Don't Stop Me Now

by BT

Fanfic based on A Distant Soil, by Colleen Doran

* * *

D'mer realized that Seren was watching him.

There was no reason, of course, that Seren should not. The Avatar of Ovanan surely had a right to be in his own palace garden; only his permission allowed D'mer to practice flying there. In any case, neither a ritual dance nor free exercise was changed by the presence of a non-Kimarian.

D'mer tried to ignore the attention and soon succeeded. Kimarian flight-dances were hardly solemn, not even rigidly sequenced, but they required a glider's full concentration. Only afterward, when he touched the courtyard's marble flagstones and let his weight fall back into the ground, was he reminded of Seren again. As the flying cloak sank downward from the air current D'mer had used, he heard, "That's very beautiful." The words sounded wistful.

D'mer could not disagree, for the flight had been a good one. Flying, unforced and unrestricted, was perhaps the only thing he could still consider wholly his own.

"I do it because it's beautiful," said D'mer finally. No other explanation would make sense to an Ovanan. He began to gather up the cloak and detach it from the flying harness, feeling it now as weight instead of lift.

"For pleasure?" asked Seren. His long, silver-white hair fluttered in the warm breeze and his eyes lingered on D'mer, as wistful as his voice.

"Sometimes." D'mer looked up at the tall figure of this world's overlord, a man who had too much power and too little but still tried to use his talents for the best. In that, he was unlike too many Ovanans D'mer had known. "Why? Do you dream of flying against gravity?" None of Seren's talents or power could give him that.

"Not often. I was just..." He parted his hands in a gesture that conveyed graceful appreciation, "looking at you. The flying is lovely."

With a distinct shock, D'mer recognized Seren's expression at last: desire.

Could Seren feel any such thing? With sudden clarity, D'mer remembered a conversation he'd overheard (since it had been conducted directly in front of him without regard for his presence) not long before he'd been sent to Seren's household.

"It's not good for anything now, is it?"

"Hardly." Lord Allem shrugged languid, jeweled shoulders. "Unless... It's pretty enough, if you like barbarians. I don't."

"My dear! What a thought!" snickered Allem's friend. "Who could?"

D'mer might have told him several other friends of Allem's who could think such things, but it was not his place to speak aloud. For the moment, he kept his silence and his life and his place.

Allem smiled, showing glistening teeth. "I know who really couldn't. I'll make a gift of it to the Avatar."

"What good will that do? The boy won't even notice."

"It'll annoy Lady Sere," said Allem blandly.

"Ah," nodded the friend. "That's a good enough reason, I suppose. Have you heard what she did to Maril... ?"

So D'mer had been sent to the Avatar's palace, and the Avatar had, indeed, ignored him completely, and so impersonally that it wasn't even an insult.

On Kimar, D'mer had been taught that the Avatar of Ovanan was a demigod, one who came when Kimra the Mother called, and to whom Kimarians thus owed allegiance. On Ovanan, the Avatar was treated with equal parts public homage and, from Hierarchy lords like Allem, private contempt: as a captive but dangerous force to be manipulated. D'mer would have been shocked at that, if he had had any concern left to spare for Ovanan by then.

This Avatar, it seemed, did not make a practice of trading unwanted beings to his guests or friends; nor did the Avatar's household staff care to trust any tasks to a variant-class offworlder. D'mer, at first relieved to be away from Allem, had soon felt extraordinarily useless. Desperate to break out of invisibility, he'd gone hunting trouble -- and had learned that the Avatar was a person with two names, and too many secrets in both of them. D'mer was still coming to terms with a Seren who was more than the emotionless figure of Ovanan legend.

Now the so-called Living Soul of Ovanan, who fulfilled that title more completely than Ovanan's Hierarchy knew, was looking at D'mer with unmistakable longing in his strange, blue-violet eyes.

And yet... D'mer, studying the composed face, could not avoid the thought, He's just lonely. Seren's double life kept him busy, but few allies and fewer friends understood it; none shared it.

