Page 38 of Finding Her Luck
Must settle all.
They dried each other, brisk and efficient. Since he had picked her clothes, he helped her dress in them after belting his own covering. He slid something over her arms, had her bend forward, and put her breasts in place in the fabric, adjusting the belt on the bottom and straps over her shoulders to fit snug against her skin. Square patches of delicate white material covered and supported her generous chest. The shoulder straps and the fabric belt that lifted her breasts felt comfortable, and she knew it would be easy to forget she wore it. When his mouth quickly darted to suck an imprudent, hardened nipple into his mouth, she gasped. The material was so light, it went translucent and disappeared. She still felt the straps at her shoulders, but his mouth could have been on exposed flesh. Thoroughly wet, he blew on her nipple to watch it stiffen further, begging in his direction for more. She shivered at the feel of his hot breath. Urku-ri smiled at Corrin with great, masculine satisfaction. His mouth made the remarkable material disappear everywhere he wet it. It felt like she was dressed in a few straps, no covering at all.
Another find from the steel cities, definitely not village made, Corrin had never heard of anything like it. Snorting at his expression, she pushed at his waist; he appeared as pleased as if he had invented the revealing, invisible cloth.
"This is not the only thing I am wearing. It does not count as clothing," she told him.
He grunted, handed her wool stockings that went from her toes to high on her thigh, before strapping an elastic belt around her waist with dangling soft clips that caught the stockings in three places on each leg to keep them up. Next, he gave her a skirt that went to her knees, like a child's, only it fit her waist and over her wide hips. A loose sleeved leather top, long in the arms and covering her hands fit over her like a light coat, with only one tie over her breasts. Her own boots, still in good condition, went on last. The only familiar piece of clothing.
There was no mirror. Corrin was covered. But Urku-ri showed her as he helped her dress that the outfit was more about her new husband being able to touch her intimately whenever he desired and have her feel every sensation, than about covering her up in a respectful manner. She frowned at him. All her bits were clothed, she was warm, but she still felt indecent.
He touched her lips with one finger. "My Corrin."
For the first time in what felt like weeks, she combed her hair with a real hairbrush instead of Urku-ri doing it for her with his claws. But he wouldn't give her anything to bind it.
Not having hair on his body, he often played with hers.
He led her up a tunnel, then up stairs that formed out the floor in a natural, impossible cascade, and finally, through a tunnel that went straight up. He set her on a thick, metal ladder, took a place behind her, and told her to climb.
It became dark and claustrophobic quickly. Just behind her, Urku-ri touched her and said the word for "light" in Orki.
Blue lights flicked on. Modern and shocking. She understood electricity, power, and the concepts, but she was in the middle of stone-age Orki territory. It made no sense. Her heart stuttered in anxiety at the strangeness. Unable to find a way to understand, Corrin took a fortifying breath and kept climbing.
Urku-ri started to purr. "Safe, Corrin."
They climbed for minutes. Corrin followed the lights until the tunnel ended, and she crawled out of it. When her hand touched the floor, more lights came on, a million blue lights on the floor, glowing softly, and up the walls to the ceiling, like stars.
A female voice, the owner hidden, spoke a greeting in Orki.
"Kor-ui, Urku-ri.Kro-ui, Corrin, Urku-riso-humonn-ror'si-ess.Welcome, Urku-ri. Welcome, Corrin, Urku-ri's wife, mate, lover, friend."
Urku-ri answered and the voice switched to common. "Hello, Corrin, I am Eid. It is nice to meet you. Welcome to Home World One."
"Where are you?" Corrin turned a circle in the strange room.
Urku-ri went over to a wall, touched it, and Corrin watched it change.
It transformed.
She knew it was technology. Suddenly, she was thankful for the schooling that had taught her reading, writing, basic farming skills, history, and all about the wonders of the modern world. Because what she was seeing was beyond her every idea of reality. The wall rippled like water, until a large black square, with a shelf of buttons and screens appeared beneath it.
"I am here, Corrin. I am not a person. I can see you, hear you, read your life signs. I can understand you, but I am not alive in the same way an organic creature like you and Urku-ri are alive. I am the voice of the aircraft from a race of humanoid beings that left this galaxy behind centuries ago. Although what you see before you may seem new to you, since you grew up on the Peace river, in truth, it is ancient. Like the
Orki, I have been here a very long time."
Urku-ri came up behind her, steadying Corrin with a hand on her shoulder as the black panel became a view screen. She had seen a smaller version before. Steel city teachers had them as well as many tourists. This one took up a good part of the wall in front of her. It changed colors, and the colors became shapes, became pictures.
"Tell all, Eid. Tell from beginning."
"Yes, Urku-ri." On the screen she saw thin, long-armed white creatures with big eyes and no mouths standing over tables. On the tables she saw war beasts that looked dead. "The creators were creatures of extreme intelligence with weak bodies. At one time, they manipulated other races, paid them, or enslaved them into defending their kind or making war on their behalf. But when the creators developed the first artificial organic, intelligent being, they realized they could create their own armies for defense or in offense, whatever the need may be."
The screen changed to pictures of armies. Rows of beings, with all kinds of machines. Corrin didn't have words for what she was seeing. This was military might that would roll over her world like a farmer's plow in a ready field, destroying it with ease. "Using natural material, the wargs from the planet Dorcus, human DNA, and samples from other planets, with the knowledge to code at the cellular level, the creators made their own army. They designed each soldier in their army based on their role: interstellar navigators, medics, communications, infantry, munitions; every part of their functioning army created in a lab. The Orki were born in that lab." The screen showed the various creator designs at attention in their ranks by the hundreds. Some of them bore a resemblance to the Orki, many did not.
The screen went back to show a giant female war beast on a table surrounded by the creator aliens, her belly swollen. The thin-armed big heads sliced her open from neck to tail, her fetal sacs of unborn young spilling out. Before her eyes, Corrin saw what looked like gray, undeveloped humanoid babies, curled round like small boulders, as well as kits, war beast kits.
Corrin covered her mouth with her hand and leaned back into Urku-ri's embrace. Blinking back tears.
The thing unfolding in front of her was a horror. A revelation. It felt impossible. Beyond. Beyond everything.
