Meridian Mutual Assurance: Because Tomorrow Isn't Guaranteed.*
*Terms & Conditions Apply. Policy excludes: unapproved portal entry; consumption by native fauna, flora, or organisms pending classification; structural collapse of terrain, architecture, or reality; any events described by surviving witnesses as "it just started doing that"; “friendly” fire incidents; biological restructuring events, voluntary or otherwise; all parasitic alien life incidents. Meridian Mutual Assurance reserves the right to add exclusions retroactively. Policy void if insured survives an event classified as non-survivable.
Meridian Mutual Assurance. We Believe In You.*
*Belief does not constitute liability.
When we left The House of Lorhara, Vael asked me if I wanted to go anywhere else or if we should head over to her mother’s home. The shadow of building exhaustion and my grumbling stomach guided me to choose the latter, and she hailed a ride with her slate. This one was almost literally just a double-sided rolling bench that one could step onto or off freely. There weren’t any other passengers, just the two of us, and we rode along under the warm sunshine.
I wonder if this is tasked out for personal transport when the need for public transport is low by Six?
Vael’s skin was warm in my palm, and I ran my thumb over her claws, enjoying the tactile sensation they provided. She kept them polished to a fairly high sheen, and the natural black color of her nails suited her crimson skin very well.
“So uh,” I started, then cleared my throat. “Are Geel and Imir friends of yours?” I looked over to see the usual coy smile on Vael’s lips.
She chuckled. “Mhm. We’ve known each other for a number of years. They’re quite fun, especially when you get a few drinks in them.”
I noticed that Vael and Geel had their tails entwined on the side bench. Does that mean…?
“Well, you have very nice friends, Vael. Thanks for introducing me to them. Imir seems like she really knows her stuff extremely well. And Geel…” I trailed off, trying to summarize my interactions with her.
“Geel is very friendly!” I concluded.
Vael didn’t say anything. I looked over at her, and she was staring off into the distance with a blank look on her face. I tried to track her eyes to see what had caught her attention, but didn’t see anything noteworthy in the distance.
Maybe she’s remembering past parties with the two.
Our transportation was taking us into the territory of increasingly elaborate and spacious private residences. The idea of owning your own entire house and property was so lavish as to be absurd and borderline offensive to me. I was trying hard to be on my best behavior up here, but there were moments when I wouldn’t be distracted by other things, and I’d have the space to meta-contextualize what I was looking at.
A residential building where each room might have multiple times the space of a cube, and there could be a dozen of those rooms. And… one or two, or four or five people lived there.
The same space in X-3 would house generously double-digit numbers.
Our transport rolled up to a gate, which opened automatically, and we pulled into a circular lane that looped under the eave of the mansion sitting in the middle of a walled property that was lush with vegetation everywhere you looked. We came to a halt in the shade of money.
I looked around quietly after standing up and stepping off the transport.
I don’t know why I keep getting surprised about these things. Maybe I’m putting on the blinders intentionally because I don’t want to think about the implications.
“You… grew up here?” I asked Vael without taking my eyes off the front of the estate.
The electric motors on the transport were a nearly silent whir as it went off to its next destination to pick people up.
A soft sigh came from my side. “Up until a few years ago, I lived here, yes. Born and raised in the city, as I told you.”
“I knew in my head that it’s basic statistics that Sul’vari skew towards the top of the city heavily, and with everything else…”
My chest felt tight.
“Hey,” Vael’s voice was soft. I looked over at her to see a concerned expression. “Don’t go clamming up on me and jumping to conclusions. I told you I was a career Diver, and Diving is extremely lucrative. Despite that, I live where I do by choice. I’m not… exiled to 5-3, or something.”
I sucked a deep breath in through my nose and let it all out in my own sigh. “Okay, Vael. I’ll try my best.”
She held her hand out, and I took it.
We walked through front doors that opened themselves when Vael approached. The inside of the home wasn’t quite what I’d expected. I was envisioning obnoxious gold plating and people being hand-fed by servants, or something.
What I got was a very comfy and lived-in-looking place that was a cross between a mansion and a hunting lodge. A warm, natural palette was vibrant and easy on the eyes. Reds and russets, umbers, browns and tans, greens ranging from near-black olives to bright chlorophyll greens. Yellows and golds were present, as well. Paintings and photographs of people–mostly Sul’vari–were arranged around on the walls of the main lobby and along the staircase leading upstairs. There were Sul’vari cultural artifacts in various displays and cases, along with what I could only describe as a menagerie of various trophies from Dives. Bits and pieces of monsters, most of which looked particularly nasty, should they be getting chomped, swung, or clawed at you.
A shorter Sul’vari woman strode in from the other room. She was around 170cm and had a similar black-on-red coloration as Vael, but her skin was a darker tone and her horns more of a graphite color relative to Vael’s dark charcoals. Her eyes glowed extremely intensely with a bright teal color, and shorter, straight, ear-length midnight blue hair in a boyish cut. She was walking around barefoot on the polished stone tile floors, and was wearing golden wrist and ankle bangles. Some ancient-looking wrap design in a cream and gold breezy fabric was wrapped around her, gathered at the waist with a belt, and pinned on her shoulders.
