Message-ID: <15554eli$9809230530@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: perigryn@earthlink.net (Rosemerry) Subject: Shining Spirit pt 1 of 2 - (F/F) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-Id: Greetings to all. This is my first post. Feedback would be welcomed. Archiving is okay with no alterations including credit and statements. Those who are under legal age or likely to be offended, please don't read this. Copyrights remain with me except as stated above. It's BitBard's fault I posted this *grin* ----------------------------------------------- SHINING SPIRIT Allie lay back, thinking devoutly up at the empty ceiling. Although she and her husband, Brent, had just gotten done fighting--the results of their making-up were even now drying stickily on her thigh--he was not on her mind. Instead Allie was running over in her mind a conversation she and her best friend had had over a week ago. In their strange and swiftly growing sisterhood, a week was time enough for a year's worth of growing together. The conversation had been about past friendships, and whether there had been any of this depth. "Never for me," Gina had said. "I thought I had girlfriends, but I can see now, having met you, that they're all bimbos." There was laughter. "I had one that came nearly this close," Allie had said. Never in a million years had she thought she'd tell anyone about that. "She and I were like family. We said, you don't grow up with your real family, you choose them." "How did it end?" It was the kind of frank question Allie had learned to expect from Gina. "I disappointed her, or she disappointed me. We should have been lovers, really," she said, realizing it almost for the first time as she spoke. Gina's eyes, strangely beer-colored and unexpectedly beautiful when taken unawares, lit up in her plain face. "Really?" she asked. "Did you ever have lesbian sex?" Allie shook her head, her mouth full of lemonade. "Lack of opportunity, not lack of experience," she said. Her mouth's censors appeared to have taken the evening off. Gina grinned. "Me neither. It wasn't lack of opportunity, though; I'm not sure what it was." Her eyes said, always occupied with men, probably. Fear, too, Allie's eyes countered. "Does it bother you to talk about sex?" she asked, unable to believe in Gina's straightforwardness, or in the lengths to which it would go. "Naw, if we can't have sex, we can at least talk about it." Did I hear that? Allie attended to her food for a moment, afraid to meet Gina's eyes. The conversation drifted off again, but even a week later, that was the part of it that Allie found herself replaying. Especially since Gina had kissed her. Perhaps she had been able to approach it in no other way, but she'd made a joke out of it, throwing her arms around Allie in the midst of their banter and smacking loudly. Allie, caught by surprise, had been able to do nothing but grab her round the waist and allow it. Until a few minutes later, when Gina had said, "Sorry I wet kissed you." "Don't be sorry!" Allie had responded with such heartfelt shock and dismay that Gina had withdrawn the apology at once. "It's something that was building up for a while," she said simply. "You surprised me... but... well, me too." Allie castigated herself for a nitwit, and only then noticed how close Gina had come. The pale yellow eyes were enormous. Allie reminded herself that she was supposed to be the strong one here. She held out her arms and they came together for a good old fashioned hug, like many of the ones they had already shared. Reassurance became seriousness, and they kissed, fumbling a little, but with true affection. Allie's overwhelming impression was of softness and sweetness. Kiss a man, and you have to fight him to savor it. Gina allowed, she returned, she responded with beauty. Perhaps it was real, somehow, real, Allie thought now into her darkened room. Because the rest of the world disappeared as if it had never been, during those kisses. How was it, why was it, what kind of miracle was it... that no matter how strange their interchanges, no matter how unusual their longings, how dangerous their revelations: still their connection remained true? The night came early for Gina. She had spent a long day off, visiting friends and working hard in the garden. She had used up another two hours practicing simple vocal up-and-down exercises in preparation for some serious operatic lessons to commence next week. After that she had fallen asleep at seven o'clock in the evening, right on the window seat of her practice room. She'd awakened at nine and crawled into bed, so she was still in her bathrobe and sound asleep when the doorbell rang with cruel suddenness. Not yet awake, moving on autopilot, she jerked her head up from the pillow, eyes open but seeing nothing. She got up and verified by hand that she wore something, steered her lifeless body down the hall to the front door. "Who is it?" she forced past her numb lips. "Allie," said the shaky voice on the other side, and had to repeat it. The obvious distress, plus the hour, which the phosphorescent kitchen clock informed