“Right behind you. I’ll be there in a moment,” he called, and he -was. Suddenly he found himself facing her across not a room, but a moonlit field, much like the ones he remembered from Vhiliinyar when he -was a boy. The moons shone down through mist rising from a free-flowing stream, and night birds crooned softly from the boughs of scattered trees. Khornya stood near one of the trees beside the stream, and noted his arrival with relief.
“There you are!”
“Of course I am.” He went to her. He -was relieved to see she seemed healthier and more substantial than she had at first appeared in his pavilion. Her skin radiated warmth and the sweet clean floral smell she carried with her. But there -was another more enticing scent emanating from her as -well. She looked up at him -with her eyes wide and shining as the moons and her mouth moist.
“I feared you wouldn’t come back,” she said softly.
“Against love’s fire fear’s frost hath dissolution,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s something I read recently,” he told her, his hand running through her mane, the backs of his fingers stopping to feel the curve of her cheek. “It seemed appropriate.”
She sighed. “It sounds better in Standard.”
“I will ask my parents to tell me Linyaari love poetry and fill your ears with it, if that’s what you -want,” he said, realizing that the language of love must have been what she’d been trying to speak when she -was in his tent. She was right, even with the meaning rather unclear, the poetry from the books he’d been reading did sound much better in Standard.
“That is not all I want,” she said, her voice husky and her breath sweet.
He felt parts of himself he’d thought dead rushing to fill his veins with life as hot and strong, as urgent as magma seeking to escape a volcanic fissure. She lifted her arms, almost as if in a trance, and he took her into his own and held her. Her sweet musky scent swept over him as they slid together into the wildflower sprinkled grass, which was not damp and dewy as he expected, but as warm and comforting as a blanket.
Annella and Maati let out a sigh at the same time. Jana pulled them away from the control booth for the holo suite. She had Laxme by the ear. Thariinye lingered a little until Maati reached back and snagged his arm.
“They deserve a little privacy,” she said.
“I maybe should have given him a few more pointers before we started this,” Thariinye said.
“There was no time,” Laxme said. “They’re going to make us leave pretty soon and we had to finish it-get them together before whatever is going to-happen, happens.”
“Looked to me like he was doing-they both were doing-just fine, without your advice,” Maati told Thariinye. “And we should leave them to do it.”
Jana grinned at her. “I think you’re wise beyond your years, Maati.”
“Someone has to be,” Maati said, with a meaningful look at Thariinye.
Feeling quite pleased with themselves and considering their good deed a job -well done, the group of young people emerged from the Spanish-Moorish castle that housed the grandest of the holo hotels. The curtain swags and bead-draped maze of back streets through which Aari and Acorna had followed each other’s doppelganger was the hotel lobby. The suite Aari and Acorna occupied now was on the second floor. The field of fragrant flowers and grass was actually a rather nice Turkomoon carpet, the stream an en suite lap pool, in case they wanted to bathe after their … activities.
No sooner had they emerged however, than Maati realized the air smelled subtly different-she recognized the smell too. It was the smell of ships landing. Linyaari ships. She recognized it even before she heard the boots pounding in concerted double time down the street from the spaceport.
With each stroke of the hand, each gentle nip of teeth or lap of tongue, Acorna felt more and more bonded to Aari, as if they -were exchanging their very molecules, which of course, they -were, romantic as the thought might sound. It didn’t feel unromantic however. The urges that had been mysteriously rising in her, troubling her dreams, thrilling her at inappropriate moments, were all about thi). This exquisite agonizing ache that made her feel as if she would burst from her skin if something didn’t happen. She knew Aari felt the same -way and yet, he hesitated.