NEW: The Word Painter 9; 12/19 (VOY; P/T, J, m/f)[R]
D'Alaire
Author: D'Alaire
Contact: swift...@earthlink.net
Series: Voyager; A/U
Rating: R
Part: Ch.9; 12/19
Summary: Please see part one of this chapter
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~ ~
Anai's eyes opened upon sensing the light, and yet she did not see
the familiar plaster ceiling at first.
"You may find the point of balance within your own mind," she could
hear Lledri say in one of the first lessons they had taken. A few other
scholars, true and quite elderly scholars, had come to assist teaching
the new regents, yet it was their older friend's voice she remembered
most clearly then. "It is a thing you have touched before. When you
bonded, you learned a way similar, the balance between each other. Now
you shall learn to center your entire presence around it. Kneel now,
and we shall find the clearing of which you speak..."
The eaves creaked, and far below Rahna's call of bread was answered
by several men, greeting him with the dawn. The chatter faded naturally
as they continued moving. Through the shutters, the morning began to
creep in.
Her fingers fell upon her belly, warm and flat, drifted over a
spontaneous quiver within her. She breathed. The air was cool and dewy
as were most mornings in Azlre. She turned her head to take in the
scent of her bondmate, as warm as she in their old, beloved bed, and
musky with incense and the deeper traces particular to him. It was
almost strange to feel her senses so tuned, so sharp after nearly three
du'ave all but lost of them.
It had been so long, she knew, since they had made love.
"Your birth is your blood, but your finer parts and spirits are of
Desal. We are of all the same star of creation, Children, and this
above all things must be accepted. Your true spirits are the product
of that first creation, and form only in life. Where fate takes that
life is but your experience..."
Ara's eyes opened into hers, oddly calm...clear...knowing. Utterly
knowing, and yet learning. It stirred her heart to see him with that
much peace, even if they had so much more to gain still.
It was something.
"From this point within, you shall slowly learn to access the
remainder of what lies within you. The memories are not a distraction,
but a lesson, all. You shall learn to call upon them--and not they
you--as they embed themselves properly into your further mind."
It had been a challenge. For the third time in their lives, they
had to learn how to process information, recall, interpret--and that
time, like the last, in a completely different manner to what they were
accustomed to. The advanced meditations, performed together and
individually, sometimes with their elder-parents, sometimes with Lledri,
had assisted in that, as did their relative seclusion.
While the battles and skirmishes waged on in the ever-stubborn Unar
territory, their lives were spent between the silag and their home, in
study and in meditation, in their near-dogged need to reclaim their
senses, to rebuild their way while beginning a completely new one. In
time, those ways would merge.
"Your spirit alone is what brings you life. The others within you
are impressions of life and spirit, already touched by fate. Someday,
they will be but another part of your education. You shall find
constant teaching from them, and yet know your own beings utterly..."
From what Anai could tell in those first few minutes of her morning,
it was beginning to work.
She stretched her arm over him, filled with his scent and his
stare. Never losing either, she moved, sliding herself over him almost
as if she was but that trail of incense smoke they lit before each
meditation, covering and encapsulating him within her streams, moving
against him, upon him, tempting all his senses, inciting him to breathe
her affects.
He showed little surprise, but undoubtedly was pleased. He added to
her aroma when his hands lifted from his sides to wash her against him,
pressing his hands against her skin, over her soft curves as she
undulated against him, arched to his motion.
"I am fertile this dawn, my mate," Anai whispered mischievously
into his ear before she tasted its lobe, nuzzled her nose against his
markings, reveling in their similar alertness, as if the sun had finally
broken through the morning mist and fog. "I feel it."
"You have more warmth, ka," he breathed in agreement, yet had to
grin as he partook of her neck, grazing her moist skin with his teeth,
as she had always liked. "You wish to bear another child?"
She smiled as her nuzzle became a kiss to the sensitive nerves of
his temple. "I awoke inspired," she told him without complication,
lightly flicked her tongue along his indigo marks, precisely as he
enjoyed it. He groaned, low in his throat, causing her to sigh with a
doubled satisfaction.
"Then I shall have to indulge you," he said, letting his fingers
fall between her parted legs. Softly, he brushed her swollen flesh,
rocked his hips against her own sinuous motion, matched her kisses and
tastes, nearing his lips, and his hers. Yet when his touches deepened,
she arched hard against him, drawing her head back as she allowed the
rush to wash through her. His other hand slid up to cup her full
breast, squeeze her nipple between his marked fingers.
"Ahh...harder..."
She caressed him with her moistness as he complied, watching
dreamily as her pleasure radiated from her open-eyed expression. It had
been far too long since they had been well enough to have each other
like that, he decided, drinking in her responses, her motions, her soft,
throaty song...
She shuddered deliciously as she rotated her hips, stirring his
increasingly wet erection, felt her nerves and muscles clamor for more
attention. "I am ready for you," she breathed, a seductive smile
curling her mouth. She slid her center over him again, trembling
slightly with another wash of sensation. "Take me."
His lungs filled as his body surged. Her words had been coupled
with her knowing, her feeling... "Ah, Anai..." Pulling her down to his
open mouth, he tasted her upon contact, burying his hand into her long
curls, turning them over like the tide and shifting himself down so to
bury himself in her.
She welcomed him fully, and with a long, soft moan of approval, she
drew her legs around and up his firm legs and hips. He moved, and her
heavy lids closed with the sensation and relief, to have her mate
feeding into her body and her joined spirit, drawing out every pleasure
in them both. Her calves pressed his weight more fully onto her as she
drank his open kisses, his quickening breath, muffled his moans and hers
between them.
