Bang*Bang Special no. 9: Earth, Wind & Fire

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© 2014. Some rights reserved. This volume is released under a Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial No-Derivatives 3.0 license. This license permits non-profit sharing, downloading, and reproduction of this publication as an unbroken unit, provided that attribution is properly assigned. To learn more, please visit http://creativecommons.org.

Copyrights for individual stories and images are reserved by each contributor:

"Apsara," by Iron Eater
"The Frying Pan Into," by Domashita Romero and illustrated by neomeruru
"Storm Chasing," by Hiwaru Kibi and illustrated by safelybeds
"The Second Sun," by Kikuna Matata and illustrated by beili
"Sensual in Such Non-Conventional Ways," by Aosora Hikaru and illustrated by Nebulosity Çiélon
"The Red Woman," by shukyou and illustrated by eluneth
Woodwives, by Iron Eater
boop!, by serenity_winner
The Summoning, by cloven
With the sky full of diamonds, by beili
Steamy, by safelybeds

If you are interested in becoming a contributor, please review the submission guidelines for stories and artwork on our website.

Published by http://shousetsubangbang.com, © 2005-2014.

Stories

Apsara

The Frying Pan Into

Storm Chasing

The Second Sun

Sensual in Such Non-Conventional Ways

The Red Woman

Artwork

Woodwives

boop!

The Summoning

With the sky full of diamonds

Steamy

About Shousetsu Bang*Bang

When Nur took the job with the Mietz Foundation they had talked a lot about the cultural importance of the pieces the organization restored, with a side helping of preserving the past for the sake of the future. That alone would have been enough, but the soup&ccededil;on of appealing to her inner (and sometimes outer) raging feminist by mentioning how crucial it was that depictions of women throughout antiquity be made more public was enough to seal the deal. The benefits were good, the people were lovely, and there were even plentiful chances to work with the caliber of artifacts she'd only dreamed of seeing when she was just a baby curator.

The problem, of course, was that it was boring.

Actually traveling across the globe and dealing with people the world over wasn't the boring part. Nur always counted down the days until her next flight and carefully scheduled her work around every possible chance to visit local museums, photograph everything, and eat whatever regional cuisine people would offer her -- at least until her guts inevitably cried out for the fruits of her homeland and she spent the last few days of each assignment gorging on Chee-tos in her hotel room. She'd seen enough fascinating artwork to last a lifetime, and there was still more out there waiting to be appreciated. No, what actually enabled the globetrotting in the first place involved a lot of long, monotonous hours of staring at progress bars and making sure nothing happened to the pieces during scans.

Art restoration had advanced by leaps and bounds beyond how it was in her grandmother's day, back when cleaning paintings required delicate touches and even more delicate chemicals and bringing sculptures back to their former glory was even less of an option, but that didn't make running tests on whether or not statuary could survive repairs any more exciting.

Today Nur had been left twiddling her thumbs for two whole hours as her more bureaucracy-minded colleagues hashed out a deal with the pinch-faced men from Kuala Lumpur who had sponsored the foundation's visit to Malaysia in the first place. She hadn't been told the details, but the bits Nur was able to piece together implied that there had been quite a lot of illegally-obtained artworks seized from someone's--they were always careful never to say whose--estate. There was something about undiscovered wats plundered for their treasures in there somewhere. It all sounded like something from a pulp adventure novel, which was, in Nur's opinion, why she was waiting for permission to start filling out spreadsheets instead of running through trapped ruins with a golden idol in her hand.

She was about to start her second pot of hotplate tea for the day when she finally received the go-ahead. About time, she thought as workers wheeled a heavily-padded crate into her lab. Just because we're working on something carved out of stone doesn't mean everything else should work at a geologic pace, too.

The contents of the crate, according to the packet she'd received all the way back in the States, were composed of a wall segment from the as-of-yet-unnamed wat that the equally-nameless rich asshole had converted into status symbols. The photos showed a dancing female figure in stylized jewelry. It reminded Nur of the apsaras she'd seen on her visit to Cambodia, though given that it was said to be from a temple somewhere on the Malay Peninsula she wasn't sure if that was the right term. There were quite a lot of pictures from various angles. Nur paused on a page featuring a close-up of the figure's serenely smiling face a little longer than she needed to. Usually she appreciated the artwork on a strictly aesthetic level, but the hint of knowing mischief about the figure's eyes caught her eye. Modern celebrities could learn a thing or two from the past.

Shame she's not flesh and blood, she thought. I wouldn't kick her out of bed for eating crackers.

Once the workers had fully unpacked the statue and put away all the bits that had protected it during its trip, Nur was left alone with her work. She fired up a few of the longer-running integrity-estimation programs based on her packet contents before taking a closer look at the artifact.

It--she, Nur found herself thinking--was taller than an actual person and didn't quite match any particular style Nur had encountered before in her career, but she was beautifully made: long necklaces and flower garlands that the preliminary tests claimed bore traces of ancient paint, bangles so delicate Nur could almost hear them clatter together, and the breasts almost the size of Nur's head didn't hurt her appreciation any. The statue was meant to look artful rather than realistic, and in Nur's opinion it was a good move on the sculptor's part. She could have admired it for hours, easily, but there was work to be done; with a sigh, Nur pulled herself away from her reverie and began going over her checklist.

She followed procedure to the letter as she recorded every measurement she took and every time she interacted with the statue directly. It matched the dimensions she'd been provided, as well as the approximate description. Most notably--and most distressing, from a professional standpoint--the figure was in a different position than the reference photos showed, with her arms stretched over her head instead of arranged demurely before her.

Nur groaned; she'd had to handle artifact mix-ups in the past and it had never been a pleasant experience. She squinted at the materials packet, hunting for any sign that someone had simply transposed a few serial numbers, when she noticed something even more peculiar than the swapped statue: every other detail, from the wear on the rock to a faint discolored patch to the jagged edges where the segment had been pried from its original wall, was a perfect match. Had someone Photoshopped the prep images? Was one of the techs just playing a prank on her?

Out of the corner of her eye, she could have sworn she saw the figure twitch in place.

It was impossible, of course, but the nice, predictable job had already gotten a little bit strange, and Nur's mind was happy to entertain the most illogical of concepts. She backed up to get a full view of the figure again, and to much less surprise than she would have expected the statue's arms were no longer over her head. The dancing woman now had her hands behind her neck with her fingers laced against the nape. That wasn't a pose in the photos, either.

Nur reached out and brushed her fingertips across the statue's thigh. It certainly felt like stone, smooth and cool as a piece of marble, but when Nur exerted the slightest amount of pressure the surface gave as easily as flesh. She looked at her hand in puzzlement. There wasn't even a hint of dust on her fingers, and given how long the statue had stood in the elements there should have been at least something there before the evaluation process had cleared it for cleaning. She narrowed her eyes and pursed her lips in thought. It couldn't be that her glasses were dirty, since she'd polished them just that morning on the tail of her shirt, and it couldn't be a trick of the light, since the lab used some of the harshest bulbs imaginable to ensure no smudge went unpunished during the process itself. She huffed in frustration. "This is really weird."

"It's certainly a change for me, too," said the statue in a pleasant contralto.

Nur froze. "Wuhf?" she replied. She had never been much of a wordsmith at the best of times, and having audio hallucinations on the job made it no easier. Maybe she'd mixed up a bad pot of tea that morning? Who knew what they put in these local blends...

"It's not every day I'm put in a box and taken out somewhere else entirely," said the statue. "And it's been simply years since a young woman laid hands on me. I don't mind, of course." Her distant smile warmed and the corners of her eyes crinkled. It was like sunlight breaking through the trees. There was meaning behind that smile that Nur had learned to spot over the course of the many false starts and missed signals that made up her college years. She broke out in a nervous sweat as she became intensely aware of how long it had been since she'd ironed her shirt and how many days she'd been wearing the same pair of work slacks.

Well, maybe there was some way to salvage this. Nur took a few steps back to give the statue a little more personal space. "Sorry! I'm sorry. I wasn't expecting you to, uh, talk." She cleared her throat and tried not to look directly at the statue's nipples; given how they were at eye level, this wasn't as easy as it sounded. "My name's Nur. I was supposed to be figuring out the proper way to..." How to explain art restoration to a piece of talking architecture? "...to clean you and your wall without hurting you. Um. What should I call you, exactly?"

The statue laughed, causing a truly astonishing reaction in her torso region; Nur's back ached in sympathy even as she found it hard to look anywhere else. Her voice was like smoked honey. "You little ones have so many words for us. Why don't you choose one?"

"You mean you're really an apsara?"

"Perhaps not the way you think, but it is as good a name as any. Call me Apsara, then, my dear Nur."

Nur pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and fidgeted. None of her professional journals ever mentioned anything about being maybe-flirted-with by an object of archaeological import. How was someone expected to act in this situation? Were you supposed to make offerings to them first? Maybe ask them out to dinner? Did thousand-year-old statues even understand the concept of "dinner" in the first place?

Apsara must have had more experience with this sort of thing than Nur did, because she crossed her arms under her breasts and arched her back meaningfully. "Don't be shy, dear one. You may look all you like." Her eyes glittered. "And touch, if you so choose."

This was not where Nur had expected to see herself when she'd woken up that morning. At least she didn't have to worry about the parts of an encounter that revolved around figuring out whether or not the woman she was currently crushing on was queer enough to reciprocate.

"You're gorgeous," she breathed. Apsara's amazing rack--which was still very distracting--was only one part of the picture, after all, and focusing solely on it would be to ignore her wide hips, or the graceful lines of her neck, or the way that her sculptor--assuming she'd actually had one in the first place--had given her stomach just enough fullness to look invitingly soft. Nur took a step closer. Might as well get right to the point, especially since who knew when one of her co-workers might drop by to check on her progress. "Would you mind if I did more than just touch?" she asked, craning her neck up to meet Apsara's irisless gaze.

Apsara chuckled. "I would be delighted."

It had been a long work trip. Nur didn't need to be told twice.

Apsara was sculpted with loving detail, and as Nur brushed away the stony skirts draped from Apsara's belt she found proof that the craftsmanship went above and beyond the petals on the flowers; the gentle swell of Apsara's mons was lined with the subtle contours of carved curls, and Nur could even make out a hint of hooded clit peeking out from between Apsara's legs. She looked up again, this time more nervously, but Apsara did nothing but give her a nod. Nur reached out and gently parted Apsara's lips with her finger. This, too, felt more like cool marble than a person, but the soft sound Apsara made was familiar enough. Emboldened, Nur continued.

Her hand toyed with Apsara's labia, pulling them further open before she ran her thumb along their inside, and when her fingers came away moist Nur learned the answer to the question of whether or not a woman made of rock could get wet. She touched them to her tongue and was rewarded with a taste that was completely unlike anything she'd tried before, somewhere between the expected feminine juices and licking a battery. How exactly a statue produced lubricant was not something she cared to think about too much. Much like the rest of the situation, it was weird, but not unpleasant. Nur crooked her index finger and went exploring again.

It had been entirely too long since Nur had been in agreeable company, but fingering another woman was more or less like riding a bicycle, sans the risk of skinned knees. First one digit, then two, then a quick kiss on the clit before adding a third. Usually a bed or couch was involved in this sort of thing, but Apsara's being so tall helped keep it from being too uncomfortable.

If Nur was rusty then Apsara didn't seem to care, given the satisfied sounds she kept making, but hands alone felt to Nur like she just wasn't trying. There was also the matter of how soft and enticing the breasts overhead looked. She craned her neck. Reaching Apsara's nipples was possible, but would involve some standing on tiptoe if she wanted to do anything other than tweak them. How irritating. Nur opted instead to redouble her efforts with her hands, grouping her fingers together like a little hand puppet before working her way into Apsara's cool, but no less inviting, pussy. This got a startled-but-happy "oh!" out of the statue, which soon became a chorus of little vowel sounds as Nur put her lips over Apsara's clit. While she was focused mostly on the matter at hand (and mouth), Nur noticed how Apsara's hands clawed up with pleasure, and how the wall ruffled like bedsheets at her touch. She only had a few moments to be smug before Apsara came.

Later on nobody would really be sure what had caused the brief earthquake that rattled the lab, but save for a few chipped coffee cups and the demise of a potted plant left too close to the edge of a cabinet, there was no lasting damage. Nur would brush it off and say something about being glad the statue wasn't damaged. It wasn't even technically a lie.

Figuring out how Apsara could return the favor was a little tricky, given certain limitations of the parties involved.

"Apsara? Do we have to do this standing up?"

"I cannot leave my wall any more than you can step out of your own skin, I fear. Do you still want to?"

"Of course I do! I just don't know if you could, uh, reach. How does that work, anyway?"

"I can embrace you, and nudge your legs with my own, but most of me must remain touching the bricks. Perhaps there is some other method we could try?"

"I am not doing a handstand."

She ended up wheeling her office chair over so she could kneel on something while Apsara went to work, Nur snuggled up against her and clinging as best she could to someone partially attached to a chunk of rock. Hands that had distorted stone caressed Nur's body and cradled her face with such delicate touches that she might have forgotten Apsara was a statue. Actually having her clit stroked was electrifying. Apsara took her time teasing and half-touching, and it wasn't until Nur whined at yet another near-miss that Apsara slid a finger inside her.

It was such a soft, distinctive feeling as the cool stone pressed up and into her rhythmically; based on how effective the results were, she suspected that at least one of her personal toys was going to start being kept in a baggie in the fridge. Apsara's other hand undid the pins keeping Nur's bun in place, letting her dark hair brush against her shoulders as Apsara ran her fingers through it. It sent a shiver down Nur's spine each time. There was just enough variation between the hand on her hair and the hand in her pussy to make things frustratingly, wonderfully uneven.

"You are a beautiful woman, little Nur," said Apsara in her ear. "You do not hide yourself, nor do you try to be someone you are not. My kind have always looked fondly on thinkers and dreamers, and you are delightfully both. Had you lived in my day, I am certain you would have been a fine priestess."

Sure, it might have been at the tail end of a drought, and sure, she might have been a little overawed by a towering and quite literally statuesque woman offering carnal favors, but Nur had to admit it was some of the best sex she'd had in her life.

Nur leaned against Apsara's chest as she felt herself closing in on an orgasm and let herself melt into Apsara's breasts. She'd never been the sort to be loud when she came, and this time was no different, though she certainly felt her face screw up in concentration as Apsara coaxed a few breathy squeaks out of her. The earth might not have moved for anyone else, but as far as Nur was concerned she'd been at the epicenter of a truly magnificent quake.

Later on, after she'd fixed her hair and tucked her shirt back in, Nur leaned back in her chair and looked up at Apsara with clipboard in hand.

"That was amazing, Apsara, it really was, but I do have to do my job," she said, sheepishly.

"And what might that be?"

Nur chewed on the end of her pen. "Evaluating you to make sure we restore you to your proper glory. Seeing if your stone reacts badly to any chemicals we'd use. Checking for what colors you were painted. That sort of thing." She had more than a few questions of her own--why Apsara was alive, what wat she was actually from, why she could speak English, how she knew Nur was a lesbian--but those wouldn't make progress towards Nur's paycheck.

Apsara laughed. "Is that all? My dear little Nur, you are far too used to artifacts that don't talk back." Nur couldn't argue with that.

Later on, Alice from PR (fresh from wrangling the pinch-faced men from Kuala Lumpur again) stopped by the lab.

"Knock knock," she said, not bothering to knock. "How're the tests coming along?"

"Fantastic," said Nur. She was staring at a progress bar in fascination while twiddling an empty test tube between her fingers.

Alice raised her eyebrows. "Fantastic already? Great to hear! What do I tell the suits, though?"

Nur pushed up her glasses with determined enthusiasm. "If my readings are correct, I might be able to recreate the pigments used to color the statue back in its prime, and we could restore this work of art to something the whole foundation would be proud of! I'll have to run more tests, of course, so I've already scheduled more time using the lab," she said.

And next time, she thought to herself, I'm bringing a stepladder.

The Frying Pan Into

by Domashita Romero (地下ロメロ)
illustrated by neomeruru

I shook a ton of hands and smiled all sparkle-white to the boys in their suits when we got out of the restaurant, and kept smiling until every last one of them got into their black cars and drove away. "Motherfuckers," I said, when I was alone, and stopped smiling. I'd have much better wrinkles if I didn't have to smile so damn much. If our deals worked out, I'd send them the bill for the Botox.

I stepped out of the middle of the sidewalk, because I wasn't a goddamn tourist, and dug through my purse looking for a cigarette. "Fuck," I grumbled when I found nothing. I'd technically quit, but technicalities meant sometimes there were emergencies, like having just spent four hours watching a bunch of douchebags eat steak. Not even a lighter in my purse; one of the girls had probably done a sweep of my condo and thrown out all of emergency supplies the last time she'd visited. Children! Always doing annoying things like caring if you lived to be a grandmother.

I gave up on tobacco and pulled out my phone instead. I could at least try to get some other stress relief, like a stiff drink and a sympathetic ear to bitch directly into.

Working tonight? I texted to Alejandra. I need estrogen. And alcohol.

I glared at my email until I got the buzz of her response. just finishing up. stop by and I can guarantee both.

"Thank Christ," I said as I texted back that I'd be there soon, and hailed a cab.

I made myself take some deep breaths and not look at my phone as the driver took me downtown to where Alejandra's restaurant was. It wasn't a slick black car like those boys in suits had gotten into, and it smelled like fratboy cologne and halal cart chicken and rice, but a nice look at Manhattan from the back seat of a moving vehicle still made me feel good, even after thirty years. The drive downtown took the views from women my age in elegant dresses stepping out from having late dinners with their second husbands, to women fifteen years younger than me in trendy jeans yawning on their way to bravely have one last drink before relieving the babysitter, to women thirty years younger than me wobbling on high heels while eating dirty water hot dogs to give them a little cushion for the next round. And then the view was Alejandra's restaurant, Riña; the lights looked mostly dim, and nothing could have been a better beacon for me right then.

I walked in the front door and the manager, Thea, lifted her head up ready to tell me that they were closed, but then she smiled. "Hey, Maral," she said. "Good to see you."

I came over to where she was sitting and leaned over to squeeze her arm and give her a kiss on the cheek in greeting. "You too," I said. "How was tonight?"

Thea lifted one shoulder and sighed. "Not bad. Could have been better," she said. "Some hedge fund prick and his friends gave us a bunch of shitty Yelp reviews and we've been feeling it."

"Fuckers," I said. The internet made everyone think they were Anthony Bourdain speaking truth to the people about the crime of waiting for brunch. "Whatever; it'll just keep the assholes out." It was a shame the assholes had the most money, though.

"Yeah," Thea said. "I hope so." She gave a nod towards the back of the house. "Alejandra's back there. Said you'd be stopping by, so she's probably got shots lined up."

I let out a little laugh. "She'd better, if she knows what's good for her." I gave Thea a little pat on the shoulder and headed back towards the kitchens. Alejandra hired good people.

The kitchen had mostly been cleared out for the night, everything put away proper for the next day's service, the girl on dishes getting through the last few, the heat of the evening's fires filtering out of the room. When I found Alejandra she she was talking to the porter. She barely came up to the guy's nipples, but he was snapped to attention for everything she said. Good people.

When the porter'd left I saw Alejandra's shoulders go a little less square, could see the long breath leave her. I came up behind her and said, "Ready for a break, boss?" I brushed my hand along the thick length of the ponytail that came part way down her back, smoothing all the strands together. Alejandra's shoulders jiggled in a little laugh and she turned.

"Sounded like you need it more than I do, chica," she said, and smiled when she looked up at me. We hugged, her arms going around my waist and mine around her shoulders, and I bent down a little to kiss her cheek. She smelled like sweat and smoke and citrus and a little like cumin. I was feeling better already.

"God, do I ever," I said, and let her go so I could lean back against one of the stainless steel countertops. I rolled my shoulders a little, hearing my neck make little popcorn pops. "Business dinner tonight. Old white men in suits."

Alejandra wrinkled her nose up and hissed breath through her teeth. "Oh, honey, my condolences."

"I asked for it." My hands wanted for something to fidget with, and lacking a cigarette to gesture dramatically with, I spun the ring on my finger with my thumb. I hadn't been married for a long time, but I'd found that at my age, wearing a ring prevented a lot of annoying conversations.

"The TV thing?" Alejandra asked. She moved out of my immediate line of sight to claim something from another part of the kitchen.

"The TV thing," I said. "They ate their stupid identical steaks and creamed spinach and talked about ways I was and wasn't marketable." I pressed my fingers to my forehead. "You know they had the sheer balls to laugh it up and act like it was a big goddamn deal I was eating a steak? Thirty years I've been a chef and because I've got tits, these twerps act like I'm trying to impress them by not ordering a salad with dressing on the side."

Alejandra came back with two metal measuring cups held between the fingers of one hand and a bottle of mezcal in the other. "Have some medicine."

"Oh, God bless you," I said, and held my cup out for her to fill. We gave the cups a little clink and I knocked mine back without any further ceremony. I closed my eyes as the burn carried down my throat to heat my stomach and left smoke to linger in my mouth. I opened them again and Alejandra was there to refill me. This time, I sipped. "Thank you, Doctor Sandoz."

"De nada," she said, and refilled her own cup. She had a sweet round face and even though she could drink a man bigger than that porter under the table, she got flushed if you so much as waved a glass of wine under her nose. "They decide on how they're going to market you?"

My lip curled a little. "Well, no one does straight-up cooking shows anymore," I said. Actually teaching people to feed themselves was very last century, I'd been informed. "And anyway, they say I lack the 'warmth' for that kind of thing."

Alejandra laughed. "Oh, you're plenty warm."

I snorted. "I'm on fucking fire," I said. "There's already a Martha and there's already an Ina, so the 'older woman who thinks she's better than you' market is apparently completely closed up." I pointed my finger at Alejandra while still holding my cup. "I don't think I'm better than you, for the record. Well, obviously not you. I mean most people. Some people, sure. But most people, they're good."

"I'd watch you teaching me to cook," Alejandra said.

"Ha," I said, and smiled. It felt good to smile for real after wearing a skeleton grin all night with the suits. "Like I could teach you anything."

"Eh, I think there's always a few things we could learn from each other," she said, and that color in her cheeks got a little darker, before she took another sip. It felt even better to smirk.

"So, they start talking about how the way to go with me is the ice queen route," I said. "Make me all 'The Devil Eats Babbo' or whatever, put me on some judging panel on some competition show, have me be the real hard bitch." My lip curled up. "And they said that. They said 'bitch.' They said it over and over."

"Pendejos," Alejandra growled. "And they walked out of there alive?"

I shook my head. "What kind of hard bitch am I if I can't put up with that?" I sighed. The first time I'd landed a job as a head chef, the first man in the kitchen who called me a bitch got the end of my chef's knife about a centimeter away from his dick and very clearly informed that if he or anyone else ever called me again, huevos would be on the menu. Even if I was a bitch, he didn't get to call me that. "No, I wish I'd torn them all new assholes, but I just laughed and nodded and smiled and sipped my wine and sold out my soul."

Alejandra pursed her lips and gave me a long look. "Maral, do you really want to do this?" She raised one shoulder. "I mean, you're in a good place right now. Your restaurant's kicking ass." It was true; business was good, even if I wasn't in the kitchen there as much as I used to be. "What's with this need to get all famous?"

I finished off the last sip of my measuring cup of mezcal and put it aside while I pinched my brow. "I know, this sounds like a bunch of ego-tripping bullshit, doesn't it? Make me a celebrity, put me on TV." I sighed. "And it is, some, but also..." I looked up at her. "You ever watch those channels? You ever read any of those blogs? It's all dicks; it's all just a wall of dicks that swing and a token woman now and then to bake a cupcake or give creeps something to spank it over when she eats asparagus." I put my hands behind me on the counter and leaned my head back. "I just want to represent, you know? Let some girls, let some women turn on their TV and see that you can get in this line of work and keep doing it and survive to be a hard old bitch like me."

I lifted my head back up to see Alejandra with a soft, sad smile on her face. "Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I get that." We'd become friends, years and years ago, when we'd worked together and been mutually completely shocked to be working in a professional kitchen with another woman. Now that she had her own place, she went above and beyond to try to hire women. She was probably the one who deserved to be on TV; she was cuter, anyway.

"And maybe if I do that it'll get this business to where sausage fests are reserved for the German joints." After the words came out of my mouth, I covered my face and laughed. "Christ, Maral, that was terrible. Save it for the cameras." I peeked through my fingers and saw Alejandra was laughing, at least. I picked up my measuring cup and held it out for a refill.

