“Come here, you troublemaker.”
Arabel slowly slid her way up over Lina until they were looking each other directly in the eye. Arabel puckered up and closed her eyes. She was still grinning. Lina delivered a quick peck to Arabel’s lips.
Arabel pouted.
Lina delivered another peck, with a hint of tongue this time.
Arabel pouted some more.
Lina wrapped her arms around Arabel’s neck, scented a bit of mating pheromone, and slowly pulled her in.
“If you’re going to mate me,” Arabel husked, “don’t snap my neck.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Lina pulled Arabel tight and let her hand wander down to the curve of Arabel’s buttocks, while Arabel straddled Lina’s thigh.
“Come up a little higher, baby,” Lina said.
Arabel obliged and the two women locked together, each with a thigh pressed against the other’s sex, and casting a combination of love and mating pheromones. Most of the scent was carried off on the wind, but that didn’t deter them in their lovemaking.
Lina wrapped her arms around Arabel’s waist, pulling her tight for a moment, and then began gently rocking her hips. Arabel responded by planting a row of kisses over Lina’s throat and collarbone. Lina shuddered, despite the warmth given off by the furnace I had supplied them with. “Love you, baby,” she said.
Arabel scented and moaned. She and Lina began to wrestle for dominance, which, with her larger size, Lina easily won. “Mate me,” Arabel husked, as Lina rolled her to the blanket.
Lina, now on top, straddled Arabel’s thigh, keeping it trapped against the deck, and using it for a slow, slippery back and forth rubbing. Lina held Arabel’s other leg straight up, with her toes pointed to the stars. She extended her tongue and showed her appreciation for the taste and feel of Arabel’s smooth skin.
Both women were moaning softly now, as Lina scooted herself forward a little more with each glide over Arabel’s thigh. Arabel tossed her head back, arched her back, and let out a long slow, “Yesss.”
Lina was nearly there.
One more thrust from Lina and both women went rigid as they connected their sex for the first time. Arabel grabbed onto Lina’s hips and dug her fingers in. “Right…There…” she said. Lina tossed her head back and shivered, reveling in the warm, wet feeling. Without thinking about it, she released a cloud of mating pheromones. Arabel soon followed.
Lina looked down at Arabel, bathed in a mixture of cold moonlight, and the warm amber glow of the furnace, her lithe body bucking rhythmically under Lina. Lina watched Arabel start to quiver, and soon felt the uncontrollable urge herself. Lina held tighter to Arabel’s leg, running her tongue along the salty skin, as Arabel dug her fingers harder into Lina’s hips. For a long while they shuddered together as one.
Finally, Lina let her grip slacken. She held on gently to Arabel’s foot, and planted three kisses along her calf before letting her go. Lina lowered herself down to snuggle up next to Arabel, who reached to the side to pull up a blanket. The two said nothing for a long while.
Lina lay on her back, looking up at the stars. “We’ve drifted off course,” she said.
“You can tell just by looking at the stars?”
“Yes.” Lina shifted her weight onto her right elbow, and rested her left hand on Arabel’s chest, feeling her heart and her breathing. “There’s more to it than that, but I don’t think I have the words yet to explain it. I just know. I can see the path to home.”
“Any more visions?”
“No.”
“I’d better stoke up the fire,” Arabel said.
Lina rolled over to trim the starboard sail and adjust the mizzen.
* * * *
Dawn came sooner than Lina had expected. She spent half the night taking watch, tacking as they sailed into prevailing winds, and the other half in fitful bits of sleep, plagued with disturbing dreams of the abyss. But this time the dreams came without the Great Tree in any of its forms to guide her, as she witnessed the harsh lessons that so many of her ancestors had ignored.
Hardest of all for Lina was the fact that there were never any children in her dreams. It was if they had all disappeared, shrouded in a mist that her vision could not penetrate. Lina had woken from one such dream and sobbed with her face buried in Arabel’s arms for a long while. Arabel never asked what was wrong, but somehow Lina felt she knew.
The rocky outline of the abandoned Island of the Missing was just breaking through the cloud cover when Lina woke to the image of Arabel holding out a lychee fruit. Lina shook her head.
“Should we stop?” Arabel asked.
“For what? Nobody lives here.”
Arabel shrugged.
“Why don’t you rest?” Lina suggested. “I’ll take the helm for a while.”
Arabel said nothing, but Lina got her answer when Arabel curled up with her head on Lina’s lap.
Lina’s time of solitude was spent enjoying the warmth of the sun, the comfort of Arabel’s touch, and ruminating on the fate of her colony. If what her visions told her was true, the old queen was dead, probably killed in a rebel bombing. And Mentor and the twirling woman were part of the rebellion, Lina was sure of it. Why?
Deep down Lina knew why. The same way that Lina automatically knew the path home, or how the music of the amphitheater was linked to the Great Tree and transmitted to her very core by way of the soles of her feet. She knew what had transpired in her colony. She knew it was the queen’s refusal to step down, to pass the crown, that led to the rise of the rebellion by those who demanded change.
And now the queen was dead, and with her the colony’s Tree. Lina had seen it in every vision she had experienced. All of them, though different in the details, revolved around that one single fact. The Tree was dead. The colony was in ruin because of it.
Lina