Except, recently and by chance, D'mer.

D'mer moved again, shaking out the cloak and folding it, waiting for Seren's next move. Seren didn't stop looking at him, but he frowned and said nothing for several minutes. When D'mer had nearly finished stacking his gear to carry inside, Seren finally spoke. "Tell me a little about how you fly, if you can."

"If I can?" asked D'mer.

"You might not wish to."

There was no reason not to talk about flying, even to an Ovanan. "Not all Kimarians can learn it, only gliders. For us it's a learned skill."

"So most Kimarians would never be able to do it."

"Yes," said D'mer, pleased. Many Ovanans referred to all Kimarians as gliders, neither understanding nor caring that the talent for flight was rarer than Ovanan gifts and more prized, on Kimar.

"Does it take a lot of energy?"

"Some. It's more a matter of doing several things at once."

Seren motioned him away from the courtyard and onto an open lawn, as if restless to walk, and D'mer followed. The huge garden was a luxury here under the city's weather shield that kept the area warm enough for Ovanans and the beings who lived with them. Even D'mer enjoyed the water-rich greenness.

"Ah. What things? Do you really need the cape? Is it an airfoil?"

"Yes," said D'mer patiently. "Gliding is aerodynamic flight, mostly." Ovanan's atmosphere outside the weather shielding was breathable but too thin to support any but the smallest flying creatures. Any birds here were imported as exotica. "That's when air pressure works with motion to push you upward..."

But Seren was nodding. "I know the principle, but how do you manage with this much gravity?"

D'mer shrugged. "Kimar is heavier."

How do you take off?" Seren stopped and faced him, silver hair trailing on the grass. They were in the middle of a flat expanse of green, still in sight of one wing of the palace but out of earshot of it.

"I levitate on thermal air currents."

"How do you find them?"

D'mer shrugged. "I make them."

"Do you mean that you move air? Create a wind?"

"Yes," said D'mer. "A little heat source moves a lot of air."

"You make them. Of course..." Seren had cause to know D'mer's pyrokinetic abilities. "This isn't entirely idle curiosity. I have a problem, and if you're willing, perhaps your flying will solve it."

"Oh?"

"Tell me, could you start a fire while you're busy flying? Is that as easy as heating air?"

"It might be easier, depending on what it is. Do you mean setting fire to something on the ground?" D'mer thought he saw where this was going. It might be interesting -- and in thinking about this Resistance operation, whatever it was, Seren who was a leader called Rieken within the Resistance had lost the alarming wistful look. "That's not proper flying, but it's possible."

"I was thinking of wood," said Seren. "I mean, a tree."

D'mer stared at him, horrified. "Do you want me to burn up a tree?"

"Is it possible?"

"I don't know... I think it could... But to burn a living tree?"

Seren looked at him seriously. "Are they sentient, to you? No one's ever reported mind-touch from a plant. I want to know if anyone does."

"Not on Kimar, but... trees are valuable. They use more water than people. And they're beautiful."

Seren nodded. "I understand. On Kimar, they're precious to all of you, and I would not harm one lightly. But on Ovanan they're not rare. Have you been outside the weather shield? I'll take you sometime. Ovanan's native trees are everywhere. The warm-climate trees we grow inside the weather shields are luxuries, for exotic fruit and wood. They're beautiful, yes, but not worth a life."

"An Ovanan life?" asked D'mer.

"An Ovanan variant," said Seren. "Still nearly a child. She'll be a great help to the Resistance if she can be gotten out of the variant barracks in time."

That meant, before any visiting Hierarchy member spotted whatever maverick talent she had that Rieken's Resistance needed and that Ovanan, according to Hierarchy reckoning, did not. D'mer had seen how it happened. The Hierarchy lords looked over the new variants whenever they needed recruits for their households or for special jobs. If any of them saw an interdicted talent there, that variant would be dead or brain-dead in hours.

