The Path Changes the Traveler Ch. 05

She leaned over and slowly kissed them both, one after the other, "I know nothing of what might come to us after this. But from our talk here and the way that I see your eyes, I think that we all agreed in how we see each other. Let it be said that I share this feeling also. It is my hope that our paths turn together into one like thin strands might become a rope."

Sonja asked Junah what it was about and after hearing the translation she smiled to herself as she thought of it and then looked at Junah with a questioning glance and a subtle pointing gesture toward Darotai with her chin.

Darotai had no idea what was meant, but when Junah nodded slightly, Sonja took a step forward and hugged Darotai. After a moment, she looked up and began kissing the surprised Eritrean.

Darotai didn't need to think about it very much, deciding that having gotten this far away fairly safely, and given everyone's state of dress here ...

She began to return the kiss as Junah stepped closer.

With Junah there, and seeing that she was at least a little hidden by her from the others, Sonja began to caress and kiss Darotai as she left her mouth and began to work a little lower.

In a few moments, Sonja was kneeling in the water and she took Darotai's hips in her hands and moved in to begin.

"What is she -?" Darotai whispered before the sound of it ended as a low groan.

But Junah only smiled, "It is something that she has had a few thoughts of whenever we had to sit or stand under the awning if no one was there to look at us. She spoke to me some nights, wishing for something like this but having no idea if you would hold any interest and you were not very friendly-looking. "

She took one of Darotai's breasts in her hand and leaned in again as she ran her thumb over the lower half of the nipple while using her tongue over the top half for a moment, "You only surprised her with your kiss and she was not ready." Junah said softly as she began to kiss Darotai.

"She is ready now," Darotai sighed as she slipped her fingers into Sonja's hair.

Junah stopped her kisses and smiled against Darotai's lips. She left them there in light contact as she whispered, "She is ready now.

Enjoy it, my friend. I do not think that this can go on for long here in the middle of all of this."

Darotai stood on slightly quivering legs holding on to the two as it went on, "Oh Sonja ... Junah, tell her sometime ... that I am sorry now that I never ... Ohhhh ... took the time to look around me much as I passed my nights alone in my anger."

Darotai felt Sonja's fingers enter her as her tongue worked at the clitoris above them. Darotai's hips moved to match Sonja's fingers and she groaned into Junah's mouth when she came very shortly afterward.

----

"We do not know anything yet," Junah said as Sonja got to her feet a few minutes later. Darotai pulled the Russian girl close and kissed her in thanks for what Sonja had done.

"I will repay your kindness when I can," she said with a smile as she leaned in to kiss Sonja's cheek and lips. She pinched Sonja's nipple very gently and only once to watch while Sonja gasped and then smiled back.

Junah spoke to Sonja, "She says -"

Sonja chuckled softly as she felt the arms of both women slip around her, "I know what she says, Junah. She does not always need this nomad's language that you speak with her to talk with me, just as I can say what I mean without a word to you.

We have gained a friend in her as she has in us and I am happy for it. Now I want to learn this speech that you share with her because I like the sounds. But I want to learn it quietly and in a bed between you if it can be done sometime also.

You should finish what you were telling her about not knowing anything about who they came to buy."

Junah laughed and nodded, motioning toward Mena with her hand so that Darotai looked.

"Sonja and I were bought by the yellow-haired American over there. For what, we do not know yet besides to free us from the slaver. You were bought by no one, Darotai. I am not sure, but I think that Maggie and Morgan only came to buy Mena - and I do not even know why that happened, either.

But for now, I wish to say that I like how we laugh together and Sonja likes you as well."

She kissed Darotai's cheek softly for a moment before she made a small joke, "Maybe they need half a tank crew or something. Perhaps they need us to steal other tanks where they take us all though I cannot imagine it."

"Mena?" Darotai asked in surprise," Why? What for? I see only a pretty girl with long hair. They came for her?"

"I do not know that," the Ethiopian replied, "I only think it is so, and if I am right, then I have no more idea than you."

