Talla's Fallen Temple Ch. 09

Talla nodded nervously.

"Where do I go?"

Rika parted the curtain in the back of the cubicle to reveal a narrow alleyway

"Go down to the door on the left, the one with a single candle burning on a table," she said. "Then up the stairs to the third floor. Zoe's in the room at the top."

Talla gave one last look back at her two -- no, three -- sisters, and ducked through the back of the curtain.

"Sorry, Mistress," she heard Rika calling out, all giddy and mindless once more, "Wasn't as nice as I thought."

Talla heard the girls' voices fade in the general hubbub that echoed between the narrow walls of the dark alley in which she stood. There was a cold feeling in her stomach and the hollow quality of those hundreds of voices didn't help; it reminded her of lying on a sick bed in hospital with physicians speaking over top of her.

One bell, though. That was it.

She took a deep breath to firm up her resolve and turned to face the long alley.

'I'm back in Form,' she thought.

The dark wooden beams and heavily stained panels were in evidence once more, even in the general darkness of the place. Gone were the colourful fabrics of the Facial women. Here was the true, stone cold, heart of Form.

There was indeed one doorway, some twenty paces along, and it appeared to be lit. At least she wouldn't have far to go. The thought of being caught here by some enforcer ...

With a mental heave, she forced those thoughts from her head. There was a mission here, a purpose. Tina and Yua -- and apparently Rika and Etta -- had made some pretty serious sacrifices to make this happen. Keeping that in mind, Talla moved as quickly along the passage as she could and ducked through the doorway into a small room -- more of a landing than anything. There was a doorway that led further into whatever building this was and a wooden, spiral stairway that would take her up or down.

Taking the stairs down was out of the question. It was bad enough knowing what Form kept on the ground floor of its buildings. Nine gods only knew what horrors awaited her in the basement. She didn't want to think about it.

Up one flight to another landing with a doorway. No candle here. Just that awful oak wood everywhere, stained as dark as could be. Had Rika and her friends kept the place dark on purpose, for the sake of Talla's concealment? She wouldn't be surprised.

But Zoe was supposed to be on the third floor. Up another spiral of wood.

This was the top, then. The stairway went no further and there was only one exit; an arched portal that opened onto a wood panelled hallway. Talla crept through the dark entrance as quietly as she could, following a flickering light that reflected off the gloss of the thickly varnished walls. A single candle, mounted in a bracket on the right hand wall, sputtered away.

Talla approached cautiously and noticed the reason for the sputtering; the candle had been jammed at an awkward angle in to a bracket meant for a torch. Wax dripped down to the floor as the candle flickered.

There was a door, slightly ajar, in the wall opposite to the candle.

After checking both directions along the darkened passages, Talla gently pushed the door open and slipped into the dark room beyond as soon as she could squeeze through.

A soft, warm voice whispered at her from the darkness.

"Best close the door."

Talla obeyed, waiting for her eyes to adjust to a room darker yet than the hallway. The only source of light was the faint glow of distant firelight coming through a tall, thin window. Silhouetted in its frame, Talla could make out the upper body of a woman; her arms folded and held tightly against her chest.

There was no point being noisy. Talla slipped out of her sandals and tiptoed across the room to lean against the opposite side of the window frame, facing Zoe.

Standing there silently, she could hear the sounds of the crowd in the square below. They weren't quite overlooking the Bazaar -- there was a bit of rooftop between their current location and that throng - but the fires that lit it gave them some faint light and Talla began to hear the voices of the singers and the instruments of the musicians.

She turned to look at Zoe, who was looking out into the sky. She let her eyes slide down the red-haired girl's body and discovered that she was naked.

Zoe chose that moment to turn and look at Talla. Catching where her eyes had gone, she spoke.

"Thought it would save time," she explained, her soft voice unusually flat. "That is why you're here, isn't it?"

Talla nodded, but realized the gesture might be missed in the darkness.

"Yes," she replied.

"Odd," Zoe remarked, looking back out into the sky. "My sisters and I never required this as a gesture of trust."

Talla inhaled.

"My sisters expect me to do this," she said.

"If they are so insistent," Zoe asked, "why not have them do it?"

"They can't."

Zoe twitched, her arms lowering to expose her breasts as she put her hands on her hips.

"Can't? Or won't?" she asked. "They leave you to do the hard part."

