Stormfeather Ch. 05

She noticed his silence after that and asked what was wrong.

"I would say nothing," he said with a soft smile, "but it would be the wrong way to say this. Nothing is wrong, Sheena." He put his arm around her shoulders and smiled to assure her, "The longer we are together, the more that I find to wonder about. The place that you talk about is full of magic - and old spirits. If that is where you were made, as you say it, and where you were birthed, I think that I must become more like you now, and not be surprised at anything anymore. They might never have known it, but they certainly were not alone there, and your birth must have been witnessed by many spirits." She liked his soft smile to her as he said, "This says much about you to me. I begin to think that you were given a gift there which only now comes out."

"I was asked by the old one who came to me up there after I found the cave if I would wait for someone while I was here. I still do not know everything that he meant. He said I was to look for two, but I think that he meant two of my kind. I have seen no one here of my kind but him, and him not often at all. The cave mouth is almost always empty when I look there. He was not there when I looked for him today."

He thought about her arm around his neck and the way that they sat holding each other. No one had even touched him in so long. No one had wanted to. It made him a little sad, but he was sure that her arm would leave him very soon. He had something to ask, and was almost certain of her reaction. He lowered his arm.

"You do not know the meaning of the braids that you drew on us both, do you?" He kept his eyes straight ahead and looked off into the distance. The only thing that he really wasn't certain about was why he seemed to be afraid to breathe just then.

He felt her arm shift, but it didn't leave him. She only drew it back far enough to place her palm against the point where his neck met his shoulder, over the old scar of his bite. He felt the warmth of her hand and cherished it against him.

"Yes I do," she said very quietly, "at least, I think that I do. Tell me if I'm wrong, but I think it means that you and I are together, and not only to travel. I think that it means that you're my husband in that drawing."

She watched his head turn toward her in wonder, "How do you know this? This is the way of wedded people for a time after the wedding, and only among the tribe where I was born. They took the custom from my father's people. I have met many from other tribes in my journeys, but none of them do this. I am certain that you didn't know it this morning."

"I saw the way that you looked at me, and how quickly you left," she laughed softly. "It made me stare at what I'd drawn until my eyes felt as though they'd fall out onto the paper. When I finally got it, I was sure they were going to leave my head!"

Amy realized what she was saying and faltered a little, "Would you like a cup of coffee? I'd like one before I turn in." She had absolutely no idea how she was going to fall asleep any time soon, but she now wanted at least a little disengagement and space.

He wondered how she could think like this at such a time, but nodded dumbly and waited while she was gone the twelve minutes that it took. It took half that time for him to realize how she might feel about what she'd just said.

Amy was cursing her fool mouth. She'd spoken the truth, but surely there must have been a better way to say that. As she struggled with herself, she decided that it was how the scene came to her. If it was meant to be, they'd both have to deal with it if it came to pass, and perhaps it wouldn't anyway. She only prayed that the statement wouldn't cost her his friendship.

Hellfire, she thought, a man like him, with me? What the hell would he want that for? I can't see it happening either, but if it's what lies ahead – if my dreams can suddenly show what can happen, it's not a bad thing, is it?

She tried very hard to turn her mind from the possibility before her body had time to be concerned with the probability. Too late, she realized with a tiny groan that she could already feel her pulse at her throat, and worried about the stronger one that now began to make its presence known.

Amy sighed to herself. She was more than prepared to admit to herself that she was attracted to him. She just wished that it wasn't on such an almost primal level. A word from him coupled with one of her own thoughts, and she'd felt the heat of her flushed face, though she hadn't been blushing at the thought.

When she returned to sit with him again, she held out the metal cup with a flourish and a grin, "Here's your coffee, my maybe husband-to-be. Hurry up and take it, or I'll have to break the spell with my curses when my fingers get burned and then you'll never want me as a wife."

As soon as she sat down next to him, the seam in her pants caused her to regret it. It was just absurd to her, how tight the seam had become. Rather than squirm visibly, she clamped her knees even tighter together.

