same stuff as before; news of everyone in Jesith but for Ysobi. The hot pain I used to feel has subsided since that morning in Iscane’s apartment, but there is still… something. Sometimes I wake up in the night from a dream of him, and my heart is pounding as if I’ve been running. Then I wonder whether he’s dreamed of me too. Often I speak his name aloud, which seems like a magical and potent thing to do. But this is all mixed up in confusing feelings about Malakess. Did I really care about him or was he just a substitute? I can’t speak to anyhar about this, so I have to work it out on my own. Winter is still all around us, but its grip is breaking. I like the spring. It’s a turning time, when anything seems possible. I hope it will bring me something good.
Aruhanisday, Windmoon 7
Yesterday was the anniversary of the day I woke up to a new feeling. I’ll always remember it. I just looked at Ysobi that day and saw him differently. It is the moment when you look upon a har and think that you will know him for the rest of your life. I gazed at Ysobi and saw a fountain. I realised that the uplifting feelings I’d been experiencing over the past weeks had been the touch of his energy against my own. He was nourishment to me. Suddenly, as if a veil had been lifted, I saw this incredibly deep beauty in him, and it was shocking. A wave of cold and heat went through me; I did in truth behold a different har before me. I looked at him and thought, ‘is this what love feels like?’ And he looked at me too, threw back his head very slightly in a sort of theatrical gesture, as if he too had just had a revelation about something. He smiled in that enigmatic way he has, eyes ablaze. We said nothing to one another, but afterwards it felt as if we’d talked for hours.
The universe rolls and turns. It positions challenges and trials, perhaps even demons, in our path, that lie in wait for us. I don’t know what is going to happen to me from this point forward, but I must relate what has led to this moment.
I asked Crytah for the day off from work, because I wanted time alone. The thought of other haras’ voices was intolerable. I needed the quiet of nature around me. It wasn’t that I wanted to dwell and brood upon the past, but in my mind, I did need to visit a grave and place a flower upon it.
It was a perfect morning. The sky looked as if the dehara had painted it several times to get that intense and faultless hue. It had rained before the dawn, so the land seemed to be drying out after a protracted session of weeping. There was a freshness to the air that smelled of purged sadness to me. Even as I ate my breakfast, I was eager to immerse myself in the landscape. It called to me with a lilting song that I could almost hear with my physical ears. The song of life. Huriel was chatting away amiably, but I don’t think I heard half of what he said.
When I went outside, I could sense the change in the air. It was as if the earth had rolled over in its sleep, and had uttered a waking sigh. I walked over the old bridge, which is covered in moss. Below it lies a straight road, overgrown with grass that somehar had once told me humans used for vehicles that ran on tracks. Most of the tracks have gone, because they have been used for building. Spring flowers were beginning to unfurl. The air tasted green.
And it was down in the meadows that I saw him. He was like a spirit, an emanation of the world itself, perhaps of the season, walking slowly through the woken grass. I knew at once he was of the Nagini, simply because of his clothes and the colour of his skin. His hair was loose down his back like a banner and it seemed to me as if tiny flowers fell from his skin as he walked. In such a way is beauty recognised. I knew at once this sighting was important and relevant. A dehar had come to me, and I followed him.
He went to the old pools, where the gentle cattle came to drink, and here the naked whips of the willows dipped into the dark waters. He knew I was watching him, of course, because no matter how fey and distant he appeared, I became aware of his own awareness.
As I stood among the willows behind him he spoke, and at first I thought it was in my head. He said, ‘I will send a dream to you.’ And then I somehow came to my senses, half dazed, and found myself alone.
I fell asleep among the early flowers, and there dreamed of a mighty city surrounded by green fields. At the edge of one of the fields was a deep ravine and when I looked into it, I expected to see a horse, but what I saw instead was a lion. It looked up and caught my eye and I could see at once it was fierce and hungry. My companion, for I had one suddenly, even though I could not see them exactly, exclaimed how beautiful this creature was and went to the edge of the ravine to reach down toward it. I cried out in alarm and told my friend to draw back, that the creature was angry and would attack us. I saw that indeed the lion was now leaping up to try and escape its prison, and as I looked upon it, so othe
r creatures manifested around it, pure white tigers, snarling and twisting and reaching up with their great paws.
‘But how beautiful they are,’ said my friend and knelt at the edge of the ravine reaching down. I could not pass the obstruction of this wayward friend, and the tigers were leaping ever closer to the edge, swiping with their claws, clearly intent on blood. Then, just as one of the tigers nearly scrambled onto the field, my friend appeared to realise our predicament and cried ‘Run!’
And so we ran, and behind us came the velvet pound of relentless paws. We ran into the city and the tigers followed us. There seemed so many of them now, and they were all of different colours, but it was the white tigers that caught my attention. They threw themselves into the air and spun round to become invisible. They plunged and pounced and all around them hara were running and screaming.
I had brought the tigers into the city. It would never be free of them again.
When I woke from this dream, I felt strangely revitalized, and it was as well I felt that way. As I walked back to the house, I was asking the universe, show me what I must do. There is a feeling inside me. I’m not sure what it is, but it’s something.
Huriel was flustered in the library. ‘I know you’ve got a day off, but will you go up to the academy for me? Abraxxas wanted these notes, and I would go myself, but I have all this to do.’ He indicated a mess of papers on his desk.
‘No problem,’ I said and bent to kiss the top of Huriel’s head.
He glanced up at me, his expression bemused. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
‘Nothing. The air is just good today.’
He smiled. ‘Good. I’ve been concerned about you lately. You’ve seemed distant. Perfectly normal and yet distant. I’ve sensed it.’
‘I’m fine. Give me the notes.’
‘Are you going out tonight?’
‘I don’t know yet. Don’t fuss.’
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