This story, for the moment anyway, is rated F18.  All characters are purely fictitious and any resemblance to anyone is coincidental, (aside, of course, that Oded is ‘cast’ in the role of Lindsay).  This is an original work and all characters are © Eirian Phillips 2006.  If you wish to use any of them, please contact me and we’ll talk.  I can be reached by Email at eirian.phillips@ntlworld.com.  Feedback is welcome and I try to respond personally where possible.

Use’ara: Thirteen Stars

 

 

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I

Something wasn’t right.  Carefully noting any discomfort, Commander Lindsay Derby stretched first one and then the other of his long lithe legs.  Something soft and flexible pressed against his toes…

No boots then…

…and when he moved his legs to try and feel the edges of whatever the firmness was that lay under his back his hips ached like he imagined rheumatism must feel.  Slowly he moved his arms, pressing his hands first against his shoulders and then down over his chest and stomach, down toward the dull pain in his hips.  Skin… but… the entire left side of him felt somehow soft… spongy.  He tried to move; to sit up and moaned as the dull ache became a sharp pain.

“Easy, Lin, easy.” A woman’s voice…

A wave of panic broke over him and sharpened each of his senses in turn.  He was hurt… if he was hurt then something must have gone wrong; terribly wrong.

“Tischen,” he gasped.

“One thing at a time, Commander,” the woman’s voice again, speaking softly but firmly.  The touch of a hand against his shoulder, pressing softly, restraining him against the cot.

Slowly he opened his eyes and squinted against the sudden stream of light.  His eyes watered and the teardrops ran down the side of his temples to lay wet against the hair beside his ears.

“Slowly,” the woman commanded, “it’s been a while since you used them, so give yourself time.”

He tried again, blinking several times while his eyes adjusted to the light, and the air that blew over them…

Fresh air… a breeze…

“The ship,” his voice rasped through lack of use and he swallowed what little saliva his dry mouth allowed him.

“As I said, Commander, one thing at a time.  Let’s get you up and about before you start worrying about anything other than yourself.”

He turned his head a little.  The shadows and light swam about him at the movement that left his stomach turning, nauseated.  Soon enough though the colours he saw resolved themselves into the blurred shape of a face… familiar…

“May?”

“That’s right, Commander Derby.  Welcome back.” May said, and he thought she smiled though blurred as she was he couldn’t quite tell.  “It was rather a rough landing, I’m afraid and some of us took quite a knock.”

“How bad?” he asked, knowing the doctor well enough to know she was talking primarily about him.

“Percussive injuries mostly,” she said, “but your LiSSSC came down hot into a stand of trees a little way off and you were burned in the fire.”

He frowned.  That shouldn’t have happened.  Zhacis should have set the whole ship down.  “The Cell came down? What happened to—?  What about Captain Mathias?”

She only sighed.

“He didn’t make it,” he said, knowing that sigh.

“It’s complicated,” she said with another sigh that did very little to assuage the feelings of unease that were settling in along side the ache in his bones.  “I’d prefer to explain everything when you’ve recovered a bit more; can take it all in.”

“Feels like I have Sleep Fatigue,” he told her, referring to the ache in his muscles and bones.

“You do,” she said.  “We all do.”

“I don’t understand.”  He shook his head and set the slowly focussing room spinning again.  He swallowed down the bile and held still for several moments until the vertigo dissipated.

“There are a lot of things, Lin,” she said, shaking her head, “and I’m not sure, even if I told you everything I know, that you’d understand any better than you do now.”

“How many of us made it,” he asked.  “You can tell me that at least.”

She sighed again.

“How many, Doctor Fuller?”

“Six,” she said quietly, and he was sure that he’d misheard her.

“What?” he asked.

“Six,” she said again more clearly this time.

Nausea hit him full on and this time there was no denying it the hold it had over him and coupled with the pain as he moved to try and deal with his body’s reaction to the shock, even with the doctor’s help, it left him weakened and trembling.  Six survivors… and if they came down in the Life Support Cells they didn’t even have the basic resources of the drop ships that Zhacis would have set them down with in a normal emergency.  How could they possibly hope to survive? And so much for the colony… they’d survive… one… maybe a handful of generations at most.  And Tischen…

It took him a long time to register that the whining, hiccupping sound he could hear was the sound of his sobs as he put together everything the doctor had said to him since he woke and realised that he had lost her.

