The TwiceBorn

Sins Undone

“There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.” --Mark Twain

Alora sat back down and placed both her hands on the girl’s face.  Islinn’s skin was like heated satin  beneath her fingers.  The simple gesture suddenly spiraled into something more than just an attempt to cool the girl down.  She slowly stroked Islinn’s face with her thumbs, feeling the heat, ice and fire, and she hesitated.  Some kind of link was being forged between the two of them and she wasn’t sure she wanted that--

( A link is part of of an iron chain. Strong. Binding)

--but felt helpless to pull herself away.   There was power here.  So much power. Alora let her hands slowly drift down the girl’s neck, feeling the strong rhythm of her heart. Something called to her within the alien pulse, pulled at her like the moon pulls the tides. Her breath quickened.  Her young body housed an old soul and she’d seen things people didn’t even know existed but this…this was new.  Whatever Islinn was…or had…drew her and repelled her at the same time and it made her angry.  An ugly shameful kind of angry like a child who does a wrong then tries to hide all evidence of it ever happening.

Islinn stared into her eyes and started to say something but Alora quickly moved her hand and pressed one finger against the girl’s lips.  It didn’t matter what she was going to say, the sound would make the moment…less. Reluctantly, Alora slid her hands from the girl’s throat leaving that seductive beat behind.  She moved lower until her palms rested against Islinn’s chest, above the swell of her breasts.  The cadence here was fainter but Alora could still feel it, moving…flowing…living. An insolent wind kicked up and her arms rippled with goosebumps.  She could hear the branches of the heat-sapped trees overhead whispering in the hot wind. It reminded her of secrets. 

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 “I have not sinned in my heart.”  Islinn thought. The words felt weak.  Brede, Sire of the Lowlands  and the High, knew that to be true.  True, she had faltered, but her heart was chaste.

  But for how long?

And was anything ever long enough when it came to service?

 No. Not when it came to Brede.  Her meandering thoughts drifted along the lines of this possible realization.  Service, at times, had been a lot like slavery.  But she’d been good. She’d been pious. 

At first, that service had been rich and fertile filled with wonder and amazement.  It reminded her, for some odd reason, of the corn her father used to grow.  When she was little, she had loved going out into the field and listening to the chuckle and whisper of it around her as she’d run through the stalks. 

But as she’d grown older and life became more complicated she’d been frightened of the steady rustle it always seemed to make, whether the wind was blowing or not.  Her father had said it was just the sound of it growing and the thought of it slithering up out of the ground in the stillness, stalks clicking like a snake’s rattle, hadn’t made it appear exactly benign in her eyes.

But her real fear was of what it said to her on drowsy afternoons when she’d been on her hands and knees in the garden nearby.  The dirt hot on her knees and sweat running in a steady stream off the tip of her nose.

(You’ll never leave here,Islinn.  I’ll suck the life from you like I’ve done your father and you’ll tend the land with bleeding hands and dead eyes, tend me for the rest of your days and the sound you hear is not me growing but you dying)