Masks
Tia tries so hard to be strong. I understand her tenacity, her pride. She aims to be the pillar of constant reassurance. It's as though she wears porcelain masks, carved and painted by the most skilled craftsmen into all the fundamental shapes of a millennial sovereign. For a time after my return, she even had a smiling mask she wore for me.
But sometimes her sturdy strides falter. Her knees give, and she finds herself on her hands, head bowed, with no resolve to regain her steps. It is behind closed doors that Tia drops her porcelain masks.
She tries so terribly hard to be strong. I see it. The strain in her knuckles as she keeps from blasting away those insolent cajolers. The tension in her back as she hunches over repetitive proposals for hours. The mute of her eyes since they never seem to sparkle as brightly as they could when she laughs with me.
The Tia I remember, past my cloudy memories attached to a once jealous veil, is not the Tia I have now. The Tia that once smiled with the gleam of her sun is not the Tia who now only plasters a stiff recreation of that brilliance on her countenance. She is not the Tia that curls on my bed when her unmasking is to too frightening to handle alone.
I kiss her pain away, never her tears, because she hardly opens herself up enough for those to fall. But the pain she gives to me, and I take it gladly. I smooth back her dancing day-break tresses, and kiss along her temple and hairline. When she sighs, I swear I can see her anguish drift away.
There was a night, like others very very sparse, when it came time to shed herself of the beautiful lies she daily adorns. They come off quickly, scarcely in time to bid my hall guards goodnight or to hear my embellished door clunk shut.
She was trembling that night. She had never trembled. I couldn't get her to speak a single word or calm her down. It worried me, which wouldn't do. I had to be stable when she could not be.
I kissed her temple and caressed her hair. Her eyes wandered, disconnected from where we were in the world. As I lay beside her, I did something new. I kissed her hands, trying to erase the strain in the hills of her knuckles.
Her fingers twitched, marginal success, but that was still something: the hope of a teether for the anchor I was to become. For a moment, her eyes swam to mine in the darkness as my lips pressed into the valleys at the bottom of her fingers. Her weariness was plain and she made me enter it in the darting seconds I was able to bring her back to earth. There was so much resignation, question, dimming fury, and trepidation towards her lot in life.
Then she was gone.
I needed to pull her back, to save her before she was trapped by her cave in. I opened her palm and kissed her there too.
Again, for a fleeting moment Tia was not a stranger to me. This was good, as long as she was responding, I was sure I was doing something right.
When my lips had found the surface of her hand, I moved to her other one. I had her attention. The distance was gone and she watched me with an eerie curiosity, but I was not deterred.
It must have been my breath, or the sensation of my lips too light, too ticklish, but she made a noise this time as I kissed her inner wrist. My eyes shot to hers, ready to apologize for any discomfort or shock, but I found none in her expression. Instead an entrapping force, her gaze bid me to kiss her again.
A faint part of me, critical and wary, warned me to tread cautiously. But why? I was helping Celestia. Nothing more.
My lips pressed her soft skin once again. My blue eyes never leaving her rose. Her lips, once trembling, ever so slightly parted.
“Please,” her woe wrangled voice rasped.
Please? But what did please mean? The small caution in my heart spoke to me again. Careful.
Please what? Careful of...?
All I wanted to do was help her, my Tia.
Her eyes begged. They asked for more.
With tremendous speed, more turned into an avalanche of thoughts and actions. The trepidation, the pensivity, the hushing of that little voice that wondered why I was not against this.
She pleaded to me. With her watery eyes and quivering inhales. With her needy, urgent fingers and her very persuasive groans. Nudging me, pulling me towards her. At some point my lips had begun slipping the pads of her fingers into my mouth and when my teeth accidentally grazed her, I lost my better sense to her well-being. If you could count a naked Tia panting below me as her well-being.
Would this heal her pain or simply mask it?
I could not know, but my efforts thus far seemed to ease her troubled spirit, so I would not stop just yet.
I lowered myself to her, pausing at the delicate fold that waited eagerly for my lips. This could take the sadness away, I thought. A gentle touch and intimate attention. That is what she needs and if she cannot trust me, her best friend, her sister, who else could she turn to in this moment of grand vulnerability. She could never let them see her downtrodden. Immortals do not bleed. Well, so it is rumored.
She grew impatient at my curious eyes, placing a hand on my head and leading me closer to her center. I quickly understood and guided myself the rest of the way, letting my tongue graze her heat.
Her head fell back and her throat granted me an encouraging sound of her pleasured gasp. I myself could not hold back the excitement that built up in me. If the heady scent of her arousal had not been hinted to it, I was sure now that the flavor of her need on my tastebuds was my new favorite.
