POLARIS: BOOK I, Ch. 2 -- Getting to Know You
Thea learns about weapons, magic, and feels his heat
You woke before her. Easing silently from the sheets, you fetched an early morning shot of caffeine before returning to stand gazing down at her sleeping form. Half covered by the sheet, the picture was a contrast between alabaster skin and black cotton, with the blaze of her hair a beam of color. She lay on her back, head slightly to one side toward you, right hand loose on the bed and left resting on her thigh. Dark lashes were closed over the green eyes, but you well remembered how they had glowed at you through the dark last night, alight with the heat of fear and passion.
Looking at her, you felt uncomfortable, and you wondered what had possessed you to stop in the first place, much less bring her here. Her presence evoked ghosts and shadowed feelings, yet you didn't want her gone. There had been another-green eyed girl once, when you and the world were much younger, when you thought love and dreams were enough to survive. Before you joined the military, before you saw stupid mistakes cause good fighters to die, before you started to believe that the only way to make it was to fight just as hard - and as dirty - as those you fought against. It hadn't been easy to give up your dreams, nor had it been by choice. You'd gone back twice to your green eyed girl. Once, when she was still living in the safety of suburbia, and had been dismayed and shocked by the changes and the roughening that were already becoming apparent in you, still saying she loved you but unable to accept the new rules you were learning. Later, on patrol in the smoking streets, you spent a rest break digging a grave deep enough that the scavengers wouldn't disturb it, feeling like you left whatever good remained in you in the ashen earth.
Since then, your contacts with women had been professional or carnal, or both. And never here. You knew of enough basement and attic rooms available that you had been able to keep your territory your own and inviolate. Yet you brought her here without hesitation. And now you couldn't bring yourself to wake her and clear her out and have your privacy return. Perplexed and unable to command yourself to a decision, you retreated. You'd see what happened when she woke up.
* * *
Waking up in another strange bed, I wondered what I was coming to; it wasn't a regular habit of mine. But at least I recognized this bed, and I knew how I had gotten here and what had happened in it. Pulling on my jeans and white shirt, leaving it hanging loose, I went in search of the "Captain."
There was a door in the wall that divided the warehouse, half open, with sounds of activity behind it: kind of a rhythmic clanking thump. Sliding in, I saw you standing at a wooden bench, pulling a crank handle with one band and feeding parts into the machine with the other. Moving closer, I saw the brass and silver eggs' eyes of new bullets in boxes. You nodded briefly in greeting, saying only "let me finish this box," so I continued to look around. This room was only one story high, but again extensive: an indoor firing range, heavily insulated, so that barely any sound would even reach the next room. You had stands for targets against the far wall, as well as pulleys suspended from the ceiling to hang targets from.
At the near end, there were five large vaults, double-locked, and a couple of small loose tables that could be moved to any firing position to hold bullets or other necessities.
Obviously, a man who took weapons seriously, but I could have guessed that when I got my first look at you. This just confirmed it.
I heard the last box of bullets get itself placed on top of a stack of other boxes, and turned as you approached. You were silent, apparently waiting for me to make the first move. I hated doing that, but figured you'd been good enough last night (taking care of me both in and out of bed), that I owed you as much.
"Why the saber?" An odd first question, but one that had grown as I looked at the firepower capability.
"Huh?" Clearly you were taken off guard. Maybe your women only raved about your personal blade...?
"Your saber. With all this, why do you carry a saber?"
"Oh. Well, you see, Polaris is a funny place. Technology works here, magic works there, but a sword works everywhere. I'm no magician, so I need a blade for the magic spots."
"Great. I can handle a gun, pistol or rifle, so that's easy. But there's no such thing as magic where I come from, so that's out. And I know next to nothing about blades."
