Sisterhood - Temptation Ch. 37

When she closed the door behind her and stood again in the quiet of the dressing room, Katharina noticed how much warmer it had been inside the small chamber with Mari. The humid air of the North Wing felt cooler on her flushed skin. There was a slight breeze blowing past, through the length of the chamber and towards the tunnel that led to the amphitheater.

She walked between the dressing tables and into the lighter half of the space that they divided. As her dick slowly softened, she felt a residual watery trickle of cum still leaking out, threatening to drip to the floor. Aware again of her nakedness, she cast around for something with which to wipe herself. There was her underwear back in the room she had just left, but she did not want to disturb Louise and Mari again now. She saw nothing among the clutter on the dressing tables. She opened the drawers of the nearest table and found one laden with small items of clothing. But it felt wrong, rather crude, to clean herself with clothing that was intended for the Sisterhood's guests. It felt like the sort of thing that a girl like Yvonne would do. Instead she took the end of her dick in her fist and wrung it out into the palm of her hand, which she then wiped on her hip. She felt the smear begin to dry quickly against her skin.

Before her thoughts had settled, Katharina began walking towards the archway that led back into the testing chamber. But then she stood before the curtain for a moment and felt the haze of drowsy satisfaction that had enveloped her begin to dissipate. There was an erratic throb of sore warmth between her legs, where her dick was still faintly twitching, limp but still thick in the aftermath of orgasm.

She held still, and listened at the archway. Over the dull thud of her own heartbeat she heard the familiar mingle of voices drifting out of the testing chamber. It was curious the way in which the sounds of the chamber seemed somehow to harmonize as they blurred together, carrying an impression of the general state of excitement in the chamber. When Katharina had herself been inside one of the beds, she had rarely noticed the voices around her, her attention too consumed with her partners. It was only when standing in the chamber, or at its entrance as she was now, that she could listen and attend carefully to what she heard. In the soft murmur of groans and laughter and whispers, Katharina thought she discerned a certain periodicity, a rise and fall in the intensity of the voices. It was as if each voice were in some way attuned to those around it, tending to grow slowly louder in competition with the others, then trail off again when the others happened to fall quiet, sometimes producing the same sudden arbitrary hush that occurs at a party, when every conversation hushes at once.

Now, Katharina had the impression that more girls were talking than before. She heard snippets of words, syllables, individual peals of laughter. She set her hand on the curtain and watched it sway, but then turned away. She could tell that she was riding a flush of confidence. And she felt a visceral stirring of excitement at the prospect of re-entering the testing chamber. But she needed a moment longer to recollect her last encounter, and fix it in her memory. Whatever had transpired between her and Mari, and perhaps even more importantly between her and Louise, seemed important, like a step up or a barrier broken. She knew that she wanted to try herself with another girl soon, but she wanted also a moment to ponder carefully how and where.

With an abrupt resolution, Katharina decided that she wanted to go for a swim, to feel herself move underwater. She had always felt a certain flinching aversion to swimming, because she had disliked being undressed or exposed around other girls, but some of that inhibition felt as if it had now fallen away over the course of the evening. She had been walking around the testing chamber naked for a while now, and had become accustomed enough to the sensation that she no longer felt it constantly, could let it slip out of her awareness if she wanted. It was as if before she hadn't felt she had the right to display herself, but now she did, because the ka'ini found her attractive, and she knew how to handle them, even those like Mari and Louise whom many girls found intimidating.

Katharina turned away from the curtain and walked towards the small tunnel at the further end of the room, which she knew led into the amphitheater. She contemplated walking on and through the tunnel, to stand in the pit of the amphitheater now and tease herself with its imposing atmosphere, then discarded the idea. She assumed it would be empty, but if it weren't, being surprised by another girl would be enough to puncture her mood.

Half way along the left wall was another archway. Katharina thought she recalled it leading into another section of the baths, one that later would be reserved for the offered girls to use before preparing themselves for the coven gathering at dawn. The arch was a little smaller than the one that led into the testing chamber, and instead of being curtained it was filled with a single thick door of frosted glass, cut to the shape of the arch. Katharina saw no wetness or vapor on the glass, and holding her face close to its surface she saw through it the blocky, scrambled image of a brightly-lit but apparently empty tiled room.

