The turquoise river
Delenn stopped the exhausting scramble up the rocky path to marvel about the sight once more. It still felt like an vacation or an diplomatic visit to an exotic alien planet rather than her new home. They were away from Babylon 5 for over a month now, living in Tuzanor near the diplomatic centre, and it still felt like that.
Clouds hung deep over Tuzanor, their bottom was almost on high with where they were walking. The crystal spires looked like sharp dots from this high, and forest surrounded the city, a green and blue mass that turned more and more detailed until it were the trees that clung the cliff beside the hiking path. Looking down so directly made her slightly dizzy.
"Delenn.", Lennier already worryingly exclaimed as he saw her leaning so closely over the abyss.
"I am cautious.", she said smilingly, and saw how he immediately relaxed.
As they continued their way, she asked: "Did seeing a sky above you and an actual landscape around you also feel so strange and not like a place that is your home as you came back to Minbar with the Anla'Shok?"
His voice sounded slightly flat: "Yes. It felt wrong. Just like how wrong it felt to not be… at your side…" Oh damn, she had managed to remind him at that horrible time again, "It became better at a time because I told me that this was where I have to be now" Because you didn't wanted me with you anymore, ,,and tried to ignore it, and after some time it became everyday life."
Delenn tried to fight down the thought: "How presumptuous can we be, believing that our relationship could possibly work out for longer than a few months with all these issues we have?" and think instead: "We have many, many problems, but we are working on them". Still, the beauty of the landscape around her and how good Lennier in his light summer robe looked suddenly only half reached her.
They turned around a curve, and Lennier brought her out of her dark thoughts: ,,Look!"
They were facing a valley now, with light green and blue shining trees, and fields of grass. In the far, she could already make out the small band of the river that was her destination. It shimmered in a beautiful turquoise.
She pointed at it. "That is what I wanted to show you."
He smiled. He was so beautiful when his smiles where real happiness and not just polite try to hide his true emotions.
"We had one of those near the cloister. I still remember how we went swimming in these in summer."
She smiled back at him and fondled his shoulder. In this moment, they felt like the most harmonic couple to her.
Now, with the mountain heights all around them to shield them from even the slightest bit of wind, the sun burned down on them intensely. Within minutes, even Delenn with her half-human genes, that, if she recalled right, should belong to an desert-species originally, felt hot. The sensation of sweat dripping down her skin and hanging in her face was still a bit strange to her, even after all these years.
She looked to Lennier, who too seemed to feel too warm, because he was fanning himself every time he had the opportunity for it. Luckily, the river must be close by now.
Ten minutes later, she finally spotted patches of turquoise trough the trees, and pointed at it. "There is the river."
It was beautiful to watch how Lenniers exhausted face lit up, and his eyes sparked almost like back then as he was only an naïve but enthusiastic little acolyte.
They turned around a group of trees and finally looked directly at the river. Grey stones created its riverside and some of the small rapids in it. Small bushed grew trough it here and there, and a tokkell quacked and waddled into the water as it saw them, its copper head shimmering.
Delenn climbed down to the riverside, laid down her backpack, then looked to Lennier. He was smiling, and slowly coming down to her. She took a deep breath. Hmmm, she couldn't wait to finally see his slim, wiry body in swimwear. If he thought the same things about her?
She looked around, as he was down at the riverside. "No one else here.", she smiled wickedly.
Suddenly, Lennier looked down, his mouth was a tight line.
"Is everything okay?"
She saw him breath in deeply. And then she realized.
"Oh Lennier, it is not bad. You're beautiful."
"The scars from the bombing… there are so many, and I can't help but think that wanderers who would come by or other people… would look at them and wonder where I got them, and even ask, and be grossed out."
"Nobody would be grossed out…"
He stared at her with an surprisingly sharp look. "It are truly a lot and some of them are rubbery and they go all the way trough my ren'helsae, disrupt them…"
In the first moment, she didn't came up with anything better than an lovingly mocking: "Knowing you are the well-behaved Minbari that you are, you will have covered your ren'helsae anyway, least some horny woman or man comes by and mistakes your bare back as an unmistakable invitation for…"He just stared at her annoyed.
"I'm sorry, that was uncalled for." She looked at her own wrists, ornamented with fine, whitish and rose burn scars from her interrogation. Thought at the longish knife scar at her back that right now was so present in her mind that she believed it must be to see even though her robe.
