orning comes. Very different to her this time.

The scent of strawberries, fruits and freshly cooked fish, tease at her nose and stir on her taste buds. She sniffs deeply as her eyes slowly open. Sounds, of footsteps and toil, ring unfamiliar against the usual quiet she's lived with since her arrival. The fragrant wisp of Jasmine and Rose Petal tea sensuously entice her awake.

She starts to rise but her body relents. It’s endeavour is done and she is overly spent. These weeks' worth of toil now make their plea, but she refuses to surrender to it. She fights against the fatigue and attempts to rise once more, but the patchwork bedding gives her no purchase, and she slips back to the bunk, with an ungraceful thunk.

He hears the rustle of cloth and turns to see her struggling against the fatigue. He gathers up what he can and crosses the room with unsteady, but determined, steps. A wooden platter, with a variety of food and drink carefully arranged upon it, teeters on his palm. It shakes tenuously with every uneasy foot fall. His muscles tremble as they try and find their memory. The platter wobbles precariously but it never leaves his hand. Though it tries.

She sees him up, and energetic, and smiles. Her arms push on the sleep-shod bedding, struggling to her elbows' prop at his approach, refusing to give in to the heaviness that grips her. The blanket falls from her breast, with no hint of embarrassment. She has, after all, been bare in his presence since the day they arrived. As he's been to hers, from that same fateful moment. Out of time? Out of space? Where Or when they first met.

He places the tray on the chair and takes a seat on the bed next to her. He sidles to the headboard, positioning himself behind her and, affectionately, helps her sit up. She braces her back to his chest and relishes in his warmth. They flow together just like the way he gathers they should. He doesn’t know why he feels this. It’s just a comfortable, fluid endeavour. Like water gliding over polished rock in a smooth, gently rolling, stream.

They stay together this way, for a spell, enjoying a meal made from both of their harvests. With every bite he feeds her she smiles. With every sip of tea he puts to her lips she catches his eye, and a quiet affinity travels between them.

The shadows shorten, the sun crests just across it's apex and they start to stretch anew.

A rabbit chews on grass just off the weathered treads of the porch. The wind is still. The air is warm and calm.

Two unorthodox companions lean into each other, side by side, overlapping, her back to his chest, quietly looking out the open door, on to the hidden little world beyond.

The evening's starried blanket draws up in silence, until three words finally break the lull.

'Where are we?'

"I not know even ‘when’ we are." she muses.

The fact that he speaks Mericanad is of little surprise to her, given their circumstance. And, sensing the affinity of this place, she gets the feeling, they’d understand each other even if he didn’t.

'When?' he puzzles.

"When, where, what celestial, what verse." she half jokes, "I have pieces, you have others, if we talk them together, maybe, will help us both."

'I hope so,' he answers, in a rather unconvinced tone.

“Me too," she responds with a humorous cadence. "What the last thing you, amember?” she asks.

He searches his thoughts to find the last thing he can recall, but his brain is foggy, dark, shrouded. He closes his eyes and searches behind their curtain for even the tiniest semblance or clue. He lets his mind drift, to gather his past, but even his own life seems distanced and blurred. There's a glimmer, a curiosity. Just a lighter darkness against the black at first. Then a thin vertical gleam, like a door opening, just a crack, to a dawning sun.

Without sound, more like a sense of one, it flies open wide like it's under the urgent rush of a child in need of comfort. The light comes pouring in with an urgency. A growing pressure against his chest and mind. All is awash in it. The fog burns away. Visions focus into clarity. Shapes and colors begin to take form. And then, the world, just, snaps.

His body tenses and arches against it, then settles. His eyes get tighter at the sights in his head. Then the light flickers.

A series of visions play before him. He remembers throwing footballs, with his brother, in the yard. The feel of a mothers love as she kisses away the hurt. Years and years of spotted memories return. Some good, some triumphant, some not so nice. he feels himself remembering who he is. And then, a single flash of a moment burns into his thoughts. A paralyzing pain wracks through every nerve of his body and the source of this pain makes itself known.

He screams and lashes out, his eyes snap open. 'Oh god, the people, what happened to the kids?'

