A Long Time from Home Ch. 03

"Did it help your memory to find your things?" I suddenly heard Alice ask, causing me to snap out of Rita's memory with a speed that made me slightly dizzy.

Reading mind-images is exceedingly fast, but it had still taken some time and I needed to join the conversation, instead of just standing there, wallowing in Rita's memory of an orgasm.

"Not yet, but I hope it will come back soon." I said slowly, as I got my thoughts under control.

There was a thing we haven't talked about and I really needed to know. "Can I stay here for a few days? I will repay you as soon as I get the chance."

Alice hesitated. "I can't answer for all of us, but I will ask."

"Thank you."

"It's a yes from me." Said Rita and switched to English, as she whispered to Alice. "And if you don't take him to bed, I will."

Even with my newly acquired and very limited knowledge about the language the sentence was so simple, that I could understand it easily, but I kept my face under control. There was no need to reveal that I spoke the language just yet.

Alice smiled and elbowed the younger woman in the side. "Now go out and relax, so I can finish my writing."

"Yes, Mother."

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After that, Alice went back to writing, while Rita and I went outside to talk by the poolside, taking some ice water and fruit along with us.

Her Latin was even better than Alice's was and much to my delight, she spoke an old version of Greek, since she was studying ancient cultures as well as languages. She also explained that the reason Alice and her both spoke Latin, was that it was part of what they studied at the university.

Even though I expected to be able to talk English within a few days, this was good news as it made life a lot easier for me until then.

It was also unbelievable lucky, that after almost two thousand years of trance, I just happened to wake up when the nearby house was occupied by people that understood what I was saying.

Despite that, it had happened, and I sent a silent prayer of thanks to the Goddess of Luck for watching over me yet again, before turning my attention back towards Rita.

I asked her about the Trojans and Troy and the conservation drifted to the Iliad, (Homer's epic about the battle of Troy) and onto the other great work of Homer: The Odyssey. Both of which I had heard, read, and told many times and apparently, they had stood the test of time despite being wildly inaccurate at times.

Being a student of ancient cultures, Rita clearly enjoyed talking about it and I happily followed her lead, as she had a habit of putting dates on almost everything, which was extremely enlightening.

The problem for me was that people 'back then' didn't really count the years like they did now and if they did, they tended to use a local calendar, like 'the third year in the rein of King Whatever'.

That way made it hard to know when anything had happened, but in this new culture, they had made an effort in placing everything in their own calendar system and it became almost a game for me to discover the major dates in my life.

It was both fun and interesting and it wasn't until Alice came out from the kitchen, now dressed in a short skirt and a T-shirt and carrying a tray with food, that I realized that Rita and I had been talking for hours on end.

"Karen called and told me that she is taking the twins to..." She mentioned something that sounded like Bouganvilla and I guessed it was a restaurant,"... so we're eating alone today." Alice said with a smile, placed the tray on the table and sat down.

"Fine by me." Said Rita and handed me a plate topped with food. "I love your cooking."

"Thank you."

A few mouthfuls of food later, I had to agree with Rita. Though foreign to me, the food was delightful, and I emptied the plate while the two women switched to English and talked about their school, the team they were playing on and what Rita and I had been talking about all afternoon.

The blonde smiled and glanced over at me. "It seems like you two found some common interests."

Rita looked at Alice with a grin and continued in English. "Yeah, how often do you find a tall, well #some words I didn't understand# guy that have read both the Iliad and Odyssey and who speaks Latin and Classic Greek?"

"Rarely." Replied Alice in the same language. "And it makes me a bit uneasy. When something seems too good to be true, it usually is."

Rita snorted. "Get your head in the game, girl. Of course, it's too good to be true." She drank from her glass. "We leave in ten days and chances are that we'll never see him again after that... unless you plan on #some words I didn't understand# and smuggle him back to the states. Just enjoy it while you can."

Alice looked thoughtful and feeling the two women needed to talk, I excused myself and went to the bathroom.

I could feel them looking at me as I walked out and heard Rita ask. "How old do you think he is?"

"Around twenty-five I would guess." Answered Alice and chuckled. "Give or take five years... "

She said more, but I walked out of hearing range.

When I came back, the table had been cleared and pool area was not only lit by artificial lights, it was also more crowded than when I left. Zena and Cyra were back and along with them, another woman had arrived, most likely the woman named Karen from Rita's erotic memory.

Though not as tall as Alice and Rita, she was still taller than most women and moved with a natural grace that reminded me of a well-trained martial artist. Like the two other women, her body was that of a long-legged athlete, with the hint of muscle showing under light bronze skin that looked as smooth and soft as silk.

She was also beautiful, extremely sexy and one of the few slanted-eyed women I had ever seen that wore her lustrous black hair short.

Alice introduced her as Karen Chai and as the only one of the trio, that didn't speak Latin. We exchanged a few polite sentences with Alice as a translator before the twins dragged Karen away to play some game along with Rita and I used the pause to walk into the kitchen to get some water.

Taking a glass, I filled it with water and drank slowly, while I looked out of the window. The pool was clearly visible from where I stood, and I enjoyed the sight of the two bikini clad women, as they laughed and played with the twins.

The sound of a door opening made me glance over when Alice entered the kitchen.

