Date:         Wed, 26 Apr 1995 10:57:52 -0300
From:         Pandora 
Subject:      FLUFF:  Shades of Gray, Part 22

Keep those cards and letters coming, folks. We still love to hear
your comments, and welcome all suggestions, undying professions, er,
professions of undying love, publishing contracts, five-thousand dollar
advances...

The Merry Fluffsters:
Baron Gideon Redoak (fraser@vax.library.utoronto.ca)
The Gray Adept (jgra@music.stlawu.edu)
Pandora (wallacel@ac.dal.ca)

* * *
Shades of Gray, Part 22

c.  1995, A. Fraser, J. Gray, L. M. Wallace
* * *

The Adept was casually tossing stones into the surf when Pandora
touched his mind from behind.  He turned to greet her as she
approached, her cloak billowing in the salty sea breeze.

"I'm sorry to keep you waiting," she said, somewhat breathlessly.
"I waited until Nicholas had left for the club." She glanced quickly at
him, meeting his eyes briefly, then looked downwards, fiddling
with a button on her cloak.  She sighed heavily.  "I am sorry that
this has all been so difficult, that we cannot even meet privately
without it arousing suspicion."

The Adept dismissed this apology by tossing the rest of his gathered
pebbles into the foam.  "I would be more than a fool if I didn't
expect it to be so."  He smiled reassuringly.  "At least they seem
to have swallowed the need for the ritual...and that I must be a part
of it."

"Yes," Pandora nodded her agreement.  "Yes, they did.  I thought you
were sunk when Michael mentioned your connection to Ravensbrook."
Pandora paused awkwardly.  "You--" she began, but was unable to form
the question.

"One meets many people in a lifetime, Pandora."  He seemed lost in the
waves, distant and unreachable.  "I meet many of the night.  Often,
those meetings have been beneficial.  Often, they have not."  He
turned and looked at her, his eyes hard with sincerity and past
suffering.  "Of all the Earth's kindred I've met, Ravensbrook was
one of the more dangerous.  I try to avoid moral evaluations in my
work, but I was not sorry when I heard that the Brotherhood had
gotten rid of him."

Pandora nodded in understanding.  "It is unfortunate, this
connection, but it can be overcome.  Perhaps it is best for you
to leave the past lie.  To what purpose--"

"No!" The Adept snapped, his manner very uncharacteristic. "Nothing
pains me more than that my association with him should return
at a moment such as this.  I am not an angry man, usually, but to
share his reputation in this most difficult moment makes me very mad.
Can Gideon...or Genevieve ever trust me now?  Am I to be blacklisted
from the Brotherhood, from Fletcherville, because years ago I sought
an informant and nearly lost my head for it?  It is not right, Pandora.
It is not right."

He looked at the sea again, his composure maintained with the barest
thread.  Pandora touched him gently on the shoulder and jumped slightly
at the minor jolt from the contact.  "I trust you," she whispered.

He grabbed her hand and pulled her towards him in one sudden gesture.
His embrace was firm and she was yielding.  He scanned her face, his
gaze fervently orbiting her eyes, as if somewhere other than in her
oh-so-similar irises lay the answers to his deep and complicated feelings.
His eyes lingered on her mouth, the rosy fullness of the lower lip,
and he was caught again in a web of desire that seemed to emanate not
from within him but between them.  He leaned forward to brush his
lips against hers softly, increasing the pressure when he felt her
respond, tentatively tasting the silken sweetness with his tongue.

"That matters," he murmured against her mouth.  "That matters very
much."

"I trust you," Pandora repeated, her voice trembling, turning
her face away to break the contact of their mouths.  "I trust you, but
this is not right, either."

"This?" Pain and confusion played tricks on his expression and his grasp
loosened slightly.

"I cannot do this," Pandora explained as she pushed weakly against his
narrow chest.  "I am sorry," her eyes pleaded for understanding and
for forgiveness, feeling she had promised more with her actions than
she could fulfil.

"But you want to." It was not a question.

"But I cannot." Her voice was now a whisper again.

"But you *want* to." His voice was as quiet but not as weak.  He
gripped her arms, his eyes fixed on hers with a penetrating gaze.

"YES!" the word exploded from her, propelling her from his grasp.
She turned and stumbled to her knees on the rough beach pebbles.

The Adept rushed to her side in order to help her to her feet.  "That
is all I needed to know."

