Chapter 4: Beauty I've Always Missed With These Eyes Before
Skyler was a little disappointed with the trip. Rather than fly off into the sky, they simply sank into a portal in the floor that was connected to the ceiling of a low passageway. The journey across the world took less than a second and maybe six feet of gentle drifting through one floor and to another. But they were now in some major metropolis... which would surely have at least one place to get ice cream in this hot summer day.
Ashley and Skyler quickly found one, and stood in the line in front of an ice cream cart. A man in a muscle shirt quickly dispensed with wrapped frozen treats and accepted money in exchange. The line moved smoothly and quickly. Everyone knew what they wanted, and if someone didn't, the helpful man told them to get on with it. If they still didn't, he'd grab their money and hand them one of the goggle-eyed cartoon characters with frozen gumballs for eyes. Those never sold anyway, but it was permanently emblazoned on his cart. He was stuck with them. What he would do when the prices went up, he had no idea.
"I could have brought you anywhere..." Ashley whispered to Skyler. "We could have had gelato in Italy, bombe in France, akutaq in Alaska..."
"Well, I don't know what those are." Skyler answered. "If they don't come in a cone or on a stick, I'd rather just do this. Always on the move, you know me."
"You can probably relax for a while. Nobody's going to come for you while you're under my observation."
"It's hard to put aside my paranoia after being chased for so long." Skyler hugged Ashley's arm and rubbed her head on her shoulder as they walked, like an affectionate cat. "If someone comes for me, will you protect me?"
"Like I said, they won't bother us."
"That's not very romantic."
Ashley brought her lips to Skyler's cheek. "You don't need to worry about anything while I'm here. There. Is that better?"
"It is." Skyler beamed, continuing to hang off Ashley's lean, toned arm.
They got to the front of the line. Ashley immediately held up three crisp dollar bills. "I'll have a strawberry shortcake... and I'll pay for whatever she would like."
Skyler was momentarily disarmed. She requested two ice pops, one grape and one fudge-flavored. She set one in the pocket of her denim jacket for later.
"That's going to melt..." Ashley warned, after they were out of earshot of the ice cream vendor.
"Nah, I made a tiny slow-time zone in there to keep it from warming up too fast." Skyler said. "Besides, it's not like the jacket's even real. This could look like whatever."
Ashley took a respectful small nibble of the end of her ice cream bar. She smacked the cold morsel about as she walked.
"I'm surprised that's the one you chose." Skyler said. "For a first ice cream experience, I thought you might go for something chocolate."
"After we were talking about it, I wanted to see what strawberries tasted like..." Ashley said. "I don't especially notice a similarity with the smell of that soap."
"May I?" Skyler swooped her head over and took a bite not much bigger than Ashley's.
"I thought you might take the chance to eat half the bar."
"That would hardly be fair. You paid for it." Skyler shrugged. "Where'd you get the dough, anyway?"
"We have a purse we're allowed to dip into for surface operations." Ashley said. "It's collected from the tithes."
"Could you use the portal stuff to steal them out from inside his freezer?" Skyler asked.
"I could have..." Ashley said. "But I would never do that. Stealing is wrong. That's a pretty big rule."
"One of ten, if I'm not mistaken." Skyler said. "Anyway, you've never had to go without. So you'd never really had to make the choice to either steal or not have it."
"That's why, if WE were to steal, it would definitely be wrong. Much more wrong than when you or someone without our support network decides to steal. It's not binary. Maybe you don't believe this, but we do have some understanding of when people are in a bad situation."
"I know a lot of them... down in the pit." Skyler said. "That's about as bad a situation as is possible."
"Well, you're not there right now, so let's make the best of it."
Skyler reached out with her left hand and took Ashley's right. "Let's."
Ashley pulled her hand away. "Stop. People are already looking at us funny. You're in disguise, aren't you?"
"I'm definitely in my human form." Skyler said. "They're not staring at me. My beauty is just so ordinary compared to yours."
"Oh, stop." Ashley looked off, still uncomfortable with direct compliments. "We don't concern ourselves with such things. It's just the divine touch that people are attracted to."
"Either that, or..." Skyler said, trailing the 'or' as long as she could. "It's because you STILL haven't adjusted the length of that skirt."
Ashley looked down. Her mini-skirt blew up a bit in the wind, but it hardly mattered. She had walked several blocks with her cock and balls freely hanging out from her skirt.
With a sudden hissing gasp, Ashley pushed her skirt down with one hand and Skyler with the other. They stumbled into a nearby alley, finally out of sight from the passers-by. Ashley carelessly threw opened a portal from that brick wall to a nearby high rooftop and they fell through.
Skyler staggered but stayed on her feet by clutching a nearby chain-link fence, behind which sat some electrical stuff and an all-important air conditioning unit. Ashley fell to her knees, hands clutching her head, her face red as a tomato. She let out a teeth-clenched groan that was as loud as a scream, sending all her fellow-winged scavengers flying away in shock. She envied them.
Maybe Skyler was laughing at her, or asking her how she couldn't FEEL that as she walked. It hardly mattered, swallowed up in her horrified panting and the blood rushing through her mind.
"YOU!!" Ashley cried out, pointing her finger. "If it wasn't for YOU sneaking around where you don't belong, I wouldn't have had to do any of this... this..." Ashley seemed stuck, like the word she was about to use was lodged in her throat. Could she really unleash this oath onto the world?
Fie on it. The world would have to deal with it this day.
"This... CRAP!"
Skyler let out a laugh like a suddenly released balloon, spluttering around the room.
"This isn't funny!" Ashley yelled.
"This is VERY funny!" Skyler corrected her. "This is the funniest thing that's ever happened. You angels are so repressed, but somehow you thought the answer to stopping people from escaping the worst place in the world, literally INSIDE the earth... was soldering a cock the size of an arm onto the nerdiest, most sexually unaware creature in the universe. You had no idea what you were messing with."
Ashley spun away from her and found a random crate to sit on. She would not have even glanced at this thing as a place to put herself down on, but she was feeling uncharacteristically weak. She couldn't even bring her head down, because then she'd have to look at this giant reminder of this mistake, standing out from her legs like a flagpole. She had never felt this... out of control.
So diverted was she, that Ashley barely noticed as someone grabbed her from behind.