The glass was heavy, and swung inward slowly. Katharina stepped into a room that was indeed empty. Electric lights housed in long hazy glass strips on the ceiling filled the room with a clean light that illuminated each corner, but was not quite bright enough to be offensive. The tiles that covered the walls and floors were a brilliant polished white.

On a whim, and glad to be alone with her exuberance for a moment longer, Katharina walked briskly along one wall of the room, reaching out in front of her to depress each metal knob she passed, releasing water from the showers above. The water was only lukewarm, and she flinched when the first stream hit her skin. Then she paused after a few more strides and let her hair soak it up until it ran down over her face. She continued, walking beneath a shower of water and idly swiping the slight clamminess of sweat and cum from her face and her body as she went.

When she reached the end of the row of showers, she waited under the last one for a minute or more until it timed out and shuddered to a stop. She guided the last trail of water down over her chest and stomach, then took hold of her dick and swiped a fistful of water along it to wash herself. She wrung out her hair over her shoulder and did the same again with the slew of water that she squeezed out of it.

Katharina looked around the quiet shower room. There were no mirrors. She could see the vaguest outline of her body reflected as a patch of darkness in the shiny surface of the tiling opposite. Still holding her dick in her hand, she felt it thickening. Not with the urgency of arousal but with a simpler sort of readiness, a satisfaction. She felt acutely aware of her body, as she often had before in moments of contemplation, but now without the awkwardness or the doubt. She could feel a pleasant, shifting throb in her insides, pushing outward as a tiny throb at her butthole and up the shaft of her dick, the echo still of her last climax.

Katharina turned away from the showers and towards the far end of the room. In front of her the walls narrowed into a corridor. She passed into the smaller space and along it until above her the strips of electric lighting came to an end. A little further along, the white tiling of the walls also ceased, at an irregular blocky border, and revealed the old damp stone of the North Wing beneath. Ahead at the end of the tunnel was a cloud of steam and the sound of gentle splashing.

Katharina quickened her stride and stepped out into the wide space of the baths. Above the curls of steam floating off the surface of the pool she saw the torchlights on a high ledge around the edges of the room, and much further above them the small grilled skylights in the distant ceiling.

She stepped forward to the edge of the pool and lowered herself to sit, legs slipping into the hot water. When she leaned back on her arms and took a long breath of warm steam, she heard the faint slap of a girl's bare body shifting against the wet tiles of the pool's edge, someone moving closer to her. Then she heard a voice announce itself with a tiny cough before speaking.

"Katharina."

"Miss Vera," Katharina spoke softly in reply. She smiled to herself, eyes closed, quietly pleased that she had not let herself be surprised by Vera's presence.

"Correct," Vera chuckled, "The steam has gotten thicker at this end of the pool. The springs are active. It's a good omen."

With her eyes closed, Katharina found she had no good sense of where she had entered the spa chamber. Deeper into it than the archway that led through the other showers and into the testing chamber, than was sure, but more precisely than that she couldn't tell. She opened her eyes and looked along the ceiling from one end of the chamber to the other. The chamber was very large. Through the thinner layer of vapor that hovered above her head she could only just make out the far end at her left, where the archway back into the grand entrance chamber of the North Wing was somewhere hidden beneath the steam. At her right, she saw the opposite end surprisingly close, perhaps only several paces away, and the row of small doors that led into the sauna.

Katharina echoed Vera's quiet laughter with a hum of her own, "A good omen?"

"Yes. It used to be common to read the Goddess' mood in the movements of the springs," the sound of Vera's voice was just above a whisper. She sounded contented, even a little smug, "But also I just like it when it's hot. When the steam envelops your body. It's as if it's wrapped around you, stroking you."

Katharina drew another slow breath and murmured a lazy nod of assent. With Vera's voice still fresh in her ear, she closed her eyes again and imagined what Vera had described. She focused on the heat at her skin, the clinging but ephemeral caress of water vapor, the meandering wafts of steam across her body. Her dick, which was lying heavy across her thigh, pulsed with a tiny frisson of warmth. As it began to lengthen, it slipped off her leg and slumped down, bent slightly under its own slowly growing weight, and dipped into the pool with a faint plop against the surface. Katharina sighed and savored the embrace of hot water around the tip. It felt almost like being kissed there by a girl, like Caroline had done, but not as vivid. The touch of the water was slightly firmer than that of the steam, but still tantalizingly incomplete.

