Chapter 6: All Wet

On Wednesday morning, I groggily sensed a presence that was both familiar and foreign at the same time, the warm presence of my sister Kam nude under the covers with me, and for a moment I was confused before remembering the events of the previous day and night with a smile. It wasn't quite time to be up yet, so I snuggled closer to her, missing the familiarity of it from across the years we'd been apart. How could I have been so against the idea of polyamory? I would have to ponder that seriously some other time, when I was more awake.

Kam being a heavy sleeper, didn't wake up from my movement. Not even when I finally pulled myself out of bed and began my day. While I got ready, I had Cleo check Kam's schedule, and found Kam didn't have any classes til this afternoon, and her Omnus was set to wake her in plenty of time. Not wanting to bother her, I ate my breakfast and then left her a note saying she could stop by anytime in the future, though please check with Cleo beforehand in case I was out or busy. I also added a bit about how much fun last night had been, how much I missed her, and how much I loved her and was glad we'd reconnected. I told Cleo to make sure Kam got it, and then left for work.

My day at work was unremarkable, except that Iris came around a half hour before work was over with a sheepish grin on her face and a wobbly little wave. I winked at her and she grinned broader before wandering off somewhere else in the library.

When I got off work, I saw Iris once more sitting outside on the bench, reading. I finally got a good look at her; she was wearing a simple blue sleeveless summer dress. I couldn't see what she was wearing on her feet, though, because she had them tucked under her.

I sat down next to her, and she looked up from her book momentarily before looking at the ground sheepishly. "So, did you enjoy the show last night?"

She turned bright red and nodded, not speaking. I leaned closer, and said to her, "Do you want a hug?"

Iris nodded and leaned into me for me to hug her. She still didn't speak. I knew the feeling.

"Like I said, I'm a little disappointed you didn't ask us first. Even if you were sure we'd say yes, it's always best to ask first. We could've given you a better show, for one thing."

She looked up at me and sighed. "Yeah, I know I should've asked. But I didn't think about it. I just wanted to see if you actually, you know, did it. I wasn't planning on watching the whole thing, just enough to know ... but well, I er..." She pulled away gently and nervously touched her index fingers together. "I may have gotten a lot of, shall we say, enjoyment from the experience?"

I laughed. I couldn't help it. It was just so cute the way she avoided talking about the subject directly. "Well," I said, once I stopped laughing, "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself. So, uh ... would it be impolite of me to ask which mode you were in?"

"Oh, I was in red mode."

I blinked. "Pardon?"

"Oh yeah, it's a Lucite thing. We say 'red mode' for, well, having certain things extended. And blue mode is for the opposite. I actually got to an orgasm last night. Might've been better in blue mode, but," she shrugged.

"Well, if I understand these designations correctly, then yes, in blue mode you might have even had multiple orgasms."

"Yeah, that's what people say."

"Oh by the way, I remembered something." And I proceeded to tell her about how I had taken several pictures of her with my Omnus, such as on the night of our first real date, and how I intended to make those pictures into art if she permitted.

"Cool! Yeah, go ahead and take pictures of me whenever, as long as I'm clothed. For anything else, I ... well..." She seemed unwilling to say it, probably because she hadn't given me and Kam the same courtesy, so I finished for her.

" ... ask permission for nudes? Of course. Just remember, the same applies to me and Kam."

She nodded, looking down at the ground again, so I leaned close to her again, and she and I hugged again. That all settled, she and I got up and walked over to my house.

I would like to say a lot happened. I would love to regale you with a detailed story about the whole day like I've been doing, but honestly, we mostly just cuddled, read, or watched three-vee. We had sandwiches for dinner, so nothing special there. It was just a lovely quiet afternoon and evening, the two of us enjoying each other's company. Iris went home again like usual, and I read a little more before going to bed.

Thursday wasn't really remarkable, either. Kam had school most of the day, I had work, and Iris didn't even show up at all. I did get a message from her, though; seems she was excitedly preparing for the vacation this coming weekend. I must admit I was excited, too.

