Passion's Journey: Big Sis Jnai

Evan was exceedingly surprised that he woke up. He wasn't grateful; his everything hurt, with his pounding head a rumbling storm cloud that rained agony down over the rest. He wasn't happy; he had expected the lynching to go through and everything to be over by now. He was confused. No word of support had come from the crowd, not even a thought. His most recent lover, learning of his previous dalliances with her cousin, had turned on him immediately. He wasn't sure of the exact charge, but they were all so aggressive, he must have been guilty of some local crime. While he'd been hanging, suffocating as the rope cinched tighter around his neck, he supposed he must have deserved it.

Before he opened his eyes, he could hear the crackling of a small fire, smell the hickory wood sacrificed for the warmth upon his face. Someone had saved him, which was already confusing, but he felt no presence of thought in the vicinity. His eyes opened slowly, facing upward and the distant stars, the trail of smoke from a small cooking fire in his peripheral, and glancing over he saw the fire itself. Moving only his eyes, he spotted no one around, felt nothing of another mind, so he sat up to look. The small camp was set beneath a stone bank, too tight to that side to sit next to, with a wok over the pile fireplace. It was filled with something bubbling, and a woman crouched next to it, next to where his head had been.

Evan reacted with a startled jump on his butt, turning to face her across the fire. Her look of amusement, lacking any reflection in the window of perception, revealed at least that she was a cast off; only children of Warens could close their shutters so tightly.

When he smiled, she stopped, and her serious face allowed him to recognize her as the Warrior who'd been watching his ordeal with no noticeable objection. He cleared his throat and tried to keep smiling but failed as she stared icily.

"Um, hi," he said. "Thanks, I suppose, for... cutting me down after I'd passed out? Is that what happened? Why did you?"

The woman smirked again, and in the high contrasts of the firelight she looked like a different person, but the same impenetrable void met his psychic gaze. "Do you know who I am?"

Evan rolled a few guesses over in his mind but knew what her type liked to hear, "A Warrior?"

She smiled wider. "That's right. And your life was in danger, so I saved it."

"Why, er, didn't you try a little earlier?" Evan asked, rubbing his bruised throat. "Not to sound ungrateful, but if they were better at lynching, my neck would've broke, and then... well, too bad I guess, maybe you can do your duty next time."

"It was a risk," she admitted. "I only needed to wait until you were unconscious so you wouldn't sabotage the negotiations with your smarmy comments."

"That's smart," he admitted with a grin as he shifted close enough to reach a hand. "I like that. I'm Evan."

"Jnai," she said, shaking his hand firmly.

Evan smiled more. Jnai was a Mazon name, and if she was raised there, she probably lacked the monogamous tendencies that got him into trouble so often. She didn't look like a Mazon, though, with a long, narrow face and her personal style with an air of androgyny. "So you could see that the traditions about sex in that town are too strict for the Law?"

"I see why they were angry, you deceived innocent people for your own depraved ends, but I thought the death penalty was a little much. If you ask me, your biggest mistake was banging the chieftain's daughter."

"Did I?" He laughed when Jnai did. "How'd you convince him to let me go?"

Jnai sighed. "I appealed to his sense of family bonds. Do you know who I really am, Evan?"

He hated guessing games where he couldn't cheat. "Why don't you just tell me, Jnai?" he asked. He wasn't sure why, but being unable to read her mind made him want to remember her name, so he resolved to say it at least three more times.

"Because I want to see if you can figure it out."

"Okay. Jnai, the Warrior. From your name, I figure you were born in Maz."

"That's right," she said.

"Okay. Jnai, the Mazon Warrior, then. The way you've got your shutters locked down, you must be the cast off of a Waren."

Her smile tightened. "A Waren like you."

"If you need a stand in to deal with your abandonment issues, I can try to fill the space," he said. "But he must have been a Waren a lot older than me." He wasn't great at judging ages, he just didn't care much, but the woman he faced was at least as old as he was.

"Yes, a Waren older than you," Jnai agreed. "One old enough to be your father, I'd say."

Evan sat back frowning. "Exactly that old, huh? Okay, so you're Big Sis Jnai, Mazon Warrior?"

"See, that wasn't so hard."

"And that's why you saved me?"

Jnai shrugged.

"How did you even know? You must have been guarding yourself the whole time, or I'd have sensed you out."

