Unity and Destiny Pt. 02

She was so warm. He really had let himself get too cold out there. And before he knew it he was kissing her.

Kat responded so eagerly that he had to pull back to catch his breath. But his hands were already struggling with the buttons on her shirt, and she ran her warm hands along his back as they kissed again.

Then her shirt was off, and he struggled with the front closure on her bra. Her breasts were enormous, familiar, and taboo. He wanted to lose himself between them. He'd seen her naked a handful of times. But he'd never undressed her, not like this.

She helped him with the clasp, and then he held her breasts, until she leaned closer, settling her weight against his chest, kissing him even while she cried. He slipped lower, nestling his head against her chest. When he reached to undo her jeans, she finally pulled away, wiping her tears.

"Javier," she said, need filling her eyes. "Are you sure?"

He nodded, though he really wasn't. Esther wouldn't mind. She'd pushed him to do this. Was that even the real Esther? But last year, she'd suggested something like it too, with Kat.

His body wasn't responding as much as he expected, even after he pulled off her panties and brushed her hairless slit. She had a new tattoo, a heart that would be hidden if she didn't shave. He wanted to kiss her there, and more than anything he wanted to fuck her. Why of all times was his erection failing now? He jerked nervously when Kat pulled down his underwear.

Kat didn't seem disappointed at all. Instead, she pushed him down on the bed, a little roughly. She knelt next to him, running her hands down his chest, causing him to shiver.

"Can I?" she whispered, and he nodded.

She didn't do it at all the way Esther would have. Her tongue, hard at the base of his cock, and then sucking much more forcefully. She leaned on his chest, and he struggled a little. He didn't know how much experience Kat had with men, but this was working just fine. He shuddered, and as his erection stiffened, she added her hand, sliding up and down, spreading her saliva. Soon he was gasping with every stroke.

Kat shifted, legs straddling his hand, and his fingers found her cleft. Smooth skin, like Esther, and nothing like her. Javier was sure he'd be terrible at this compared to her usual lovers, but she smiled and urged him on as he found a rhythm, circling her clit. It was so strange, after all this time with Esther. Kat was already wetter than Esther ever got. He had to think back to the other girls. Before Esther. He'd been a different person.

He was practically ready to come, but he was nervous about earlier. Maybe he wouldn't be up for any more. He didn't want to disappoint Kat.

"Can we have sex?" he asked, running his hand through her closely cropped hair.

She let his dick pop out of her mouth.

"Hell, yeah," she said, standing up. Javier held his gaze on her rounded breasts, her wide hips, her piercings and tattoos. Even her hands were so much larger than Esther's.

She reached for her bag on the side table, and came back with a condom. Javier hadn't been thinking at all. But apparently Kat had been far ahead of him.

"I felt so guilty bringing these," she said as she unrolled it onto him. His dick twitched with every touch. "I told myself it was just in case. Maybe I'd have a fling with someone. I knew what I was really thinking."

She stroked him a few more times, and he groaned. Then she straddled him, her breasts hanging heavily. He held her ass and she carefully guided him in.

They didn't quite hit it right, but on the second thrust he went all the way in. She wasn't especially tight, and he didn't give a shit. She was warm around him, her weight solid and reassuring, and her breasts hung right there. He held them reverently, and she laughed at his expression, leaning forward until he could just touch a nipple with his tongue. Then she began to ride him.

"Oh, fuck, you feel good," Kat said, stroking his face. When he thrust his hips to meet her, she lost her balance, falling forward onto him and laughing. Then they were kissing again, her tongue finding his, her breasts pressing hard against him. He wanted her to envelop him completely, to be swallowed and cocooned from everything. She was huffing and grunting, and she murmured something indistinct. Then suddenly her pussy gripped him, and she pulled her lips away, gasping for breath as her orgasm shook her body. He stroked her cheek while she shuddered.

In this moment, he was almost happy. That was enough. More than he'd expected.

Finally she opened her eyes and started to ride him gently again.

"Anything you want in particular?" she murmured. "A fantasy, maybe?"