"Well, they probably won't have 'be a bitch' in your contract," Alejandra said as she tipped the bottle back into my cup. "So you just be yourself in front of the cameras and they'll have to deal with it."

"You know how those shows are," I said. "They'll edit me down to a core of pure bitchiness."

Alejandra arched an eyebrow and lifted her cup to me. "Sounds like a perfect role model for girls to me."

I leaned my head back a little and laughed. I was feeling looser now, from both the booze and Alejandra's smile. "Now you've got me thinking that you should get in on this with me," I said. "They'll look at us, think, oh, hard and soft, ice and fire, The Cunt and Someone's Mama." It was Alejandra's turn to laugh. She'd never had kids and had negative interest in ever changing that.

Alejandra came over to lean against the same counter, next to me. "And then we're both bitches?"

I leaned into her, nudging her with my shoulder while I grinned. "See, we're already on the same page." I tapped measuring cups with her again. "Inspirations to the next generation."

Alejandra raised her cup. "A future with kitchens full of bitches." She knocked the rest of her drink back and let out a long sigh. "If they tell you to get in there and make them a sandwich, you tell them you'll make one out of them."

I grinned and let my hand slip along the counter, just happening to leave my arm around Alejandra's back. She leaned into it. "We'll give the boys a little credit," I said. "They can be useful back here. For instance, a lot of them are good at reaching things that are high up."

Alejandra snorted and looked me up and down. "We don't even need them for that with you around, fideo," she said. "Especially with those shoes you've come in here with."

I was tall enough to look most men right in the eye as it was; I got a real thrill putting on a pair of fuck-you heels to make them crane their necks up a little. "These fucking things," I said, holding one foot out to show them off a little. "Yeah, let the young women of America know that that lasting a night in a bar full of assholes in a pair of pumps is great training for lasting a night on the line with a bunch of assholes and you can wear goddamn clogs."

Alejandra held up her own foot next to mine, smaller and clad in a lot of very sensible round-toed rubber. "Not as sexy, though."

"Bullshit," I said, and tapped my toes against her before putting my foot down. "Just as sexy."

"Mm," Alejandra said, and put her foot down. She resettled her weight and ended up a little closer to me. "If you say so."

"Well, this show we're going to have, it'll have some sex appeal." I looked over to her, my eyes sly. "How do you feel about eating asparagus?"

"I'll do it if you do it," she said, and then covered her face with her hand while she laughed. "Sorry, sorry, thought of a terrible joke."

"And you're not telling it to me?" I said. "Christ, you are a bitch."

Alejandra was still laughing, but hadn't lifted her hand off her face. "Well... it was going to be about eating clams."

I laughed and didn't bother keeping it from getting a little breathless. "Sweetheart, you know I'll try anything once," I said. She took her fingers away from her face and peered up at me. "Or twice."

Now she was really flushed, more than alcohol ever got her. "I was wondering if that might be what you meant by your text," she said. "Needing estrogen."

I took a little breath. "It wasn't," I said, being honest. I felt Alejandra go a little tense next to me, and let my hand come around to her waist. "But now that you mention it, that's a really good idea."

I'd never fucked anyone without a penis until two months ago, when I went to some foodie circle jerk event with the openest of bars, found Alejandra there, destroyed a disgusting number of bottles of wine with her, and then found myself back at her apartment diving headfirst into some bisexual experimentation. The experiments had been very successful. We'd had a fun time, but after I took my hangover home we'd never talked about it again. Flirted a little more than usually flirted, sure, danced around it a little, but neither of us had gotten up the balls -- or, well, eggs, I suppose -- to come out and ask if it might happen again. Turned out, though, all we needed was some dumb innuendo.

"Is it?" Alejandra said. Her voice was a little softer. I'd known her to date boys and girls through our whole friendship, so I didn't get why she seemed like the nervous one.

I brushed my hand along the curve of her waist down to her hip. "Well, it might not actually be a good idea," I said. "But it seems like a really fun one."

She brushed her hand against my stomach and it made me go hot all the way down. "So, you going to act on those ideas," she said, and looked up at me with big, soft brown eyes and a little smirk on her big, soft lips, "or are you some kind of bitch?"

I laughed and curled my other hand around the back of her neck and leaned down to kiss her. She tasted smoky from the mezcal and bit at my lower lip until it made me gasp. It felt good to kiss someone smaller than me, good to let my hands move over the curves of her body. Alejandra was thick all over, but she had serious muscle under all her softness. I squeezed at her thigh and felt it barely give under my fingers. She'd nearly taken my head off with those last time; I was definitely in the mood to give her another chance.

Alejandra was hissing breath through her teeth while I rubbed my thumb over her nipple through her clothes, when we heard noise from the front of the house. Right, Thea was still out there, hard at work, and we were back here being two tipsy, horny assholes who were breaking health codes. Alejandra and I both looked at the kitchen doorway, breathing hard.

"You want to go..." Alejandra started, but I could tell from her face that she wanted to go out and hail a cab and worry about whose place to go to even less than I did. Maybe she was worried I would change my mind on the way. Not a goddamn chance.

I gave her ass a squeeze and grinned at her. "When was the last time you fooled around in a walk-in?"

She laughed and leaned her head back, but not for long enough to give me the chance to kiss her throat. "Christ, not in forever."

"Double forever for me," I said. I'd made a point of avoiding fucking on the job, or even other chefs in general, because of worrying about my goddamn reputation. My reputation was good and settled now, though, and I maybe was thinking of working up a new one. I gave Alejandra a little swat on the hip and one more kiss. "C'mon, let's go."

She laughed, breathless and gorgeous, and yanked open the heavy door. The cool air felt good on my skin, and I let my suit jacket fall off my shoulders onto the floor before I went for Alejandra again, kissing her. She was so good to kiss, soft and hungry all at once. I shivered when she brushed her hands over my shoulders, and she laughed when I kicked off my stupid sexy heels. I didn't need to be that much taller.

I put my hands on her hips and walked her back until her ass collided with a waist-high freezer. She took the hint and hopped up on it, putting us a little more eye to eye. I just grinned at her while I went for the buttons of her chef's jacket, and she grinned back while she helped. Me from the top, her from the bottom, and then I had the thing off.

I'd spent years thinking Alejandra looked sweet and innocent and gentle until the first time I saw her not wearing something that covered her from neck to wrists and got to see all the ink. She had tattoos on almost every inch of her from her collarbones down to her thighs. I brushed my fingers down the dahlias she had running down both of her arms and she leaned her head back, finally giving me the opportunity to start running kisses from her throat down to the twin swallows inked swooping over her breasts.

Alejandra made a little yelping noise when I mouthed at her nipple through the fabric of her bra, and put her hand into my hair so I had no doubt that was a good noise. She squirmed her hips and made me make a sound of my own brushing her fingers down my throat. She was gasping when I lifted my head back up.

"Very good fun," I said, and pushed the straps of her bra off her shoulders. She grabbed hold of one of the supports of a nearby shelf as I went back to playing with her nipples, rolling one between my fingers until it was taut while I ran my tongue around the other, then switching, then back again. I kept at it until her heel thumped against the side of the freezer and she let out a fantastic string of filthy words in Spanish. That was the vocabulary I knew very well.

I eased up to kiss her again, and then drew away when I let my hands fall to unfasten her pants. When I'd gotten the zip undone, Alejandra got her hands in my hair again to tug my head back and lick a hot stripe down my throat. It got a dark, good moan out of me as I felt my nipples go tight just from the feel of her breath on the skin of my chest. I stepped back out of her reach, though, and smiled when she gave me a grouchy look. "You'll get your turn," I said, and then she was laughing while we worked together to get her pants off.

She spread her legs and I put my fingers right to her cunt. She was slick and wet and hot, and I could smell her, that thick smell of sex and sweat that hit me right in the gut. It gave me an appetite. I went down on my knees. Slowly, though; I was much older than the last time I'd been kneeling in a cooler.

I put my face between Alejandra's thighs and got in close enough to bury my nose in the dark curls of her hair and breathe in. I loved the way skin smelled, all the strange and wonderful scents you could only experience when you got your face right against somebody. I could spend ten minutes smelling a good glass of wine before I took my first sip, and I could have done the same thing with Alejandra if not for how she was panting.

"Maral," she growled. "Don't tease."

"Not teasing," I said, and she whimpered when I let the breath of my words go right against her clit. "Savoring." I laughed and put my hands against her thighs, letting my thumbs slide forward to part her lips. "Now, come on, give me some space."

Alejandra laughed and parted her legs further, as much as she could with her pants tangled around her ankles. It was more than enough. I buried my face in her, licking her cunt slowly from bottom to top. I moaned a little myself as I slid my tongue into her, tasting her as much as I could. I'd always been a champion cocksucker, or so I'd been told, so it had come as a surprise more to Alejandra than it had to me that I liked eating pussy the first time as much as I did. I'd spent my whole goddamn life thinking about taste and about putting things in my mouth. Of course I fucking liked it.

Hell, I loved it. Just getting something new at my age was a goddamn blessing. I could just spend forever down there getting crushed by Alejandra's thighs, learning the map of her body with the tip of my tongue. It was so good to be on the other side of it now, seeing if what I knew felt good on me worked just as well on her. From the way she grabbed at my hair and growled my name, it seemed to be working just as well indeed.

Alejandra crushed both hands into my hair as I sucked on her clit, rolling my tongue around it and waiting to hear her bark out a little sound each time I flicked my tongue a little harder. She was breathing hard, her whole body heaving around me. She had me completely trapped and I could barely breathe, and I hadn't felt so good in -- well, in about two months. I slipped two fingers inside of her and it seemed like seconds later she was coming, the rain of filthy words coming out of her mouth muted to me by how her thighs covered my ears.

I stopped when she loosened her hands in my hair and gave me a little nudge. I had to look like I'd been in a wind tunnel by that point. Good. I leaned back a little to look at her, panting and flushed all over, from her cheeks down to where the coiling snakes she had tattooed down her thighs ended. Alejandra opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, "You." She pointed a finger at me. "You have no business being so good at that."

I wiped my mouth with my hand and sucked my two fingers in my mouth. "I've got all the business in the world being good at everything," I said, and pulled myself back up standing. Alejandra shook her head and grabbed me by the waist of my pants to pull me closer.

"Bitch," she said, slow and sly and satisfied, and we were both laughing while she kissed me and slipped her hand into my pants.

Anyone who said that women couldn't have good sex after fifty both didn't know shit about shit and was probably a man besides. Alejandra's fingers, her strong little fingers with all their years of burns and knife marks, found me completely dripping wet, and she had me coming until my knees buckled in an amount of time that would have made a sixteen-year-old boy look impressive. I kept myself standing with my hands on either side of her hips on the freezer, and let my head rest between her breasts while I caught my breath.

"You know," she said, after a bit, as she ran her fingers through my hair to try to straighten out some of the damage she'd done earlier. "I think you had a pretty good idea."

I laughed. "No shit," I said.

Alejandra made a warm sound. "Mm, no, that too, but... us working together. Being a team."

I pressed my cheek against her chest, listening to her heart beat. "Mm," I said. "TV, books, inspiring the youth, all that good shit."

She smoothed my hair behind my ear. "Eventual world domination," she said, and I laugh. "A bitchocracy."

I lifted my head up and smiled at her. I slipped my arms around her waist in a lazy embrace. "Sounds good," I said, and there was something in her eyes, some little uncertain spark that made me say what I said next. "You know, I think if we're going to be that kind of team, couldn't hurt to be this kind of team more often."

I saw her swallow, and the color rise in her cheeks again. "You think?"

"Sure," I said, even though I wasn't, really. But something about the way her arms felt around me, the way I could still feel her lips on mine, the way I'd come right to her to feel better about the world and she had pulled it off... well, it made me not so worried.

"I need a better date to get steak with, anyway," I said, and she was still laughing when she kissed me.

Storm Chasing

by Hiwaru Kibi (火悪 木美)
illustrated by safelybeds

When she'd seen the ad in the paper, Mari had thought it sounded exciting -- romantic, even. And besides, it wasn't like she'd been planning on doing anything else with her half-completed atmospheric science bachelor's degree this summer, considering that all of the local news stations had old snow-haired meteorologists who'd been there a thousand years each and would probably still be standing in front of blue-screened weather maps when the inevitable collapse of human civilization came a thousand years on. Shitty old-boy networks like that tended to keep their own. Maybe someday she'd impress them, but for now she was more concerned with impressing her landlord with her ability to pay him.

What she hadn't thought was that she'd wind up stuffed in a ratty, ancient baby-blue VW bus with a broken radio and doors that looked ready to fall off their hinges at any moment, holding a brand-new 1992 Rand McNally Road Atlas, its spine already permanently broken over the Texas panhandle. She was also sweating like a pig and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. "What are we--"

"Shhht!" Camille hissed at her, shooing at her with the hand that wasn't fiddling the dial. This far out from most civilization, the best signal they could get on the tiny, battery-powered Sony radio was one where Mari could hear maybe every tenth word coming in over the AM stations, if she squinted and pretended. Camille had been doing this for years, though, and by now, she seemed to speak static as a second language. She put one well-pierced ear up to the speaker and shut her eyes, chewing on her lower lip and frowning with concentration. Mari more than half-suspected her crazy boss just did this for show most of the time, then 'interpreted' the hisses and infrequent signals to mean whatever she wanted to mean. At least she wasn't looking for tornadoes on commission.

So Mari reclined the driver's seat as far as it would go and tried not to die of heatstroke. She'd started the day with a bra, undershirt, t-shirt, and ratty old polo barong she'd stolen from her dad, but was now down to the undershirt only, and even that was soaked through with sweat. She could see her dark nipples clearly through the drenched white fabric. Well, thank fuck nobody but the jackalopes was out here to see.

At last, Camille sat upright and jabbed her finger in a southerly direction. "Southwest. Just outside of Borger. Drive."

A month ago, Mari would have spat and begged for some time to plot a course through unfamiliar territory. Now, she just turned the car from Morton Elevator Road on to Texas Beef Road and started weaving the dusty way back to streets with more reliable asphalt. She couldn't really argue with the course change; she thought the farmer who'd rolled by in his combine harvester an hour previous had been giving them shifty eyes. Then again, maybe that was just how farmers looked. She'd lived around San Diego all her life and hadn't met many.

There were a lot of things she hadn't done before meeting Camille, like squinting at radio broadcasts and drinking whiskey and cursing aloud and appreciating tattoos. Camille had a couple, including one on her shoulder that she said was Chinese for 'big beautiful storm goddess'. Mari knew just enough Chinese to doubt that was true. "Big?" Mari asked, giving the clear blue heavens a skeptical glance.

"Three, maybe even four, I'm guessing." Camille loaded the mini-tapes in her camcorder, then swapped out the battery for the one sitting in the charger plugged into the cigarette lighter. That, Camille had said, had been the number-one reason she'd quit smoking a few years back: These days you couldn't keep all your gear going and get a light.

The bus rattled and sputtered as she pulled it onto the highway. Mari had taken one look at it even before they'd left California and demanded they start carrying a large amount of nonperishable food and bottled water. Breaking down in the middle of nowhere looked to be that particular vehicle's destiny, and she didn't want a two-woman Donner Party repeat when it happened. But at least she could get some speed going here, such that the air that poured through the VW's vents might have been hot, but at least it was air at all.

Truth was, Mari had never even been that interested in extreme weather. She'd gotten turned on by meteorology by the southern California climate -- lovely and mild today, going to be lovely and mild tomorrow, with a chance of extra loveliness and mildness over the weekend -- and the chance to be on TV. Curse her romantic notions and the weird places they got her. "If this heat keeps up," she said, pulling her heavy black ponytail away from her neck, "I'm just going to chop this all off like yours."

"Right?" With a laugh, Camille ran a hand across her short brown cut, rearranging the spikes in all new configurations. "Best decision I ever made. Thirty seconds in the sink at the truckstop and you're good to go." She put her bare feet up on the dash and unfolded a surface map across her lap, making little notations with a red pencil. "You'd better keep yours, though. They only put the pretty people on television. Unless, of course, you're on trial for murder, or something like that. Which I can't recommend."

She knew she should let it go, she wanted to let it go, and yet: "Have you ever been on trial for murder?"

Camille laughed again and poked Mari's bare arm with the pencil tip. "Not thus far. I'm sure plenty of people have been close to going on trial for murdering me, but that's a whole different problem."

"I was never going to murder you." Mari zoomed ahead of a pickup truck with a Confederate flag decal on the back and hoped it enjoyed getting a good eyeful of the bumper stickers that made the back of the van a veritable liberal beach read. When the truck honked angrily, she figured the driver had at least seen the newest addition to the pack, proclaiming the van owner to be a Clinton/Gore supporter. She thought about flipping him off, then thought about shotguns and at last thought better of the whole deal. "Might've put me trial for maiming you, maybe."

"Nah, not a jury in the world would convict you." Camille poked her again, then scribbled something else along the contour of an isobar. "And not just because you're pretty."

Mari stuck out her tongue and made the ugliest face she could while still keeping her eyes on the road, but she couldn't help smiling while she did. The first week or so of their acquaintance had been friction-filled, to say the least, and there had been times when driving across Arizona and New Mexico that Mari had been sorely tempted to just put the whole thing in reverse and not stop until she saw her own apartment's front door. But they'd found ways to resolve their differences -- one in particular that proved they weren't so different after all.

Signs for Lake Meredith National Recreation Area began to pop into view. "Hey, if nothing happens, we can go swimming," said Mari, pointing at one as they passed.

Camille nodded. "If nothing happens, we can definitely go swimming," she said, her eyes still fixed on the map. "But nothing's not going to happen."

There were three pins in her leg, their positions marked by three white scars that wouldn't tan the way the rest of her skin did, and Camille had told no fewer than five completely unrelated stories about how they'd gotten there, but she said gave her the ability to do magic. That was bullshit, of course -- the maps and radar and radios and instruments lining the back of the van presented an overwhelming body of evidence about how much hard, careful work went into finding the storms she recorded. But even Mari had to admit there was almost something mystical about the way Camille could pinpoint the location of severe weather hours before it started. "Go left when you can," Camille directed, rapping on her window without looking up.

Mari saw a sign for an exit a mile up, but frowned. "Borger's still on east of here."

Camille shook her head. "It's on the move. Stick close to that lake of yours."

It wasn't her lake, Mari wanted to point out. Her lake was the Pacific Ocean, and you didn't need to chase down its weather; it would bring its weather right to you. Still, she took the exit, sailing on ahead of a refrigerated truck with the words BLUE BELL ICE CREAM on the side. Though she'd heard all kinds of tales about Texas state troopers and highway patrolmen, she hadn't been pulled over once yet, and figured it was a bit of respect on their part for a VW bus that could even make the speed limit, much less break it.

Fifteen more minutes of driving passed, with only road noise and Camille's mutterings for a soundtrack, and then Camille held up her hand. "Okay, find a place to pull over and we'll start setting up."

If only her parents could see her now, knowing the money they'd put toward her college education was going to good use in her career as a crazy white woman's chauffeur. There was a little graveled-out area at the side of the road, though, next to a cattle gate with five padlocks and a FOR SALE sign on it, so Mari pulled off there, figuring she wasn't likely to be bothering anyone or blocking anything necessary.

Before she'd even put the vehicle into park, Camille was climbing between their seats and into the back. Where normal people might have kept panels and seats, Camille had two walls of gadgets and devices -- half of which, Mari had noticed through repeated pokings, didn't even work. But they held up the things that did, and she supposed that was what mattered. "It's important to get a good 'before' picture," Camille said, handing Mari her heavy Nikon camera.

"So you keep saying," said Mari, even though she knew it was true. Part of what Camille called the 'Holy Grail of meteorology' was ability to predict severe weather: the more advance warning you could get, the more you could give the people on the ground; the more the people got, the fewer casualties. Camille could light on storms even when the day was clear and pretty, just like the one Mari was photographing now. A slightly alcoholic twice-divorced college dropout, Camille didn't exactly have the ear of the scientific community. The more data she could provide, then, the harder she'd be to ignore.

Not that she was exactly easy to ignore now. "Turn the antenna twelve degrees north!" Camille ordered from inside the van, and Mari stared at all five antennae on the roof before turning them all twelve degrees north, or at least all about that much in about that direction. If Camille wanted them more precise, she could do it herself. She climbed back down got inside the van, shutting the back doors behind her.

Come here," Camille said, waving Mari close, and Mari walked over, wondering which of the screens Camille wanted her to see -- only to find Camille with hands on either side of her face, kissing her. The thing about Camille that made Mari the angriest was how her pussy was basically soaked every second that maniac was around. Son of a bitch, she looked like she'd been in a bar fight every day of her life and had more ink in her skin and holes in her body than Mari thought were entirely appropriate, and she was loud and rude and kissed like the devil. Mari wrapped her arms around Camille's waist, enduring one kind of heat to satisfy another. "Figure we've got half an hour before things start getting hairy."

"Oh, fuck," Mari said as Camille twisted her nipples beneath her shirt. "Fuck, I left all my spare clothes back at the motel."

Camille twisted again, grinning as she caught Mari's lower lip in her teeth. "That's why I don't bother wearing underwear."

That should have been disgusting instead of hot, but Mari just whimpered a little and went for the buckle of her own jeans, pulling them and her panties off before she could soak them both through. Forget her driving duties; if her parents could have seen this--

Maybe it was best not to think of her parents right now, not while Camille was slipping her hand between Mari's legs and petting her clit. "Fuck, fuck, fuck," Mari muttered, grabbing at one of the defunct receivers for balance. She normally had such a polite mouth, too. Wonder where she'd picked that up.

With a kick, Camille rolled out one of the sleeping bags she kept lodged under a desk, then nudged Mari back down toward it. Fucking in the back of the storm bus was about the most uncomfortable thing in the world, which explained nothing about why Mari wanted it all the time. She lay down on her back and let her legs splay wide, exposing her pussy to the air. Six weeks ago, she never would have done such a thing, but six weeks ago, she'd been in complete denial about her dykeish tendencies and she'd never met Camille. It was hard not to be slutty for this when she was working with such encouragement.

"You look so fucking hot like that," said Camille, kicking off her boots and socks. She slid out of the loose khaki cargo shorts she liked to wear, then peeled off her tank top and bra, tossing them on the same pile. Both of her nipples were pierced with thick hoops, and Mari rubbed her clit as she looked at them. "Makes me want to eat you all up."

"Think you can get me down in half an hour?" Mari asked. She'd been thinking about getting her own nipples pierced. They both had similar slender frames, and Mari had always been a little uncomfortable about how her A-cups looked so boring when she got naked. Everything about Camille, though, was the opposite of boring.

To that, Camille grinned and gave Mari's knee a playful swat. "You're right, that's not very long." She stood on one side of Mari, then turned so they were facing opposite directions and knelt astride Mari's chest, putting her ass up toward Mari's face. "We'd better double up." With no more provocation or instruction than that, Camille dove right in to Mari's pussy, kissing and licking the warm, wet skin there.

For a moment, Mari was so taken by the sensation that she couldn't respond -- but she had Camille's own clit hovering so close to her face, and not reciprocating was hardly an option. She bunched her jeans up under her head to give herself a little pillow, then grabbed Camille's thighs and yanked her back those few inches until her tongue could reach right into those soft, pink folds. Everything about Camille was so pink, from her cheeks after a hot shower to the peaks of her nipples to the soft skin of her lower lips, in a way that almost made Mari think of all the toys she'd had when she'd been a little girl. But there was nothing little-girlish about the woman atop her, not in body or in demeanor, so Mari had long since decided to dig in and enjoy it.

Camille sure wasn't making it easy on Mari's concentration, though; for a woman who'd spent at least a full decade of her life married to men, she could eat a girl out like she'd been born doing just that. She caught Mari's clit between her lips and went after it with her tongue, punctuating her sucking with intense flickering friction. It was so easy to give in like that, to focus on what was being done to her, that Mari fought to remember what she was doing. Right, giving her boss head. Simple enough.

Not that Mari had ever had her mouth on any part of another woman's body before she'd started this particular job, but at least Camille provided an excellent role model -- sexually, if in no other way. She let her tongue skim across skin, feeling for the way Camille's body tensed when she hit just the right spot. Camille wasn't shy about letting her know, either. "Yeah, baby," she said through teeth poised lightly around Mari's clit. "You've got a great mouth."

Mari, who'd always responded well to positive feedback, took that as a cue to step up her game. She took her fingers and spread Camille's lips wider, then slipped her thumb right into Camille's wet slit. Not so long ago, Mari had prided herself on her long acrylic nails, feeling they helped establish the kind of feminine sophistication newsrooms might expect in a meteorologist. Of course, now things like that were far too impractical for riding around in a chase van, prowling Tornado Alley in high summer. That was her story and she was sticking to it. She curled her thumb back and pressed at the inside of Camille's vagina as she sucked, tickling at the little rough ridge of skin hiding in there.

