Talla was still going over all of the images that had flown in to her mind when she and Zhair'lo had tried to mesh.
There were images of Natta, both having sex with him and fingering herself while lying next to him. There was Nadine, rubbing her nipples along the length of his shaft. One of the images of Nadine, forcing herself down on him with considerable vigour, was laced with some strange emotion of desperation.
She shook off those thoughts.
If only they'd had time to talk. She had so much to tell him. There was the imminent danger of the double upgrades they were forcing him to do, for one thing. How could she have forgotten that?
She cursed herself.
There had been the more immediate danger of being discovered.
Having let her eyes adjust to the darkness of the Offices, it was time to check on her nightly assignment. She wondered what would be in the slot tonight.
Tina had told her that she should expect to be out Serving tonight, based on the fact that she had Primed the previous night. It was unfair enough, the theory went, that women should have to prepare men for the Rite of Upgrade without getting to have sex with them. The standard procedure, so Tina had said, was to make sure Primers got out the following night to relieve themselves.
So there was that. She would appreciate it very much, even if it wasn't Zhair'lo. She had worked those two guys over pretty hard the previous night. When Tina had come back to Talla's room, Talla had hoped that they would be able to relieve each other.
That was before the disastrous and violent intrusion, which was its own kind of stress.
Then there had been the afternoon run in and almost-sex with Zhair'lo. Gods, the tip of his erection had been right there. She could still feel the place on her lips where it had touched, even now.
She could use some sex right about now.
The other possibility was the Extraordinary upgrade that the Sorceress of Strength had promised her. If it was that urgent, and everyone seemed to agree that it was, she would expect that to take precedence.
She bent over and drew the card out of its slot.
What would it be tonight? Semen sprayed on her chest or pumped in to -
"History"
History?
History with someone named Alli'anya. Why not Shanata?
Seventh bell. Exactly as if she was going to Serve.
How about that.
-----------===================-------------
Zhair'lo had a lot of things on his mind. He had managed to get back to the farm in time to not be missed. He was tired, but he was also very young. He would survive, even through the afternoon heat and upgrade he had in the evening.
Just like Talla, he had a pile of images in his head, too, and they weren't just the ones Talla mad meant him to see.
There was an extremely confused jumble of images involving Talla and another girl. Zhair'lo could gather from the cluttered kaleidoscope dancing in his head that Talla and this other girl had been fooling around somehow, but the images were a mess. In one of them, Talla seemed to be able to see her own body, with her breast in the grip of the other girl.
That was a mess that, while erotic, was more of a headache than it was worth to examine.
There were other things that came to him, too. Emotions, mostly. Very, very raw emotions. Fear. A flash of vicarious pain that came without any image of a person but instead an imposing, dark building made of wood. There was anxiety. There was the pain in her chest.
Talla had, accidentally or intentionally, put a lot of stuff in his head.
There was one image with so much anger, so much burning passion attached to it, that it hurt when he thought about it. He could feel his heart pounding and his face warming whenever he conjured that image to the front of his attention.
He just couldn't, however, for the life of him, understand how a picture of a dark-skinned and heavily breasted Sorceress, her hand at the side of her altar, could possibly be related to the level of anger Talla attached to it.
-----------===================-------------
"What are you doing?" Tina asked her roommate.
Y'ris had already discarded her underwear and was slipping out of her knee length skirt.
"Working in Principia Endowment," she responded. "You know the rules."
No underwear - that was one thing upon which the Queen insisted. The other was the trick of curtsying high enough at the sides to prove you weren't wearing underwear while keeping the hem low enough in the front to avoid exposing your genitals.
"This skirt," she said of the one she was folding, "is too tight to pull off a curtsy pleasing to her Highness."
Y'ris, a Neophyte like Tina, hadn't had a chance to get upgrades outside of Endowment. She had absolutely gorgeous nipples. That much Tina knew, even if those pretty tips were currently covered by Y'ris sashes. There was nothing exciting, however, to see below the waist but the same bald lips that Tina had.
Besides, Y'ris wasn't interested in that sort of thing.
"Can you check something for me?"
"Wazzat?" Y'ris asked.
"I Primed a couple upgrades last night," she said, casual as could be. "They were the first two on the docket. Can you see if they worked out?"
Y'ris paused, half way in to her skirt, and looked up at Tina.
"Any reason to think they wouldn't?" Y'ris asked. "That sort of thing is right in your slot, isn't it?"
That metaphor could mean either of two slots. Y'ris, straight laced as she was, meant the one with the coins in it.
"Yeah," Tina shrugged. "Just got a funny vibe off an Officer today. Don't have time to check myself."
Y'ris pulled her pleated white skirt the rest of the way up to her waist.
"Sure," she said, somewhat distracted. "First two?"
"Yeah."
Y'ris eyed herself in the mirror. Facing sideways to Tina, she lifted the sides of her skirt up to her waist.
"You see enough from there?" she asked her roommate.
"Yep," Tina said after examining the bare length of tanned thigh.
"Good. See ya later."
"Later," Tina confirmed.
She only hoped that Y'ris would remember to check the docket. Tina hadn't wanted to put too much stress on the request. The less attention, the better. She and Talla had agreed to keep whatever the hell was going on between the two of them. That was why she was getting Y'ris to do it in the first place.
-----------===================-------------
Talla walked past the women in their finery, all headed out to Serve the hundreds of men to whom they'd been assigned.
Not for her, that pleasure. She would be enjoying a history lesson.
History was knowledge. If there was one thing she needed more of, it was knowledge.
So History was good. It just wasn't "erect penis" good, and that's all there was to it.
"Talla?"
She turned at her name.
"I'm Alli'anya," the woman introduced herself.