She had what I’d call a sculpted figure, with a petite-but-present chest, strong shoulders and contours throughout her arms. Her dress left the full length of her right side exposed from her armpit to her bare feet, and she had powerful thighs and a rear with projection, and there were corded hints of muscles on her side. Her garment was an unusual mix of retro, classy and revealing. Less the fabric being transparent, and more it being very soft and flowing, doing nothing to conceal her chest. Leaf-shaped gold pins held her dress closed at the shoulders, and she had on a matching torque that looked like it was a section real, natural vine, just made out of metal.
Her toe claws clicked with a body confidence I couldn’t begin to muster as she walked over with a smile on her face, one that I was quite familiar with. She caught sight of my tail shifting behind me and stopped in place, her eyes locked on it and rooted in place. A weight so heavy I thought it would crush my soul into toothpaste landed on me. I felt a different sensation wash over me too, almost like I’d crashed face-first into a strategic water reserve: front to back, icy-cold, and flashing by in less time than it took to blink.
I let out a gasp.
The woman, presumably Vael’s mom, spoke so rapidly in Dar’vari that it sounded even more alien than it normally did. Vael had a back-and-forth with her, and the sensations evaporated. She resumed what she was doing before halting in place, which was walking over to Vael to–
Open mind, Kiera, open mind, open mind.
They wrapped each other in a tight embrace, tails entwining and taste-greeted in the formal manner, which was to say, noisily. They separated with visible reluctance.
I didn’t have that kind of relationship with my mom, but we were fairly close. Fuck, I miss her so much. Wish she were here right now.
“Kiera, this is my mom, Lael’Mira Sul’Vethik, matriarch of the Sul’Vethik clan on Earth. Mom, this is a friend I made recently, but we’ve been spending a lot of time together. Kiera Voss, a new User and Diver.”
I noticed a subtle, almost imperceptible shift in Lael when Vael introduced me as a Diver. Like I wasn’t just the school friend of her rebellious daughter, but someone that deserved an ever-so-slightly-appraising eye. Maybe I was imagining it. This wasn’t my culture, my class, my scene. I wasn’t a fish out of an aquafarm here; it might as well have been someone taking a tilapia and hucking it out an airlock onto the lunar surface. I did have the presence of mind to notice that her name wasn’t pronounced like Vael’s, which smoothly rolled off the tongue.
Lael’s name was spoken with an accent, and it sounded like Lay-El. Mira was similarly Mee-Ra.
She stepped in front of me and wore an unreadable expression on her face. Very neutral. Her hand came forward.
Okay. Let’s… not fuck this one up quite as badly. She sounds important.
I took the offered hand and stepped in close, and our chests met, my embarrassingly huge tits squishing all over the place and doing absolutely nothing helpful. I couldn’t get distracted right now.
Focus, Kiera.
I took the initiative and pressed my lips against Lael’s to greet her casually. I think she seemed… mildly surprised? Certainly not shy, and she reciprocated enthusiastically. I was trying my best to not be rude, so I engaged with maybe a bit more adventurousness than I’d have done otherwise, crossing the gap and putting my tongue in her mouth right off the jump.
I got a gentle hand-squeeze from her. She tasted like smoke and exotic spices, which was far more enjoyable than it had any right being.
Oh fuck, should I be carrying around mints or something? I hope I don’t taste like a Tube Jammer or something! I mean, I haven’t had one in probably a decade, but still. Nobody wants bad breath if they’re going to be uh… greeting people often.
Vael softly cleared her throat to one side.
Oh no! The time!
I went to pull back, but Lael kept the greeting going a good beat longer, then we withdrew.
She must be testing me. Seeing if I actually know what I’m doing.
She had a sparkle in her eye and a faintly duskier hue to her cheeks when we did, and she licked her lips clean with a smirk you could have cut and pasted directly off Vael’s face; it was so indistinguishable.
Guess that’s where she inherited the grin from.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Kiera,” Lael said in a beautifully accented English, and her hand slipped from mine. She had a low voice that brought a warmth to my chest. I idly wondered what her aspect could have been, teal was an unusual color, and vibrancy and brightness were positively captivating. I could spend an hour studying her eyes, the same way I could Vael’s eyes. Both drew my attention in ways that made me want to just stare into them every chance I could.
I saw them lift above my eye level to take in the polearm I had strapped to my back with its wrapped head.
“What a lovely weapon, I don’t have to look at the maker’s mark to recognize it.”
Vael chuckled. “I took her there; she was ready for a weapon upgrade. She completed her first Dive this morning and felt like she needed to make some changes.”
I smiled at Vael. I wasn’t entirely sure what to make of Lael just yet, and the assist was more than appreciated.
“She’ll have her first set of armor in a few days, made from the hides of monsters she killed inside,” Vael said, and that got my cheeks warming. Now she was boasting about me to her mom.
“We should have a friendly spar! What better way to get to know someone properly than to face off against them!” Lael said, bright and chirpy.
Vael held up one clawed finger and faltered. Something between concern, apprehension, and ‘yikes, what now?’ written on her face. I think it was the first time I’d seen anything like that on her face.
