Chapter Ten

My first time

Letum

“I am a deathly regent–an unseen guide to the afterlife. I appear at the moment when one’s life comes to the end to accompany his or her soul in the last journey to the Afterworld.”

“Do you want to say that all the pictures of the world all of us are used to don’t exist?”

Carved snowflakes landed on the light lashes, framing her eyes with the color of the deepest and clearest sea which were fixed on me with fear and eagerness to hear the truth about what would happen next after your body stopped functioning.

I saw my breath when I exhaled, “I am afraid it is so, Kasimira.”

There is no protocol for what to do when a fleshy is communicating with you and no bans for telling the structure of the Afterworld, so I broke no laws. Kasimira’s view on the world order had been imposed by her ancestors and I was not to blame her for ignorance for all the living are unaware of the life behind the border for they could not come back after death and inform everyone about it and that is why they made up the legends and myths to smooth the fear of death.

The girl turned to face the earth mound–her brother’s new cradle until the very end of time.

“Can I ask you not to tell me what is waiting for me after I’m dead?” she asked me, affectionately patting the mound.

Her request stunned me with my inability to speak and I needed a moment to shake away the shock.

“Are you sure?” were my first words to her after a while, “Lots of inhabitants of the world of living would sell their souls to find out their destiny when they die. Some of them even tried to revive their deceased relatives to investigate the ghosts because the fear of obscurity of death is stronger than anything here. You have a chance–”

“Please, stop,” Kasimira interrupted me, “I don’t want to be rude, but I need no more attempts from your side to persuade me to learn what I’m not eager to know. If Mother Nature decreed for humans to live without knowledge, I would respect Her decision.”

The connection with nature in the lands she resided in was strong and even after the refutation of her beliefs, Kasimira would not give up cherishing it. That was worthy of my respect.

“As you wish,” I nodded humbly.

She was sitting on the frozen ground, never shifting her sight from Vsevolod’s grave. She was mourning her little brother and, although the girl exposed no sign of it on her face or by her behavior, the picture of it demolished my heart. Kasimira retrieved a tiny pouch from the pocket of her wolf coat, trying to untie it with her almost rimy fingers.

Noticing my closer look, she hurried to explain, “This is our father’s amulet which he got from his father. It’s supposed to be his.” Kasimira managed to pull the amulet in the shape of an ax and, putting it on her open palm, exhibited it to me. “It’s made from bone by the most famous carver of my grandfather’s era. We call it the ax of the gods. A man who possesses the amulet is hardy and tough physically. The ax presets its owner with overcoming fears and doubts. The men in our lands have to be decisive and intrepid, especially during hunting, if they want to survive.” Her thumb brushed the carved bone and I spotted some kind of pattern on it. The amulet was no bigger than half of my point finger, but the lines of the pattern were flawless.

“I had to give the ax of the gods to Vsevolod when he was old enough after our father’s death because he was the only man in our family,” the sorrow she said the words made the entire world silent. Not a single bird dared to twit.

“I am sorry, Kasimira.”

She looked up at me when I reached her at the mound. The expression on her face told me Kasimira had not heard these words from the inhabitants of her settlement because the hope and gratitude that flickered in the two abysses of the bluest color were ready to materialize.

“Is he…” she started timidly, “Is he happy?”

I bit my lower lip, preparing myself for cutting the plain truth, “Well, the last time I saw him he was not sad or scared. Your brother accepted his fate as a brave and valiant man worthy of his father’s honor.”

“Wait,” she said, “what do you mean ‘last time I saw him’? Doesn’t he stay with you in the world of the dead?”

I shook my head, “No.”

Kasimira did not know what to say, so her lips were dividing and joining again and again, making her look like a fish that had jumped out from the water to the shore and was greedily swallowing the air.

Remembering her request, I was formulating my answer in a way that would not break her view of the world, “I am a simple guide, no more. I bring souls into the Afterworld, but then they are to find their peace by themselves.”

“Oh,” Kasimira sighed.

