*** Argh! This is gonna spill over and I can't have a Chapter 7a and 7b.
So there's gonna be a Chapter 8.
The more that I read it over, the more I had to grin, though I sure didn't think of it as quite this much of an action comic at the time that I wrote it ...
And I'm laughing to read the weird (to me, anyway) collection of tags that I used for this. I doubt that I could have come up with this particular combination if I'd looked at them and THEN written it, lol.
For the later parts of this chapter, try to remember that some of these things do 'love' in a different way to humans, though I'd say that they mean it in just the same way, once they're there.
With the exception of two, the others in the final scene of this are all mixtures of some sort, and by their own admission, their 'other side' is a fair bit more ... animalistic. Mischka is one like that and in this, she finally comes to grips with the mixture.
0_o
***
----------------------
"I think that I can understand it from his point of view," Mischka said as she and Taela folded the blankets and things.
No matter how civilization had advanced, there was still a need for laundry to be done and it was an even greater need if one didn't really have any convenient way to get it done – especially here on a trading post.
So there were still laundromats.
"I also hear what you're saying," she smiled, "He needs to get us out of the bay where it costs us like blood to keep the craft in there. I'm pretty sure that he doesn't want to be there either for much longer.
We need our own place, and somewhere that we can park for free – or at least for a lot less than it's costing now – and this rock isn't worth even thinking about as far as living here is concerned. We can't leave our ship parked outside here. We'd have to shovel it out of the snow about every three days at the outside."
"Then why don't we go somewhere else?" Taela asked.
"He wants to," Mischka nodded with a smile, "As far as I know, he's looking into better places right now. But he also needs for us to be located where we can get the 'wanted' listings and go track them down. That makes the location even more important and harder to find.
Fugitives tend not to live around a whole lot of other people, since that means that the law is just that much closer, right?"
Taela nodded and as she looked at Mischka, she also saw past her across the mall hallway to a bathhouse where travelers could take showers long enough to get clean as well as feel better for having done it.
Mischka saw Taela looking and she turned around to look herself.
She turned back with a smile, "How much have we got left out of what we decided to spend on the laundry?"
It wasn't all that much, but Mischka had an idea, "If we double up on the shower cost – like we buy two showers back to back in the same stall and we wash real quick, we can stand there and actually get warm – and if we do it that way, though it's the same thing, I'm hoping that we'll have enough left over to get something hot to drink before we head back, I think."
She could see that Taela was thinking about it but ...
"What's to decide on?" Mischka chuckled, "We met without anything on, Taela. I think we must have seen all there is to see on each other, but hey, if there's something that you're curious about on me, just say it and I'll show you.
It's just a shower, you know. And then we can sit down and relax with a drink afterward."
Her face showed that another thought had come to her and she reached out for Taela's shoulder, "I think I get it. That was when I was working and didn't know what was going on. I meant what I said about not liking girls either. I'm not gonna – "
"I know," Taela nodded, "I'm being a little stupid about it, I guess. I like your idea. Let's get a locker for this stuff and do it."
As they walked across the hall a few minutes later, Mischka smiled after Taela had asked one more time just to be sure.
"Absolutely not. Not if there's nobody paying me to do that. About the only time that I'd get the idea in my head would be to help a friend while she's making it with her guy, but even then, that's really stretching things."
"How do you mean?" Taela asked and Mischka shrugged, already kicking herself for even mentioning it, though as far as she knew herself, it was the truth.
"I mean like if there's sex going on in sort of a ... I dunno, a shared way. I think that I could help to make it feel better, but it doesn't matter even hypothetically, does it? I only have four friends; you and your guys are three of them. I wouldn't even think of doing anything to mess it up.
I'm not all that heavy a sleeper, you know. I know what you and your guys do while you're trying so hard to be quiet about it and you know that I don't mind at all. All I'm saying is that under the right circumstances, and only if I was a part of it, then I might try to help another girl."
Taela looked over, "But that's - "
Mischka shook her head, "Not to me, it's not. Look, if it was you and me alone together someplace, then in my head, messing around then is what I don't want to do, because, ... well, it wouldn't feel right to me.
But if I was at an orgy – to exaggerate - like where everybody's doing it, that's different to me, and if I knew the other girl, I don't think there's anything wrong if I give her a hand while she'd getting bopped anyway.
I even know what to do to make it good because it's what I had to do, isn't it? I'd just see it as being nice for a person that I care about. In a situation like that, I think that everybody involved should just want to help anybody else so that they all have a great time. I mean, that's what it's all about then, right?