WATER NEST

1541 4D

Andrew took Leil‘s hand, his heart pounding, and together they entered the grotto.

Leil Adrili was twenty-two, and Andrew Luce was twenty. She was Astran Terxil Coll, but he was Darko Hejj Coll, so her father Triesh counted his beamer cartridges and issued threats: their colls feuded.

But Andrew loved her beyond anything, even his own life; her rich brown hair and eyes and skin, her strong supple body, her firm and tender way with him, and her laugh that showered on him like sweet rain, all drew him like a sugar fly.

It was infatuation at first, but it grew and spread beyond passion into calm places where they were friends, and knew each other’s hearts almost as well as each other’s bodies.

This evening, they met secretly in Poly Town, by the Falling Wall, a sheet of water that coursed down over rough-hewn bedrock to pool in a green-streaked limestone grotto just off The Street of Shines.

The grotto was called Water Nest. Tunneled out into the rock behind it was a maze of barely-lit, stone-carved alleyways lined with erotic friezes, and dozens of tiny bedcells where lovers found brief privacy in the teeming City. The front of Water Nest was a music spot with a wide polished black dance floor.

It was supposed to be safe here; the young Astran cocks of Leil‘s family never came down here from their lattice up higher, in Fortovo Zone.

Andrew and Leil began with a dance. Always in Water Nest the slow, tripled beat of the sandrukha throbbed, in a bass below hearing. This was the music of loving, music that everyone in every coll in every city knew in their blood. Several couples moved gracefully across the floor.

Andrew and Leil, wearing soft dark-blue skinsuits, made a circle of their arms, hands resting on each other’s shoulders. Then, with backs erect and chests thrust forward, chins lowered and eyes locked, they stepped with the slowest pulse around the circle of their arms, first left two steps, dip and pivot, then right two, dip and pivot, thrusting each foot out to land on the toe. Three times through it all, the underbass shaking their chests and spines: the heat began to rise in Andrew.

This was the opening to the sandrukha, the greatest and most erotic of the slow dances. Still linked, Leil and Andrew slid hands to each other’s waists and repeated the steps three times again, inching closer with each turn until their near hips touched, rubbing slightly, between each dip and turn. Leil‘s smile turned mischievous.

Now the third of three: the figure repeated, but now their hands were above their heads, and their faces inclined close together as their bodies gently pressed and rubbed after each turn. When they turned, Leil‘s breast brushed Andrew‘s chest softly, then freed itself to be replaced by its twin. He groaned in his throat.

A new figure of movement now: they drew outward, arms extended across their napes, sliding out until they circled at the limit of their fingertips. They faced each other, fingers touching, and made the sandrukha‘s deep bow, the forward right knee bent full, the rear leg extended straight out behind, the back arched forward and the face to the floor. Submission to passion.

Rise, a half step forward, repeat. Again. The music mounted, and now Leil and Andrew bowed with their heads on each other’s shoulders, and rose to stand face to face.

As they continued, the music swelled around them, and they forgot everyone else. Andrew caressed Leil as they passed each other, again and again, and as they strode haughty together in the midst of the dance she passed her far hand from his sternum down over his belly to where his sex swelled.

At last the sandrukha paused; this was the mounting to the next level of the dance, when the pace quickened. This time, they could stand to go no further on the dance floor; they turned and hurried into the grotto’s tunnel maze.

They slipped past another shadowy couple into a cell of their own and locked its heavy plast door. The air vents breathed softly; a rivulet of water streamed down to a blue-tinted pool in a wall niche. The walls ran with soft, warm images; mingled sweet scents tinted the air itself.

They stood by the bed, trembling, and peeled off their coveralls and bodysuits. Leil‘s long fingers caressed herself as she drew the second of the bodysuit‘s sleeves away from her dark-bronze forearm, revealing the long decorative scrollings of the Astran Terxil Coll inscription carved in her skin.

Drunken with warmth and loving, they lay exhausted for a long time; then at last they rose, cleansed and dressed, and found their way out to where food was served.