"How's the vision?"
Maksa couldn't see a gods damned thing, really, and that was more unnerving than she could have ever imagined. Anywhere she had ever been, in her entire life, there had always been the knowledge that light was close at hand. Even in the dead of night, torches were kept lit in hallways and alleys. A woman only had to step outside her room to find the comfort of a clear, if somewhat dim, view.
Her eyesight had been reduced to a faint and fuzzy blur and it had been that way for more than a bell now, since her Facial upgrade. The Second of Pussy had shown up and whisked her out of the examination room as quickly and oddly as was possible. The woman had refused to answer any questions and instead brought Maksa home in silence.
Well, not "home" precisely, but back to her Mistress.
Maksa's eyesight might be useless, but her sense of direction and hearing were still working. She was in Principia Pussy and the woman who had spoken was her Sorceress.
"Terrible, Mistress," she replied. "There's a burning sensation, too."
Maksa felt the echoes in the room change; she experienced a vague feeling that something was quite close to her face. Her vision dimmed, as if light was being blocked.
"The dilation is extreme, Mistress."
So it was Dol'ya, leaning over her. She had some medical training, in addition to being a genealogist and the Second of Pussy.
"They've kept their promise, then," the Sorceress remarked.
"It would appear so."
There was a pause in conversation. Maksa opened her mouth to speak, but her Mistress was already talking.
"You got to her before she even had a chance to bathe, Dol'ya?" Pussy chided.
"Yes, they were going to examine her first," the Second replied. "I had no choice."
"Use my shower, then," Pussy told her assistant. "We can talk after you get the semen out of her hair."
"Or while shes gets this mess out of my hair," Maksa protested, her voice cracking in panic. "I'd really like to know what's going on."
Her voice had come out hastier than she'd meant it to. She hadn't realized how much being blind had affected her. There had been an expectation on her part of a quarter bell's worth of impaired vision, but this had gone on much longer and been much worse than the briefing had implied.
Pussy let out a sigh of sympathy.
"Very well, dear," the Sorceress agreed. "Get up now and let Dol'ya walk you over."
Maksa obeyed, clinging to the taller woman's arm as they stood up together.
"Come around the table," Dol'ya warned, pushing a bit on Maksa's stomach so she would miss the corner of the piece of furniture. "Here, have a seat."
Maksa found herself being seated on a cloth chair with a back so reclined that she was almost lying down. She imagined that the chair might be upholstered in some shade of green, but it was only a picture in her mind. All she knew was darkness and a few faint blurs of light splashed here and there from the fire in the centre of the room.
"Close your eyes."
It wasn't as if she'd been using them for anything.
A lever creaked and warm water splashed over her forehead and back into her hair. That was comforting. The water stopped and she felt a liquid soap being poured over her head. Dol'ya massaged it into her scalp.
Maksa inhaled deeply, trying to calm herself.
"How long until my vision returns, Mistress?"
"Tomorrow morning," Pussy replied. "Noon at the latest. It might be imperfect for a few bells thereafter, but it should be fine by fall of night."
"Why?"
With a heavy sigh, the Sorceress sat next to her.
"We made an arrangement on your behalf," Pussy began. "It wasn't easy, you see -"
"On my behalf?" Maksa asked. "Without telling me?"
"Think about that, dear."
As Dol'ya scrubbed, Maksa thought.
What if she had been told that they were planning on doing something special for her upgrade? How would she have acted? Would the enforcers of Form, with their legendary intuitions, have wondered at her anxiety?
"You didn't trust me to keep a straight face," Maksa admitted, thinking back to when H'reena had seen through her guilt. "And you're probably right."
"Indeed," Pussy said. "No slight was intended. You simply aren't -- or weren't -- a match for them in that regard."
"But now you can tell me?"
"Oh, quite," the Sorceress said. "We arranged with H'reena and her Mistress for you to receive a double upgrade."
Maksa might have guessed as much, based on the blindness and pain.
"And you arranged for Dol'ya to be waiting there, pretending an emergency?"
Her tongue traced around her lips, as if tasting the words that had come out of her mouth and finding the flavour unfamiliar.
"We couldn't allow you to be examined in front of someone of Iron or Tight," Pussy said. "They were upset enough about your sudden promotion and transfer of Disciplines. That sort of thing tears them at the seams. I would advise you, for the next little while, to avoid any Iron or Tight upgrades."