"Oh, you're going to get it later," Camille said against Mari's thigh, laughing. 'Later' was back at the motel, stuffed in the side pocket of a duffel bag, and it plugged into the wall and had two different speeds and on more than one occasion had been the reason they'd gotten a 'courtesy visit' from some motel manager, asking them if they wouldn't mind keeping it down, ladies, there'd been complaints from other rooms. 'Later' hadn't given Mari the first orgasm of her young life, not by a long shot, but it had pushed the total from double to triple digits. "Going to get you on the bed and strip you naked and--"

"Suck me, bitch," Mari growled, though she was right back at her own task as soon as the sentence was through.

Camille laughed, ignoring the demand. "Maybe tie you to the bed a little, make you see if you can beat your own record. How many -- oh, fuck, that's good, baby, right there -- how many you think we can do before your little pussy gives out?"

Now that was like declaring war. Mari jammed her thumb more firmly up Camille's cunt, then took her other hand and grabbed for Camille's nipples. She had to grope a little, but she found one and she tugged, causing Camille to gasp and a fresh gush of wetness to soak Mari's hand. She'd always been a competitive thing, and the same dedication she'd put into graduating as her high school's valedictorian went right into making sure she made Camille come first, and hardest, and most memorably.

And come Camille did, with a shake in her body that made the van shake on its wheels. "Oh, fuck, fuck, fucking fuck--" She let go with a wordless whoop, the kind Mari associated most with movies about cowboys, and her pussy clamped down on Mari's thumb, shuddering in time with the rest of her body. It made the panther tattooed on her thigh and ass shake, its inked-on claw marks rippling with the rest of her tanned skin. She must sunbathe in the nude, Mari thought, and that vision -- of Camille nude on a beach, of fucking Camille on a beach -- made her even wetter as she settled in for her turn.

But Camille hopped up to her feet, yanked on her shorts, and was halfway into her bra before Mari could even voice a protest: "Wait, what--?"

Camille tapped her ear. "Hear that?" she asked, pulling her tank top back on. Mari listed a second, then shook her head. "You will in a few. Come on, get the cameras fired up, and maybe we'll even have time to roll into town yelling about how the British are coming."

Mari, still entirely naked except for her undershirt, sat up with furious intensity. "You said half an--"

"Extreme weather, baby. Storms and me, we're both bitches." Camille held out her hand to Mari, and it was only with greatest effort that Mari took it and allowed herself to be helped to her feet, instead of ripping off Camille's entire arm at the shoulder. Camille used the momentum to pull Mari into a kiss, one that was long and sweet for all the horrible injustice she'd just visited upon Mari. "And I said later, didn't I?"

"Cunt," Mari growled against Camille's mouth, grabbing her ass.

"Fucking right," said Camille. She gave one of Mari's nipples a final hard twist, then took the resulting shudders of pleasure as a sufficient distraction to let herself slip out the back doors, shutting them behind her.

"Cunt!" shouted Mari, alone in the van -- except now she could hear it on the wind, that faintest rumbling, like a freight train on the very farthest edge of the horizon. Whatever shaking Camille had done to the vehicle was being doubled in intensity by the wind outside, and she heard a dull thud as a gust blew some debris into its painted side panels. "Oh, shit," she said to no one in particular, then yanked on her pants and hopped into the driver's seat. The sky outside had gone from a bright blue to a hazy yellow in the east, and she could feel the dropping pressure in her back teeth. She turned the key and the engine ground to life.

The passenger door flew open and Mari was blown back as Camille jumped in and slammed it behind her. "Drive," Camille said, one eye already glued to the camera's lens, and everything before or after was forgotten -- there was only the now as Mari jerked the gearshift and slammed on the accelerator. She didn't even have to wait for more directions: There was only toward the storm and away from the storm in her world right now, and right now, despite everything she'd ever planned to the contrary, she knew which way her life was pointed.

The Second Sun

by Kikuna Matata (菊菜 瞬)
illustrated by beili

When the great comet of 1811 was attracting all eyes, my star-gazing was ineffectual. Night after night, the whole family of us went up to the long windows at the top of my father's warehouse; and the exclamations on all hands about the comet perfectly exasperated me, -- because I could not see it! "Why, there it is!" "It is as big as a saucer." "It is as big as a cheese-plate." "Nonsense; you might as well pretend not to see the moon." Such were the mortifying comments on my grudging admission that I could not see the comet. And I never did see it. Such is the fact; and philosophers may make of it what they may.

- adapted from Harriet Martineau's Autobiography

---

Isabel runs out of money in Stockholm.

She could write to Sophy, of course; she did, in Vienna, where Bettina had said, We can't have a mind like yours wasting away in that pit of a boarding house, only to abandon Isabel five days later to the company of her brother's friends; and later in Berlin, where Alexander had said, very quietly, I don't believe it is safe for you here, is it?, and Isabel had lived for some time under the protective watch of him and his servants: both, by long practice, most painfully discreet. Alexander had been a friend to her: he had even invited her to Paris, but she feared to overstay her welcome, and rode instead with Cenek Pechácek and his bad reputation to the university in Prague, where she picked up enough Czech to not be taken for a German and learned to drink with the scholars without ending the night vomiting into the snow; and when the eyes that fell upon her there began to stay too long, she went by carriage to Krakow, where she was dismissed from the observatory after a week and a half and, instead, bent her head over her calculations by wavering candlelight long into the night. She'd not given those sooty addresses to Sophy, no more than she'd written of the rattling carts that smelt of hay and dung; or the reek of tar and river-fish on her hands, or the expanse of ocean that finally at the end of summer lay itself at her feet at her in Danzig: lit in lavender twilight, her own silver road.

London, she had thought with a shudder in Danzig; and then, Paris, but of course Alexander had been called back to Prussia; and then: North, towards the comet in the belly of Ursa Major, with Polaris above her shoulder. North, to Erik Gärnö, formerly of the observatory in Lund -- or to Teodor Wåhlin, perhaps, known to grind his own lenses and returned from Uppsala. North, to Stockholm: where the air has snapping teeth, and one never runs out of sea.

So Isabel in Danzig paid for her passage; then emptied her pockets entirely at the other end, for a week of lodging in a stinking alley-facing attic room off Prästgatan, and a broad flat hat in what appeared to be the local student style. It wasn't of any use. Gärnö worked independently and always had, terribly sorry; and Wåhlin was so abstracted that she couldn't bear the thought of offering herself to be his assistant, even if she could get him to focus on the issue at hand long enough to take her on. And she could write to Sophy -- she could, of course: could tell her, I've run into a spot of trouble or I underestimated my need for funds on my journey from Paris; could lie, even, and write that she'd been robbed, that she'd traded her purse to save her virtue, or some other absurd story that Sophy, mouth serious and fretful, would be too earnest to take as anything other than the truth -- but somehow, Isabel couldn't bear it: the thought of offering her mistakes up in such a way: Dear Sophy, please send -- to my stinking attic room off Prästgatan -- addressed to 'Frederick Dunstable', you understand.

It would get back to Theo, for the one.

Instead, she puts her hands to different skills; and in September Isabel throws her shutters wide to the twilight, and hangs her hat upon its hook. The evening air flooding in is sweet with autumn, clean and cool. The comet glitters above her neighbors' roofs: hanging low within Ursa Major, its tail burning bright. She loosens her boy's tailored jacket. She hangs it beneath her hat. It leaves her in her shirt and her stays and her trousers in the Prussian style: Theo's things had been worn to shreds, by Potsdam. Without the jacket she feels more herself. She rests her elbows upon her windowsill in the light from her second sun: glowing, glowing, golden and white. As big as a saucer. As bright as the moon.

Golden, Theo had said, and white. Pushing back a long damp strand of Isabel's mousey hair, stuck to her shoulder. Theo had said, Golden, and white, and -- and enough.

Enough.

Isabel empties her pockets: silver and copper, no notes. A lady's silk handkerchief, and a man's pearl-inlaid pocket watch; foolish, that. An accident. She'll never sell it herself, a boy like her -- but Ulrika might take it, of course; Ulrika, who speaks French and German and more than a little English and roars at her sailors like a bull; who lets out attic rooms to foreign lads not past eighteen at the outside, and doesn't say a word. Isabel puts the watch back in her pocket, and takes up her coat. Ulrika is behind the bar: scrubbing, scrubbing. Her broad hands red from hot water and soap. Fredrik, she will make it, reshaping Isabel to fit her tongue; she will say, Fredrik, s'il te plaît; as she had said it on the eighth night: Nous pouvons parvenir à un accord, Monsieur Dunstable -- Fredrik. We can come to an agreement, Mr. Dunstable. If you please. To Isabel, and her empty pockets: S'il vous plaît. And again, now, Ulrika, with her brown hair frizzing with the steam: "Fredrik, s'il te plaît."

And so Isabel goes to her, and stands upon the rickety footstool to hand the bowls and tankards up to their shelf as Ulrika passes them up into her hands, still hot from their washing and tacky with damp. "Fredrik," Ulrika says, as she says it by candlelight -- s'il te plaît -- and then, in English, "a letter for you -- a gentleman's hand."

Isabel's face grows hot, and she knows how it must show. How red you are, Theo had murmured, uncurling long fingers against her burning throat -- but no. Theo couldn't find her, not here.

"Your brother?" Ulrika suggests, and holds it out.

"I haven't any brothers," Isabel replies, and takes it. Smooth paper, yet: it's not from abroad. She finds that makes it easier to open.

Across the bar, Ulrika's chin is lifting, her mouth curving. "Herr Bäcker, then," she says, as she had said, your German poet, by candlelight; and there is enough amusement in her voice that Isabel lifts her chin, eyebrows raised and shoulders pressed up in a parody of the man himself; to make Ulrika laugh outright. Ulrika isn't wrong: Bäcker will be returning, tonight, and he would like Frederick accompany them, to Den Gyldene Freden, to Hasselbacken, to buy a better class of beer.

Isabel folds it into her pocket. "I have happened upon a watch," she says, instead of anything else.

Across the bar, Ulrika says something low and shakes her head; but she holds out her hand, not quite smiling. Isabel digs out the watch, and Ulrika takes it. "Le loyer," Ulrika says thoughtfully. The rent. Isabel could without question, from the proceeds of the watch; but instead her mouth is moving: "Ne le puis-je payer comme d'habitude?" and Ulrika snorts, lifting her solid shoulders and then dropping them again. Can't I pay it in the usual way? Isabel's hot face.

"Lazy," Ulrika says, half-laughing. "S'il te plaît." Her thick eyebrows moving, speaking.

And so. And so Ulrika will sell the watch and keep only a very reasonable fee (behind her bar with her thick tattooed arms moving and moving); and Isabel will pay for her lodging at a later date and spend her schillingar on beer and herring with the low-capped well-born boys who write second-rate serenades to their drawing-room goddesses, neatly and decorously tidied away; north, in Stockholm, where the air snaps and bites, and one never runs out of sea.

Isabel bears her father's name: Frederick Dunstable; Mr. Dunstable, from London. No, no -- not a poet, I'm afraid; and her carefully measured half-gravelly laugh. A question for her philosophers: is an astronomer still an astronomer, with no telescope to put to her eye? She does her calculations by candlelight: the comet's position in July, in August, in September, but unmeasured and unconfirmed; and in Hasselbacken with Bäcker leaning over the table, Isabel bawls: "NO, NO, NOT A POET, I'M AFRAID," into the ear of a young gentleman with a very daring waistcoat and a turn for verse in German: a Mr. Videbeck; a Hans, she thinks; a Mr. Videbeck perhaps Hans with a daring waistcoat and a turn for verse who is standing up in Hasselbacken with a hand up for ale. These are, in Stockholm, Isabel's friends: poets and novelists of not quite the first rank; young men who say, "An astronomer, oh?" in French, and then, "I always have found great inspiration, in the heavenly spheres," and then raise their hands to call for ale. (In Suffolk: Sophy, serious-mouthed; with her elbow on her notebooks and her hair spilling out of its knot of coffee-colored curls, and a pen to write to Theo already in her hand.) In a previous life they might have bowed to her, perhaps led her in a single stiff and stilted dance; perhaps then taken a far more engaging turn with dashing Harriet Swinton -- or Miss Gidlow herself, perhaps, with her laugh like bells -- but in this one they go alone to attend the salons of women of culture, then drink with English astronomers in public bars. In Hasselbacken. In Stockholm. Where Mr. Videbeck perhaps Hans calls for ale.

At the edge of the city the observatory sits on its ridge, ringed by its fence and surrounded by little huddled houses, busy with industrious Swedes. At dawn Isabel rises empty-pocketed and walks to and fro and to and fro; and by twilight if her pockets are heavier the observatory fence remains unbreached. Back in Solen Tavern she takes off her jacket, and her scholar's hat, and empties silver and copper on her coverlet, no notes; and past midnight in Hasselbacken, Franz Bäcker, arm around Isabel's shoulders, roars above the crowd into her ear: Come along (uninvited) with us then, Fru Selvig would love you, Freddy; and these are her friends, in Stockholm, and Isabel has nothing better to do. Without Gärnö. Without Wåhlin. With the comet low in in the belly of the bear, with its tail flowing out behind. So, instead of nothing, Isabel will permit herself to circle through Bäcker's wider orbit: his smooth-chinned poets and bright-eyed novelists and robin-puffed junior philosophers, down cobbled streets and narrow alleys into the bright lights of Charlotta Selvig's overheated salon, where Isabel moves through the masses of literary society in her boy's jacket and her trousers in the Prussian style, bowing and shaking hands: Frederick Dunstable, from London; our English scientist, Frederick Dunstable. Bowing, and shaking hands. Coincidence upon coincidence: Charlotta Selvig is the wife of a fellow at the observatory. He isn't there.

The women move through the men, not touching. Fru Carpelan, and Madam Lenngren, and the dashing dark-haired opera singer whose name Isabel never seems to catch: elevated, and serene. Fru Selvig is as old as Ulrika at least: must be, but doesn't look it, with her shy face and delicate white hands; beside her, her slip of a sloe-eyed debutante daughter in robin's-egg duchesse silk done up in the Parisian style and her hair wound up in heaps of honey-colored curls. Fröken Selvig is called Elsa, only just seventeen; with the comet burning through the glass window as bright as her disquieting dark eyes. Only just seventeen, helping her mother hostess salons; and even if in her boy's coat and Prussian trousers they never take Isabel for much more, Isabel is still not her fellow; not Elsa Selvig's fellow nor Fru Carpelan's nor Madam Lenngren's; and still not Bäcker's nor Videbeck's nor Wachschlager's, not at all. Isabel turned eighteen in a church in Suffolk, in a conspiracy of liars with a white veil on her hair; Isabel turns twenty-one called Frederick standing on a bench in Hasselbacken with her face burning hot and her tankard turned up while Wachschlager and Videbeck and Bäcker shout at her in celebratory verse, pounding their fists on the wood. Two hours later, Isabel goes back to Solen Tavern where Ulrika's thick tattooed arms deal out tankards as she roars at the drunks; where Isabel pays for her lodgings by candlelight, ocean-wet all over her chin and her cheeks. The next day, in Fru Selvig's drawing room, Isabel stands at the edges with her hands clasped behind her back while the men argue about the essence of poetry and the purpose of learning while Elsa, Elsa, golden-haired Fröken Selvig, switches into Swedish when she speaks to the others of the salon's female attendants; and Isabel does not understand. These elegant urbane women, who glide like the little boats around their islands, and hide their mouths behind gloved hands when they laugh.

By candlelight. Isabel in her boy's coat slides Ulrika's chemise from her tattooed shoulders. Her hands parting with Ulrika's broad hot painted thighs. Fredrik, s'il te plaît. By candlelight, in her boy's coat, in Stockholm: where the air has snapping teeth, and one never runs out of sea.

September uncurls into October in icy, prickling drizzle and when Isabel returns wine-warm and poetry-sodden to her room above Solen Tavern, Ulrika is smoking her pipe with her heavy sleeves rolled up to her elbows, above her thick tattooed arms. Ulrika meets laughing eyes to Isabel's: holding court above her sailors' din, whistle and fiddle and song. (Her tattooed mermaids, caressing Isabel's cheeks -- ) Ulrika with her heavy lined jaw and sharp green eyes (her thick, tattooed arms behind the bar: scrubbing, scrubbing -- ); and Isabel weaves towards her.

What do you look at? Elsa Selvig had asked, in perfect English; and when Isabel had turned her face from the window Elsa had lowered her eyes and murmured, You can see the comet quite well, from the little telescope -- that is, the one upstairs, and Isabel without thinking had nodded and followed her up, and up, and up: before her on the stairs, Elsa, with her hand on her own skirts of robin's-egg duchesse silk; and Isabel's hand had knotted, without the exercise of will, in the nothing behind her own thigh. She had been thinking of her dresses, back in Suffolk. She had been thinking of Theo's long fingers reaching out, to straighten her hat. She had been thinking about Theo's hands, and how they had rested on her waist -- her petticoats -- her thighs. Without even unlacing her stays.

"Any letters?" Isabel asks, raising her voice up, up; thick with wine, and Ulrika nods and passes over two: one from Vienna -- Bettina's tedious brother, Isabel thinks, with a sigh; and the other, battered and fat, from Paris, enclosing a second redirected from Suffolk marked from Stabroek -- and Isabel feels everything else falling away.

In her room. In her stinking attic room, too hot with the shutters drawn and freezing with them open; outside the window, the comet burns bright and then brighter, as bright as the moon; with its tail misting out across its moon-bright sky. Isabel turns the sheets over and over, unreading, until the lines sharpen at last with the wind: My dear Frederick, Alexander writes, has written; and Isabel's eyes prickle as she reads, I am afraid that your letter informing Miss Burnet of your whereabouts has somehow managed to go astray. And Sophy -- oh, of course, Sophy: writes four paragraphs about her garden experiments and barely has room to squeeze in two afterthought sentences in which she manages to reprimand Isabel without saying anything at all. Your father, Sophy writes, and his household are all in the best of health; and George is, I understand, growing quite as can be expected. Theo wrote -- in South America, of late -- and asked me to forward the enclosed to you, once I found out where --

Enough. Enough, enough. Isabel slides it into the box with the others; and puts off her scholar's hat and her boy's jacket and her trousers, in the Prussian style, and washes her face in cold water, and goes to bed.

"Bad news from home?" Ulrika asks, in the morning.

"No," Isabel says. She perches so that her arms rest beside Ulrika's thick tattooed wrists on the bar. "And with that number of forwarding addresses, it ought to hardly count as news at all." South America. The North Sea. Isabel hardly ever reads the Navy Lists. There is a fish in blue and green, just below Ulrika's right palm: twisting into a sea-breaking leap. When Ulrika plunges her hands into the basin to wash the dishes it dives, and dives.

"Hmph." Ulrika clatters a portion of bread and cheese and herring towards her. "You children," she says, in her accented English; "You can hardly keep track of yourselves, God forbid anyone else," and Isabel presses her thumb to the fish's feathered tail, and ducking her head. "Ah, well," Ulrika says, sounding regretful and amused; "ah, well," and Isabel drops her hand.

She returns to the observatory like a magnet drawn north. By mid-morning light, its walls glow like gold beyond the wrought iron. She straightens her hat and addresses the public entrance: an abstracted young lecturer directs her down the hall to the little cramped offices, with nameplates on the door. Wilhelm Selvig is kind, thoughtful, understanding; but not as senior, perhaps, as a young man like Frederick Dunstable might like. He will ask, of course; consult his fellows, but perhaps -- if Mr. Dunstable were willing to leave Stockholm -- go to Uppsala, perhaps -- if Mr. Dunstable were willing to take his feet from the sea --

In her stinking attic room Isabel burns her paper. Sheet upon sheet. The least useless of her work she keeps in the box above her letters; the rest, she burns. Sheet upon sheet. She ought to feel herself fading, dissolving, melting away. She had feared it in Suffolk, this very thing, when Theo took her wrist before a conspiracy of liars and slid her into a manacle of a ring -- but of course, Isabel sold her ring in London, just as she watched herself in the looking-glass and put her sewing scissors to her mousey hair; and here, in her stinking attic room, she puts herself to the torch. She crumbles her own lesser selves into dust. In Stockholm.

In Stockholm, by comet-light, in Charlotta Selvig's drawing room, there is Elsa Selvig in robin's-egg duchesse silk; and this time when Isabel follows her up the stairs, up the stairs, up the stairs, to look at the comet through the telescope whose use Elsa Selvig had coaxed and coquetted out of her astronomer papa, Isabel's hands do not grab for things that are not there. Instead -- instead. And when, past midnight, Isabel stumbles back through the door of Solen Tavern, Ulrika has pulled one heavy knee up to the bar and is yelling in her accented English, her thick hand in a fist with one red extended finger; as a sailor with dirty-blond whiskers shouts back from London's East End, three of his fellows with better judgement dragging him back by his shirt: the war conducted only ever on paper, and over too much ale. Isabel turns, and weaves her way up the stairs. Flings open her shutters. Drops her hat, and her jacket, and her trousers in the Prussian style. Without the aid of lenses and mirrors the comet is imprecise, and thus mysterious: a star, large; bright and bridal-veiled; and how Elsa had flushed. Pink from forehead to ankles. Isabel had pressed her back against her papa's telescope, whispered into her hair, her throat; had put her hands on her duchesse silk waist and her muslin petticoats and chemise; and Elsa had gasped, Frederick, as Isabel slid her fingers up the satin-soft insides of Elsa's damp thighs, without even unlacing her stays. Theo hadn't unlaced her stays. Theo's eyes had been as dark as her candle-limned coffee-colored hair; and she had touched Isabel's waist, and petticoats, and her wet thighs -- and Isabel rolls onto her stomach on her narrow rickety bed, knees crossed, open mouthed.

"Fredrik," Ulrika sighs over Isabel hunched over her plate in the morning; "Oh, you English." Sigh upon sigh, as she fills up a mug with pale beer.

"I'm not weak," says Isabel.

The observatory in Stockholm! Thick walled! Sea air! Isabel stiffens herself shoulders and spine, and calls upon the residence. A Mr. Dunstable, to see the Head; but no, he does not have an appointment. Herr Cronstrand, Mr. Dunstable believes, will see him anyway: he has come all the way from London, via Vienna, and Berlin, and Krakow and Prague -- to study at Cronstrand's far northern observatory, to monitor the movement of the heavens, in their long winter nights --

The maid does not believe Herr Cronstrand will be available; but she turns out to be incorrect.

"But why," asks Cronstrand, in his soft and accented English, "should you come so far, when Mr. Hershel -- at Greenwich -- "

I had heard of your reputation, Frederick Dunstable ought to say. Your work with -- . Isabel says, "I grew up in Suffolk. There was a great deal else that I wanted to see."

"Hm," says Cronstrand; but he is a young man, and he smiles.

"Hm!" says Wachschlager; "then -- it is Bäcker's round, I think -- " but Isabel laughs (too high mustn't immeasured) but she says, quick, "No -- I shall have a proper salary -- mine, no mine, I insist, keep your money -- " and all of them roar with approval and drink, and drink, and drink; and Isabel, who learned her lessons carefully in Prague, manages to not end her evening vomiting into the snow, but only just.

"Hm," Ulrika says, soft, with her lined mouth heavy, with her thick arm around Isabel's waist. "Careless."

"Ulrika, I would like -- I shall be able to use their telescope," Isabel says, the staircase wavering as she blinks heavy eyes. "And take my measures, and have a salary."

Ulrika opens the door, murmuring, "Very good," with her heavy red hand in Isabel's hands oh her hands. Isabel tugs at Ulrika's loose collar, her sailor's practical coat, above her man's shirt and her chemise.

"Tu as beaucoup bu, Fredrik," Ulrika says, very softly, with her broad fingers wrapping around Isabel's wrist; and Isabel surges up like a fish from the sea, and draws Ulrika's hand to the front of her coat. "Fredrik," Ulrika sighs, into her mouth; You're very drunk, Fredrik; but her fingers curl around Isabel's buttons, and tug them free. One, by one, by one. She unfastens Isabel's hooks, and unlaces her stays. She does not seem surprised.

