Favela Pt. 23

"The state spire has been dismantled!" Marcella shouted from her bedroom. She always left her door wide open now, so Olivia and Maithri were able to hear her clearly even from the kitchen. I know! Olivia wanted to shout back, but bit her tongue. Maithri glanced over at her girlfriend to gauge her reaction, and wasn't very shocked when she noticed that Olivia was smiling contentedly to herself.

"You fucking knew!?" She hissed as her hands continued to spread peanut butter over a thick slice of burned toast. Olivia looked up and tried to disguise her expression, flattening out her smile and squinting her eyes. Even so, she couldn't help but let a little bit of her smug hoard of secrets slip.

"Just wait..." She murmured. "There's more."

Maithri glared as she put two pieces of toast on a plate and handed it to her friend. Olivia, who had been cutting up several overly ripe mangos spooned a healthy portion of glistening slimy pieces into three different bowls.

"Wait. It's not just the spire... The... Holy shit. The entire skyline is down. There's a lot more here, I've never seen an incident report this long." The two girls picked up two trays loaded with food and headed back to Marcella's bedroom. Olivia's mom turned to face them when they awkwardly squeezed through the door together.

"Jesus!" Olivia laughed. "Personal space?" Maithri glared and rolled her eyes, rushing up to Marcella so that she could use handing her a plate of toast as an excuse to peer over her shoulder at the shrouded display of her salvaged workstation. Her eyes scanned the screen quickly as Marcella gratefully munched on the cracker-like bread.

Even though she already knew the true extent of the cataclysm, Olivia could feel the excitement and tension growing in the room. She was excited too, see it in advance was one thing, but living through it... Filled her with a nauseating mixture of dread and elation. "The FRAME are taking apart the entire city... No casualties as of yet... The state is evacuating, Calico has withdrawn all the way to the border. It says before communications went down there was a brief communication from the capital, apparently it's happening there too. The HAND has gone silent, but the ambassador is still in the bunker. No idea if they're dead or alive." Maithri trailed off, the report continued but she'd reached the end of the screen.

Marcella swallowed. "It goes on for another thirty pages." She sighed, seeming already exhausted, her eyes reading and rereading the executive summary several times before quickly darting over to her daughter's completely unconcerned face. "W-What the fuck do we do Olivia?" She rasped. Her daughter calmly scooped up a large spoonful of mango and gently directed it toward her mother's partially open mouth. Without protest, almost meekly, Marcella opened her lips wider to accept it.

"First we eat this delicious, nourishing, breakfast, and then we relax." Marcella almost spat out her food, spluttering and struggling to swallow. "Easy girl." Olivia murmured, taking away the spoon and gently using her thumb to wipe a small piece of mango off her mother's bottom lip. The older woman swallowed several more times before she tried to talk again, she did seem calmer though, a bit of her dignity returning after the embarrassing display.

"Relax. Relax! Really?" Marcella folded her arms and swiveled her chair restlessly back and forth, her thighs flopping open.

"Mom." Olivia fixed Marcella with a cool stare. "Even Calico has given up, and I think we can assume they're dealing with their own problems right now. There's nothing we can do but wait." She paused, taking a beautiful fluorescent golden spoonful of fruit from her own bowl and popping it into her mouth with her mother's spoon. She chewed slowly, savoring the complex flavor, swallowed and licked her slightly sticky lips.

Marcella huffed, but stopped swiveling, suddenly, acutely aware of how widely she was spreading her legs, how exposed her crotch was. Just as quickly she realized that she'd noticed because her vulva was tingling, her mound swelling slightly into the comfortably tight, black, satin of her underwear. The panties Olivia had told her to put on the day before. Her mind buzzed, jolted by the sudden cognition that she was intentionally putting on a show, flaunting her pussy in front of her daughter, baiting and inviting her to pounce in this moment of insanity and terror.

Olivia just smiled and loaded up another generous spoonful. She pressed it softly to her mother's lips. "Try not to spit it out this time." She taunted. Marcella glared but obediently opened her mouth and took the big slippery bite of brilliant flesh. She manged to get it all down without incident this time. Her crotch throbbed, she wished desperately that her daughter would, do something aside from just feeding her... Which was frankly, mildly humiliating. Marcella's cheeks got redder and redder as they traded bites, and she felt increasingly conspicuous, being the only one of the three sitting down. Also inexplicably unable to end her provocative display.