She's to be transferred to the barracks tomorrow night," said Seren, "and it's next door to a plantation of trees belonging, incidentally, to Lord Allem."

"Ah."

"It needn't be all the trees. One or two would serve to get their attention."

D'mer twitched. "It's all right. I'll do it."

"You're not fond of Allem, are you?"

D'mer smiled. The Kimarian smile was not a pleasantry. "No. Should I be?"

"I'll leave that to you," said Seren. "I have my own reasons... But that's not important. A small team of my own will be ready at the variant barracks to pick her up as soon as she's brought there, and the idea is to get her away before she's counted and checked in with the other children. No one at the new place knows her. I'll reset the computer's records so that the numbers fit. It'll work best if no one has a chance to notice us taking her way."

"So you need a distraction," finished D'mer.

"We need a big, spectacular distraction," agreed Seren, "such as a very visible, sudden fire near the barracks compound. Do you think it will work?"

"Are the trees guarded?" It seemed likely to D'mer.

"At ground level and against powered floaters or flyers, but not against you." Seren smiled, and D'mer wondered if it could mean what a Kimarian smile meant.

* * *

D'mer waited, silent and still, for a signal. Seren was elsewhere, working his Crystal magic on the computer's records of the variant girl. Other Resistance members waited for their signals near the barracks.

This part of the city remained dark -- dark for Ovanan -- at night. The streets were empty now except for guard-sensors. As long as D'mer didn't cross the sensors' boundaries, there was no one and nothing to know he was here.

No one but Seren. On the first operation he'd shared, D'mer had learned how Rieken created his successes: he kept a mental link with all members of his team, directing them instantly away from the dangers he and the computer could sense, guiding them toward the goal or an escape while he fooled the computers into ignoring them. Seren couldn't (or wouldn't; D'mer wasn't sure which) tamper with the living guards' awareness. Fortunately, there weren't many in this area.

D'mer thought of heat, atoms quivering with energy sufficient to shatter the bonds that held them to one another. He thought an invisibly tiny pinpoint of that energy into being and set it on a nearby section of the plain poured-rock pavement, whose cooler, heavier substance resisted it.

The air didn't resist, but streamed upward. D'mer waited until it was flowing steadily, then leaped and lifted. After the first effortful boost of muscles, rising was as easy as holding the correct posture of body and cape as he moved upon tangible currents: not weightless but supported by a glider's element.

He leveled from his spiral at rooftop height and skimmed over a rank of flat-topped warehouses, looking now for the orchard and the barracks complex as he paid attention to the air below and above him. Motion alone was nearly enough to maintain his altitude, even in this cool, nighttime atmosphere. The buildings and ground features were clear to him in the city's night lighting that Ovanans called dim.

Beyond the second row of warehouses he saw the outlines of the lower-built barracks and the perimeter of the trees. Everything was quiet, no alarms, no vehicles as yet. D'mer circled slowly, riding the dense layer of air just above the rooftops. Roofs here were lower than in some parts of the city, but he was safe as long as he stayed away from live guards who would see him, and from mechanical sensors that could report his presence as an intruder.

A mind-voice came into his head, unmistakably Seren: Ready? Oh, you're...

What? asked D'mer. The trick of replying was no more difficult than shaping his thoughts as if for speech aloud.

You're flying! A thread of exhilaration colored the words.

D'mer adjusted an edge of his cape and floated easily across a canyon between rooftops. I've been up for several minutes. Everything's exactly like the map, but I don't see any carriers on the streets near the barracks.

You're in the air! It feels wonderful!

Can you feel me? asked D'mer sharply. He had no sensation of Seren beyond the mind-voice, silent but carrying emphasis like spoken words.

Yes! That's incredible, much better than free fall! Seren's voice nearly sang in his mind. I can feel what you're doing. Is that air, just air?

I'm not falling, D'mer pointed out. This now... he crossed another gulf, feeling warmer air again, is a thermal current from where I lifted. It pushes me upward whenever I circle back over it.

