It wasn't, of course. Violinists and violists get those nasty-looking things from practicing their chosen instruments, not from their human lovers. As she did every evening, Michiru patiently reapplied the makeup she used to cover up the telltale blemish. After all, she couldn't let rumors get around, even if anyone with any sense knew what it was actually from. It wasn't as though she were actually dating anyone. Between school, juku, violin, swim meets, and tutoring younger musicians, where would she find the time?

She inspected her work and judged it to her satisfaction, then snapped off the light on her vanity table. The room was still illumined by the moonlight that came in through the curtains, but now much more muted. Less as though she were on stage, still being inspected.

With a sigh, Michiru went to the window and leaned her forehead against the cold glass. She closed her eyes. Unbidden, the image came to her again.

Fleeting thoughts...dreams? memories?...of a taller person running just ahead of her, always a few paces in front, never far ahead enough to lose sight of, but never enough to catch up to. Pale short hair, quick movements, a husky laugh. Pale eyes, cloudy grey and sky blue. Strong hands. Such beautiful hands.

Who are you?

Waves crashed against the cliff below the highway. The occasional car horn honked crankily at the mad jogger running along the thin strip separating the road from the barrier wall. Haruka ignored them. She had better things to concentrate on. School. The track meet tomorrow. The cute redhead who'd smiled at her in bio. Such a charming kitten; maybe not the brightest light she'd ever met, but sweet enough....

A horn blared in her ear, and her stride faltered. Obnoxious drivers. There was such a thing as taking pride in the way you took the road, and then there was hogging it. Both she and the cars had plenty of room. Their loss if they thought they needed the shoulder as well.

Hell, it was getting dark. Time to head home. Time to study, then crash out in her bed.

Her steps slowed unconsciously, then sped up to their regular rhythm. Her cold, empty bed. Well, such was life. So what if she couldn't open her eyes in the morning and found she'd turned in her sleep to face her lover, the other girl's lips curving in a pleasant dream, her green ringlets unfurled across the pillow....

Green ringlets? Nonsense. Her current crush had lovely straight hair. Red, of course.

No, her subconscious contradicted strongly, it's green. Soft sea-green, as are her eyes, eyes that see into forever and see into your soul. And when she opens her mouth, she whispers prophecies, calls your name, cries out defiance against any and all who would oppose her.

Stupid, stupid. There's no one in this world like that. If there were, she wouldn't give you the time of day, gangling tomboy that you are. If there were...

Who are you?

Bedtime at last. Homework finished, Flesch scales gone over minutely one by one--major, minor, arpeggios, thirds, fifths, octaves--shower taken, nightgown on. Another school day over, another one to start at six-thirty next morning. Michiru absently massaged her tired left hand, mentally reviewing an especially tricky passage in the Mendelssohn. Must remember to work on e-minor thirds tomorrow.

She flopped back on the bed, shutting her eyes.

"You work too hard. Race you!"

"Ah no, not again. You always run too fast for me."

"Don't whine. Here, I'll slow down just for you, since you howl about it every time. Ready, set...go!"

Michiru and the other racer sprang to their feet at the count. As always, the pace was intense, but Michiru found herself enjoying it for the first time, letting herself breathe easily and simply concentrate on staying in stride. Subconsciously she began to match both steps and breathing patterns with her partner, their heels hitting the ground in perfect precision.

Her partner grinned. "Wanna go faster now?"

"You're on!" How could she resist the chance to compete with the best? She couldn't. Grinning madly, Michiru stepped up her pace. Dreamlike, the other one matched her step for step. Dimly, they heard wild cheering from onlookers who'd stopped to follow the impromptu race. But now the audience didn't matter, just the thrill of giving all they had to the moment. To each other.

With a sudden muscle twitch, Michiru snapped awake. No, don't go! she thought in despair. Only a dream, but it was so beautiful.

Don't leave me again. Where are you?

"Don't stay up too late, now. The big meet's tomorrow."

"Yeah, Mom, I know. G'night."

"What, I don't even get a kiss now?"

Haruka grinned. "Sorry, Mom." She gave her mother a brief, tight hug, and kissed her cheek.

Her mother ruffled her hair. "Sleep well, sweetie."

Haruka automatically smoothed her hair as she headed upstairs. Silly, I'm not a kid anymore! She swung her door closed in a practiced motion, making a face in the mirror. If I were still a child, I wouldn't be looming over half the teachers at school, including the men. I wouldn't be the number one track star in the school district. I wouldn't--she glared at her assigned reading--have to slog through _The Waiting Years_ for Japanese Lit. I wouldn't...

