Talla's Temple Ch. 10

Talla sighed as Tina pressed first one, then the other breast, in to her mouth. She opened her mouth just a little, to let the cool, erect tip slide between her lips.

"You okay?" Tina asked, sitting back on her heels but not moving her legs.

Talla shrugged.

"Tell me," Tina insisted gently. "We're sisters now. We can talk."

Annoyance, frustration and anger overwhelmed caution. Tina was very close, her face only a hand's span from Talla's. She could whisper. It would be private.

"You know the Conduit that did the double upgrade?" she asked.

"Ren hana," Tina said, nodding. "Yeah, I was there."

"He was the guy who did my upgrade."

"The quadruple?"

"The only upgrade I've ever had, yeah."

"So?"

"So I picked him for my Virgin's choice, too."

Tina nodded, still waiting for something of substance. Picking one's first Conduit as one's Virgin's Choice was not at all unusual.

"When he did my upgrade," Talla explained. "It looked bad. The expression on his face -- well - I thought he was going to die. And after he came I thought I was going to die. It hurt that badly."

She shivered, thinking about it.

"And?"

"And they did it to him again," Talla pronounced darkly, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. Her heart pounded as her anger came back fresh.

"On purpose," she emphasized.

It was Tina's turn to make an 'o' with her mouth.

"You care about him?" Tina asked.

Talla wagged her head from side to side, feigning indifference. It wasn't right to care about a specific male. Not too much, at least.

"He's a person," she said, somewhat defensively. "It's bad to hurt people on purpose."

That was one of those axioms that was drilled in to children very, very early.

Tina considered this and put her forehead against Talla's, ever so gently.

"Listen, giant-breasted sister of mine," she said affectionately. "I've seen ren hana upgrades a lot of times. It's the only way to crack some Virgins. Everyone in the Chamber knew what that signal meant because they've seen it before, too."

Talla was acutely aware, particularly after being addressed that way, of how Tina's nipples tickled at the tops of her breasts.

"I've never heard of one going wrong, or anybody being hurt -- male or female. Yeah, threes and fours are dangerous, sometimes fatally dangerous. You'll learn about that later. But ren hana? Perfectly safe."

That was comforting. It didn't leave Talla entirely satisfied with what had happened tonight. But she had to acknowledge that there had been no sign of objection in the Chamber to such use of Zhair'lo and, despite a somewhat cavalier attitude toward male welfare, the outright killing of men was not something of which she would accuse the Temple.

She let out a breath of air to calm herself. She felt better, having stated her fears out loud, but was still muddled with emotion. Her racing heart was slowing back to normal.

Tina backed her upper body away so she could look in to Talla's eyes.

Eyebrows raised, she asked, "Was that all that was bothering you?"

Talla looked around. Yes, something else was troubling her. Something under her skin that she just couldn't grab a hold of.

"I don't know," Talla said. "I feel really -- really ..."

She didn't know how to describe it. Tina watched her carefully as her eyes roamed around the room, searching for some way to explain herself.

"I want to run. I want to be left alone. I want to crawl in to bed. I want to go screaming through town."

That made no sense, but for some reason Tina smiled with some mischievous sense of comprehension. Under the water, one of her hands slid up Talla's thigh, fingers on the outside, thumb on the inside, until she came to Talla's hip.

Talla quivered as Tina's thumb slid inward along the fold where her abdomen met her leg.

Tina acknowledged the shiver by glancing around the room. Her thumb lightly traced the very top of the slit between Talla's lips before she withdrew her hand.

"Come on," she said as she backed away. "Let's get dried off."

-----==================----

The Queen of Endowment was too busy to sit and talk. She held court with her juniors while marching around her Office. The short train of her red gown led two women in green and a retinue of others in orange.

"So it worked, then?" she asked

"Yes, Highness. Perfectly," Abundance replied proudly.

Much more soft spoken, her dark-skinned comrade added, "It is most likely that both upgrades will take to Nadine, Highness."

The Queen rounded to the back of her desk, not immediately looking at either of them as she leafed through a stack of parchment on her desk.

"We'll have twelve more days," she said, pointing at one Sorceress then the other. "Then we'll have to release this Seal breaker to general."

Point pursed her lips in a gentle pout.

"That will get us through only half of our queued up Virgins, Highness," she said.