"I wonder now," Darotai said as she glanced at Morgan, "This American only sits there watching over us all. I wonder what he has under his clothing."

"I do not know, but I like him, and until we know better, I try to hold him as our master," Junah whispered.

She smiled then, "And I know that Sonja also likes him very much for what he has done for us."

Darotai grinned at that, "I want to say that she has a good eye - but any of us would have to be blind to miss him in even a crowded place, I think."

----

Priest had been sitting on the front of the tank on what might be called the fender until then. But he'd seen small ripples in the water coming from a thicket of reeds. He pointed them out to Morgan and quietly said that he was going to check it out and Morgan nodded.

Priest picked up the other rifle and began to wade over slowly, trying not to make any noise or cause many ripples himself.

Sonja saw him pass and began to follow, which brought whispered encouragement from Junah and Darotai. "I think that your friend likes the quiet, mysterious one," Darotai grinned.

"He is not so ..." Sonja nodded back, "Well he is quiet, but if you talk to him the right way, it goes better."

Darotai watched them for a minute and then she chose that moment to leave Junah, motioning where she intended to go and leaving Junah with a kiss. Wading away quietly, she looked up and saw that Mena stood watching Priest and Sonja.

Darotai smiled just a little out of politeness and the way that they had seemed to have come together a little as a group. Other than that, she didn't have much to say, even if they could have conversed without needing Junah to translate. The truth of it was that Darotai didn't have much use for the girl at all.

She didn't hold any ill will toward Mena; she just had the thought that she could see that in her former life, the girl must have been wealthy and spoiled and it was just as plain to her that if there had been any lessons there for Mena over what had happened to cause her to be in a slave market, then she'd missed every one.

She waded on a few meters, trying to push down a sudden memory which chose that moment to rise to the surface in her and very unusually for her; she felt her eyes well up in an instant. It had been so long since she'd thought of her husband, even longer since she'd held herself to him tightly. It seemed like a previous life to her.

It lasted only a moment, and a little water splashed on her face as though she was washing it hid the signs well enough.

Her gaze fell on Morgan, who was sitting on the turret of the tank looking at her. At first, she felt a small wave of annoyance that he was looking at her, but then she realized that he seemed to be a better man than one who would sit there and leer.

She also knew in an instant that he'd seen her moment of unwanted emotion.

She stood looking at him for a moment or two longer. Where she was at that instant, the water only covered her to about mid-thigh, not that she cared at all.

She wasn't shy by nature and by her upbringing. Here, she was a lot closer to being the equal of anyone than she had been when her robe had been pulled down so that she could be shown off like some fruit in a cart.

Here, they were bathing and when they weren't anymore, she'd put on her old rags again.

Sitting up there like that, she thought as she observed him a little longer, the way that the reflected light from the water shimmered over him made him quite attractive to her, and those feelings were rather strange ones for her to be experiencing, especially just after thinking about poor Ajjiuar.

She felt a slight want to look away out of some sense of doing right for her husband's memory, but then she thought that if it were her who had died and if she could see him from whatever afterlife there was to be, then she'd have wanted him to be happy with someone.

So she decided that she did not need to feel shame for only having slightly admiring thoughts about another man.

This American was some kind of mystery to her and that bothered her to a degree. To have arrived at this point in her life, Darotai had learned many things because she'd had to. In large measure, what she'd learned about men didn't seem to fit when she looked at him.

He was from another culture. She looked around at the others for a moment and saw that all of them were from differing cultures in some shape or form. That was all well and good, but only the woman called Maggie and this Priest character appeared to have much of any commonality with the man on that tank, and even that had its limits. Darotai recalled how quickly Maggie had been to point out that she wasn't an American.

Darotai hadn't had much of any formal schooling; only bits here and there, but whenever she'd had the chance and the wanderings of her family had taken her close to where there was a school and a teacher, she'd loved to learn. She didn't understand what Maggie had meant when she'd said that she was Taiwanese. She'd asked Junah and learned that the country was called Taiwan.

