"I've seen lots of lights in the sky. Stars right? But they aren't just north. They are all over. They even have names, some of them." The girl said, misunderstanding his words. The Gyvaka was south, lowland, and way beyond the reach of the Aurora Brig spoke of. Haeli hadn't seen it nor had she been in Lhavit yet long enough to enjoy the clear spring and summer skies where the heavens put on their show.
About his questions on Caiyha, she had a more sure answer. "Yes, I've seen her every day. You have too. I'll explain Brig, I promise. But its hard to understand first without having been somehow touched by Her or to live in the world understanding how it is we live with Her." Haeli added, unsure how to pass knowledge of this kind, of the heart, forward.
Haeli had no real understanding what she was doing to Brig or that she could be distracting. Her whole life she'd been taught humans were ugly, even if she hadn't quite believed that they were finding them more fascinating than Ozantha could have ever known. She assumed Brig felt the same way, especially since like Ozantha, he wasn't human. The witch herself though, was under no such constraints. She found him handsome in a way she had no words for. Beautiful if such thoughts would not embarrass him. It wasn't his form, either, that truly caught her. It was the light in his eyes and his quick and easy expressions. It was his confidence and openness and the way he talked to her like he cared what she thought and felt.
Had it only been a few chimes? Maybe a bell or two?
Ozantha had done her no favors and educated her in the way things should have been. Brig was far more knowledgeable in such things just being an observer of life. Like him Caiyha herself, nature, had been her teacher. Haeli knew the way of things, but felt outside of that circle for more reasons than one. Because of her upbringing and what she'd been taught having been all wrong for her species, there were parts inside of her that were not quite what they should have been; off kilter and misinformed suffering from delusions of inadequacy that her adoptive mother had really had no intention of burdening her with even though it had happened all the same. She'd been raised knowing her mother had wished her to be dhani more than anything instead of the weak little girl with legs instead of a powerful muscled torso. It was one of the reasons she had been taught to shapeshift. The girl had spent more of her life with her lower half in coils than she had using legs, which in all fairness was convenient in a swamp.
And had she been in the same mindset Brig was in, she'd have shifted her lower body into that of a Dhani and invited him to view how beautiful her scales could be and to wrap around her and do a dance of power. Haeli had often wondered what it would be like, entwining with a male. The Dhani were as cruel as they were beautiful, so there were times females didn't survive their first dance.
Males used females to further their status. The more offspring they sired on important females, especially Queens, the more desirable they were to those females that had higher rank. Ozantha had been broken, in a few ways, for as Haeli grew older, it was easier to treat her as Dhani rather than human, and teach her the ways of the Dhani. Males coiled to dominate young females in a matriarchal society where always females ruled. But those Queens were older, far into their wisdom, whereas the younger females were vulnerable. The males would catch the unprotected ones at inopportune times and do one of two things - kill them or inseminate them. Often there was a battle, for who liked to be slain? Females defended their lives and sometimes promoted the violence as much as their male counterparts. It was inhuman and vicious.
Dhani were cruel, and being raised as one, Haeli expected certain things to come cruelty. And she expected them from males, regardless of their race. And in her frolicking, she let Brig's questions go unanswered briefly... the showing him of Caiyha, in exchange for the frolic that expressed her joy of good company and the attention of an attractive male.
When Brig's hand captured her calf and tugged her back, Haeli expected violence. He hadn't done more than hold her hand and touch her lightly before and she had no real baseline for playing, but when he tugged, she let the water's buoyancy drag her lighter body to his where she bumped against him. She automatically thought the worst. Their lengths brushed fully and she reached out to grab at his shoulders instinctively. She felt all of him, his interest, his mirth, and knew she'd been taught the moods of males switched gears in a heartbeat and a hair's breath. She froze, the stupidest thing she could have done, truthfully, and let his eyes capture hers. He would want fight so he could breed, and she'd caused it by imitating the play. That's all males did. She was stupid... so stupid... even as her heart began to race at the thought.
But then her eyes met his and Haeli forgot about cruelty, about coiling with him though a tiny part of her wanted to reach for the form that could do so the best. Instead she lost herself in his so similarly colored eyes and leaned forward to press her forehead against his. No gaze was deeper or more revealing. His soul was in his eyes and the light she saw from it blinded her.
There was no violence to come. There was no forced lover's kiss. In fact, even though their bodies came together intimately, legs brushing legs, hips bumping, breastbone striking breastbone there was something far more monumental going on within them. Haeli took no shock from Brig's form pressed against her own. Instead she was simply welcoming, understanding, accepting. Males showed their pleasure in many ways; she understood this and thought nothing of it. How could she? She was too lost in what she felt.