I slept in on Friday because my hours are later on Fridays, but still no Iris. This time she was busy packing, which I spent some time doing as well, before leaving for work. I still didn't see her at work that day, and when I got home late after work, I would have been really surprised if Iris had bothered to show up by then, especially with the next day's excitement.

I woke up at 7am on Saturday and got up almost at once, for I too was excited for the trip I'd been invited to. I got everything ready, ate breakfast, did the rest of my routine, then got a call on my Omnus from Matria, saying they were going to pick me up at 8:45. Since it was only 8, I flipped on the three-vee, since I knew I wouldn't be able to focus on reading.

It took what felt like ages, but finally Cleo informed me that they were pulling up. I grabbed my things and bolted out the door with them to see a large blue van parked behind Jeeves. Inside the van I could see Derris and Matria in the front, Taanlen in the middle with the teenaged Avra, and Iris was in a rear passenger area behind which was a storage area. A lot of things were also put inside a detachable storage device atop the van's roof. Iris was grinning like mad, bouncing up and down on the seat.

Derris got out and helped me get my stuff into the back. Iris chattered at me the whole time, to which I smiled. I so love the sound of her voice, it didn't matter that she wasn't saying much of anything, I just liked to hear her voice. When we got everything packed, I got in the back next to Iris, and we prepared to get underway. Iris was so excited that I had to work my patient charm to get her into her seatbelt. With everyone secure, the car pulled out and started the drive to the beach.

The trip took 3 hours, but Iris chattered herself out after only 40 minutes, and so we spent most of the ride playing some computer games together on a gaming device she'd brought with us. After taking 20 minutes to decide we didn't like the first choice of games, we spent the rest of the time on the second choice, a two-player cooperation game, and were working together on the final boss level when the car announced we were 20 minutes from our destination, the hotel we would be spending the night at. We finished the game with 5 minutes to spare before pulling up to the hotel.

After we checked in and unpacked our stuff into the room, we all went outside and walked several blocks to a nearby restaurant cluster for lunch. I knew the moment we saw a Taco Tavio's there among the restaurants in the area, that we would be going there, and sure enough, I was right. Naturally, Iris ordered five of their spiciest tacos. Before we left, she went to the restroom and, upon coming back, said, "I was extra careful to remember to wash my hands well this time, Rianna!" The rest of the family looked at me in confusion, and when my face turned back to its normal temperature, I explained about the incident on our first date with the hot sauce on her hand when I kissed it.

With lunch finished, we went back to the room to change into our bathing suits and get our things ready to go to the beach. When we had everything with us we needed, Derris checked something on his Omnus and led us to a short bus line that would take us on the ten-minute ride to the beach.

The beach we went to was long and wide enough that it wasn't too horribly crowded, but we could see areas farther down that had even fewer people on them, so since it was a partly-cloudy and pleasantly breezy day, we took the time to walk to a less-crowded area.

It was not my first time seeing the ocean, but apparently it was Iris's, because she gawped open-mouthed at it, and ran laughing into the waves - at least, she did once Derris finished warning her about going too far, and about undertows and stuff. As she nodded and ran off, wearing armband flotation devices (I noted with relief), I also made note of a lifeguard station nearby, its lifeguard monitoring the screens showing footage from cameras of different kinds pointing at the water so that AIs could track the humans for safety. There was also a small fleet of automated rescue crafts with robotic arms for dragging humans out of the water and speeding them back to the shore to be resuscitated. (It helps, I'm sure, that Omnuses are waterproof.)

Derris, Matria, and Taanlen set up a sun-shade and put some beach chairs down under them for the three of us while Iris and Avra went into the ocean to play in the waves. I didn't want to sit there all day long, but I sat there for a few minutes at least, taking distance shots of Iris with my Omnus. I'll be honest and say it wasn't for my art. At least, not mostly for that. Iris looked very nice in her little aquamarine bikini, and a part of me was annoyed that I hadn't suggested a tie-up set; specifically, the part that wanted to untie the ties and watch the bikini fall off her. This part was more active than usual because I could see, even from this distance, that Iris was in "blue mode," as she would say. This made me think briefly about Avra, who was topless where Iris wasn't, even though they were both sex shifters; but then, he seemed as assurred of his identity as a boy as Iris was of her identity as a girl, so I put that thought aside and continued to admire Iris from afar.

