Breathless Bounds
K. Ryan, 2010
"Oh, goodness. That's all very fine. Does it stick?"
It was difficult to think when Ellimere was in the room. For all Sam's complaints of his sister—"five-foot nine and equine", the scourge who had seen him humiliated in chicken feathers dancing his way off the brink of dignity—The Abhorsen-in-Waiting found herself drawn to the tall, vivid figure. She moved from room to room taking whatever anyone else was thinking or feeling and drawing it into herself, thriving off any feeling, the stronger the better. Invasive. Rather astonishing.
"Darling, I'm speaking, here."
Lirael looked up, wincing slightly as she allowed the golden, geared hand to relax in a faint hum of clockwork. Ghost-fingers unbent with it, soft and insistent and textured of flesh. Ellimere smiled.
"You're not really an aunt to me, you know. You can't be. But that was a delightfully intimidating expression—oh, you're spoiling it!"
Lirael blushed. "No, it doesn't stick. Not with this last making."
"Sameth can be clever, sometimes." The Princess-Royal strode into the small room Lirael had taken as her office in Belisaere, and sat on her desk. Oak leaves, burnished red, stuck in the princess's tumble of warm brown hair, and the wide panels in her heavy green coat spread about her over wood and papers both. Lirael gasped, at audacity more than feeling, as Ellimere leant down and took her new hand, stroking her thumb over the golden palm as if expecting flesh to yield. "It's delightfully cunning." Ellimere surveyed her, head tilted to the side, a twig sticking out by one ear. "A little like you, perhaps, now I think on it."
How she has time to think on anything, I have no idea. "Is there..." Lirael swallowed. "I was working. Is there anything you wanted?"
Ellimere shrugged. "This and that, and the moon and stars," she said. "I tend to want everything, darling." She paused. "Except your job, of course. I hardly envy that."
This startled a laugh from the former Second Assistant Librarian, who did still miss that job, sometimes. "I would not want to be Queen."
"No?" Ellimere smiled more softly, bringing up her free hand to slide her fingers through the older girl's dark hair. "Silver would look well on you. You're like mother that way."
She laughed, a true Dyrim, as Lirael shivered. "And you need to be touched more. I've seen Clayr. They're all over each other any time they're not being all mystical. You must have been frightfully cold on that glacier."
The Abhorsen-in-Waiting hoped her face was appropriately familial in its distaste, but Ellimere only laughed again, and Lirael gasped, all faces forgotten as she found her mouth opening under full, soft lips, slightly chapped from outdoor hunting. The clever tongue flicked inside her, over her lip, stilling and waking all at once, and full of teasing heat. Lirael soon found that her own hands—old and new; flesh and metal—came up easily around the other girl's waist and back.
The kiss, unlike Ellimere, was quiet. And like her, it was also very, very sweet.