by Elin Wyn
Sylor and Rokul loved that she stole my comm unit and used it, so they were already liking her. I’m pretty sure that Trevor and the other two guards thought nice things about her as well. I even liked her.
I chuckled to myself at the thought of it. As much as I tried to remain my own person, distinct and separate, despite my closeness to my brother, I still ended up like him.
He had fallen for a human female, and if that dream was any kind of predictor of the future, I would as well. Perhaps I already had and simply didn’t know it.
I leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.
She moaned again, then turned her head and looked up at me. “Hey,” she said quietly.
“Hey,” I said in return. There was a different look in her eyes than before. It was a look of peace, and complete trust…mixed with a little bit of…
I was unable to complete the thought as she reached up, put her hand on my neck, and pulled me down to her.
We kissed. Still gentle, but deeper this time. Connected.
I felt her soft lips on mine again and this time I didn’t hold back. I pushed my face closer to her and our mouths opened up. Her tongue slipped into my mouth and began to attack mine in a mischievous fashion.
Everything Daphne had exhibited up till now made its way through her kiss. Her confidence. Her impetuousness. Her lust for life.
And it came to me. I wanted more of her, to see more of her, to know her better.
And then I just lost myself in her kiss.
I couldn’t dream of anything more perfect than that moment.
Daphne
The kiss we shared was fantastic, and comforting. It somehow just felt…right. I didn’t really know how to explain it any other way.
I mean, yes, it did come across as a clichéd description, but things become a cliché when they’re true.
We had stopped kissing a while ago, but I wanted to do it again. His arms holding me just made my blood race through my veins. I wanted nothing more than to feel him hold me again…okay, maybe one thing more.
I had to admit that while I was kissing him, I had definitely been thinking about what his lips and tongue would feel like over the rest of my body…and what something else would feel like being rubbed all over my body.
I felt the blood rush to my cheeks as I imagined his thick member touching me, penetrating me. It was…entrancing.
I had to think of something else. Quickly. “So, you said that you had a brother.”
“That’s right,” he nodded. “Older.”
“Oh, so did he tease you and beat you up a lot when you were kids?” I asked. I was trying to take my mind off his lips and his…
“He tried,” Takar laughed. “Before I grew into my body, as my father used to say, Rokul was the more powerful of the two of us. But once I started to show my size, our brotherly battles started to equalize.”
“Oh,” I nodded. I wasn’t sure what else to say really. I didn’t have siblings, and while occasionally I wondered what I was missing in that bond, it's hard to miss something you’ve never had.
We started talking a little more about what I did at the hospital, about what he did in the city, and just random things. It was easy to talk to him. Hell, I had told him things about my past that I never told guys on a first date, or even after a month into the relationship. And I had told him a few hours into knowing him.
While we talked, part of my mind wandered. When I had been asleep, I had an insanely vivid dream. It felt so real that, when I woke up, I had to concentrate hard to control my breathing and to not throw myself at him.
The dream had been so vivid that I could have sworn that between my legs I could still feel what it was like to have him inside me. Stretching me.
Swallowing hard to bring my concentration back to the conversation, I looked up at him while we walked and talked.
He looked relaxed, as if all our conflict earlier had never happened. His posture before now had always been rigid and straight. He had always seemed to be annoyed with me, and I had to grudgingly admit that I had been a bit of a pain in the ass. It was in my nature…I always figured that it was the best way to figure out who was really willing to put up with me and who was just there because of either my job or my parents.
Not that I should have worried about it with Takar. He had never met my parents and he never seemed the type to care about a person’s position.
Except in the dream, and the position he had worried about was a position that had made me nearly scream in pleasure.
In the dream, we had been in the same bed, in a house that had four bedrooms. We were trying to sleep in, but our kids…a little boy and girl…were attempting to be quiet. So, of course that meant that they were making a ton of noise that could have woken up a deaf dead man.
We had joked around a little, lovingly teased one another, then snuck in a quick session of oh-my-fucking-lord-this-feels-good love making. At least that’s what it started as. But just thinking back to the vividness of the sex in the dream made me blush. I was a wanton woman with Takar, mounting him and taking myself to paradise shamelessly. And he used me for his pleasure, while shooting me higher and higher. I had just barely gotten my panties and shirt back on when the kids burst into the room and started a tickle fight with us.
We were a family, with two beautiful kids, and everything just seemed right. I knew that we were able to talk to one another about anything and everything. We supported one another in everything we did, and loved one another. I could trust him to do the dishes or cook dinner when I was running late, just like I knew I could trust him to care for the kids and never cheat on me.
He could trust me all the same, as well as trust me to do things to him that would make him tremble right before he lost control…in a good way.
It was the dream life, and when I woke up and realized that it really had been just a dream, I nearly cried.
He had kissed me on the forehead, bringing me out of the dream world and into reality. I knew that I had to kiss him, so I did. It didn’t even seem like much of an issue to kiss him, like it was something that we had already done thousands of times.