"You don't understand," Talla sighed. "Hopefully you will. I'm different."

"Different?" came the dubious response.

"Yes."

"Show me."

Skeptical, that last bit. Very skeptical.

But the command was to show, wasn't it?

Talla undid the laces on her skirt and laid the rectangle of cloth aside -- on a desk or dresser, she couldn't say which in the darkness -- and moved on to her top.

"You really got hit with a quadruple?" Zoe asked, rather light in tone all things considered.

"Yes," Talla said. "Knocked me out."

Zoe reached out across the breadth of the window frame and touched the inside of one of Talla's breasts with the back of her hand. She brushed along the underside and turned her hand over so just the fingertips were touching. There was a gentle push, shifting the mass of Talla's breast upwards, before she withdrew her hand and brought it to caress her own face.

"My skin still aches," Zoe said. "I have to be careful smiling."

"It'll go away after a day or two," Talla promised. Then she added, in a hopeful voice, "You're very pretty."

"I know," Zoe replied, a faint sadness backing up her words. "I hardly recognized myself in a mirror. It's like it's not even me. As if I've been replaced."

Another long pause as the two girls took turns staring out into the dark sky.

"This place scares me," Talla volunteered suddenly.

"Which part?"

"All of Form," she said. "Everywhere I look, it's that wood. Same as that table."

"Ah," Zoe agreed. "That table."

"Have you ever - "

"No," Zoe interrupted. "They don't really bother us Sealed Virgins with that."

"Oh."

"Stupid, though," Zoe offered. "There's no reason for women to do that to each other."

Talla blinked in surprise.

"But you're from Form -"

"But I'm from Facial," Zoe interrupted again. "I don't see why you can't see the distinction. Look down there."

She pointed at the Bazaar, at least the part of it they could see. So Talla looked out over the nearby roof.

"More colours," she observed. "Music. Warmth. Dancing. You covered up the wood. That was nice."

"We get stuck in Form because there was nowhere else for us nine centuries ago," Zoe said. "But we don't belong here ... or anywhere. Unless we belong with people like you."

"Like me?"

"It remains to be seen what you are like."

"Oh," Talla said. "Let's hope I can show you."

"Hope?" Zoe asked. "You seem a bit -- cool -- at the moment."

That probably wasn't a reference to the shape of her nipples.

"Yeah," Talla agreed. "Like I said, this place creeps me out."

Down below them, the raucous dancing music ceased and drums started pounding. The general hubbub of female voices faded away into an expectant hush. A lone voice, impertinent, shouted out a last protest against the falling silence.

Then the voices began to sing.

Talla's heart trembled.

"Zhair'lo's song," she said suddenly, in a whisper quiet voice.

"What?"

"It's the song I hear when -" Talla stopped suddenly.

She felt her heart racing and stepped across the small gap until her knees were touching Zoe's. Pushing a bit further, their thighs touched. Zoe made a little move but to spread her legs slightly, letting Talla interlace their knees.

"I can show you," she told Zoe. "I can only show you. There's no way to use words."

Talla first cupped Zoe's face in her hands, then brushed her red-streaked hair back over her ears.

"What is it Facial girls like?" she asked.

"I'm not the problem," Zoe said with a melodious laugh as she took Talla's hips in her hands. "I was a Sealed Virgin for quite a while, so I know how to masturbate. I've been getting ready for quite a while now."

"Oh," Talla said, abruptly embarrassed. "Then it's just me."

"And for you," Zoe whispered in Talla's ear, "it's just the squeezing."

With that, one of her hands slid up Talla's rib cage and took firm hold of her breast. Fingertips dug in mercilessly. Talla moaned as her nipples bulged against Zoe's much smaller breasts and she buried her face in Zoe's hair.

Outside, the voices of the chorus picked up their tempo, soaring higher and higher in both volume and tone. Talla was astounded. It was almost as if they knew the song that played when she and Zhair'lo meshed. She had tried to put thoughts of Zhair'lo out of her head, to keep the logic and planning separate from the emotions that had been driving her so hard.

But hearing this song, with him undoubtedly so far away, hurt her far worse than she had thought she was capable of feeling. She ached to be with him, to be in his bed, to feel him inside her. If she'd been alone, she would have masturbated -- desperately, repeatedly, even violently -- if only to still the demands of her heart, the crying inside her head.

She wasn't alone, though. There was Zoe.