She'd never heard of something like that.

She wondered if was near to America, since they didn't look all that far apart to her eyes, but then she remembered hearing that Maggie's father was American.

She filed the thought away for the moment and just went back to looking at Morgan.

The tone of the light here was golden and greenish and whenever a ripple in the water moved in the right way, it seemed to cause his strange eyes to flash their own odd light back to her.

They went on looking at each other for a few minutes, neither one wanting it to end, and yet, neither one showing much of any sort of shyness, both able to keep their eyes moving and their expressions open at the same time easily.

To a girl from the western lowlands of Eritrea, if you wanted to learn something, then you needed to see it.

And if you wanted to see it, then you had to look at it, since to her, looking is one thing and seeing is another.

And another thing, she thought - you wouldn't see much of anything by looking at the ground in shyness. She didn't think that she had much dignity left to feel shyness over.

A moment later, she wanted to smile over a thought which came to her, though she kept her face a bit proud and impassive. His features were a little hard for her to read, but it seemed to her that there was respect for her in those eyes and it brought back more of her natural pride over who she was.

She found herself wanting to believe in the feeling. She hadn't felt this way in a long time.

She began to wade over to where the tank sat.

-------

Morgan had seen a lot in that time.

He didn't know what had caused her sad look for an instant, but given that she'd been little more than a troublesome piece of inventory for a man who traded in human lives, it hadn't surprised him at all. Anyone in that kind of situation just had to have unhappiness in more than fair measure.

He also noticed that she didn't seem to mind standing there naked and looking at him. It wasn't an overtly sexual thing and he knew that, but he liked her all the more for it. It wasn't what he knew that he'd see from most women where he was from, but then he thought that she'd clearly shown him today that she was a warrior, and he guessed that he was seeing some of that attitude now.

Morgan liked that about her. He really did.

Though he'd never have categorised himself to be anything much of a thinking man, he was that to a great degree. He hadn't been looking at her in any way that might be considered lustful or even admiring in a sexual way as far as that went, though he had been admiring her for the beauty that he saw, and even more because he'd gotten to know at least a little of her.

He saw openness and interest - much like he might imagine that he'd see if she were looking across a valley at something which caught her eye. But he also knew that she'd been looking at him with the same sort of interest that he'd been looking at her with.

He didn't give it a whole lot of thought, because it would have made him chuckle at himself, but he'd seen her standing there like this and he'd thought about the way that she'd run the tank that he was sitting on and just how quickly she'd gotten them into a cooperative effort while not even speaking most of their languages directly.

She'd managed that and in doing it, she'd killed three tanks and an armoured personnel carrier, none of which would have given them more than the time it would take to kill them all in their stolen tank!

To his mind, that placed her in a rather special category. Then he did smile a little. No wonder that she looked so proud.

He was looking at a lioness.

Darotai stopped next to the tank for a moment to look up at him and he actually felt a bit of a thrill to see her very slight smile. She asked him something and guessing what it might be, he indicated that she should come up.

She nodded and Morgan was struck by her beauty once more. How much loveliness any one person might show at any one time was a variable thing to Morgan's mind and depended on what the person was doing at the moment and the amount of grace which was displayed.

He didn't think that there even WAS a graceful way to climb up onto a tank at all, but she demonstrated that she knew it and well as she jumped up with easy movements which told him that it was something that she'd done a thousand times before at the least.

Only a tanker knows the best way to climb up on a tank. Everybody else just does the best they can.

She stepped over the grating and stood before him.

Morgan found himself liking the way that her brow knit in a little contemplation for a moment.

Darotai gave up and looked back a little. "Junah? Have you a moment for me? I wish to say something and I have none of his words."

Junah answered and she began to wade over as Darotai looked at Morgan and shrugged with a helpless smile and what he took to be her little apology for something that he couldn't even guess at.

