Chapter 2 : Conflict

Location Training Camp, near Waterless Shore, Blue Wave Territory
Time Night Sleep 300 hours (12 hours before dawn)

Maiho woke slowly and snuggled up to Kernan. She looked up at the stars and could see from their position that it was close to the end of the sleeping period. She would need to check her timing crystal in her bag to be sure, but not counting the interruption caused by her nightmare they had had about seven hours sleep.

Their sleeping mat was in the couples' area of the camp. The trees between the spread out sleeping mats did not provide much privacy but by unspoken agreement everybody pretended as if they did.

Maiho was getting thirsty and was also starting to feel pressure on her bladder. She grabbed her canteen from her bag and drank deeply. The night outside was generally hotter than the day nest and it was important to stay hydrated. She pulled on her boots but did not bother with her beech-clout as the same pretended not to see rules covered sleep period excursions to the latrine. She carried her water and grabbed some leaves off a fiber tree on her way to the pits. Lack of bathing was an issue on patrol as water was rare outside of the day nests. After finishing her business, she cleaned the dust, sweat, and the remains of their midnight love-making session as best she could with the fiber tree leaves and a judicious use of some of her drinking water. On the way back to her and Kernan's sleeping mat, she noticed that most couples in the couples' area were still asleep but few were up. One couple was particularly noisy in their love making, as she passed them, she noticed that it was Sebram and Feibu, two of her closest friends and a patrol-only romance as they both had partners back at the day nest. She felt slightly jealous of their enthusiasm. She felt a little hot and bothered and wondered if Kernan could hear them. She grabbed some more fiber tree leaves just in case. To her disappointment Kernan wasn't at their sleeping mat when she got back. She took off her boots and drank some more water. Swishing the canteen she was glad she had several more canteens tied to her shard mount Veuto. As she listened to the slap of flesh against flesh and Feibu's moans and Sebram's grunts she started rubbing her clit. She couldn't help but think about how they had looked when she had seen them, the ecstasy on their faces as he slammed into her. If she turned her head, she could still catch a glimpse of them though the tree branches. She wished that Kernan was here to do that to her.

Kernan wandered in from the direction of the latrines.

"Ready for a run?" Kernan asked.

"I was thinking that maybe we could do something else first," replied Maiho, pulling him down to the sleeping mat.

"Didn't you get enough last night?"

"That was all frantic and fast. I am in the mood for something slow and mellow." said Maiho as she pulled him close for a kiss.

"I don't feel like getting zapped again so soon." he said referring to her problem with accumulating energy or 'vitality' every time she sung a crystal. He had never really gotten over the first time they had made love, where she discharged several years' worth of accumulated energy into his body as she had orgasmed. She had had the first decent period of sleep in a hundred-day. He wasn't able to sleep at all for a day or two. She had great difficulty convincing him to have sex with her again. He had insisted that she had fried his balls even though with a great deal of examination she had been unable to find any damage in form or function, in fact she thought the extra vitality gave a great improvement to his performance.

"I gave you half my 'vitality' before we slept. Since we have about the same amount there shouldn't be a zap." she said even though it was not strictly true as he had lost a bit of vitality while they slept.

"I don't think I can perform so soon," he complained.

"Oh, I think I can help with that," she said removing his boots. She massaged his cock and balls letting some of her extra vitality seep into him. She kissed him, letting some vitality flow through her lips as well. She felt him respond. She kissed his neck below his ear. The noises from Sebram and Feibu indicated that they were coming to a climax. Maiho was impatient to have Kernan inside her but she made herself slow down. A moan escaped her lips as she imagined Kernan climaxing inside her the way Sebram was climaxing inside Feibu.

She kissed her way down his neck and then across his chest. He moaned as she gently bit and sucked on his nipples. She worked her way down his torso, when she reach his groin, she started licking his balls while stroking his cock.

She plunged one finger then two into her hungry pussy.

She switched to licking and sucking his cock as she stroked it. She placed one of her sticky fingers, wet from her pussy juice, in his rose bud and pushed until it was half in the entrance. He yelped and thrust his hips forward. She waited until the sphincter relaxed then pushed her finger all the way in. She hooked her finger until she found his prostate then shot a burst of vitality into it. His cock stiffened to rock hardness immediately.

"Naedri Mercy. I told you I don't like that." He complained. "Why do you keep doing it?"

"Because it works."

She couldn't wait any longer. She moved up, positioned his cock at her pussy entrance and then pushed down.

