Nova

by Lora E. Rasmussen

  Still positioned at her self–relegated post at the cavern’s mouth, an hour or so later, K’llan heard Avara moving about. Turning her head, Z’arr noted that the Captain was using the portable laser to efficiently desiccate the remaining meat, dry it into a hard–textured yet more sustainable version for travel.

  Shifting her gaze back to the rain–blanketed vista before her, she considered the fuller meaning behind the Captain’s meal. Serros had consumed an entire third of the massive predator on her own and though she was not at all practiced in the intake of such corporeal fare, K’llan knew the amount was quite unusual. Basic need and Arca Enhancements demanding their due.

  Sacrifice required for every gift, every breath one takes.

  “K’llan.”

  Knowing what Avara was about to say, K’llan found that she could not turn around, could not walk forward into the welcoming haven.

  “K’llan, stop running.”

  Choking back a sound that she herself could not quite identify as either laughter or lament, Z’arr did turn around then, and found herself moving towards the Human who sat calmly in the gravel by the crack–snapping fire–pit. At the Captain’s gesture, K’llan sat next to Serros, not touching yet so close that she could feel Avara’s radiated heat across the sparsely separating inches.

  “Tell me what to do, K’llan.”

  K’llan found the Human’s measured tone to be an almost maddening counterpoint to the swirl of demanding emotion rippling through her body. Fighting an urge to hold, possess, and release she’d never before encountered or imagined, Z’arr once more tried to make Avara recognize the risk. “Captain, be sure of what you are … offering. You are correct, I am starving, and the danger is very real.”

  Shaking her head, though whether in denial or comprehension K’llan could not be precisely sure, Avara replied “K’llan, we’ve been over this before. I understand your concern, but I also understand you. You will ensure my safety.” Avara’s voice, radiating an imperturbable belief, was all velvet, steel, silk, and home in one.

  And it both broke and beckoned K’llan’s heart at once, ending any pretense of omission. Running a hand through her long, loose sapphire hair, K’llan finally murmured “Avara, do you remember when you asked why I said that…Feeding was especially dangerous for you and I?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have you considered why?” The Vosaia asked, wondering how much the clever Human woman had deduced on her own.

  Breathing deeply, gaze uncomfortably direct, Serros answered, “I assume it has something to do with the empathic connection you and I share. The link that seems to be anything but normative for Vosaia, though my experience in this matter is limited to you and you alone.”

  “Yes, it has everything to do with our bond, and yes, it is unusual. In fact,” K’llan began, refraining from reaching out for Serros, “within Vosaia culture, it is a bond only shared by Life–Mates, not platonic friends or relatives.”

  “I… see.” Avara answered, brows knitting in concentration as she considered K’llan’s words, still refusing to shift her eyes away from the Vosaia despite the declaration. Z’arr was struck by the subtle meaning of that act, and suspicion was confirmed a moment later as Avara continued. “I cannot say that I’m entirely surprised, especially since your… regard, is not one sided.”

  Both pleased and frustrated, K’llan exclaimed, “Then do you see the additional danger?”

  “Not exactly. You also told me that Feeding is not necessarily romantic or sexual in nature.” At Avara’s hesitation, K’llan was struck by the fleeting thought that Serros was concerned about offending in some way with her next sentence, yet in the end, pushed forward anyway. “Also, I have been… casually… sexually intimate with Vosaia before, and there was certainly no Feeding involved.”

  For just an instant, K’llan felt a ripple of almost primal territorialism at Avara’s announcement, with the lack of a singular pronoun particularly inflammatory. It was a response that was driven by pulsing hunger, yet with an iron exertion of resolve, she faced and then dispersed the feeling. As Humans measure age, Avara was in fact, comparatively older. Thus in some ways, including apparently having had alien lovers, more experienced than K’llan, despite the two–centuries of life the Vosaia held above the Captain.