To be honest, I expected more than just ‘oh’. A tone of questions–maybe. But ‘oh’? Well, if it had to be like that, then I would let it be.

She sat down by her brother’s grave and patted the earth next to her somehow tentatively, inviting me to join her. A blow of icy-cold Fierce wind whizzed from the forest, forcing Kasimira to wrap tighter into her fur coat.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked me while I was nestling myself in the hardness of the earth.

“No, my dear. In the world of living I possess no flesh to be. I am neither dead nor alive–a spirit in the realm between our worlds, so I am in the Afterworld and in the world of the fleshies simultaneously, but out of people’s sights.”

“But I can see you.”

“And this is the point I am here,” I told her. “You are the first living person I have ever met who is able to communicate with a regent.”

She arched her fair brows and tilted her head with the wolf hood, “Is that why you called me curseress that day? Did you think I was someone else but a human?”

I did not expect her to be so early. Behind the door, I heard steps get closer to my chamber. I knew the regent who walked like that, so I folded the manuscript with valuable information that was not intended for everyone, especially for my lover. One of my hands discovered the restricted space between the metal carcass and the feather bed to put the manuscript there for it was the only safe place I could manage right now.

The door swung open, letting Octavia into the chamber we shared. Beneath her knee-length black hair, I noticed the training suit was not soaked with sweat as it usually happened when she came after evening exercise.

“Are you not supposed to be training right now?”

My lover took the hooded longsleeve off and threw it onto the chest of drawers by the stone wall, exposing the nudity of her breasts to me.

“The downpour ruined our plans to practice camouflage skills in the Spruce Ridge, so Dahlia let us go, promising to beat our asses tomorrow in the hall,” she was talking to me while her soaked leggings were smoothly sliding down her muscled, long legs. Looking up, I realized that her pants had fallen with them.

“You are naked,” I said to her.

“I know. I do it on purpose,” her hands skillfully tied long hair into a bun on the top of her head with no ribbons, and she moved towards me with soft progress. “It has been a long term since our last time. I need to relieve. Right now.”

She was right–the last time of the intercourse had occurred to be long before Amatory had materialized at the threshold of the training center and, undeniably, Octavia was not the one with a necessity of relief. We had sex infrequently and she thought that the reason for it was my hostility, and it would have been true if I had hated her. I did not, though, but I did try to make her think so for I knew about her feelings for me and could not use her to distract myself from thinking of my sibling’s lover. She did not deserve such a treatment. Destiny is a bitch, as the fleshies say, or we merely were unlucky enough to love regents who loved us not. And yet, having sex was our obligation as a mated pair for the originals had established the law to, at least, try to revive a kind of regents. So, it was inevitable.

The passion she was walking through the room with and the desire in her eyes inflamed an itching feeling a bit lower than my belly button. It required a great deal of effort to stay unyielding. Octavia climbed into our bed and laid down on her side next to me without further action. She was simply staring at me waiting for me to react. It cost me much, but I did not shift. When none of my muscles moved, her hand started slowly studying her own body to the touch. With no hurry, she directed her fingers to circle her dark pink, already hard nipples. I felt my trousers become too tight for me in the area of the zipper.

“Stop it,” I asked.

She clasped her right breast, breathing unevenly, “If you want me to stop, why is your sight fixed on me, Letum? Why are you trembling?”

Her hand traveled lower, causing goosebumps all over her nude body. My throat bobbed when I gulped the enormous quantity of saliva that had collected in my mouth.

“Why are you holding your breath, lover?”

I squeezed my eyes shut and rubbed my face. It was getting harder and harder not to think of Octavia’s hands in the private places of hers. My natural instincts had gotten the best of me.

“I do not want it.”

“Oh, yes, my lover, you do,” she breathed and moaned quietly when the middle finger slid between her legs straight to the spot of the richest sensibility.

“Octavia,” I whispered.

She added one more finger and coerced them to dive deeper inside her. I bit the inner side of my cheek, hoping for pain to force me to think straight.