Talla, her mouth slightly open in her passion, lifted her head so their noses were separated by but a hair's width.

With one hand still clenching Talla's breast, Zoe lifted the other to touch Talla's face. Somehow, even in the darkness, she sensed the pain there.

"I don't understand why he's so important to you," Zoe said. "How can one single man matter so much?"

Talla closed her mouth and bit her lower lip, taking a moment to inhale deeply through her nose.

"I can show you now," she said.

"Now?"

"Are you wet?"

Zoe, her face still in Talla's hands, nodded.

"But how will that -"

"You'll see."

She slid her right hand around the front of Zoe's face and placed the tip of her index finger in the gap between their lips, touching both of them. Zoe opened her mouth just enough to let the finger in and wet it lavishly with her tongue.

Outside, the drums were pounding and the voices of the singers were rising towards a crescendo.

Biting her cheek now, Talla slid her finger under their bodies and reached for Zoe's bare lips. She didn't want to be rough, but there was no telling how long all of this would take. She and Zhair'lo had once completely lost track of time while meshing -- and after. Firmly, if a bit slowly, she pushed past her sister's lips.

"You really were waiting," Talla breathed, feeling the wetness between those lips.

Zoe gasped and shivered as Talla made circles around her clitoris.

"I knew this was your test," Zoe managed to say.

"Not yet," Talla warned, and slid the tip of her finger past Zoe's entrance.

Zoe let out a squeak.

"I don't know if I like fingers inside," Zoe protested.

"It's smaller than a penis."

"But with fingernails."

"Whatever," Talla said, not removing her finger. "Now you."

"Inside you?"

"Yes."

Zoe inhaled, squirmed a little, and held her finger to Talla's mouth. Knowing that she wasn't nearly as aroused as Zoe, Talla made sure to coat that finger with a liberal dose of saliva. Zoe lowered it to Talla's mound and began pushing through her lips.

She stopped suddenly.

"After this," Zoe warned, "you'll tell me what you're up to?"

"After this," Talla promised, "you'll know what we're up to."

Even in the darkness, Talla sensed the frown. For a moment, she feared an ultimatum was coming. Instead, there was a shrug, and Zoe pushed.

Her finger touched Talla's vagina. The fingertip poked inside and quite suddenly their bodies moved. It was as if suction had been applied to both fingers, forcing them inside the others' genitals and dragging the rest of their bodies along in whatever contortion was necessary to complete the manoeuvre.

...

'What in the Nine Hells!'

'Easy. Relax.'

'Women do not Mesh at all! Men and women do not Mesh like this!'

'I do. Relax.'

It took a while, Zoe protesting all the way, before they could calm down. In that time, Talla could gain very little from Zoe's mind. She had none of the anger of Yua or the wonder of Tina. Neither was there the horror and dismay she'd known from Sila so long ago. What was Zoe?

When the mesh finally settled into something like a normal state of arousal, Talla was able to think more clearly. She separated herself from Zoe, able to tell who's body was who's only by which one had an aching, stretched feeling in its face. The darkness didn't help. When she looked out of Zoe's eyes, she saw almost the same as out of her own.

'Is it always like this? For you?'

'No. Not always.'

And so she relayed the story to Zoe, of the meshes with Zhair'lo and the meshes with other women, and how she and Zhair'lo could stay meshed even when far apart. When that was done, she showed Zoe the horror and savagery of the Monogamy Trial and the punishment which seemed to have permanently severed their link.

'That's awful. No wonder you want to -'

At which point Zoe came to realize what it was that Talla and her friends wanted to do and the strength of emotions that would drive them to do it.

'You think it's possible to bring down the Temple?'

'Yes. You didn't know?'

'He wouldn't tell me. Just sent me to you.'

And there came the images of Zhair'lo, of the many times she'd had sex with him, of the things she'd told him. Finally, at the end of all that despite it not being the last thing she did with Zhair'lo, there was the feeling of his erection in her mouth, ejaculating down her throat -- all of this relayed as Zoe's bid to make Zhair'lo trust her.

This triggered a memory from Talla. There came the image of her last attempt at a secret meeting with Zhair'lo, when they'd been locked together, his penis to her mouth, and she had been unable to escape any of what he'd expelled from his manhood.

So they shared that, too.

More ideas. More shapes of things.

'But you don't yet know how to bring the Temple down.'

'We need more people.'