Pandora whirled from his grasp.  "All you needed to know?!" she almost
screamed.  "All you needed to know?" she repeated.  Her confusion could
only find expression in incredulous anger.  "I need so much...*want*
so much more than to KNOW.  I feel drawn to you, pulled against my
will.  You would turn my desires against me, Adept?  Manipulate me
with this telepathic obsession," she paused, looking at his hands,
the hands through which he had spoken to her in the car.  "I love
Nicholas, but you make me desire you.  I *trusted* you!  And all you
want to know is that you've succeeded?!"  She turned away, struggling
to fight back the angry tears that were threatening to fall. Could
Nicholas be right?  Was she wrong to have trusted him after all?  And
what did this mean for Genevieve?

The Adept looked truly shocked, his hands held palm upwards at his
sides.  "Pandora, I am not operating by my own will, either.  Even
if you weren't already involved with Nicholas, this desire would be
strange.  It is *hollow*, somehow."  He shook his head.  "I don't
know.  I'm just not feeling myself of late."  He caught sight of
his human hands and could not help but grunt at the irony.

"Hollow?  Hollow..." she repeated, in imitation of his chosen words,
struggling to contemplate their meaning.  Finally she smiled, turning
to face him. "Do not fear, my friend Adept, I do not misinterpret your
meanings.  This is not," she said, gesturing between them, "this is not
born of love, I know that.  And it is not born of desire, and yet it is
desire..." she trailed off, suddenly helpless in her revelation, helpless
to explain the desire that *was* clearly present, a desire that was
threatening to assume complete control over her, despite her efforts
to keep it at bay.

Her breasts heaved as she struggled to take control of her
breathing, of her wild feelings.  She forced herself to hold his
gaze, to study the expression in those eyes so like her own, to
determine, if she could, whether he spoke the truth.  As she
felt her consciousness briefly touched by his again, swirling in a
sea of gray, she knew that her fears were unfounded and that her
instinctive trust of him was right and true.  After a moment of tense
and uncertain silence, she finally stated the obvious.  "I do not
understand this."

"Nor I," the Adept agreed.  "There is much I do not understand about
you...about us."  He looked away and then back, his frustration
trapping him like a caged animal.

Pandora met his eyes as he turned back towards her, her head cocked
to one side as she tried to ponder further what he meant.  Then, her
head snapped back to perpendicular with a jolt.  "The dancing!"

"Yes, the dancing," he nodded.  "What is *that* about?"

"Magick," Pandora stated simply.  "We...travel when we dance.  Or, at
least, when we've danced.  Has this ever happened to you before?"

The Adept shook his head.

"Me neither," she agreed.  "I mean, outside of my own ritual, my own
spirituality and healing.  But this is not my type of magick...and I
don't think it is yours, either."

Again, he shook his head in agreement.

"Then what?" Pandora pondered.  Her thoughts could find no answer nor
even a persuasive theory.

"That is not all." The Adept interrupted his pensive swaying.

"What do you mean?"

"The ritual," he suggested.  "Whatever it's final form, I think it
will involve dancing...or some like movement."

Pandora gasped at the realization.  "Goddess," she murmured.

As the implications of this dangerous possibility played out in her
mind, Pandora paced the beach in great agitation.  "We must plan this
ritual carefully.  We must take this into account.  That could be
what this weird desire is all about..."  The thought brought her
up short,  "Couldn't it?"

The Gray Adept shrugged.  "Beats me," he said, finally grasping the
adolescent idiom.

"But don't you see, we can't go through with this ritual if we don't
know what this, this, power will do.  How can we understand it better?
Genevieve's life is at stake.  I don't--" she broke off, then, and
looked at him helplessly.  "We must resolve this somehow, before
the ritual."

The Adept nodded gravely, his eyes seeking the horizon.

"Perhaps then...perhaps we must dance," Pandora said softly.

* * *

Date:         Sat, 29 Apr 1995 17:25:22 -0300
From:         Pandora 
Subject:      FLUFF:  Shades of Gray, Part 23

This scene contains mild erotic content.  You've been warned.  *smile*

* * *

Shades of Gray, Part 23

c.  1995, A. Fraser, J. Gray, L. M. Wallace

{fraser@vax.library.utoronto.ca, jgra@music.stlawu.edu, wallacel@ac.dal.ca}

* * *

"Perhaps we must dance," Pandora repeated, her eyes locking with the Adept's
as he turned to face her.  A sudden gust of wind lifted her hair, sending
it swirling around her face.  Her cloak billowed up around her arms,
revealing the simple wool dress she had worn that accentuated her generous
curves, with a colour that matched her eyes.  She nodded slightly at the
Adept, at something he had said, and yet he had not spoken.  She took a
small tentative step towards him.

