Wendy
Wendy lay on a plain white towel on tile floor in the hot, dry room. The sweat ran from her nude body and dripped on to the wood floor as she lay there in the semi darkness. From the small window near the top of the far wall in the small room, she could see that the sky was just beginning to lighten with streaks of tangerine and strawberry against a dark background. This was both the best and most difficult times for her. This was when she could let her thoughts wander and roam throughout the universe of her dreams and memories.
When she came into the room 20 minutes earlier dressed in only a cotton kimono and worn slippers, she carried in one hand a cup of steaming herbal tea and in the other hand a black silk purse shield closed by a drawstring. She set the tea cup on a low shelf and the purse on a small hand crafted stone table that was next to the towel where she now lay. This was her routine whenever she traveled. She either brought or bought the items that she needed to set up a room like this wherever she stayed.
She opened the drawstring and extracted from the purse a small, irregularly shaped pale wafer about the size of the end of her thumb. She placed the wafer on her tongue and took a sip of tea. She walked over to the thermostat on the wall and turned it to the maximum, switched on the heat lamp next to her, set the electrical timer and went back to the towel. She hung the kimono on a nearby hook and slipped off her shoes. She sat on the rough fabric and took another sip of tea as she felt the first waves of radiant heat wash over her. She lay on her back and closed her eyes.
She loved the heat and the way her body felt as her skin became moist. As the drugs from the wafer coursed through her body she felt relaxed and comfortable. Sometimes she would trace the pattern on her skin with her fingertips to follow the progress of the drug. Her stomach first, and then to her back and chest. Her fingertips would follow up the curve of her breasts to her nipples, and then to her throat and shoulders and down her arms. Only then would the drug work its way down her lower body, slowly making its way down her thighs, calves and then into her feet. The penultimate location was between her legs and the pleasure she felt as this happened was the last thing she would feel before the drug entered her brain.
The feeling was always the same. It was both a relaxation of her brain and a focusing of her thoughts. It was simultaneously an out of body experience and and a sharp increase in her control and feelings from inside her body. Had she been an artist, she could have created a perfect image of how she looked at this moment without the use of a mirror.
As she started to let her senses take leave of her body, she had to resist the urge to immediately turn them towards Charles She wanted to get a sense of what he was feeling this morning. This didn't happen very often and there was a good reason. As her grandmother had told her when she was learning about her abilities, "If you try too hard to find something to want to know, you will influence what you see. The harder you try the more you will shape the feelings with your own. Don't try too hard and don't trust what you learn if you do."
She had to learn on her own how hard was "too hard." It was a subtle, wavering line. Sometimes she had been forced to try and then had to work through a confusing maze of ideas and destinies to determine her role. Her experience with the Thai princess when she had just turned 21 had nearly been an epic disaster and had taught her a valuable lesson. That her grandmother had left her alone to determine and shape this destiny was still an unexplained mystery.