her greenly was two in the morning, served to shake her awake. She began undoing locks and when the door was open, Allie stood there bundled up, with a suitcase in one hand, her flute case in the other, and no shoes on her feet. Gina took one look at her face and was awake at once. "Oh, my God, you poor dear, come in this instant," she said, as part of a general swoop that ended with the closing of the door and Allie on the inside of it. Gina took the suitcase. "Brent?" she asked bluntly. "I left him," Allie said. She was in emotional shock, Gina could see, and exhausted besides. "Don't talk," she advised. Allie probably couldn't have made a coherent story out of it anyway, she thought. "You'll sleep here tonight, of course. Whatever you need, sweetheart, you know that, right?" Allie was beyond thanks. She only nodded. Her eyes were obviously so wearied of weeping that they could produce no more tears, but her face wrinkled at the kindness. Gina did not take the flute case. Allie was holding it with the grip of nightmare. "Go in my bedroom and shower, Allie," she ordered. "I'm going to make hot chocolate. We'll sit on the couch until you're ready to go to sleep, and then you can sleep for ten hours, twenty-four, whatever you need." Allie didn't move, looking at her mutely, perhaps struggling for tears. Gina felt her heart break inside her. Where was Allie's shining spirit now? "He can't find us," she said in a rush, nearly crying herself. "He doesn't know my address. Remember, I asked you not to tell him? He doesn't have my phone number. And he really doesn't have much of a clue that we're... how close we are." She was stumbling in haste to relight that candle before it went out. Somehow she had said part of what Allie needed to hear. A little color had come back into her, and she almost smiled. Gina shuddered before her courage and gave her a little push toward the back bedroom where the best shower was. Allie, in reality, felt much less damped than Gina thought. She was, indeed, exhausted, but she felt husked out, almost clean. The fearful price she had paid to leave him was over now, and she had a plan that would prevent her paying it again. She put her flute case on the toilet lid, where she could look at it. It symbolized to her the things in her life that she wanted to do, things that Brent had somehow prevented. Not by saying anything, not by laying down the law, not until he had no other recourse. Not him. Oh, no, it was, "Go on, dear, you know I'll be all right." But somehow there was always some minor crisis that he could have used her help with; somehow there was always something to upset him when she returned, until she spent, as a rule, nearly twice the time making up for it. She shook him out of her head, hopefully for the last time that night, and undressed carefully. Gina made the hot chocolate and spent a few tense moments in the kitchen, walking around aimlessly from refrigerator to counter and back again. She was arguing with herself about whether to go into the bathroom and take in Allie's chocolate. She knew, guiltily, in her heart that her real reason was wanting to see Allie behind the translucent shower door. The guilt came from consideration of Allie's emotional state, not from weakness in her personal confidence. She had not forgotten their kiss, and would not be averse to another. But these things, she felt, were innocent expressions of the unusually deep love between them, no more sexual than the tug of longing she often felt at the sight of a running horse or an energetic child. But she was afraid of transgressing against even the slightest of Allie's boundaries tonight. Curiosity won out, however, and she put the chocolate on a tray and opened the door cautiously. With luck, Allie needn't know she had been there until she was gone. Allie was just opening the shower door to reach out for the soap on the porcelain sink. Gina dropped the chocolate at once, ignoring the hot splash of it on her bare ankles. Allie cowered down like a frightened animal, trying in vain to cover herself with her arms, her streaming hair falling full under the shower. Her urgency to hide in the tiles was matched by Gina's passionate swarm forward, where she threw her arms around her friend, disregarding the water that ran over them both. "Oh, Allie, Allie," Gina said. The harsh and ripping sobs coming from her friend sounded as if they would tear her throat. Allie gave in and allowed Gina to hug her, but nothing would take away the bruises and split skin that lined her entire body, from shoulders down her spine to knees and shins. "Allie, Allie, Allie... I love you, I love you, Allie." For a long time she held her in the shower, until the water ran cold and she was drenched through. Later, both in Gina's robes, towels over their shoulders, they attempted some normalcy. "I told him I was leaving," Allie said. "I'm not sure what made me decide to do it... maybe it was just one time too many that I came home from seeing you and had to see him." The robe covered most of the bruises, but her shins were visible, and they were sad and sore. None of the bruises had