"Mem'ry?" she asks, reaching a compassionate hand to his face. He almost recoils from her touch, sees her gaze, calms, and accepts it. His blood slows and the phantom pain fades. He ponders her question. 'Maybe? I don’t know! But I remembered, something.'

"The moment we meet?"

'The moment we met? Maybe? Again, I don't know, but I think I saw the moment that I died, or should have… What is this place? Heaven? Hell? Or… something else?'

"No, not afterplace. Not died. Not think. Whisked away. A bad mess. Could have been, but not dead. Others, safe, I think..." He wants to ask her how she knows, but he somehow feels that she just does. Her brow furrows a little, she looks at him with inquisitive eyes then she smiles and nestles her head back to his shoulder. She gathers her words and then gives her own witness. "I can tell how we meet." she tells him, almost like it was a happy secret. "I was in...a... ughh, a thing I can't--- ex-plain. E’en now with much time to thought it out. So I tell. Okay?" He nods his head in affirmation. "I's in a bubble, that stretch far behind me, like a whirly wind of energy, lectric. It was closed afore and round me. Blurry places flashy by outside. Then slow almost stop. On the other side, I see you and a place…. hmmm, what's word? When a place or face you feel like you know?"

'Déjà vu?'

She gives him a look that tells him that's not quite right. "No. Not dream word. A place you not see, never been, maybe just feel like other. Everyday word."

'Familiar?'

"Yes! Yes. Familiar. Where you was, was familiar, but, strange to me. Maybe know from book or telling. The people were in odd dress but much like my people. There was a loud man. Angry. Hateful. People ascared, fearful screams. A brightness and then… A force. A hurt. You took most the ex, exp… hmm, the hurt, the push and pieces, protecting the other ones… I think, I feel… felt that. Then you in the bubble with me. Time whooshed on the other side of it. I witness a second many minutes. People come. Some help others go away..." No not right, bad time… she thinks... Get away. Some people put healing cloth. Help others. Carry them to metal carts with bright lights. Then it like we, snap back, like we reach the end of a stretchy… and it went back to where it held it's feet, or past it. Or maybe even somewheres else." She twists uncomfortably, not just at the recollection but also towards her inability to describe her thoughts in words. Then she settles back into his warmth. "What day's that, what place that?"

He looks out the door vacantly and tugs at his memory. 'November ninth, twenty twenty-three. New York City. And... people, are what happened.' He senses she doesn't quite understand. Hell, even he doesn't quite understand and he lived it, died almost, because of it. 'One group of evil bastards, against a polar opposite group of evil bastards, with innocent people stuck in between. I swear, no place will ever come to know peace as long as one person wants to be called a leader. Or tell someone else how to live their lives because, they know best.'

She smiles an understanding, "Yes. We have them too."

He shakes his head, throwing off those thoughts, 'Wait! If I took the blast, how am I still alive?'

"I guess… bubble pull you in in-time. This place, many herbs, root and sap can heal." She brushes her hand through her hair and pulls it to the side of her neck, letting it fall over her shoulder and across her left breast. It cascades around the curve like a gold, silken shell, cradling its flesh, framing her nipple in satiny yellow threads. "So! That Earth. Afore the breaking. I thought it ‘nother. The colors, the lights, the towers and buildings, so alive, so beautiful. So much."

'The lights were, unfortunately, as beautiful as some of the people were ugly,' he sighs. Then, realizing he doesn't even know her name, he finally makes her acquaintance, 'I'm Joe, by the way.' He offers his hand. She takes it and holds it firmly in hers, "Solata, Solata Lunata of..." she slips into thought,"… of whatever, this place name, I guess."

'This place is part of your name, but you don't know it?'

"We take name of the place that's home. And this, the first place I stay, in long time, what feel like home, for me. But like you… I am strange to it."

'So, this is Earth?'

"Mayhaps. Star sign... familiar. I not full sure, but it seem, we both from here, different time held us. You before the breaking, Me from long years after."

'The Breaking?'

"That's what the ‘storicals call it. A time when people and earth just broke, life lost it's, hmm, glimmer. There no more us, 'just pockets of me's', my father say. He was 'storical, he teach me. If I member what right, it was, twenty thirties your reckoning. Mayhaps…" She continues talking, steady and calm, describing the events as she can remember, fighting to structure the words, that she had long lost the habit to use.

