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At My Lady's Whim

My name is Kinari, and my Lady Steerer is going to drive me insane.

She is an alfin woman from the planet Siivill, which means she has a slender, pointed face, long ears on the side of her head covered in fur, and more fur that goes down her shoulders and her back to the outside of her midthigh. She’s almost twice my height and stunningly gorgeous. And, like most alfin, she only wears clothes when it’s ceremonially necessary, or when the whim takes her to accentuate her already unfair beauty.

She is a master of the Discipline of the Celestial Pull, a particular school of gravity magic. She has a network of metal wires and crystals called a celestyad embedded in her body that, together with a whole lot of very complicated ritual equipment, amplifies her power enough to fling a spaceship at hyperluminal velocity with almost no effort at all. She’s in charge of propelling our ship, the Pernicious Needle, towards the edge of the universe, where one day she or someone else will commit the Great Blasphemy and kill the Raveller who created the universe, cementing the Paramount Alliance as the new and only gods.

I’m her apprentice. It could end up being me in that throne, slaying the First God.

It probably won’t be, though. It’s been five years and we’re not even a tenth of the way there.

For most of the trip so far, she hasn’t bothered actually teaching me much. She’s been content with having me wait on her hand and foot like a maid while I study the theory. Which I put up with, because she’s a terror if you don’t do as she says. But now, all of a sudden, something’s lit a fire under her, and she’s decided to become a more hands-on teacher. In the most literal sense.

Right now, we’re in her stupidly enormous bed, and she has her arms around me like I’m a teddy bear, and I cannot focus on what I’m actually supposed to be doing at all.

I should explain. Alfivin don’t sleep in the traditional sense. Their consciousness is uninterrupted. While their body rests, their mind wanders around in space, staring at stars and contemplating the great mysteries of the universe. It’s called cosmofugue. This ability of theirs to disconnect their mind from their body is why alfivic ships work the way they do.

In order to one day be able to use a celestyad, and moreso to be worthy of the honor of having one implanted, I need to be able to enter a similar trance. I’ve been trying on my own, but I’ve never been that good at meditating. I get distracted every time. (Usually by thoughts of my Lady, who refuses to vacate my mind as steadfastly as she refuses to get off my case.)

So my Lady has come up with a new exercise. She wants me to sleep close to her and feel the “currents” caused by her cosmofugue. Never mind that I still barely have any idea what I’m looking for. Never mind that having a giant woman wrapped around me would make it hard to focus even if I wasn’t a hopeless little lesbian.

Alfivic society considers a calm mien a noble trait, and my Lady is nothing if not noble. When she hasn’t been woken up early, anyway. By her standards, and she will frequently tell me exactly what she thinks of me, I am an emotional mess. She has no idea just how right she is.

It’s maddening how casually she decided on this particular course of study. How little she seems to think of welcoming me into her bed. How warm she is against my back. How I can feel her soft and slow heartbeat on the nape of my neck.

I am not going to get a single wink of sleep tonight, I can already tell.