much coloration yet, but Gina knew from long experience with lesser traumas that they would be 'doozies,' as her mother would have said. "At first I thought he didn't hear me. Then he put his book down and I saw that he didn't understand. The look on his face was just the usual one he uses when he wants me to explain. You know... just the usual confused face." Gina nodded. "I went a little closer to him to explain, I'm not sure why. It felt normal to walk near him... you know...." Her face showed that a time when it felt normal to get near Brent was across a gulf as narrow as it was deep. "But before I got more than three words out, he knocked me down. I couldn't even fight him. I had no idea he could be so--that it could be--" She fell silent, struggling with gestures to describe a violation of trust so total that nothing could excuse it. Gina grabbed one of the waving hands and held it. Allie looked at her gratefully and went on. "After a while I just waited." She turned her other arm over for Gina to see the defense wounds between elbow and wrist. "I tried to cover myself, and he mostly got my back and arms and legs. Thank God he didn't use anything on me, just his hands. It seemed to take a long time for him to stop, but I don't guess it was really that long." Gina looked at her, feeling that really she couldn't take this much more. The beautiful Alexandra, beaten and battered. "Allie?" she said. "Please do me a favor?" Allie raised her eyebrows. "Please don't say, it wasn't his fault." Her friend's face twisted in anger. "Wasn't his fault? What do you mean, not his fault? If I had a knife I'd kill the bastard!" Taken aback, Gina felt both glad of this show of spirit and a moment of fright. Just at this moment, she believed she would, and that was nothing she wanted to know about her best friend. "Good," she said after a moment. "I'm sorry, sweetie." Allie shook her head, the flare of temper gone. "I'm sorry, too. I know I've said 'It's over' in the past, and then gone back. But I'm not saying it anymore. My bridges are burned." She looked down at her arms and legs and laughed ruefully. "For good and all." Gina reached over and held her. Allie came into her arms, but Gina had a strong feeling it was more for Gina's sake than her own. Over her shoulder, there was one more bitter sentence in her. "I keep thinking... thank God we didn't have any children." After that they sat in silence, holding each other, Allie's head casually on Gina's shoulder. After a time, she squirmed around to a more comfortable position, and ended with her head in Gina's lap. There she fell asleep, a deep exhausted slumber that left no room for grace. It was nearly seven in the morning, but Gina did not move and eventually leaned over to rest on the couch's cushioned back and fall asleep herself. Allie woke painlessly to the feel of soft hands stroking her temples, smoothing back her sweaty hair. Fingertips so light and graceful that she made no connection whatever with Brent, even in her sleepy mind, swept over her forehead, drew across her eyelids and down her cheekbones. She smiled a little and the fingers trembled a little on her chin, then continued downward, slipping under the edges of the robe to caress her collarbone. Sensation made her shiver. More awake now, she thought again how different a woman's touch was; although with only Brent to compare with (and all his masks finally off), she couldn't know if it were women in particular. With a flash of anger at herself, she wondered how long she would think of Gina's touch only in comparison with Brent's. Gina deserved better. For this reason primarily, she opened her eyes and moved enough to show that she was awake, at which point the hands fell away. Gina's eyes were wide, nearly hypnotized, and her hair was a mussed sandy flare around her face. Allie saw that she had gone a distance in some direction that Allie didn't really understand at the moment. "Good morning," Allie said. She heard pleasure and utter contentment in her own voice and wondered at it. Surely someone who had just been through what she had would be more traumatized this morning? She thought that might be true, if she had any plans to go back. If this were part of the cycle, part of the vicious increasing ugliness that had been going on between her and Brent, then she would be traumatized. But it had been a case of last time pays for all. A case of Brent burning more bridges than he had thought he was. She had not yet told Gina that all the while he was finding new and exciting ways to land a fist on her, he was saying over and over -- almost chanting -- "Don't think you won't be back! Don't think you won't be back!" He had been weeping. Allie had thought Brent believed he was administering this beating for her own good. She thought maybe he had always believed this. She felt more sorry for him than anything else, and with relief she qualified this as a pity for the lesser, not a sympathy for an equal. It was over. Really over. Gina had come out of her slight trance now and was smiling down perfectly normally. "Would you like some breakfast?" she asked softly. "Would