And I blew as her groan was accompanied by the question, “Should I finish myself or you will finally join?”

I was not capable of restraining the tension in my trousers anymore. Deathly sons, it was enough for me. I tore the black T-shirt I was wearing off. Breaking the zipper, I got rid of the remaining clothes and pulled Octavia to me abruptly. She gasped out of surprise, and it only escalated my desire.

My lover kissed me not romantically but roughly, forcing me to divide my lips to let her tongue in, and, with my eyes closed, I obeyed. A sour taste of ripe cranberries seasoned our deep kiss. She moaned again, and it was a trigger to me.

I gripped the curves of her waist and pushed Talia away, then rolled her on her stomach, seizing ginger hair the way her head rose but she could not see me–only the wall behind the headboard. I reached her ear, pressing her fragile body into the bed with my weight, and licked her earlobe, then bit it. Her hands fisted the cushions beneath them.

“Please,” she begged, spreading her legs wider under my body, “I am able to keep waiting no longer.”

The plea, vocalized by her languorous voice, incited me to hold the moment on. I unclenched my hand with her silky, wavy hair after a long time of wearing braids and let her think I was about to start. Talia relaxed and lowered, dropping her head into the gap between the cushions. I felt her snake beneath me to take a comfortable position for her and me. What was her surprise when instead of coming in my fingers groped the gentle part of hers and began circling it steadily. She gasped for the air and arched, rising and lowering her wide thighs in rhythm with my maneuvers. Her buttocks were rubbing against my erection and it drove me crazy to dizziness.

“Letum–”

“Hush,” I crooned and pushed the finger harder.

“Ah, please, Le–” she moaned, “I want you so badly.”

And I could feel it because the wetness between her legs was flowing down my hand.

“Do you really want me to?” I asked, not stopping to fondle her.

“Yeah, yes, yes!” she cried into the down pillow when I entered and the first thrust happened.

I was not gentle. Today I was eager to be rough, and, according to her moaning, she did not mind. The wooden bed under us was creaking and I prayed it would not be so loud to get noticed by passing inhabitants of the training center.

The headboard was bouncing against the gray wall, leaving the dents on it which would be concealed with the regular gouache I kept in the drawer for the moments when I needed to splash out the rubbish from my head onto the paper. Her slender fingers were gripping the cotton pillowcases and the fabric was about to give away all the attempts not to get torn by the long, pointed nails of Talia. I loved the view of her gasp from the bliss of my abrupt movements and wished to never stop it. I pushed harder and harder, reveling in the low groans she was directing into the down to muffle them.

I was craving to gratify Talia, so my hand slid down her belly in searching for the sensitive spot a little bit higher than the place we were joining into a single unit to double her pleasure. My palm was still between her legs when Talia hooked my neck, pressing me down to her lips to give me a kiss and I succumbed to her, losing vigilance. She leaned forward to liberate herself from my control then whirled to her back and, lifting herself up on the slightly shaking elbows, pinned me down on the rustling sheets. Her copper hair tickled the skin of my chest, flushed with her touch.

“My turn to be on top,” was all I heard before Talia seated herself in the middle of my body and literally rode me.

“Tal,” I murmured, choking on her name when her thighs began unhurriedly wriggling, and my entire body disobeyed my order to resist.

“Hush.”

She grabbed my hands and immobilized me by the smooth but steady movements. It was the agony and the ecstasy to feel her on top of me and to be capable of doing nothing but moaning.

“It turns me on, lover. Go on,” Talia whispered, her tone mandative.

Her hands went down my arms slowly with the gentleness only she could produce. I seized the moment of her abstraction for my hands were free from naughty things that were lurking in my mind, so the next action was gripping her delicate bosoms into my palms.

“Let,” she groaned and moved harder.

She was close, I felt it. The rhythm her thighs were going back and forth on me got nimbler and fleeter. I desired to finish it up and each of her deft shifts was bringing me closer to it, but I could not let it happen before Talia tasted the satisfaction she hankered after. I arched beneath her and tried to control myself.