The shutters are open. Isabel lies open. Ulrika's hands strong and rough on her ribs: so much broader, and wider, and heavier: ever so sure. Isabel's bare prickling white legs that had parted, by inches, for Theo's long coaxing fingers, until the whole of her lay spread open on clean sheets and trembled in her pushed-up chemise and her stays. Ulrika strips her to the skin. Isabel pulls, and Ulrika kneels up: skirts up, chemise up, to bare broad hot thighs marked with mermaids, the twining blue-haired twins who nuzzle their faces to Isabel's cheeks. "Please," Isabel says, and then, "please;" and Ulrika makes a low noise deep in her chest and hitches up, closer, kneeling above Isabel's trembling bare belly as Isabel slides her fingers into her, slick -- hot -- Ulrika grabs for the head of the little narrow bedframe; gasps when Isabel strokes her down her slipping valleys. Caresses her peaks. Isabel had two fingers in Elsa, at first, and then petted her into making room for three; with her boy's jacket buttoned up and her breasts aching to burst from her seams. By candlelight with Isabel bare naked and prickling, as Ulrika drips onto her arm. She is panting; she can hear herself. Her bellows-breath. Ulrika grabs at her throat, and digs her other hand into her cropped curling hair. Ulrika's mermaids with their mouths half-open, desperate and begging, as they strain to kiss Isabel's wrist.

"I would," Isabel says, tongue thick, as Ulrika shudders above her, again -- again -- "I would have you -- Ulrika, I would like -- "

Ulrika's thick voice, ripping around slipping Swedish sounds; and then, in English. "Up, then;" but with her back flat to the mattress Isabel pitches and yaws. Ulrika stands, with her soft belly and her heavy hanging breasts, tapestries on her hips and her ribs, and her grasping hands -- "Up, please," she is saying, as she pulls Isabel up to unsteady sitting. "Up!" Ulrika says, sharper. Drags Isabel up and over and Isabel -- "Fredrik;" her spine bowed, face down -- "Up, s'il te plaît," with her arms sprawled over the mattress to hold her steady, and the gritty floor digging into her knees. Ulrika's foot presses into the back of her legs. Knocks her calves apart; and Isabel moans, pressing her face to the sheets. Her burning bare thighs, dripping already; and her skin bursting open at her seams. Fredrik, s'il te plaît.

The shutters are open. The comet pours in.

"The comet," Isabel manages, breathing deep. With her ribs still trembling, and her skin awash, she struggles for words. I will be able to measure its course. Beside the bed Ulrika is straightening her chemise. Her skirts. Its course: sa voie. Isabel says, "Je pourrai tracer sa voie."

"Very good," Ulrika says, and reaches one broad hand down to pat Isabel's cheek. Her fingers trace down, down, down; pinch the peak of Isabel's breast. Isabel's skin jumps, as she squirms, giggling. "Félicitations, my friend," Ulrika says; and Isabel is smiling, as her eyes slip shut.

"Sophy." Isabel's mouth is moving, unbidden. "She would be so very proud of me."

"Sophy," says Ulrika, from far away. "Who is she -- Sophy?"

"My sister-in-law," Isabel says, and is asleep.

Through her wide-open shutters the dawn light glints like knives. Isabel squints; dresses; swallows coffee and toast and herring and when Ulrika raises an eyebrow at her Isabel snaps, "Oh really," and Ulrika laughs; but over mirrors to polish and lenses to grind in the cellar workshop at Stockholm Observatory, with Cronstrand leaning over her shoulder, Isabel's skull aches, and her abdomen, and her back. When he finally releases her, she falls into bed, and falls into bed, and falls into bed until when, of an early November Sunday, Franz Bäcker calls, his eyes concerned -- "But Freddy, we've hardly seen you, for weeks" -- she is forced to admit him correct. Mirrors to polish and lenses to grind; and in the fire-heated half-light: Fredrik, s'il te plaît. But Bäcker is her friend, and has been, a younger Alexander even if they are not of a kind; and so Isabel concedes to follow him in the moonlight darkness of half past four in the afternoon to Fru Selvig's overheated drawing room, crowded with talk of the purpose of poetry, and the essence of learning. Isabel attends, but only just; on the far side of the room Elsa Selvig's dark disquieting eyes slant down and over, to the fine narrow waist of Captain Eklund, or perhaps the well-proportioned shoulders of Günter Lindskog; and if her eyes do not seem to fall on slight mousey-haired Frederick Dunstable at all, Isabel finds it hard to feel much but relief. It is very late by the time Bäcker, who lives in an ill-lit back room off Kåkbrinken, walks with Isabel to Solen Tavern; but Isabel has grown accustomed to working late into the night; and with the comet above her she forgets that Bäcker is a poet, that he calls her by her Christian name, that he sat beside her in Hasselbacken with his arm around her shoulders and said --

"Freddy," very quietly, and very close; and she eases his gripping hand from her shoulder, and clasps it between them instead.

He draws a deep, deep breath, and pulls --

She says, "No -- don't -- Bäcker -- I wouldn't." His face is very red. His forearm held in her hand. "I wouldn't ever say," she repeats, and eases her voice; "to anyone," she adds, sounding ever so much more herself. "You are my friend."

His head jerks up. Lips parting. Eyes wide.

Her heart is pounding. She hasn't ever said it aloud. She has never said: not to Bettina, who didn't know and didn't care, damn her; and not to Alexander, who recognized her anyway; and not to Ulrika, because there was no need. In nearly three years Isabel hasn't once said, and she will not say it now, any more than Theo had said it to her. For Theo had said nothing, nothing; merely stood for Isabel, her scientist, in a maiden's sprigged muslin morning dress, with her long hair wound tight around her head, to unbutton Theo's tightening blue lieutenant's coat: to bare Theo's brown collarbones, her sea-worn shirt, and beneath, the white men's corset laced tight across her breasts; and then Theo had met her eyes, and three weeks later wreathed Isabel's third finger with a ring. So now in the thin sea air beside Solen Tavern, Isabel says nothing, and Bäcker says nothing, but his forearm is in her hand -- and as his face settles back to itself, he turns his fingers, and clasps her wrist.

In Solen Tavern. The fire burns low; in these few sinking-dark sleeping hours between closing and dawn, and Ulrika is already gone to bed. Isabel latches the door and wends her way up the stairs, up the stairs, up the stairs; and throws open her shutters to let in the sky. The air is as sharp as snapping teeth; and smells of snow, and their fires, and salt. And in Stockholm, Theo had sighed, aching; the air is like -- like snapping teeth, she had said, and it felt inconceivable, that I would ever run out of sea.

She had shivered, looking away. Her collarbones bare. Face pink.

Isabel loosens her jacket and hangs up her hat, and sits on her bed with her letter-box in her lap, and watches the comet fade into lavender and white. She'll be expected at the observatory before noon, with her head still heavy with wine; to sweep up and carry coffee and Whisper, boy, do you hear us shouting?; to double-check the most tedious calculations and clean-copy papers with other people's names; to grind lenses and polish mirrors with the threat of Cronstrand's supervision constantly hanging over her shoulder; but in exchange, she will be permitted, perhaps, a quarter-hour of observation in the cloudiest bits of the night, and come home near dawn, exhausted and buzzing and full up of light.

You are, Theo had whispered, like the sun, with her hand upon Isabel's cheek.

Isabel opens the box.

Crossed sheets from Paris, and Vienna, and Berlin; illegible notes from Pechácek in Prague and considerate replies from Mr. Herschel in Greenwich, and in between Sophy's half-read impossible letters: a conversation carried on by Isabel only in silence, even to the face of her oldest friend. Isabel smoothes the sheets on her knee, and reads of Sophy's recalcitrant hybrid pinks, and the difficulty of producing a climbing habit in anything worth growing and the mildew on the Celsiana and the unseasonable rain -- and oh, your father keeping well and George growing just as he ought but more importantly: the roses in Suffolk in August: these sickly-smelling leggy whites, these recalcitrant hybrid pinks. In her mind Isabel sketches and shades: Sophy's sun-flushed cheeks and disordered hat, and the ink on her fingers and the dirt on her sleeves: the first keeper of Isabel's faith and her best friend for a decade. For eons. For ages, before Isabel thought to see anything of Sophy's sister in the shape of her eyes; or glowing in all that coffee-colored hair. Isabel stacks the sheets together, and dashes her palm over her eyes.

The light through the window is full morning, of a Monday, in November; and Frederick Dunstable, lately of London, will be wanted at the observatory before noon. Isabel has calculations to do, for af Schultén and Svanberg -- but not, she thinks, just yet. I am come to Stockholm, she will say. I am staying at an inn off Prästgatan, with a friend. She will say, After some difficulty, I have at last found a position at the Observatory; she will say, in Stockholm, on the coast. She unfolds the last of her paper, and takes up her pen. My dearest Sophy, she will write, hand shaking; I hope your hybrids have taken, since I heard from you last -- and please send me news of Theo, if you have it -- to 'Frederick Dunstable', you understand.

Ulrika will know a man who knows a man who has a boat who runs the lines. Isabel puts her pen to paper, to float her words to sea; and she will polish mirrors and grind lenses and do the most tedious calculations on papers bearing other people's names; will drink with Wachschlager and Videbeck and Bäcker, with his arm around her shoulders as he roars into her ear; will dance with Elsa Selvig at the first party of the spring; and night after night nearing dawn, Isabel will put her eye to the heavens, and fill herself with light. The comet will fade, and the embargo will disperse, and English ships will trickle back into their harbor, and Ulrika's accent will improve; and on the first of another September with a letter from Suffolk in her pocket, Isabel will pull her coat collar up against the snapping teeth of the wind and await the tides, at the edge of the never-ending sea.

---

Author's Notes:
First, on history, and my liberties therewith: (1) Because of its alliance with Napoleonic France, Sweden was technically at war with Britain in 1811, but there wasn't ever any active fighting between them; and there was a lot of very active smuggling going on to get British goods into Sweden. (2) While the main players in this story are all fictitious, there are some cameos by real historical people, though I have played a little fast and loose with their places of residence. Simon Anders Cronstrand became the head of the Stockholm Observatory in mid-1811, at the age of twenty-seven; Natanael Gerhard af Schultén and Jöns Svanberg were likewise astronomy-affiliated Scandinavian scientists of the period, though I haven't confirmed that they were involved with the Observatory in 1811 in particular. William Herschel and his sister Caroline were both astronomers of considerable renown, who, though born on the continent, worked primarily in England, and had close relationships with the British Royal Court. Anna Maria Lenngren was a Swedish woman of letters and salonist of the age. Bettina von Arnim was a German writer, whose brother, Clemens Brentano, was also an important figure in the Romantic period. Alexander von Humboldt, the model for Isabel's correspondent in Paris and at the Prussian court, was a naturalist, explorer, and (admittedly Eurocentric) humanitarian, who is also widely suspected to have had affairs with both men and women. I have no reason to suspect that von Humboldt actually did ever offer any kind of friendship or protection to a young lady scientist passing herself off as a boy; but I likewise have no reason to suspect that he didn't. (3) Similarly, I have no reason to suspect that any particular Royal Navy lieutenant of the Napoleonic period was secretly a lady-loving lady with a hot astronomer wife, but by gum I hope at least one was. And second: all my thanks to EJ for audiencing, encouragement, and a lightning-fast multilingual beta well at work on my questionable English, and nonexistent French.

Sensual in Such Non-Conventional Ways

Aosora Hikaru (青空 ヒカル)
illustrated by Nebulosity Çiélon

A few words uttered, a rush of power, a plume of smoke... A newly empty space, previously occupied by a beautiful woman.

A gasp ran through the crowd and Jo grinned, an eyebrow cocked in challenge. I dare you to challenge what you have seen. I dare you to doubt me.

She gave a few more moments to let the tension build, allowing enough time for a well-rehearsed dramatic reappearance to have the maximum effect. Another puff of smoke, a dramatic wave of her hand, and a rush of air from the audience's collective letting out a held breath echoed through the auditorium.

Cassandra stepped forward and Jo made a broad sweep of her arm. She is whole, the gesture said. I have done the impossible.

"Jo the Magnificent, ladies and gentlemen!" The announcer bowed low, sweeping his arm toward Jo on the stage.

She bent forward in a deep bow herself, then stood and took the hand of the woman by her side, and shouted, "And, of course, who could forget the lovely Cassandra?"

The cheers of the audience were deafening as Jo bowed, Cassandra dipping in a deep curtsy. The curtains rustled as they fell closed, and the ladies stood up to meet the announcer.

"That was marvelous, simply marvelous!" His cheeks were bright, a grin spread across his face. "Stupendous work, Jo, as always. And Cassandra!" He turned and clasped her hands in his own, pulling her close. "Cassandra, Cassandra. What I wouldn't give to have you by my side instead of this cocky--"

"Don't get your hopes up. She's with me, Bill, as always." Jo stepped forward, grinning as she draped an arm over Cassandra's shoulders. "Someday you'll get your own beautiful assistant, I'm sure."

Cassandra let out a light giggle, slipping her gloved hands from the announcer's grip and leaning into Jo's embrace. "I'm sure I could talk to the other girls, one must be dying to help out with such a lovely venue. If you'll excuse me, gentlemen," she said, a sly grin cast in Jo's direction, "I must be off for a bit. I need to freshen up before the next show!"

Bill nodded, the flesh of his face moving in a wave with the effort expended, and shooed her in the direction of the changing rooms. "Yes, yes, please do! You mustn't look anything but the best!"

Jo turned to watch Cassandra as she walked down the hall, her hips swaying in her clingy gown, the feathers tucked into her coif bouncing. "She always does. Bill, it's been lovely, but I need to make sure I have everything set up for the next show myself. You mustn't leave the audience hanging, after all. They're itching to meet you and talk about the act." She held up a finger in teasing reprimand. "You can't give away the secrets."

"Of course not, like I would ever--" Bill spluttered, shaking his head as Jo laughed.

"I know you wouldn't, you daft man. Now go!" Jo grinned, waving Bill off as she turned to head down the hall herself.

She didn't go to the prop room, however; she took a left instead and stopped outside of Cassandra's dressing room. "Are you decent, my dear?" Jo called.

"Entirely too decent," Cassandra replied, and opened the door, grasping for Jo's collar with a mischievous grin. "Now get in here. How dare you keep me waiting."

Jo was careful to shut the door to the small dressing room behind her, then returned Cassandra's grin as she backed Cassandra up against the wall. The breaks between their performances usually started this way. A set routine they followed, comforting while still thrilling, and sating burning needs. "So sorry, my darling. I couldn't risk Bill trying to follow me."

There wasn't much room in there; barely enough for the sink and wardrobe, with a small chaise wedged between the wardrobe and the wall. When Jo backed Cassandra against the wall, the picture frames around the room rattled with even that delicate impact of Cassandra's body. She sighed impatiently as she reached up to untie the cravat at Jo's neck with practiced fingers. She wasted no time; there was barely enough time between the shows without them dawdling about it. "I still can't believe he did that before. How else are we supposed to get any time alone at all if he follows us?"

"I don't know, my love." Jo bent to ghost a kiss across Cassandra's cheek, her hands sliding around Cassandra's ribs to feel for the zipper, and muttering a curse when her gloves dulled her sense of touch too much to find the pull. After tossing the cursed things aside, she pulled the zipper open, sighing with relief at the skin revealed as Cassandra's thankfully strapless dress slid down.

Cassandra grinned as she shoved the dress the rest of the way down and kicked it aside, then tossed her own opera gloves in the same direction. "I'll leave the pearls on, darling, if you don't mind."

Jo took a moment to take in the sight -- Cassandra stood before her, nude except for a pair of sheer stockings, heels, and a long strand of pearls, wrapped twice about her neck before draping down between her breasts. "Please do." Jo leaned forward to growl against Cassandra's collarbone. "I would have made you, anyway."

A shudder slipped through Cassandra's body, the softest moan passing her lips as she shoved Jo's tuxedo jacket off of her shoulders. She managed the first two buttons of Jo's shirt before Jo reached up to stop her.

"No, I think this is about you this time, my love," Jo murmured. "I'm feeling territorial right now... I want you to remember me today."

"Oh, God." Cassandra shivered again under Jo's touch, panting as Jo shrugged out of her tuxedo jacket. Hunger burned in her eyes as Jo took the time to roll up her shirt sleeves, and as Jo approached again, Cassandra reached out to pull her closer. When Jo simply meant to tease her with another soft kiss, Cassandra held her as close as she could and kissed her with what Jo imagined to be every bit of that hunger.

The ends of Jo's lips curled up in the kiss as she slid a hand up Cassandra's side to cup over one of her breasts. As she brushed a thumb over the nipple, already hard with arousal and anticipation, Jo murmured, "Good Lord, it's like you couldn't even wait for me to get back here with you."

"Don't be daft." Cassandra pushed herself into Jo's touch, her voice breathless, "It's not nearly as fun without you here."

"You've tried before?" Jo asked, knowing the answer was already yes, and also knowing this, like their routine, was part of the game she and Cassandra played.

Jo, of course, knew her part as well as she knew the one on the stage. The words flowed like water, showing how unashamed she was of her actions. "Of course. Once, you took so long to get back here, and I wanted you so badly, that I--" She halted as Jo moved to pepper kisses down her throat.

With Cassandra's halt, Jo paused the kisses. Her lips brushed against the pulse in Jo's neck as she spoke. "You need to keep talking if you want to have any fun."

Cassandra let out a soft whine, then drew a breath. "I started without you."

"You certainly did," Jo murmured, and having moved as Cassandra spoke, her lips now brushed the tip of Cassandra's nipple. "It was completely unfair."

"Oh, God--" Cassandra moaned, pushing her chest forward, and Jo obliged her unspoken request by drawing the nipple into her mouth and teasing it with her tongue. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as Cassandra struggled to continue. "I hadn't been going for very long before you walked in, and you said -- oh, Jo -- you said to keep going."

Jo hummed affirmation and slid her hand down Cassandra's side and around to cup between her legs.

Drawing another deep breath as she spread her legs apart wider, Cassandra continued, "And I did. I thought you were angry with me, but that look in your eyes... You were glad for it. It was a new opportunity for amusement." She had to stop again, unable to force the words out as Jo stroked her finger against that sensitive pearl in her folds, but she struggled on. "And you told me what you wanted to see -- what you wanted me to do."

Another shudder rippled through Cassandra's body, and Jo took advantage of that to shift her hand, sliding a finger inside as she pressed against that most sensitive spot with her thumb. It didn't take long for Cassandra to cry out. "Please, Jo... My love. Please."

Jo pulled back, looking up at Cassandra with her flushed complexion, that blush spreading down her neck and across her breasts. "I do so love it when you beg me. All right; we haven't got all the time in the world, after all."

Cassandra sighed as Jo drew her fingers away, but her eyes grew bright as Jo urged her to the chaise crammed in the corner of the dressing room.

"Just because we're here now," Jo murmured as she helped Cassandra down, "doesn't mean I expect you to stop talking."

With a whimper, Cassandra bit her lip, and gave a slight nod as Jo settled herself on her knees at the edge of the chaise. "It felt so amazing, with you telling me what to do..."

Jo smiled to herself as she grasped Cassandra's thighs and pulled her closer to the edge, then began a slow chain of kisses from the edge of Cassandra's stocking up her thigh. That afternoon was one of her favorite memories, and Cassandra had been all too willing to be told what to do. Each of Jo's words had pushed her closer and closer to the edge, and her response to each suggestion had been the most aroused Jo had ever seen her. The way Cassandra had moved, here on the chaise, as she chased her climax...

That buildup was what Jo aimed for today.

The closer Jo's kisses came to the top of her thigh, the faster Cassandra's breathing grew, and she let out a pleading whine as Jo moved to place her kisses on the opposite thigh. "Keep talking," Jo murmured.

"I especially loved when you would tell me to speed up or slow down -- oh, God -- and I want that again, Jo, I want to feel like that again, please...!"

Jo hummed softly, then moved forward to place a soft kiss on the soft folds there at the apex of Cassandra's thighs. Cassandra let out a soft moan in response, and Jo, spurned on by Cassandra's response, darted out her tongue to tease between the delicate folds. She pushed Cassandra's thighs apart more and began to move more enthusiastically, sucking and licking in equal measure. Cassandra began to writhe, quiet moans building up to louder cries, until they went quiet with a muffled tone -- most likely from a hand clapped over her mouth.

This was how Jo liked Cassandra best: completely undone, completely at her whim, completely willing to let Jo do whatever she pleased. It was so easy to push Cassandra closer to her peak by focusing more on that most sensitive nub, and easier still to bring her back to pleading whines by moving away from it. She knew exactly what Cassandra loved, and Jo herself loved to exploit it.

After a few minutes of teasing with only her mouth, Jo brought a hand up, sliding two fingers into Cassandra with her palm cupped under her chin. Enough practice had made this motion easy, and it was all too simple to hook those fingers up while making broad strokes with her tongue. It didn't take long for Cassandra's body to grow more and more taut, until she clamped down on Jo's fingers, her back arching up as she cried Jo's name loud enough for it to echo.

If anyone had been walking past the room, they certainly knew what had just happened.

As Cassandra came down from her peak, Jo settled back onto her ankles, a grin spreading wide across her face. "And how was that, my darling?"

Cassandra let out a breathless giggle, which quickly grew into a full, deep laugh. "That was phenomenal."

A sharp knock at the door, echoing through the small space, interrupted them. "We need you on stage in fifteen, Miss Cassandra."

"Ah-- yes, I'll be right there!" Cassandra shouted, her eyes wide as she sprang up from the chaise, nearly tripping over Jo. Her legs trembled and she nearly collapsed, but the wall provided support enough to allow her to circle the perimeter to the room to the sink.

Jo stood and ran a hand over her mouth, then joined Cassandra at the sink. While she carefully washed her hands and face, she chuckled at Cassandra's harried attempts to correct her hair and makeup to hide her disheveled, flushed appearance. "You looked better when I was done with you."

This comment did not help Cassandra's flush, and her skin grew ruddier as the color spread down to her breasts again. "Stop it, Jo. I can't go out there on stage like this." She repositioned a few bobby pins in her hair, and though her words had been annoyed, her eyes still crinkled at the corners with amusement and endearment.

Grinning, Jo dried her hands, then fetched Cassandra's dress. She smoothed out some of the rumples, then held it out for Cassandra. "I'm sorry. May I be of some assistance, my love?"

They locked eyes in the mirror and Cassandra smiled, some of the flush of her cheeks fading. "Yes, please."

Jo helped Cassandra zip in to her dress again and gathered up the other miscellaneous pieces of their costumes, pausing before opening the dressing room door to press another delicate kiss to Cassandra's lips. "Meet you here again after the next show?"

"Always," Jo murmured. "I'm looking forward to the magic you work next time."

The Red Woman

by shukyou (主教)
illustrated by eluneth

In her ninety-fifth summer, Mayrat af-Qash met the dragon.

She'd been expecting something to happen; ninety-five was an auspicious number, after all, and to make it to one's ninety-fifth year was an auspicious thing. Of course, most people lacked the heavy preservation of magic saturating their bones, making them look no more than four decades old, but Mayrat hardly considered that cheating. She'd given much of her life to her magic, and thus she thought it only fair it gave back.

She was working in her garden, tending to the grapevines that hung heavy with black summer fruit, when the evening air stirred and she looked over just in time to see a red dragon roughly the size of a large horse land on her roof. Most humans were struck dumb with awe and terror upon seeing a dragon; Mayrat was just irritated. "Get off!" she shouted, sweeping her arms in a great shooing motion. "You fat awful lizard, get off! You'll cave the thatch in!"

For a moment, the dragon just looked at her, and Mayrat had cause to wonder whether or not all dragons were capable of understanding human speech, or whether they only sent forth as their envoys the ones who did. This one wasn't very bright, obviously, or it would have settled on the clay path to Mayrat's front door or the fallow field by the well or literally any other surface that did not include her somewhat fragile and quite flammable roof. "Get off!" she shouted again, and this time she cracked a shower of sparks from her knuckles; sure, she'd burn down her own house in the process, but she'd always been the kind of person who could accept the consequences of her own folly better than she could deal with the fallout from other people's stupidity, and that went for dragons too.

But the dragon at last huffed and flapped its wings, relocating to the ground near the patio where Mayrat took her evening tea. It was a good thing this dragon was small, she realized; she'd seen paintings of ambassadors as big as cathedrals, whose long necks and terrifying claws gave even her great heart pause. Size notwithstanding, the dragon still wasn't welcome. "Go away!" she shouted, marching over. She'd been weeding, and thus she found herself brandishing a trowel as though it were a sword without particularly meaning to. "I've no goats for you to eat and nothing of particular interest for you to knock down. Also, I'm a very powerful magician, and if you make me cross, I will ... be very cross." Damn it all, she was only wearing a light dress; without her robes or other trappings of office, she looked as imposing as a mother of eight on market day.

