The Star Whorl (The Totality Cycles Book 1) (15 page)

     “Despair?” she lifted her
head, gazed at him, considered. “Yes, that fits, the Mji’Hives are drowned with
it, aren’t they? I always thought of it as a kind of heaviness, an oppression,
but despair is much more apt. Do you despair?”

     It was a direct question
that he was not expecting, though looking back at his comment, he supposed that
he should have.

     “Yes,” he confessed, “a
little. But I’m hoping to go to Tertius, so I’m not completely goalless. It –
the despair – just makes me... irritable, at times.”

     She laughed a tinkling
laugh, seeming delighted with his answer. “That was entirely too honest! Thank
you for that – I like honesty and bluntness, being that way myself. So, at
home, you’re a much more pleasant fellow?”

     He furrowed his brow at her,
then laughed. “Yes, I’m a laughing fool, and my parents call me Smiles. They
tell me I need to take things much more seriously.”

     She sat up to laugh,
throwing her head back in an appealing way. “Oh ha, a wit, you are. Good, I
thought you were just brains and attractiveness and tallness and muscle and
brooding, but there’s something shining in you yet!”

     “I don’t know about shining,
but there
is
more to me, if you’d like to know,” he said, holding out
his hand. Pavtala Ralili’Bax gave him a melting, heartfelt look, then took his
hand, reading something more of his glyph than casual contact would allow. He
opened up to her a little, letting her get to know him a bit better. But she
did so delicately, not taking in too much, just the bare minimum.

     “Mmm, that was sweet,” she
said, then she turned serious again. “Thank you for that.”

     “Why did you...?” he asked,
as she cuddled in his arms again. Or, he began to ask. It seemed silly, once he
began putting words to the thought, and he let it trail off. But, though she
had claimed that she was not in peril of exile from the OSI, he could not help
wondering.

     “Why did I... what?” She
turned a twinkling, teasing gaze up to him, as if knowing what he was asking,
but delighting in making him say the words.

     “Why did you finally speak
to me?” he asked, awkwardly. “I – would have thought you weren’t interested.
You sat beside me all that time, sharing half of the same lectures with me, and
saying nothing. Why now?”

     She shrugged, still smiling.
“I thought you were – standoffish, aloof. But then, when you seemed to be
getting close to pre-mating with Zyledi’Kil, but came back the next turn not
sporting her colors, I – I peeked at what I could see of your glyph, and –
there was sadness there. You looked like you needed a friend. So I decided to
try to talk to you. I’ve been interested in you for a while, but you were
so...” she blinked at him, her vuu’erio tennae waving at him. He invited her to
know him a little better, letting her read something more of his glyph. “You’re
just closed in, within yourself,” she said quietly, touching his cheek. “I had
thought you were cold, but you aren’t. First you were completely wrapped up by
your ex-Geni’vhes, then you were just – hurt.
Damn
Pelani’Dun, and her
manipulations, she almost ruined you!”

     Kreceno’Tiv laughed, because
he could not disagree. Pavtala Ralili’Bax smiled in delight, her eyes
sparkling. He leaned down on impulse and kissed her, and she responded, sliding
her arms around his neck. The low, comforting level of her chemi-scent shifted,
changed to real attraction, and he shivered as he let his body respond to her.
She pressed closer, more fully up into his embrace, and he felt surprise and
more delight from her, and then – a flash of something, something so brief,
that he could not quite read it.

     “What is it?” he whispered,
touching his brow to hers. His vuu’erio tennae gently brushed over hers. “I
felt that. What was that?”

     She twined her vuu’erio
tennae with his briefly. “Oh, Kreceno,” she said, using his given name
affectionately, but not as intimately as Zyledi’Kil had done, “I...”

     “What?” he asked again,
sliding a finger under her chin and tilting her face up so that he could look
into her deep red eyes. She was very pretty, and had a bright glyph, usually
full of laughter and enjoyment of life.

     She blinked, and tears
actually shone there, in her pretty red eyes. “I promised myself that I would
be honest with you,” she said, and there was much more there, a silver-sad,
bitter edge to her meaning.