Is that normally how these things go? I’m trying to not embarrass Vael here as being her cringy Human friend.
“Um, okay, sure!” I said with a confidence that I didn’t remotely feel.
Lael turned with a click of her claws. “Right this way!” She turned and gave me an over-the-shoulder once-over. “And Kiera, please, no need to be reserved, you’re welcome to properly enjoy my home. Please take some of that stuffy clothing off and let your feet properly breathe! It’s good for you!”
Vael let out a quiet sigh. “Yes, it’s true.” She showed me the large shoe rack next to the door, and I stripped out of my stompy boots and socks while Vael did the same.
The floors did feel quite nice under the feet.
I really hope my feet don’t stink. I don’t think the Sul’vari have as strong of a sense of smell as the Tokh.
Lael led Vael and me through the first floor of the estate, and I saw several rooms in passing: one was an extremely comfortable-looking lounge, another was a spacious home office. We walked out a side door to smooth slate flagstones that were a touch warmer than strictly comfortable to me in the direct sunlight.A mid-height wall, maybe about two and a half meters tall, enclosed a large square space, and there were countless figures topping it with all sorts of arms and armor carved into stone with shocking levels of detail.
Inside was a big arena filled with white sands and some training equipment I vaguely recognized; a few looked like someone had taken a bench and turned it on its side, with wooden dowels sticking out at odd angles. Some were clearly padded human-size targets, and there were some big targets made of heavy rope formed into bullseye rings, presumably for archery target practice.
Vael squeezed my hand and looked like she wanted to say something, but didn’t. She walked over to one side and leaned her back against a wall in the afternoon shade. I looked around. I didn’t see any training weapons on the walls, like I had in the training, trial, and practice area in House of Lorhara.
I cleared my throat. “Today’s my first day using this, ah, partisan–” I hesitated just a moment.
Do I call her Mix Sul’Vethik? Ma’am? Vael’s Mom?
She turned and faced me, a huge, tooth and fang smile plastered on her face. Like she’d read my mind, she filled in the blank for me. “Please, just Lael! I hate formality in good company.”
I gulped. “Okay. I was just going to say I’ve not really trained with using this weapon. I didn’t know what I wanted, I just picked what felt right.”
“She’s never had any training. At all,” Vael said from the sidelines.
Lael’s smile grew larger, somehow. “How wonderful, and rightly so! That’s absolutely how it’s supposed to be done, so great job, Kiera! You’re already showing such promise!”
She motioned at me with her hand open and claws facing me. “Please, show me where you are currently.”
I blinked slowly and took the partisan off from where it was slung across my back, slid the loops off the shaft, and tossed it to the side. She pointedly looked at the sheath on the blade.
Err…
I glanced over at Vael. She had her face down and was pressing her knuckles into her forehead.
“It’s sharpened?” I half-asked, half-stated to Lael.
She just smirked. “I should hope so! Don’t worry, I’ll be very careful.”
Okay then.
The sheath joined the strap, although I stuck the tip in the sand so it wouldn’t get any inside. I took a breath and let it out slowly, and did my best to remember the lessons Imir had taught me about where to put my weight and how to stabilize my forward hand with my hip.
Lael motioned for me to initiate with a curled fingertip and teasing claw.
“You want to press the opponent with the partisan. You have reach, but not the same reach or speed as other long weapons. You’re trading that for utility, flexibility, and much more variations in the ways you can utilize the weapon. You will feel like you want to react with it, parry, look for openings to leverage. Don’t react to what they’re doing, make them do what you want.”
It was a lot to wrap my head around when Imir was trying to push it into my brain, but I was paying attention.
I advanced with short steps as I’d been shown, keeping my forward leg strongly planted and keeping my back foot at the ready to move and reposition.
Lael motioned for me to continue. I gulped, then thrust.
She bent like a stick of room-temperature cheese analogue. I tried a few more tentative pokes with the same result. I tried a few thrusts and then swept out into cuts from the advance.
The woman moved like a rope doll, as if she didn’t have a solid bone in her body.
“Kiera, take this seriously!” Vael called out from the sidelines. “Use your mana!”
Oh yeah.
Once again, I got my circuit buzzing with current and then pushed it out into my bones and muscles. My reaction times cut down dramatically, and my speed and precision grew in leaps and bounds.
“Good! But can you do better?” Lael called out while I pushed her around, or perhaps I was being led around. Hard to tell.
It’s not like I need to worry about patching myself up afterward, I guess. More is better, right?
I focused and pushed harder, squeezing my sense of pool and directing it into my circuit, which went from tingly to hot. From there, out once again into flesh.
Faster still, and I tried to use that, along with tightening up my thrusts and swipes to put more pressure on Lael. I was getting closer, I could feel it, but she still had a big smile on her face with her eyes flashing between strands of hair and around spins, flips, bobs, weaves, and every other kind of acrobatic dodge I could recall ever seeing.
“More!” She called out with a laugh.
“Mom–” Vael protested.
“She’ll be fine! More Kiera, more! As much as you can!”
I was already working up a decent sweat in the harsh daylight and baking heat coming off the sand.
Fuck! Fine!
