78 - Puff Cakes after the Party

Kyrus drifted up out of one of the deepest sleeps he’d had in a long time. Ilax and Da... do I call Ilax da now too? It was a crazy thought. He was so warm and exhausted and he and Haraklez had practiced with each other until they were both sore, but in a good way, after Ilax and Da snuck off to start their honey time.

Kyrus had drunk enough at the celebration that he’d been sure he couldn’t do anything at all but cuddle with her, but she’d pulled him into the circles of dancers with her, dragging his one arm over her shoulder, Werfas on his other side. Jash was too little to dance with the grownup circles but the kids were all dancing together too, requiring some fancy footwork on the drunken adults’ part to not step on the kids.

They’d all danced, he’d even ended up in the men’s drunken dance with Verpiccaus and his wing brother Gaumant, each one showing their ‘fine-feathers’ circling and stalking each other like the warbirds in their heat-dances. Ky had a memory of leaping and spinning, with the two, the girls clapping and chanting them on, faster and faster, jumping over Gaumant’s low kick, ducking under Ver’s high one. They ended, all three on the ground, lying arms spread, grinning, just trying to catch their breaths before the girls... and some boys... swept in to carry them off and toss them in the fountain, though they did give them time to take their festival clothes off first.

Everyone had ended up in the fountain by the end of the celebration, the spring water merely cool instead of icy because of the magma at the mountain’s heart. And then after he’d clambered out of the water, clean and naked and not caring, taking Haraklez’s hand that she offered him.

“Is that the Rumon ambassador... naked... with the Speaker of the Unity?” He’d hissed in her ear as they made their way quietly out of the crowd.

“Yes, aren’t they cute together?”

“As long as it’s not a diplomatic incident.”

She shook her head in the dark, the moon high enough to make her motion clear. “I spotted the other ambassadors taking advantage of the wedding truces. Kaosha, and Maxshtey, were splashing Lainz mead on each other and giggling, last I saw.”

“Those are the Charnan and Hippafrei representatives?”

She nodded again, smiling. “Weddings are so good at making people friendly instead of wanting to kill each other.”

“Well, we can hope that the Nadumarian ambassador gets laid tonight.” It was so easy to say such things in Milari.

Maks and Ilia were long asleep from the evidence of a trail of wet clothes leading to their beds. Ilia’s hand trailed out of the top bed and Hara tucked it back under the covers. Maks was bundled up tight in his featherbed, only the pale oval of his face showing, snoring.

Then they’d slid their newly washed, naked selves into Haraklez’s bed and... that was where his memory hiccupped a little. ... made love. He didn’t want to gloss it over in his mind, the scent of her hair in his hands, the scent and taste of her hair on his lips. Her hands clenching in his hair as she laughed and sobbed, saying ‘yes’ ‘yes!’ against his lips and tongue, the feel of her gripping him all around, clenching and shuddering still, slippery and hot, her fingers clenching tight on his back, then cupping him, pulling him close even as he drove into her arching his back almost enough to smack his head on the shelf over her bed...

Later, the dreamy, almost sleepy, gentle second, and third time, her laughing at him for fighting sleep so hard. He did make her lose count of her paroxysms and fell asleep with his head on her thigh, smiling into her deliciously fragrant hair.

The cat, Cloudy, lay across his foot this morning as he lay, thinking of the night before, in a haze of remembered pleasure. He could feel the purring, even through the quilt. 

This morning he could still taste Hara on his lips and in the night they’d shifted so she lay half on his shoulder and chest, sprawled like a cat, limp as warm washing. His own limbs felt weighed down by the draw of the planet, but not sore, nor hung over. As though he’d spent all yesterday working or working out. Limp all over. Not like the singing tension that had been in him when he’d worked as a whore in Lainz. He could look at it now, because of Haraklez, because of da. Because of the Milari, and their ideas.

It didn’t crush his spirit the way it once had. It just was. And it was a good place to be, now. He and Werfas had talked... a lot before Haraklez had grabbed him... and he sent a prayer to Light and Dark both for his wing brother. As long as it was agreed on, as long as one did not own the other or coerce the other... as long as everyone was happy, it was good, not evil. 

He was hurting no one and he had never felt so good in his whole life before.

He shifted slightly to put his arm behind his head and she wiggled, murmuring in her sleep on his chest, a fine hair or two from her tangled head drifted across his lips so he kissed them and smiled. He had nowhere to go today. No lessons, no training, and neither did she.

Maks looked in. “Hey,” he whispered really, really loudly. “Hara? Kyrus? You awake? We made some food!” His words were the cat’s cue to get up, stretch with mild complaining cat noises and walk up them to lie down like a stone on his abdomen, reminding him that his erection now had nothing to do with sex. Its tail flipped up and across Hara’s face and she sputtered, pawed it out from under her nose.

“Good morning, sleepy,” he said. “Maks and Ilia have cooked something for us all.”

“Oh. I don’t want to get up.”

He laughed, bouncing her head on his chest. “Cloudy has just reminded me that I need to reacquaint myself with the earthcloset and I would really hate to put that fluid into your bed.” She giggled and pushed up on his chest, her hair falling forward to veil their two faces as she kissed him good morning.

“That’s nice of you. And you didn’t even mention that my breath is morning bad. You’re learning to be a gentleman, you Basin rat!”

He growled, pretending to threaten her, swooped up to kiss her breasts before tickling her unmercifully till she fell back against the wall, laughing breathlessly and let him up. The cat, of course, had fled the moment the bedclothes started heaving. He retreated while he could, snatching his bedrobe off its hook and fled before she could rally and drag him back.

Maks had flour upon his nose and Ilia wielded an iron pan over the burner fuelled with a burning pot with its blue flame high and hot. Maks carefully drizzled the criss-crossing lace-like pattern from the dipper and the batter puffed as it hit the oil. Kyrus refused to say anything about the fearsome mess left around the wash-bucket but quietly turned the spigot on to fill it. “I’m hungry enough to eat a wool-pig raw!” he said, pouring tea for Hara and himself.

Everyone got up to eat puff-cakes, still in their bedrobes, worn at the elbows in the kids’ case, embroidered with star-flower’s in Hara’s. Ky’s was a plain brown fleece, thick and wooly and he was the only one with blue-wolf fur slippers, everyone else was barefoot. Everyone’s hair was uncombed. “You barbarians! Even the summer mornings are freezing up here!”

Ilia giggled and poured more boiling water into the tea pot. 

“Soft Lainzer!”

“We have the whole house to ourselves for a whole month,” Maks crowed. “What will we do for a whole forty days?”

“Your puff-cake is burning,” Hara said, just as there was a knock on the outside door.