...I wouldn't be dreaming about green-haired girls who order me to save the world every night. Who call my name over and over again, weaving a spell over me, one that I don't want and can't break. The girl who stole my heart when I wasn't looking and isn't real anyway.

Damn you. Damn me.

Where are you?

Damn it all. Half-past midnight and she still couldn't fall asleep. Michiru wearily rolled out of bed, rubbing her aching forehead. The moon had risen higher, sending light directly into the room on a patch of floor. Acting on a mad insomniacal impulse, the girl walked quietly across the room to her wardrobe. She riffled through her lovely, and expensive, dresses, stopping at a purchase made almost at random and forgotten.

She held up a remarkably short-skirted outfit, beribboned and bowed, carefully smoothing out the ruffled short sleeves. A dress she'd worn to a party when she was eleven and never given away afterwards. She had played a Beethoven romance and everyone clapped and smiled. Such a clever child.

Such a fool. But no one would believe that of Kaiou Michiru.

She pulled the nightgown over her head and tugged the too-tight child's outfit on. Constricted, but cute. The color wasn't apparent in the washed-out light, but she knew it to be white with blue-green trimming. Her favorite color.

She frowned. It needed something. She rummaged around the floor of the wardrobe, hoping she wouldn't pop a seam on her old dress. After some effort, Michiru hauled out a pair of high heels she'd found recently. She slipped them on, giggling, feeling like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's clothes. Teetering slightly, she gazed at her reflection in the wardrobe's full-length mirror.

Astonished eyes stared back at her. The reflection didn't just show a fifteen year-old in an outgrown dress. Someone older stood in the mirror, her face revealing authority and hard-won control. Michiru raised her hand, and the other woman copied the gesture, as though summoning or repelling. Her? Or something else?

Michiru kicked off the heels and pulled the dress off over her head, ignoring the rips made in the overstressed seams. She stuffed them both back in the closet, not bothering to hang the dress properly. Naked, she looked at herself once more. The ambient light faded as a cloud drifted over the moon.

She crossed her arms over her breasts, hugging herself. She felt as though another were in the room with her, invisible in the mirror, standing just behind her, close enough to feel the warm breath in her ear. Strangely, it wasn't a frightening sensation. Warm, protective, rather. Loving.

Her hands seemed to fade in the reflection, replaced by another's. They slipped gently over her shoulders, caressing her back and sides. The rational part of Michiru's mind knew that it was only she who was touching herself, and only her subconscious had tricked her into believing anyone else could be with her. The rest of herself knew better.

With a deep sigh, she tilted her head back as the hands explored her body. They cupped her breasts, pinching her nipples lightly, ran gently along her face to ruffle her hair. Fingers caressed her neck, where the violin had left its mark, and she could feel the soft kiss there.

"You work so hard, my love. Let me love you..."

"Yes. Please, please love me," she whispered aloud to the voice in her mind. The hands ran down her torso, along her arms, rubbing the tension out of her tired fingers. They drifted up to her mouth, which opened obediently as she licked a finger. Once again, the hand slowly covered her breast, and Michiru felt an answering throb in her vulva.

She sank to her knees and felt gentle fingers work around her sex. She parted her legs to allow greater access, and whimpered softly as a tip--or even a mouth?--touched the lips and slipped inside. She felt the moisture around the entrance, and clenched her muscles sensually around the visitor.

She slowly tilted back until she was lying full-length on the carpeted floor, the hands working intensely both on the inside and outside of her body. She rolled over on her side and hunched around the source of the pleasure, her whole body rocking with greater force as she came closer to orgasm.

"Ah!"

"Hush, my love. I have you here. Hold onto me."

Michiru snapped her teeth into her own shoulder as she writhed. "Hold me..."

"Shh...I have you. Don't be afraid."

And, for the long, rushing instant, as she arched up, as she seemed to lift her body onto a wave then dive down, only to swoop up again, hold the moment, hold it, release...she felt the hands embrace her tightly, smelled the overwhelmingly familiar scent of another as she pressed her face into her lover's neck, riffled her fingers through sleekly short and blissfully soft hair. For a moment out of time, she held her lover tightly to her. Long-forgotten, now remembered, a presence that filled her heart with peace.

And as Michiru embraced her beloved, her hands slapped against her own skin, and she found herself lying naked on the floor, no doubt with rug burns for tomorrow. And still facing a six-thirty wake up call.

Shaking her head at herself, she shambled back to her bed and fell deeply asleep.

Her last thoughts drifted.

I love you. Where are you? Come back to me....