I stopped squeezing on my pool and instead put it in a headlock and bore down on it as hard as I could. Liquid fire shot down into my guts and up into my brain. It felt like freshly-erupted magma flowing through my arms and legs. Beyond just searing hot burning that made it feel like I was cooking myself from the inside, there also came twinges, twangs, snapping, and popping bursts of pain in random spots along my circuit.
My pool was dropping at a rate I couldn’t hope to sustain for more than maybe a few minutes at the most. I grit my teeth and panted hard, sweat soaking my shirt down my back, under my armpits and under my boobs. The mana wasn’t just diffusing from my circuit into my meat and bones; I could feel it leaking in places, like the arterial spurts I'd seen too many times in X-3 back alleys.
It felt horrible and great at the same time.
There was enough speed and power on tap now for me to be kicking up plumes of sand with my footsteps, and I felt a more pronounced springiness in the shaft of the partisan while moving it around. Lael was keeping up effortlessly with the gains I’d made. I made a risky gambit and did something that Imir had shown me as one of the don’t do this unless you’re really sure about it, because you won’t recover from it if they’re not dead strikes.
I slid my grip down the partisan’s shaft, twisted and thrust with one hand only, all at the same time.
Success! FUCK!
Lael had stopped dodging entirely on the last attack, and I’d nailed her just above the drape of the neckline of her dress, and squarely where her heart–or a Human heart, at least–would be under the sternum. I startled so hard with the realization that I’d actually stabbed Vael’s mom that I dropped the weapon entirely to rush forward and catch her.
Maybe I can–
She stood there with a goofy-looking grin on her lips, one fang peeking out. I had her by the shoulders and had been trying to push vitality mana from my protesting palm locus.
Her shoulders heaved under my hands, and she burst out laughing. I looked down at her cleavage area.
She didn’t have a scratch on her.
I fell straight on my knees, my guts rudely yanked out of me and flung onto the sand.
Have I been pranked?
I looked down at my palms, which hurt. There were some outer layers of skin missing on my palms, and they were bleeding in places. My chest heaved with the effort of trying to put oxygen back into my bloodstream.
“Do you mind?” Lael’s voice.
“No, of course not. Let me get something to clean up with,” Vael’s response was conversational.
My partisan was picked up and carried off, and Lael’s hands lifted me up to my feet by my armpits. My legs were wobbly.
“Keep cycling your mana, Kiera, and you’ll feel better in a moment. You stopped cycling your mana when you panicked, and while you still had a big debt in your system to recover from. You can’t get yourself all worked up with hard exercise and then just hold your breath mid-run.”
My head bobbed on autopilot and I did as I was told. My circuit hurt, and cycling mana through it increased that pain, but I think I knew what she was getting at.
Hurts to cycle, but you have to cycle to fix the damage, and then it will stop hurting. Suffer now for ease after.
When I felt like my legs were a bit more stable under me, she quit holding me up like a wet cat and let me stand on my own two legs. Then I got a kiss on the cheek.
“I don’t know where my daughter found you, but you are the most adorable thing I’ve seen in… decades, easily. Probably a lot longer than that, if I’m being honest. Centuries.”
My eyes were burning with sweat and tearing up, and I wiped at my face. I was wilting.
“Come along, this way. Quickly now.” She took my hand and led me out of the sandy area, back across even hotter rocks.
Around some weird-looking trees that were more like architecture than proper flora.
A sparkling blue expanse of water. Hands on the hem of my shirt, and I eeped as it was pulled up over my head, and those same hands flicked the knot off my sash and dropped my harem pants a moment later.
I felt claws on the middle of my back, where my bra was held closed by industrial-grade straps.
“N-not my underwear!” I yelped out. The hands paused, then patted me on the shoulders.
“Of course, of course, I wasn’t thinking about your cultural practices, I apologize.”
“Th-thanks–”
I was firmly shoved into the water reserve, and I screamed before crashing into it.
I was flailing around with my arms and legs.
What a way to go… Survived Diving and a portal guardian, only to drown in bathwater. Here lies K. Voss.
Another splash hit the water a half-second after I did, and hands grabbed me, and my head bobbed out of the water, and I shot water out of my nose and gasped for sweet air.
Loud laughing was joined by Vael screeching when I had a moment to get some of the water out of my ears, several beats later.
“...e’s from X-3, she can’t swim!”
“You think I didn’t know that, silly girl! I came in with her! I wasn’t going to let her just drown!” More laughing.
“Ugh! Mom!” was followed by what I was pretty sure was cursing of some sort, just based on the manner in which it was spit out into the air.
Lael bounced back with bubbly laughter.
The arms wrapped around my midriff were holding me securely with my head out of the water.
Dazed and confused.
What is even going on right now…
“Relax, Kiera,” she whispered into my ear.
“H-how can I when you threw me in here!” I sputtered.
“Oh, lighten up, that was just me trying to break the ice with Human apprehension about water. Now, relax. Trust me. Hold your arms out to the sides, and not gripping mine. I won’t let you go.”