Ahhh... I see, came the reply, still fascinated. There was a quick flicker of attention away from D'mer and back. It will be another few minutes before the carrier will reach the variant compound. Start your show when you see it stop, or when I signal. Do you expect any problems?

I can't see any.

A mental nod of approval answered him, then nothing. Rieken had other business to attend to.

Here it came now: a passenger carrier that would be transporting the half-grown Ovanan children newly classified as variants, including the one they wanted. It slowed at the compound gate and D'mer, relieved that the waiting was over, swung upward and headed toward the plantation of trees.

He coasted into comparative darkness above it, feeling the air as warm but sluggish, heavy with the scent of water and life. The richness of it was an incredible luxury, even more to D'mer than to Ovanans. He tried to ignore that and thought again of heat, of a fist-sized ball of speeding atoms expanding in chaos, much bigger and hotter than was needed to move air for flying.

The leafy crown of one tree at the near edge of the variant barracks flared slowly black and red. Twigs and leaves caught fire reluctantly, almost wetly, but D'mer could sense a small updraft already.

D'mer, NOW! Seren's presence filled his mind for an instant and was gone, urgent in its brevity.

D'mer realized belatedly that a living tree would not burn like dry wood: it was smoldering, not blazing, and had not attracted any attention as yet. He called a hotter spark into the faint glow and finally saw flames spurt up, sudden and harsh as a disaster beacon. He circled, thrown upward by the heat, fighting away from the barracks side of the orchard where living observers might spot him. When he was shielded from their eyes by the brightness of the fire, D'mer paused, floating comfortably on the edge of the updraft.

Are you safe now? asked a voice in his head.

Yes. Have you been monitoring me all this time?

Only for a moment. Now that you're not busy flying, will you set off another tree? That one has distracted them, but not enough.

I'll try, said D'mer, folding the cape so that he sank again to treetop level. There was no danger of losing lift now, though movement was hard to control the lower down he went. He picked a tall tree not too near the first, not thinking about the tree, only of Seren's needs, and set it ablaze in a rush of sparking fire. This time he chose his position so the hot wind pushed him further aloft in the direction he wanted to go.

Oh, my, murmured Seren's voice. That's really lovely. Then he was busy again, not absent but with his attention focused elsewhere. D'mer caught hints of tension, quick calculation, and soon after, a burst of exultation.

She's safe, he told D'mer a moment later. Can you do it once more to keep them occupied a little longer? The plantation guards have foam sprayers, and they won't let the other trees catch fire. Or anything else.

He could sense Seren riding in his mind now as he swooped through twisting currents to send heat into a tree further over, to make it a third torch. He rose on its updraft, feeling the pleasure of the soaring lift -- until the element that supported him thinned and cooled abruptly. He fell and floated inexplicably in a layer that shouldn't have been there.

D'mer? asked the voice in his head as he fought to regain balance. He found his equilibrium after a moment. What was that?

I don't know. D'mer could feel himself panting, and wondered if Seren could feel it as well. The air fell apart.

He couldn't afford panic while he was flying but the question of what happened? burned in his mind.

You must have risen above the weather shield. Wonder laced Seren's exhilaration. I didn't realize how high you were. D'mer, do you do this whenever you fly?

Not usually. No one had shared his mind and knew what he felt during a flight, as Seren seemed to be doing.

I couldn't help feeling you fly at first, and then that last one just carried me.... Lingering pleasure in the flight reached him, as well as Seren's words. I have to check on Ynia and the other team. Can you get home from where you are or will you need a pickup? Are you tired after that much flying?

This much? asked D'mer with intentional bravado that he knew Seren would understand. This is nothing. I'll be back at the palace before you are.

A soundless chuckle acknowledged his message; then D'mer was alone in the air. The updrafts from the now-extinguished orchard fires were subsiding, and he let himself sink with them, looking around carefully. He was in the zone reserved for aircar traffic and the like, but he was invisible to the traffic monitors which would sense only Crystal-powered vehicles.