The droning chant faded to a mere vibration in the water as she submerged herself completely.  The cool water caressed her, soothed the fire that burned in her arms and legs and tamed the inferno that crippled her belly at each touch of wind or breath against her skin.  It calmed the tumult of emotion that raged through her; that made her scream and cry at the beauty of the night sky, or break her heart at the tears of a motherless child; that locked her inside herself until these times when the fever would take her again and they would bring her to the waters.

Soon they would lift her into the coolness of the inner caverns, and carry her into the heated air of the Dome of Fire.  Soon she would descend again into the frenzy of senses… the need to feel and smell and taste… until everything she was, became the need to lose herself to one of them even though she could not.

But perhaps this time…

Even as the words floated into her mind she knew from deep inside herself that they were words of false hope.  In spite of the signs that everyone said meant that she would at last find her mate.

It had been three days ago when they had first spotted it.  The centre star in the Wheel constellation was brighter and glowing red.  It had never done that before.  Times in living memory it had brightened and dulled, but never before had it shown red.

“It’s a sign,” they all cried, though none of them could pronounce exactly of what it was a sign.  And then her gla-kai’ar hit…

Darkness was pierced by the shrill cry that split the night as many hands reached for the shutters on lanterns.

From her rocky prison it looked as though the stars had fallen to the sands and were shining out their light as lantern after lantern winked into existence, revealing the scattered placement of the tups of her mother’s people.  She laughed at the thought of it, and then shivered as the night breeze, as though attracted by her waking cry, began to spiral around her.

The shiver became audible as a moan as the door opening behind her gave the breeze substance; gave the night’s breath fingers which caressed her skin and drew the need together over her like a heavy garment that left her weak and trembling, gripping the stone sill of the window space with fingers that felt each bump and groove as though her fingerprints were melded with those of the rock.

“Come away from the window, my lady,” her maid’s voice sounded so sweet to her ears, but when the woman’s hands met with the naked skin of her shoulders their heat almost burned her.

“Don’t touch me,” she growled and then fell sobbing to the carpeted floor as the woman fled.

“Naa-T’zen!” the maid cried as she ran from the room, calling for her mother by her title rather than her name… a name they shared as had countless generations of women before them.   “Naa-T’zen, it’s come… it has come again.”

Another cry split the night, this time it came from outside, from down in the settlement and she leaned up, craning her head backwards to see and almost relishing the pain as her skin tore against the rocky wall.  It was an exquisite pain… a sharpness that brought her back to herself.

In the dimness and shadow she saw that the figure pointed… pointed toward the sky.

“A sign,” a cry went up from somewhere within the rocky palace.  “The Naa-T’zen’s daughter has the need and the star flashes… it is a sign.”

“Bring her,” her mother’s alto voice commanded, “Let her see.”

Her very existence dissolved into agony.  They wrapped her in the topmost blanket from her bed.  The rough wool scraped against her tender skin as the tightness of arms wrapped around her to lift her feet from the security of the ground.  Each movement stirred the sensation of it as they carried her, dizzy and gasping for every breath from the relative warmth of her room to the frigid, pinching cold of the desert night.

“Let me… go…” she gasped, but they might have been deaf for all that they obeyed. “Let… me go.”

Grains of sand, sharp and angular between her bare toes, scraped against her skin as they set her down. The warmth of Use’ara’s caress increasing as the cool top layer separated and drew her into the under-sand that still held the heat of the day.

“See, T’zen,” her mother’s voice sounded in her ear, and the warm breath warred with the night’s crystal-cold fingers against the gooseflesh risen on her neck.  “The Keeper-star flashes to welcome your need.”

She moaned, but tried to obey her mother.  She tilted back her head until she saw The Wheel and could watch the bright flashes of orange, white and red that burst from the large star at its centre.

“It is a sign, daughter,” Naa-T’zen said.  “This time, my little one, you’ll find the sh-tho you need.”

“The Keeper,” a cry went up from another of the onlookers, shrill in tones of shock and fear, and the colourful flashes ended in darkness.  The star was gone.  Then as they watched, one by one, the twelve other stars of the constellation flashed once, and streaked across the sky, falling like stones toward the horizon.