I felt like I might cry, and I wasn’t entirely sure why. I did as she asked. My legs started to come up, and I could feel the pull on my arms as well. Buoyancy I’d only ever felt on the few times in my life when I’d been treated to a visit to an actual bathhouse and not just used their showering facilities. Of course, that was also when I’d had a way different body shape and had been mildly traumatized by old and mostly fat guys with their dicks swinging around everywhere.
This was more than a minor improvement.
“I’m going to switch my grip but keep my arms under you, okay?”
I nodded quickly. I popped right up to the surface, panicked, stiffened back up, and started sinking once more. Arms caught me.
“Just relax, and let your head rest back more. When you stiffen your muscles, it changes the density, and you sink. If you relax, you’ll float like a cork.”
It was easier said than done. Fighting an instinctive desire to try to resist.
Lael worked me through rolling over and then doing little paddles with my hands and kicking my feet, and then…
She wasn’t holding me at all anymore.
Holy shit, I’m doing it!
“Careful, it’s shallow here; you don’t want to kick the wall.”
I felt around with my toes and found the bottom.
Wait a minute…
I got my feet under me and stood up. I might have been short as hell, but this was like… a meter deep.
Vael was coming back out of the estate with a tray of drinks and a stack of towels that looked divine. She had on a bikini top, and a sarong fluttered around her legs. There were lounge chairs and tables out here she was heading to.
“Well, what do you think? Pools are pretty great, aren’t they?”
I swallowed past the knot in my throat and felt pretty stupid. I also had to adjust things because there were some positional challenges going on with my chest. It was a good thing that I’d had on a bra with fairly full coverage, otherwise I’d probably be flashing everyone.
My cheeks burned at the thought.
Coming back to reality, I coughed. “Yes, um. The water does feel very nice.”
“Especially when you’re overheated from a workout, huh!”
“Mhm, Yeah.”
I looked over at Lael, who was half-immersed in the water standing next to me, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the fact that her dress was now entirely see-thru. I averted my eyes quickly, and she laughed once more and said something in Dar’Vari. Vael chuckled.
“What was that?” I tried to keep my tone inquisitive and not judgmental. I was afraid she was making fun of me, but I was honestly curious more than anything.
“Zal’hir dhal’na han’shi.”
I stumbled over it. “Zal’her dal’na hand’she?”
“Za like pizza. And soft ‘ah’ in han. No D.”
“Zal’her dal’na han’she?” I queried Lael
“Better! You need to put some chest into dhal’na. Dhal.”
“Dhal?”
“Mhm!”
“Zal’hir dhal’na han’shi.”
Vael clapped from the side of the pool.
But what’s it mean? I think I’ve heard Vael say it before.
“What’s the meaning? I’m not calling someone a fat ass, am I?”
Two sets of tooth-filled grins greeted my question. “It’s a saying we have that… refers to Human culture,” Vael offered while rummaging in her stack of towels.
“It translates to bloom that thinks itself a weed.”
I blinked slowly.
Vael walked over to the side of the pool. She asked me, “Staying in for a little bit, Kiera?”
I nodded. This was much better now that I didn’t think I was about to die. Vael hopped down into the water with us and walked over, taking my hand and leading me over towards the other end of the pool, where the water grew deeper, and by the edge of the pool.
“I got you what I thought would fit you best, and sorry, I wasn’t expecting her to do that, although I was hoping to show you the pool. Here, turn towards the wall, and I’ll help you put this on while you’re modest.”
What she thought would fit me best was a string bikini that did not look like it was the right size. Still… I did appreciate the sentiment. She helped me take my bra off and then into the top, which took some adjusting to get to preserve some modesty. And she gave me cover to put on the bottoms, which fit really quite well. Comfortable, even with the back being designed for people with tails.
I had some slushy booze thing that was sour and sweet and salty all at the same time, and tasted like I needed another two when I was done with mine. Vael let me have half of hers, but cautioned me not to have more than that.
Turns out those drinks packed a wallop despite tasting like they barely qualified as alcoholic. I was floating along with Vael and giggling at the explanation of the Sul’vari take on Human shame culture. Lael was floating around on a foam mat and occasionally flicking water at the two of us with her tail spade.
Speaking of tails, mine was surprisingly good for swimming around with. I could power myself and Vael around the pool at a fair pace that had her pouting that Sul’vari tails weren’t nearly as large or muscular and weren’t suitable for such things. If I wasn’t paying attention too much, it was fairly easy to control the thing; you sort of just… wiggled it around, and you went off in the opposite direction.
I thought it was really very entertaining, but it could have been the alcohol. The sun was slowly setting, although it was still quite warm, and my lids felt like they had concrete blocks attached to them. Vael suggested resting on the loungers while drying off and helped me wrap my insane mass of hair up in a towel after wringing it out half a dozen times.
Vael was being the best friend ever and slathering me in oil or sunscreen of some sort. I wasn’t really paying attention. I had a cool washcloth over my eyes, and it felt amazing, and things were a little spinny and wavy. Claws lightly scratching my abdomen and arms when lotion was applied was giving me warm tinglies and I was nicely toasty, so napping was a foregone conclusion.
***
Yawning, I smacked my lips and slid the now-dry cloth off my eyes and unwound the towel around my hair. It was dusky, and stars were peeking out. Warmth coming off the stone created a lovely contrast with the coolness of the air drifting down from the open sky.