There was a slapping sound again, Vera's buttocks plumping down on the tiles as she sat up. She spoke a little louder, more briskly, "So. You have been enjoying yourself Katharina. Very good."

Katharina released her breath and opened her eyes to turn and smile at Vera, "I suppose I have, yes."

Vera was naked and leaning forward, sitting on her hands at the very lip of the pool. Her brown hair, darkened by moisture, clung to the sides of her face and her neck in clumps, with sweat or perhaps from a recent swim.

She squinted at Katharina, "But I know you Katharina. What you enjoy most. You have been learning. Discovering yourself."

Katharina smiled despite herself. She glanced away, "Maybe. Or I hope so. I did what you suggested, to try things out, with other girls."

"Excellent, so tell me," Vera hoisted herself a short distance in the air on her hands, then plumped down again a little closer to Katharina, "What sort of girls did you meet? Like Caroline? Or more troublesome?"

"I suppose a troublesome one," Katharina pondered, "But not in that sense. Maybe she's actually quite simple, I don't know."

"Ah her. Well, she does require a lot of energy," Vera chuckled again, "But not much finesse."

"And how have you been enjoying yourself?" it occurred to Katharina to ask, "Did you stay with Caroline?"

"Mm-hm," Vera nodded, "For quite a while. But then um..."

After Vera's pause grew a little longer than seemed normal, Katharina interrupted, "Yes?"

"Curious," Vera frowned, "Her cousin turned up. Similarly beautiful. If not more so." Then Vera's frown broke into a quiet smile, "But perhaps a little less sure of herself. She may prove slightly more troublesome for Lena, in your sense of the word."

"For Lena?"

"Yes. Her girl. But..." Vera's expression brightened and she turned and clapped her hand exuberantly to Katharina's thigh, "We have another spectacular prospect, thanks to you Katharina. And to your friend Ivy. The other girl you two brought. Ivy and I found her again."

For a moment bewildered by the rush of identities and relationships that Vera was throwing at her, Katharina sought among her memories, then realized. "Josephine."

"Yes," Vera took her hand from Katharina's leg and put it to her own forehead, then swept back the damp hair from her face, "And she is perfect."

"Oh?" Katharina examined her earlier impression of Josephine, and recalled how Josephine had perhaps hinted that she still found other dmurrhisi more exciting than Sisterhood girls, and how despite her effusive and flirtatious demeanor she had seemed at moments to be subtly and very politely reticent, at least with Katharina.

"You don't think so?" Vera asked.

"Oh no, she's..." Katharina shook her head, "Hot, beautiful, full of energy. I just, um, wondered whether she was totally sure, about staying with the Sisterhood."

"Perceptive, Katharina," Vera pursed her lips, her eyes smiling, "Perhaps she was not, to begin with. But whatever fun and games you and Ivy treated her to earlier, they have proven persuasive. So well done. She has already encountered one of the Seven, and accepted to be offered."

Katharina smiled fondly, and thought back to the time that she and Ivy had spent with Josephine, wandering the house with Mari, their dance in the Great Hall, their success in gaining entry to the North Wing. She permitted herself to believe, tentatively, that Vera's praise was deserved. Josephine had seemed to enjoy herself a great deal.

"Which of the Seven?" Katharina asked.

Vera's shoulders shook with a quick snort of laughter, "She could not remember, or at least not the name. But I believe it was Julie, or perhaps one of Anna's sisters. Maybe it doesn't matter too much. She is perfect. And not every girl has to do everything that we want of her. The Sisterhood has its uses for girls like her."

"Girls like her?"

Vera laughed again, a proper laugh, brief but loud, "It is good if the ka'ini also desire each other, work to keep each other in a state of excitement. And Josephine will be excellent at that. At taking care of the others."

Katharina turned Vera's phrase over in her mind. Then something about the way in which it was formulated triggered the recollection of a recent memory, something she had said she would do. She turned, reached out as if to take hold of Vera and draw her attention by taking her by the arm, then withdrew her hand a few centimeters from Vera's bare skin.

"I met another of the ka'ini," Katharina said, "Louise."