It would have enraged her to know that what happened between them was bred into him generations ago by a man desperate to want answers to his questions and willing to do anything to see blank lines filled in. Her awareness of it was far more acute than an average humans would be due to the gnosis mark that graced her belly beneath her naval and above her pubis. It made her open to him, aware of him, acutely sensitive to his nature and to his needs. They spoke the same language, had blended awareness to do so, and now with this on the heels of that, the bonding that was happening was far stronger than it should have been so newly forged.
She was lost in the sensation of the it. It was arcane and spiritual and physical all in ways Haeli would be hard pressed to describe. It came upon them both hard, like icy foreign fingers of what will be invading them both and linking them up. There was no choice in it. The fingers of djed and spirit were coated amber like their eyes, blending soul to soul and linking them in ways that most kelvic bonded pairs only briefly touched on. Hard. Fast. Certain. Nature took no gentleness with them. He was hers. Just like that. Marcus Kelvic had designed it thus, willing slavery in all but name. Had she been anything but a marked of Caiyha's, the moment would have been of as much note as simply passing going to a merchant in exchange for needed goods. But Brig hadn't bonded young or repeatedly. He'd grown into his own and learned to use his mind before the will of others stole it away. His prime cost her something that most humans didn't have to pay to own another living thing. She felt as given away in the bond, handed over, which was something rare for most kelvics didn't bond to followers of Caiyha or grow so old before they bonded. Haeli paid for Brig's ownership with pieces of her own soul that were bartered out like coin exchanged for its true weight in tradegoods. Will. Awareness. Dependence. Some of his became hers, just enough, so that between them there would always be an equality that most bondmates didn't share.
The swamp witch who'd never uttered a fearful sound in her life whimpered. She caught hold of Brig even harder, and laid her head on his shoulder shaking slightly, letting the water hold them both up. She knew something had happened even without his body joining hers and leaving his seed. They'd joined alright, but not in the way she'd been thinking or the way Brigs body had felt would be best. But they tangled in a dangerous way, for both of them, because the man who'd played god had never designed it to happen between two such as them. Kelvics were tools, things owned, loyalty unquestioned. They didn't own. They didn't demand. They didn't impose their wills and needs on those who should have been their masters. But Haeli was bound by a higher authority to serve. Her duty was to the wilds and Brigs was part of that which was wild.
So he claimed her as neatly as his bond had gifted him to her. And while it felt natural and normal to the Kelvic, something wholly complete, the swamp witch was completely blindsided. And as the bond finished solidifying with her wrapped in his arms by her own doing, he felt his awareness expand outward. His mind long robbed of full humanity, due to the nature of his being only mimicking it, suddenly began to flood with knew knowledge, sharper intellect, and greater potential. A strong bond didn't so much as grant the kelvic his mistress' mind. It rather formed a key to unlock his own.
He became something more in that instant, like a new tool finally placed against a grindstone to at last grant it an edge. Dangerously, his intelligence began to expand outward and embrace what he was meant to be. In the beginning they were walkers of worlds, seekers, bent on a quest to find that which was lost and beloved of their Master and Creator. Now though, he was something still much like that, something dangerous and capable, but the missing task was given a name and a shape. He wasn't to seek lost places to find something missing to the Kelvic family. He'd found Haeli. And she was his task.
Even if she didn't quite realize it or understand it. Dragging a deep breath the girl opened her eyes and pressed backwards. There was an unwillingness to speak words that needed to pass between them. There was a stark terror of loosing herself, of slavery, of linking to deeply or knowing too much. But it was far too late. The thing between them was already done. Hard, fast, giving both of them no choice and no chance to question. Haeli swam backwards, releasing Brig completely, her face a mask of confusion. And Brig knew instinctively she just needed a moment, some space, for humans weren't as equipped for and capable of what had happened as the kelvics themselves were.
She tried to cover for it. The witch drew a deep breath, took two more strokes backwards. Her bravery was false, all bravado, as she plastered normalcy on her features and pretended to look around, taking her awareness from him. But it would never stray far from him, ever, until the bond was broke either by his choice or death. That was the power of the kelvic.
"Cai... Caiyha... is... is...." She reached up and brushed wet hair out of her eyes, trying desperately to finish the conversation from earlier. She stopped, closing her mouth before even finishing the sentence. It wasn't the conversation they needed to have at that time. It probably wasn't even one they could have. And secretly, somewhere back in a more reasonable place in Haeli's mind, she wondered if Caiyha wasn't laughing, bright eyed and viciously at the utter confusion in her favored.