"Look", she showed her wrists, "I also try to have them covered at every time. It feels as if people could directly see how I got them, and with that all my failures and flaws that came with that. And you know of the one on my back", she laughed sadly, ,,well, at least that one is easier to cover."
Finally, a bit of the tension left his features, and his half-smile came back, though it was only half-real. "And now we only sit here?"
She felt another drop of sweat dripping down her upper lip. The sun burn relentlessly on her shoulders and back.
"If that is what you are comfortable with. But for me it becomes too hot, I will take a swim. Besides, very likely nobody else will come her, I chose that spot deliberately for that."
From his half amused, half lustful smile, he realized exactly what she meant with that, but he said nothing.
And so she pulled her robe over her head and laid her shoes beside it, until she stood only there in her human bikini she had foresightfully put on already.
To her surprise, Lennier was laying down his robe as well. Just like her, he had already pulled his swimwear on, typical Minbari style with the stripe of fabric that covered the blue speckled line down his back, and skirt-like, short trouser that played pleasantly around the slight curve of his hips.
Only now she realized just how human her choice of clothing was, a Minbari woman wouldn't have found a sense in covering her breasts when she wanted to swim, and her swimwear trousers wouldn't have – actually somewhat sillily – looked like a panty, but like a lose skirt or trouser as well. She tried not to think at how scarily less like her people she had become already, and focused on walking closer to the water instead. The small stones slightly stuck in her feet as she stepped on them.
She reached the water and dipped her feet in it. Whoa, colder than she had expected. But then, it was an mountain stream, why should it be warm? She breathed in deeply, then she stepped in with her other foot, and forced herself to walk into the turquoise, icy-cold liquid. Her muscles cramped in the coldness. Behind her, she could hear Lennier hiss.
She waddled deeper in, and as the water went to her hips, it was her turn to hiss. By Valen, was that cold!
"On three.", she said. Lennier nodded.
"One…" She could feel the flow against her legs. "…two…" The coldness made every sensation more clear. "Three" She fought her hesitation, pushed herself off and jumped with an plunge into the water. Feeling the coldness all around her was a shock. It stung at every body part, and she felt how it soaked her hair and pulled it with the current and surrounded her bone crest. And then her head broke through the water surface again, and she breathed in. She felt free, and the awful heat was finally gone. The coldness had gone from painful to refreshing.
A meter beside her, she saw Lennier swim. He laughed with her.
They had dived so wide out with their jump that they couldn't stand on the river bottom anymore, and to get back to the riverside, they had to swim against the current. Side at side they fought their way against the stream, unspeaking. As she finally felt the small pebbles under her feet again, she was out of breath. Lennier reached the riverside just after her and already waded a bit out while she still let herself drift. He was beautiful with how the water dripped off his pale skin, down the wiry form of his chest and flat stomach and the pale blue there.
She stood up, and shivered in the coldness. Suddenly, the air didn't seemed that hot anymore. She felt that her nipples had grown hard trough the coldness, and that they pressed trough the fabric of her bikini now.
She noticed from Lenniers gaze that he had seen it too. His gaze flipped from her face to her breasts, and for a second an feral passion flashed up in his eyes he showed only for seconds and forced back directly because he still felt wrong about it. But it was enough to let her heart beat faster. She went up to him and kissed him hard. He hummed against her lips and his tongue brushed, caressed hers.
Originally, she had planned to make love with him in the river. In reality, turned out, the water was simply to cold for that. Already now she started to be cold, simply from not moving.
As they finally parted, she told him of what she had actually planed and what had become of this plans.
"Here?", the innocent shock and amazement was still so much like his younger self. "Its outside. People could see us."
She took his hand, played with his long fingers: "Not if we choose our spot wisely. And outside, think about what an wonderful experience that could be under the open sky."
His eyes sparked for an part of a second, and there was curiosity and desire in his voice: "Imagining that", and he had imagined that, she could clearly hear that, and it let her breath harder, "is quite tempting, however the prospect of, eh… realizing that in reality is quite another thing. I… I think I would rather wait another month or two living here with you until we could consider doing that."
"As you wish.", she had not expected for him to say his boundaries so clearly even when they were against her wishes, and she felt proudness wallow up in her.
"Let us continue swimming.", he asked, "I'm freezing."
So they swam for a while, until they felt so cold that they started to couldn't feel the tips of their toes anymore, and then went out. Delenn found the big towel she had brought with her in her backpack, and then spread it on the riverside floor. As she lied down, Lennier cuddled up to her to feel her warmth, and they let themselves be dried by the sun.