Thrusting up and down, she worked his cock all the way into her pussy. She looked into his eyes and saw with relief that he was getting into it. She leaned back, enjoying the sensation of forceful rubbing of the front wall of her pussy. She rocked vigorously back and fro stimulating her clit by rubbing it against his pubic bone.

She shifted leaning forward and lifting herself up slightly as she thrust up and down, experimenting with the angle.

She trembled and shook as she felt the excitement, the sensations built until there was an explosive release as wave after wave of ecstasy swept through her body. At the same time, something inside of her let go and the vitality that was bottled up inside of her was released. As the energy swept through Kernan's body, an ecstatic expression graced his features as he emptied the contents of his balls into her. Later he would complain about being zapped but she would console herself with the fact that as it was happening, he always looked as if he was experiencing divine revelation and he always climaxed as the vitality surged through him. As she came to herself she heard clapping. Sebram and Feibu were watching them from a short distance away.

"Aren't you supposed to be giving us privacy by pretending not to see us?" asked Maiho.

"Yes, but you were sooooo loud," replied Sebram.

"You were not exactly quiet yourselves."

"Are you going to do the run?"

"Of course," replied Maiho.

"See you there."

Maiho looked down at Kernan. He had a dazed expression. He blinked a couple of times. "Was that Sebram and Feibu?"

"Yes, they are meeting us at the run." Maiho would have liked to spend some cuddle time with Kernan, however if they weren't careful, they would be late. She consoled herself by giving him a quick kiss. She cleaned herself with what was left of the water and the fiber tree leaves, donned her beech-clout, bag, and boots, then raced over to where Veuto was stabled and grabbed a full canteen and a spear from her harness.

As she ran she thought about her problems with singing crystal. The cause had to be the sheer amount and frequency of her crystal singing over the last 11 hundred-days. The demands of staying alive meant she was always singing in Lost Souls. Then after she had returned to Waterless Shore, she had spent as much time as possible singing blue crystal in order to try and restore her skin to its natural color. By the time she had found her way back home, her patterns were purple, as was her hair and the skin between her patterns was grey from all the non-blue crystal she had been singing. She had been treated like a freak. After 10 hundred-days of effort, the blue swirls on her skin only held a hint of purple. The skin between the swirls was white, thanks to singing white crystal, which was better than grey but still not her natural brown. She had less success with her hair which was now bluish purple. However the price for this restoration was that her body now absorbed energy from crystal whenever she sung and kept on absorbing it until her skin itched, until she was unable to sleep or sit still, until she thought she was going to explode. The obvious solution was to stop singing, but she could not do this without giving up her position as Healer.

She was just in time to meet up with Kernan and the others at the starting line.

The Instructors signaled the start and in a burst of speed Maiho and Kernan quickly outpaced the rest of the runners. Maiho enjoyed the relaxing, repetitive rhythmic motion of the run. She enjoyed perfect silence of the night, the quiet companionship of Kernan as she matched his pace, the beauty of the brilliant stars, the eerie ghost light of the Hunter's Moon, the peculiar red light of the Messenger Moon, the complex swaying shapes of the night trees, the brief glimpses of the fearful night life, the alien shapes of the dormant crystalline day trees so rigid and unyielding, and the stony forms of the sleeping day life and the occasional lonely abandoned half buried Artificia. It was a magical time and she wished she could spend more time outside.

She knew that the junior healers of the other blue villages resented being forced to support the Village Guard and go out on patrols. She knew that her mother resented the time that she was not available to help at the day nest's healing center. However she loved going out on patrol and resented being cooped up in the confining day nest. Even though Waterless Shore's walls were blue instead Lost Soul's white, her village's endless corridors still reminded her of her time trapped in the Reborn day nest.

She also relished burning off the excess vitality she was always accumulating.

They flushed a night hare from its hiding place. Maiho skewered the hare with single throw of her spear. She was particularly pleased as it was a razor-claw spear complete with crossbar and not balanced for throwing. She tied the hare to the side strings of her beech-clout. She picked up speed to catch up to Kernan, careful not to catch up too quickly as Kernan tended to act weirdly if she showed what she truly capable of.

She spotted flashes of red, green and blue off to the side keeping pace with them. She glanced at Kernan. To her relief, he seemed not to have noticed anything.

They reached the first blazed tree and turned north, using the stars to set their bearing to the next waypoint. A short time later she heard the faint sound of a flute.

"Someone has been hurt. I will need to turn back," she told Kernan.

Kernan nodded. He was starting to breathe more heavily. Maiho could almost see the vitality she had given him leak out of him like water out of a punctured canteen. He never seemed to get as much out of the crystal energy as she did.