The sea foam took on the texture of clouds at sunset, spraying spice
rather than salt.  Somewhere, green grass tinkled like windchimes as an
orange breeze caressed its shoots.  Pandora's agitation melted
away as she felt once again the Adept's calm resolve.  There was a
way to better understand she realized as her limbs floated in
warm oil-air.  It had been there all along, the Adept admitted.  In
his dreams, in their longing--some message imprinted on the
very core of their being.  Its source was nameless; its purpose
as yet unknown.  But it was there.  It was a part of them, and they a
part of some greater mystery.  It was a connection that precluded,
if not preceded, all others.  Both of them had felt its soft yet
irresistible demands, as intractable as wind against sails.

Pandora took another tentative step towards the Adept, the breeze
gently pushing against her back, urging her forward.  Her eyes caught his
and the blackness of the night receded, fading and dissipating into
a soft, light gray.  He whispered her name as he closed the distance
between them, placing his arms hesitantly around her.  The breeze
played with their senses, whistling a melody underscored by the washing
of waves, counterpointed by the distant hum of a car travelling the
highway.  Their bodies swayed in unison, of their own accord, responding
to the rhythms enveloping them.

She reached up to touch his face, fingertips lightly brushing his
cheekbone, tracing the fine line of his jaw.

"Pandora," he repeated huskily, leaning towards her, once again seeking
her mouth with his own.  For the briefest instant he blushed at this
intimacy.  Such audacity, he thought, such surrender to these alien and
strange senses.

She melted into his embrace, her lips softening and yielding against
his, tasting the lingering citric sweetness of tangerine.  Underneath
their feet the stones of the beach shifted, contracting and slithering
beneath their weight.  The sounds of the shore receded, leaving in their
wake the poignant singing of crickets.  The breeze that lifted Pandora's
hair was warm, and she felt a trickle of sweat run down her back, the
wool of her dress suddenly prickling her skin like tiny needles.

The Adept sensed the shift in the air and the earth before he felt it in
Pandora's body.  They had done it again, he knew.  Gasping, Pandora
pulled back from the kiss, opening her eyes to find her world had
been transformed.  They were on the sandy beach of a lake, tall grasses
waving gently in the wind.  A multitude of stars twinkled faintly in a
blanket of violet, one outshining the others in the still sun-kissed sky.
Pandora sought the Adept's eyes again, her expression a portrait of wonder
touched with fear.

The Adept scanned the horizon, recognition of the twilight landscape
settling between them.   the words penetrated Pandora's
thoughts, enveloped in the purple thrum of a theory proved correct.
Desire vibrated from every rock, tree and cloud.

She nodded in response, dropping her heavy cloak to the ground and slipping
out of her cloying boots.  He pulled her closer, his hands seeking her
voluptuous curves, slipping beneath the hem of her dress and lifting the
skirt.  She acquiesced, letting him strip the damp fabric from her body,
revelling in the kiss of the warm breeze against her bare skin.  Without
hesitation she reached for his clothing, slowly undoing the buttons,
exploring his flesh with her hands and mouth as it was revealed to her.
She tasted him, this skin that was so human and yet smelled of orange
groves and burnt kindling, her tongue trailing paths of desire from his
throat to his thighs.

His long fingers caressed her back, drinking in the silky textures and
tasting them like wine.  So expertly she knew the hidden secrets of his
body, secrets he had never known himself.  The senselessness of nipples
now made exquisite sense.  His chin settled on top of her head, its
nerve endings hypersensitive to the vibrations caused by her darting and
exploring tongue.

They slipped slowly to the yielding softness of the sand, Pandora moaning
with pleasure as his mouth sought the richness of her breasts, her sex
opening like a flower beneath his gently probing fingers, spilling the
nectar of desire.  She closed her eyes, lost in the sensual caresses,
feeling the tension of the past days slither away like grains of
sand over a dry palm.

The Adept leaned back, breaking all contact with her except where the
tips of his fingers still found electrical exchange.  Through those
minimal points of meeting he savoured her sweetness, her soft scent,
her sibilant sighs.  So much energy poured through so little, the
shuddering vibrations of its restricted passing pushing them to
even higher points of physical pleasure.  Their mutual sighing found
a syncopated rhythm, sharp and staccato like a rhumba.

Opening her eyes, Pandora found the Adept studying her, his face a mask
of yearning, watching her responses with an intensity that heightened
her awareness both of her sense of his pleasure and of her own.

"Yes," she whispered, closing her eyes again, straining her hips towards his.
A gray-blue haze filled her consciousness as he pushed against her, suddenly
enveloped in her unresisting velvet warmth.  She saw him clearly, in her mind,
his wiry, gray frame pressed against her own curvaceous body, his great black
eyes blinking serenely, mysteriously.