In the end, he lay behind her on his side. They'd slept like that so many times, pretending that was all either of them wanted. It took some maneuvering, but eventually he slipped inside her. It was a lot more awkward than his fantasies, but that was all right. He and Kat did awkward just fine.

He held her in his arms, and she sighed as he sped up, not really thinking about anything except the physical weight of her body, the slow warmth building in his groin, the loud slick noises they were making. The whole camp would know already.

When he came, it wasn't earth-shattering. It didn't leave him carefree or with any particular hope. But God, it felt good.

For a while they lay there. Kat eventually sighed happily and reached for her bag.

"Is it OK if I do a round on my own?" she asked. "This is no comment on what we just did, which was fantastic. I've gotten used to doing it this way. Grace called it toy time. She joined me sometimes, or just watched."

"Go for it," Javier said, finally smiling a little, because she looked so hopeful. The buzz of the vibrator started before he'd finished getting the condom off.

"I think I'll just watch," Javier said eventually, after he'd already been watching five minutes. His body could probably do a lot more than that, but it was nice just to lie beside her while she worked the vibrator on her clit. He started to stroke her chest, and she smiled, turning slightly to him.

Still, he was getting an erection, and Kat kept looking at him. So he started masturbating lightly, and she sighed.

Her second orgasm was a lot noisier, enough that she looked embarrassed afterwards. She giggled softly.

"They heard that, didn't they?"

"They heard all of it," he said, stroking her cheek. "It's fine. I don't care right now, and Esther understands. Oh God, Kat, help me."

For a minute he saw the desperation behind her eyes as well, and he knew she understood what this was, no matter how they pretended.

She forced a smile. "Can I do anything about that gorgeous erection?"

It turned out she could, after all.

* * *

Esther had worked it out during the brief rainstorm yesterday. Or two days ago?

These deep canyons were entirely carved by water. It rained here sometimes, and when it did, the canyon would become a dangerous flood.

Except that it hadn't. She'd heard water thundering above her, but the trickle of water here had barely increased. There must be a fork in the canyon above, and something had diverted the water to protect this branch. The people of her visions would have been in danger otherwise. And the carefully placed stone patterns around and below wouldn't have survived a flood.

At least part of the mind-numbing pattern was due to those stones. She'd managed to move the nearest one, kicking it with her foot, and the pattern had altered. It was an infinitesimal change, though, and that left her with only one possibility.

There had been thunder earlier that night, and the breeze was picking up, carrying a few plump droplets of rain. This might be her last chance. Her energy was failing, and she couldn't reliably keep herself warm now. In this moment Esther had more clarity of mind than she could remember since she arrived. Perhaps since long before that. She'd stopped feeling hunger pains, and her body was shutting down. Yet her mind soared more freely than ever, rattling the bars of her cage, seeking answers. She was scoured out. Reborn.

She closed her eyes and moved her hand another inch. Pause. Now her opposite leg. Teaching her body to crawl. It was the most difficult struggle of her life, and it was strangely calming. She felt her senses extending upwards, beyond where she'd been able to feel even a minute ago.

There. A clever rock wall, with a kind of concrete holding it in place. It was much too far to crawl, even if the rocks themselves weren't opposing her. But she hadn't expected to get there.

More rain began to fall.

Hand. Then foot, then hand. She could hear the water beginning to flow in the upper canyon. She needed to move faster.

Finally she felt the opposite wall. There was a narrow shelf just above her, the highest place she'd thought she could reach. It would have to do.

By the time she finally lay flat on the shelf, the flood above her was tremendous. More than the previous time. The rain was slackening, which meant the water would be peaking soon. She had to pick her moment just right. More water meant a greater chance of success, and a greater chance of dying. There were old water marks even above her narrow shelf.

She couldn't use her typical method to reach for the otherspace. The thought of masturbating in this state was ridiculous. But she had another way.

It turned out, after everything, the visions were they key after all. They were another projection, like Abuela's map. The sex, the rituals, all of it was simply a path to access a pale sliver of what Esther's mind could reach on its own. Like a kind of triangulation, the shared features of the two independent projections had given her a direction to look. Even as the floodwaters raged above her, Esther's mind stilled. And she Looked.