I sat there being a quiet perv, stewing in my own juices, for maybe 15 or 20 minutes before deciding I'd had enough, and getting up to join them. Iris noticed me coming and said, "Finally! I thought you were gonna be boring like the other adults," and soon the three of us were splashing water at each other and laughing fit to burst.

From what Iris had said, I expected the three Zahane adults to sit in their beach chairs all afternoon long, but I noticed another group of adults moving into the area and drafting them into a game of beach volleyball. I asked Iris and Avra if they wanted to join in, but by then the three of us were immersed in making sand castles, so I wasn't surprised that they weren't interested. I hadn't really been, either, but I thought I might as well ask.

Now you'd think, with her skill at designing things on VC, that Iris would have had the best sand castle of us all, but no; in fact, the medium seemed to frustrate her, for no matter how hard she tried, her sand castle looked more like crumbling blobs of wet sand than a building of any kind, while Avra's sand castle was a little above average. I think it helped Iris's mood that mine was not much better than hers; I am a painter, not a sculptor, after all. In fact, Iris eventually just shrugged at her crumbling sand castle and said "Meh. Kinda sucks, but whatever."

"Yeah, mine isn't very good either. I guess neither of us are very good in this medium."

"Yup. Bytes and pixels are much more cooperative than sand. In a VC, things usually stay where you tell them to stay, and you can always undo mistakes. Here in the real world, with sand, not so much."

"Oh yea, but the laws of physics are a pain sometimes, right?"

"Yup yup. Oh well, the best part of making sand castles is destroying them, right?"

"Indeed. Though only your own, of course. And yours is close enough to Avra's that you might want to wait until he gives the go-ahead. He might want to take a picture of his before it gets knocked over, and if you demolish yours now, his might get caught in the crossfire."

"Yeah. Well I can add a moat and some little stick people anyway, then Avra and I can pretend to be dragons when he's ready."

As it turned out, Avra wasn't impressed enough with his own work to want to get a picture of it, and so with a nod to his little sister, the two had an epic mock dragon fight in the area, which I started filming on my Omnus, the two of them like great monsters very dramatically nearly missing stepping on villagers or knocking over buildings many times before Iris-dragon grabbed Avra-dragon's ankles and sent him straight into his own castle backwards, while roaring. She scrambled up onto him, also roaring, and pretending to claw at him. They wrestled each other for a while, rolling over her own castle. I took my Omnus off and set it up in a little hillock of sand to continue recording as I joined in, the big mama dragon roaring at her ... cubs? Dragonlings? for them to stop fighting, because they'd wasted all that delicious human meat. I picked the two of them up in my arms - for Avra, while adolescent, was only maybe 15 years old, which of course looks younger for Paxites and Lucites - and tried to haul them away from the wreckage, but they were too heavy for me, and I toppled backwards onto my own sand castle.

When we were done laughing so hard we were all clutching stitches in our sides, I went over to my Omnus and stopped the recording, putting the device back on my wrist, and sat back down next to Iris as the two of them sat there, still recovering.

"A part of me thinks that would have been even more fun, not to mention hilarious, if you'd brought your Autonotinies with you; we could have had little terrified villagers running around for real. But another part of me is glad we didn't. Quite apart from the potential pain of falling on one, they're not terribly bright, so I can easily see them running off into the ocean and getting swept away."

"Yeah. Actually, I've heard of that happening," Avra said. "Kids bringing their Autonotinies to the beach to inhabit the sand castles or to build their own, which I imagine would be fun to watch, and then like you said, they either get too close to the ocean, or they run off in terror during roughhousing and either way, get swept away. But even more interesting, sometimes Autonotinies wash ashore, still able to walk around. Usually they drop dead a few hours after that, their batteries depleted, but still, kind of cool."

I tried not to stare at Avra, though I'm not sure how successful I was. Aside from the dialogue in the game, it was the most I'd heard him say ... ever, really. I made a mental note to ask Iris later if he was shy or if he was just naturally quiet.