“Another moment, lover,” she breathed, noticing me restrained.

One, two, five–all the moments were hers. Talia pulled me up, never stopping her attempts to reach the pleasure. I cupped her pink face, reddened by the heated air around us, and kissed her roughly when the pulsation around my erection announced her final. I did not hold back the desire to come anymore. The relief that came made my body relax to the necessity of dropping my body down into the down pillows, bringing my lover with me. Our lips were still joined and I would become a mortal fleshy just to keep the moment till the end of my life. At the minute when Talia slid down from me to the softness of our bed, I opened my eyes.

“What the–” I blurted out but got aborted by the shock that vibrated through the very skeleton of mine and was unable to finish the question because instead of Talia’s black eyes I stared into the wide pinkish scar. Hope tilted her head as if she was watching me through the tissue.

“Do not react like this, please. I know I am not her, Letum,” Hope's lips were moving, but the voice with a distinctive hoarseness belonged to Octavia.

I shook my head and rubbed the hot skin of my face before casting another look at her. The long, tousled, black hair was covering my lover’s naked body. Still breathing unevenly, Octavia hid herself beneath the duvet and turned away from me to the wall.

“I am sorry, Octavia.”

She braided her hair, staring at the tiny cracks of the stone, “You called me by her name. Again.”

I held up my arm to reach her and to somehow give her comfort but did not complete it. My touch was the last thing she needed right now and there was a risk that it would make it only worse. I put my arm back quietly and positioned myself onto my back to the view of the gray ceiling.

“I did not mean to offend you, Octavia,” I said apologetically.

“Then control your fantasy and at least try to pretend that you care about me enough not to call me by the name of your sister’s lover during our copulation. I do not deserve to be treated like you do, Letum. I did nothing to be.”

I did not have anything to reply for she was right–she did not deserve it. The problem was me, not her. Apologizing once more, I lowered my feet over the side of our bed and started collecting the scattered clothes. The only idea that sounded appropriate in this situation was to leave Octavia alone, giving her some time to spend in solitude. She did not ask me where I was going, so I said nothing when I shut the door behind my back and headed to the Quiet Garden to air out. My mind was a tricky thing that I needed to handle.

I made my beeline through a chattering group of the youngest of us–the last generation of regents. They had been born not that long before the Deathly Battle had started and were the hope to breed of all our kind for some of the regents had appeared to be no more than a week old when the curse had rooted. I recognized three of the youngest–Tolidy, Rowen, and Clarissa attended Baleruhb’s pieces training with me. I nodded by way of greeting when Clarissa sheepishly tugged her light bob behind the tiny ear and her eyes spotted me pass by. The others followed her gaze to face me. She liked me so much, that I could not say about her company. Rowen nodded back only to seem polite in the presence of his potential lover in the face of Clarissa, while Tolidy’s upper lip went up with a tsk of disdain which did not surprise me–lots of habitants of the training center, mildly speaking, was not enthusiastic about Amatory’s and my staying here for Baleruhb–one of the few originals who had managed to survive–had taken custody of us when our mother and father had not come back from the battlefield, that was why so many of the newly born discriminated against us–no one had taken care of them. I was not sure whether their treatment mattered to me or not, but decided to continue the way to my destination. I had no time for a new generation’s drama when I had my own and her name was Hope Nataly Hill.

I stopped in the middle of the well-trodden path to the Quiet Garden.

Hope Nataly Hill.

Her face had flashed in front of my eyes after sex with Octavia and I had no reasonable explanation of why it had occurred. My feet had been carrying me to the place in the Afterworld where I felt safe and where my thoughts were able to return to normal functioning, but what if I went to the world of the fleshies and found the only one whose ability to talk to me broke all the views of the world both mine and hers? I was eager to find the answer by embodying it in life.

I looked around not to get noticed by others in order to avoid making up unbelievable stories of why I was going to the mortal world without a call of duty. Finding myself surrounded just by tweeting or frolicking in the air birds and no regents, I cast a portal with zero hesitation and crossed the border between two realms.