It was more gradual than she expected. Her ordinary senses faded away, and she had a feeling of unwinding, or unfolding. The glowing connections formed themselves, and she immediately saw the beautiful geometry of the cage that enclosed the glowing strands named Esther. Everything beyond her cage was hazy and ill-defined. For now, Esther was still a prisoner.

Unfolding, that was the key. Everything in the physical world was folded one particular way, like a protein, but immensely more complex. The otherspace didn't care about any of that. Connections were connections, no matter whether the things touched each other in Esther's world.

She searched, and she struggled. Most of the mathematical structure was far beyond her, but there were a few maddeningly familiar patterns. And then she saw it, a single possibility.

It was her new folding. Her butterfly. With one last burst of computation, she blew on its wings.

Above her, a single rock cracked. A split second later, there was an immense crashing as the entire dam collapsed and the water thundered down.

It was too much. She pushed herself up with the little energy she had, scrambling to make her hands tight on an outcropping above her. The water slammed along the curves above her and quickly filled the tilted floor of the canyon. Rocks came with it, debris from the dam and from higher up. Water splashed under the ledge, and it kept rising. It lapped at her, pushing dangerously on her legs, and she found herself praying.

And then she realized: the pulsing was nearly gone. There was still something left, the strong compulsion holding her here. She didn't think she could escape even after the water receded. But this was the chance she'd hoped for.

Esther prepared the images in her mind, and then with every last ounce of her energy, she called out to Javier.

* * *

Javier sat in the dark, looking for something.

Not Esther. All the daylight hours were for that, and the search was failing. Their best hope had been Lukas's satellite imagery, but he'd finally reported complete failure. The coverage wasn't perfect, and the car might be in a garage or hidden by trees or who knew what. Selena was still out every day, looking for places to hide in the Nevada high desert, but there were too few, or too many. At this point he actually hoped Esther had been lured by another Changed person. Then at least she'd be alive, hidden somewhere.

No, Javier was looking for a way forward. It had been a full week, and he wasn't making it.

Kat had kept him company, but he couldn't count on that forever. He suspected she'd already quit her summer job without telling him. They hadn't tried a repeat of that strange, escapist evening of sex. Javier didn't know if he regretted it.

Kat snored gently next to him, and he tried to imagine moving in with her. Waiting for Esther, the way he'd waited before. He didn't know how he'd managed it for so long. And this time he didn't know if she was alive. He'd never really doubted that the last time.

He had no idea what time it was. Javier spent many hours awake like this, trying to make sense of things. Trying to see if he'd missed something. Trying to imagine a string of nights and days, stretching on without mercy.

Something tickled his mind, and he didn't know why the feeling was familiar.

Then it came all at once. Fractured images, a sense of exhaustion and terror. And Esther's voice, crying with desperate strength. It was gone in an instant, leaving nothing.

He took a huge breath, and then another, and then he jumped out of bed, nearly falling over a chair.

"Kat!" he yelled. "It's Esther! Oh my God, Kat, we have to find her!"

He ran out the door, ignoring Kat's confused voice.

"Nicola! Mark, Selena, get up! I heard from Esther! I need your help!"

Mark made it to the dining cabin just behind him. Javier flicked on the light as the others straggled in. Selena gave him a strange look when she entered.

Oh, he was only wearing boxers. Well, so be it.

"It was just images," he explained as Kat entered, dressed in her bathrobe. "She's called to me before, and I know what it feels like. It was no dream."

"I believe you," said Nicola. "Tell us everything."

It was maddening. The images had all been mixed up, and he'd been totally unprepared. He was sure he'd already forgotten some details.

"Empty highway," he said. "A gravel road, some funny rock formations in the distance. A canyon, colored rock. Rain, and water in another canyon. Like, fuck, I don't know. Like a calendar picture. Could it be Nevada? She's outside still. She was in terrible shape, I could feel it."

"Can you draw any of it?" Nicola asked. He frowned, and they got him some paper. He was lousy at drawing. And it had only been fragments. He didn't have the whole of any of the images. He stared in disgust at the scribbles.

Selena had left at some point, and now she returned, handing him a small book: a photo album.