"I know who you are," said the dragon, its voice soft and low as distant thunder. It beat its wings again, but instead of rising into the air, it sat upright in a way Mayrat associated more with begging dogs than with mighty creatures.

"Then you know why you should leave." Self-conscious about her lack of attire, Mayrat brought her hand to smooth her hair and realized she'd pruned the vines right into her long brown curls. This was doing nothing for her dignity. Faced with a grooming choice, she opted to leave the plants there; perhaps they looked intentional. "Go on, then. Shoo!"

The dragon barked a laugh, and Mayrat could see little tongues of flame flick out from between its sharp teeth. Well, perhaps it would be especially impressed by her skill set. "You'd tell a dragon to shoo?"

"Not much of a dragon, are you?" answered Mayrat, standing now well within range of any attacks. It was easy to be brave, she supposed, knowing she couldn't burn. "I've met camels who probably weighed more than you."

"Camels?" the dragon scoffed, a low grumble menacing the word. "I could swallow a camel in a single bite."

"Have to be a rather small camel, wouldn't it?" Mayrat folded her arms across her chest. "Come on, go. The duke's fields are a league and a half to the east, and he can afford to lose some goats, unlike the poor bastards around here. Go there for your snack and leave me be."

The dragon looked as affronted as she supposed a dragon could make its face appear. "Aren't you even curious as to why I've come to you?"

"Not especially," Mayrat lied. Truly, by this point, she was more than a little curious, but she felt she'd already established herself as hostile and didn't want to change her position.

With a huff, the dragon fell back down on all fours and peered closely at Mayrat; up this close to its powerful jaws, Mayrat had to admit that perhaps the camel-swallowing threat wasn't such an idle one. Then, with a disgusted snort, it lifted into the sky and flew off toward the west, chasing the last few strips of daylight. Mayrat watched until it was invisible against the darkening sky, then stayed a little longer to watch the stars twinkle into view.

Well, that had been strange, but it hadn't been the strangest thing that had happened all week, and for that she supposed she should be grateful. She raked the dead vines from her hair and tossed them on the ground, then went back inside her house (which mercifully seemed to have suffered no damage from its brief tenure as a dragon's perch) and began to prepare supper. By the time she had finished her wine and bedded down for the night, she'd nearly put the whole encounter out of her mind for good.

---

Her next visitors were of the more expected type, and they came during the middle of the day, their faces veiled. She thought this had been a good compromise on the duke's part; after all, if they were the ones who were going to show up unannounced and at irregular intervals, why should she be the one who spent her whole life covered and waiting for their arrival? She wondered how much of her they could see through that fabric, how heavy they'd had to make it until they could convince themselves the shadow of her they saw wasn't enough to curse them. A large part of her wanted to rip off the veils and make them stare, but she knew that would only terrify two low-level messengers, when it was the duke she'd curse if she really had that power.

The taller of the two carried only a scroll, though his partner kept one hand on the heavy sword at his waist. Even their horses, left tied to the gate posts, had blinders drawn over their eyes. "Enchantress Mayrat af-Qash," the taller guard addressed her, using the duke's preferred title for her as he peeked from under his veil at the paper he held. "His Great Majesty Duke Naq ar-Javan ar-Baresh ar-Dain ar-Hamisar wishes to inquire as to the progress of your work."

She tried so hard to be polite to the underlings, she really did, but it didn't come easy. "Tell His Royal Nonsense that when I do find a way to make his impossible dreams come true, he'll be the first to know."

The two men shifted uncomfortably, such that she almost felt bad. The speaker cleared his throat. "Enchantr--"

"Oh, don't tell him verbatim," Mayrat said, waving her hand with enough force that she could hope he'd see. "Use whatever ridiculous honorifics and however many of his names he's using these days. But the truth is that making me report on my progress is a distraction from actually making progress. And you can spin that any way you like, but it'll still be true."

There was a long silence, and then the speaker lowered the scroll to his side and took a step forward, keeping his eyes veiled all the while but now clearly trying to do his best to meet her eyes. "Enchantress, there's more to the message."

"No doubt," she said. Her coffee was going to go cold before she even got to the first sip. "Well, go on and deliver it; the sooner you do, the sooner you can go."

She had no doubt he agreed with the wisdom of her statement, but again he hesitated before speaking -- and when he did, gone was the tone and pomp of a royal messenger; instead, he spoke like a weary man at the end of his rope. He couldn't have been more than twenty summers old, judging by the sound of his voice, and likely less even than that. "The duke has made clear his intention to triple his tax tax on the temples and the people of the lands beyond the wadi in an--" He swallowed. "To make up for the money your work is supposed to have brought him, please, Enchantress, spare me, I only speak the message given to me, not to anger you."

What a monstrous reputation she'd gained, though surely not without cause. "Please," Mayrat said, and she saw their shoulders relax a hair's breadth. "I appreciate honesty. Are you hungry?" Both men glanced toward one another and shifted uncomfortably, but gave no reply. She sighed. "Go now, and tell the duke you've delivered his awful message, and on your way back, take some dates from the grove at the crossroads." She pointed back toward the direction from whence they'd come. "The trees are not on my land; they belong to no one. Let the horses drink from the stream there." They were on her land and she tended to them as she did to all the other crops, but had they known that, their superstition would have overridden their hunger and done no one any good. She'd never poisoned a plant in her life and had no intention of starting now just to punish passers-by.

Without further discussion, they bowed to her and set on their way, and she did not watch them go except out of the corner of her eye, so as not to spook them. It was a terrible thing, being a terrible thing. Once she saw that they had indeed stopped at the grove to refresh themselves and their mounts, she sighed with relief and walked back into her house. That, at least, was one less thing to worry about.

Everything they'd told her, though, was one more. Entire tables and benches in her house were filled with various books and artifacts, and she had her experiments and her research that kept her entertained in her solitude, but never once had she come across anything that might bring gold into being where none had been before.

She had trained as an illusionist, or more accurately had trained herself as an illusionist, peeking in classroom windows and breaking into schoolhouses to read books. Even though the Great City of Kaluma boasted thirteen different great houses of training in the magical arts, few of them would take female pupils, and none would take pupils of any kind who couldn't pay their way. Mayrat, on the other hand, had been born to beggars who spent their spare coins on food, not on schooling. She knew what it was to be poor, and she knew what it was to be at the mercy of men who would keep their people poor so long as they themselves grew richer. The people in the land where she lived now were both.

The duke was an idiot, but was hardly the first idiot in his line. His great-grandfather had been an idiot as well, and he'd been the one she'd first come to seventy years previous, full of raw power and empty of discipline; dozens of other rich men and rulers had turned down her offers of service, but she'd said 'illusion' and his eyes had lit up with the thought of the tricks he'd pull on enemies and friends alike, and that had been the end of her search for employment. He'd always been wary of her, especially when he'd seen the ghostly people and illusory monsters she'd conjured up from thin air, but he'd let her stay in the main manor and had made her something of a social celebrity. Not every minor ruler, after all, had his own witch.

That duke's eldest son, the current duke's grandfather, had also been an idiot, but he'd been a superstitious idiot and a lecherous idiot. Mayrat had refused his advances and he'd come down with a fever the same evening, which was all the proof his mind needed that she'd cursed him. She only wished she had, but the damage was done. He was too fearful of her to let her go from his service, though, but he made the city such a hostile place that when he offered her the chance to live on an estate in the country, she agreed without hesitation. He'd taught all three of his sons to fear her, and they in turn had spread that fear throughout the land.

But Duke Naq was not just an idiot, he was a greedy idiot, and those were the worst -- like five-year-old babies throwing tantrums in the market because they couldn't understand why they couldn't have all the pretty sweets they wanted. Mayrat didn't think he believed in the curses his father and uncles and grandfather had so deeply dreaded, which made him less of an idiot than his predecessors, but by now everyone else did, and he had nothing to lose by milking their terror. If nothing else, she was acutely aware, it kept the people from enlisting her help in overthrowing him.

She ran her hands along the dozen gold coins spread over her workbench. She could make them seem to multiply forever -- could fill her entire house with gold coins that felt and tasted real -- only the moment she stopped paying attention to them, they would fade. She could stuff the duke's coffers to the roof and devote her every thought to their contents, but she would have to sleep sometime, and the instant she drifted off, they'd be as empty as they'd been before. That, she'd explained to him, was the essence of illusion. She made nothing; she only made things appear, for a time, to not be nothing. But when the duke had seen illusive coins drip from her fingertips, he'd become convinced there was a way to make them real, and as with a squalling toddler, there was no way to reason with him.

It wasn't as though he were poor, even; the duke had more money than he could spend in a lifetime. But he had been infected with a sickness that made him believe the only thing in life better than money was more money. Starve the people, bleed the fields, just so long as the coins kept rolling in.

Standing there in her kitchen, wondering what to do with the mess she'd let grow up around her, Mayrat closed her eyes and wished very not for the first time in her life that illusion weren't all she could ever hope to accomplish.

---

Two weeks passed before the dragon returned, and in that time, Mayrat slept at most a few hours a night, burning every candle she had as she pored through her books, trying to find some solution to the problem set before her. By that point, she almost wished she had a firstborn child to ransom in exchange for the knowledge, but magic had made her barren and her personality had made her unloveable, so there'd never been any chance of that.

She had set fire to a small, sickly tree in frustration and was watching it burn when she heard the flutter of leathery wings behind her. The great gusts sent sparks down toward the healthy trees, and Mayrat raised her hand and closed her fist, extinguishing them all.

"A human who plays with fire," said the dragon. "I thought someone like that might be brave enough to talk to a beast."

Exhausted, Mayrat was beyond the point of arguing. "All right, because you did not land on my house this time, I will hear you out. Fair?"

"Fair," said the dragon, stretching out on its belly and folding one of its front paws over its other. Prone like this, it was little taller than Mayrat herself, and she supposed if she'd had a death wish, she could have climbed up on its back and asked it for a ride. "Though a shade less grateful than I would have expected, seeing who I am and what I'm offering."

"Then who are you and what are you offering?"

The corner of the dragon's mouth lifted in what might have been a smirk, though Mayrat knew little about reading human expressions and even less about seeing them performed by dragons. "I can offer you gold."

"I don't need gold," said Mayrat, and on a personal level, at least, it wasn't a lie.

"All humans need gold."

"All humans think they need gold. Subtle distinction."

The dragon huffed out air through its nose, blowing back Mayrat's long skirts and tangling her messy hair into an even greater fright. "You do need gold though," it said. "I heard the people in the villages. Your duke needs gold, which means the people he bleeds need gold."

Perhaps the dragon had her there, but Mayrat wasn't ready to concede rhetorical defeat just yet. "And where do you suggest we get gold? Which of the neighboring lands would you suggest we invade and slaughter?"

"Oh, you don't need to kill people," it said, fixing Mayrat with its ruby eyes. "Only dragons."

A moment passed, a long beat. The heat finally worked its way to the heart of the burning tree, and the trunk split with a great crack that sent sparks swirling into the still midday air. It would burn itself out with no trouble, and the rest of the orchard would be better off for it. Mayrat hiked her skirt up away from her feet and began walking back toward her house.

The dragon made a noise of confusion. "Where are you going?"

"Away," Mayrat said without turning back. "I'm mad enough myself; I don't need to talk to anyone who's worse."

"I'm not mad!" The dragon plodded after her, up the hill to her front door, each heavy step sending tremors through the ground.

"Then go to the north and find a knight! Aren't they always keen to slaughter one great beast or another?" Mayrat had never been farther north than Kaluma and everything she knew of the snowy mountain kingdoms came from folklore and legends, but it seemed to her they always ended with swords and bloodshed. She'd never heard of a knight that had killed a dragon, but there was bound to be one or two somewhere. "I'm not a butcher."

"And what of that tree?" The dragon's breath was hot and it licked the backs of Mayrat's ankles.

"That tree," said Mayrat, unable to believe she was even having this argument, "was doomed anyway."

"So is that your metric? You'll only put things out of their misery?"

"I'll put you out of my misery," said Mayrat, aware that ten seconds ago she'd made clear what an empty threat that was. With a heavy sigh, she stopped and turned to face the dragon, hands on her hips, looking as menacing as she could in the dress she'd worn for the last three days straight. Still, with her hair uncombed and her face lined with sleeplessness, she supposed she might look like the curse-dealing hag the people believed her to be. "And what makes you think I'm the one to help you?"

"Because you're desperate." The dragon folded its paws again, waiting. "Like me."

Damn it all to hell, the dragon had her there. With a huff of air to show exactly how much she didn't like this, Mayrat sat down on the low stone wall that ringed her house. "I will give you until the sun hits the top of the trees," she said, pointing to where it was only a finger's width away from the tallest of them.

The dragon sighed in kind, but it didn't back down from the challenge. "What do you know of dragons?"

"Of dragons? Nothing." Mayrat pointed toward the point on the horizon where the sun would disappear a few hours from now. "They live in the west, between the desert and the sea. They don't come out much, and when they do, they tend to eat everything in sight. And apparently at least one of them likes to land on my house."

Mayrat suspected what she saw next was what happened when a dragon tried to roll its eyes. "We don't live in the west. We live under the west. The great plains that connect the four cardinal lands -- the snows of the north, the rivers of the south, the deserts of the east, and the islands of the west -- look flat from above the ground, but beneath are the great caverns where my people live. Have you ever crossed those plains?" When Mayrat shook her head, the dragon continued, "You have to pay, and you can't stay any longer than you need to get over. If you stop to rest, even to sleep or for bad weather, they'll start flying overhead in great circles, like vultures."

She didn't want to ask, she knew better than to ask, but curiosity being what it was, Mayrat couldn't help herself. "Why are they in such a hurry to have people off?" she asked, folding her arms across her chest.

"Gold." The dragon scratched at the ground with its claws, though it disturbed little more than the topsoil. "And gems, some buried no deeper than this. If humans knew...."

"If humans knew, they'd rake the ground as they crossed. So what is it to you?" Mayrat asked.

"The surface, if you'll pardon the expression, is only the surface." The dragon's brow furrowed as it spoke, drawing dark red scales down over those luminous eyes. "You can't imagine what's beneath. I grew up in caverns filled with treasures forged by human hands and precious metals still in the walls. The chamber where I was hatched was encrusted with emeralds; the first thing I remember seeing outside my shell were veins of silver as wide as rivers. There's wealth there beyond counting. And do you know what dragons do with it?"

Mayrat frowned. "Spend it?" she guessed, certain even before she spoke that she'd given the wrong answer.

"Nothing." The dragon's long tongue flicked out from between its teeth as it spoke. "We sit on it. We hold some of it in common, and that which isn't held in common, we fight over. We do nothing with the tolls the caravans pay us to cross. Those of us who can swim scour shipwrecks -- or worse, cause them, then blame the sea and let the whole thing sink. Bodies scrambling for the surface aren't nearly as easy to ignore as are corpses."

The truth was that the whole setup -- if it could be believed, Mayrat reminded herself of that -- sounded monstrous, or perhaps human was the better word for it. "And what's your complaint?" she asked. "From what you've said, it sounds to me like you're not the one who's been wronged."

The dragon's lip curled back from its teeth in a sneer. "It's disgusting. I can't stand it. The elders talk about the noble dragons and our regal history, while acting like common crooks. We don't die of old age, you know, but we're not immortal. Seven moons ago, another dragon ripped out my sire's throat because my sire had laid claim to a great crystal the other wanted. The others all agreed no justice needed to be served, because if my sire had been the faster one, the other dragon would have been the one slain."

Mayrat took a long moment to think about that, her arms folded across her body; the shadows from the tall trees were already touching her knees and soon would be to her face, marking the end of her self-imposed time limit. The day was warm, and she wanted nothing more than a cool drink. "Would you excuse me for a moment?"

"Where are you going?" The dragon rose, straightening its spine.

"Inside." Mayrat pointed to her house. "It's too hot in the sun."

"Aren't you going to invite me in?"

Mayrat looked from the dragon to her front door and back to the dragon again, then once more to the smaller-than-a-dragon front door, just to make sure the connection was clear. "You may come in, though I'm not sure you can."

At that, the dragon sat back on its hind legs, lifting its forelimbs up to its shoulders. It stood twice as tall as Mayrat when it did that, and Mayrat clenched her fists out of reflex, ready to catch whatever flaming breath might come, just in case the dragon had decided that the only solution to a human-sized entryway was burning the whole place down. She didn't know how long she could hold off dragonfire, but she was ready to try.

The dragon, however, started to shrink. At first Mayrat thought her exhausted mind might have been playing tricks on her, presenting to her the illusion of their rapidly growing apart. But no, the dragon was actually shrinking, melting as though it were a wax figure left too close to a fire. Its leathery wings sagged and drooped, then fell against its back and merged with the scaly skin. Its long, thick tail retreated into its body from where it had been the great beast's counterbalance, though it now seemed no longer necessary, as instead of resting on its haunches, it stood on two thick legs. Mayrat watched with undisguised amazement as the dragon's shape shortened and elongated at once, its muzzle flattening, its teeth receding, its claws softening.

At last, what stood before Mayrat on the path to her front door was a human woman -- and a rather young one at that, about the age the village girls were when they started to wed. She was certainly a woman, though, as her bare breasts and her wide hips attested. She was short and had long, straight hair, and every inch of her was the same ruby-red shade the dragon's scales had been.

The new woman locked her fingers together, raised her arms above her head, and smiled as her spine gave several cracks in quick succession. "That's better," she said; her voice was deep still, especially for such a young woman, but not the stormy baritone it had once been. "And now?"

At an utter loss as to any other response, Mayrat opened her front door and gestured for her newly resized guest to lead the way inside.

---

"I actually hate goat," said the dragon-who-was-now-a-woman, as she stuffed another handful of dried figs into her mouth. "It's stringy and terrible. Gamey. And they've got those weird eyes."

Mayrat sat at the other end of the table with her hands folded atop its wooden surface, trying to quantify just what was taking place in front of her. She'd offered the woman-who-had-been-a-dragon a robe, which she had cheerfully refused, and every dish hospitality had compelled Mayrat bring to the table had been consumed and followed up with requests for seconds and thirds. "Is that so."

"It is!" answered the dragon, her human mouth full. She took a heavy swallow of the wine Mayrat had poured for her; some of it spilled and made an darker-red trickle as it ran down the corner of her mouth and onto her breast. So she could look human, that was a fine enough trick, but no one sitting down to a meal with her would ever have believed she'd been raised human, even before they got to her odd coloring. "I don't think anyone really likes goat. Not when there's sheep."

"Not many sheep around here," Mayrat felt compelled to point out.

The dragon shook her head. "No, not here. Up north. That's where I went first, but it was too cold. It was well enough, because I could cover my face and no one would see--" She gestured to the bright red tint of her skin and hair. She looked for all the world as though she'd dipped herself into a vat of red dye and walked out some uniform crimson shade. Some of the temples in Kaluma painted the statues of their goddesses with food on certain feast days, and the dragon looked like one of those now, stained with cherries or pomegranates. The whites of her eyes were white, and her teeth were a pale ivory, but everything else Mayrat could see about her was the same stunning red. Mayrat felt an urge to reach over and touch her, to see if the color might rub off her skin, but refrained. "I started sneaking out at carnival time in the nearest town, when everyone was painted. I'd wait until things got underway and emerge, and no one looked twice."

"Wait--" said Mayrat, but it was too late; the dragon had already thrown a handful of pistachios, still tucked snugly in their shells, into her mouth. The dragon bit down and chewed as though nothing were amiss, though, and Mayrat supposed she could let that go without further comment.

After swallowing, the dragon let out a belch and grinned. She sprawled back in her chair, her legs spread wide, to the point where it was a work of conscious effort for Mayrat not to look down at the thick thatch of red hair at the juncture of her legs and the soft folds shadowed just beneath. "My sire was the most skilled, though. He could change his form into a man's so that even other dragons couldn't tell the difference. It was how he acquired many of the more precious items in his possession."

"Can all of you...?"

The dragon shook her head. "No. Just like not all of us can fly, or swim, or eat stone. We're quite diverse."

Mayrat had never expected in her life she'd be learning this much about dragons, nor all at once. "And you want me to help you kill them?"

The dragon let out a sigh that pushed some of her long, limp hair from her face. "Maybe I exaggerated a little."

"Exaggerated." Mayrat started to refill her own glass from the wineskin, then was reminded that she had company and that a good host would fill their guest's first. Well, she supposed she'd have to content herself with being a mediocre host; she filled her own glass to the brim, then poured the remnants, dregs and all, into the dragon's. She didn't imagine the palate that had taken whole pistachios indiscriminately would notice the difference. "A little."

"It's all too much," the dragon said. "We're no longer noble. We've become ridiculous. We're parodies of ourselves at this point, sitting on top of gold eggs that'll never hatch, hissing at anyone who comes too close because we're afraid they'll take the things we never even use. It's awful to see things like that, and worse to know that if I stay, I won't end up any different. Another few hundred years of it and I might have slit my sire's throat for a pretty stone." She raked her fingers through her long hair, and its weight held it back from her face for a moment, giving her a sleek, streamlined profile; for all the difference between her two forms, Mayrat could see they weren't wholly disconnected.

The birds beyond the window started to sing their dusk-song, and Mayrat drew a shawl around her bare shoulders, mindful of the chill the night air would bring. "I'm hardly an etiquette teacher."

That made the dragon laugh so hard that smoke came out her nose. "No," she said at last, "that much I know. And if you tried a lesson, the closest one would just eat you."

"Well." Mayrat folded her hands in her lap. "That's reassuring."

The dragon arched one crimson eyebrow. "You don't think I'd have come all this way without a plan, do you?"

By the time they finished speaking, the birds had all flown back to their nests for the night and the half-moon was peeking over the eastern horizon. They'd had arguments over certain matters, of course, and Mayrat had voiced all the practical objections she could think of, some of which involved some revision, but most of which the dragon had already considered. And at last, lit by candlelight, Mayrat agreed.

She took the excuse of having left something on her porch to step out for a moment. Alone in the darkness, she took several deep breaths and let them out in slow succession, a funeral march of air. It was madness, of course, and no small part of her knew exactly how foolish it was. In a better world, she wouldn't have agreed; if she had been a better person, she wouldn't have agreed. But she had, and she'd given her word, and if it was all she had to give, then it would have to be enough.

And if it all failed, what was her loss? She would die making something of herself, which was better than another century languishing in a remote house, too terrifying for visitors, too terrified to change anything. Alone with burning trees and the ghosts she made. Anything had to be better.

It was a selfish reason, perhaps, but she was ninety-five summers old; she had earned the right to be at least a little selfish.

Mayrat straightened a few things and went back inside, only to find most of her house empty and her bed full. She sighed, frowning at the tendrils of bright red hair that snaked all across her pillow. "I only have the one bed."

The dragon popped her head out, looked around as though to confirm Mayrat's inventory of her own furniture, and snuggled back down under the covers. "I don't take up much space," she said, while occupying a good three-quarters of the mattress.

"All you do is take up space." Mayrat huffed and hung her shawl on a hook by the window. "And you shouldn't sleep undressed. You'll catch cold."

The dragon rolled her eyes. "Colds are for humans."

"You look human," Mayrat said.

There followed that long, heavy moment where Mayrat felt the weight of her guest's whole gaze on her, from eyes no less piercing for being smaller now they were no longer housed in a dragon's skull. "Of all people," said the dragon, her voice low like the rumble of a great bonfire, "I'd think you'd know not to let your lesser senses make your judgments for you."

Mayrat had every intention of giving that a smug and condescending response, which was why she was startled to find the corners of her lips curving in a smile. "My senses greater and lesser are telling me you're hogging the bed."

The dragon shrugged. "Do you want me to say I'm sorry when I'm not?"

"I want you to move." Mayrat punctuated the order with a light shove, delivered with her bare foot to the dragon's plump bottom. The dragon let out a petulant hiss from between clenched teeth, but giggled a little as she then obediently rolled toward the wall, leaving Mayrat just enough of the bed to fit her body's width, but no more. Mayrat climbed in beneath the sheets and lay flat on her back, folding her hands across her chest. This was all far outside of her normal range of experiences, and she suspected the dragon was only doing it to get a rise out of her, but she was going to be damned if she let anyone else see her give even a drop of sweat. She shut her eyes and took deep, measured breaths, willing herself to sleep.

Great self-control kept her from tensing every muscle in her body and flailing when the dragon draped her arm across Mayrat's waist, but she couldn't stop her eyes from snapping open. The dragon moved closer still, to where Mayrat could feel those great bare breasts against her own bare arm, soft and insistent. The dragon's all-too-human lips came to rest just by the bare curve of Mayrat's neck. "I'm not sleepy," she whispered, her words those distant rolls of thunder again, her breath hot on Mayrat's skin.