My tongue moved against her, brushing from her wet entrance to the swollen bud above. I was no novice in regards to pleasing women, but in this situation I felt as though I needed to compensate, of course to show my sister how much I cared and appreciated her, but I also felt compelled to show off for big sister. It couldn’t be helped.
And what was a little showing off if it only added to her satisfaction.
I savored every drop of Tia’s nectar just as much as I did her moans and whimpers. Her fingers coiled in my hair, pulling in a delightfully rough way, though I doubt she was actively aware of doing so half the time. I groaned gravelly into her, adding a rumbling sensation that I could tell was shooting up her spine.
She called my name as her hips bucked, my hand spread flatly over her stomach while the other entwined her free one. Tia was close to coming over the edge and I was ready to catch her when she came crashing back down to earth.
Like rolling dew on the edge a leaf, her hips hung in the air once my lips suckled her clit. Then she dropped, my name the splash and echo once she landed, flat and still, save the few tremors that rippled through her body.
I kissed my way back up her stomach and then under her chin. When I reached her lips she pulled me in tightly, threading her fingers through my hair again and tugging while she drank her flavour off my lips.
She rolled us over and I wanted to protest. This was about her and her heavy heart, not me.
But she wouldn’t have it, and I was weak against her persistent tongue wedging itself past my teeth and brushing my gums.
Foolishly, I looked into her eyes. They were no longer brimming with tears or dimmed by grief, but instead her spinel eyes blazed with heated promise that made my lower stomach dip.
Never had I seen her so possessive, but that night her ravishing lips and quick fingers claimed me. I do not know when my clothes were gone anymore than I know when she had begun to caress my wetness with her tongue. I was swallowed in the tide of her consuming passion.
In the works of my third orgasm, it was then that I managed to gather my wits. I could think past her grazing nails on the tip of my nipples and her tireless tongue stimulating my pulsing bud.
Was this wrong, I managed to wonder, now that the intentions were changed? While I wanted nothing but to ease my sister's pained heart, Tia clearly wanted to make more of this situation than healing.
This was exceeding a simple ‘thank you’ or reciprocation for good measure. This was Tia actually pleasuring me and, I dare say, enjoying it. I can not lie and say I did not as well.
Possession, dominance, control. I felt them all explode across my skin from every point of contact between us. They struck through the thickened air like lightning in water, jolting white hot aftershocks every time ours eyes met.
Her lips on mine and the smell of her exertion in my nose told me of more than the power she held, but of the power she sought. She too was performing. For me and for herself. To show that she could be useful in more than just a political way, to please with more than just a tempered grace, to assure herself that she could do more than be only a princess, but a desired and appreciated lover.
Quickly, I realized she was losing herself before me, and there was no one else she could do this for. She wanted to let herself go and this- I was the safety line that let her venture into the unknown without drifting too far.
Was this love or lust, compassion or consumption?
She and I were now eye level, her fingers pumping between my legs. As one of my hands mimicked her, plunged knuckles deep in her clenching heat, the other entwined with her hair, grazing her scalp and keeping her lips sealed to mine.
When she peaked for the last time, clenching then quivering then petering out in calm waves, I followed soon after. She rested her head against my shoulder while her arm lay on my torso. There was a silence that stretched as the drumming of our hearts calmed, and within that silence was the return of our sense- if we had ever had any at all.
I could feel her against me, much differently now than in the seconds before, where every tangible sensation of her was mingled in desire. Tia, with her body in a fetal curl to my side, felt small, in the same way one imagines their size in the vastness of the universe.
I could feel her contemplating, wondering what to make of this, and some part of me worried she would try her politician excuses for this moment we shared.
I wouldn’t allow it, not after all the crossed boundaries and release this night brought. I too felt myself wonder what this would mean for us, but I refused to let this become a regret, no matter the outcome.
Just as I predicted, she started to speak of apologies and having unclear thoughts, but I challenged her. This was something you needed. This is what snapped you out of that depleted state. This is what gave you a meaning not forced onto you.
I told her that it was not best to ruin such an new experience on a sour note: things like right and wrong. She was still, most importantly, my sister. We had tomorrow to deal with this.
“Thank you,” she said, looking not at me but at the depths of my soul. Peace flooded me from her words.
That night, Tia slept in my arms, our bare skin pressing to one another. Tomorrow was only hours away, but it could have been an eternity as far as either of us were concerned.
Author's Note
I'm trash.
This story's trashing.
Everything is trash.
On a serious note this was supposed to be a writing exercise on character consistency. I wanted to see if I could write a whole piece in one character's voice. Did I do Luna justice?