He took the cup and found that he had to set it down as he stared, or there wouldn't be anything left to drink. "Sheena, these dreams that you have surely make more sense to you than to me. You sound as though you just accept what they have shown to you. Are you saying that you want me as a husband?" The thought, as suddenly pleasant as it seemed to him was bending his brain.

Inwardly he'd noticed the flush in her cheeks right away. A part of him welcomed the sign, automatically weighing chances, but he pushed that back instantly. It wasn't every day – or decade - that he met someone who liked to talk with him.

Amy was very afraid that she might have said the wrong thing in her quip to him, but was at something of a loss for an idea to place him at his ease again. "Before I answer that," she said, "you ought to know that it's the way of my people to make light of things. I'm not making fun of the idea – especially since I drew it without knowing what it means to you. But we like to joke to make ourselves and those we're near laugh, just as you did a moment ago."

"If you want my answer to it, not at the moment," she said truthfully, "I want my new friend to be a better friend, to say the least before anything like that. The way that I see it is that we have some sort of journey together – as strange as all of this seems to me. I don't know where, when or how. I just drew what I saw us doing in that one instant. I don't know what brought us there like that. But the idea of traveling with you looks much better to me than teaching in a school for the rest of my life. And having you as a companion and friend is much better than how I spend my time alone now, struggling to remain awake. As for being even closer than that, I have no idea right now." She looked over at him a little searchingly, "Is that a good answer?"

She felt as though she'd done a lovely dance on a knife's edge for the moment, but his smile said a lot to her even before his answer. "Yes," he said with a nod as he sipped the steaming mug carefully. When it was safely away from his lips again, he offered his quiet comment, "One has to be very careful when stepping on the rocks close to the water's edge. It is all too easy to fall in."

Amy wondered about it for a second. When she realized it was much the same as she'd been thinking, she looked at him to see his slight smile. Amy fought the urge to panic. She'd been as clear as an open window with her answer, but he'd also seen perhaps how she was feeling. She felt his warm hand on her forearm, and some of her nervous tension seemed to fall from her.

Looking a little sideways at him, she noticed that he was studying the distant ridge-line, "A lot depends on how much one wants to swim at the time," he said, "better to be ready than to step onto those stones not really wanting to risk the splash." He turned to her and rather than feeling foolish, Amy asked him what was behind his tiny smile.

"Not much, Sheena. I only enjoy it here with you and I am happy to be this close to the eyes that I saw in the visions" he said, "A good thing that I didn't know how close you were to me when I saw them. I think that I would have been drawn to come, if only to see you like this. Imagine me in the place where you live."

His statement held more than the words and she knew it.

"I think the way that we met yesterday was terrible," Amy replied, "I was so happy to see that you were real, but we had no time for anything. I can agree that if you had come to Santa Fe, it would have caused a lot of people to be upset, probably me among them, since I'd have been even more shocked to see you than I was last night. But that's only if you came like this, dressed to travel in the way that you always knew. Did you see how I drew myself in that scene? Do you think that I'd cause any less upset if I came to Santa Fe like that?"

She decided to enjoy being with him and that her fretting was getting in the way of it so she purposely set her cup down, leaned against him and wrapped her hand around as much of his bicep as she was able. The feel of him against her was indescribable. "Let me tell you something. I drew what I saw – exactly as I recalled it. I think you might guess that I've never in my life been dressed as I drew myself there. But I'll say this;"

She locked her blazing green eyes on his, "If that's what I have to wear to be able to be in that place wherever it is, traveling with you, to stand next to you like that if you're in danger," she exhaled, "Stormfeather, I wouldn't think twice." She let go of his arm to pick up her cup and took a long sip while looking away before she burst out laughing at his shocked expression. She turned back and waved the cup at him for punctuation, "ESPECIALLY if you made the clothes for me," she grinned, holding one moccasin-shod foot out in front of them.