     “That’s good,” he said
lightly, waiting for her to elaborate. Instead she kissed him again, and it was
sweet and salt, but mostly sweet. He ran his hands down her elytra-pace, could
feel that her wing-nets were already straining at them, just about ready to
burst through. Her passion flowed around him, dominating his mind for a moment,
but she did not try to press forward to proto-mating, stopping at the
pre-mating level. His body responded, the colors of green and black deepening
enough to mark him. When they drifted up from the depths of the kiss, she
snuggled her head under his chin and sighed.

     “Be honest with me,” he said
huskily. Her arms slid about his body, and her hands were light, teasingly
fluttery on his elytra-pace. “Or not,” he breathed, “which ever you prefer.”
Just
don’t pull away.
She squeezed him as he shared the thought-glyph. He liked
this closeness, and if honesty was going to destroy it, he would leave whatever
it was alone.

     “I know we won’t be –
together after Secondus,” she said quietly, after a time, and there was real
sadness in her voice.

     “Why’s that?” he asked,
tensing slightly. Was the OSI going to raise its hideous vuu’erio tennae again?

     “Because I – I probably
won’t be going to Tertius, not directly,” she answered, looking up at him. “I
am not worried about being moved off-world by the Initiative, because I already
have my plans and path set. I’ll be apprenticed to my mother in the Ministry of
Preservation, a specialization of Tertius, and I’ll be going to the Solidaris
Orm right after Secondus. When you go to Tertius, you’ll be there for at least
three orbises. You’ll have found someone else, by then.”

     “I might not get to go,” he
temporized, though getting into Tertius
was
his ambition. “My
parents...”

     “You’ll go,” she said with
conviction. “Unless you balk, your parents will send you. Don’t worry, I knew
all of this from the beginning. I just – wanted to be close to you for the time
we have left in Secondus.”

     He felt a touch of the cold anguish,
but it did not sour his attraction to her. Her chemi-scent turned comforting,
again, soothing, and he let it soothe him. Her honesty was brutal, but he could
not fault it. She had no false hopes, and no desperate needs.

     “Let’s not be honest
anymore, not for this turn,” he said, and he knew that there was a slightly
bitter edge to his voice. She turned a smile, bright and mischievous to him,
kissed him again.

     “All right. We’ll be
together forever and ever, Geni’vhor, mated for so long that my colors will
carve themselves into your elytra-pace,” she said, a chuckle in her voice.

     He laughed, but there was a
part of him that winced and cringed, not because he was put off, but because he
craved something like that, and he knew that her words were fiction.

     “Don’t worry,” she said,
rubbing her cheek playfully against his. “There is someone special out there
for you, Kreceno. You’ll meet her, and she’ll never let you go.”

     “How do you know?” he queried,
trying to stay the sour feeling. “I thought we weren’t going to be honest
anymore.”

     Pavtala Ralili’Bax waved that
away. “I know because you’re special, and because you desire it. Honestly.” She
tucked her head under his chin again, and a whisper of desire from her, a wish that
she have been that one, washed over him like glittering, stinging rain.

Whorl Forty Five

     The pain in his back woke Pa-Kreceno’Tiv
with a cry. The Pavtalar-induction fled before the pain, leaving him as neutral
Kreceno’Tiv. It felt as if a thousand needles were dancing on his back, under
his elytra-pace. He rolled up onto his hands and knees. The wing-nets under the
elytra-pace were seemingly on fire, and he could not help but buzz them. The
space they were in seemed too small, too confining, and he arched, straining to
break them free. He helplessly listened to his own cries as every muscle in his
body seemed to contract to its fullest. His deshik writhed to his distress,
getting successively tighter and looser, trying to determine what would be most
comfortable to him.

     “Kreceno’Tiv, we are here,”
his mother’s voice sounded beside him, a balm against the pain. He felt her
hands on his arms, cool against the feverish burning along all his limbs. She calmed
the confused deshik. His father’s hand framed his face, and a cup was pressed
to his lips. He gulped down the bitter liquid, anything to lessen the pain. A
different, fiery sensation burned down his throat, settled in his stomach, and
seemed to expand outward, making everything – distant. His body still strained,
and a distant, terrible thirst came to him. A thin spout was put to his lips,
and when he involuntarily drew on it, this time a thick, sweet, syrupy fluid
flowed into his mouth. It quenched the thirst but then redoubled it, so that he
gulped and gulped. The stuff filled his stomach, then seemed to flood to his
madly buzzing wing-nets, making them swell. It felt as if the skin of his back
would tear off from the pressure of the swelling wing-nets, but still he drank
and drank.