"Don't I know it," the Queen said with a shrug. "But we'll get him once a week after that. That will just have to do."

Abundance let out a sigh. Point was more reserved, merely running an index finger from her forehead to her nose.

From behind them another voice spoke up. "There is another possibility, Highness."

"What?" Endowment asked, interrupting her examination of the mountain of parchment in front of her to peer past the considerable shoulders of her green-clad subordinates. "Pril?"

"Yes, Highness," a woman in an orange blouse and tiny underwear stepped forward. "The other double upgrade."

Everyone stopped then -- Queen, Sorceresses and Officers all.

"Other double upgrade?" the Queen asked.

"Eletta, Highness," Pril stated flatly, consulting the wooden board she now hugged as if it were a shield against unwanted attention. "Her measurements just came in."

Another unintentional multiple upgrade. They'd just gotten over what they'd done to Zhair'lo and Talla without incurring any obvious signs of displeasure from over the wall. What was this now?

"Just a double?" the Queen asked, pleading in that imperious way that woman of power often did.

"The physician was certain, Highness," Pril stated, eyes wide. "The swelling was not enough to measure three, but would definitely hold at two."

"Name?"

"The Conduit was Zo-"

"We'll get to him later," the Queen interrupted. "Who was the source?"

"Shanata, Highness."

The Queen snapped her fingers. Two attendants in chest-crossing white sashes perked up immediately.

"Find Shanata," she ordered. "Both of you. Go, now."

They curtsied high, showing that there was nothing under their white skirts. No one -- no one at all -- was to wear underwear while on duty in this Queen's Office. It was quite a trick, though, to show enough thigh at the side to prove there was nothing underneath while keeping one's genitals concealed in accordance with all of the other rules. A junior never made either mistake twice and was ever careful to demonstrate her obedience to this particular Queen's rule.

"Do you think we could have found a second Seal Breaker?" the Sorceress of Abundance asked. More credit to her if that was the case, as Eletta had chosen her Discipline.

"Another toggle for your blouse?" the Queen asked. "We'll see after we talk to Shanata."

-----==================----

So what was up with Kurran anyway?

Zhair'lo had shoved open the wooden shutters to his quiet little bedroom and was looking out at the moon and stars. His bedroom faced roughly toward the glow on the horizon that he knew to be the Temple.

What is it with you? he asked the hidden building. Why does no one wonder at you?

Maybe men just didn't care. Maybe they learned not to care. Then how was it that he had come to care? Were other men just naturally incurious?

What did he know so far? There was a Goddess. There were three Queens. There were three shapes -- triangle, circle and square. So figure that each Queen had a shape and the shapes were Divisions.

Endowment's shape was the circle. That was Talla's Division. There were Disciplines. Talla's was Abundance. Renia's had been Point.

Natta was in Sweetness -- the triangle - which had Within, Lips and Pussy.

Kurran had mentioned Form, another Division.

But why? That was the overarching question. Why this hierarchy? How did it get that way? What purpose did it serve?

So his knowledge had some gaps. So there wouldn't be a lot of men interested in filling those gaps for him, even if they knew anything. It would be women, if anyone at all, who would tell him things.

Just as Natta had told him things. He pictured her now, holding her fingers in that triangular shape over her smooth genitals, the line of her lips bisecting the shape perfectly and cleanly.

If more women came to him, perhaps he could coax them to speak.

He peered out at the ineffable glow as he leaned on the window sill.

There was also Talla. She would tell him things, probably, if he asked. But he would have to go quite a way to find her.

There would be more heat bells, though, right?

-----==================----

"When did you get a room like this?" Talla asked.

"Neophyte," Tina answered, waving three fingers in the air.

The room, quite a distance down the street from the apartment Talla shared with Lara and Salee, was a bit smaller than Talla's but only held two beds. Beside each bed was a small dresser, much the same as she had in her room.

Tina was lighting a wall torch so they could see better while Talla looked around. The walls were decorated with a few keepsakes and pieces of art.

"Where did you get those?" she asked.

"Form, mostly," Tina replied. "They make all sorts of things there."