I!" There was a difficult moment later that day, while Allie struggled with Gina's offer to let her stay for awhile; caught between some unnameable scruple and her real need. Scruples died rapidly, and she was firmly ensconced in the guest bedroom by sundown. In the weeks that followed, Allie bloomed like a flower of light; and Gina felt less and less like a mother hen and more and more like a woman surprised by awe. She would never get over Allie's strength and fortitude if she lived to be a thousand years old, she thought sometimes. Why, in three weeks she even had someone from the office sending her flowers with badly written poetry, rather unoriginally titled "A Paean to Your Beauty." "What shall I do with this?" Allie said, holding the little card up, with two fingers and wrinkling her nose, as if it were a deceased fish. "He's rather given to romantic aspirations, isn't he?" Gina laughed. "It's touching. It's good for a woman to hear that sort of thing once in a while." She looked again at her friend, speculatively, and said with true concern, "Really, it would be good for you. To get involved. With someone." Allie looked at her. Gina's hair was in its customary sand- colored ponytail. Quite a few wisps had come loose and curled around her face, in which the amber eyes were always startling. Allie looked down, but Gina had caught the unhappiness in her glance and was waiting silently, with kind eyes, for her to come forth. "I don't seem to be interested," she said finally. Call that a half truth, she admonished herself. "I mean, somehow... well, he's a man. I'm not closing any doors," she hastened. "But..." But I'd rather have you. Her mouth was glued shut. She made an honest try to say what was on her mind and could not. "Hush," Gina said at once, and came to sit beside her. Gina brushed her hair back from her shoulder. "You don't have to say it." She leaned forward just a little and pressed her lips softly to Allie's cheek. Allie felt as though her skin had been asleep and was coming awake, all over her body. Gina's kiss left her cheek and touched her lips, softly, softly. Allie closed her eyes and lifted her hand, encountering Gina's cheekbones, sharper than her own. She slid timid fingers over Gina's ear, neck and shoulder, outside the blouse. Then Gina's hand enclosed hers with warmth and caution. Gina drew back. Allie looked at her. That wide eyed, intent look was back, but Gina was moving away, sitting back in her chair so that she was no longer close enough to kiss. "I know," Gina said, continuing the previous conversation in the same understanding tones. "It may or may not be healthy for you to get involved with this guy so soon, even on a casual, friendly level. I think it would: learn something, teach something, be together. But it certainly wouldn't be healthy for you and me...." You're wrong, Allie thought despairingly, you're wrong about that entirely. I may not see everything you see, Gina, but I'm sure about this. There would be nothing more beautiful. Gina leaned close again, holding Allie, her hands warmly circling Allie's shoulderblades. She whispered into her hair: "In our minds, we're already lovers," she breathed, "there's a lot of passion between us, on a deep level." To Allie, that would only mean they should become lovers on a physical plane as well; but she knew that Gina meant it to comfort her for what they would never have. Allie rested her head on her friend's shoulder and decided that above all, above everything else, she must not let this subtle asking and refusing incident taint their friendship. It was worth too much. Her closeness with Gina was the first clean thing Alexandra Washington had come across in a long time. She didn't know that Gina's thoughts were the same. Their fears were delicately balanced, a little more on Gina's side, a little less on Allie's, but their love was equal. So deliberately, over the next few months, she turned her thoughts aside, cooled her interest in her friend on that level, and like a fractious horse pointed it in the direction of men. But they all seemed like angry ogres to her, negatively polarized, ugly minded and aggressive and harsh. She knew that was incorrect programming, a too-strong reaction to what she had been through, but she couldn't seem to shake it. Perhaps she would be celibate until she was eighty and no longer cared. She wasn't losing any sleep over it. Eventually the man in the office, taking cool noncomittal friendliness for impassioned longing with his own special brand of logic, asked Allie to marry him. Gina didn't press for details, but it was clear that her friend had turned him down, in no uncertain language. Jealousy, Allie soliloquized in silence, to the ceiling that night. Sign of a deranged condition that assumes ownership of another human being. Ownership, not only of their will, but of their sexual agenda. Like mineral rights when you claim a piece of land. Marriage, she further defined. The institutionalization of that deranged condition that assumes ownership of another human being. Never again. -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ----