Chapter 22: Safe Returns

Traffic in the Nestia med bay had increased significantly immediately after the attack at the Trantmore Aid station. While repairs were being made at the hospital, all new arrivals were brought on board for their medical screenings and treatment, then sent back to the dormitories once the medics had cleared them, made easier because the Nestia was able to park in the landing area, cleared by the efficient Netherlands heavy equipment operators.

The maintenance teams worked swiftly, and the volume of comings and goings slowed to a trickle, much to the relief of Inta, who had a bodily instance sitting at Diana’s bedside the entire time. Inta monitored everything that happened in and around the Nestia at all times, but she wanted to hold Diana’s hand so she could feel her presence and so that if she awoke, Inta would be the first person she saw.

The expressions on the faces of the medical staff in the med bay ranged from surprise, curiosity, to complete shock when Inta and Artona displaced back to the Nestia, carrying an unconscious Diana and the woman they found in the attacker’s hideout. Inta carried Diana swiftly over to an unused bed and laid her down gently while Artona helped the sickly woman they rescued to another. But before Artona and the medics who rushed to help could get her up on a bed, her face contorted in pain as she doubled over and vomited all over Artona.

She grimaced as her fur became matted and slickened with whatever half-rotted canned food the ill woman had consumed before their departure. “FUCK! as if this day couldn’t get any worse!” the Urarc swore loudly, terrifying one of the young medics helping Artona with the woman.

“Oh, I’m sorry, it’s not you, it’s just...” Artona dropped her hands to her side in defeat. “I’m going to get cleaned up,” she told Inta, leaving the rescued woman in the medic’s care. “I’ll be right back.”

“It’s okay, Honey, take your time. The other’s are on their way now.” Inta locked eyes with her favorite wall of fur. “You’ve done so much already. Thank you sweetheart. I really am lucky to have you.”

Artona’s disgruntlement melted in the radiant heat of Inta’s smile. “I would do anything for you,” she said, smiling back. Then she wrinkled her nose, catching a whiff of her now fetid-smelling fur. “I gotta go...” Inta shooed her off with a wave and a chuckle.

Just as Artona was exiting through the med bay door, she nearly collided with June and Ben, followed close behind by Thea, De’noke, and several other Toparians.

“Look out, you don’t want any part of this!” she warned, raising her hands over her head, and everyone gave her wide berth as she left for her infrequently used room to shower.

June rushed to Inta’s side and immediately threw her arms around the silver girl, squeezing her tight. The echoes of Inta’s fear and worry for Diana had been coming through loud and clear; June didn’t know what else to do besides console her lover.

“Is she hurt?” June asked, as Inta brushed Diana’s raven hair from her face.

“No, not physically, at least,” Inta replied, her sadness deepening. “She’s exhausted herself, and I suspect she’ll sleep it off, but she’s still suffering from the mental scars from her ordeal.”

June hugged her a little tighter. “You did an amazing job healing her broken mind, it takes time to get over something as horrible as what Diana went through. Healing isn’t a linear process, there’s bound to be bump one the road and set backs.”

Inta furrowed her brow. “This didn’t feel like a relapse, it felt like something else. There’s an shadow hiding deep in her psyche; something that I can’t sense; it rose and subsumed her, and I couldn’t sense Diana at all; for a while she was gone and all that was left was that emptiness.” Tears started streaming down Inta’s silver cheek. “I can’t lose her or any of you!”

It hurt June’s heart to see Inta so distressed, but all she could do for the moment was comfort her the best she could. Reaching from behind, June draped her arms around Inta’s shoulders and hugged her tightly.

Ben and the others surrounded them, unintentionally making it difficult for the doctors and nurses to move past the gathered group as they tended to the other patients in the med bay. They reached in, forming a group hug, all of them wanting to ease Inta’s pain and guilt.

With love in their eyes, they took turns placing a kiss on her cheek and giving her words of encouragement.

Inta sighed, her mood lightening slightly. “I love you all so much. I don’t know what I’d do without you.” Inta looked around the medbay at the doctors and nurses doing their best to work around the crowd gathered around Diana’s bed.

“I think we’re getting in everyone’s way, here. I’m going to keep an instance here with Diana until she wakes, but...” she said from her bedside seat.

“I could really use some love and attention, what do you say?” Another instance of Inta finished the thought as she sashayed into the Medbay, wrapping her arms around June and Thea’s waist while giving Ben a peck on the cheek.

“You know I LOVE giving you attention,” June said, pulling Inta’s new instance close and giving her a passionate kiss, causing the nearby medical staff to raise their eyebrows. Ben joined them, moving Inta’s silver hair to one side, and started placing soft kisses on the back of her shapely neck.

“We’d better take this back to the lounge before we start making anyone uncomfortable,” Thea said, seeming to be the only one in the group not a complete exhibitionist.

The seated Inta smiled and nodded. “I’ll be fine here, especially if you all are making me feel better back in our room.”

The Inta, with her arms around the waists of two lovely women, smiled brightly. “Come on, let’s go and see just how good you can make me feel,” she cooed, leading June, Thea, and Ben out and disappearing down the hallway.

The Toparian Maidens and Brothers accompanying him, each gave Inta a peck on the cheek and headed back to the arboretum. De’noke lingered as the others left.

“My Dearest Inta,” De’noke said in a slow, loving tone, “you are a miracle. I have no doubt that Diana, with your help, will make a full recovery.” He took her hand softly in his, crouching low so that he was at Inta’s eye level. “Just remember that we are all as devoted to you, as you are to us. You can lean on us when you need to.”

Tears pooled in the corner of her eyes, and she rushed to wrap her arms around his neck, clinging tight. De’noke tenderly embraced her, wrapping four arms around her, holding her tight.

After a few warm moments, they released their embrace and separated. De’noke gave one last smile to the seated Inta before getting up and heading out of the medbay, leaving Inta to her bedside vigil.

He waited for the lift to arrive, and when the doors opened, Inta was inside waiting. “Mind if I join you?” she asked, with an uncharacteristic uncertainty. De’noke smiled and stepped into the lift with her.

“By all means, you’re always delightful company,” De’noke replied. Inta quickly pressed herself against his much taller frame, clinging to him as if she were afraid she was going to be swept away in a fast-moving current.

Wordlessly, De’noke wrapped a soothing arm around Inta’s shoulders, holding her tight, and felt her begin to relax almost immediately. The lift opened, and they walked together down the corridor and stepped through the first door to the Toparian living area.

Stepping onto the lush grass of the Grove’s arboretum and feeling the soft green blades between her silver toes normally soothed and delighted her. The events of the past couple of days weighed heavily on her mind, subduing her usual, bubbly spirit. It was late, in the early hours of the morning, and most of the Toparians were scattered about sleeping in groups of two or three throughout the space.

A couple of Brothers and a Maiden lay among the rows of newly planted seeds, their small leafy sprouts feeding the growing sparks of life that seemed to twinkle like stars in Inta’s eyes. A half smile turned up the corner of her lips at the thought of young ones that would soon make their appearance.

Inta stepped through the ring of tree-like Mothers and approached the Pi’natha, the largest, her soft, supple bark still bulging with the heavily pregnant form of one of Inta’s instances, the penultimate vision of fertility. Inta spread her arms and embraced Pi’natha’s wide, rainbow-hued trunk, feeling the loud echoes of the Seeding ecstasy coursing through both Pi’natha and the instance of herself she had given to save Pi’natha’s life.

She slid down and rested her back against Pi’natha’s warm trunk, closed her eyes, and reached inward to the bubbled off portion of her mind, carefully managing the delicate flow of energy from Pi’natha to the seeds Inta was playing surrogate to, for Pi’natha and De’noke.

Sheltered within Inta’s encased form, the seeds were strong and growing large, fed by Inta’s sheltering embrace from the Malestrom of raw energy of her and Pi’natha’s union. Inta’s capacity to transmit the overwhelming levels of orgasmic energy was infinitely greater than that of the Maiden’s. If she didn’t consume the excess the seeds didn’t need, feeding her own remarkable regrowth in her crystalline matrix, everyone in a five-mile radius would be fucking like a Silvestrian in Heat.

She smiled at the memory of the incident on the Dallas, and though she had come to terms with it, a small part of her still felt guilty for exploiting the situation. Leaning her head back against Pi’natha, Inta thought of the trick she learned to bubble off part of her mind, enabling her to shelter the seeds and the delightful women of the book club, finally perfecting it to provide Diana the means to use the silver arms and legs, replacing her lost limbs.

Inta sighed as her mood sank again, thinking about the horrors her love suffered, and her apparent inability to heal her fully.

Even as deep in her own thoughts as she was, few things escaped her notice aboard the Nestia, and she was unsurprised when De’noke came and silently sat beside her, resting beneath Pi’natha’s inviting shadow. “That’s quite the deep sigh; something on your mind?” he asked, draping one of his left arms around her shoulders and placing the hand of his other on her knee. Do you want to talk about it?”

Inta nuzzled into the taller Toparian, allowing him to comfort her. “Yeah, I think I could do with a bit of wisdom right now,” she replied in a small, uncharacteristically unsure voice, tracing the branching silver lines on his arm with her fingers.

“Pi’natha’s usually the one to dole out the wisdom, but I’ll do my best,” he said with a bit of self-deprecating humor, trying to lighten the mood. “I assume you’re worried about Diana,” he guessed.

“Yeah, I am,” Inta confessed. “After her original ordeal, I had to do something. The doctors could have put her body back together in time; the nerve damage was severe and would have taken a dozen surgeries and months, if not years, of learning to use prosthetics well enough to function on her own.”

She sighed, looking up and off into the distance in the general direction of the med bay. “Worst of all was the damage her psyche suffered; fractured beyond anything their modern methods could heal, I did what I could do to mend the pieces back into a healthy whole, but it does not seem that it was enough.”

De’noke shifted, cradling Inta, holding her tighter. “You did what no one else would have thought possible; you brought young Diana back to herself and gave her a fighting chance at normalcy,” he countered, “If you had not intervened, she would have remained a hollowed out shell of who she once was.”

Inta gave him a small smile, appreciative of his efforts to buoy her spirits, despite her apparent failure. “I did the best I could, but there was something I missed at the time. Today, when Artona and I brought her back to the med bay, both the doctors and I found no physical injury or anything that could explain what happened. I then inspected her mind again, carefully looking along the scarring she suffered, and noticed something I hadn’t before: there were fine tendrils woven all along the scars.”

She turned to face him again, and the expression on her face was full of confusion, worry, and doubt. “But the strange thing is that the tendrils don’t seem to be a foreign presence; it’s as if there’s nothing there at all. An emptiness that I can’t see, feel, or sense, but seems wound into her. What’s more, there’s a kind of stress or pressure behind it all, like something lurking, hidden from my sight, waiting.”

De’noke turned to face Inta, locking eyes, probing for what she had left unsaid. “You said when you and Artona went looking for Diana, you couldn’t feel her. Is that normal for someone who has Bonded?” The dread in Inta’s eyes confirmed he had it.

“No, never! Everything I can remember being taught is that once Bonded, we are parts of the same whole,” she paused, pain from the past surfacing, bringing with it the beginning of tears, “only death would separate us.”

Inta looked around, searching for the words, for the understanding that was not forthcoming. “When my first family died on that isolated planet, I felt the fear and pain of each and every death as if it were my own. I knew with horrible certainty they were gone. With Diana, she was there one minute, a bright star in my mind, like all of you,” she said, placing a hand on De’noke’s chest, “then the next minute, it was like she never was, leaving a dark spot in my mind where she once was.”

De’noke could see the uncertainty and fear of losing Diana again running rampant in her mind, feeding back on itself, pulling her spirits further down. Without a word, he gently scooped her up in his strong arms, depositing her in his cross-legged lap, and wrapped all four arms around her, holding her tight to his chest.

For a long time, they sat together like that, Inta huddled in De’noke’s strong embrace, him willing feelings of warmth and love through their connection, comforting her in her moment of need and doubt. “She’s stronger than she looks, largely thanks to you,” he said after a long silence, brushing the hair from her silver brow. “You found her, she’s back, all is right again.”

Inta finally relaxed, her head resting against his chest, listening to the slow, steady beat of his heart. Although relaxed, she seemed a little distracted, an unusual trait for her.

“You are with her, and will make sure she is taken care of,” De’noked stated, reinforcing that she was doing the right thing.

Inta nodded. “She’s still sleeping in the med bay; but haven’t left her side and don’t plan to until she wakes.” She stopped, then shook her head, “No, I’m not going to leave her side even then.”