I was quite thirsty, full-on starving, and needed to use the restroom. I sat up and got to my feet. I had a deep-seated soreness that had set in while I’d been napping, and it extended nearly from head to toe.
A glance downward and I nearly choked on my own spit. I remembered Vael telling me that she got the best fit she could find, but that was one hell of an understatement. There was boob oozing out and overflowing the bottom and sides of the bikini top I had on. It was tied fairly tightly on me and… yikes. I folded the damp towel my hair had been wrapped in and held it against my chest like one would hold a dataslate in school.
Clothing was a problem for later. I smelled food.
My sensitive snout guided me towards the house and through a set of doors. My stomach was throwing a tantrum about not being stuffed full of whatever food I could get my hands on.
I was walking down a hallway toward the smell and sounds of activity. Vael passed out of a doorway and nearly ran into me. Her eyes looked me up and down, and I saw the beginnings of a frown tugging at her eyebrows.
Very slowly and deliberately, she raised a hand with one finger extended up and towards my chest, maintaining eye contact with me the entire time. I couldn’t look away from the glowing orange embers. A claw hooked on the towel and gently pulled it down and to the side. I put up a token resistance, then let her take it.
I went to cross my arms over my chest, and a second claw paused my arms mid-motion.
“Kiera.” Vael's tone was soft, but there was an undercurrent of something else under the softness. “You are beautiful, and hiding yourself does nothing to change that; it just makes you look frumpy and insecure.”
I swallowed hard. I didn’t know where to look, but anywhere other than her eyes was suitable. I found a sudden interest in the runner on the floor to the side and behind Vael.
My voice was dangerously close to cracking when I broke the silence that extended between us. “They’re–I’m too large, and it’s too small, and there’s bulging–”
Vael’s claws touched my chin, and she handled me like a dried leaf from an agri-stack, turning my face back to face her. My eyes met hers with the utmost reluctance. I felt naked, but not because I was only wearing a two-piece bikini.
Vael’s face was set in something unfamiliar to me. Not…exasperation, exactly. Something quieter, and maybe a little… tired?
“Kiera. Geel couldn’t take her eyes off you for more than a total of two seconds in the course of two hours. Imir took every opportunity to put her hands and tail on you. My mother extended her taste greeting. Everyone you’ve spoken to today has been watching you the way people watch something they’re certain they’re not allowed to have.”
Her claw shifted on my chin, grazing over it in a way that made my cheeks want to try their best to turn even more beet red than they were already.
“You’re not hidden. You never have been since you’ve awoken. You are the only one who can’t see it.”
A thought flitted through my brain, almost faster than I could track it.
Does that apply to you, too?
My tail was circling in small corkscrew motions, and I stepped forward without thinking about it, wrapped my arms around Vael’s waist and squeezed her as tightly as I could in a fierce hug. I didn’t know how else to express the giant fucking mess of feelings in my head. So I just squished my chest into her upper abdomen and put my forehead on her sternum between her boobs. She was still wearing her swimsuit and sarong, so there wasn’t anything but bare skin contact. Her arms looped around my shoulders and squeezed me back.
I stayed like that until I’d calmed down enough to resume thinking. Her cleavage smelled of oud and a light, musky sweat that was more pleasant than it had any right being.
My stomach growled like a caged beast, and Vael patted me between the shoulder blades. I took a deep breath to steady myself and stepped back.
Vael was back to her usual wide grin, full, dark lips catching the warm lighting of the hallway in a way that drew my eye.
I fidgeted with my hands and went to try to adjust the top once again, even though my rational mind knew that no amount of tugging and shifting was going to solve that math problem. Vael’s hand met mine, and her smile deepened.
“You look amazing. Really. Have the confidence in yourself to just be.”
“It’s… It’s not…?” I tried to make some kind of gesture with my hands to describe the situation and failed completely.
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. People try very hard to nail a look you’re doing entirely incidentally. Don’t mess with a good thing.”
I worked up the nerve I wasn’t feeling, forcing myself into it, as I had with the portal guardian. I nodded to Vael, who brightened immediately. She offered me a hand, and I took it. We went into a dining room with a table that would seat a dozen people, and was already loaded for bear. Lael came striding in, wearing a different dress in the exact same style. Vael had called it a chiton earlier in the pool. Her accessories looked amazing on her. She had a giant bottle of wine, something I actually recognized, assuming it was the same thing. Passionfruit wine, a spendy drink in X-3, where the standard drink of the sort was beet and strawberry wine or dandelion wine. The pale gold color gave it away.
“I hope you’ve brought an appetite!” She called out to the two of us.
There was a mind-boggling amount of food on the table. A feast for a dozen people with plenty of leftovers. Big chunks of roasted meat, full vegetables, and a big loaf of fresh-baked brown bread that managed to cut through the smells of everything else.
The three of us sat at one end of the table where most of the food was placed, with Lael at the head, and Vael and I on each of her sides. I was told in no uncertain terms to eat my fill, and anything less would be considered insulting by Lael.