While she speaks his lids get heavy. His eyes drift to the hearth and get caught in the focus of a single ember, floating on the updraft from the fireplace. It twirls and swirls in a tightening spiral, pulling him in. Pictures get painted in his mind, either by the flow of her words or some other force entirely. Or maybe, hints of both. Staring at the ember he drifts into them.

And sees.

Diseases, famines and strife. Vicious riots in the name of peace. Innocent people hurt in the name of justice. Pictures of war, a brutal war, fill his head. Places familiar become unrecognizable. Radioactive events, both solar and manmade, scorch the surface and almost three eighths of the world population was gone in a year. A little less than a third were left when there were no bombs left to drop. And no one was left who could build them. In the calm, in the eye of the storm, people started to change. In twenty short years a lot of babies were born, different than before.

Some were more aquatic, some more adapted to mountainous terrain, some were able to change their coloring, others were hermaphroditic, some, egg laying. There were even those who could sense by touch better than sight or see at night better than the day. Most, looking very much as their ancestors did. Just tweaked, in subtle, sometimes imperceptible ways. Either by their environment or by radiation playing havoc on the DNA. There were scattered groups who changed in such dramatic fashion that you'd never tell they were shaped from the same genes. And even smaller groups, splintered here and there, who could shift the energies of nature to their will. And others still, who defied logic and known science, becoming creatures of fantasy or nightmares.

The world was very different in many, many ways, but not so different in the ones that really mattered.

It didn't take long before the ones with physical differences came together, to challenge the ones who could scry the essence, as they called it. It seems to be what humans do best, he thinks, as the scenes play out, fear and hate, then group together in like mind and go after what you don't understand, or go and destroy what causes you envy. Or, see the potential of a thing and go and take it, to control it for your own benefit.

Noticing the power at the others command, and fearing them, they chased them out of towns or killed them in the night. But there were those who would not be taken so easily. Some went to solitary places, away from the hordes. Some, grouped together in secret and fought back. And, more strife ensued. Villages and cities all over the planet were again razed and afire. Many died on both sides, many others were tortured, maimed, or enslaved.

And fate, well she was not always kinder to the ones who left for more peaceable pastures.

The vision shifts and snaps into focus. He finds himself hawk-eyed, looking down on a rather unfamiliar stage. A dirt road. In a shanty village. An outside marketplace. A dingy, tattered cloth, looking stall.

A disheveled, thirsty child stands beside a dingy, tattered cloth covered, haphazard fruit stall. A clean but tattered dress is all she has to her person, "...of House Ziata," her voice creaks, through dry cracked lips, to the shop keeper.

'Stupid Girl, There is no House Ziata.' comes the retort from the angry woman.

"It is my name none the less." she replies.

A twisted hand thrashes through the air biting into the face of the girl. A trail of blood trickles from her temple, where a jagged nail has left an ugly gash. 'Your family is dead, and good riddance,' her words ooze out, saturated with spittle and vile, 'abominations get no food from me, you can starve or die a more painful death. Either one, would suit me fine.' she hisses…

The pictures fall away. A gentler hand touches on his cheek. His head shakes, the door shuts and the scene snaps out of view. Her eyes lock into his with a curious, calm, but very surprised look. A look that's understanding in nature, yet puzzled, in an analytical way. No one before the Breaking had vision, she thinks, or did they? Or… maybe this place?.

"Did you jus, vision a moment?" she asks curiously.

'Sorry, I...' he struggles for the words.

"Been aplace you never been? Seen what you not see? Know what you not known?"

'Yeah. That pretty much describes it,' he muses.

She strokes his cheek playfully, "Sorry about the face hair. I needed it not be there. Easier to keep clean til healed "

His hand feels the hair that's built up, two maybe three days growth, 'You did me a favor, I like this level of scruff better.'

"Me too," she giggles, roughing her fingers through the short, brown and grey stubble.

'You were saying? And I promise not to do that again.'

"You can't promise yet, it takes practice to shut it. But it does help one learn things, of places and people."

'So, this happens to you too?'