"Yeah," Iris added when he stopped. "And then some of them end up in the Ocean Skimmers." I nodded; it made sense, after all. Ocean Skimmers are automated ships that constantly wander about the oceans, skimming garbage out of the ocean and recycling it. An early version of them had been invented by a young inventor in the early decade or two of the 21st century, but it took a bunch more decades for them to begin to be made and implemented. With the rise of metamaterials, many of which were very resistant to any kind of decay, they'd become even more important than they'd originally been. Fish choking to death or being poisoned by plastic was bad enough, but some metamaterials could cause truly gruesome deaths indeed for any wildlife unfortunate enough to ingest them.

We got into a discussion, then, about the various things that could happen to Autonotinies, including some people who just flat-out released the small machines into the wild with programs that included a fear of returning home, and a desire to find ways to keep their batteries charged. So while human homelessness was not an issue on Paxum, it wasn't terribly unusual to see homeless Autonotinies wandering around. Of course, their range was limited; Autonotinies usually become inert if they end up too far away from their home base, IE the little wirelessly networked house unit they came with.

I pointed this out, and added that I thought that might be part of the reason why the company that made them designed them to be too difficult to customize to really be worth the effort. That wasn't the only reason, of course. Autonotinies were one of the few products from the capitalist colony Greshnok 4 that Paxum had, which only worked out because a company on Paxum was paying the Greshnokkians for the Autonotinies with rare minerals mined from local asteroids and adjacent lifeless planets.

Being a bit tired out, the three of us went over to take over the beach chairs while the other adults were playing volleyball. After being out in the sun, even with the breeze and the evaporating water clinging to me, which had long since dried, it felt good to sit in the shade a spell. But the heat was getting more oppressive, so when Iris and Avra got up to go into the water again, I followed them into the cooling waters.

Our mood in the water this time was much different. Avra went off on his own, wading in the waves, while Iris and I drifted together and cuddled in the water. I began to float, with Iris floating atop me; we just stayed like that for a few minutes, bobbing in the water as waves went past us, before she used her legs to get a better purchase on me. I felt a surge of warmth as she did, and felt my swimsuit bottom get tighter. Judging by her wry facial expression, Iris had noticed as well.

"Well I'd always heard wood expands in water, I guess this proves it," she said; I once more felt the familiar sensation of my face warming up.

"Smart ass," I playfully countered.

"Yes, but I'm your smart-ass, right?"

"Sure thing, my Queen."

"You know, you can come up with other pet names to call me, too, for some variety."

"How about 'my flower'?"

She grinned. "I like that one."

"Me too. So, my flower, I notice you don't have any pet names for me. You don't even call me Rea, like my sister does. Always just Rianna."

"Oh. Well, that's an oversight I should correct."

I waited for her to continue. When she didn't, I asked, "Are you still thinking, my flower?"

"Yeah. Your name doesn't lend itself well to pet names, and I don't want something cliche, nor do I want to use Kamaria's pet name for you."

"Well if it helps, the rest of my family calls me Rea as well."

"I appreciate the attempt, but that doesn't help."

"Alright. There's no rush. If you think of one, let me know, but it's perfectly fine to take your time if you need to. I like the idea of having something special."

"Okie dokie, when I think of one I'll run it by ya." She sighed, and snuggled in a little more, but pulled back a little, making a face.

"Something wrong?"

She hit herself on the side of the head a little. "Got some water in my ear."

"Well don't beat yourself about the head. Come on, let's go back, I think your parents brought something for that."

She sighed. "Do we have to do that right now? I like it here."

"Me too, dear. Hmm ... well, it'll probably be fine if we wait a little longer. Just, let's try to remember it needs doing, okay?"

"That's easily handled." She lifted her wrist, pressed a button on her Omnus, and said into it, "Remind me when we get back on land, I need to take care of the water in my ear."

"Understood. Reminder set," the Omnus intoned, the text of the reminder flashing on the display briefly before the Omnus went into standby again.

We went back to our own sort of standby mode too, floating there, relaxing. I don't know how long we were like that before she spoke again. "I think I just peed."