The paintings were quite pretty, Talla had to admit. Very colourful and smooth, except for one odd piece of work. It hung on the wall next to Tina's Strength medallion -- the one she would have received at her Initiation. Strength's symbol was the circle of Endowment wrapped around an arrow made of two lines. Talla had always thought it looked like child's drawing of a roof, but without the building underneath. The odd piece of art next to it was a strip of bronze, bent in a circle, with another piece of bronze bent inside it. It looked very much like an incredibly crude representation of the very same symbol.

"Oh, that," Tina laughed as she noticed Talla's curiosity. "Just a weird thing I can't let go of."

It was completely out of place, that twisted piece of metal in amongst the other, nicer works.

Tina quickly turned Talla toward a rack of clothing that took up the far wall of the room. A brass pole had been mounted horizontally across the wall. Tina and her roommate apparently shared this space to hang up their fancier clothing.

The simpler, working style of clothing would be folded up in the dressers. This was the nicer stuff -- the ceremonial clothing and the things they might wear to go out Serving. Talla had nothing like this.

"Where do you get stuff like this?" Talla asked as she leafed through the hangers. She'd seen the other women, on their way out to serve, dressed in things like these. She'd even seen them, occasionally, out of her window when she lived in the dorms.

"They have bazaars every now and then in Form," Tina explained as she opened one of her dresser drawers to reveal a small pile of metal discs. "You get coins for Serving and you can spend them at the bazaar. When you're done with whatever you bought, you can sell it to someone else, or trade it."

That was the first Talla had heard of a 'bazaar'. There was nothing like it in the dorms. No personal possessions at all, really. There were board games -- where players marshalled their resources in cooperation and competition with each other. It was enough that Talla knew the words 'buy' and 'sell'. She hadn't realized they could pertain to an individual's actual day to day living.

"I kept some of my Initiate outfits," Tina said. "You can try them on."

Neophyte clothing would look somewhat like the crossed sashes Tina was currently wearing whereas Initiate clothing was nothing but a mini-skirt and a top. It would be easy to tell which was which.

"Why did you keep it?" Talla asked as she leafed through the hangers.

Why not get rid of anything she couldn't use? The coins, like resources in the boardgames, were obviously finite.

Tina shrugged.

"Dunno," she said. "I guess I just like having ways to remember things. I want to keep at least one outfit from every rank."

Talla pulled out a hanger to examine its contents. The skirt, embroidered with flowery blue and silver patterns, looked very short even for an Initiate. The strapless top was made of angled pieces of fabric and looked so foreign that it confused Talla.

"Forget the top," Tina warned. "You're too big for it already. But the bottom would look great. Hold on a sec."

Tina brushed past her, the fabric of her sashes just touching Talla's upper arm, to ferret out another outfit.

"I wouldn't know how to put it on anyway," Talla remarked, holding it up in the torchlight.

Tina harumphed.

"I can show you," Tina said as she handed Talla a top. "But try this on first."

It was the nicest top that Talla had ever seen. Maybe that was why Tina had kept it so long. It wasn't the stretchable fabric of which her current top was made. Instead, it was very close to silk. She felt the fabric between her fingers. Soft, and loose. It wouldn't provide much support.

"I won't look," Tina said eagerly as she turned around. "Try it. Surprise me."

Talla shrugged and turned around at the same time Tina did. Talla was a bit jealous. She'd never had personal possessions, and now here was Tina with two walls full of them. At least Tina felt like sharing. As Talla slipped out of her top, she wondered when she would be rewarded with these coins.

The top had a tight band around her chest that fastened around the back with hooks. Straps went over her shoulders. The silken layers of light blue and white were loosely draped from the straps to the horizontal band so they didn't quite cross her cleavage.

"Am I wearing it right?" she turned around to ask.

Tina, it turned out, was also playing dress-up. She had managed to get herself into the patchwork top that had befuddled Talla. No wonder Talla had been confused. Not only was it made of weird, triangle-shaped patches, it was also designed to look like a triangle in general. It covered her left shoulder and the left side of her chest, but left her right breast mostly bare and her right shoulder strapless.

"Doesn't quite work anymore," Tina eyed herself. "When I was an Initiate, I only had the one upgrade in Abundance. I'm a bit too big now."

She looked up at Talla.

"Now you, on the other hand ..."

She trailed off to approach Talla and adjusted the band around her chest upwards so it pushed her breasts up. Talla had to hide a wince.

"There!" Tina pronounced.