"Having said that," Amy continued after setting her empty cup down to hold onto him again, "if you had clothes that wouldn't cause my great aunt to fall down clutching at her failing heart in shock, I'd have been overjoyed to see you in Santa Fe then." She looked at him with a soft smile, "I'm saying that it's a different place and it needs different clothes, that's all. If you could get past the discomfort of the clothes, I'd be proud to be seen with you anywhere, my friend."

She nodded when she saw his smile, "I don't choose my friends to match the scenery. You just need clothes to fit it sometimes. I think I'd look pretty silly if I were here in a long gown dressed for a ball."

"I wanted to ask you," she said, "do you need to stay outside for some reason tonight? If I'm not in any kind of danger from you, why do you have to be outside? Or aren't you housebroken?"

"You always surprise me," he replied, "I have never known anyone who could do this. I do not need to be outside," he said, "I thought that you would feel more comfortable that way. If I stay outside, I only change to keep warmer when the night gets cool before the dawn."

She laughed a little, "Tell me, do I look and act like a delicate lady to you?" She smirked at his expression, "I didn't think so. So come on inside. We have to clean the guns anyway. I'll teach you how to keep yours clean first. Then I'll go upstairs to bed. You can sleep on that bed in there. It was my bed when we all lived here."

It happened somewhat as she'd said. They cleaned and oiled the weapons, and Amy reloaded her Winchester. She left the Sharps rifle empty. "You ought to clean that shotgun at least within a day of using it," she told him as she stood up. He nodded again, and before he could look up, she closed the short distance between them and kissed him very quickly before stepping back, "I'm going to turn in now, so goodnight, Stormfeather."

He smiled and wished her a good night as she started to walk away, but she came right back to kiss him again, this time longer. "And thank you for saving my life yesterday." She went upstairs to bed, and he tried to make friends with her old bed, but sleep didn't come to him right away.

He finally got up and left the house quietly to look around. Looking to the plain, he saw the half-moon just brushing the edge of the mountains off in the distance and closer in, he saw the ridge where he'd sat a few weeks before. He looked back at the door, and sat down with a soft smile. It had been awhile, he admitted as he clutched the tiny pendant at his breast, but he found himself asking for something in his prayers to the only gods which made sense to him after his mother's death. He hoped they weren't too old or far away to hear him. He almost couldn't remember the last time that he'd felt anything like what he was feeling now.

Lying in the bed in the comforting darkness of the upper storey of the house, Amy found herself feeling several emotions as she sifted through her thoughts, and though she realized that they were mostly pleasant, she was also concerned over a few things. If her crazy dreams were any solid indicators to her life in the real world, there would be even more difficult decisions for her to make very soon.

She'd lived her life up to this point with a fair amount of self-reliance for a woman her age. Her one semi-romantic experience hadn't changed her much. But if her dreams were anything to go by and something tangible happened between herself and Stormfeather, there would be a lot of changes required in how she lived.

In her world, she had a bit of worth and a means of providing for herself independently. The other side of that was that she was already becoming something like the personification of a word which she thought was applied so unfairly for its unwelcome connotations of failure in a way. Where she thought herself to be independent, the largely male-driven society of which she was a part categorized her as a spinster, or it soon would. She smirked to herself at the thought, - and it was all because she hadn't found a man for herself. It was absurd. Amy had already come to terms with it herself – a man such as she wanted just hadn't been made yet. That was what she'd always told herself.

Along with her sudden and shocking ability to see him as she slept, it had come to her that such a man had actually been made long ago. It had just taken all of this time for them to learn of each other and somehow drift together like this. She wondered if he knew it as well.

Amy turned her thoughts to him. She recognized that she was attracted to him in more ways by the minute and wondered if there might be a danger there. Well if what she'd seen were to happen there would certainly be some, she conceded. She was beginning to see that to be with him would come at a cost to her. She doubted that there would be much of anything of the life of Amy Monaghan left as she knew it. But to be able to walk with him, she sighed to herself as her fingers inexorably crept the distance to her already damp sex, to have him for herself and be able to drift off in those arms and wake to see him there with her in the morning dimness, that was worth a lot, she admitted. To have the love of one like him was worth anything to her.