Jnai shrugged again, raising an eyebrow. "I merely observed and chose my moments very carefully. Moments you were deeply engaged with the thoughts of others, leaving yourself wide open. I'm quite sure that you're my brother, but I remain uncertain why I saved you."

"Well, it's what you said before about the Law, and murder as punishment being way too extreme for telling some women what they want to hear so they'll have sex with me."

"Here's the thing, though, lying to people to get what you want hurts them. Acting that way is counter to the Law."

Evan sighed, rolling his eyes. "You saved me so you could lecture me about the behaviour they were already going to kill me for? Seems redundant."

"Shut the fuck up Evan," his sister snapped. "This is why I enjoyed watching you swing."

Evan laughed. "I'm going to tell Dad you said that."

"I'm getting less and less certain why I saved you," Jnai muttered, stirring her dinner. "I suppose I hoped you would tell me about him. Our father. What he was like."

"If you want to know about him, you're going to have to meet me up here," Evan said, pointing to his head.

"I saved your life, you ungrateful cur," she hissed like a real big sister. She rolled her eyes, sighing and laughing at his stubborn grin. "I'll feed you if you like, if you'll tell me."

"Yes please," said Evan, eying her ladle up a bowl of stew. "What did your mother say about him?"

Jnai took a moment to consider the question or compose herself to answer as she served the food and handed him a bowl. "His name is Alan. My mother said he made her fear men. She didn't leave Maz for the rest of her life."

"He was abusive to her?" Evan asked. He was skeptical but tried to hide it; Warens considered violence to women the worst thing one could do and his father was a traditionalist.

"Not to her, but she saw him being violent and cruel to others. When he approached her, she was afraid to say no, so she didn't. He said he may return someday and if she had a girl, he might take her back home, so she moved to Maz, where she could be protected."

"And that's why you wanted to get strong and become a Warrior."

"That's right," she said, staring into the fire, only stirring her portion of food so far. "I strove to be the strongest, so I would be confident enough to make my desires matter as much as a man's. I wondered what it would be like to meet him, to stand up to him."

Evan swallowed half his too hot mouthful. "He would love that."

When she glared, she looked more like their father. Her smile almost destroyed any resemblance, maybe because Evan had so rarely seen the man make the expression, but her face currently gave him the bad kind of shivers. "Are you mocking me?"

"Not at all. You're a daughter, so if you went to War to find him, he'd be over the fucking moon no matter what you said to him. He'd want you to stay and marry some fine Brother and break the Curse of Sons."

"A true believer."

"Oh yes," he said, taking a small, cautious bite. "In all the worst ways."

"Did he beat you?"

"Quite a lot, yeah. Listen, you saved my life for some difficult to identify reason. Thank you. But if you want to get into childhood trauma, we should move upstairs." He huffed at her continued refusal to meet his mind, blowing on a big bite before putting it in his mouth too soon again. "What are you so afraid of?"

"Afraid?" Jnai smiled, shaking her head. "Only that I'll see those villagers were right. You're irredeemable, and I made a mistake I would need to correct."

"Ooh, scary," Evan said, mocking her with his tone, but he had no idea how much strength she had in her slightly smaller frame, or how much skill. "You think you could take me, Big Sis?"

"Yes," she said, her gaze cool and confident, as far as he could tell. "Do you think you will ever stop hurting people?"

"What I do doesn't hurt, it feels great," Evan insisted. "I spend up to four hours making a woman feel great, and then because I disappoint her expectations, she wants me dead. You already think I'm the worst fucking guy in the world, so kill me if you can, or let's just try it. If you want to know the kind of person our father was, meet me in Deep Link."

Jnai shook her head, her gaze cool and empty. "I want you to tell me. Was he cruel to you?"

Evan ate a few bites as he considered whether to answer the question. He already mentioned the beatings, so it seemed rhetorical, a power play, just trying to make him do something beyond his comfort zone. She had some deeper game than getting information about their mean bastard of an old man. "Not at all, I love a good beating."

"That would explain a lot of your behavior," Jnai admitted.

Evan chuckled, chewing another bite. He nodded toward her untasted potion. "You didn't drug it or anything, did you?"

Jnai looked at her bowl as though she'd forgotten it was there. She finally began to eat, and Evan was confident enough to take another helping.

"So," his sister said after a moment. "Do you think his abuse made you into the sociopathic womanizer you are?"