For a few heartbeats, I was afraid she would get annoyed by seeing me admiring her friends, but instead she grinned when she saw me standing by the sink and walked over to me.

"Enjoying the view?"

"Yes. They are both very sexy." I said truthfully and offered her a glass of water. "No wonder you all share pleasure with each other."

Alice fumbled and almost dropped the glass. "What? Who said that?"

"No one." I said with a smile, while I cursed inside my head. I really needed to be more careful until I had a better idea about their social taboos, because I felt like I was stepping on them constantly. "It's in the way you look at and touch each other. It's sweet."

"What?"

"It's sweet." I repeated. "I mean, given the chance I certain wouldn't mind sleeping with anyone one of you, so why should you?"

Alice stood there in silence and looked at me. Then she shook her head. "You are very different from the men I am used to."

"I hope that is a good thing." I replied with a grin.

"Oh, it is." She said with feeling in her voice and dragged me in close for a quick kiss.

Suddenly I could hear a faint telepathic voice saying "< Mom is kissing that blonde guy! >"

It wasn't as clear as a telepathic conversation between two Baylons is, but it was there and since it was a child's mind-voice and they were speaking English, it could only belong to one of the twins.

A moment later I heard another, but similar voice say, "< Well, he is good looking >"

"< As long as he keeps removing the growing pain, I'm happy >"

There was a mental laughter and the voices disappeared again.

Curious, I reached out with my mind, searching for mental patterns of Cyra and Zena and found them without any problems. Judging from the energy patterns of their minds, the twins didn't have a drop of Baylon blood in them.

I was stunned. The ability to speak mentally was normally linked to Ars Mentalis and that was something only Baylons had, since it required the development of a special part of the brain known as the Centrum Potentia (Baylon: "Centre of Power), which is the source of both magical and mental power, collectively called Artes Potentia, and unique to Baylons.

While I had met humans with mental powers before, they had all been descendent from Baylon ancestors. To hear pure humans use Telepathy, was like seeing a dog fly and yet I had heard them.

I started to compare their mental patterns with other humans and found connections that weren't normally there. In fact, those connections somewhat mimicked that of the Centrum Potentia, if to a lesser degree.

Unfortunately, that also meant that there was a good chance, that the slimy sending I had caught the other night was real and not something I had imagined.

A slight dizziness came over me and I had to remind myself, that I was still weak as a child. One day wasn't enough to get over two thousand years of meditation.

"Something wrong?" Asked Alice. "You look thoughtful."

"Just trying to piece things together." I said and drank some more water. "I think I need to go to bed early."

"I think you need a bit more than that." The blonde said slowly and lowered her voice, before saying. "I don't know what, but there's something about you, that makes me extremely ... lustful." She sighed. "Unfortunately, we will need to wait until we're alone again."

Moving to the side, so we couldn't be seen from the outside, I drew her closer and kissed the side of her neck.

Alice trembled slightly, causing strands of blond hair to tickle my nose, but the sound of the door opening made her take a few steps back to the kitchen table.

She had barely taken her glass of water when Rita stepped into the kitchen. As soon as she saw us standing close together, she stopped "Oh... I hope I am not interrupting anything."

"No, no," Said Alice.

I smiled and shook my head as well. "I need to go to bed early and was getting some water."

Taking the glass of water from the table, I walked past Rita and into the living room.

Behind me, I could hear the brown girl mumble in English. "God, he has a hot body."

"Behave!" said Alice in the same language and with a chuckle.

"Why? We're on vacation."

They continued to talk, but their voices faded when I walked down that stairs and they were completely gone even before I closed the door behind me.

Thoughts whirled in my head as I undressed and lay down on the bed.

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There was a real possibility that it was the children's mind talk, which had woken me from the slumber, instead of the sound of falling rocks, and I pondered that for a while until the sheer lack of information made me push the thought away.

I needed to know more about the world and the language, before I did or said something stupid, so I activated the Ars Mentalis trick again and continued my work from the night before, connecting the words I knew, with the corresponding words, objects, meanings and concepts I had gotten from Alice.

When I had done as much as I could, I started to think about the information Rita had given me.

My sister and I were born in Egypt the year Ramses the Great celebrated his 33rd year on the throne. To be more precise, according to my mother, I was born during a solar eclipse at the winter solstice, which made it rather easy to remember my birthday. People have been using a lot of different calendars over the years, but winter solstice didn't change.

Converting to the calendar the Americans used took a bit of calculation, but after I got used to the fact that they named everything before their year 1 as BCE, it became a lot easier.

Rita had said that Ramses the Great became Pharaoh in 1279 BCE, which meant I was born in 1246 BCE and that Baylon had disappeared in 1210 BCE, since I had been 36 when it happened.

For most humans, that was middle-aged, but Baylons usually lived around 300 years, and many were able to extend their life using Ars Magica or Ars Mentalis, so I had been a young man when my life had been turned upside down and inside out.

A stray thought made me chuckle softly. I wondered what how Rita would react, if she knew that not only had I visited Troy while it was still standing, but I had also met Ramses the Great.

Shaking my head, I smiled at the ceiling as I lay down to sleep. Of all the people, I had met in the hundreds of years, I had wandered the world, only a few had discovered that I didn't age, and I didn't see any reason to change that.