Should I tell him that?
I thought as we walked. Should I tell him about the dream, about how we were a family and we were together in all ways? What if he didn’t feel the same way as I did? Holy shit…did I really feel something now because of that dream?
I looked at him, taking all of him in with my eyes as we walked, as he talked. I honestly couldn’t say what he was talking about at that moment, my mind was barely on point. However, I guess enough of my mind was paying attention that I was able to answer or comment, and it sounded coherent.
Who the hell am I and where did I get this magical power?
I stifled a chuckle, pretending that it was a small cough instead. I didn’t want him to think I was crazy.
But did I really have feelings for him, aside from the physical attraction? Was I just remembering how I felt in the dream or was it real?
I forced my attention onto reality, onto where we were and what we were trying to do. We were below the surface, in a crazy maze of tunnels, looking for something that controlled the plants above.
I wondered if we…and by ‘we’ I meant ‘I’…had made the right decision to come down here.
I looked around at the tunnel we were in. The rock of it was different than before…it was grayer than the brown from before. It looked stronger and thicker than the rock above us. It made sense. I knew that the deeper into the planet we got and the closer we got to the molten core, the thicker, darker, and stronger the rock should become.
Now I was confused. I had officially confused myself trying to remember something about rocks that I had learned in the eighth grade. I shook my head and just concentrated on walking and talking with Takar.
“What about you?” he asked me. I couldn’t remember the conversation topic. I racked my brain trying to remember, then it snapped in clearly. We had been talking abo
ut the anti-alien group and he was asking me what I thought about the prison they were trying to set up.
I shrugged. “I don’t know, really. If we set up the prison and only keep the anti-alien people there, won’t that make people think that you’re being racist and targeting only the anti-aliens? Specisist? Whatever?”
“I had thought that,” he said. “But, if we make the prison for everyone, including non-humans, then we run the risk of them either corrupting others into joining their cause, or they’ll kill whoever the non-humans are that get put in there.”
I thought about it for a second and finally agreed with him. “You have a point. But, if you can’t do that, then what are the…” I never finished my sentence. I tripped over something on the ground, and in an attempt to not look totally inept, I tucked myself into a ball and rolled into the wall.
I placed my hand on the wall and used it to push myself up to my feet. Takar was looking at me, and opened his mouth to say something when the wall started to move. I jumped away from it, turning in the air to see what was going on.
The wall rose, revealing a… “Ho—ly SHIT!”
I was looking at a giant eye that stood as tall as me.
An eye. No question.
It was, massive green with a golden brown circle surrounding a black iris.
One, massive, eye.
My mind stopped working as Takar grabbed me and pushed me behind him.
The only thought running through my head was “We found it!”
But now what?
Takar
I instinctively grabbed Daphne and shoved her behind me. Whatever this was, I was not going to let it get to her without doing everything I could to stop it first.
Maybe those skrelling vines would help her. I could only hope.
Daphne clutched onto my arm tightly, but I didn’t get the sense that it was from fear.
A quick glance down at her confirmed my suspicions. She was excited.
Of course, she was.
The wide-eyed glee on her face was unmistakable.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s him,” she whispered in awe. She looked up at me and smiled. “It’s him,” she repeated. She stepped around me and approached the eye, stopping only a foot or two short of touching it.
It blinked, slowly, as if it was studying her as much as she was studying it. Suddenly, the ground began to shake beneath us. Daphne fell to a knee as I reached for her, pulling her close. I tried to keep us steady as the ground continued to shake and move.
Vines came out of the ground, breaking the dirt floor away, covering us in dirt and dust. The vines began to weave themselves together into two strands and lay themselves flat against the wall, as if they outlined a pathway for us to follow.
We looked at one another, then at the path. “Do we follow it?” Daphne asked. This was the first time that she seemed nervous, apprehensive about this.
I looked down and gave her a reassuring smile. “Why not?” I asked rhetorically. “You’ve come this far, dragging me along with you. Are you saying that I have to drag you along now?”
She cocked her head to the side, and pursed her lips at me. “You’re not going to stop me?”
I shrugged. “Why bother? It’s time to figure this all out,” I answered.
She smiled, grabbed my hand, and pulled me behind her. I was walking with her after only two steps, unconsciously slowing down my pace so I didn’t force her to move faster than necessary.
We followed the path that the vines created. They led us through a series of tunnels, different in appearance from the ones we had been exploring. These were rougher, as if they were created either in haste or simply hadn’t been rubbed smooth yet.
Those tunnels took us past some minor drop-offs, across some small crevices, and over some minor fissures in the ground. But the vines marked the way, helping and guarding us from danger. Wherever there wasn’t a vine bridge to cross, there was an earth bridge. Some of them crumbled slightly under our weight, but they held as we crossed.
Only once did Daphne slip on one of the bridges, but I managed to snake my arm out to catch her, along with some help from three vines that had quickly braided themselves into a rope around her waist.
It was obvious that whatever was going on, we were safe.