  And more, given not only Avara’s undeniable physical draw, as she’d thought before when first catching sight of the Captain walking towards her in the Sonata on Sigil, the beauty and potency of the woman’s soul would surely draw the interest of any unattached Vosaia within her orbit.

  K’llan cut her chin in both acceptance and also negation of the importance of Avara’s disclosure. Trying to find the right words to produce understanding, Z’arr proclaimed “Avara, I am saying that because of our bond, my control may very well be less than it would be with another person.”

  “I would think you would actually have more self–possession because I’m not just anyone. I don’t know, not just some random stranger?”

  Striving to retain the steady calm that was her more customary state, K’llan answered “Yes and no. Because you are not just ‘anyone,’ because I do care, the desire to go deeper will be increased. And I am also not sure what Feeding combined with our link will mean, even in the larger sense.”

  “K’llan, isn’t all of this a little academic right now?” Serros queried, gesturing at their surroundings to encompass the realities behind their entire on–planet situation. “Let’s be honest; we’re talking about your life here.”

  Giving in to a little impatience of her own, Z’arr responded “Well, do you really think it’s an academic question? Would Lieutenant Commander Adeline agree?”

  K’llan could see the flush of heat sweep across Avara’s features, feel the emotional spiral through her nya. Even more, she could clearly read that Serros understood in that moment how she’d known about the romantic turn in Avara’s relationship with Diana Adeline.

  K’llan found herself fighting the urge to squirm in her seat at the exchange and the position she found herself being placed in. One that, given the nature of her connection with Avara, she would never have had to endure if Serros had been born Vosaia rather than Human.

  “K’llan, that is… neither here nor there, and any questions regarding feelings for one another are for another time, another place. We are not going to be… sexually intimate.”

  Looking at the woman before her, so filled with persuasive if somewhat naïve surety, K’llan couldn’t help but think to herself, If only it was that simple.

  “K’llan?” The speaking of her name was question and demand married to one.

  Once more feeling the gnaw of insistent hunger crawl through her body like scrambling mice trapped within a water–filled hole, K’llan gave the only real answer circumstance would allow. “Very well, Avara.”

  Shifting her seated position closer, she took a final moment to breathe. K’llan allowed a sliver of the tight control she’d been exerting since planet–fall and in some ways, since their encounter in the Adrenix factory almost half a year ago, slip away.

  She felt a swift spike of excitement flash through her frame and she studied Serros’s features, raven dark crown to elegant brow and long, soot colored lashes framing sapphire pools, and finally, sweetly curved lips.

  Reaching forward, K’llan laced her slender fingers with Avara’s, and finding refuge in the Shield’s responsive grip, she slowly leaned over to the seated Human. As the distance between their faces collapsed, the Vosaia caught a brief thrill of anxiety and nervous expectation, then felt Avara deliberately lower Arca SP enhanced mental shields in invitation. Progressing with a sense of infinite care, as if afraid to break the fragility of the space between one breath and the next, K’llan gently brushed Avara’s lips with her own, contact feather light.

  Almost immediately, she felt a trickle of the Shield’s potent soul energy, her nya, shiver to and through her mouth and could feel her own body’s insistent reaction. An
swering the call, K’llan’s tongue traveled the same path as her lips had, then sought further, moving to and then with Avara’s mouth as she fell deeply into the kiss.

  The shot of unadulterated energy and euphoria cracked through her body with more force than any bullet slicing through flesh. The charge was lightning captured, dynamism made manifest. Pure life surged from Avara to K’llan, an explosion of primal force that wiped away restraint, resistance, and barrier like a child’s paper toys caught and shredded by a hurricane.

  With a sense of unquenchable want, the Vosaia locked her questing mouth to Avara’s, hunger both fed and magnified by the Human’s offering, by her answering lips and tongue.

  Soon there was no thought, no sense of time or space, no possibility of sight or sound, no scent, touch, or taste outside of the person with her now, joined in soul and flesh. With realization, something extraordinary occurred. Accompanied by a sense of finality likened to a door smashed to splinter and dust, a flood–fall of images, thoughts, sensations, and feelings coursed from Serros to Z’arr, capturing mind and heart.