"I've hiked all over the West," she explained. "Arizona. Utah. Nevada. Idaho. What you're describing sounds more like Utah or northern Arizona, but these are my favorites from all over. Go through these photos and tell us if anything's familiar. Even parts of them."

They all crowded around as he flipped through.

"There," he said. "That kind of rock formation. And those canyons on the next page are close. Not quite the same. More red layers, near the top. Even narrower, with lower walls. Not so immense."

He flipped through all of them, but that was the best he could come up with.

Selena nodded, starting to smile. "Utah. Those are in Canyonlands park. If you think the rock's even redder, that could narrow it down more. If she drove up one of those canyons, it would be easy to miss her from satellites. This is great news, Javier. She's farther than I've searched. I don't think anything in Nevada looks like that."

She pulled out the maps. "Let's see. It could be Escalante, or farther south along the Colorado plateau. There are probably other places I don't know about. But this is my hunch. Canyonlands and the area around is huge, and you could stay lost there. And look, if she drove straight to either place, she would have gone through Fallon. She would've needed more gas, though."

"She had cash," said Javier. "Oh, thank God, Selena. If she's been out there all this time—"

"She's strong," said Mark. "Strong enough to reach you, still. What do we do now?"

"I fly out there," Selena said. "Immediately. And you follow in the truck. I'll land and refuel as near as I can, and start searching. When I find her car, I'll land and call you. Uh—"

"We'll leave our contact information with Raj, wherever we stay," Nicola said.

"I might be able to sense her from the air," Mark said. "I should have thought of that. I don't know—I've never tried. But I should fly with you."

"And I'll go with you, too," said Javier. "If there's room. She found me, of all of us. And maybe I'll recognize something from the air."

Selena nodded. "There's room. It will be harder for me to concentrate, which means flying lower so I don't miss the car. That means more passes. But maybe it's a good trade-off."

"And I'll stay here," Kat said. Everyone looked at her.

"I don't want to," she said. "I want more than anything to come with you. But who am I kidding? I'll slow you down if you have to search on the ground. I don't have any special senses. But I can keep watch here, in case Lukas or Raj or anyone e-mails. You get going, and find Esther for me."

* * *

Javier woke up curled next to Nicola, just in time to quit snuggling any closer. It'd been awkwardly intimate to share a double bed with her at the tiny motel, and he'd rolled against her at least once in the night. Mark had insisted on the floor to give Selena her own bed.

At least Nicola had worn a nightshirt. She rolled slightly and stretched, tempering her usual morning scowl when she realized Javier was right there.

"We'll find her," she whispered, touching his cheek with unexpected tenderness. Then the moment was over and they all got moving for the second day of the search.

The sun was just peeking over the distant mountains when Selena's plane left the runway. Javier still wasn't used to the stark landscape that opened below. Red plateaus, deep valleys, a maze that easily fooled the eye. Occasionally water flashed in the bottom of a sinuous canyon, but usually they were dry. There had been water in one of Esther's canyons, but it had been raining at the time. Selena said the water didn't last.

"There," he yelled over the engine noise. "That looks more like it. I think."

Selena nodded and changed direction again. It had been like this yesterday as well, her careful flyover plan getting jerked around by his confused recollections. Everything looked different from above. He was starting to doubt they'd find Esther today either, despite the early start.

This area did look pretty similar to his memories, but so had plenty of the ones yesterday.

Suddenly Selena banked the plane, turning in a wide circle.

"I saw something," she called.

They lost elevation alarmingly, but Selena knew what she was doing. The plane slowed.

"Down to the right," she said. "You can see the faint road. Watch the canyon."

Mark leaned over him. Javier squinted. It did look kind of familiar, but he couldn't really be sure. He didn't see the rock formation, but maybe that was a different part of the drive.

Something white flashed briefly in the canyon, and Javier's heart jumped. But it was so tiny.

"That's your car," Selena said simply.

They did several more passes, lower down, but there was no way to tell if anyone was inside. Esther hadn't been in the car in his vision.

Selena did a spiraling set of loops, as low as she dared. There were so many canyons cutting the sandstone plateaus. They couldn't see into every part of them.

"There is something," Mark said slowly. "Something strange. I can't locate it exactly. As though it's confusing my senses."