He didn't want any pilot or passenger to see him, so he kept a careful watch with eyes as well as his more familiar kinetic senses on the air around him, while he sank toward the night-lit city. He tilted his course toward its center toward the Avatar's palace with its shining Crystal beacon and darker gardens. There was nothing to keep him from landing in the courtyard just as he had yesterday morning, and household security would recognize.

All the same, it was a weak spot in the palace defenses that a living flyer could land inside the perimeter without challenge. It might endanger Seren someday.

D'mer wondered why he should care about the Avatar's safety. Perhaps not the Avatar's -- he'd seen too often that Allem and the others could treat the Avatar like their own toy -- but Seren's. Seren meant to do something and had been doing it, step by slow step, with the Resistance. And D'mer had never seen him use his rank unfairly.

The house and security guards were all Ovanan, but Seren had taken to including D'mer in his ceremonial entourage. D'mer had assumed it was some ploy to tweak the Hierarchy's pride; now he wondered if Seren might have begun to trust him as a personal bodyguard. The Avatar's official guards were obedient to the Hierarchy as much as to Seren. Their loyalty was official, not personal.

D'mer's loyalty... There was no way to avoid thinking about it: Seren, even if he didn't understand it yet, wanted more than loyalty, and perhaps more than friendship as well. What did he think he wanted? D'mer flew through the dark, uplifting air toward the bright center of the Ovanan world, and wondered what he himself wanted. He had begun to trust Seren's honor, but by Ovanan reckoning the Avatar was nothing but his master, an owner in the most absolute sense. What was Seren's reckoning?

What did -- or could -- Seren think? About honor, or friendship, or... anything else?

In momentary panic D'mer remembered that Seren might be able to listen in on his thoughts. He tried to sense the monitoring presence of Seren in his mind, but the mental "place" where Seren had been was empty. Other responsibilities should claim him now, and D'mer hoped that the seeming privacy was real privacy. Could he trust Seren?

There was very little choice, but D'mer found himself hoping that Seren was worth trust as well as loyalty.

* * *

D'mer landed without a challenge, but he observed two of the house guards running out to meet him, preceded by searchlights. He stood quietly in the dragging center of his grounded flying harness and let them see that he was no threat. At least the Avatar was being protected. As soon as they came within clear view of him, they became the stiff, uncommunicative figures he knew too well in the palace, who would never speak to a Kimarian if they could help it. They watched as he packed up the cape and stood aside to let him enter after the most formal exchange of identity-checks.

Then D'mer waited for Seren to return, and in fact it was less than an hour later that the Avatar signaled for a meal and asked for D'mer to bring it. He had not, in the knowledge of nearly all the palace inhabitants, left the safety of the palace complex that evening.

Seren sat playing with a chunk of Crystal in his private study as though he'd been doing nothing else all day, but he set it eagerly aside and ate and drank with a hunger unsatisfied for hours. At last he put down his goblet and said, "The rescue was successful. She's safe with the Resistance, and the computer believes that all the records match, and no one saw us." He smiled. "Thanks to you."

"It is my honor to serve," said D'mer, wondering if it would be taken for irony. Seren knew as well as he that the phrase had been taught him during the variants' indoctrination that D'mer had resisted violently.

Seren merely looked at him, no longer smiling. "I think you mean that."

"Don't you know?"

Silver hair rippled over the back of Seren's chair as he shook his head. "Not as you do. Not from your mind and will."

"But you could."

Seren picked up the Crystal again but did not use it, merely handling it inert. "You knew I was mind-linked with you while you were flying. I'm not, now. Did you dislike the link?"

"It's not that," D'mer said. Seren's pleasure in the flight had become his as well. "It was... unfamiliar. What did you learn about me?"

"Very little, about you. I don't like to overread the minds I link with."