  The glint of gold turned to blue, the sticky spray of

  wind, the taste of salt and an expanse so endless as

  to swallow time itself…

  Folding into,

  Green upon verdant green, the sound of chattering,

  red–crested birds and howling cattail–colored

  primates…

  Sound and light shifting and a,

  Human man, ink–black hair and merry gray–blue

  eyes crouching over a floor–sized palette, gently

  holding a slight hand a fourth of the size of his own.

  He using clever fingers to guide the tracing of

  pattern, the swirl of cool pigment blending with the

  scent of linseed oil…

  Then shock and childhood lost with,

  The scudding sound of cannon ballista firing into

  hearth and home, smoke filled alleyways and the

  desperate cry of a girl made indistinguishable from

  the whimper of a cream–furred retriever lying in a

  pool of blood…

  And shadow drinking shadow,

  A young, dusk–covered face of a skinny, teenaged

  Marcus Perez sobbing over the body of a rotund

  woman with starry–night braids, floral–patterned

  dress a tattered flag…

  To transformation symbolized by,

  The smell of wood oil and upturned earth, the grief

  raked face of a tall woman with burnished–red brown

  hair and crystalline blue eyes next to a younger

  version with darker hair and a sage hued gaze. The

  crick–creak of coffins going to rest signifying the

  sound of an oath sworn …

  Then gentle sweetness and sorrow,

  A brilliant, sun–filled green park, nature captured in

  a timeless clinch, and the scent of sweet asylum

  blossoms and a slight woman with dark hair and

  gilded eyes, whose kiss tasted of lemon–drops and

  goodbye…

  Preceding the ringing clarion of victory and release,

  The smell of ion and a magnified vision of a gold and

  gray dreadnaught firing the totality of her port

  batteries, resultant shockwaves coupled with knifing

  pain yet countered by a sense of fierce exultation and

  the deliberate acceptance of coming death speeding

  close…

  Faith and belief confronted as in sharp relief,

  The interior of a starship’s Strategy Room and an

  array of Human brass headed by a sun–silk crowned

  woman sporting Admiral’s pips, with unmoved eyes,

  demand flickering across her beautiful features and

  the heady swell of finality, trust and love betrayed…

  Followed by submersion in undeterrable, cold rage,

  Moisture consuming dry heat, ramble–stone

  buildings sprawled under a tri–solar sky. The tic–tic

  shuttered hum of a struggling power generator

  murmuring as a pearl–skinned individual with blood

  red eyes and burgundy markings, cries out in denial,

  screaming for clemency, and the surge of wrath that

  signified refusal…

  A shift to renewal and the reignition of conviction,

  the sense of coming home encapsulated within,

  The smell of recycled air coupled with the sharp tang

  of metal merging with petroleum, and the slow reveal

  of artificial light pooling over the sleek panes of a

  silver–steel and royal blue kissed starship, set

  against waiting stars…

  On and on, the sense–ridden image–flow rushed forward, demanding and devouring, granting and sustaining. Incredibly, K’llan knew that she’d barely brushed the pool’s surface.

  Soon, without deliberate decision, K’llan felt the current shift, as she became the giver even as she was given to. The Vosaia’s nya intertwined with the Human’s, the looping exchange of energy without end or barrier, synchronous and complete.

  Nothing K’llan Z’arr had ever experienced, nothing brushed with the quill of imagination compared, or could even have hoped to capture this reality.

  Perhaps most astonishing, the ever increasing tempo of exchange seemed ad infinitum, an endless escalation of spirit and physical response. It was with that realized thought, that the first hint of danger fractured the state of shared, vital bliss. A warning written in the subtle undulation of flickering energy and heralded with the sound of physical response.

