Lives Lived and Lives Lost

Life #50: Sorcerers at Kamar Taj

Kamar Taj, Kathmandu, 1193 A.D.

They met when Harry was eighteen and Tom seventeen.

“You’re a wizard, Harry,” Tom said with the biggest grin on her face.

Harry snorted before she could stop herself, and then she rolled her eyes. “Nope. Sorcerer, babe. And so are you.”

“Student sorcerer,” Tom said, glancing curiously around the large main room of the magical temple they found themselves in. “I only just got here.”

“I’ve been here for almost five years now. Master Azad found me as an orphan living on the streets of Bhaktapur not that far from here. I’m officially an apprentice now.” Harry gestured at Tom to follow her as she walked towards the dormitories. “I’m Hanit, by the way.”

“I’m Tashi from Lhasa, only recently orphaned. My mother, before passing away just a few months ago, had arranged a marriage for me with some older man I don’t particularly like, but thankfully Master Azad offered me an alternative. Magical training instead of an arranged marriage sounded like quite a good deal to me.” Tom followed Harry into a small, private room with stone walls and a narrow, glassless window with only a wooden hatch to cover it . “I thought we were sleeping in a dormitory?”

“New students, yes,” Harry said, gesturing to the thin mattress on a simple, low wooden frame. “But apprentices get their own rooms, and a real yak-hair mattress instead of those horrible sacks filled with moss and ferns.”

“The hight of luxury,” Tom agreed with a solemn nod.

“So, want to share?” Harry gave Tom a saucy wink while flipping her long, black hair over her shoulder.

Tom stepped a little closer to Harry, looking down at her with a crooked smile. “You’re so small. What are you, three feet?”

“What? No! I’m probably four foot nine, maybe even ten.” Harry crossed her arms and glared up at Tom, who couldn’t be more than five foot four but still towered over Harry. “And you have to be nice to me if you’re sharing my room or else you can go sleep on the ferns, buddy.”

“I’ll be good,” Tom whispered, lowering her head and pressing a soft kiss to Harry’s lips. Tom was beautiful, with long, black hair tied up in a wild bun and warm, brown eyes, and skin bronzed by the sun. Harry sagged against Tom as she deepened the kiss and before long they were having a really good snog, the kind that made Harry’s whole body tingle while things started throbbing and tightening between her legs.

“Fuck, now I’m horny,” Harry whispered against Tom’s grinning mouth. “And we have first meal soon.”

As if on que a bell rang across the whole temple.

“Later,” Tom mumbled against Harry’s lips, giving her one last kiss before pulling away. “But I am quite hungry so breakfast would be good.”

Shaking her head, Harry grabbed Tom’s hand and pulled her along to the mess hall. They could be patient with any intimate relationship. Their previous life they’d been happily married for over fifty years with two kids and a bunch of grandkids. Tom had been a man, a small town doctor in a coastal town in Croatia, and Harry had been a woman and after the kids were old enough to go to school full time, Harry had gotten involved in local politics, at first to save the library, but later because she enjoyed it. Harry had never had ambitions to do politics on a large, national scale, like Tom sometimes had, but in that life Harry had made it to mayor and enjoyed doing that job for many years.