Pandora was dimly aware that this could not be as she felt the unmistakeable
hardness of a human male's sex penetrating her, joined with her in an ageless
dance of physical ecstasy.  But the sensation receded as she felt herself
float, rising above her corporeal body, boundless, untethered, pulled towards
the stars.  She reached out her hand, or with what felt like her hand,
only to feel the misty smokiness of the Adept's consciousness touch her,
filling her senses with the sound of growing grass and the smell of the
sun.  They sailed, passing through the pulsing colours of the aurora
borealis, shimmering with the taste of wine and honey.  Pandora laughed with
joy, silent sound exploding in a shower of snowflakes, landing softly
on her tongue, melting with exquisite slowness.

Under him, in him, around him, the Adept felt Pandora quiver in waves of
mirth.  The chain reaction of giggle to laughter cascaded raw power
between them, propelling them up and up and out and beyond.  The energy
of their own connection glowed in the night sky, vibrating their mindbodies
between the ever thinning molecules of air.

Pandora sensed the stars around her, surrounding her, sending showers
of light into the violet night like sparklers, alighting on her mindskin
with the quickness of butterfly wings.  The nebulae quivered and
rippled in a spiralling dance, still and yet ever moving, around her,
through her, reforming and transforming into myriad shapes and textures.
Now a rainbow, now a waterfall; now a ribbon, tail lashing across the sky;
now a sword, silver glinting in moonlight, bone smooth handle, ivory,
clean.

The Adept looked down an endless corridor of repeating blue-gray portals
and knew that he no longer looked into Pandora's eyes but through
them and beyond.  Around their flexing reflections the substance of
the cosmos shimmered like cobwebs in dew, the universe revealed as a
great and chaotic web.  An owl, its feathers oddly absent in favour of
vellum, flew frantically before him.  Its matching colours made it
vanish against the contracting and pulsating circular irises of bluish
gray.  In its wings he sensed a warning, even as they churned the
remaining air into a vortex.  But he had no time for warnings.  The
squeeze and throb of the infinite rings pulled at him with exquisite
pleasure--skin stretching, bone popping, breath-taking ecstacy.

Pandora felt herself open, her mindsight shifting and swaying.  The
Adept expanding, Pandora contracting, both enveloping, surrounding the
blade, becoming a chalice of fathomless depth, smooth golden wine-
cupped, knife steel melting, encircling, bloodsong bursting sky edged
crimson, blue eyes squinting, squeezing, joining...fusing...connecting...

...drifting...

...floating...

...falling...

Awareness crept in slowly with an opening of eyes, a clarity of seeing.
On the beach Pandora saw distant forms, a man and a woman, locked in a
primitive dance, limbs moving to the rhythm of the earth.  
she thought simply, mind reaching across the air currents, seeking
the Adept, but touching only emptiness.  She cried out in fright as a
heaviness descended, pushing her inexorably downwards.

 she reached out frantically, trying to feel the yellow of the
Adept's touch, the tangerine of his taste.  A dusky fog surrounded her as she
plummeted, caught in an interminable free fall. The smothering darkness
rippled in a high pitch alien scream, the vibrations painfully fraying the
extreme edges of Pandora's sanity. The Adept was clearly struggling, fighting
against some torture. What had been communion and contact, now shattered
into grating shards.  A black whirlwind wrapped him tighter and tighter
around Pandora, pulling them down and smothering them, grinding together
the broken and tender pieces of their astral dance.

The Adept shrieked against the endless waves of constriction.  Bands of
steel hot, white cold agony seized his frail gray body, tearing his
mind's flesh.  With each expulsion of the scream he found it more and
more difficult to take in breath...even in this place where breath should
not be necessary.  Tighter and tighter the forces compressed him, packed
him, reduced him to empty singularity.

With a cold gasping shock Pandora plunged back into an awareness of her
physical body, breath pulled from her lungs, expelled in an astonished sob.
A shudder passed through her limbs, uncoiling from an incredible heat in
her belly, an unbearable tension threatening to rend her in two.

"Nooo," she moaned, wriggling to free herself from within the oppressive
heaviness, to escape the intensity of the sensations coursing through her.
"It's too much," she murmured, panting, "too--" her voice heightened to
a scream as her body shook with violent contractions, with a pleasure
so acute it bled her nerve endings, throwing her into blackness.

* * *

{With appreciation to the poet, Daphne Marlatt, for inspiration and insight.
LMW (Pandora's Muse)}


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