"Meh. The ocean is full of pee already. Human pee, fish pee, and so on. But I'll make sure not to get thirsty anytime soon."

"Silly person, you can't drink ocean water! It's not good for you."

"I know that, my flower. It was a joke."

"Is that what they're calling it now?"

"You know, my little Iris flower, with your eye color and your occasionally impish behavior, I think you might have been better named 'Thistle.'"

"Thistle be the last time I let you call me 'Thistle, ' you impudent scallywag!" And with that, the relaxed mood instantly transformed into a silly mood, and we started splashing water at each other and chasing one another about, playing a game of Shark and Seal. I started out as the shark, naturally, but I think Iris made a far more convincing shark when it came her turn to try to catch me. I had barely been able to touch her during my time as shark, she was so much better at swimming than me (probably went to the pool a lot, the little whelp), and it took all my energy to get away from her when she was the shark. As it was, I had to head toward shore.

"Hey no fair! No going on land!"

I pulled myself ashore and turned back to face her. "I'm a seal, remember? Seals can go ashore."

"Oh, OH!" Iris jerked around a little, which confused me, until she spoke again, "what's this? I ... seem to have ingested some kind of ... mutagenic chemical. Evolution ... changing me. I ... I AM NOW A LAND SHARK!" She stood up and ran at me, and I yelped and, staying true to my role, tried to drag myself away like a seal, even going so far as to bark like one. I had an ulterior motive for this; soon enough, she caught me, and began to mock-bite me.

"I, the land shark, have caught the seal! I'm eating you right up! You will be in my belly!"

"Oh no! Oh no! Whatever will my pups do without their mother? Please have mercy on me, Ms. Land Shark!"

"No! I'm gonna eat you, and then I'm gonna take your pups and fatten them up for later. And there's nothing you can do about it!"

"Ahhhh!" I writhed about, making piteous moans as Iris nibbled me all over. This quickly devolved into me giggling like a drunken high schooler at prom, because her mock bites were tickling me.

Luckily, the land shark did eventually take pity on me, and stopped before I started to laugh too much. I lay there, recovering as Iris snuggled up next to me on the sand, waves occasionally washing over our lower legs. Once I calmed down enough to stop giggling, Iris leaned closer and began to nibble my ears lovingly, and I could do nothing but lay there enjoying the sensation, the pressure in my bikini bottom returning in earnest.

Wanting to do something for her, too, I tried running my hand along her arm, but between the wrinkliness of my fingers, our skins' wetness, and the sand on her skin, that didn't work out well, so I stopped it. Iris lay herself atop me and started to nibble the other ear. In this position, I was able to run the backs of my fingers against her own ears, which probably didn't do much for her, but she gave no sign that it bothered her, so I continued it.

"Ugh! Get a room!" We both looked up at this voice, and saw Avra rolling his eyes. "I'd rather not witness my sister and her girlfriend getting hot and heavy, especially in public."

"Nobody's forcing you to stay here," Iris pointed out.

Avra countermanded with, "Actually, our parents kind of are forcing me to stay in this general area."

Iris rolled her eyes. "Yeah but you could always look somewhere else. Your Omnus will tell Mum, Dad, and Mom where you are. Or go back into the ocean. Nobody's forcing you to look at us. Or maybe it really turns you on and you don't want to admit it."

Avra snorted and crossed his arms. "Well yeah, probably, if you weren't my sister. If you were some other girl, I wouldn't have stopped you."

"Rianna and her sister are lovers, so I don't-"

"Yeah well I'm not into that kinda thing. You're pretty, I guess, and maybe if you weren't my sister ... but, well ... you are." He turned bright red, something which was obvious with his ginger hair and lightly freckled complexion, and walked off in an embarrassed huff.

"Wow, what a mood killer," Iris commented. "But kinda funny, and flattering, to know he fancies me."

"I do not fancy you!" Avra shouted back at her without pausing or even really slowing down. In fact, he sped up.

"It's okay," she shouted back, "I know I'm highly fanciable! I make all the boys and girls drool!"

"You drool!" I could barely even hear him that time. Iris shrugged. "Soo..." she said more quietly at me, like a question.