"I can do, yes, I think father give to me, but I can shut it, off and on. Took learning but I did. It help one know the nature and the nurture." She waits and watches. Looking him over while he collects himself. She muses about his visions some, then she remembers what they were piecing together. "Hmmm, Where we are?” her neck stretches side to side, “Oh yeah, I picking crowberries and leafs, to eat. Then there's light, dark blue bolts, they crack down on the earth. BOOM, I just sat awatch, so powerful. Then, one grab me and pulled me into its energy, it swirled,” her hands move in patterns drawing the imagery on the air, “and flash around me... foom fwoom..."

His mind fogs, his eyes close against the dizziness, his head drifts forwards and he's standing in a world much like the one before.

A tiny girl in very nice frock, no more than 9, sits crossed leg on a clean wooden floor, reading a book about a small man, with big feet, who went on a journey with a wizard and a ring. It's an old book, a relic. 'A fiction or a fantasy,' her mother said they called it. "If only they could see the now," she chortles. She's softly swaying to the sound of her mother’s humming as it drifts up the stairs and surrounds her.

It's a familiar tune, one that soothes in his mind.

There's a cracking, not so much the sound of some thing being broke, more like a tearing in ones own core, or the breaking of an energy. There's a presence here now. A thing, iced with malevolence, yet volcanic in it's fury and hate. The girl wants to run to her mother, but there's a wall of energy that pushes her away. The house erupts in fire, but she's safely settled on the grass outside. She sees the last whisps of gold and green essences as they drift away. She knows what they did, in their last breaths of life. Tears start to form, in her piercing blue eyes, as she watches the energies flicker and fade into her skin…

"Joe." The wall falls again. His eyes glisten, he blinks and shakes the web from his sight. "Too much, too fast, give you, really bad mind ache. Take air, lax." she cautions.

He breathes in deep and exhales. She feels him press up against her back then settle away. He's warm and soft against her lower back. Another breath. The wind leaves him and the tension flows with it. She wiggles back a little more, to regain the contact. She giggles as his short hairs tickle the sensitive skin just above her seat. "You okay? We take break? Go walk?"

'No, I think I can handle some more. Let's keep going.'

"I sorry, I not speak right. I no practice in long time."

'You haven't spoken in a long time? Why?'

"I live in tree place, forest, ways from people. No one to speak to but air, plant and creature. They not best talkers, not with speak. More, feel, than word."

'You're doing fine, Solata. I understand you just fine. As a matter of fact I can understand you better than some people… where or when I'm from. And if you're from my future then you probably speak here better than I do.'

"Mother n Father speak more like you. Me forget, break words now."

'Well the pictures you paint with those broken words tell me the story just fine.'

She turns to her side, reaches to the chair, picks up the kettle and pours water carefully into a mug. Steam starts to rise and drift above the rim. Purposeful fingers pinch a bit of bark between them and sprinkle it into the seeping hot water. "Drink this, help keep the mind ache down."

He sips the hot tea. It's medicinal but palpable. While he drinks she continues her tale.

"The whirly wind of light slowed, and I see you. I feel this... fear, I feel it coming off you. But the fear, it not for you, self, it for the others. I felt same once, a long time ago." She pauses at the memory, her eyes glisten with the hint of a tear but the water never falls. It's been a long time since she had the comfort to conjure those memories. But now is not the time to relive them. Or the pain. Her chest rises. She steels her resolve. "I reached to you, to push you the way, to shield you, but when I touch you, you swallow in with me..."

The visions settle around him again. There's something not right here, something vile. His back tightens, his eyes clench, his lungs suck the air in with a deep hard gasp, he feels like he's on the edge of letting go of this world...

Pain explodes through a little girl’s body, as the lash rips through her flesh. The girl is boyish, frail and thin. Her ankles and wrists bleed from the thorns of the vines that bind her, obscenely, to a cold metal table. Her hands tied taut above her head, inches apart. Her legs bent around the tables width feet bound to the cold rusted steel legs.

The man with the whip is slovenly, sadistic and cruel. Spittle falls from his mouth as he thrashes at the tied up waif whose legs he’s between. A carnal fury ebbs from his eyes as he plows himself, half limp and pathetically, into her.

Her screams stopped a while ago. He gets no satisfaction from this. He needs their tears, their acknowledgement, and their pain, for his pleasure. He tires of his sport and gives her one last lash with the thorny switch, spits on her back, cursing her as he turns away.