We ate. The food was beyond description. Juicy, succulent meats that separated from the bone, which was gigantic. I wasn’t under any false assumptions; this was some kind of big-game monster. It was a little fibrous and stringy, but so tender that the meat practically fell apart in the mouth. Whole roasted potatoes, carrots, and parsnips drizzled in oil, cooked so they still had body and weren’t mushy, and sprinkled with coarse salt. The bread was like munching on slices of heaven, and I was introduced to fresh butter, which I decided on the spot was the best thing ever invented. I loved salt-cured egg spread, cricket, and black soldier fly eggs processed into a salty paste and usually spread on toasted flatbread. I grew up eating it; it was a comfort food. This was similar and hit related neurons in my brain, but wasn’t the same.
Vael ate a lot. I ate way more than I was expecting. There was just a hole in my belly that didn’t want to seem to fill up. My tail decided to join in, although it seemed petulant about the humongous hunk of meat and bone it swallowed whole. Lael watched with an interested eye, and I managed to get through digestion without low-key killing myself or sprouting extra body parts. This was despite the fact that the food was mid-tier and making my circuit buzz as we ate.
Neither Vael or I remotely put a dent in what Lael ate. She took an entire haunch nearly the size of my torso and ate it down to the bone, then sucked the marrow out. It had to have been 10kg of meat, easily. I couldn’t begin to fathom where it all even went.
Vael saw my eyes bugging out of my head and wiped her mouth on a napkin. “Mom is a full-time Diver in peak Dive condition. Higher-tier Divers all tend to eat like this. Heavily tempered bodies can run extremely efficiently, but people tend to temper for performance, and they burn calories the way the city burns Dust.”
I glanced over to see Lael put the bone down and withdraw what had to be 20cm of tongue from the hollow. She waggled the tip at me and winked before retracting it. I nearly choked on my piece of carrot.
The two laughed at my expense.
“Um.” I put my chopsticks down–I’d requested them out of familiarity–on my napkin. My nerves to ask what I wanted faltered when those two bright teal rings met mine.
Her eyes are so, so bright. Brighter than I’ve ever seen before.
“Yes, Kiera?” She purred.
Vael had said ‘higher tier.’
“Are you… you know, er–” I felt this strong blend of ignorance, curiosity, and awkwardness clutching at my chest and throat. “...a high-tier diver?”
She parted her hair with a thumb claw, and her grin grew toothy and lopsided.
Vael let out a sigh. Neither spoke for a moment, and I felt like I fell face-first into a lion’s den in the middle of dinner.
Vael cleared her throat. “Mother was training to be a Sul’vari Defender when Sul’eth fell. Her master fought in the defense.”
It wasn’t something discussed in any appreciable level of detail; we were only given a very broad-strokes retelling of events. A dark force descended on the Sul’vari homeworld. Sul’vari Defenders were the strongest warriors they had, people who defended cities, entire societies, and continents. The Defenders held back the darkness, buying enough time for the rest of the species to flee out into the portal network. Billions perished, regardless, and they’d been nomadic ever since. It was something that’d taken place in the ancient past. When humans were still scratching notes in blocks of clay with reeds and figuring out the nuances of bronze.
Some seven thousand years ago.
Lael smiled and placed her hand on mine. I hadn’t realized that I’d been trembling until I felt her warm, steadfast hand on the back of mine.
“You’re perfectly fine, Kiera. It was a very long time ago, and all of us have had several ages to express our grief and move on with our lives.”
“I’m sorry. Still. I shouldn’t have asked.”
A point of light lit up in the dim recesses of my mind. A second point. A third. They connected, and more and more popped up in rapid sequence, mapping out a polygonal rendering in my head.
If she was Defender-class then, that means that she was Tier Seven, all the way back then. So she’s probably moved past that, since, because that was the event that pushed the Sul’vari to split into two factions–
“You’re Vethik’sul, aren’t you?” The words just fell straight out of my skull and splatted on the table like a wet lump of gray matter.
Laughter from Lael, warm, bright, energetic, and friendly. She squeezed my hand, then let it go to dab at the corner of one eye with the back of her knuckle.
“Oh my, you’re a gem, truly!”
I glanced between Lael and Vael. Vael was similarly full-face smiling.
“Yes, very good. We are. How did you arrive at that conclusion?” Lael asked me after settling her mirth.
“I was just thinking, like. If you’re still Diving now, that probably means that you’ve been able to advance to the eighth tier, or maybe higher?” I glanced over at her. “Is that why your eyes are so bright?”
That earned me a nod. “Mhm. They’re bright, even as suppressed as I’m able to go.”
If she’s eighth tier then… She could easily squash the Ark. Like stepping on a roach.
My cheeks must have been nearly glowing in shame.
She wanted me to fight her with my weapon because I could have loaded it into one of the wall defense guns and shot it at her, and it wouldn’t have left a scratch. I could hit her in the head with a mining pick, and it’d dull the pick. Nothing I could ever do could harm a hair on her body if she didn’t allow for it.
I swallowed and stared down at my roast monster butt.
“The um.” I coughed and cleared my throat. “The meat’s really well done. I’m not really used to eating meat, but this is very good.”
Vael perked and giggled.