***

The hall was navy blue. The floor-to-ceiling windows on my right let the daylight inside the place I ended up in. A scent of coffee and brown sugar burst in my nose.

Where am I?

This was the first time I journeyed across the border without a call of duty which generally led to the particular place and person in the world of the living. Now I was at sea, what the room I was standing at and how I had got here. There was no sign of Hope nearby, only a female fleshy dressed in wide milk trousers and an ordinary white cotton shirt. She was typing a text with the sound of her long red nails hitting the keys of the laptop that was placed on the elegant desk matching the walls' color.

I did not notice the smartphone next to the laptop, so when it started ringing, I flinched, caught out off guard by the ear-piercing melody of her ringtone that was probably heard in the Afterworld.

“Dr McAdam’s office,” the fleshy said, bringing the phone up to her ear beneath the head of her chestnut hair, “Good morning, Mr. Gold. I’ll check on the nearest dates to restart your therapy. Give me a second.”

The female fleshy at the desk was a secretary of the mystery doctor called McAdam. I wondered how comfortable it was for this woman to do things like flipping the pages of journals and writing notes with such long nails. The rustling of the pages stopped, and the fleshy pointed her index finger into the paper and moved it zigzag as if painting snakes.

“I’m afraid the whole Subtle is occupied. Can I offer the beginning of Sultry? Aha, well, then I’m waiting for your call. Thank you, Mr Gold.”

A distant noise which resembled a dialogue between a man and a woman snuck into the hall through the hardly visible gap of the office door and I left the female fleshy without my attention, moving closer to the origin of the sound. The closer I got, the more familiar the voice of the woman inside seemed to me. Deathly sons, I recognized it.

Hope Nataly Hill.

I quickened my pace to get over the barrier in the form of the black office door. Propitiously to me, my body in the world of the fleshies had a ghost form because of what I needed no maneuvers to end up on the other side of solid walls.

Behind these ones, there was a spacious room in calming blue and beige tones. An enormous quantity of framed diplomas and certificates were hanging on the opposite side of the open window wall. A gray man in his middle fifties was sitting in the spongy armchair, crossing his legs and documenting the words of the woman in front of him.

The story that was flowing from her mouth appeared to be the story of what she had gone through several weeks ago in the building of the notorious Nordery University. It was hardly surprising that Hope was restlessly fidgeting on the light leather sofa, creaking the denim she was wearing against the furniture surface.

“I still wake up with the smell of blood and sweat although I leave the window in–” Hope stopped talking abruptly and brushed her covered in goose pimples forearm. Her head tilted, trying to detect any ambient noises that did not belong to the psychologist's office. Discovering nothing, she continued, “–my bedroom opened for the hall night to ventilate the room. And Lewis–” she paused, “I still could feel him. His physical presence.”

The psychologist’s pen froze in mid-sentence, and he cast a glance at his patient without lifting his head, “What do you mean, Hope?”

“It’s… well. When I’m brewing coffee in the kitchen, I can feel the slightest touch of his breath on my shoulder.”

“Did he do it often?”

She nodded, “Every day. Am I going crazy?” The tone she asked the question was not usual. She sounded scared.

Dr. McAdam noted her answer on the pages of his notebook that was lying on the arm of the armchair, “What I can say by now is that all the phantom touches and sounds are the consequences of post-traumatic stress disorder. And, of course, the loss of your husband plays no small role, which can worsen the case. The typical symptoms of mental disorders are abnormal mental or behavioral patterns such as uncontrollable rage or voices inside your head that engage you in a dialogue. You have nothing like them, Hope, so we can conclude that you aren’t insane.”

Hope’s thumbnail got wedged between her jaws.

“Is there anything you want to add, Hope?” the psychologist asked carefully not to scare her more.

I thought I knew what she was about to spill.

Her trembling voice began vocalizing my consideration, “Three days ago, I tried to kill myself by overdosing on pills I accidentally found in the cupboard when I was brewing coffee.”