"You don't?" D'mer, honestly surprised, saw surprise and affront on Seren's face. "Please pardon me. I did not mean to offend you." That too was a formula, but it had been more useful than any other. "I should have known you were not the same as some lords."

"I hope I'm not. I have different reasons for using telepathy with you, I imagine."

"What did you find, then, if you weren't reading my thoughts?"

"Oh." Seren smiled, curiously innocent for a moment. "I felt you flying. That's all, just the physical sensations when you weren't sending words to me."

"What did it feel like? To you?"

"Don't you know?" asked Seren, a faint lift of amusement in his voice. He set down the piece of Crystal to look directly at D'mer. "You were there first."

"I felt something back from you that wasn't from me."

Seren's brows rose at that and then, slowly but definitely, pink color flooded into the pale face. D'mer had seen the reaction before on Ovanans, but never on Seren: the Avatar was never at a loss, never uncertain or embarrassed. He couldn't afford it. And, indeed, his next words were steady and self-possessed. "It reminded me of something else," he said, calmly. "I had no idea you'd catch enough feedback to know it."

"I never have before."

"D'mer, what did you think it felt like? To me?"

D'mer realized he was being given a choice, when anything as direct as a request would have had, unavoidably, the weight of a command. Seren watched him steadily, unmistakably interested but silent. D'mer thought of Seren's exhilaration and an excitement that had nothing to do with flying on air currents. He had not seen another Kimarian since his own disastrous time in variants' training. He had not desired anyone since he'd left Kimar. It had not occurred to him before that someone other than a Kimarian could interest him so.

Until now.

Seated, Seren was the same height as D'mer. D'mer looked into the white-ringed blue eyes and said, "It felt like sex."

Seren showed no reaction to the blunt word. "Yes. To me. How did you feel it?"

D'mer nodded slowly. "The same. Enough to recognize it."

"D'mer." Seren's voice sounded quite detached, almost disinterested. D'mer couldn't see a hint of strain on the smooth face, but the pale eyes flashed hunger at him for an instant between sweeping gently from polite distance to polite attention. "What do you want?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"Yes or no, as you will." Seren smiled at him, not casually. "Please."

"I thought," said D'mer, testing, "that you didn't take lovers."

"Not often." After that Seren, hands clasped, gazed at him without speaking. He was waiting for an answer.

It would be foolish. It would be no more foolish than rebelling against the Hierarchy of Ovanan. It might be impossible.

It would be with Seren.

"Yes," said D'mer.

Seren opened his hands and held them out. "Even when you are not flying, you remind me of that feeling. At times. I hadn't meant to let you know, but you..." He closed his mouth abruptly on the incautious flow of words and then said only, "Now?"

Decision made, D'mer didn't want to wait for anything. "Yes," he said, and took the offered hands. Contact of flesh and mind was simultaneous: Seren's thoughts slid in among D'mer's, accompanied by awareness of sexuality and memories of bodily pleasure.

D'mer? The telepathic voice now was like a caress, its verbal content unimportant.

How do you do that? D'mer was fighting a confused surge of lust. Seren's or his own? How could he tell?

Does it matter?

Yes. Please let me go for a moment.

Seren disengaged his hands, and the mental presence dropped away. "Is this better?" The words sounded as a mechanical vibration in D'mer's ears and nothing else. D'mer stood still, acutely aware of his body. It wanted... he wanted... Seren. Even though Seren was Ovanan.

Seren had left D'mer's mind when D'mer asked him to, shutting off that hot wind of lust without hesitation.

The absence was a loss, however strange the presence had been. If D'mer wanted Seren, he wanted all of him. He reached for Seren's hands again and thought, as if speaking, Let's go on. Now.

The warm, appreciative awareness was back with him, and part of it was a wordless question. D'mer knew what was being asked. You're right. It doesn't matter after all. He felt his awareness blur with desire.