Blood flows off her ribs to the cold steel, then drips to pool at the floor below her. It mixes with the excrement and fluids of his past playthings. The scent is heavy and rank.

Footsteps plod, heavily, up stone stairs. An iron door slams shut with anger, frustration and impotence. The room goes quiet. It's cold. The dampness is looming.

Time passes with no tempo.

'New meat,' a different voice shouts.

'Oh! These three are fresh,' the pig man seethes.

'And they have no ways,' the other intones.

'They're gonna be delightful fun. Toss em in with, that thing, that should prime their fears nicely.'

Cries and sobs get increasingly louder and clearer to the girl. Metallic clicks echo down the stone stairwell. The cage door squeals, then slams against the stone wall. Three bodies stumble, tumbling to the floor. There’s a sound, like sacks of wet flour being dropped from a cart and landing, unceremoniously, onto a slab of hard packed earth. Boomph, boomph, boomph.

There are gasps, as air is sucked back into lungs. Six eyes, awash in horror, search through their panic for a safe space to hide. Or any chance of escape.

"Hello," smiles the little girl, in a strained raspy voice. She struggles to be heard over their cries and wailings, "Nice to meet you."

Tear streaked, black and blued faces, turn to her and look at her like she's crazy. But the contradiction of her tone, against the truth of their circumstance, stops their crying, long enough for her to speak and be heard. Without having to talk too loud.

She's seen them before. Many moons older in age, almost in their union years. They hide from her whenever she is near. "Could one of you untie my hand please. They won't hurt you anymore if I'm free.' Her eyes are glazed and twisted with pain. Yet her words and tone, mixed with their fear of the men upstairs and their expectations of ending up in her position, fill them with a moment of courage. If they recognize her, it doesn't show. Either that same fear blinds them to their recollection or the blood on her face disguises it away. It makes no matter, she's offered them salvation. They scramble across the floor to her side.

Three pairs of hands pull at the knots, awkwardly. Their bruised fingers tremble with fear as they work. Thorns cut into their skin but they endure. The barbed binding comes undone from her wrist.

'Thank you.' she says with a soft honest hush.

The smile on her lips recedes into concentration. They watch as she rubs the bond on her right wrist. The ropes uncoil and twist, unleashing themselves from her arm and then from both her bloodied ankles.

She grabs the switch from the table side, the same one that cut into her just minutes before, and gathers it and the bindings together, holding them in her hands. There’s movement, in her grasp, in harmony with her motions. The pieces of her bondage and pain writhe and merge. Dancing and weaving, pulling themselves together. A snake, of twined hemp, leather and thorny vine slowly begins to take shape. It eases to her face and brushes gingerly, sympathetically, at a wound under her eye.

Then it rears back and accedes, with a cold determination.

Her face goes stone. She sighs.

The girls huddle away from her. The fear of 'her kind' rekindled by her actions, and that look. They scramble under the cots and tables and hide. Fetal, In the filth. Trembling at the thought of what they released.

The snake slithers it's way across the blood stained, stone floor, undulating up the stairs and disappearing beyond the gate.

Seconds pass like minutes. The silence is hungry, ravenous.

The quiet breaks, with horrific screams. Shrill howls, that pierce the air and fill the night with shrieks of defilement and terror. It resonates through the rock. Dust falls from the ceiling from its intensity. The echoes hit their ears like sledgehammers. The other girls cover them fast, but they can't escape it's volume or the sheer terror in it’s tone.

The little girl does not cover hers. She’s immune to the sound. "So! You don't like it there either!" she words, half in her mind, a bit out loud.

A final cry of anguish is consumed, in a gurgling choke, as a cracking of bones brings the screams to an abrupt and merciful end. A thud. Metal jingles and crashes to the stone.

A high pitched scraping, rhythmically resounds with ascending volume, getting closer to the tortured girl's cell. Shsching, scritch, shsching, scritch, shsching, scritch…

She stands, defiant to the pain, naked and bleeding and, deservedly, unashamed.

The bramble snake reappears at the bottom of the stairs, keys to the cell, firmly interlaced in it’s tail…

"Joe! Joe!"