"Uh..." Evan picked a piece of meat from between his teeth. "Sure, why not?"

"Anything to evade personal responsibility?"

"You asked," Evan said with a shrug. "I keep telling you, I don't want to talk about that old fucker. Meet me in the mind, and you can find out..."

"I don't want to know that badly," Jnai said. "He was a shitty father whether he stuck around or not, and I suppose that's good enough."

"Sorry if I managed to disappoint you without even screwing you first."

His sister smiled as she shifted toward him. "Is that what it would take?" she asked.

Evan stared at her, his last bite of stew paused before getting to his mouth. He hated being locked out of his sister's mind. Lacking the advantage he'd gotten so used to, he felt off balance, like every response she made might be a trap. "What do you mean by that?"

"I mean that if you're able to satisfy me, I'll satisfy you."

"In... what... way...?"

Jnai smiled at him, leaning nearer. "Is there more than one way to satisfy a filthy degenerate like you? Tell me a story about our no good dad, and I'll do something for you that you usually have to beg for."

"You're calling me a filthy degenerate while offering sexual favors to your own little brother?"

She frowned, sitting back slightly. "Is that what I was doing?"

Evan ground his teeth. This was exactly the shit reading minds was good for, and the shit he usually did to other people. She had to be reading him somehow. "Implying then."

"Implying how?"

"By offering to satisfy a sexual deviant like me, you're implying freaky sis-bro sex."

Jnai laughed. "I thought I was talking about beating you."

"Yeah right," Evan scoffed. His cheeks burned, ashamed of his discombobulated lack of a decent comeback. "I'm not falling for this, so just..."

"Wait, is your problem the incest, or you don't think the offer is real?"

"The second one. Obviously."

She appeared surprised. "You don't trust me?"

"Obviously not."

"Why not? I saved your life, Little Bro. I'm on your side here."

"What 'side'?"

"We're united against him," his sister said. "Our father. He abandoned my mother and cast me off, and I realized today that I was the lucky one. Even if I only had to watch what you went through... I couldn't. I would have thrown myself over you and protected you, Little Brother."

Jnai probably would have hated him like everybody else, like Evan's full blood big sister born on the mainland had. Every time she pointed at him, he got hit, and she'd loved doing it. The look on his half sister's face seemed sincere, the firm hand on his shoulder meant to reassure him, but without seeing her mind, he couldn't really know. "Thanks," he said, and offered a weak smile.

"So will you help me make him pay?"

"Pay how?"

"We'll make that fucker wish he'd never fucked our moms. What better way than to break a taboo and get off together on how much we hate him?" She just stared at him a moment, and then sighed. She got up to add two chunks of wood to the fire and a small bucket of river water to her cooking vessel. "So tell me, has he ever done anything to screw you up so bad you'd fuck your sister an hour after meeting her?"

"If we shared our thoughts..."

"Shut up about that, please. You just fell right into this little brother roll with all the whining." She put her nose in the air, mocking him as a brat, "Wah, wah, wah, we gotta do things my way or I can't cum right."

Evan's dick twitched despite his best efforts and all logic. "What exactly do you want to know about him?"

"Let's start with the way he treats your mother."

Evan felt his hackles go up, a shiver that made his body tense, defensive. "She was treated kindly, because she always agreed with him. She watched him beat me with this fear that he would hit too hard with his cane and bust my leg, but she said nothing. Later, she would try to explain him to me, his expectations being so high meant that he believed I could be so much better. No matter what I did or didn't do, it was never enough for him, and she was always on his side."

"I'm not on his side," Jnai said, skootching her butt closer. "What kinds of things did he hit you with a cane for?"

"All kinds. Talking too much. Not talking enough. Failing to meet his standard of quality at some chore..."

Jnai had maneuvered herself to touching distance, smiling as she nodded for him to go on.

"Just mostly getting in his way. From about ten on, just seeing me made him want to raise that cane." He decided not to add how he'd antagonized at every turn. He pushed and prodded and pressed every button until his father assumed he'd done something wrong, and his father was mostly right. If she wanted to know that stuff, she'd have to open her mind.

"He needed the cane for more than a disciplinary tool?"

Evan looked down when she placed a hand on his knee. She continued to smile, her empty gaze on his face. She was used to picking up cues that he let pass in his reliance on his gift, and the disadvantage made him anxious. He had a hard time trusting anyone who took such effort to shield themselves from him, and without knowing her motivations, he assumed they were devious.