"So, I think I've been in the water too long, and need to get my land legs back. What say we go for a walk?"

"Okie dokie." She stood up and strained to see where Avra was going, then pointed in another direction. "There's some nice trees over there, we can take a nature walk." Before we did, we brushed sand off each other and got into some sandals, since whatever sand that wasn't being pummeled by ocean waves was getting quite hot in the sun. We also took a moment to poke Iris in the ear gently with this device that made sure her ears were free of water and disinfected the ear canal just in case, before heading off on our walk.

Our time in the water must have gotten to Iris pretty bad, too, because we'd barely made it to the large rock marking the beginning of a small nature trail before she had to sit down again. My own legs were recovering faster, but that might have had something to do with the fact that I hadn't been swimming as much or as fast as Iris had been. When we stood up again, Iris eyed the path and then asked me if I'd let her ride on my shoulders. I agreed, knelt down, and soon I was standing up with her perched on my shoulders, and she was grabbing the top of my head to keep herself from falling backwards.

It wasn't a terribly long path, so after our first time through, we went through it a few more times, twice with her on my shoulders, and the last time side-by-side, holding hands. Actually, we only went through another 2 and a half times, stopping to rest on a bench under a large oak tree. At least, it started out as just a rest and a cuddle. But then the romantic mood came back, and this time Iris climbed up on my lap, straddling me, and initiated a kiss.

She seemed to be focusing her attention on making it a really good kiss, only pausing a couple times to giggle and comment as she felt "little Rianna," as she called it, make its presence known from beneath my bikini bottom. Naturally, I returned the attention. And I must say, Iris was a fast learner. Her technique already seemed to have improved from our first real kiss, like she'd been paying attention at the time and not just getting lost in the sensations like I'd done. Probably she was doing the same now, too. I suppressed a grin at the thought that I was teaching her to be an excellent kisser. Since Kam had taught me kissing, I guess that meant I was paying it forward in a way. That made me imagine Kam watching us, which I could totally see her doing, even if she wasn't a fellow paedoromantic, which got me harder. Iris giggled again, more of a titter than a giggle. Heh, I thought, titter.

I couldn't help it; I snorted mid-kiss, which made Iris pull out and break into a fit of the giggles. Which, naturally, set me off giggling too. We both made several attempts to go back to kissing, but those only made us laugh harder, until we both fell over in the bench laughing like a pair of hyenas at a comedy show. Neither of us noticed the sun getting lower in the sky, the day getting slightly darker. We just kept giggling. We would stop every so often, attempting to restore a serious atmosphere so we could go back to kissing, but it was just that really tense suppression of laughter that kept invariably exploding out of one or the other of us, setting the other one off.

We were in the middle of an extended giggle fit, one where both of us were struggling to stop so we could breathe again, when the others found us. I was upside down in the seat at the time, but I was able to look up and see Taanlen smiling with wry amusement at us. Derris and Matria were grinning, as well. Even Avra had to fight to hide his smile at finding us acting like a couple giggly toddlers; I imagine he'd been expecting to walk in on us snogging. Which, of course, we had been doing, before we got caught up in an extended giggle fit.

Seeing the rest of her family finally, somehow, got us to calm down and stop laughing. We righted ourselves and stood up.

"Okay you two sillies, it's time for dinner. We need to shower and change first. Are you done cackling like loonies?" I nodded, not recovered enough for words yet. Iris did the same.

"Good," Taanlen said. "We're going out for seafood. Come along."

They turned around; Iris and I followed, still faintly amused, but all giggled out for now. But we did keep looking at each other with amusement and smiling all the way back to the hotel room, like we were having some kind of silent conversation that was funny.

Once we were all changed into our street clothes, everyone got in the van and drove a couple miles to a really nice seafood restaurant. I was a little worried, at first; I wasn't sure if I had it in my budget for a place like this, yet. But at my concerned expression, Matria informed me that they were paying for my dinner, too. I was relieved. Maybe in a couple months when I'd been working my increased hours for a while, I could afford to splurge on a place like this, but until then, it was a relief to be treated by someone else.