The lever creaked again and warm water poured over her head, washing away semen, soap and Synergist, relieving her of the illicit burden so recently deposited.
"Why did Facial go along with it?"
Pussy grunted in uncertainty. It sounded as if she might have shrugged, but Maksa would never know.
"One never knows with that lot," she told her Disciple. "Spite directed at Iron and Tight, perhaps? A gift to you? Some hope of future consideration from our quarter? We made the request, through channels I will not discuss, because we knew it would be some time before you could put anything through Form again. Why they accepted ... you would have to ask them."
Dol'ya took a moment to towel Maksa's hair dry before helping her to sit up.
"Now let's have a look at you, shall we?" Pussy said.
"The hair is going black already," Dol'ya pointed out helpfully.
"And the eyes," her Mistress added, "have already shifted to a faint blue ... or perhaps grey. Only sunlight will say."
Maksa felt a surge of excitement at this news. Upgrades had been rare in her life until recently, and the changes this one would bring to her body were looking to be quite substantial.
"Grey eyes?" she asked.
"Perhaps," Pussy replied. "Best you get some rest. We've made up a bed here for you, lest some snooping person spot you wandering around and doubt the authenticity of our emergency."
"Or find her bumping into things and wonder why her eyesight is so bad," Dol'ya added drily.
"Indeed, Second of Mine," Pussy said. "Get her off to bed."
It became clear, then, to Maksa, why Dol'ya was doing all of the work that would normally be assigned to some Virgin or Initiate. No others were to see Maksa in this condition.
-----------===================-------------
"Let's get inside," V'shika said.
"Hm?"
She was trembling, Zhair'lo noticed, and it wasn't from the cold.
"Before someone catches us," she added, nervously scanning the dark clearing.
"Sure, sure," Zhair'lo reassured her.
She was already on her feet, her clothing falling back into place. Zhair'lo only felt the need yank his shorts back up and loosely tie up the laces so he could lead her, without too much awkwardness, to the largest of the tents in this clearing.
The tent, reserved for a Hunt leader perhaps, was a palace compared to his usual sleeping quarters. The peak of the canvas roof was tall enough for him to stand under and his blanket covered barely half the area of the grass floor. He lit a stick-mounted candle and staked it into the ground a safe distance from the sloping walls of the triangular tent.
V'shika took a moment, while he did this, to lace the flaps of the tent closed.
She turned to face him.
"That's better," she whispered.
Biting both her lips, she walked over to him, put her arms around his waist and put her head to his bare chest.
Not quite sure what was going on, but desperately needing to get off his feet, Zhair'lo bent down to scoop up her legs and bring them both to the floor with her in his lap. For her part, V'shika was nearly limp; only her arms seemed capable of anything and they had moved to encircle his neck.
With her head still bowed low, her eyes never meeting his, her body began to jerk.
Zhair'lo realized she was crying.
"What -- what's wrong?"
She shook her head, not in denial that anything was wrong, but rather a gesture meaning she couldn't speak and he would have to wait.
What was there to do? He simply held her, tightly as he figured was appropriate, and waited for her body to stop shaking. The time was best spent trying to understand what was going on. Some of the girls he'd been with had broken down in fits of laughter after an orgasm, after all, so anything was possible.
Hadn't Yua cried, too? He seemed to remember that happening, but it hadn't been like this. V'shika was a very special case and she made him feel distinctly uncomfortable. The words he spoke to her -- past, present and future -- could very well affect whether she took her own life or not. He'd never felt such a burden as the one that she'd lain on him.
It occurred to him once again that if he had known during the upgrade how much was riding on his abilities, he might have faltered.
Why? Why did she have to do this to him?
If there was one thing that a life ruled by the Temple had given him, it was not having to worry about things like this. A man simply had to know what his vocation was and what the Master of that vocation expected of him. Decisions -- the serious kind -- were left to those with a great breadth of experience.
But here was Zhair'lo, decidedly not experienced, being expected to make Decisions -- lots of them -- in the course of the next few minutes.
Based on the actions he would take in the next bell or two, a girl might decide -
Suddenly, the shaking subsided and V'shika took a breath in preparation to speak.
Then she sighed, pathetically, and took another breath.
"There's just no point," she said.
He let that sit a moment, in case she wanted to be more specific. When it became apparent that she wouldn't be following up, he stepped in.
"No point in what?"