"He'd been lamed somehow?" Jnai pressed, her hand sliding an inch up his thigh. "An old injury from his Passion's Journey?"

"Yeah, he needed the cane. I got this idea to hide it on him, so he couldn't beat me, and one of the worst beatings I ever got was when he finally found it. My mom came at me when I was still laid up, how I'd humiliated him."

"He sounds like a monster," Jnai said softly, leaning toward him. "What do the other islanders think of him?"

"He's a cranky old fucker. Corporal punishment is not only allowed there, it's pretty much universal, but they all thought he took it too far." Of course, they all thought Evan lacked respect so hard they had no better suggestions of how to deal with him, but too bad she wouldn't open her mind and find that out.

"Did you ever try to anger him on purpose?" Mostly facing at the fire, she glanced up when Evan's head snapped askew to glare at her. "I must be onto something." She smiled kindly as Evan became flustered, moving her hand to his back. "It makes sense that you acted out; if you're going to be beaten no matter what, why not deserve it, right?"

"How are you doing that?" Evan said, pushing her hand off. "Can you see through your own shutters? Am I missing it somehow when you're taking peeks at me?"

Jnai laughed at him. "Take it easy, Little Bro. Just cold reading, and those expressive Waren eyes of yours make it easy. Were there ever good times?"

"Uh..." Evan wracked his brain, and supposed he'd felt some joy as a child, while his grandmother had been alive. He watched Jnai clean camp with the hot water, and he thought about it until she sat back down and gestured expectantly. "Sure, some. Early on. The older I got, the more we hated each other, but if you did exactly what he said without question, he wasn't a bad guy."

"But you couldn't do that, could you?"

"Nope," Evan admitted.

"Good. I want to do something he wouldn't like, too."

"Yeah? What?"

"May I touch you, Little Brother?" Jnai asked, leaning again, and bringing one leg beneath her to crawl.

"Uh..." Evan couldn't feel desire from her, so this still felt like a trap. If they wanted the same thing, they could have fucked three times already, if she only opened her perspective to him.

"What are you so scared of?"

"You're hiding..."

Jnai laughed again. "Oh, shut up. I take away one instance of this huge advantage you have over people, and I'm hiding? Just do what everybody but those from your cursed island do, and judge on action. I'm a Warrior, who saved your life a few hours ago, so just trust me."

"Trust you to seduce me, your brother."

"That's right, Evan. I'm sorry for playing around before. I just want to send you back to War with a big fuck you to that son of a bitch in the form of taking your cock for our pleasure."

Evan's dick twitched and he managed to smile about it, but he was still nervous. "It's kinky as fuck, and I love that, so if you want it, all you have to do is share your mind."

"Listen," Jnai said with a tone of finality. "I've made love to other cast offs as well as Warens, shared body and mind with them, and I prefer it like this."

"How many?" Evan asked, leaning slightly away to look at her.

Big Sis frowned. "Now you're going to judge me, you hypocrite? It's fine for you to fuck whoever you want, but for me..."

"It's fine for you, too, I like it," Evan assured her, grinning. "Fucking right, Big Sis. I was wondering if you kept score."

"Oh. Um... eighteen. Well, do you count women?"

"I do, so sure."

"Twenty-one, then."

"Mm, very nice."

"So, Little Brother," she said, coming close to him without making contact. "What's your score?"

"Well..."

"Can I see it?"

Evan swallowed as he tried again to glance past the façade of the physical. His score was becoming more contentious by the name. "It's three hundred eighty-one."

"Holy shit. You little slut! Can I see it?"

Evan allowed his sister to pull his shirt up and off him, casting it to the ground. He waited as she crouched behind him, desperate to feel some reaction to his tattoos, to anything. He didn't know if his collection of lovers was getting her wet or getting her ready to stab him.

"Oh my god," she said, and he still had no idea if she was thrilled by his ink or super pissed off. "Oh my god, Evan. Can I touch it?"

He glanced at her and took a relieved sigh. Her grin was slightly maniacal in the firelight, but she appeared earnest, and she wouldn't have bothered asking if she was going to stab him, she just would have done it. "Go nuts," he said.

Her cool hands came to rest upon his shoulders, running down over his back. She poked him in the fresh ones and had the gall to act surprised when he flinched. "Oh, does that hurt? This one is crooked, did you do it yourself?"