Junah stood on the ground beside the tank looking up. "What it is that I must tell him?"

Darotai looked down at her feet and his boots for a second before she looked into Morgan's face, surprised at herself that it would take this much to do it in the blaze of his eyes.

"Please say to him that I wish to say that I am sorry. When he stood before me at the market, I did not know his kind enough to understand what I saw in his face.

I spit at his feet."

Junah nodded, though neither of the pair looked at her, "I saw it. I also saw the look in his eyes at the man for striking you. You did not see it, but I read the warning in his eyes to that one not to strike you again. All of us did."

Darotai's mouth opened a little in surprise before she almost hung her head, feeling a little worse now.

"He spoke words to me then, but I do not understand him very much at all. Do you remember what was said? Did you hear him?"

Junah nodded, "He knew that you could not understand him and he said that he was sorry that you were being shown to him like that and that he felt foolish or something over it because he did not ask that you be pulled forward . He said that he hoped that you never lose the way that you looked so furious."

She shrugged, "I think that he admires it in you.

He said that he did not want to leave you there but he had no choice. I think that he would have wanted to take everyone away, but it was not possible."

Darotai was shocked and it took her a second to get past it. "Please say to him that I am very sorry for what I said. I know him better now and he did not deserve my anger.

I no longer wish to kill him. Please say it so that he understands it. It is important to me."

She waited, watching as Morgan turned his head to listen to Junah. The slight laughing smile that she saw felt like a cool, fleeting rain on a hot day to her.

"He says that he understands it and he feels no offense for it at all. The best thing which could have happened was what did happen, so he is very pleased. He says that what is needed now is a little more of your fine luck and we can all leave this place.

He says that to him, you are like a lioness for what you did with the tank."

Darotai nodded, but she said, "Not really, not like a lion. I only said that so that the rest might understand. I know of lions.

But much of how I think at times such as we were in is more like the wild dogs. They look for weak spots and use what they can. They live in your land too, I think - or they used to - the painted ones. We called them takula. I think it must be close in your language, no?"

Junah nodded and explained what had been said as well as explaining a little of the creature which had been mentioned. Morgan seemed to get it and he nodded, still smiling.

Darotai reached out and touched the hair on Morgan's chest for just a moment, smiling at how it felt to her fingers and how he didn't seem to mind. "But where will we go now?" she asked.

Junah said, "He says that we will go to Taiwan where Maggie is from. It is a long way to go and the aircraft is a very slow one. He says that he is sorry for that."

"I have little learning," Darotai said, "Where is this place? Is it near America or something?"

"He says that it is far from here and from America. It is not far from China and it is not a large island. He says that he knows nothing beyond that; other than he will be in trouble for bringing so many people when one was all that he and Maggie were sent for. So I am right in my own guess."

Darotai noticed it when Junah looked uncertain and worried then, but Morgan spoke to her and she brightened at least a little. "He says that he does not know what will happen there, but he does not think it will be bad for us - only for him, but he does not care about that. First, he needs to get us all there. Then he will worry."

Darotai reached over and she took Morgan's hand. He looked at her in a little surprise.

"Please Junah, say to him that I was not bought back there in the market. I only saw a chance for everyone. But even so, tell him that where I am from, we say 'my life is yours' and we mean it.

And ... and also, please ask him to speak his name to me. I have heard Mag-gie say it to him, but never when I was able to listen well."

Junah grinned after a moment, "He says that his life is already yours for what you have done for us."

Darotai looked at Morgan for a moment. He looked into her eyes and she felt strange and a little hypnotised by it as she looked back.

She knew in the next moment that his purpose had been to take and hold her attention - and he'd succeeded absolutely. She stared as he smiled and bowed his head to her and then said something else.

Junah said, "He says that he likes it when the tank commander is looking a little proud much more than when she is looking regretful. He says that regretful is not the best way for her to look to his eyes."

While Darotai was pondering it, she watched his face smile a little softly as he said, "Morgan," pointing to himself.