Haruka closed _The Waiting Years_ with a decisive thump. She had no problem keeping up with the class or understanding the required texts--but the book was so depressing! A bunch of squelched women standing by as the men of the family ruined their lives. Interesting subtext here and there, though. She grinned as she imagined handing in a paper detailing the secret love affair between the two concubines in the story. It didn't seem that she would be reading *too* much into the novel to find that.

Yeah, right. And maybe the main character would stab her awful husband and son in the night and elope with her daughter-in-law. As much chance as Haruka getting a good kiss from the green-haired...

No, no, no! The *redhead*, dammit. At least she was real. Life was complicated enough without falling for a hallucination. A hallucination that never stopped lecturing her, to boot.

God, she was pathetic. Falling in love with a figment of her own imagination.

"I couldn't live like those women," Haruka mused aloud, lying back on the bed.

"You wouldn't have to. Anyway, if it's any consolation, Tomo gets her revenge at the end. It's very subtle...but it's there."

Haruka's eyes snapped open. What the hell? Now she was getting advice on literary theory? This was ridiculous. She got up and grabbed the book, flipping impatiently to the end of the novel.

Well, what do you know. She was right. Haruka shuddered with a frisson of fear. It was just possible that she had glanced at the end and not remembered it, but to have a voice--*the* voice--remind her of it out of the blue like that?

"That's it. Bed for me," she said, flicked off the lamp, and resolutely prepared to go to sleep.

No such luck. She rolled onto her side, sighing. Damn it all. Big track meet tomorrow, with that Elza Grey literally and figuratively panting at her heels, and all Haruka could think of was the girl calling her name. Commanding her. Pleading with her.

If you were real, I would kiss you. Hold you. Gaze into those eyes, watch you as you watch me. You won't leave me alone...well, if I could, if you were real, I would never leave you. I would take you in my arms and hug you to my heart as the world fell around us to pieces.

But you don't want that, do you? You say the world will end, and you want me to help you. But you don't need my...need my love.

"Oh, don't I?"

"Prove it."

"I'm lonely..."

"You are? I thought I was the only one alone."

"I need you. Need *you*...but you won't come to me."

"Oh god, not that again."

"It's not! Please stay with me...."

With a hallucination?

But then, who had ever needed Ten'ou Haruka before?

Instinctively, Haruka knelt on the bed, resting her weight on her hands and knees. Closing her eyes dreamily, she slowly pressed her thighs together, sighing as the familiar pleasure began. She visualized the other girl, but this time the image was different. Rather than the usual stern expression, she gazed tenderly at Haruka as though she were a long-lost lover, the beloved she had never thought she would find again.

Haruka banished the workaday thoughts: I'm just imagining this, she's just a dream girl, even though she's fun to fantasize about. Instead, for the first time, she accepted the other woman's presence as real, as necessary to her own soul as freedom.

"Don't cry, my love. I'm here. Come to me."

She rocked her body back and forth, squeezing her legs together with rhythmic pressure. She reached out to her partner in her mind.

If you were real, I'd touch your face so softly. I'd run my hands along your body, kiss your breasts, touch your nipples with my tongue. Kiss your sweet throat. Hold your hands in mine and rub away the pain.

And you are. So I do.

"Hold me, please..."

"Shh, my love. I've got you. I won't ever let go."

She moaned deep in her throat as the deep pulsing between her legs became more intense. She stroked her lover's sides, running her hands sensually up and down her thighs, revelling in the feel of smooth skin and downy hair. She kissed her throat, her breasts, her belly. As Haruka slowed down the pace of her stimulation, she slipped her fingers into the other woman's crevice, and cried aloud as she felt the delicate muscles tighten suddenly around her. Rocking forcefully, clenching her taut thighs together, Haruka's breath became more and more ragged. As she climaxed, she felt arms clasp tightly around her. In response, she buried her face into warm, fragrant hair, wrapping her legs around the bucking hips and kissing her lover frenziedly.

As she came to herself, Haruka sighed deeply. She wasn't sure what had happened. Either her ability to fantasize had reached fantastic new levels, or...

No. Good as it was, it was only a dream. Reality was tomorrow's track meet, a pop quiz in bio, Czerny exercises, a driving game at Crown. And redheads.

But if it were real, what would become of her life?

Would it be worth the cost?

She wasn't sure. It wasn't worth worrying about, in any case.

As she pulled the covers over her head, the last flitting thought appeared:

But if so, where are you? I love you. I swear I'll come to you. If I can only find you.

Theresa Ann Wymer twymer@efn.org
March 20-21 1999 11:00 PM-1:40 AM.
Until Jeanne Johnson writes a Haruka/Michiru or Sailor Mac writes an Alex/Michelle (or Greenbeans writes a lemon), I'm afraid you'll just have to make do with my bad writing. How was it?