Mayrat tried to swallow, but found her throat had gone dry. Her own nipples were little peaks beneath her dress, and every time the dragon shifted, the fabric brushed against the too-sensitive skin. However long it had been since she'd had a guest in her house, it had been far longer since she'd had a guest in her bed, or been one in someone else's. In her heyday in the first duke's employ, she'd had lovers of all types and in all manner of configurations, and her body wasted no time in reminding her how good it was to have a warm and willing woman beside her. Her head filled with thoughts about how easy it would be to push the dragon on her back, to catch those red nipples between her teeth, to shift her body down toward the foot of the bed, to plant her face between those thighs, to taste the sweet skin there and taste it again and again until she made her lover cry the stop that meant more--

"I am," Mayrat said at last, and that was that. The dragon did not push the matter, but neither did she retreat, choosing to fall into dreaming right where she'd placed herself. For Mayrat, sleep was a long time in coming.

---

The coach was a bit ostentatious, perhaps, but never would she let it be said that Mayrat af-Qash did not give fair warning to her arrival.

It was an illusion, of course, as were the impossibly strong horses that pulled it, but that only meant they could do their jobs better and without complaint, and that she'd have to waste no time housing them while in the city. She'd create an entire staff of servants once she settled in -- far more for show than for actual use, but displays of power were their own kind of power -- though for now she and the dragon sat in the coach by themselves, having etiquette lessons despite earlier warnings about their uselessness.

"In fact," Mayrat concluded after nearly an hour's worth of detailed instructions, "best if you don't say anything at all."

The dragon stuck out her tongue and folded her arms across her chest, beneath her still-bare breasts. From hints and bits of what she'd gleaned, Mayrat had more than a little cause to suspect that this dragon, though possibly as old in years as Mayrat herself, was little more than an adolescent by her people's reckoning. "So, I can't eat anyone, I can't threaten to eat anyone, I have to stay looking like this, I have to wear clothes, and now I can't even speak?"

"Until I tell you to, no." Mayrat crossed her legs at the knee in the tight carriage, wishing she'd ever learned how to conjure something that was larger on the inside than it appeared from without. "You could pretend you can't, if that makes it any easier for you."

"How about rude gestures?"

"Absolutely not."

With a great huff, the dragon sank back down into the corner of her side of the carriage and pulled her feet up on the seat next to her. They'd have to close the curtains once they got nearer to settlement areas, but for now, the parted drapes let the sunlight fall across the dragon's prone body. Mayrat caught herself staring at those thighs, letting her eyes wander upward to where they met, and decided to distract herself with lunch. It was nearing midday, after all. "I know it's a bit late to ask, but what's your name?" she asked as she rummaged through the small basket she'd packed.

The dragon frowned. "I don't have one."

"Could I just not pronounce it?" Despite how she'd made a point of packing her more substantial provisions, Mayrat's stomach had become tender with anxiety, and she left the dried meat and goat cheese aside in favor of fruit. She wedged a thumbnail inside a bright ripe pomegranate and cracked it into halves.

"No, I don't have one." The dragon sat up. "Humans have names for things. We know who we are."

Mayrat frowned, a seed caught between her teeth in the moment before being bitten. "Then how do others call for you?"

"They want me, and I come. It isn't difficult." The dragon reached over and snatched a handful of small figs from Mayrat's lap. "We just ... know."

"Well, you'll need a name. You'll be announced at court. Unless you just want to be Lady Shh Nobody Knows She's A Dragon."

The dragon shrugged. "I could do that."

Mayrat's eyes narrowed. "No. You couldn't. You need a name."

"How about just Lady Dragon?"

This was getting ridiculous. "You need a proper name."

"Do you have a proper name?"

"Yes! I have a very proper name!"

Finished with the figs, the dragon went for the rest of the provisions, and Mayrat was only too happy to hand the basket over. "How'd you get your proper name?"

That was a more complicated history question than Mayrat had been expecting to answer this early in the day. "It was my mother's mother's sister's name. She died shortly before I was born, and it's good luck to name a child after a recently deceased relative."

The dragon stuck out her tongue. "Considering that person just died, I'd say all the luck in the name had just run out."

That made Mayrat smile despite herself. "Well, yes, I can't say I've done much with it. Or with the rest of it, for that matter. Qash was my father. You're only supposed to add your father's name to your own if he was some sort of notable individual, so everyone can know, oh, that was his son. Especially if you're a woman, in which case it's more of a warning about who will give you trouble if you trouble her, or an indication of whom you'd have to pay if you wanted to marry her. But when I left Kaluma, I realized fast that no one outside the city knew the difference between the name of a great prince and the name of a beggar. What mattered was that I presented myself as though I came from nobility, and so I did."

"There, that's why I think names are foolish." The dragon gnawed on a piece of meat as she spoke, and Mayrat decided she didn't care enough to have that particular argument over table manners. "They don't mean anything."

"They mean a lot to the right people," Mayrat said. "But I suppose you've got a point. They're hard to erase, though, especially when they come with reputation. How would you have heard of me if I had no name?"

The dragon pointed to the fruit in Mayrat's hands. "What's that?" she asked, as though Mayrat hadn't said a thing.

"This?" Mayrat held it up. In the sunlight coming in between the parted drapes, it was the same shade as the dragon's skin. "A pomegranate. Do you want some?"

"Then you can call me Pomegranate," said the dragon, taking the fruit from Mayrat's hand and biting into it, skin and seeds and all, as though that were a remotely normal way to consume it. "Or Lady Pomegranate or Your Highness Pomegranate or whatever it is you do."

Mayrat rolled her eyes. "You can't be Lady Pomegranate."

"Why not?"

"Because we are trying not to arouse any more suspicion than I will just by making an appearance myself." One of the seeds had fallen out and stuck itself with its juice to the dragon's thigh; Mayrat plucked it up and popped it in her mouth. "You might as well walk in declaring yourself Lady Dishwater, or Lady Wagon Wheel, or Lady Shoe."

"And what's wrong with any of those names?" asked the dragon, juice making her lips bright and wet. "They're names for things."

"Yes, but they're not human names."

"And I'm not human!" The dragon sighed and tossed the fruit back in Mayrat's lap, scattering seeds everywhere. "I thought you were supposed to be smart! You keep forgetting this!"

"I didn't forget," said Mayrat, trying to cover how she had, indeed, forgotten. It was one thing to think of her guest as a dragon, but quite another to look at her current form and remember what she'd been before. "So by all means, back to your oversized lizard state. Fly right up to the duke's hall and see how much he'll listen -- if, indeed, you can get past the city gates without fifty archers and pikemen bringing you down." Mayrat didn't relish the look of quiet fear on the dragon's face that told her she'd scored a hit, but neither did she let it give her pause. "How many do you think it'd take?"

With a huff, the dragon pulled her legs closer to her chest and set her chin atop her knees. Mayrat didn't know if it was the light and the expression or if her human face really was that mutable, but she looked so young at that moment, caught in her tantrum. Mayrat remembered all too well what that age had been like -- it had been the age that had pulled her away from home, after all, drawing her on to greater adventures up from the streets. She'd thought she'd known everything, and she'd made promises to her parents to that effect, and she'd found out every hard way there was just how much she didn't know.

She hadn't thought much about her own parents in a long time, other than to realize almost two decades ago that they'd probably died before they'd become as old as she had been then. Her siblings, too, or else they would have been bent over with age, while she still stood straight as though she were a woman in the prime of her life. The knowledge had come with a dull sort of ache, a remote sadness about things long gone and things unchangeable. She'd never been sentimental, but the years had exchanged her heart for a stone. It was strange even now to think on what an easy trade it had been.

"Anar," Mayrat said, holding a single seed suspended between her fingers. The dragon lifted her chin and frowned at Mayrat, curiosity written on her features. "In the first language I ever learned, that's what these were called. I've never heard anyone around here speak it. So you could be Anar. Or Lady Anar, or Your Highness Anar, or whatever it is that we do. Fair?"

The dragon's eyes brightened, and she sat upright again. "Anar," she said, testing every sound of the word across her human tongue. Her lips curled into a smile as she turned and faced Mayrat. "Call me that."

"Call you--" Mayrat began, but the eager look in her companion's eyes made the totality of the order clear. "All right. Anar."

"Again," said Anar, putting her hands on either of Mayrat's thighs, leaning closer.

"Anar." Mayrat looked her straight in the eye and addressed her as though trying to get her attention.

"Again." Anar leaned closer, and the weight of her movement shifted the folds of Mayrat's dress, sending several of the seeds falling to the floor.

"Anar." In the closed carriage, the warmth of their bodies burned the air.

"Again," Anar demanded, grabbing handfuls of Mayrat's skirt in her fists.

Mayrat licked her lips and whispered this time: "Anar," she said, with all the soft care of one calling her lover up from sleep.

Anar let go of Mayrat's dress and grabbed her hair with the same ferocity, pulling herself into Mayrat's lap for a hard, tooth-biting kiss. Mayrat might well have given protest, but the truth of the matter was that she didn't want to, and they both knew that to be true. She reached for Anar's heavy breasts and caught one in each hand, pinching her hard crimson nipples between deft fingers. Anar growled into the kiss and writhed on Mayrat's lap, hiding nothing about how much she wanted the touch; she ground her body against Mayrat's, until Mayrat could feel a telltale dampness spread against her thigh. Oh, Mayrat remembered this age well.

Before Mayrat could make the protest that perhaps it wasn't the best idea to get up to this inside a vehicle she needed at least a bit of concentration to keep in existence, a great horn sounded on the hot midday air, startling them both into statues. Mayrat pulled back from the kiss just enough to whisper against Anar's lips: "We're here."

---

Sartorial luck, at least, was on their side. Not much changed about the clothes the country folk wore, but in the city, fashion was fickle, to say the least. Not that she was worried about looking out-of-style -- the limits of magic meant an illusionist could never use an illusion on herself, though she could have afforded to buy any change of clothes she wanted -- but she knew already what she and Anar needed to wear, and it was best if those outfits blended in instead of sticking out.

Thus, when she stepped from the carriage into the duke's outer courtyard, only her hands were visible; the rest of her body was wrapped in deep red cloth, great bands of fabric that started from knots around the crown of her head and wrapped all the way down to hide even her toes as she padded barefoot across the duke's inlaid marble floors. The other men and women she passed were not all so conservatively swaddled -- nearly all had their faces exposed, and some even dared to show their hair -- but she supposed few of them had curses associated with their visages. The guards were of course in much looser, less covering attire; heavy, restrictive garments were for the well-to-do, to show how impractically they could dress because they could hire people to do for them anything that resembled work.

Anar followed close behind her, under strict instructions to keep even her hands tucked back into the robes. She'd made a fuss about having to wear clothes, about humans and their ridiculous affectations, but it had been more of a general cry to ills of society than a whine strictly directed at her current circumstances, and as such, Mayrat had let it go uncommented-upon. The gauzy red fabric across their faces made some vision possible, though not much, and every time Mayrat had to stop short, she felt Anar bump into her.

At last, the great cedar doors groaned open, and a herald's voice cried out, "Presenting the Enchantress Mayrat af-Qash and her companion, the Lady Anar."

There was a loud guffaw from her right, and though Mayrat couldn't see the exact person who thought her arrival so amusing, she had no trouble guessing his profession. "And what have we done here, to earn a visit from such an illustrious guest?" asked one of the court magicians, false sincerity dripping from every word. "Did you run out of little fables to tell the goatherds?"

Mayrat wished her face could be seen so that they could get the full effect of her rolling her eyes. Instead, she took the same advice she'd given to Anar and ignored them completely, taking another step toward the duke's great seat. "I've come to discuss matters of magic with which you have tasked me," she said to Naq ar-Javan, who was only a red shadow in her vision, but a very distinct one. She did not bother with any formal address or signs of obeisance, knowing that they both knew any kind of deference on her part would have been phony.

"Wandered back from the sand wastes, has she?" sneered another court magician. She must have fallen far in the world indeed, that they would be permitted to speak to her like this so openly. Mayrat suspected they'd all been hired on since she'd last made an appearance, and thus had learned everything of her from rumor and reputation -- dangerous teachers, to say the least. "Maybe she's here to dance naked for us while she roasts babies on a spit. I hear that's a good trick."

"Brothers, please, let's not be so rude to a fellow magician," spoke a third, though there was no kindness to his voice. "She too understands the rigors of schooling and mentoring, just like we do, and has had training passed down from her elders, and has been through the initiation rites of--" He stopped, humming with mock puzzlement. "I'm sorry, my memory isn't what it used to me: Where did you receive your training, again? And what order was it with which you pledged?"

Mayrat could feel Anar tense at her side, so she held a hand flat against Anar's side, urging her to keep still. "Your Great Majesty," she said, hoping that some pageantry might be the key out of this. "The matter of your alchemical requests is--"

"Oh, alchemy!" laughed the first magician. They looked upon any art that did not draw upon raw power as a master sculptor might regard a child's idle scratchings in the dirt, and they considered Mayrat, who'd never had any god or goddess to fuel her talents, an insult to the craft. Small wonder the duke had looked to her for such elemental transformations.

A fourth magician -- and whether the duke kept them around at all times or if they'd all just shown up to mock her, Mayrat couldn't say -- stepped in front of her, blocking her passage. "Little witch, little witch," he hissed in her face. "You know, I've got a magic potion I could teach you how to use. It's very simple, right perfect for your skills. You pour some in your hand, and when you rub it on my staff, it just gets bigger and bigger and bigger--"

So much for blending in. She reached up to the clip that kept the fabric coiled around her head and pushed it back, veil and all, until she was bare from the neck up. The reaction was instantaneous: the room full of people, all of whom had been watching her, filled with panic. Magicians who'd been so bold only moments before yelped like frightened children and scuttled away, insects startled by the light. Mayrat saw this only from the corner of her eye, keeping her gaze as fixed on the duke as it had ever been. Guards on either side of him lept into place as the room cleared, though they themselves were doing their best to avert their gazes even as they brandished their weapons.

Only Naq ar-Javan did not look away from her uncovered face, and as his court cleared, he smiled with what could only have been grudging respect. "Mayrat af-Qash," he said with quiet amazement. "Never let it be said you don't know how to make an entrance."

"Let them go," she said, gesturing to the trembling guards. "If I were here to hurt anyone, I would have done it by now."

"So you would," said the duke, nodding. "All right, men, remain in earshot but leave us be." At that, the guards retreated gratefully, keeping their faces hidden as they filed out the doors to the chamber. If anything, acts of kindness like those made Mayrat even angrier -- he did not abuse his servants and he gave no coin to superstition, both of which Mayrat found excellent traits. He was quite handsome too, dark-eyed and strong-jawed, and Mayrat found it all the more a waste that such a lovely body was fueled by the beating of a greedy heart.

But such things were not changed easily or often, and Mayrat had other goals at the moment. She approached, and he responded by rising, until they stood eye to eye, equal in height and dignity. "You tasked me because you know I have more power than every other magician in your employ combined, yes?"

Naq folded his arms across his chest. "What of it?"

"But the task cannot be done, and threatening the lives of innocents is not the magic that would make it possible," Mayrat said. She knew this might go better if she played more openly to his vanity, but she had vanity of her own. "What's more, I think you know I had no hope of accomplishing this. You wanted to show me your power by pushing me where I have none."

"Have you come all this way just to call me naughty?" Naq smiled smugly. He was still not even as old as Mayrat herself appeared, but the men in his line went grey very early, and his dark hair was already shot through with silver. Mayrat had seen wolves like that illustrated in tapestries brought for sale from the north. "You could have saved yourself the trip and just assumed I don't care."

Mayrat did roll her eyes now, and made sure he saw. "I came all this way to present you with a counter-offer, which is more than you deserve for trying to get blood from a stone." She stepped back and gestured to Anar -- who, to Mayrat's vague surprise, had not taken Mayrat's earlier gesture as a cue to unveil herself. "You can choose to listen to us and become the richest ruler in the lands. Or you can send us away and leave us all empty-handed."

Naq was indeed no idiot, and his face gave away that he believed the bait before him to have a hook right through it. Even so, Mayrat knew she'd played a good hand when she saw him take a long, thoughtful breath. "I'm listening," he said, smirking as he did as though this were all very amusing and he were being politely indulgent. But he'd asked, and that had given away how much he wanted whatever she said next to be true.

"The dragons that control the lands between here and the sea sit on untold wealth beneath the ground. Even a small fraction of it would be enough for--" Mayrat waved her hands in a fancy way she hoped communicated 'whatever stupid thing you want it for' without her having to outright say so. "You'd be able to buy lands and buy armies to take whatever lands you couldn't buy."

"Yes," said Naq, his arms folded even tighter across his broad chest, "and while we're at it, let's steal cobwebs from the islands' fairy-folk. You came all this way for nonsense?"

"Not nonsense." Anar had been so quiet Mayrat had nearly forgotten her presence, but now as she spoke up, she sounded quite sure of herself. "There's a cave by the cliffs that overlook a waterfall on the eastern border of dragon territory. Except no one can see it, because it's got strong magic worked over it. I know where it is, though. It's the only way in and out for miles, and it's the only exit big enough for some of them."

"We set fires," Mayrat explained, bringing her own addition to the party. "Big, sulphurous fires by the entrance, and blow the smoke in. The air inside will become unbearable. We'll agree to stop for a price."

Naq stroked his chin, smoothing the dark hairs there as he thought. "I thought extortion would be beneath you," he said, though his earlier dismissiveness was gone. "What makes you think they'll pay?"

"They'll have to," said Anar, still beneath her veils. "The caves are deep and the air is stale already. Fill it with smoke and they'll be helpless."

"Fifty men," said Mayrat. "And most of them only to carry the treasure on our return. We travel fast and light there, and we make a show of force to say that we could invade while they're blinded and make short of work of more than a few of them. If all goes well, not a single sword will be drawn."

"And in return?" Naq fixed his dark, piercing gaze on Mayrat.

This had been the part she'd been dreading, not because she didn't want anything, but because she did. In many ways, ones that she didn't like to acknowledge, she and he were much alike. "I come to your court."

Naq waited a moment, and when it was clear she wasn't going to volunteer anything else, stepped closer, until they were well within arm's reach of one another; either he trusted her good intentions or he thought her toothless, and she didn't know which made him the bigger fool. "That's it?" he asked. "A seat here?"

Mayrat shook her head. "A seat beside the most powerful man in the land. Not here, but what will be here once you return from this."

He laughed and reached a hand toward her face, which she smacked away with calm composition. "I see," he said, though his smile grew a bit hard at the edges to have the touch denied.

"Only a seat," Mayrat said, keeping her gaze level and trying to suppress the urge to hit him again. "Business. Not pleasure. It's never been so with any of your fathers and it wouldn't start with you."

Naq laughed again, though the sound was far more forced now. "And why," he asked, turning his attention toward Anar, "should I believe you?"

"Because I'm a dragon," Anar replied.

There was a small pause, and then Naq snorted and turned his back on them both, walking over to the high cushioned chair where he sat. "Out. Go. Be comedians somewhere else."

Anar looked up at Mayrat, and though Mayrat couldn't see her expression through the cloth, she knew well enough what it was. Wordlessly, she gestured forward, as though showing Anar through a door. Naq turned again toward his guests just in time to see Anar pull the cloth of her garments from her body; they were illusions and they evaporated as soon as they fell from her hands, leaving her crimson and bare in the middle of the room. He opened his mouth -- to comment, perhaps, or more likely to call back the guards -- but whatever he'd meant to say turned into a choked gasp as Anar turned back into a dragon.

She was rather a tiny dragon, Mayrat knew, and her rooftop landing had been startling but not especially threatening. Here inside the chamber, though, enclosed on all sides by marble walls and pillars, Anar might as well have been as large as the building itself. Naq staggered and his knees gave way, sending him falling into cushions that lined the floor as he gaped fish-mouthed. "A trick," he said, though his voice was more whisper than word.

Mayrat shook her head; she reached up and stroked Anar, who looked rather pleased with herself. "What was before was the illusion," she said, glossing over the specifics of Anar's own contribution to that illusion, which Mayrat herself didn't fully understand. "This is real." Anar punctuated the claim with a puff of fire that singed an especially ugly tapestry.

It was hard not to feel smug seeing the duke brought to such a state, so Mayrat didn't bother not feeling so -- she simply took care not to let the expression visit her face. "I came to you first for loyalty to your fathers," Mayrat continued, pulling her garment back up over her hair. "We could go to anyone else. And we will."

Naq cleared his throat and found his way to his feet again, though the procedure was tortuously slow. "I--" The word was lost in breath, and he cleared his throat twice more before speaking again. "I will need time to consider--"

"Of course." Mayrat nodded, then turned back to Anar. "Come along, let's get you to a little more portable again." Anar looked as disappointed as Mayrat imagined a dragon could look, but she dutifully reversed the transformation, until she again stood on two human legs before the duke, naked and unafraid. "I will tell the guards you gave orders for us to be set up at your finest guest suite, and I expect this order will not be countermanded. Two nights, and on the third day we leave the city and do not return, not while you live and possibly not even after. Are we understood?"

With a quiet nod, Naq said, "Understood." Even as he spoke to her, though, his eyes were fixed on Anar, looking at her not the way a man might at a naked young woman before him, but with the same eyes that had beheld the dragon only moments before. She'd scared him, but that was good. Fear was useful. Mayrat knew that as well as she knew her own name.

She made short work of spinning Anar an illusory garment, and when she threw open the doors of the duke's chambers again, Mayrat had her face again covered. The magicians hunkered by, and she supposed she could have threatened them with another peek, but instead she chose not to given them even a second glance. Let them bicker amongst themselves, the petty monsters; let them look down on her for being untrained, rootless, female. Soon they would have to answer to her, and then they'd see who was laughing.

---

"This is stupid," said Anar, flopping down chest-first onto the piles of silks and pillows that made the sleeping area of Duke Naq's finest guest suite. "Is he stupid?"

Mayrat didn't dare open the windows that faced the city, for fear of starting a panic, but one overlooked the desert wastes, and she pulled the shutters wide, letting in the breeze. Stripped down only to a simple dress, she felt much better now than she had when bundled up fashionably. "Not entirely," she said, knotting her hair up at the back of her head; she fixed it there with a sturdy frond taken from one of the room's many potted palms. "If he were, this would have been much easier. He's clever enough to be cautious."

Anar snorted and rolled over onto her back. "How long do you think he might make us wait?"

"I'm certain he's trying to decide that himself right now." Mayrat ran her fingers along the edge of the fine table that had been prepared for them: a fine selection of fruits and wine, intended to impress with its diversity, not its quantity. She poured herself a glass as she spoke. "Too soon and he'll seem too eager, which means he's opened himself up to being asked for more. Too late and he'll seem a coward, as though worries about risk have held him back."

"But you think he'll say yes?"

"I know he will." The wine was fine and sweet, not too heavy for drinking on such a late warm afternoon.

"Good," Anar said, "because when you said we'd take our offer elsewhere, I found myself wondering if you had any other elsewhere in mind to go."

Mayrat shook her head and poured out a second glass, then walked over and took a seat on the pillows; she offered Anar the glass, and Anar sat up gracelessly before accepting. "Nowhere I could be guaranteed a position in return."

Peering over the edge of the goblet, Anar frowned. "Do you ... really want to work with him?"

Mayrat finished her whole glass in a long, slow drink before she found herself ready to answer that question. "Yes," she said at last, then shook her head. "No. I--" The explanation came harder to her than she would have hoped; in fact, she had been hoping she wouldn't have to explain herself in the first place. She expected to be interrupted by Anar's next impatient inquiry, but Anar remained still, and so Mayrat at last found an answer to a different question: "I came from nothing. I became interested in magic because I saw the masters and the pupils walking from their schools, and all I could think was, if I had that kind of power, no one else would ever be in control of me again.

"So I learned everything I could. And I learned badly--" She held up her hands, palms out toward Anar's face, where time had diminished but had not erased the burn scars of self-taught disasters. "But I learned. And even when I came first to the court of Duke Dain ar-Hamisar, I thought, I will submit to him, but only because it is my choice. He will never be able to force me to do anything I don't wish to, and my reputation and my life will be my own."

Anar reached for Mayrat's hand, and only then did Mayrat realize she'd been clutching the stem of her glass almost hard enough to bend it. "And now?" Anar asked, her voice soft.