As though she were one of them, T’zen thumped against the sand as her legs buckled.  She felt empty and cold, drawn by the too dark space left in the suddenly disfigured sky.

Her lungs ached for lack of breath as the last few precious drops of air escaped from her nostrils.  The many points of light from the glowing rocks blurred together into a single blue brightness.

…find the sh-tho you need…

Her mother’s words echoed into the empty calm the waters had given her.  Light headed, dreaming a peace she did not truly feel she closed her eyes.  A face swam into view… a strange but invitingly beautiful image.  Nothing about the face was at all what she had expected to see.  Not the full, long rounded face, not the strange, light-coloured skin, nor the eyes devoid of their outermost light mauve band of pigment. The eyes that looked upon her were a deep, rich brown.  The full lips relaxed into an almost gentle smile, rosy against the olive tan that was as different from her own hazy, wine tanned skin as a drop of water from the sandy ground.

…are you him…?

Water rushed into her mouth as she spoke her thought aloud, but before she could begin to cough the touch of many hands against her back lifted her water-rich body from the womblike pool.

She gasped and sucked in as huge breaths of air as her lungs demanded of her.  Sensation almost at once began to prickle her drying skin as they carried her, heedless of her pleas for time, from the Water Chamber, into the Dome of fire.

“Wait-wait-wait-wait…” she chanted the words as a litany even as they set her feet on the rock floor.  The rock was warm from the fires that burned around the room, their lights flickering against the many naked and oiled sh-tho, the men of her mother’s people.

She breathed in deeply, becoming almost intoxicated by the heat, and the sweet, musk scent of those chosen to stand as her potential mates.  She moaned and stumbled toward the circle of men; tried to see and read the mottled orange markings that patterned their skin to make at least some conscious choice, but her eyes would not focus.  Everything she was, was sense and sensation.

Pressing close to one sh-tho she turned her back and rubbed herself, catlike over him, her back against his chest, her head turned to the side so that she could smell him… taste him…

He breathed out, long and slow.  His breath was like molten fire against her shoulder, but he did not move… nor was there a change in what she sensed from him.  She moaned and tore herself away, turning so that she could see his eyes… green within the lilac circle of colour.

“No…” she whispered.

He bowed apologetically, and then turned and left the chamber, but she was already gone… approaching another, taking in everything of him, scent and taste and the dark brown orbs that were hazy with desire for her, but nothing changed.  He might well want her, but his essence did not answer hers, did not shift to cover him with her scent.

“No,” she moaned and moved away as he too bowed and left.

Another, B’Maan, she knew him like a brother.  They were close.  The rational part of her mind knew her mother must have selected him in the vain hope that a familiar sh-tho, one with whom she shared fondness, would entice her to mate with him; would end the fear that skittered like tumbleweed across the desert sands that the daughter of the Naa-T’zen was barren.

“Oh, B’Maan,” she breathed and the tears that came to her eyes bathed his chest as she wound herself around him; rubbed against him; trying so hard.  It wouldn’t be so bad, to be mated to her childhood friend.  At least they could share more than just the mating-fire, but, “No.”

Weeping she moved on.  B’Maan was yet too young for her.  Sh-tho matured later than sh-my.  Her mother should know that.

Another and another of the sh-tho failed to match her; failed to complete the call to her body that would bring them both to sink down together in a surge of need so powerful it would steal the strength of their limbs.  It hadn’t come.  It never came for her.

In desperation she almost threw herself into the body of the last sh-tho.  His musky scent was so strong from need of her that it almost suffocated her when she came close.  His taste was sweet and his body firm and taught as she pressed her skin against his.  He breathed out against her and the whole of her body tightened in readiness.  He leaned down his face into the crook of her neck and breathed her in deeply and for one, sweet moment she allowed herself to believe that the agony of waiting, of needing was at an end, but in the one, final moment before she surrendered entirely, her vision returned once more to surround her; to separate her from the instant of acceptance she had been about to give to the sh-tho who even now wound his arms around her.

“No,” she sobbed and pushed herself away from him, to stagger and fall, curling into a foetal ball trembling with pain as the gla-kai’ar gripped her body and her mind and dragged her back into needful oblivion.

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Use’ara: Thirteen Stars – Chapter 2 (coming soon)