Eye of the Ocean Book 3 Ji'jin Station

Eye of the Ocean – Book 3: Ji’Jin Station
lassitude. “I'd forgotten this part of being pregnant,” she added, blinking hard to
keep her eyes working. Could she make it to her bed?
A red disk was in his hand but she didn't feel the scan, only his fingers on her
skin. “The change in worlds has upset the rhythm of the wassilk periods.” A
gentle irony was in his voice. “We are all captives of our body's needs. I've seen
this happen many times on the ships I've been on. There is no harm done to the
child.”
The desk would do, she thought, head down on her folded arms, stupidly
seeking to find the proper scent in the cloth of her uniform.
Captives indeed, she thought. Tu'pin as much as she was. What scent did he
seek, drugged until his only response to her presence was a slow flaring of his
nostrils. Did he know she was pregnant? The difference in her scent would
normally have told him, but now?
She was aware of Awillykh closing the door, the light going from a flood to a
trickle, and then his hands were on her again. “Not paltin, but better than a
desktop,” he said as he pulled her head onto his lap. “I've done this many times
as well. Even if the need isn't as instinctive with freeborn, it's still a comfort.”
A hand moved on her crest, smoothing the heat bloom down to let it rise
again, stirring the air. She thought she might feel the added coolness.
“An inconvenient time?” she heard asked in a different voice. And couldn't
move, the wassilk stupor paralyzing her.
“Very inconvenient,” Awillykh answered, alarm in his voice.
Their guards?
A trickle of domestic Net reached her, the response to Awillykh's call and
consisting only of a disavowal of the need to act and feeling filtered as though
coming from a much higher level. She pushed herself up, dizzy with the effort. An
abortive attempt at yuin sight made the room flicker.
And as quickly resolved to a banded red haze from the light of Grandfather
coming between the slits of the shutters. A juvenile Piltsimic stood across room,
the black and white patches of his skin only briefly covered with shorts. More
curly hair than shorts, like a pelt and all of it dark in color.
“Obviously Cam'lt Temple has no objections to your presence here,” she said,
finding her balance by holding onto the edge of the desk. “But that does not...”
“Objections, hell. Cam'lt Temple is damned relieved to have me here.” Without
waiting for her invitation, the Piltsimic sat cross-legged at the desk, his tiny dark
eyes staring at her. In the striped red light, the hand's breadth patches of light
and dark seen most clearly on his face combined to make her feel nauseous.
A hand was on her shoulder. Awillykh, standing behind her now, she felt the
tension in him. A deep breath and she continued, “Will I need to push the limits of
the Guest-right afforded me? In my present state, and finding myself quite
Laurel Hickey www.2morrow.bc.ca