"I feel kind of naked," Talla said as she looked down at her chest. The silken fabric was so loose that it hung away from her. She could see her nipples quite clearly, as would anyone who was standing beside her. "You're allowed to wear this?"

The Protocols regarding nudity were quite specific about breasts -- especially the pointy parts. The only rules that were more stringent were those about genitals.

"It's a little more relaxed when we got out Serving," Tina said, admiring Talla. "You want daring, try this."

With a quick movement, she pulled the string on Talla's skirt and yanked it away.

Talla started to protest but Tina was already handing her the odd skirt.

"Try it," she said with a smile. She turned her back as she added, "And for the gods' sakes, lose the underwear. No one wears that when they're out Serving."

Talla wasn't sure about this whole thing. Neither her mind nor her stomach had really had time to settle down since ... since when? When was the last time she'd felt stable?

She laced up the skirt as she thought about it. Had she felt right before Tina had brushed against her in the pool? No. Before she'd watched Zhair'lo do the double upgrade? No. Before she realized she'd miss Zhair'lo? Before working Zo'kar with her mouth?

No. She hadn't felt calm in body or mind since she'd run in to Zhair'lo at the dormitory. Everything had felt upside down since then. She took a deep breath and tried to centre herself.

The skirt was done up, at least. The issue was whether or not it was the sort of thing that she would wear on her way out to Serve somebody. The only way to test that out was, like it or not, to take off her underwear.

The sound of it sliding off was enough to make Tina turn around.

"Well!" she shouted in approval.

"Now I feel completely naked," Talla said. "You actually went outside in this?"

Tina nodded eagerly. "A couple of times, anyway."

She moved around Talla from one side to the other, sizing her up.

Talla looked down. The skirt, if you could call it that, was a string on her right side, knee length on her left thigh and barely covered her crotch in the middle.

"I dunno," she said doubtfully. She pointed to one corner of the room and added, "If you stand there, can't you see underneath?"

Tina moved to look from the indicated angle.

"Maybe a little."

"A little? What's a little?"

Tina closed one eye and and lined up a pointed index finger with Talla's genitals. She closed in on Talla, letting her finger follow the imaginary line she had made in the air. Talla watched, nervous and silent, as that finger brushed against the flimsy protection of her skirt and touched a spot so close to her lips that it made her let out a gasp of air.

Tina looked up at her with wide-eyed sincerity.

"It's tough, isn't it?" she said softly.

Talla nodded as the tip of that finger explored the edge of that cleavage.

"Working the boys over," Tina continued, almost pleading. "Touching them."

Her finger pushed, ever so gently, in to the flesh over Talla's clitoris.

"Those hard, hard penises. In your mouth ... between your breasts."

Talla, helpless, let Tina stroke her.

"You can't wait until tomorrow, can you?"

Speechless, Talla shook her head.

"Just lie down," Tina said. "It'll be easier, and you can see to me, too."

Talla gulped and let Tina gently push her to the bed, that small, gentle hand never leaving the throbbing flesh that was her mound.

It hurt. It hurt so badly, to want and not have. It wasn't even that she wanted Zhair'lo though he was always on her mind. Her body just wanted satisfaction so badly, and all she could think was that the boys she could have were so far away ...

But Tina was here, and Tina was a woman, like her. So she trusted that Tina would know what to do.

And Tina did know what to do. With the patience of a cloud drifting across the sky in the quietest night, she nudged Talla over on her side and curled up behind her. One hand snaked around Talla's neck and dove down to search for a breast. The top, faint protection even in the best of situations, utterly failed to cover her chest in any useful way in this position. Her breasts spilled freely in to one another. Tina grasped one, palm over nipple, and began kneading it.

Her other hand slid down between Talla's legs. Talla spread her thighs, welcoming Tina in.

Fingers found lips, caressed, pressed down. Talla felt Tina's naked breasts press up against her back. When had the other girl discarded her top?

"Abundance you have," Tina whispered as she took a tight grip on Talla's breast. "And Abundance you will be. So it's for nothing if you don't -- squeeze."

And she squeezed hard as she pushed in to Talla's mound and hugged her tightly.

Talla moaned.

She remembered, quite suddenly, how she had felt when she had run to Zhair'lo and tackled him. She recalled how vibrant and powerful that moment had been, seeking him out, hunting him down. It brought back a memory of desperate hope.