'Or not,' Zoe pointed out. 'Maybe it only needs one person doing exactly the right thing.'

'Why do you want to help us?'

Now it was Zoe's mind that was laid open.

Nine Gods, Talla thought. Facial.

It had never occurred to her, and yet there it was. Here in Facial were the last to be chosen. The weakest Discipline with the long skirted Virgins no one else would take. The architects not of function, but of beauty and song, always confined to live with the writers of law and enforcers of orthodoxy. Here were the most obvious allies in her quest.

Zoe's education was not like Talla's. It was laced with sedition, with all that was wrong with the Temple, with all that could be changed and how it could be changed. Here in Facial, the women from the top down were the ones that questioned orthodoxy, that wrote their own rules and laughed at the staid and frightened masses. They knew, and they taught their Virgins to realize, that the Temple was a fluid thing that could be nudged and adjusted for the greater good of women and men.

On top of all that was Zoe, trapped in Sealed Virginity, more seditious than all the rest. Talla saw Zoe's allies laying this evening out with perfect planning, and not worrying because they knew their superiors wouldn't bat an eyelash at it -- assuming that no one from Iron or Tight caught wind.

'You think you can bring the whole thing down?' Zoe repeated.

'Yes.'

There were strange things in Zoe's head -- things Talla had never felt in anyone. Those Facial upgrades did things, things far more subtle than anything that Synergist and charged semen had done to Talla.

'Don't be so sure,' Zoe's thoughts leaked through. 'Things have been done to your head, too.'

Talla felt something click in Zoe's mind. An evaluation had taken place.

Talla remembered once, many days ago, walking through Endowment Hall and looking at drawings of a proposed tower. Something had clicked then, too. Something had made her look at that drawing and pronounce it ugly.

'It was ugly,' Zoe agreed, though for different reasons than Talla.

Zoe's click was something else. She had looked into Talla and decided that Talla was capable of doing what her heart was set on.

'But I don't even know how,' Talla protested, forced to be honest in the mesh.

'You will find out,' Zoe said and, as if to accentuate the certainty of her belief, pushed a second finger inside Talla.

Talla moaned aloud, feeling her eyelids flutter involuntarily as her eyes rolled. She tilted her head to the side, letting her lips fall upon Zoe's.

Facial. The lips so soft. The tongue so agile. She could only imagine what Zhair'lo had felt, with Zoe doing that to his penis while he came.

If there was a song for this mesh with Zoe, she couldn't hear it over the choral symphony outside. It grew to a climax and Talla knew that the same would soon happen to their mesh. There was no longer a way to guide the thoughts that passed between them. Free association brought up memories: of whips and meshes and men and women; of lessons; of coins and clothes; of sadness and happiness and pain without end.

It was mindless and it was far too full of thoughts. Talla found herself holding off the orgasm in the hope that she could sort out some of these images, gain more information, do something. But it was hopeless. They were being buried.

Lips locked together, with someone's tongue being sucked painfully into someone's mouth (they weren't sure who was doing which), they felt themselves tightening around each others' fingers.

As the drums pounded, the first spasm drilled through from their heads down to their genitals, squeezing at the intruding fingers. Talla tried to cry out, but her voice was muffled by Zoe's mouth. Another spasm tightened her vagina, squeezing too hard on the pair of fingers poking at her. Zoe only pushed upwards into her even harder, determined for some reason to get everything they could out of this.

Helplessly locked in, Talla could only endure wave after wave of their orgasm and Zoe's insistent prodding.

When it ended, the girls gently removed their fingers and found themselves dripping down to their wrists.

Both panting with exhaustion, it was Zoe who found her voice first.

"Meshes aren't supposed to be like that."

"I know."

"You didn't know, though. You thought every mesh would be like the one with Zhair'lo."

"And none of them have been," Talla said. "Except with other girls."

A long pause as they caught their collective breath.

"I have sisters," Zoe said. "They can relay messages for us."

"They will take the risk?"

"I will convince them."

"We don't even know what do yet."

It was the third time she'd admitted this.

"You will find out how," Zoe said, firmly and evenly. "I've met Zhair'lo. I've seen you. The two of you will find a way."

Talla was surprised by the force of Zoe's determination.

"I've got to get dressed and get the hell out of here," Talla said.

She found her clothes exactly where she'd left them. In the darkness, she could hear Zoe getting dressed.

"Your message?"