Dr. McAdam’s body tensed visibly. She had not told him before.

“What prompted you to do this?”

Hope was nervously rubbing the backside of her neck, brushing the ringing golden chain with a pearl locket on it. Obviously, she did not know how to present it. Her knuckles cracked when she started toying with them.

“It was the first day I came back home from the abode. The moment my mother-in-law shut the door and I happened to find myself in the middle of the corridor of our empty apartment, the realization of what was really going on and what my life would look like almost knocked me down. The silence pushed so hard my ears seemed to bleed.”

Dr. McAdam was watching his patient, losing no scarcely conspicuous body gest which would out her lie or withhold secrets. The professionalism of him was undeniable. At least according to my point of view, I met the professional psychiatrist not so frequently.

“And when I unscrewed the lid of the plastic bottle, being ready to swallow all the pills there were inside, I heard a male voice.”

His pen curved another ink note before he started speaking, “What exactly did the voice say to you? Do you remember?”

“Uhm,” Hope breathed, “well, he said that instead of dying I would get diarrhea because the bottle contained vitamin C.”

One more sentence in his notebook.

“What happened next? Did his words stop you?”

What a stupid question. If she was sitting right here right now safe and sound… maybe almost sound, did it mean that she had not taken the meds?

Hope cleared her throat and replied positively. Her brown, slightly waving at the ends hair was shimmering with the morning sun to the beat of her breathing when she was talking although her entire body stayed still. She did not hide the events of the day I had emerged in her apartment and told Dr. McAdams about our conversation in the kitchen in exquisite detail. Even I, who was a direct participant in it, did not recall all the phrases that had been said that day. I would never stop admiring her memory.

“What did you feel about the regent? What do you feel presently?”

My eyes traveled from the psychiatrist to his patient, waiting for her to give the answer.

She twisted the white gold ring on her fourth finger of the left hand tensely and took a small pause before her lips relaxed to get ready for talking again, “I was scared. I still am.”

That was the answer I did not expect to hear.

“At first I got frightened because I thought that someone had broken into my home and I was alone and helpless even to protect myself. But when it explained…”

It.

Why did her words hit a nerve? It was not a surprise that for the fleshies I was it for they had no idea about the existence of me or my kind. It was natural. And yet, to be called it was not a very pleasant thing. Regents called the fleshies he and she.

“–madness. I’m terrified to even think of it.”

Dr. McAdam put aside his notebook and leaned towards her, “Hope, I can assure you that it’s not madness.”

“Then what is it?”

“It can be explained by your subconscious reluctance to die,” his hands began gesticulating, but, realizing that the patient was not able to see at all, the psychiatrist, “You wanted to commit suicide, but your mind understood the consequences, so your body was acting oppositely to your brain, what caused the auditory hallucinations. In other words, you were lying to yourself that you wanted to die while you wanted to be alive.”

“Does it mean I will never hear that again?”

“I can’t guarantee it right now. You’ve gone through the horror in real life and your mind is in need to restart and have a good rest,” the doctor’s arm extended itself towards the drawer of the coffee table that was separating him from Hope and retrieved a pocket-sized book, “I’ll prescribe you Trexipol. It’s a kind of antidepressant with minimal side effects.”

Hope nodded, “Okay, thank you.”

Dr. McAdam handed her a piece of paper with his signature and stamp on it, “I’d recommend you to spend several days in a quiet environment. And, if you feel that you need my help or anything like that, you know my number, Hope. Call me anytime.”

“Thank you very much, dr. McAdam.”

She was packing her stuff into the white handbag, and I already knew that my goal was to get back to the place where I belonged for the sake of both of us–Hope’s and mine. The mystery of her skills would be forever unsolved, but I was ready for it if her health and mental state were at stake, so I did not even say goodbye to leaving the psychiatric office Hope not to frighten her more than she was, only waved my hand and flee to the Afterworld as soon as the portal opened.

I do not need Hope’s presence to find out. I know.

I did not, but I hoped.