Seren stood up, still holding the handclasp. My bedroom's right through here. D'mer followed willingly, feeling Seren's mind-touch, knowing he could hide nothing and not worrying about it.

He was inured to the excessive splendor of Seren's home, but he found himself concentrating on small details now: a carved marble tub of red starflower plants, a malachite pillar topped by a Crystal formation, a bedpost of fluted silver attached to a bed big enough for three Kimarians. Seren stopped there to shrug out of the loose, indoor robe he'd been wearing.

D'mer did the same with his tunic and leggings. Ovanan fashions being what they were, nudity meant nothing at all. Being naked with Seren, however, felt very strange. Not bad, but not like being with a Kimarian. D'mer suddenly wondered how well this was going to work physically. At the thought, he felt an echoing question from Seren, and heard an unfamiliar, voiced sound, not quite laughter.

How do you... began D'mer, nervous. Kimarians did not giggle.

Seren knelt and put his arms around D'mer, his head against D'mer's shoulder, pale hair rippling everywhere around both of them. Fascinated, D'mer gathered a thick handful and let his slither through his fists. The renewed touch intensified the contact from Seren's mind, and just as there was no doubt of his own feelings, there was no need for haste. Seren said, You want to know if an Ovanan Avatar makes love the same way as a glider. His hands rubbed up and down D'mer's back, almost soothing but... more.

Do you? I'd better know.

Well, I'll tell you, confided Seren, kissing his neck and then his shoulder, and his neck again. I haven't the least idea. A warm, wet tongue tickled behind D'mer's ear, sending a tingling current down his spine. Seren was all bones and thin muscles under his exploring hands, transparent skin showing all the veins and sinews.

You don't? D'mer shivered in the unsteady embrace, not wanting to stop Seren's hands as they played down his back again.

Let's find out, suggested a voice that carried desire as clearly as the words. Seren rose and pulled D'mer onto the bed. They were both breathless in moments at D'mer's light touches over pale ribs and down the long expanses of flawless skin. Seren's touch in turn sent a river of hot sensation washing through D'mer, and Seren gasped.

It was arousing. They were arousing each other. If the experience wasn't similar to lovemaking with Kimarian mates, it hardly mattered here. He was body to body and miraculously mind to mind with someone who cared for him, someone he wanted. His hearing was flooded with happy, incoherent syllables while Seren's busy hands ran up and down, repeating anything that either of them felt as pleasure. D'mer let himself forget the place and time and all the difficulties that had brought him to Seren as they shared the gift of passion.

Later, resting with Seren's drowsing mind still in touch with his own, D'mer lay on the smooth, warm surface of the bed, feeling only a sort of benign astonishment. It should have been impossible.

It's not impossible, said Seren. We've just done it.

Telepathy no longer required conscious effort in the close link. I assumed you couldn't, or wouldn't.

Says who?

The vulgar phrase called up a snicker from D'mer, but he sobered as the memory came back to him. One of the Hierarchy. I think he meant it.

I hope you don't believe everything you hear from them.

No. But Seren seemed oblivious to the danger of showing the Hierarchy an inconsistency, even a trivial one, in their picture of the helpless, boyish Avatar.

They already think I'm stubborn and childish. Let them think this is why.

D'mer already knew there was no possibility of hiding the fact that he shared Seren's bed, if he continued to do so. Nothing in either of their thoughts wanted to abandon this new partnership.

Why don't they think you should have this? The memory of Allem's snide comments was less painful, but now more puzzling to D'mer.

Seren moved for the first time since they'd started using words again, his hands seeking D'mer's. Tradition. The Avatar is to be untouchable -- for no one who touches an unwilling Avatar survives.

But does that mean no one should touch you? D'mer flexed his fingers around Seren's and began deliberately touching his way up wrist and forearm.

There was a mental drift of approval. Go on.

It's untraditional, D'mer reminded him.

Oh, good. Seren gave a little gasp as D'mer's fingers slid over his inner elbow and upward. Oh, very good... very very good...

* * *