He snaps back to her words. His eyes fall upon her shoulder and back, before she’s fully turned to meet his gaze. His fingers go to her face, she leans into them. They trace a line down her neck to a point of raw, taut flesh, just above the nape. His face turns solemn. It's a similar scar to the one he just saw, ripped into the child turned liberator, not seconds ago. 'Did you get them out?' he asks, on a whim.

"Who?" she puzzles.

'The three girls in the cage when you...' he pauses, remembering the things that were being done to her, if it was her, and he phrases his response to be kind to her modesty and her memory, 'got these?'.

She gasps softly as his hand traces the biggest cicatrix, almost by memory, from the left side of her neck down her spine, then under her ribs to just above her hip.

"I not be here if I didn't." She answers, matter-of-factly.

'So why didn't you escape before, if you can do things like that?' His hand glides down to the small of her waist settling into the bend and resting on her thigh.

She turns and smooths back against him, taking his hand in hers and leading it across her stomach. "It only hurt for the first couple lashings and when he tore me… back there. Then words in my head telled me, 'You be okay, a little longer, hush, no more tears, be strong, be brave,' and I not feel it anymore. My only sort was to wait. All else I could do, have killed me too."

'I've felt the truth of it, little one. You were about a blink away from taking that chance."

"But," she shifts back to look in his eyes. "how could you feel my knowing? That, not part of the sight."

'Is feeling my fear part of this sight?'

"?I not think? No. I feel your fear awake, not in sight, but... once afore," she settles her head into his shoulder, nestling back into the cradle of his arm, unconsciously tracing a jagged circular scar on his chest, "With sight I don't member feeling, just seeing and hearing…" She chuckles, "Ah well, more questions for the musements."

She gathers her dress and puts it back on, takes the salve and gently works it in to a few, still not fully healed, wounds. She sits back next to him, kisses his cheek, lays her head back into his shoulder, and shuts her eyes. The scruff on his chin against her forehead causes a shiver to course through her.

He wraps an arm around her, she brings her hand to merge with his.

'So let me put this together. You, were watching an energy storm and I… was getting blown up. You got picked up and hurled back to my time... to me, in this vortex thing, then I got picked up by you, and this energy... thing, then, we ended up here, wherever or whenever this is?'

"Yep! Out there, in the stream. Bare as the way we come into the world..."

'Kinda like we were a minute ago.'

"Hyeah…" she chuckles, "I guess energy not like anything but living stuff in it. Clothes gone. Even the bits in your skin left behind. Then, it was like a flexy band. You know when you stretch and then let go? Well it let go and poof, we here. And energy, just gone."

'Good thing I didn’t have a pacemaker. Hold on! How long have we been here?'

"Eighteen days, mayhaps." she says, point of fact. "I put a stone on... what you call that?" she points to the shelf above the fireplace.

'The mantle?'

"Yes, the mantle, I put a stone there every sun sleep, but I may amiss one-a-two."

The fire crackles, their eyes draw to it, there's a hard pop and the logs settle in a fury of sparks.

"You pretty bad. I think your brain think you rip apart. Which you almost was. On that side, but not inside. Inside, you just burnt a little here, and blood a bit there.”

He looks at his body and sees the places where fresh, tight, dark, pink flesh now contrasts against his normally olive skin and he realizes, it was a little more than just a little. His face gets solemn. His eyes fill with an awareness. The pieces of just what has come to pass, since they were settled here, come together. As much as he can fathom of it anyway. And even though she has not spoken a word of what she's done, he imagines all that she has forced herself through, to tend to him and to bring him back to health. Never mind just to keep herself alive. He’s overwhelmed by the thought that she did this alone. And he wonders if he could have done the same for her. Marveling, how this, petite, graceful, sprite of a being, has done, for nearly three weeks, what would have been a hard pressed task for any three, or even four people he knew in his time, to have endured. Never mind seemed happy for it. His heart fills with admiration and awe and his countenance brightens. What strength, he thinks, gripping her tighter in his arms, what a strength and what purpose she wields… But why me? Why am I the one? Why is it me, here, with her, right now?.

He put's his mouth by her ear and whispers, 'Thank you.'

"Mmmhmm," she answers, then stretches herself further into his skin and yawns.