Mayrat gave a bitter little laugh. "Now? I'm a witch." She sighed, shutting her eyes and leaning back against the pillows. "A witch who can curse just by being seen, a minor fool whose talents are bought through extortion. I'm laughed at because they're frightened of me -- and I want them to be frightened, no question. But ... not like that."

With a nod, Anar took both their glasses and placed them atop a low table, then lay down beside Mayrat, tucking her head in the crook of Mayrat's arm. "I think you're impressive enough to be afraid of."

It had been meant as a kindness, Mayrat knew, but she couldn't help scoffing. "You've barely seen me do anything."

"I've seen you make a coach from thin air and burn trees," Anar said. "That was impressive."

"And I've seen you turn from dragon to human and belch fire when you laugh." Mayrat turned and found her face pressed in Anar's brilliant red hair. She smelled like warmth and smoke, like hands after making a campfire. "In light of that, I hardly would consider my abilities extraordinary."

Anar turned and propped herself up on one elbow so Mayrat could see her face. "Don't you think I haven't met other human magicians? I have, you know. Poor scryers and jesters to entertain children, most of them. The schools teach them what they can do, but also teach them what they can't do. No one ever taught you your limits. No one ever taught me either. No one had to. You were right when you said you have more power than all those awful men combined. I can feel it from you. I can taste it on you."

"You're so lovely," said Mayrat, reaching up to stroke Anar's cheek -- not because she meant to change the subject, but because it was true, and she didn't want to let such a truth go unspoken.

"So are you," Anar said in return, bending down to kiss Mayrat on the lips briefly before straightening her back again. "You deserve to rule, not just to prop up someone else's throne."

Mayrat smiled. "One goal at a time," she said, and this time she grabbed Anar's hair and pulled her into a deeper kiss, rolling them both so that Anar lay atop Mayrat's body. She raised a knee and caught it between Anar's thighs, and Anar gasped as she writhed against the contact, turning Mayrat's smile into an outright grin. "Right now I have my sights set on something else."

Anar gasped as Mayrat's fingers slipped between her thighs and found her clit. "Yes," she whined, "right there, please, human fingers are the best."

That startled Mayrat into a laugh, but she did as she'd been begged and pinched the hardening nub of skin there, feeling her knuckles dampen with Anar's juices. She didn't even have to move her hand much; Anar was wriggling and writhing all over, rocking back and forth against any pressure Mayrat's body would give her. She shifted her weight back on her knees and Mayrat obliged her the change of position, offering up two fingers for penetration. Anar slipped right back onto them, taking them so easily inside her that Mayrat added a third for good measure.

She fucked herself on Mayrat's hand for several strokes, letting her soft, heavy breasts bounce every time she lowered herself back down. Her long, wild hair spread around her like fire, and she grabbed it with both hands to pile it atop her head, giving Mayrat an even better view of her lovely body. She was all smooth red curves, the kind of voluptuous body Mayrat had known early on would never be hers to own. Still, hers to pleasure was just as good.

"Come here," Mayrat said, and Anar leaned forward enough for Mayrat to grab her breast and catch a nipple in her teeth. That made Anar squirm again and moan; she let her hair down and it fell in curtains around them. With her thumb, Mayrat teased Anar's clit in time with her tongue across her red nipple, speeding up every time Anar groaned wordlessly for more. This was its own fine kind of power, this complete control that came from such trust. Anar was a horny little thing, which always made things easier, but it hadn't taken Mayrat long to find all the right buttons to push. Mayrat had been with many women who'd taken pains to moderate their sexual responses, and she'd even been like that herself at the start, but Anar was utterly shameless in her pleasure. She had what she wanted, finally, and seemed bound and determined to enjoy it.

When she came, there was no polite shiver or theatrical moan -- Anar laughed as she reached her climax, though each exhalation was another push of her body onto Mayrat's hand, and tendrils of smoke poured from her lips. Her body jerked and twisted beyond her control, and she giggled with the delight of it, enough that Mayrat felt herself laughing too. This was good, being together like this, knowing and being known so well.

At last, Anar popped herself off of Mayrat's hand and flopped onto her back, panting and kicking her feet with glee. "Waiter, I'll have a dozen more of those."

Mayrat bopped her soft tummy with a small decorative pillow, then wiped her soaked hands on its fringe. Someone else could clean up. "Quite an appetite you've got."

"I could have sex forever as a human." Anar rolled onto her stomach, wiggling her bare bottom. "Dragon sex is ... not nearly as versatile, we'll say. Usually just in and out. Nobody gets fingered, nobody gets sucked, and nobody ever puts on seductive undergarments."

"I don't have on seductive undergarments," Mayrat pointed out, tugging at her skirt. A large damp spot marked the place where the fabric had settled between Anar's legs for a time, in almost the same place she'd left a stain earlier. This dress needed to be laundered, if not burned.

"You don't need any," she said, standing and holding out her hand, and Mayrat obliged. With a laugh, Anar took her over to the open window. The desert landscape was empty even at this time of day, and would stay so until the cool of night settled in, meaning they had a breeze but no audience. "You're too dressed as it is."

"You're usually too naked," Mayrat countered, though really, she had no complaints. She smiled as Anar went for the buttons that fastened her dress and gave an obedient raise of her arms as Anar lifted the fabric over her head. Bare and feeling much cooler for it, she turned toward the window. "Help, help," she called out in a voice no louder than the one she'd been speaking with before, "I've been trapped by a fierce dragon."

"Oh, very fierce." Anar leaned up against her, kissing at her collarbone. "We dragons love eating maidens."

"Do you? Because I'm sure I could find one around here if you--" Mayrat's joke was cut short as Anar planted a bright kiss right atop her nipple, making her shiver. "Or not."

Anar suckled at the sensitive skin there for a moment more before kissing down Mayrat's belly, kneeling as she went. She was short already, making the height different work to her advantage as she knelt before Mayrat and nudged her legs apart. "I was just thinking how much I like hair," she said, and then she nuzzled her broad nose into the dark thatch right above Mayrat's pubis such that Mayrat nearly toppled over.

"Ticklish!" Mayrat swatted at Anar's hair, still laughing. "Bad lizard!"

"Best lizard," Anar countered, and before Mayrat could think of a response, Anar grinned and stuck her face right between Mayrat's legs. Mayrat's laugh turned into a low groan as she grabbed the window-dressing to keep herself upright. She was being eaten by a dragon; help, help, indeed.

This close to the window, the breeze blew across her bare breasts, making her nipples stand at attention as Anar sucked her clit and licked at the folds beneath. Whether or not jokes about cannibalism were accurate, Anar certainly knew how to put her tongue and teeth to good use. It wasn't the first time Mayrat had had someone's face between her thighs (and she hoped it wouldn't be the last), but she'd never before had someone there so single-minded about her pleasure. Anar barely came up for air -- in fact, Mayrat wouldn't swear she breathed at all. She alternated between flicking her tongue across Mayrat's clit and sucking on it, keeping Mayrat on such a razor's edge that she began to gasp and moan and not care who heard or even saw them.

Her first orgasm was intense, but almost polite, in that it shuddered its way up from her core and out her extremities, leaving her breathless but still standing. That had been fun, she thought, and she shifted to give Anar room to stand up -- only to find Anar grabbing her thighs and redoubling her efforts. "What are--?" Mayrat bit back a soft cry as Anar's teeth grazed almost too-sensitive skin. "Isn't it ... your turn?"

Anar emerged a moment later, wild-haired and grinning. "Dragons are good at connecting," she said breathlessly, nuzzling the soft brown hairs that downed Mayrat's thigh, "and you and I are very ... connectable."

"Oh?" asked Mayrat -- and then her mouth formed another oh, one of comprehension. She never got to making the accompanying sound, though, because Anar was at her again, kissing and licking with all intensity at just the right spots, and no wonder she knew where they were now. Her fingers pet at Mayrat's lower lips, teasing but never penetrating, and Mayrat felt her whole body shake as a second orgasm came for her. Anar gripped her thighs as she came, leaving little angry half-moons in Mayrat's brown skin, something Mayrat had gone nearly a century without learning that she liked.

The third and fourth climaxes blurred together, in that Mayrat was fairly certain she'd come twice more, though was willing to believe it had just been once lasting several minutes. There was a small pause then for Anar to wet her throat with wine, but she got right back to work and licked Mayrat again so intensely that Mayrat heard herself crying out Anar's name with pleasure. By then she really was too weak-kneed to stand, so they staggered back over to the bed and fell into the pillows together, kissing and holding one another tight. "You are simply magical," she whispered against Anar's lips as she played with those wonderful soft breasts.

"Precisely." Anar looked smug as anything, and all Mayrat could do in response was to kiss her again, kiss every inch of her, never stop kissing her.

A pounding sound woke them both only a few hours later, and Mayrat was startled less by how someone was knocking at their door and more by how that someone did not have the polite, inquisitive rap of a servant. On the contrary, the fist hammering there surely belonged to someone who was not accustomed to having to knock at all. Mayrat grabbed a robe and wrapped it around her body just enough to be decent, then opened the door with a swift sweep and barely missed having Duke Naq's hand connect with her face. "We're going," he told her. Behind him, two guards stood in the hallway, facing one another and not even glancing in her direction.

Mayrat waited a beat, letting her just-awakened brain catch up. "Now?" She glanced toward the window, which looked out onto a starless night. "...We?"

"Now." He huffed as though irritated by the entire process, though Mayrat could see the way his body trembled with a little boy's excitement. "And yes, we. If I send you out with my men, I've no guarantee either you or the treasure will return."

Mayrat shrugged; though she didn't relish the thought of any more of his company than was strictly necessary, fair was fair. "Where shall we meet you?"

"By the gates," Naq said, turning on his heel and marching out. "We're all waiting for you."

She didn't point out that they might not be waiting now if he'd summoned her earlier, but she did make a rude gesture toward his retreating back that made her feel marginally better. She shut the door and turned to explain, but found Anar standing by, holding Mayrat's one bag open to what clothes she'd bothered to bring. "Can I eat him?"

"Maybe later," said Mayrat with a smile. She pulled out a clean dress and tugged it on, then used a scarf to cover only as much of her head as she needed to keep her hair out of her eyes. The soldiers would have to overcome a lot more than baseless superstition if they were to be successful. Might as well give them an early start.

Dressed as she was ever going to be, she started for the door, but Anar caught her sleeve and tugged her toward the balcony. Mayrat followed, confused but willing to accept the trajectory, until they were both standing out in the night air. "Stand back," said Anar, and as Mayrat did, Anar bent forward and transformed into a dragon again. That one, she looked at Mayrat and nodded toward her own back. "All right, get on."

Well, that answered the question of how Mayrat herself was going to get off the balcony, but it raised many others. "Are you certain?"

Anar laughed, only now the sound was not her pretty alto purr, but a deep, cavernous tremor. "He said you know how to make an entrance, didn't he?"

Mayrat supposed she couldn't argue with that. Anar lowered one of her thick wings and Mayrat braced her foot on it, then was lifted by a strong flutter that nearly knocked her over. She kept her balance, though, and found a grip along the sturdy ridges that ran down Anar's neck. She took a moment to find herself a secure place to sit, just up on Anar's back from where her wing met her shoulder, then took a deep breath and prayed she didn't have a fear of heights gone undiscovered in her life until this moment. "All right," she said, "let's be impressive."

With a deep growl that Mayrat knew could only come from satisfaction, Anar beat her wings and rose into the air, and Mayrat, holding her head high so no one could see how nervous she was, rose with her.

Flying, as it turned out, was easy -- or, Mayrat supposed, it was easy provided she wasn't doing the actual work of keeping herself airborne. But as the ground grew distant and she rose with Anar over the tops of even the tallest minarets, she found that she had been more afraid that she might be afraid than she'd actually dreaded flight itself. The low, cloudy sky showed no heavenly lights, but reflected back the lamps and lanterns of the city, giving the heavens an orange tint, almost as though they themselves were on fire. Anar swooped low and Mayrat held on tight, but found herself laughing at the sensation. She worried for a moment about being seen, then chased that worry from her head -- let the people below get a good look. When she returned triumphant, they'd be looking anyway.

Five black lines stretched out over the marble ground of the courtyard, though as Anar approached, those lines began to tremor and then break entirely as they stopped being five lines and instead became fifty men, weapons at the ready to battle the unexpected beast. With a great beat of her wings, Anar blew them back, and Mayrat conjured up a tall platform where Anar could land, careful not to trap anyone inside the illusion as she made it reality. At the far end of the courtyard, the duke and his retinue emerged from behind heavy doors -- she'd beaten them down here, how about that? -- but before they could approach, Mayrat drew up a signal fire in her hand and addressed the men. "Look at me," she said, and when most of them did not comply, she squared her shoulders and demanded again: "Look at me."

There was a pause, and then fifty heads of fifty soldiers all turned toward her. At last, she had their attention. "You know who I am," she said, "by reputation if not by experience. But much of what you've been told are lies. None of you is cursed to look upon me, nor should you fear for health or sanity just to see." She reached up to stroke Anar's head the way she might do to a friendly dog. "Nor have you anything to fear from my friend here, provided you do not cross either of us."

Naq had nearly reached their ranks, well to the point where they should have been turning to mark his passage, but instead all their eyes were fixed on her. She studied their faces in the firelight, seeing the terror there despite their training. They were just boys beneath those helmets, eyes wide and faces still soft with youth; if her life had been quite different, she might now have had great-grandchildren that age. "I cannot promise your safety," she told them, being as honest as she dared, "though I will swear this on my life, that I would not lead you into danger if I did not think us all likely to return, and better for it."

"Nor would I," said Naq sharply, and at that all fifty men jumped to attention as he passed them by. Mayrat wondered how many of the soldiers there knew that was a lie -- and, to that end, how much by contrast they believed her. She continued to pet Anar almost absently as Naq stomped his way to the front, though her impromptu landing site kept Anar's feet well above the level of his head, creating a visual hierarchy she rather enjoyed. "We mount and ride for the western lands at the enchantress' direction."

"'Illusionist' will do," said Mayrat, closing her hand and snuffing out the flame. She'd always hated 'enchantress' -- one step up from 'witch', she knew, which itself was one step up from 'crazy old woman with marginally medicinal plants' -- but for years she hadn't felt she'd had the leverage to argue against it. That changed now. Many things changed now.

Naq's mouth set in a thin line, but he recovered in short order. "The illusionist Mayrat af-Qash," he said, giving her a small bow. "Tell us then, Lady Illusionist, where shall we all now go?"

Mayrat's response was to tap Anar's shoulder twice, and Anar rose in another great beating of wings, which sounded to Mayrat like nothing so much as the pounding of a very slow heart. Despite the hour, the trumpets blew as the gates opened wide, and the men filed through them toward their waiting horses as Mayrat and Anar rose above. They hovered only long enough for all the men to mount their steeds, then turned toward the point on the horizon where the land embraced the setting sun each night. It was time to go west.

---

"Okay, okay, stop," panted Mayrat, batting at Anar's head; she was breathless and exhausted and giggling, when had she done that last? "Stop!" She batted again with the last of her strength, then fell back against the pillows. "Don't kill us both before we get there."

Anar lifted her face from between Mayrat's thighs and grinned, then gave the soft skin of her clitoris one more strong suck before obeying. The fabric that made the covering of the tent was real enough, but the exquisite bedding was all illusory -- and thus bearable, Mayrat thought as she sprawled naked atop fine satin sheets. Anar wiped her chin on one of the pillows before curling up next to Mayrat and giving her a deep kiss; Mayrat could taste herself on Anar's tongue, which was no surprise, considering where it had been for the last hour or so. Sounds of camp life and activity sounded beyond the canvas walls, but there wasn't likely a man in camp who didn't know what went on inside the illusionist's tent. Let them know, Mayrat thought; taming a dragon to ride was one kind of feat, but turning one into a lover was quite another.

With a yawn, Anar cupped Mayrat's bare breast in her hand. "I counted ten."

"I lost count," said Mayrat, kissing Anar's forehead. "But we should sleep."

"Are you tired?"

"No," Mayrat said with a sigh, "but we should sleep anyway, if we're going to make the edge of dragon territory by tomorrow nightfall."

Anar nodded, but Mayrat could feel the way the smile slipped from her face at the mention of their destination. It had been a trying journey most of all for how it hadn't been trying -- in fact, the trek had been monotonous in the extreme. They'd had little trouble skirting the edge of occupied territories between the duke's lands and the west, and though she knew they'd been seen by guardposts along the way, fifty men was much more likely a royal retinue than an invading force: in short, nothing to write home about. They'd traveled more in the dark than in the light, and as soon as dawn began to change the sky from black to grey, Anar transformed into a human and they both rode atop horses of Mayrat's making.

Mayrat hadn't been called on to do this much illusive work in a great while, and though she'd feared she'd find it taxing, the work was instead exhilarating. On the road, out in the wild, headed on a journey with a purpose, she'd never felt so powerful in her life. The first night they slept on the road, she expected she'd wake and find the pillows and blankets she'd conjured up gone, unable to sustain themselves with her conscious mind given over to sleep. Instead, she awoke as comfortably as she'd drifted off -- minus, of course, the way Anar tended to sprawl in her sleep and take up all available space, but even that had its own charms.

With a deep breath, Mayrat shut her eyes and stroked Anar's hair. "You could stay with me, you know," she said, her voice soft. "After this is all over."

"I--" Anar swallowed. "I don't know...."

"Or visit." Mayrat could tell herself she hadn't expected Anar to say yes, but somehow hearing the hesitation made Mayrat break out into an anxious sweat. "If you didn't want to stay. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want to be anywhere near the duke or his men."

"Oh, the men aren't so bad," said Anar, nuzzling Mayrat's shoulder. "But ... I feel if I leave my people, they'll never learn what they need to learn. They'll slip back into their old ways. I should stay -- as a threat, if nothing else. A reminder that they aren't as strong as they pretend to be."

Mayrat's eyes widened with surprise. "Won't that ... be dangerous for you?"

"Don't worry about me," said Anar with a quiet laugh. "I'm tougher than I look."

"You'll forgive me if I'm not comforted."

"Forgiven!" Anar raised her chin so she could look Mayrat in the eye. "Might makes right with them, perhaps, but I have a lot of might. With this, I'll have proven I can out-think them all, and some of them are old and slow, but they'll all have to respect that. And maybe they'll see the old ways of greed and fighting aren't doing them any good."

Mayrat stroked Anar's back, feeling the heat burning just beneath her smooth, soft skin. "That's a lot of maybe," she said, trying to keep the worry from her voice. She'd never thought the idea of sending a dragon back to other dragons might give her so much cause for concern.

"Maybe I'm very smart." Anar smiled and kissed Mayrat on her lips. "And when you're done doing whatever you do with humans, you can come to me."

"Me?" Mayrat looked at her, startled by the offer. "Among the dragons?"

Anar laughed. "Why not? You're dragon enough already."

"Oh, of course, how hadn't I noticed? With my long tail and my terrible claws and my wings."

"You are." Anar stuck out her tongue, then licked the tip of Mayrat's nose, giggling as Mayrat swept at the spot with the back of her hand. "Magic doesn't come from humans -- not the power, and not the knowledge. That's why human schools teach you to pledge yourself to gods and goddesses and spirits and whatever else you call on. But none of those are real. We dragons are older than any gods. They're just power given personalities. When you do magic, where do you get your power?"

Had she had proper training, she could have given a proper answer, named some patron and given some great lineage. But she'd taught herself her first spells before she'd ever learned that magicians were supposed to require wellsprings for even the simplest workings. "Myself," she said, and though it would have gotten her another round of mocking laughter from any proper magicians, it was true.

"So do we," said Anar. She took Mayrat's hand and placed it in the center of her chest, between her breasts. "You learned from us: fire and illusion, both from the dragons, long before written human records. You didn't, but humans did. Healing from the dryads, blood magic from the fairies, transmutation from the skinwalkers, alchemy from the undine spirits -- humans have no magic, which is why you can learn anything. Or didn't you know that already?"

In fact, she hadn't. "You're saying I could have learned to become a dryad instead?" Mayrat asked. She thought about pointing out that dryads and fairies and skinwalkers and undine spirits were all fictional -- then remembered that she was, after all, talking to a dragon in human form, so perhaps she shouldn't be too keen to dismiss such possibilities.

Laughing, Anar moved closer until their breasts pressed against one another, trapping Mayrat's hand between their heartbeats. "You could have tried. But you would still have burned. Like me."

Burning, Mayrat decided, was as good a reason as any to put off sleep for a little while longer.

---

The cliffs were so beautiful, it was almost a shame they weren't real. Of course, if anyone there -- herself included -- touched them, they would feel solid rock beneath their hands, and not even the most magically attuned passer-by would have detected anything amiss. Only Anar's direction let Mayrat know there was something more there to be seen, and even then she'd had to walk up to the wall and press her face against the stone to be absolutely, perfectly sure. It wasn't that she thought Anar might intentionally lead her astray, but that the magic was so good, she wanted to be sure it was magic at all before she began to take it apart.

But it was, and as she walked up and down the length of the wall, touching and whispering and listening to each point to determine the boundaries of the illusion, the soldiers built four great pyres on the riverbank. It was nearly sundown before they'd completed their task; Mayrat's instinct had been to prepare the attack under cover of darkness, but no, Anar had told her, for a group of creatures accustomed to living in fire-lit caverns underground, darkness covered nothing.

Behind her stood Naq, his two generals, and Anar as beastly as she'd been when Mayrat had met her, and behind them the men in fierce formation, arms at the ready, looking on the edge of attack. In fact, they had all been given orders in no uncertain terms to hold ground, not take it. If everything went well, stubbed toes and sore backs might well be the worst casualties. Strength could draw blood, but it could also make bloodshed unnecessary. That could be part of her reputation as well.

She raised her hands as though to touch the wall, even though she stood now on the far side of the river. That was all right; she wasn't reaching for the wall anyway. She shut her eyes and reached out instead with her mind. Illusions were acts of power and will, and she had come to this challenge with superior power and superior will -- at least, she had to hope that was true, because if it wasn't, she didn't stand a chance.

Her fingers began to close as though grabbing handfuls of drapery fabric, and she could feel the material of the conjuring bend and buckle in her grip. It was old magic, stronger for aging, but weaker for having been taken for granted so long. She drew back her hands just a fraction, just enough so that the physical gesture helped her concentration know what her power had to do, and she heard from behind her a sea of muted gasps. This must be the place.

"Hurry," said Anar from behind her, in her deep dragon's growl. "They know something's wrong."

Mayrat wanted to hurry -- wanted to have this all over and done with as soon as possible, in fact -- but the illusion clung stubbornly to the real rock around it, disguising its edges. Mayrat dug her heels into the ground and gritted her teeth as she pulled, feeling her breath rasp from her nostrils. The coming night air brought with it a breeze that turned the sweat that beaded her forehead to ice. "Come on, you bastard," she muttered under her breath.

At last, she felt something snap. She worried first that it had been inside her, but moments later she felt another of the illusion's anchors give way, and then another, and then she tore her arms down to her sides with all the force she had in both body and mind as the whole rock wall gave up its claim on existing. She opened her eyes in time to see it shimmer and fade, falling forward as though to crash into the ground, but never completing the journey. In its place stood a great dark maw, a cave that opened into pitch darkness. Breathless, Mayrat wanted nothing better than to fall over right then and there, but she knew her task was only halfway done.

She thrust her hands into the air in a great sweep -- like little girls tossing flower petals into the air at a spring festival, she'd once heard while eavesdropping on some musty old professor's lecture -- and on either side of her, great pyres burst to life. Laced through with sulphur powder, the fires sent huge clouds of noxious yellow smoke belching up toward the darkening sky. She opened her mouth to shout the cue, but there was no need -- Anar was already there, batting her wings into a storm much larger than her size might have suggested she could make. The wind whipped the smoke into curls and sent it into the cave, where some of it trickled out, but most disappeared into the black void. Mayrat's hair and skirts whipped around her as she stood in the midst of the blazes, holding her ground. Sparks flew from the pyres and singed little black marks into her clothes, but those embers that landed on her skin were brushed away with the next gust of air; fire would not burn itself.

After what seemed like hours but could have been no more than a few minutes, Anar stopped and came to rest beside Mayrat. "Your turn," she said, gesturing toward the cave. "Speak; they're listening."

Little in her life had prepared her for a career of extortion, but Mayrat had always been one to learn on the job. "I am the illusionist Mayrat af-Qash," she declared to the darkness, not expecting her name to mean anything yet, but wanting it there anyway. "You have been found out."

There was a moment's pause, and then Anar nodded. "They want to know why you're doing this."