“Vael’Sura was a darling and cooked dinner for us; she’s always had a real talent for cooking with her mana!” Lael was beaming with radiant smiles at the opportunity to brag about her daughter.
Youngest daughter, now. I wonder how many sisters she has? Ten? Six hundred? Family dynamics when you’re immortal have to be so strange.
The rest of dinner passed by without further incident, and I managed not to step directly on more rakes. Thankfully. We enjoyed passionfruit wine, something I didn’t quite have a taste for, but could still appreciate. I got a short tour of the estate, Lael’s home was… gorgeous, really. Homey, comfortable, a safe-feeling place. It wasn’t the ostentatious, vulgar display of wealth and power, but I guess it didn’t really need to be, either. Nobody sane would question her power or authority, knowing what I now knew.
The most prodigal humans were tier six, and those were vanishingly rare. Tokh scaled similarly, though they clustered heavier in the middle tiers than we did. Lael was probably one of a handful of people on the planet at her tier, of any species.
Time flew past faster than I could track, and the time the nap had bought me was catching up with me. I could see it on Vael, too.
Vael invited me to sleep in her room instead of a guest room.
I didn’t want to seem ungrateful. I accepted with only a brief hesitation.
She found me a pair of running-style shorts and a cropped tank top of hers that fit, although the top wasn’t cropped for me so much as it exposed a band of lower belly. It fit snugly across the chest, although the neckline was lower than I’d have liked. I showered and changed into them, and both were supremely comfortable. I made my way out to a bed that was big enough to comfortably fit four people and had enough pillows for two or three times that number.
Oh. My. God.
The sheets were this shiny material similar to silk, and it felt like slippery, silky, cool clouds on my freshly-lotioned skin. The air temperature in the home was very comfortable for me, which was good with what I was wearing. I was on the outer side of the bed and sliding my hands, feet, and tail around under and on the sheets and luxuriating in the feel of the soft caresses on my sensitive skin.
I’m so getting a set of these for myself when I can afford them. They have to be crazy expensive.
“You look like you’re enjoying the bed?” Vael’s voice.
I froze in place and cracked my eyes.
Wh-wha!?
She was completely bare-assed, wearing nothing but her hand on her hip and a shit-eating grin.
I died a little on the inside.
“W-w-” My mouth moved, and I made some sounds with it, too.
“Slide over, silly.”
I scrambled, and she sat down and slid in while tapping her slate and turning the lights off.
“No need to be a stranger, you know. I thought we were going to sleep together?” Her tail slipped over my waist and lightly pressed against my side.
“Okay.”
The acceptance that I managed to squeeze out earned me a throaty purr, shifting weight, and body contact. An arm, a leg, and a tail draped over me. I kept very still.
I heard clicks in the hallway.
“Wha?”
I’m so eloquent.
The equally nude silhouette of Lael appeared in the open doorway of the room, and the light in the hallway went out. My brain was short-circuiting so, so hard.
The bed shifted on my other side, there was a breeze of the sheet being lifted, and then–
Another arm, another leg, another tail joined the first set.
“Are you good and comfortable, Kiera?” Lael’s voice was low and velvety, and directly in my ear, her breath tickling my sideburns and earlobe.
Vael’s tail found the tuck of my waist, and her hand rested on my hip in a way that my brain clocked as possessive.
Lael’s looped around Vael’s over my bare, exposed midriff and draped over the other side of my waist, and her hand found a full, well-padded resting place on my chest.
I was going to say something. My brain was screaming. I wanted to nope out, run into the other room, and hide in the corner. But they’d graciously welcomed me into their home, and I was the stranger here to their culture.
My heart raced in my chest. “I um. Er.” I squirmed a little. The two seemed to think it a good time to press in more tightly against my sides, until I could barely feel a spot on either of my sides where I wasn’t being greeted by toasty, warm softness. “Yes. Very.”
I thought Lael was going to… do something, but she didn’t. She was just… cupping me? It felt nice, in all honesty, and the hairs on my neck went down with some reluctance when it categorized this as a platonic touch. I got a pair of kisses, one on each cheek.
Some time passed, I’m not sure how much. I was tired, but being so mortified as to be doing my best statue imitation had waved away the drowsiness.
I heard breathing deepen on either side of me, one breath gracing over the side of my neck, the other teasing at my ear. Both were out cold, and I could feel little twitches of their claws on my skin, and their tails coiling around one another on top of me. My own tail was out cold, seemingly.
I was left all alone in the dark, more warm, safe, and comfortable than I could recall being since some vague notion of a distant childhood memory. I didn’t have anywhere to hide from the alien sensations greeting me. A tightness in two points on my chest, one of which was much warmer than the other. The sensation of every scrap of fabric shifting over my skin in clear high-res detail, I still wasn’t used to, outside of ignoring it constantly.
My fingers on one hand were tracing loose, lazy ellipses on my thigh, where the sensation sent goosebumps and tingles running up my core. There was a steady warmth and fullness in my lower belly; a strange sensation, but not an unpleasant one by any stretch of the imagination.
And then there’s this.
I don’t know how long I lay there like that; it felt like a long time. I drifted off at some point, after a heart was stubbornly talked into complacency by the rest of the bodily committee.