“Remember to drink lots of water,” Arabel said, and pulled Lina in closer to transfer the beaded necklace holding the teether to her.
* * * *
The music of the party was felt before it was heard. Deep bass notes and a driving rhythm reverberated through the corridors as Lina and Arabel approached. They were in an older part of the colony that had been abandoned after a rebel bombing some time ago. It looked to be opening onto a massive storage area, still quite structurally sound, but with a large hole blown in its roof. The crowd became thicker as the two women walked forward.
A massive diploid woman was spinning in circles, her wrists adorned with various, neon-colored, glowing bracelets and her long, unruly hair trailing out behind her. Occasionally she would knock into someone, sending them stumbling, but neither party seemed too upset about the encounter.
The spinning woman wore even less than Arabel, with her costume seeming to consist mostly of well-placed pieces of colorful tape. There were purple X’s over her nipples and alternating colors of the spectrum wrapped high on each thigh, combined with a minuscule piece of pink cloth that served to hide her sex from view, but not much else.
Slung low on her hips was a belt from which hung many long strings of multicolored, glowing beads—beads that were sent flying outward in a semi-rigid line by the force of her constant twirling. The rest of her skin was covered in bio-luminescent ink, ancient designs of orange and yellow. The result as she twirled was a brief segment of animated light display, repeating in a loop.
It wasn’t long before the woman’s carefree twirling, and Lina and Arabel’s fascination with it, resulted in the spinning woman careening directly into Lina, and then Arabel.
“Many apologies, my Queen,” she said, while slowing the momentum of her twirl, but never really stopping. “If I may…”
And in an apparent peace offering, the woman pulled a glowing bracelet from her wrist and placed it carefully atop Lina’s head, all while twirling around her twice. And then in a similar, single twirl, another bracelet was laid atop Arabel’s head. The diploid woman paused long enough to bow deeply, and promptly got back to the business of full-speed twirling, eventually disappearing into the crowd.
“That was crazy,” Arabel giggled.
“Very.”
The two women looked at each other for a moment, and then in unison said, “tree flower,” and let loose a peal of laughter that was quickly lost in the crescendo of the music.
As they moved forward into the swell, Lina and Arabel resorted to taps and gestures to communicate, since trying to talk over the music this far in proved useless. Lina pointed up at the gaping, jagged hole in the roof, where bright points of stars could be seen twinkling in the inky distance. Arabel smiled and wrapped herself around Lina’s left arm, nuzzling now and then against Lina with her scent gland.
Arabel pointed out what looked like one of several large, wooden storage crates that had been abandoned in the facility. Lina nodded and looked up. There were several diploids engaged in some kind of group dance on top of the crate. They all wore about as much clothing as the twirling woman. But rather than spinning, they were happily engaged in rubbing together and slowly dragging their tongues over each other’s scent glands while bouncing to the beat.
The smell of the women’s lust was heavy in the air, and Lina found herself involuntarily licking her lips. Lina turned to Arabel, gestured to herself, running her hands up and down her body and her makeshift dinner napkin top, then shrugging as if to say, “too much?”
Arabel turned her palms upward and tilted her head to the side while Lina frowned. Arabel held up a finger.
Lina watched as she reached down to pull the rolled-up leaf from her waistband, the one that she had used to smuggle in the tree flower petals. With a quick swipe of her finger, she flicked Lina’s top off of her left side.
Before Lina could complain, Arabel tore the leaf in half, extended her tongue seductively before coating the leaf with a long slow lick of saliva. She smiled and plastered the leaf over Lina’s left nipple. She stood looking thoughtfully at her handiwork for a moment before pronouncing it good with a quick thumbs-up.
The other half of the leaf ended up plastered over Lina’s right nipple, while the top of her costume was hastily repurposed as a belt hanging loosely over Lina’s hips.
With Arabel’s application of the pieces of leaf, Lina’s nipples quickly began to crinkle and tingle, and her heart felt as if it were beating double-time. She sucked a quick breath around the child’s teething toy still clutched in her teeth and reached to latch onto Arabel’s hand. Her current theory about this was that there was much more of the tree flower-salt mixture sill on the leaf than she had suspected.
Arabel’s mouth was moving, but the only sound was the driving beat of the music. Lina sunk her teeth into the teething toy and laced her fingers in with Arabel’s. Together, the women moved toward the source of the music.
Wading through a sea of diploid bodies—all scantily clad and glistening with perspiration, and each adorned with creative bio-luminescent artwork that danced before Lina’s eyes—Lina felt lost in the crush. She pulled Arabel over to the base of a crate to escape for a moment and catch her breath.
Lina felt a hand on her shoulder and jumped. It was not Arabel. Arabel was currently reaching for a bright orange bio-globe that was being tossed through the air, leaving a trailing orange arc in its wake. A