     Then he cried out as
something tore/cracked, indeed, and the pressure was alleviated. His deshik
parted more around his elytra-pace to make room for the new protrusions. The
spout was taken away. The needles still danced, but his muscles relaxed all at
once, so that he flopped to the rest-pad on his belly. It was still distended
from drinking copious amounts of the sweet fluid, but it slowly flattened as the
fluid was pulled away to his humming, expanding wing-nets. Exhausted, his eyes
began to close.

     “I’ll get him pardoned from
Secondus for the turn,” he dimly heard his father say, concern mingled
strangely with joyful pride in his voice. “His wing-nets will continue to
vibrate for another half-turn, to get the fluid fully dispersed.”

     “I’ll stay with him,” Vespa Kareni’Tiv
said, and her voice was warm. “My Kreceno’Tiv, you’ve reached full adulthood.”
There were actually tears in her voice.

     The last thing he knew, she
held his hand and patted his back beneath his open elytra-pace and still
tingling wing-nets.

Whorl Forty Six

     When he woke, he was still
on his belly, and his back ached. He moaned and tried to roll over, but a cool
hand on the nape of his neck discouraged him.

     “Don’t try to turn over, your
wing-nets are still emergent,” Vespa Kareni’Tiv’s voice said gently.

     Kreceno’Tiv opened his eyes
– or he tried, they felt gummed closed. A cool, damp cloth wiped at them, and
he made no plaint – though he remembered his mother’s voice calling him an
adult, he felt as weak and helpless as a mumphling.

     Eventually he was able to
open one eye. He squinted at her, saw the blurry smile on her face.

     “Mother,” he tried to croak,
but his mouth was crusted with something, and the side of his face seemed to be
stuck to the sleep-pad.

     “My sweet Krece,” she said,
and he would have jerked in surprise, if he had had the strength. She rarely
used the endearment, the affectionate, personal shortening of his given name.
Usually she called him Kreceno, in her more demonstrative moments. He projected
an interrogative – anything else took too much effort.

     “Your elytra-pace is open,”
she answered simply. But the simple answer spoke Star whorls. It meant he had
reached adulthood, that he could now formally mate. His elytra-pace had split,
and his wing-nets were now emergent, and yes, he could still feel them waving
gently above him, causing the needle-sensations in his upper back and strain
across his lower back.

     Vespa Kareni’Tiv offered him
something, and he took it and ate it without tasting it. She held up another
and another, and he ate until his sides ached. Then he slipped into slumber
again.

Whorl Forty Seven

     He missed most of a
five-turn of instruction, recovering from the emergence of his wing-nets. When
he was finally able to return to Secondus, there was a World-Tree of
assignments for him to catch up on. He went out to ride the transport, feeling
slightly awkward with his new, larger wing-nets and Ro-Becilo’Ran greeted him
enthusiastically, turning him to see his split elytra-pace.

     “And to think, you were
behind me in development!” his friend said, somewhat enviously. “Now you go
emergent before the term is even half over!”

     “Well, you can’t be far
behind,” Kreceno’Tiv said, patting him hard on the back.

     “Vuu-blitz, that actually
hurt!” Ro-Becilo’Ran complained, rubbing his back. “I remember when you used to
hit like a mumphling!”

     Kreceno’Tiv made a face,
crossing his eyes and vuu’erio tennae and his friend laughed as the transport
stopped for them.

     “Ho, very mature! Lead the
way silver-pace!”

     Kreceno’Tiv did get on the
transport first, and was delighted to see his pre-mated there.

     “Oh ha, Kreceno,” Pavtala
Ralili’Bax said, looking at him appreciatively when he sat down beside her.
“Your wing-nets...” Her chemi-scent glomed enough for him to retake the
Pavtalar-induction.

     He fluttered them briefly at
her, and she drew in a breath, her eyes getting larger. He tucked them away
again, quickly – exposing one’s wing-nets too long at this age was considered
lewd. Only the eldsters, whose wing-nets were silvering and no longer fit
completely within their elytra-paces could be excused for partially displaying
their wing-nets all the time.