There was something of a clear notion which came to her in all of this confusion. She felt herself wanting to throw off all of the concerns of a young woman in her society when she was with him. All of the constraints and niceties which she'd been taught must be observed really meant very little to Amy if she weighed them against him as they'd sat together. She recognized that two things had come to her mind out there on the porch, and both of them held something profound for her to consider.

In the first place, she found that they were growing comfortable with each other very quickly. There were odd little bumps and jars to their time together, but these seemed to have a lot to do with the things which came as little revelations to them about each other. Mostly, she just reveled in how nice it felt to be with him, and thinking about that, she was fairly certain that he felt the same way. There was an almost overwhelming feeling to her that they belonged together, a feeling something like a homecoming to a place where one had never been before, but belonged nevertheless. She'd never felt anything like it. It was the other part of that which she found oddly compelling.

With parts of his body in any sort of contact with her own, and with his subtle and pleasant scent coming to her, she found herself almost overwhelmed with something that had never come to her so strongly before. Amy found herself almost aching to throw off the last of the constraints that she felt and just give in to the mounting tension of the lust that she felt toward him.

Her hand moved to caress her breast for a time and her fingers eventually found the small nipple there as hard as a pebble. Her other hand continued to cup her sex as she noted her pulse there hard between her legs. The hand at her breast traced a long caress down along her body wishing that she could feel his hands on her as she parted the intimate folds to find her bud waiting for her almost painfully.

Her thoughts went to him and his present location downstairs. She wanted more than this, she realized. She ached to be filled more than anything, but wondered at her self-control and whether she'd let any sound slip past her lips if she continued with what she needed to do at the moment. She knew that she wouldn't be satisfied with only her own gentle caresses for much longer. She wanted to go to him and just ...

But it wasn't quite the time for it, she judged, and was thinking to just settle for some relief as quietly as she could when she heard his weight shift on the bed down there, and in another moment, she heard the door close after him. Amy wasn't sure what significance this had, but a part of her knew what her response would be now that he was at least out of earshot, hopefully.

She made one more light and tracing circle with her finger before doing something out of the ordinary routine for her. Since she felt herself ready for it, she subtly pinched the nub between her thumb and forefinger and was thrown ahead into something which was close to the release that she now craved, but it wasn't quite there yet.

She thought of her hairbrush, but knew that it was too far away to retrieve before her need overcame her ability to grab for the brush. Drawing from a memory of one of her dreams, she visualized him there over her as she slid two fingers of her other hand into her passage and did her best to hold her mouth shut as she was overtaken by one of the fastest-rising orgasms of her life. She rode the crest of it with her head hard back on the pillow. A very quiet cry escaped her before she found herself drifting down like a falling leaf, and she humbly asked whatever force drove her dreams if she might gain some insight into loving someone like him.

Out on the porch, he looked up in the direction of the soft and barely audible sound which came to him where he sat. Like everything else about his new friend, it was something of a surprise that only seemed right to him if he considered it for a moment. He found himself nursing a very slight desire to ask her quietly if she'd found the release that she'd been seeking as one would politely ask any close friend in other circumstances how they'd slept. After the thought passed, he examined his own heart with regard to the friendship that they'd found between themselves.

Stormfeather had no idea about some of the things that he'd wondered about over all of the time that he'd wandered. He still hadn't come to grips with the things that the female traveler had told him about a prophecy. What he'd heard from the guardian at the cave was unclear as well. With a soft smile, he realized that right now he didn't care about either of these riddles. He only cared about the beautiful dream-walker. It was a pleasant thought to him that she'd sought and found her release just now, and he was beginning to become more than conscious of the hope that he found within himself that they could find themselves on many paths together. It seemed to be what her dream-walking presaged to them, and he knew that he already cared deeply for her.