  Awareness brought by, yet outside of, K’llan’s fusion with Avara slowly returned. With it, recognition that she was no longer sitting up but instead was lying atop Avara’s body. Her hips were nested with Serros’s, and the fingers of K’llan’s right hand were gripping smooth back skin with bruising ardor, her other palm impressed into the body–heated dry gravel underneath them. With a trickle of disquiet and embarrassment, K’llan become conscious of the sticky signature of sexual release within the confines of her borrowed Karukai trousers.

  Though skin had not once touched flesh underneath their apparently irrelevant garments, K’llan also knew through their actively trilling link that the same was true for the Human she clasped so closely to.

  Despite still humming desire, K’llan forced herself to answer the subtle shift, the pull of withdrawal. With exquisite care, she gently extricated her nya from the Human’s. And the everyday became present once more.

  Sight returned, K’llan looked into the shimmer–bright eyes of the Human Shield Operative, watched the play of her curling lashes as lids gently opened. More than anything, she wanted to blend her mouth with the other woman’s once more, only a heart’s–breath away.

  Yet she did not.

  Though the immediacy of their connection had been granted a reprieve, Z’arr could still feel their bond singing through vein, mind, and soul, and now knew that nothing short of expiry could snuff this manifested truth. For K’llan, there was perfect clarity, no mystery, no question to be asked or answered.

  Yet for the Human, and she had to consciously stop herself from thinking of Avara in terms of my Human, there was lingering confusion, a sense of traveling through and trying to sort out the unknown. Beneath all else, K’llan sensed an uncertainty and unease born of remorse and vague guilt that hurt Avara deeply.

  “Avara… I am sorry.” K’llan finally uttered, voice low with emotion, feeling her words to be woefully inadequate. She gently pulled back and sitting up, gave the woman the space she knew Avara needed.

  Moving to sit a further pace away, lean arms wrapped around her knees and nya flailing with an attempt to sort and quantify, to regain equilibrium, Serros responded, “No need. It’s fine… I… you… are you okay?”

  Smiling slightly inside at Av
ara’s sense of consideration even when within her own confusion, K’llan answered softly, “Yes. My fear of not being able to stop myself from… harming you in my current state of depredation seems to be a non–issue.”

  Neither spoke regarding Z’arr’s statement. She could feel that they both knew her words were true, knew now that with the bond that they shared, K’llan could no more drain the life from Avara than she could order herself to stop breathing.

  Just as we both know that my other concerns about our Feeding have proven true.

  The thought hung between them, a whisper unspoken as they fell to silence and eventually, to sleep in their separate bedrolls, apart yet not apart, listening to the still persistent pit–pat–pit–pat of rain falling on grass and earth.

  CHAPTER 20

  With a sense of quiet triumph, sunlight streamed through the tapering mist of rain to puddle in the entryway of the cavern, a beacon calling for the abandonment of sleep. Carrying a faint sense of reluctance despite feeling more vital than she had in days, Avara shrugged off the last vestiges of sleep as she escaped the cocoon of her bedroll to a sit–up position.

  Without deliberate thought, she found her head turning towards her traveling companion a few feet away, still curled up onto her side and breathing with the steady rhythm of sleep. Head cradled on her arm, K’llan’s hair was loose, locks pooled about her head like a long–trained crown made of sky, pearlescent skin a muted shimmer in the low light of the cave.

  The color of the Vosaia’s hair was echoed in the delicate azure tracings that brushed along her hairline, starting from her ears then coursed gentle whirls at the inception of high–arched cheekbones. The natural sigils were then lost in the swirl of sapphire tresses to persist, Serros knew from the past week of travel together, along her back.

  With a sudden urge, Avara found herself wondering if the marks continued their path and what K’llan’s fully bared back would look and feel like, wanted to follow and map the course of cerulean patterns. Like a rifle–shot, images and feelings from last night snapped through her mind. The cinematic play threatened to drown out vision as they repeated like a Vid gone mad. Though she couldn’t quite pin down its full significance, exactitude a fleeing quarry, Avara knew with certainty that the very mutual experience of Feeding that had taken place between her and K’llan had changed something. Perhaps everything.