"You sit on treasure unearned, taken from my people for no reason but to satisfy your own greed." Mayrat neglected to clarify that no one she knew personally had ever been a victim of the dragons' practices, but she hoped that shared humanity would suffice for a bond. "You demand tribute from those in need to satisfy needs you do not have. It is cruel and it is unjust, and it will not stand."

The ground began to rumble, then to shake, and then a great roar poured from the cave that coalesced into a word: "Unjust?" The voice was like Anar's, only larger and more terrifying; Mayrat could only imagine the size of the chest in which the sound began. "A thief demands a ransom and calls her victim unjust?"

Anar exhaled sharply. "You should hear what they're calling me," she said under her breath.

"I am not a thief," said Mayrat, hoping that she might claim it with enough confidence that she herself began to believe it. "I want nothing from you but that which humans have given you in the first place. Gold and treasures to fill five wagons, and then we will be gone. The secret of this place will be kept, and we will disturb you no further."

"And if we refuse?" asked the great unseen dragon.

Mayrat made the pyres flare high again with a clap of her hands -- only for a moment, but enough of a warning. "Then no one breathes easy tonight, or for a long time after."

That brought a great angry growl from the cave, and Mayrat braced herself, but Anar shook her head. "They're thinking," she said. "They're angry but they're thinking."

"And why aren't you the one giving the ultimatum here?" asked Mayrat.

Anar shrugged as much as her stocky shoulders would let her. "To a dragon? You're far more threatening than I am."

Before Mayrat could even scoff at that idea, the voice spoke again: "There are more of us, and more ways out. Only a few of our number would be needed to come and swallow you all whole."

"Of course you could," said Mayrat, and she tried not to smile as she heard the men shift uncomfortably behind her. "But you'd have to get us all, and even then, you have no idea who else we've told of this location. When we haven't returned in a fortnight, the message goes out to other lands, and you'll have more than a few fires on your doorstep to contend with. The gold, and you have my word on my honor and my name that no other kings or magicians shall know."

Mayrat hadn't realized how well things had been going, hadn't measured how confident she'd begun to feel, until she heard a voice from behind her that made her heart plummet into her stomach. "The gold now," said Naq, strutting forward to the place where she stood and bellowing into the cave mouth, "and once a year, the same."

Anar stiffened and Mayrat drew horrified breath as the voice spoke again: "Another little thief?"

"Thief? I am Duke Naq ar-Javan ar-Baresh ar-Dain ar-Hamisar!" he shouted, and Mayrat felt certain in that moment that as little as her title may have impressed the dragons, his did even less so. She wanted to stop him, to throw herself on top of him and gag him with his own turban and break his neck if it came to that, but she was paralyzed; she could barely find air enough to breathe, much less to speak. "And I demand tribute as it is due to me! Give me what I am owed, or else I order my wizard to push the fires as deep as they can go, and I wait until I've smoked you all out to take what I want."

Mayrat took back every kind estimation she'd ever made of him: he was an idiot, a complete idiot, the lord high king of all idiots, and he was an idiot most of all because he wasn't an idiot, but he'd let his greed twist him that way. He'd heard the beginnings of weakness in the dragon's voice and had taken that not as a sign of success, but as an indication that he should push on. He'd violated his own wisdom he'd shown in waiting to accept Mayrat's offer, and now it was all going wrong. In an instant, Mayrat's plans began to shift from how she was going to receive the ransom to how she was going to escape with her life.

"Greedy monsters," hissed the dragon in the cave, and Mayrat's heart stuttered as she saw the dim, cold light of flame flicker deep inside the darkness. "Petty little lives."

"You've lost!" yelled Mayrat, running forward until her bare feet splashed at the river's edge; she didn't know if she could take control again, but she had to try. "Accept so now while you can choose your terms!"

"We do not bow," roared the dragon from inside, and now it was close enough to the cave's entrance that Mayrat could see the contours of its body. It was a long, sinuous thing, with a serpentine neck and pearly grey scales; its black eyes reflected predatory moons of light as it looked at her. "No human will threaten us again. What is ours, we keep."

Mayrat braced herself against the coming fire, but what caught her attention instead was the water around her feet -- the deep, slow river began to shake, sending strange ripples from the bank to its center and back again. Once, as a child, she'd been playing near one of Kaluma's many fountains when a tall temple had collapsed quite suddenly. She'd been too young to understand at the time what such a thing might mean, either in human or in spiritual terms, but she had remembered the way the shocks had caused the one-still waters to splash violently against the walls that held them in. She hadn't thought about that in years; now, standing as waves crashed against her ankles, the memory flooded her mind.

"Mayrat!" shouted Anar, and Mayrat turned to see Anar's great red body rushing toward her -- only it wasn't rushing, it was expanding, and it wasn't red, it was turning grey. Terror widened Anar's crimson eyes, and then they too filmed over, as prettily as frost might form on the top of a small puddle. Mayrat started to run to Anar's side, but the ground split open and tossed her back -- and then tossed her upward, shooting toward the sky. From there, she could only watch as Anar's wings shot out from her back, only to come down again as stony mounds. They were turning her to stone.

Another pair of sharp petrified wings roared out of the ground behind her, sending a shower of stone chips tumbling down, and Mayrat realized she was wrong: They were all turning to stone.

Far below her, the men had scattered, their training forgotten as they ran in all directions. She thought she saw some escape, but others were caught as the ground picked up beneath them and soared up into the clouds. A sudden jolt made her lose her balance, then took away her footing entirely as what had once been a riverbank turned into a steep incline. Mayrat scrambled for something to hold, bloodying her fingers as she grabbed at rock that might once have been a tooth or a tail. There was no way to tell anymore; even the figure that had been Anar had been distorted out of any recognizable shape.

Trees ripped from the ground as great chasms swallowed and churned them to splinters, sending roots and branches flying. Mayrat caught the root of a great cedar that must have been thousands of years old, popped up from its place as though it were little more than a pulled weed from her garden. Around her, great spires of stone lurched into the sky, churning what had once been rolling grassland into a nightmarish terrain of jagged edges. The sound was unbearable, great roars and groans as huge boulders smashed together and whole shelves of rock grated against one another.

Her body smashed into a rising pillar of rock, making her cry out in pain as both her shoulder and her head ripped open. The world swam in front of her eyes, leaving her only enough sense to realize that she could see her breath in the cold air. That was strange, she thought absently, since it had been so warm earlier that day. Then something else hard caught the back of her head, and she took the opportunity to pass out.

---

The world was so quiet when Mayrat woke that she thought she might have gone deaf. Or died, she amended, she might be dead. She moved her arm and yelped as she saw white bursts of pain behind her eyes, then concluded that she was neither, though that didn't make her feel altogether better. Gritting her teeth through the pain, she touched the back of her head. Her hand came away bloody, but the blood was mostly dry. She had no idea if that was a good sign or not.

She'd lost her grip on the root during her ordeal, but the cedar had come with her, and it had wedged itself a few feet above her, blocking most of the debris and leaving her a makeshift shelter -- though even that was a polite term for where she found herself. Sheltered from the elements on most sides, she still wasn't anywhere anyone would consider a hospitable location. A quick shifting of her limbs assured her that nothing was broken, though everything was bruised and sore. That was as close as she came to good news now, though; she had no provisions and lacked any sense of where she was.

She was also cold, she realized, and not just chilly, but cold. She'd read books by visitors to the north, and she'd spent days under the hot desert sun dreaming of what a glorious thing it would be to be in crisp, icy winter. But a few flakes had started to blow in to her little den, covering her feet, and she took no time in revising her opinion.

She also noticed that she was having trouble breathing, as though the air weren't doing its job. Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath and heard a gurgling in her lungs as she pressed it back out. If only she had taken the educational path of the dryads; maybe then she'd have a way to make herself whole again, or at least to make her head stop feeling like it had been smashed against several rocks. She rubbed her eyes, but the world had taken on a blur she couldn't erase.

Well, she wasn't going to sit around feeling sorry for herself. Grasping once more at the tree root but careful not to pull it all down on top of her, she pulled herself to her feet, then held on tight until she no longer felt the ground sway. She drew in as much air as her lungs could hold, then blew it out in a warm gust that lifted both her body temperature and the temperature of the enclosure several degrees. She couldn't burn, but she could easily freeze, and she'd have to hope that the fire in her could hold out long enough to--

To what? It was a fair question, and she was being honest enough with herself that she had to admit, she didn't know. But there was no way of figuring out in here, so she took several more warming breaths until even her fingers and toes had regained some feeling, then stepped out.

Her first view of the landscape was disorienting -- the sky was the clear pinked blue of dawn, but someone had replaced the ground with a rolling silver fog. Several other sharp stony peaks poked their heads out over its slow waves, their peaks dusted lightly with bright white snow. She'd never seen such a low fog, she thought, before realizing that it wasn't fog; she'd been lifted above the clouds. Her bare feet crunched against frost and rocks as she trudged farther out, stopping every few steps so she could catch her breath again. The pounding in her head was so fierce she considered self-decapitation as a solution, one which seemed even more reasonable as the sun broke over the horizon and assaulted her with light. Wincing, she turned away and waited for her eyes to stop watering.

Daylight burned away the clouds in short order, revealing a landscape that would have been breathtaking if she had been atop it on purpose. The first rays of dawn painted the sides of the mountains rosy pink -- and they were mountains indeed, ones where no mountains had been so shortly before. They were crisp and sharp, like ridges down a dragon's spine. Raising her hand to shield her eyes, Mayrat could see glimpses of the land they'd crossed to get here, proving that she hadn't gone far, just high.

What she didn't see, however, was a way down. She staggered close to the edge, only to find herself looking over sharp drops that made her ill with vertigo. Hell of a way to discover the nuances of her fear of heights. And here she'd thought flying--

The thought of Anar hit her as sharply as the rock had, and she tried to push it down, but the memory of Anar's face kept pushing right back. She'd been so afraid at the end, so pained and horrified, and Mayrat had been responsible for getting her into this, or at least for making her stupid idea possible. And it had been a stupid idea, she could see that clearly now, and she'd been stupid for indulging in it. She was a thief, and a miserable little monster to boot, and knowing this about herself just made her double over on all fours and retch until she coughed up stomach acid. After all this, it was right that she should be stuck here. She deserved to die.

Of course, what Mayrat deserved and what she accepted for herself were two different things, and after a moment, she slapped herself in the face. It hurt, but pain was clarity. "Stop it, you ninny," she told herself, surprised at how well the sound carried at such an altitude. "You are an adult, and you are going to act like it."

What was she going to do? She couldn't get back down, and even if there were a path, she had no supplies and no guarantee of how long it would be before she met someone who could help her. She was alone.

"Right, well, if you can't go down," she said, pushing herself to her feet with great and pained effort, "you go up."

Up? Up was a stupid choice. How could that possibly help her situation?

"I don't know, and I don't care, and if you don't go, I'll hit you again." She raised her hand and looked at it, nodding to tell herself that she meant it. After a moment, she sighed and clenched both her hands into fists, then started up.

The first steps were painful but almost exciting, spurred on by a distant hope. Up was a direction, and one that contained the possibility that something might be different -- something good, something useful. She stopped every few seconds and gulped in air, then blew it out in great breaths as she focused on warming her extremities. Progress was slow but steady, and she felt certain that it would get easier if she could just get a little farther. There was a small rise ahead of her, where she could surely see more and better paths to take. Things were looking up.

By the time she made it to the rise, the sun had crawled several degrees across the sky and she had come to realize just how little sense of perspective she had up here. A boulder she'd estimated to be as tall as she was turned out, when she finally reached its side, to be over ten times her height. She rested a hand against its side, bracing herself as she caught her breath -- then yelped and jumped back as something about the rock's contours made her certain that what she'd touched had once been an eye, engorged by petrification.

"You idiots," she muttered to herself -- and then, filled with a sudden stab of anger, she turned back the way she'd come and screamed: "You idiots!" The mountains' only reply was her own voice, bounced back to her in ever-diminishing echo form. The only thing, it seemed, that listened less than dragons did was stone. And yet, as a woman who'd once nearly burned down her house to spite a pesky dragon, she had to respect their decision. It had been nothing if not effective.

By the time the sun had reached its zenith, she had settled on a destination. The nearest peak, connected to where she was by a thin, exposed ridge, was not sharp like all the others, but instead appeared smooth and round. Furthermore, she could see great cracks up its side, which seemed to her exhausted, dehydrated brain the best possible way to return to the caverns that had once existed beneath the plains. Maybe the whole transformation had been an illusion, and the hollowed-out earth still held its reptilian inhabitants, tucked comfortably away, pleased with themselves and their cleverness. As possibilities went, she had to believe it could be true, because she was running out of other reasons to keep moving.

There was only a little snow on the mountainside, seeing as it hadn't even existed until a few hours before, but there was enough that she could gather some and melt it to drink. She was sweating now with exertion and the sun's rays beating down on her, but the wind still blew cold, taking that warmth away from her. As she walked, she also began to notice that she was developing a cough, a raspy little hack that made her lungs and throat ache. Nothing about this altitude was kind.

As she walked, her mind wandered, and she found herself thinking about the duke and his men. Dead, she assumed, unless a few of them had managed to run far enough fast enough; the mountains stretched on for miles in all directions, though, leaving her unable to imagine how far and fast that could have been. And any that had survived the rise would likely have frozen to death. She felt bad about that -- she hadn't promised them a safe return, it was true, but she had believed in one, and she had made them believe with her. At least her ill repute would not survive her, she thought with a grim humor, and her bitter little laugh became another cough.

She couldn't think of Anar, but Anar pressed against her mind anyway. Had she known this might be a possibility? No, the look on her face had been terror, but it had also been confusion. She hadn't known what was happening even as she was drawn against her will along with the others. Idiots, perhaps, but idiots who didn't believe in leaving anyone behind. And now they were all together, and their treasure was safe, and they would never be blackmailed by humans over that secret again. It was hard to argue with logic like that..

Careless with her footing, she stepped in a pile of loose rock and went down -- not far, but enough to bring her to her hands and knees, and to slice her lower lip on a jagged outcropping. That pain startled tears to her eyes, and she punched a fist into the ground, not caring how it opened barely healed cuts. "Anar," she said, gasping out the only word she could think to say. "Anar, I'm sorry, Anar, Anar."

"Don't be sorry," a familiar voice said. "Walk."

Mayrat's heart leapt in her chest, and she raised her head to see a pair of pudgy red feet standing just beside her face. With a cry of joy, she grabbed for them -- and felt that cry turn to anguish as her hand fell through them as though they were smoke.

"No," said Anar, stepping back, "you're still too weak, I--" She reached out her hand as though to help Mayrat up, then pulled her arms back. "I'm barely here. But you've got to get up."

"How...?" Mayrat felt her lip throb as she tried to question what she saw before her.

"I told you, you have power." Anar looked off toward the west, toward the too-quickly setting sun. "But it's fading fast. You've got to get to shelter."

She was hallucinating, she was dying -- but at least she could feel better that she wasn't alone. "Just ... just stay with me...." Mayrat shut her eyes and rested her head against the rock. It was cold, but so was she, and soon enough they'd be the same temperature. No fire burned forever. Magic either ate its practitioners young or preserved them, and she'd been lucky enough to find herself in the latter category. Ninety-five was good, and it was more than most people got. Maybe it was time to go.

"You stupid bitch!" Anar's shout cracked at Mayrat's ears like a whip, and its echoes stung no less. "You wanted to rule the world, and now you're going to die up here? Pathetic! Those men were right to make fun of you!"

Insults had never sounded so sweet. "You're just trying to make me mad," Mayrat said with a tired smile.

"You stupid, selfish bitch, I am trying to save your life!" Anar kicked at a pile of rocks, though her feet passed right through them. She wasn't even standing, but hovering, floating at an approximation of ground level. Mayrat had never conjured unconsciously before; absently, she was impressed with herself. She had her eyes half-closed again before Anar snapped at her again: "I'm trying to save my life!"

That was odd. "What do you mean?" asked Mayrat, lifting her weary head.

Anar pointed toward her feet. "I'm down there. Somewhere in the stone, I am. We all are, but we're fading. Soon we won't be anything but rock, and I won't be anything but rock, but somehow you called me out and brought me here. This is all that's left of me. And if you go, I go. You give up, and you kill me too."

She felt rage boiling up through her bones. She wanted to hit Anar, to hit something, to choke every dragon, to find Naq and stab his (surely dead by now, cold comfort though that was) body repeatedly, to scream, to call down fire. She settled for getting her bloodied hands underneath her body. Bracing against the surest stone she could find, she took a deep breath and shoved herself up from the ground.

"That's it," said Anar, and though Mayrat couldn't see her face, she could hear tears of relief in Anar's voice. "Come on, you awful old hag, walk."

"Shut up, you fat lizard," Mayrat gritted through teeth clenched with effort and pain. Her body hurt in places she hadn't known she'd had.

"Crazy old witch."

"Bossy mannerless reptile."

"Puny mortal mammal."

"I--" Mayrat staggered forward, expecting to tumble again, but the ground held. "I am going to conjure you whole again just so I can set you on fire."

"Do it." Anar walked backward on ahead, keeping pace with Mayrat, giving her a steady goal and a sense of perspective. "But you've got to live first." And the bastard part of it, Mayrat knew, was she was right.

The sky had grown so dark by the time she reached her destination that she didn't see that she'd arrived so much as feel the bitter wind cease. "Don't stop," said Anar, beckoning her forward with the same pleading tone she'd used the last several hours for alternating encouragement and insults. She was, in fact, so creative with her insults -- delving into an extensive knowledge of grotesque subterranean creatures to compare Mayrat to -- that Mayrat had become a bit more convinced with every labored step that she wasn't hallucinating. Her own hallucinations, she felt, would be more polite.

"Just a second," said Mayrat, reaching out a hand to brace herself. The walls here were cool and smooth, yet felt to Mayrat unlike all the other rock she'd spent the past day stumbling over. "Let me sit down."

"If you sit down, you smelly ear-grub, you will never get back up again and you know it. Now look up."

Mayrat did, not knowing what she was expected to see in the near-darkness -- and certainly not expecting to see what she did. A pinprick of light shone from just above her. Using what little strength she had left in her frozen limbs, she drew a flame to life in her hand. The chamber where she found herself was too large for the light to reach its walls, though, so she took a deep breath and blew on the flame, sending its sparks high and lighting the air.

She shouted and flattened herself back against the wall as her eyes finally made sense of what surrounded her: a dragon, five times as large as Anar had ever been, though ghostly white and skeletal, and tucked in on itself. The feel of the wall finally connected in her mind with the sense-memory of helping her mother make the evening meal long ago. "Eggshells," she whispered.

Lit beneath one of the flickering orbs, Anar nodded. "Don't stop," she said again. "You're almost there. But the last thing you need to be a dragon is a dragon heart."

A heart -- that's what it was, shimmering in the darkness. The poor creature in here had never made it past its shell, but here its innermost core kept beating. "I'll--" Mayrat swallowed as she stepped forward, trying not to yelp as she realized what she stubbed her toes against were thick carpals, even in their fossilized state more bonelike than the grey stone Anar's body had become. "I'll kill it."

"He's already dead," said Anar. "As dead as I am, at least, and no deader than you will be soon. But maybe if you can get to it, you can save all three of us."

She'd lived in desert climates all her life and was no stranger to bones; she did not butcher animals herself, but did not object to the act, and often bought and cleaned carcasses for her own meals. Even so, making herself touch the baby dragon's skeleton was an act of sheer willpower. It was smooth and cold, but she couldn't shake the feeling it might close around her and crush her at any moment. Step by hesitant step, she made her way around curled wing and up arm bones, then stepped between its great ribs into its chest cavity. It couldn't have been that large in life, but magic had distorted it until it had the same monstrous scale as all its kin.

Mayrat swallowed. "Now what?"

"Take it," said Anar.

Mayrat extended her bruised hand toward the glowing object, then hesitated and drew it back. "Are you sure?" It was smaller than her fist and bright yellow, bright enough in the darkness to make her eyes ache. It was smooth, too, not the shape of a heart, but more spherical, like a gem from an expert jeweler's hands. It was beautiful.

"All dragon hearts are made of stone." Anar lay a hand across her chest. "Some old legends say we were mountains to begin with, that all the gems and metals we mine are just our ancestors' bodies and blood."

"Is that supposed to be an answer?" Mayrat grabbed the side of one rib for balance, then reached her hand out and closed her fist around the heart.

Great flames shot out from the point of contact, burning through the whole eggshell and out into the night, and Mayrat fell back, but kept her grip tight. The first thing she noticed as she landed hard against the spine was that she wasn't cold anymore -- in fact, she hadn't even realized how cold she'd become until the chill had vanished from her body. She could feel all her extremities, and though the ache wasn't pleasant, it was preferable to the gnawing numbness. The cold was still there, but she no longer had to mind it.

The second thing was a pair of arms wrapping around her, real arms, sturdy arms, bright red arms. Anar cradled her, and she clung back with one hand, her other one still clawed around the heart. She could feel its beating match hers, as though it were pumping blood through both of them now -- no, better than blood, magic. She was still weak and exhausted from her ordeal, but she felt filled again, rejuvenated, recharged. Weary as she was, she was no longer so tired she thought she might die of it.

And the third thing was a baby's cry, so strange and hollow that she took a moment to convince herself she'd heard it at all. But after a moment, she lifted her head and looked at Anar, expecting some sort of explanation. Anar looked as confused as she, though, and presently they helped one another to their feet.

There in the hollow where the heart had been lay a baby -- a human baby, in fact, small and wriggling. And male, Mayrat noted with some absent amusement. Keeping her fist tight around the heart, she scooped her arm under the boy and lifted him to her chest, where he stopped squalling almost immediately. She'd expected him to be frozen in this air, but he was as comfortably cool as she, and being tucked up to her chest seemed to be all he'd wanted. She was sure she'd lived stranger days in her life, but she couldn't name when.

He was as chalk-white as Anar was red, though his eyes as he opened them were bright glacial blue. Mayrat felt a hand on her shoulder and turned to let Anar see, hoping again that Anar might have some special insight. Instead, though, Anar extended her other hand toward the baby, who wrapped a fist around her thumb and seemed content with the arrangement. "What do we do now?" she asked, her voice soft.

Mayrat thought about dragons and dukes and obligation. She thought about expectations, of herself and of others, and about rumors and expectations, and about reputations good and ill. She thought about restrictions others had placed on her and she had placed on herself. They all seemed so small now, so many thousands of feet away, insubstantial in such high, thin air. Even power as she'd regarded it only days before was ashes in her mouth. So many things had died so recently, so suddenly -- including Anar. Including herself, for that matter, for all it mattered to anyone. And the dead were under no obligations at all.

"Now?" she echoed, feeling a freeing smile lift the corners of her mouth. "Anything we want."

Woodwives

by Iron Eater

boop!

by serenity_winner

The Summoning

by cloven

With the sky full of diamonds

by beili

Steamy

by safelybeds

About Shousetsu Bang*Bang

Shousetsu Bang*Bang is a webzine for original gay fiction. Issues are published bimonthly, with special issues in the spring and fall, and all are available online for free.

Established in 2005, Shousetsu Bang*Bang is intended as an online, English-language text equivalent of one of those All Yomikiri Bimonthly Summer Special 100 Extra Pages!! manga phonebooks where every story is a complete romance, self-contained in 30 pages, and heartwarmingly predictable. All stories in the regular issues contain stories of romance between men, are between 1500 and 23,000 words, and include explicit male-male sexual content. The special spring issue shifts the focus to women, and all stories in that issue include explicit female-female sexual content. Though tone and subject vary from story to story, the spirit of the 'zine is one that encourages true love and happy endings.

We welcome all writers to contribute original material to issues! Complete rules and guildelines for text submissions can be found on our website. Signups are posted two months prior to each issue's publication date, though these are neither mandatory nor binding. Artists traditionally publish under pseudonyms, as in the style of contributors to yaoi manga collections, but are not required to maintain anonymity.

Artists are also encouraged to participate, both by illustrating for authors and creating original standalone pieces. Complete guidelines for art submissions can be found here, and artists wishing to offer illustration services should do so in the signup post for each issue. In addition, the special fall issue welcomes contributions of short, original comics.

Submissions are always open. Send in your story or artwork as an email attachment to shousetsubangbang at gmail dot com. Please read the rules and guidelines first.

Published by Shousetsu Bang*Bang, ©2014

Stories

Apsara

The Frying Pan Into

Storm Chasing

The Second Sun

Sensual in Such Non-Conventional Ways

The Red Woman

Artwork

Woodwives

boop!

The Summoning

With the sky full of diamonds

Steamy

About Shousetsu Bang*Bang