They sit in quiet contemplation as the sun's arc settles in the sky. Both aware of, but neither mentioning, the bond that seems to have been weaved between them. By this place? Or her actions? Or the temporal storm? Or maybe, all of them together, he muses, each piece honing a part of it into us. It feels like there's, a whole here, not pieces, a whole.

She settles herself more completely against him and hums a little contentment.

The day orb glows red in it's descent. A comfortable calm creeps upon them with a promise of peaceful rest. They fall asleep in each others arms and, as they drift into the dream lair, more fruitful visions come.

And so does an intoxicating pull.

The years they had passed, without witness, filter into them, like a scent that revives a memory and stirs a flavor on the tongue. One you still taste, long after you awake.

They're not their own visions that play in their minds though, it's more like they were looking through the eyes of, someone, something, from the others time, not each others but not their own either. Something other, something that watched and remembered and learned. It was the type of seeing that leaves only a hint of itself in the senses. Well, not so much a hint as a tenuous connection to one.

It's another scent, altogether, that pulls her awake and away, from that place where the visions played. Not just any scent, but his scent, and hers, mixed together by the air around them. It guides her path and teases a knowledge in her. Edging her on a journey, she's never been, never knew she longed to take. And now, because of this place and him, she finds those urges rekindled. And this time she has someone to share it with. Someone, she wants to share it with.

She shifts her body to face him and runs her hand up the inside of his leg, slowly. Just as she's done, so many times, in those so many days before. But it's different this time. She can sense it. Like the morning is different from the eve. For this is the first time her hands scan his flesh without a wall of fabric between them. She can recall the trail of moisture from the cloth. She can see the hairs stand in its wake. The friction of his skin, burns in her mind and teases at the whorls on the tips of her fingers. Her callouses offer no resistance to the feeling. She feels her way confidently, unhurried, but hungrily, up the inside of his thigh to his sex. Knowing how he'll respond to her touch. Watching her desire come to life in her palm. She wraps her hand around him and feels him growing bolder to her play. His flesh tightens and thrums, filling up her grasp. She loosens her grip to encompass him.

Hotter it feels, than she recalls and prouder it grows. Each inquisitive rub rewarding her efforts with the promise of something, mystical. He is hard and tight and she can feel his blood pulse, firmly in the soft fold of her palm.

With a unique and fluid motion, she slips her dress up and over the curve of her hips. She rolls her long slender leg over his torso and slowly lowers herself onto him, teasing his warm, flush, flesh deliberately against herself, feeling his boldness parting the folds of her.

Minutes pass, deliciously slow. She relishes every second of the feeling of their contact. The inching and building of their energies continue as she feels him press firmly into her heat. She grinds down and slinks lower, there's a gnaw and a tug and a reason to stop. But she refuses. She rolls forwards and back and that reason disappears. She rises and holds, closes her eyes gathers her resolve and descends. There’s a pleasure then a tearing that grips her with burning pain but her needs and desires compels her onwards. Steadily, she continues downward. And, when at last, she feels the fullness of him inside her and the touch of his stomach, as it presses into her, she shudders, and a tingly heat prickles up through her spine. Blood trickles and tints their skin. Her flesh ripples with vigor. She smiles at the pain for it's of her own making. She grinds hersel slowly against him. The fine radiant hairs, on her arms and legs, stand up. Like they do to capture the sun when she's chilled. She rises slowly and the pain gives way to warmth. The warmth becomes an energizing thrum.

So this how it feels, with not hate or cruelty. she whispers in her mind, This!... Is this where the joy in House Ziata came? Is this, what mother and father shared?

Her dress scrapes roughly at the hardened nibs that push away, tauntingly, from the dark sensitive circles of skin on her chest. It teases that delicate flesh with it's gauzy fabric, sending waves of teasing heat through her veins. An enraptured, humming pulses through her bones, sinew and nerves. She rolls her hips back, methodically, then forward, an ecstasy rises inside her and a fury of blood, she didn't know possible, begins pulsing and feeding her with a need to continue. The hairs of his loins tease her most sensorial of places, lifting her higher into her senses and pulling him within it. Her body shakes as she rises and sets upon him.

He gently awakens from a dream and finds himself at the same place he left it. Inside her. Fueled by her fragrance, urged on by her sultry, velveteen grasp. Surrounded in an all consuming warmth.