But Maithri didn't seem particularly interested in their silly drama, she had opportunistically taken over Marcella's computer, scrolling recklessly through the pages of the report, her eyes getting wider and wider until finally Olivia reached over and lightly pressed the button that turned off the display. Her girlfriend blinked at the black screen, it took her a moment to realize what had happened.

"I can feed myself you know." Marcella said petulantly, finally grabbing the spoon herself while her daughter was distracted. Olivia chuckled and smiled at them both. "Let's go and eat outside." The concept struck Marcella as so openly outrageous that she nearly dropped the spoon. The sky was falling, almost literally, the HAND was going on some kind of bloodless rampage, very likely world-wide. They... No, humanity itself was on a precipice, and who knew what could happen next? Anything, they could die! She looked at her daughter and then at Maithri, a girl she didn't even know that well, but who had become almost as precious to her as her own flesh and blood. The thought of losing either of them was unthinkable!

And here her sweet filha was suggesting that they throw all caution to the wind... And go outside, outside where there could be... Bullets flying, bombs falling, marching platoons of killer robots crushing them all to death under their cold metal feet. It was almost too much for her heart to take. All the stress that she'd been feeling building for months came crashing down. But then in a single beautiful instant it was lifted away. Olivia had reached out and taken her hand. Immeasurable power and life flowed back into her, it was like being connected directly to a high-voltage line. Her heart skipped several beats.

Then she felt on the verge of enlightenment, euphoria, ecstasy, her pussy going haywire, an endless orgasm but without any strain or contrition, a single whimper escaping her trembling lips as she was pulled gently to her feet by both girls. "C'mon, you're coming with us Marcy." Her daughter said, looking like an angle to Marcella's dumbfounded eyes. She tried to see around her, to see anything else, but there was only Olivia, luminous, glowing, a goddess.

"D-Did I really... Make you?" She asked weakly, her voice sounding to her ears like a static-laced radio transmission from another universe. Her head reached out, brushed lightly against her daughter's face, soft, warm, and yet just ordinary human skin, she could feel the oils and the texture, and was confused. Olivia laughed, the clarifying sound of a million pealing bells shattering Marcella's mystical delirium. Then the three of them were just walking casually through the cool shaded rear villa courtyard, carrying their plates and bowls and cups. They burst fully into the light, the sky was a prescient washed-out watery blue.

Marcella gasped, she could hardly remember a more beautiful day in her life, except for maybe in the time before, so long ago, when there were still a few trees, and the occasional seabird. She could remember their piercing calls, they seemed to echo in her head even now... Had they really lost all those things... Thrown them away, like trash? The thoughts couldn't seem to penetrate her sense of calm. Olivia had done something to her... She couldn't say what. She glanced sideways in her daughter's direction, cautiously observing the girl.

Maithri and Olivia were frolicking around a few of their old aluminum lounge chairs, their frames bent, their rainbow straps faded to a pale creamy monochrome. Her daughter had connected a hose to the thermal reservoir and was spraying water high over their heads, a real rainbow formed in the misty shower, arcing over their heads, disappearing into the restless gloom of the synthetic jungle that lurked just beyond the low brick wall that surrounded the vast sprawling patio.

The fun when on for awhile, until both girls were sprayed and soaking wet. Marcella quietly sat down in one of the stilted chairs, creaking disagreeably but still serviceable after all these years. She leaned back her head and stared unblinking into the sky, wondering if she'd had some kind of psychotic break. Dripping and panting, her daughter and her girlfriend eventually came over and sat down beside her in two of the other chairs. "Feeling better?" Olivia asked, greedily guzzling down the last of her goat's milk.

Marcella turned her head sideways, fixing her daughter with a cool haze gaze. "Yes." She whispered, and realized it was true. Broken, mended, broken, and mended, again and again, turned and spun and jerked around, tumbled like a fragment of sea glass, rounded and made beautiful and whole, yet having lost some ineffable baggage along the way. That was how she felt, but whole despite everything. Even the world coming to and end felt far away, impotent when set beside this luminosity she was feeling now. "Just..." She paused. "Just tell me what to do." She breathed. Olivia grinned, her eyes shimmering with joy.