One More Confessional
Part Six
197S9.9.05
Another restless day. Gippal and Nooj took target practice again this morning, but otherwise everyone just sat around, brooding. After what seemed like hours of that, I decided I would likely explode if I didn't blow off some steam, so I pounced on Baralai, and that turned into a full-blown wrestling match. Well, for the guys and me, anyway; I started to invite Nooj to join in without really thinking about it, and then felt like an idiot for doing so. One wrong move with a machina limb, and he could crush any of us like a bug. He declined, then sat back and watched, looking awkward. Damn! I hate that I singled him out like that. I'll have to make it up to him later.
Anyway, it was still great stress relief.
I scratched Gippal with my nails one too many times, and he started swearing in Al Bhed. After we had finished playing, Baralai asked him for a translation. I already knew what it all meant, since Berrick taught me most of the good curses -- not oajuh-cfaadraynd, though; "Yevon-sweetheart", I like that. I'll have to add that one to my vocabulary -- and a fair number of other words besides. But it was amusing to watch Baralai turn red at the crudeness of Gippal's language.
Then I got to wondering: just how much Al Bhed had I picked up from Berrick and his friends, anyway? So I asked Gippal to speak it some more, just to hear what it sounded like, or so I told him. He held forth on the foulness of Yevon for a little while, and I'll be damned -- I followed most of it. I had no idea that I'd learned and remembered so much. Something stopped me from sharing that information, though. You never know when it will be useful to have a secret.
Baralai asked Gippal to teach him the language, and I think I'll sit in on the lessons. I'm hardly fluent, so I could certainly use the practice.
Nooj has disappeared again, presumably to the pool. Maybe I'll join him there.
197S.9.9.06
Will my desire for Nooj ever be satisfied? I'm thinking not. Yesterday afternoon was yet another astounding experience, by turns gentle and slow, passionate and rough. We are still learning one another's bodies and needs; there is much to discover, I think. For the first time, he pleasured me with his machina hand, and the depth of my response to the touch of it surprised even me. When he asked me whether it was because of the danger, the chance that he could hurt me with the slighted miscalculation of pressure, I said yes, because that was certainly part of it -- a little risk, a little roughness, has always turned me on. But there's something else, too, something I hesitate to tell him: the very idea of being intimately stroked by machina is so illicit, so antithetical to everything I was taught as a ward of Yevon, that it arouses me. Powerfully.
It's five years now that I have been free of that fiend-damned temple and the hypocrites who ran it, and still I flout their beliefs and rules at every opportunity. Sometimes I wonder whether that's healthy, if I shouldn't just let it go.
On a somewhat different subject, I think I'm glad that my first few encounters with Nooj were in darkness. Now that I know the joys of the lean, strong body beneath, I find the scarring much less noticeable to my eyes, but if I had first seen the true extent of the damage in broad daylight, it might have been more difficult to get past it. So I consider myself fortunate that everything played out as it did.
We had more leisure yesterday than ever before; between bouts, we napped and bathed and finally fell asleep together. Of everything that has happened between us over the past few days, waking up in his arms was perhaps the most extraordinary moment; I woke just before he did, and I spent a few long minutes just lying there, not moving, enjoying the feel of his solid chest beneath my cheek, rising and falling with his breath. It was getting cold, though, so I roused him and we headed back to camp.
Now it is morning, and I have once again slept soundly. The first group is leaving today, so they're finally passing out the recording spheres. I guess I'd better go now, get some practice with the camera.
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This camera is great -- I hadn't really taken the time to look at it closely before. Much lighter-weight than the ones I used in Luca. Better shielded, too; maybe we're going somewhere with lots of dust, or sand?The spheres are an unusual red color, very distinctive. Nooj said earlier that they've dubbed this enterprise the Crimson Squad, so I guess that's why they've chosen that color to mark the records. The spheres are also damned heavy.
As long as I was in the commander's tent, I scoped it out for anything worth liberating. There wasn't much, but I did palm three ink bottles. I suspect it won't be easy to pick up more, wherever we end up going.
197S9.9.07
Another group gone. Nooj was busy being lubed this morning, so he sent Baralai and me off to forage some more. He specifically asked me to scout out ammunition, so I've been focusing on that. The bag I brought is already filled with all types of bullets, but I see an abandoned knapsack over there, and there's enough ammo lying around that I should be able to fill up that one, too, once I'm finished taking this quick break.
It's getting harder to find time to write around camp. Much easier when we were all ignoring one another, but now that we are genuinely friends -- lovers, in our case, and I'm pretty positive now that Gippal and Baralai are sleeping together, too, although I still haven't gotten up the nerve to ask Baralai for confirmation -- we pay far more attention to what everyone else is doing. I hope I won't be forced to give up my journaling, although I suppose once my recording duties begin, the spheres I make will be another type of journal. Of a much less personal nature, though. At least I don't need to worry about ink anymore.
Well, back to the scrounging.
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The loot I brought was welcome, but Baralai made the big find: a pair of dueling pistols. They are, quite frankly, gorgeous; made of fine metal, highly polished, decorated with crimson marks that Baralai says are ancient Yevonite runes, marking them as the property of the Maesters. Gippal is checking them out to see if they still work.
In the meantime, Nooj is poring over the bags of bullets. I don't think he knows what each type is for any more than I do, but I'll let him make a show of checking them out. Even in the short amount of time I have known him, I have learned that he needs to be in control of any situation, or at least appear to be. Only when we are alone at the pool does he ever allow himself any sort of surrender, and even then I suspect he's still holding back much of the time.
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Those guns--
One of them is rigged, tampered with in such a way that it will fire a bullet into the face of whoever shoots it. They are designed purely for betrayal, to subvert a fair duel; they can have no other purpose. And they belong to the Maesters.
Of course they do. Of course. Who besides the Maesters of Yevon would come up with something so sneakily vile? When Gippal told us what he had learned, Baralai looked like he was going to be sick. Me, I had to walk away. It's just more confirmation of every bad thought I've ever had about Yevon, justification for every curse I've ever rained down on the heads of the Maesters and their priests and their nuns and their monks. Yevon is a cancer rotting at the heart of the world, full of corruption and treachery and -- yeah, I'll say it -- evil. I wish somebody would come through and sweep it all away, let the people start fresh.
I want to take those pistols and throw them into the ocean, but I also want to put them on display and parade them all over Spira. "This is what the Maesters are," I would tell everyone who came to see. "This is what Yevon is."
Damn. I hate getting into these moods. I'd better head back to camp before they start wondering what happened to me.
I very much need to forget myself with Nooj tonight. I hope he is willing.