The air of the room feels static and charged. It ripples with light and potential. Sparks of blue and purple hues, arc and flash like fingers, pulling outward and around them.

He slides off her dress in a slow, deliberate motion. The passing of the fabric against her skin causes her body to shiver. Her nipples harden a little more passed comfortable, she gasps as the crochet plucks and taunts them.

The energy around them intensifies, gathering itself in a pale blue drone.

He watches the flush pass across her face and is awash in her beauty and, thoroughly, lost in her charm.

She's a wallflower, he hears, in the back of his mind, She's unkempt, I mean look at the hair on her legs and eww, those armpits… Poor girl, doesn't she know about make up?'.

Yes, he curtly responds, to those thoughts, that's what they would say in my world, but she, is anything but. She is true and wild, unconventional and real, she is bold and calm, and unique, and she's stronger than anyone I’ve ever known. She is beauty and I'd love her, even in that place.

And she would love you, even in hers, teases an ethereal voice, unknown, patient, and whispered. A different softer enchantment entones, treat her well, she's seen much, given much, as have you.

He rolls her over and onto her back, careful not to break their bond. She wraps herself around him. Her legs and arms pull him into her, feeling his weight upon her, feeling his breath on her chest and the scruff of his cheek against her neck. She clenches her sex around his, squeezing him and pulling him even deeper. He feels her strength surround him as their bodies, entwined and one, continue their slow, amorous dance.

She lifts her face to his and pauses, just on the edge of their touch.

He brushes his forehead across hers and a titillating tension teases across his scalp. He sniffs deep and long. drawing in her scent, breathing it in fully, letting it fill him. His mouth toys just out of reach, then gambols a little bit closer. Their lips touch and spark. The static in the air pulses. They kiss with a hunger and a passion, well beyond anything he's had to compare.

The blue haze grows brighter and hums more intensely, as they surge into each other more of their will.

One hand finds the small of her back, the other a warm, firm breast. He cups it and teases at the rigid flesh with his palm. The pliable pebble tickles and teases his lifeline.

She looks into him deeper, deeper than anyone has ever tried, and lets him, completely, in to the depths of her own. She rolls purposefully up and into him, pulling not just his sex but his ghost into her, arching and aching to push herself, and her own energy, more completely into him.

The haze becomes flame, circling their movements, in a ring of bright plasma and a steady, low, rumbling din.

Their lips part and tongues entangle and they breathe each other in, like they were the very air they needed to live. His fingers trace the scars on her ribs and when she feels his nails pass tenderly on the skin of her back, she shudders and can hold it no more.

The cool, blue fire surges and she feels the wall fall in a slow, rippling cascade.

Her release rages through her, from somewhere deep inside, rising from the place where his heat melds with hers. It rumbles up her spine, exploding out through every hair. He stiffens his back to his own need and slowly, steadily, teases in and out of her, straining to see her through to her end. Her hands clench his back, her fingertips scrape at his still raw flesh. She pulls him to her, and his own defenses fall, when she groans in his ear and finds it's lobe with her teeth.

The blue flame turns almost white, then flashes out and all around them, as his climax flows hotly into her and hers flows molten around him. Melding their moments to one purpose.

Three more pulses and pushes, one more euphoric cry and they collapse, breathing heavy and into each others bliss.

The drone slowly wanes and the glow softly fades, as their two bodies, flushed with the knowledge of each others fate, twitch in their final throws.

He stays inside her, while they reclaim their breath. Both entranced in the fading energy that surrounds them. They look into each other, feeling the truth of it, or a hint of it anyway, then they laugh. A deep and much needed laugh. A soul binding sound of honesty and joy.

'Well that was..." he stops, not quite finding the words.

"Yes," she responds , jovially, "Maybe next time not a moon of horning me up?"

His mouth finds hers willing and slowly they kiss and tease, commanding the air back into each other. She hugs him then rolls him onto his back, lays herself on top of him and nestles her head to his chest. He wraps her in his arms. Cheek to cheek and ear to mouth, they drift into soft chatter.

Moonlight dances across the lake's flowing ripples and spies through the cabin's open window, glistening two bodies in its gaze. Bodies covered only in its glow, sweat and the warmth of each others skin. The laughter subsides into comfortable whispers and they drift softly back into dream.