Chapter 13

"Walk into those brambles," Emma suggested, pointing at an overgrowth of bushes nestled under several trees.

This was after having walked a couple of hours through what seemed to be uninhabited terrain, Timora began complaining that her feet hurt. The boots she had on didn't really fit all that well, having been designed to show off her fashion sense rather than her practicality. "So take them off," Jessika had suggested. Timora did, and now she was walking barefoot, the same as the two Phoenix girls she wanted to emulate. Her next complaint was about the sticks and prickly grass that poked into the bottoms of her feet. That was when Emma had made her suggestion.

"What?" Timora asked. "Why would I do that?"

"Cause if you don't, she'll beat the crap outta you," Jessika chuckled.

Timora glared at Emma, certain that she could take the small-statured female. Emma sighed with mock frustration and said, "It's just to teach you how to watch where you're going. During your training, you're going to be running all out, dodging bullets and arrows and whatever else a hunter might sling at you. Where you put your feet and what you run into has to be calculated automatically. You'll be too busy dodging bullets to put much attention on staying upright and not running headlong into a tree."

"Walk into those brambles, she sez," Timora muttered, changing the direction of her glare to include the thorny bushes that looked so ... thorny. "On purpose."

"Yep!" Emma grinned.

"You go first," Timora told her.

Emma rolled her eyes and walked away, exuding confidence in every step. Jessika smiled as she watched Emma's round rump roll from side to side. "Goddess, she looks hot!" Timora heard Jessika murmur.

Timora frowned at the thought that these two women she wanted to emulate might be sleeping together – maybe even having sex with each other! Startled, she blinked at the sudden image in her mind of Jessika and Emma rolling around in the grass, completely ignoring the sharp blades, each one's face pressed between the other's thighs. She blushed as she heard Jessika's soft chuckle, but kept watching Emma, determined not to let this possible lesbian standing next to her get her goat. Then she blushed even harder as she visualized a goat's goatee and how much it resembled...

"Stop doing that!" Timora snapped, turning to glare at an amused and obviously telepathic Jessika. "Stay out of my mind!"

Jessika shrugged, and turned to watch as Emma raised her arms and stepped into the brambles. Timora thought she could hear a sigh, perhaps a sound of pleasure at getting scratched, from Emma's direction. Then Emma was pushing through the brambles, turning and twisting to keep the thorns from digging too deeply into her soft, feminine flesh as she moved. 'Why would I think of her flesh as being soft and feminine?'

The next sound she heard was a low growl; the kind she might make to a girlfriend when she spotted a particularly succulent, well-muscled farm boy. This growl, however, came from Jessika. Turning to stare at the source of the noise, she took in the undisguised desire on Jessika's face as she watched Emma disappear into the brambles. 'Yep! She's a lezzie!'

Timora turned back to watch Emma, somewhat curious about what could possibly be so attractive about Emma getting her tits, ribs, stomach and legs all scratched up. 'She wants me to do that?' she wondered.

"You're next," Jessika grinned, looking over at Timora, now.

'Pervert!' Timora thought. 'You just want to watch me scratch up my tits!'

'You bet I do, ' Timora distinctly heard Jessika say in her mind. Out loud, Jessika continued, "Be sure to keep turning and twisting the way Emma did so that you don't get scratched too deeply."

"Easy for you to say," Timora muttered as she started forward. "You're not the one being sacrificed here." She heard Jessika smirk in response.

Timora reached the edge of the bramble bush and stopped, completely unwilling to allow her perfect skin to be perforated by even a single thorn. A pair of hands in the center of her back thrust her forward, and Timora yelped in pain and surprise as she found herself completely surrounded by sharp, thorny branches. She whimpered as she tried to pull away and contract herself so that she wasn't being pricked from every direction.

'Emma had her arms raised before she went in, ' Timora thought, desperate for a quick solution. 'That made her a smaller target for these vile things.' But trying to raise her arms only made more scratches in her skin, and she discovered that wherever a thorn was embedded, she was bleeding.

"Shit-fuck!" she exclaimed. "I'm stuck!"

"You sure are," Emma chortled from somewhere ahead of her. "You're supposed to twist as you come into contact with them. Try it and see."

With a protesting wail, Timora twisted to her left, trying to shrink away from the thorns that found her right arm, breast and that side of her torso, but she was surprised that the thorns on her left side released and slid behind her. Some of them, especially the ones directly poked into her front, left deep, painful gouges as they slid by.

'Now the other way, ' a voice cooed into her mind. 'Keep going, back and forth. And don't forget to move your feet. Otherwise, you're just going to get scratched with the same branches over and over.'

After three agonizing, fearful steps, Timora discovered she wasn't in so much pain anymore. The hundreds of scratches and gouges covering her arms, legs, breasts and belly didn't seem to hurt as much as she thought. With a victorious grin, she forced her way through the thorny bushes and staggered out to see Emma waiting for her.

The shock of seeming Emma with dozens of oozing scratches stopped Timora cold. 'Do I look like that?' she asked herself, then stared down at herself to see that she did.

"Fu-uck!" Timora gasped. Then her body came alive to let her know just how much it had been wounded. She sobbed and sank to her knees, robbed of her victory and all her remaining strength. Every deep gouge, every tiny scratch, flared with pure agony.

"You ... fucking ... bitch!" Timora gasped between sobs. "Why did you make me do this?" The worst thing was that Emma was obviously as damaged and wounded as she was, but her bleeding gouges didn't seem to bother her at all.

Emma dropped down on her knees and took Timora's head in her hands. "Pay attention to me!" she commanded. "Close your eyes!"

Timora did as she was told, unable to keep her body from trembling with the pain that was wracking every part of her.

'It's all on the outside! Where you hurt is not where you are! Feel the separation! It's just your skin that hurts, not you. You can't be hurt. Feel the difference between you and your skin. Okay? Emma's thoughts were insistent, yet Timora could feel the honest affection the girl felt toward her. It wasn't sexual. It was ... Okay, it was sexual, too. But there was more...

"'kay," Timora muttered through a throat that was raw from tension and her constant whimpers, which were suddenly stopped when she realized... 'That was me making that noise?'

'Yep, 'fraid so. Better now?'

'I think so. Timora responded, reveling in this new form of silent communication. 'I feel like I'm burning. My skin is so ... alive! Stinging all over!'

'You'll get used to that, ' Emma smirked. 'In fact, in time you'll look forward to feeling that. But your skin isn't you. Can you feel the difference? YOU are not in pain!'

'Yes! I mean, you're right!' Timora laughed with sudden relief as she realized she wasn't actually in pain at all. 'I feel ... wonderful! Is there more to this?'

'Yes, ' Emma promised. 'If you're ready, I can show you. But you're going to have to change your mind about some things... '

Timora struggled, most of her attention already committed to holding onto the difference between her 'self' and her pain. Then she realized she already had an image just like what Emma was trying to get her to do.

"Got it!" Timora gasped, then quickly drew in a breath as she nearly lost the separation between herself and her fiery breasts.

'Got a good image of your breasts, too, I see, ' Emma chuckled. 'That's okay. Now draw a triangle down, starting with your breasts being in each corner across the top... '

'I'm going down to a point?' Timora asked, suspecting she already knew where this magical triangle would end.

'Yes – all the way down to where your body... '

'Whoa! That tickles!' Timora gasped, then she wailed in fresh agony as her pain collapsed in on her. She suddenly realized how much effort she'd been putting into maintaining a separation between herself and her sorely wounded body.

'Hold on! It's okay!' Emma thought anxiously at her new trainee. 'You just need to reestablish the separat... '