Relatively.
We continued walking down more tunnels and across more bridges. Every few tunnels, the slope was definitively pointed downwards.
“We’ve been walking forever,” Daphne said. “I can’t tell if we’re getting deeper or not. I’ve lost all sense of everything down here.”
I had to agree with her. There was no sense of direction anymore, or time. I no longer knew how long we had been below ground, or even how long it had been since I’d woken up from that amazing dream.
“What are you thinking?” I asked her.
“I don’t know,” she said with a shake of her head. “Do you think we should turn back?”
“Are you getting cold feet?”
“Well…I don’t know,” she said. “I just…when we saw the eye, I got really excited. I was thinking that we were going to find the center of this thing, and all we’ve done is just walk for a really long time and we’ve found nothing. It’s…it’s discouraging, you know?”
I nodded. As I opened my mouth to respond, the wall to my left started shaking and rumbling, bringing dust down on our heads. Within a few seconds, the wall broke away, revealing another cavern.
And the vines path led straight into it.
When the dust cleared, the awe that I felt at the sight of the previous cavern was nonexistent when compared to the amazement I felt here.
This cavern dwarfed the first one by nearly twenty times the size. Foliage that was much bigger than the previous cavern filled the space.
Colors that I had never seen before were in the previous cavern…in this cavern were so many shades and colors that I didn’t think the universe knew of them. There was a forest-like area in the far left corner, a field of yellow man-sized flowers below our feet, ponds, streams, and waterfalls filling the cavern with moisture and sound as they fed the plant-life.
Daphne began slapping my arm with both of her hands, her slaps becoming more rapid and more violent as she tried to get my attention. When I looked down to see why she was slapping me, she pointed straight ahead.
In front of us was…if this thing wasn’t a plant, it certainly looked like one. Suspended from the ceiling was a massive creature with a flower-bud like head. Vines stretched out from the creature all the way to the ceiling and the walls to my left and right and, as I moved to see past him, I could see vines stretched out behind him as well.
Great, now I’m changing pronouns from ‘it’ to ‘him,’ I thought as I tried to drink in the magnificence of what it was.
What he was.
When we had first seen the eye, it was as tall as Daphne. Overwhelming all on its own.
Now, seeing the rest of the body attached to that five-foot-something eyeball…I felt as little as an ant.
He was a giant green figure with what looked like petals of intense blues, reds, yellows, whites, and mixtures of each making up the flower-bud head. He didn’t carry a humanoid shape, but I had the feeling that if he wanted to, he could walk the face of the planet in a matter of minutes if he chose to.
No one had ever accused me of being fanciful before.
I didn’t think I was being so now.
The sheer size of him…I could see why this cavern needed to be so much larger than the last one. I could see how it was able to create and control vines that could encompass a city.
“This. Is. Amazing,” Daphne whispered as she held my arm.
I had no words. To try to take all of this in, I needed every conceivable brain cell, and answering her statement took too much work. My brain was incapable of fully accepting what I was seeing.
Daphne started to sit down on the ledge, dangling her feet below her. “Sit down with me,”
she said, patting the spot next to her. “I think I need a moment to take all of this in.”
I carefully sat down, not wanting my weight to make the ledge break. The ground ended, a short ledge sticking out over the floor of the cavern several hundred feet below us. To our right, far below on the cavern floor, was one of the lakes, so clear that I could see the fish swimming in it and the plant life swaying in it. I had a sudden vision of myself diving into the lake and enjoying the cool waters. It was such an attractive vision that I started to lean forward on the ledge.
I pulled myself back and looked at Daphne. I don’t think I had ever seen her, or anyone else, smile so genuinely, or so hugely. I felt my own face crease into a smile. “So?” I asked.
“What?”
“Is it what you were looking for?” I asked.
She nodded and looked back at the cavern. “Oh, my, yes. It’s so incredible,” she answered breathlessly. “This is beyond my wildest imagination. Did you ever think something could have been more beautiful than the last cavern?” Her eyes searched mine and they sparkled with joy.
You, I thought.
Instead, I shook my head. “No. I thought the last cavern was the most beautiful place I had ever seen…and considering I’ve been to a few planets, that’s saying something…but this,” I swept my arm out to attempt to encompass the totality of this cavern. “This is, as you said, beyond imagination.”
“I’ve never thought that I could ever find a treasure such as this,” she breathed out as she lay her head against my arm.
I moved, then wrapped my arm around her and cradled her to me. “Neither did I,” I whispered back.
We sat there for several long minutes, drinking in the scene before, below, and above us. I felt…what did I feel? I felt comfortable. That was it, I felt comfortable sitting here with her cradled under my arm.
Suddenly, I felt her start to shake. I looked at her in concern to see that she was laughing.
“What’s so funny?” I asked.
She looked up at me and took in a deep breath to calm herself. “I just realized, my little hand-held scanner isn’t going to be nearly big enough to scan him.” She jutted out her chin in the direction of the Puppet Master.