Vera turned to meet her gaze. She looked intrigued, "Ah. Now she is something special. A tougher challenge. Lovely, isn't she?"

"Yes," Katharina nodded. Looking into Vera's excited eyes, she found she had to swallow a little knot of dryness in her throat.

"Don't tell her Katharina," Vera leaned closer and grinned, "But I am absolutely dying to fuck her."

A sudden swell of nervous excitement forced a fleeting, hysterical giggle from Katharina's throat. She coughed and checked herself, "Well, she..."

Vera lifted her eyebrows, "Yes?"

Katharina found her memory suddenly reticent. Or else she recalled it perfectly, but found only now on examination that there was nothing in particular to report, nothing she could state simply, only an impression.

"She said I should say hi. From her, to you," Katharina realized only after she spoke that she was whispering very quietly, as if delivering an extremely sensitive secret, and felt a little foolish.

To Katharina's relief, Vera tossed her head back and laughed, loudly, a hearty laugh of pleasure. Her voice echoed off the far arched ceiling of the spa, and Katharina thought she heard the waters elsewhere stirring and splashing, as if other girls had heard, and startled.

Vera sighed and lifted one leg from the water, set her foot on the edge of the pool and hugged her leg to her chest, "Katharina?"

"Yes?"

Vera rested her chin against her knee, her lips close to her own wet skin, "You know, it shares a root with many other important words. That's the part of it that you first recognized."

Though the habit was at times maddening, Katharina also experienced a quiet rush of exhilaration whenever Vera dealt one of her abrupt changes of topic. It was a special quirk of hers, and Katharina always had the impression that it signaled a test of some sort. Katharina stared blankly for a splitsecond, then set to searching her memory quickly what she had discussed with Vera at the outset of the ball, for words and word origins. She realized very soon what Vera was referring to, but then found for a short moment of panic that she could not recall the precise word itself.

"D-..." she moved her lips, searching, "Dmaani. You mean? As in 'last-born'?"

"Yes, or as in 'weakest'," Vera nodded, "Dmu- is the root of the word. That it shares with, for example..."

"Dmurrhisi?" Katharina interjected.

Vera smiled. She slowly leaned back and with a swift, lithe leap she sprang to her feet and stood, shaking little droplets of water from her body and onto Katharina's face. She flexed her arms across her body, stretching each in turn. "Yes."

"Dmurrhisi. 'The weakest ones'?" Katharina frowned. She found the idea somehow troubling, for its incomprehensibility, and for what it implied about how the old Sisterhood thought of the dmurrhisi. Too, she was irritated that it had not occurred to her before to examine the composition of such a common word. She consoled herself with the thought that the relevance of word components in the language of the old Sisterhood was often obscure.

Vera cocked her head. She looked both pensive and mildly amused, "In a sense. But as you read more you will find that 'weakness' is often a poor translation of the root. The Sisterhood thinks about many things very differently. Words are used for things that we now consider distinct but they did not."

Katharina hummed to herself, still puzzled, "Because the dmaani is also made the most important member of the coven, you mean?"

Vera righted her head and pursed her lips in an expression that seemed noncommittal, only minimally assenting, "That is one difference, I suppose. Next term, Katharina, we must press on with your studies. And Ivy's too. I will have more to teach you both."

Katharina reflected on the implication of what Vera was promising. She spoke quickly, to hide her excitement, "So who is the dmaani? Was it decided?"

Vera looked up to the ceiling and remained silent for a moment, as if thinking. "Or I may have, I should say."

"You may have?"

"I maybe have more to teach you," Vera murmured. She looked back down at Katharina, "The dmaani? There isn't one. Not now. They had to make it up, really. But one was found. Now I shouldn't disclose these things before they are definitely tied up. It will become obvious enough at coven who it was, and she is a friend."

"Well. That's good," Katharina smiled weakly, irritated at herself for having pried about something that she had already known Vera wouldn't reveal.

"Thank you Katharina," Vera smiled warmly. Her eyes flashed wide with a gay energy and then she spun on her heel to turn away. Looking over her shoulder as she stepped away into the curling mist of the baths, she waved, "And thank you for delivering Louise's message. Please make the most of the rest of the ball, and enjoy yourself some more. You have done so well."