"We shall make a child this sun," he whispered, parting from her a
moment to find his breath. His sleepy eyes smiled down to her, warm,
intent and aware, even as he pressed again into her small body, watched
her relish in her fullness.
Slowly, her eyes drifted down to his. "We shall, yes," she
whispered, ending on a deep claim of the cool morning air as he
completed them again...and again, then rocked his hips against hers in a
timeless rhythm all his own, which she had learned by heart with him.
She almost laughed. It was wonderful, the motion, the sensation,
building upon and on each other...
He thrust harder, plunging his hand into her nape to draw back her
head. His lips and teeth went to work on her neck and the flesh of her
shoulder. Upon contact, her nails tightened upon his hot skin. It
dawned on her a moment later that he would not be patient in it that
morning. It had been too long for that. Considering how he
compensated, she did not mind.
She instead kept his strengthening rhythm, holding his eyes as his
face tensed, as her upturned lips twitched, completely in each other.
He was straining within her, surging against her riveting muscles; she
felt the small muscles in his temple twitch as his teeth locked onto the
curve of her neck. A strangled growl rumbled in his throat, and her
hand flew between her own teeth to stifle the cry she might have voiced
freely had their son not been sleeping in the next room.
It barred nothing in pleasure, though. Moments later, she felt his
warm seed spreading into her as his mouth parted to gasp for his
breath. A moment after that, she bit her hand to feel her climax rain
through her, arching her body and clamping her legs, pressing her foot
on his inside thigh to hold him where he was. He did not resist, but
fed it more, bearing hard into her in another small surge, tasting the
soft underside of her exposed neck lovingly, gratefully. He nuzzled
there a moment when she began to relax.
For a moment, it was utterly quiet within them. Looking to her
again, adoring how she looked just then--sated, completed, at peace, her
small, tattooed hand at rest beside her face, touching her temple with
the backs of her fingers--his lips pulled up into a similar smile.
"M'ves ye'a," he whispered, his emotion crackling in his throat.
She was so beautiful to him...And he still believed that her hands were
so tiny...It always had fascinated him, how small they were.
"M'ves ye'i," she responded softly, with a slow blink in her misted
eyes. Sometimes, not necessarily at times like that, her heart thrummed
to sense what he felt for her. It never failed to raise the same
regard. Reaching up, slowly caressing the long muscles of his legs with
the arches of her feet, she led his lips back to hers.
He went easily to her, tasing her full mouth once more before
pulling her over with him, onto their sides. He drew their blanket over
them again, still kissing her intermittently, whispering his love of her
as they nestled into each other's embraces. Their eyes closed slowly,
without attempt nor argument.
The rustles in the eaves, the clinking of the kettle downstairs, the
sun shining fully into the little window at the center of their attic
room, all of it they enjoyed as they laid entwined in each other below
their soft knotted blanket, smiling gently with the knowledge and first
signs of peace within them...and a little more, if the spirits blessed
their hope, and fate saw it to be truth.
"Nali? Tola?"
Their eyes drifted open.
Their son stood at the curtain of his room, sure on both his small,
sandaled feet and yet prepared to go any direction with but a word. His
dark brown gaze was rather plain below a raised brow; his bottom lip was
lightly snagged between his small teeth. His fingers, entwined upon his
ribs, fumbled a little.
Since their inheritance, Ba'ela had been so strong for such a
high-spirited child, though naturally a little hesitant to approach his
parents at first--careful, in truth, not to surprise or disturb them.
There were several mornings where they, so wrapped within their own
minds, did not even hear his calling them.
That morning, they heard him perfectly, and found their mutual grins
grow to know it. Turning onto his back, looking to his son's
questioning face, Ara outstretched his arm. "Come, Ba'ela, it is yet
too early, I should think."
Seeing his mother's smile, his father's welcome repeated with a turn
of his fingers, the boy smiled widely and hurried over. He slipped off
his house sandals once there and crawled onto the bed, giggling as his
father pulled him over and between his parents. Placing his dark, curly
head on his mother's breast, Ba'ela snuggled in with them and gladly
closed his eyes, felt both their warm arms rest upon him, holding him
gently. The child relaxed in mere moments.
Anai caressed her child's hair, placing a kiss on his fluffy crown
before looking up to Ara again. That time, she thanked her bondmate
with her smile and her gleaming eyes for the one they had already, and
the other that might have been made that sunrise.
For any guilt her beloved sister might have felt in her prayers and
her actions, Anai yet knew she regretted not a moment, especially then.
~ ~
There was a palpable pause in the transporter room when the systems
whirled down.
The elders of Allanois laid, still entwined in each other's limbs,
their marked hands bound with their center finger rested in the other's
palm, their beautiful robes and ornaments spread around them, staring
serenely at each other.
Dead.
Chakotay took a step forward, seeing their array. In a blink, he
was in his quest, watching the youthful forms in those same clothes
walking away from him, having said their goodbyes. He almost held a
hand out to prevent Kes from disturbing their grave, but suddenly
understood that she was supposed to.
For that matter, on Desalia, once their spirits had been freed by
their loved ones, the body did not matter.
"They've only lost pulmonary function about a minute ago," Kes
said, her voice rising with contained hope as she double checked her
readings. She looked back at the captain. "Their neural pathways are
still functioning. Weak, but still there."
"Then we don't have much time," Janeway said, her stare locked on
those forms, to whom she'd said goodbye not a half hour before.
~ ~
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(continued)