150 - I Don't Know Left From Right Anymore

Zon Merzahd actually sat up in her bedroll in the wadi and bellowed, in her best ‘I am a by-the-owner’s left-nut-a-teacher’ voice.  "Kyrus and Hara!  Be quiet and let people SLEEP! Your fathers' should be back from scouting sometime tomorrow, so kindly stop acting like twelve-year olds."

Hara was giggling into his shoulder, biting on the edge of their sleepsacks to keep from leaking noises, her every tremor shaking him, since he was still inside her and also trying hard not to laugh; or be appalled that they were being so noisy.  He wasn’t sure which.

Elemfias lay rolled up tight in her blankets.  There was a gap next to her where da’s blankets would have been if he and Ilax hadn’t gone ahead to scout.

Their combined bedroll, with Werfas rolled up in his at Ky’s back were wonderfully warm and they’d managed to get all the grit, or most of it out, and is smelled of sex and both of them instead of the faintly vinegary smell of the well and the soapy odour of the grayish-blue tinged grass all around, waving hairy edges in the evening breeze. A centipede grass under them was a pale yellowish green. “Xxxxxxshhhm mmmhee hhee ssshh hhmmmxxxxx.”  Little explosive sounds leaked out.

“Shhh.  Shhhh.”  Kyrus was struggling so hard not to laugh out loud that he slid right off Hara, as she convulsed, trying to keep silent.

“You know.” Elemfias’s unmoving lump said conversationally.  “If youngsters have so much energy we could dump water on them till they cool off.  Or sand.  Sand buries a lot of noise.”

Werfas rolled over and looked at both of them in the fading embers of the fire and the winking, glittering moon.  “Please stop.”

Kyrus wasn’t sure what it was.  His wing-brother’s look. The simple request.  Whatever it was he caught hold of his sniggers and Hara stopped hers as well, which helped.  “Sssorry.  We’ll be quiet.” No one answered, which was good because he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t just have started him all over again.

“Sorry for waking you, Werfas.”  Hara said, pulling him over into their knot of blankets so they could all talk whispering, if they were quiet.  Kyrus wasn’t certain he liked the idea of Werfas on Hara’s other shoulder, especially with her naked.  Wer still had his shirt on, which helped but Kyus was suddenly raw and aware of how bare he was, himself.

“S’okay.”  There was something wrong there, that Ky couldn’t make out, something not entirely true about his word.  “I just wish I had a girlfriend here.”

“I didn’t even know you had a girlfriend!” Ky could have bitten his tongue in half the instant the words were out of his mouth, from the sudden way Werfas froze.  Kyrus could feel it, even across Hara, in the dark under their blankets.  He could just imagine the striken look on Wer’s face.  “I didn’t mean it like that!”

“Stop it, both of you.” Hara shook her shoulders, drawing their attention.  “Werfas, you do have a girlfriend if you want. I still like you.  You know.”

“Wait, what?  Hara... you and Werfas? Um.  But... er.”  Kyrus felt like he’d fallen in a hole he hadn’t even realized was there.

Hara reached her hand around; the one that had been draped over his shoulder, to cover his mouth and stop his sputtering.  “You never asked.  We Milar don’t just have kid sex with one person.  We find out our, um... you’d probably call it ‘proper kind of partners’, by having lots of them before we settle on any one.”  Thankfully she’d let up on her hand and let him breathe by then.

“Oh.”  That was all he could manage.  A few heartbeats ago life had been weird but manageable.  Now it was all different all over again.  “Um. Er.  I can’t be jealous of my wing-brother.”  It was like swallowing glassbugs for him to say it so calmly, even in a whisper.

“Or me,” Hara said practically.  “It’s not like I’ve promised to be your partner until the moon falls out of the sky.  Especially not with you being some kind of ‘iliarch’ to your people now, hmmm?”

“Er.  Um...” Suddenly hot all over his body he desperately wanted to burst out of their nest and run out into the dark, get away, even if it meant getting all over grit on sweat.  “I... Hara...”

“Haraklez... he didn’t know until now.” Werfas’s rumbly voice was so quiet it was hard to hear, it was almost like they were feeling him speak.  “He thought you’d picked him forever, and he didn’t know that you and I had sex before he showed up.”  He sighed.  “Lainz.  You can’t assume that they know what we do or how we do it.”

“You’re right,” she whispered, in Lainz.  “I never understood a lot of things that mama tried to teach me, about being proper.” Kyrus, still on her shoulder, still reeling as if he’d fallen into the waterbasin all over again, could feel her head turn as if she could look at him in the dark.  “I’m sorry, Kyrus.  I don’t mean to hurt you.  I’m not rejecting you.”

“No... um. Er. Um.”  He just couldn’t say anything intelligent.   

“It’s all right.  I just didn’t know, is all.”  He felt like his heart was shrivelling up and shooting away off the surface of the planet like a reverse ice-star, falling away up into the dark like a coal fired off the edge of the canyon rim.  “I’m fine,” he lied.  “It’s just my Lainzness, all right?”

He tried to feel all right, on Hara’s shoulder, with Werfas on her other side.  He truly tried hard to relax as if he were exhausted after they’d just had sex.  She fell right asleep.  But he wasn’t sure that Werfas did, imagining his friend’s face, less than a handspan away, invisible.  He lay relaxed, breathing deep, but inside his chest churned with confusion.  I don’t know my left hand from my right anymore.