Republic of Monoi | Lusia colony | Tomaros System | Athena Nebula | 2180
(Anatomical summary of the Asari at the end of the chapter)
(Definition of terms at the end of the chapter)
The flight attendant at the door to the ramp offers both her palms to Lanya.
"I...uh..."
A volus passenger behind them forces a cough which his suit amplifies into something that sounds more like the ship tearing in half, sending two shrieking taeles racing past in terror.
"Greeting meld," Masha hisses. "Were you born in a ba-never mind."
"Long flight, wasn't it?" the matron sighs.
Lanya reaches out.
Welcome to Lusia, young one. I think this place may suit you.
Thank you.
Their palms separate, leaving Lanya blinking the blazing sun out of her eyes and realizing they'd walked hand in hand down the ramp. She didn't even hit her head on the door, making it the third time since the station where she hasn't rued being so big.
"You were nervous," Mascha grumbles, nodding at the matron. "Class act, that one."
"Big place," Lanya murmurs.
"That your professional opinion?" Mascha teases.
"Thank you for visiting Lusia! Have a pleasant stay!"
Lanya leaps back as a hologram of an asari pops up, holding out an ephemeral tourist brochure right over the actual omni-tool upload pedestal. She runs her omni over it and it blinks.
"You're ten feet tall," Mascha hisses out of the corner of her mouth. "Do you have to make a scene? An actual yahg would get fewer looks."
She glances over at her old cell-mate, sticks her tongue out, and flicks her threat-signaling fronds.
Lanya flicks through the local news updates, like she has on every planet. She can't lose the feeling they're being followed even though the more she looks, the more it becomes clear it's her imagination.
"S'really good," Mascha mumbles, big blue fingers covered in some brown sauce as she lifts a massive sandwich-massive even in her hands-to her mouth.
"What s'it?"
"Hamburger. Human idea, apparently. Sakhoi meat, local. Nevosian flatleaf for lettuce."
Masha lunges for her water and guzzles it.
"Krogan hot sauce, local artisanal brand."
"Explains it. There are a lot here, aren't there?"
She dismisses the window and looks around. At a nearby fountain, two krogan pups are playing with a taele of twenty-five or so, racing after her. They're half her height but probably only a tenth her age. Their plate-studded heads are round, not flat, and the plates on their arms where they peek out of the sleeves of their jumpsuits are spaced out, rather than closely packed.
"Are those her..."
Masha is too surprised to finish.
"...sisters?" Lanya asks. "Why not? Asari and two krogan bondmates. Tell you how it works when you're older."
"Asshole."
The pups launch after their sister like giggling rocks and she ducks, spins, pirouettes and weaves away, all maiden's speed and nearly all of a maiden's height, but not yet grown, lacking the muscle she'll get as she fills out. So she moves suddenly, twisting her thin body between them like electricity arcing through a short. She doesn't use her biotics, even when they barrel their rock-hard bodies straight towards her. She ducks instead.
She's playing their way.
"With the genophage...I didn't know there were any except on Tuchanka. Krogan children, I mean."
"Besides here, there probably aren't. The colony has been krogan nearly as long as it has been asari."
Layna turns.
At the bar sits a huge female krogan with a stack of etching glass plates and small denomination credit chips to one side, and to the other, empty liquor glasses, the shells of the fried swarmers from an appetizer platter, and crumpled paper. Actual paper. Her voice is deep-that of rumbling earth, boiling mud, and cracking rock-and raw at the edges. Perhaps age or injury, perhaps stress. An impressive row of empty glasses sits beside her, each with the glowing green film that only krogan ryncol leaves behind.
The maiden bartender is collecting the glasses with a fond shake of the head.
"After the Rachni War," she sighs. Without being asked, the bartender produces a small, bubbling shot of ryncol, which the big krogan downs immediately. "Some krogan and asari who fought together settled here."
Lanya feels as compelled to listen to this krogan as she did to Aethyta. She has the same sense of experience. The big krogan chuckles and Lanya feels the laugh in her guts, it's so low.
"War is a great place to fall in love."
She fought in it, Lanya realizes. Needing the drink, the way the war made her smile when she talked about love... The Rachni War ended two thousand years ago. She's twice the age of a matriarch.
"And no one wanted to retire to Tuchanka to start a family," Mascha fills in. "Right?"
The stranger sighs.
"Why would we? Hard as some of us try to convince everyone otherwise, we krogan aren't born stupid. Just born hotheaded. Back then, most of us were...better than the ones left. No one likes Tuchanka except maybe the shamans. Oh, the males talk and talk about how tough they are, living on radioactive rubble and burning sand. But they miss it too: Green. Hunting food. Water. Not just eating mass-produced rations that the Turians drop from the monitoring stations. Before the salarians even came, we burned Tuchanka. Nuclear war. Godd-."
Mascha sputters in surprise, and Lanya has to use her barrier to keep the sauce off her.
"What? Athame can't spare any wisdom for little old me? My kind needs it more than most. Used to live in the shadow of the Temple," she explains, pointing at a towering spire of glimmering white metal not far from the city's center. It's miles away across an ocean of big, boxy houses on the rolling hills. Two or three stories, not towers of hundreds of stories.
"Maybe we're different, if we're born here. Most krogan you'll meet here were born and whelped on Lusia. The only clinics doing biotic conversion surgery for krogan are here, with asari doctors. The ones we had back home are gone. I have a doctor who helped me keep trying for centuries until I could have children. I have a home here that doesn't make me angr-"
Something heavy crashes outside.
The krogan's massive fist slams on the bartop.
"FUCK!"
The bartender hides her giggle with a rag.
"They made it nearly an hour, Kesh. That's something."
The taele who was playing with her sisters walks in, holding the snarling, frothing pups aloft with her biotics in two stasis bubbles as far apart as she can make them without bumping them into things. She's breathing hard and rubbing her sides, obviously winded and yet not using her hands to cast the fields, which would be easier. They thrash in the stasis bubbles, eyes nearly all pupil, slits turned into broad black bars rimmed by pools of blood. They hammer their little heads against the edges even as it pushes their plates into their flesh too hard and shakes loose droplets of rust-orange blood.
The blood rage? Even as pups? How do they live like that?
"Sorry, mom."
"Don't be. Let me guess. Trum bit Rhov, right?"
"Other way around, actually. And it was more of a..." She knocks her knuckles together. "Accident. Headbutt. Just that Rhov pulled back so Trum got a nip from the angle."
"Hmph. Progress, at least. You'd think by three they'd learn."
The taele shrugs. "I want to bite them sometimes. And I've got no excuse. Want me to hold them, or would you rather?"
Kesh huffs, fists her big hands, and drapes herself in her own biotics-the color of jade, and rough, like a shower of sparks from a bare wire-and forms new bubbles before the pups realize they're falling.
"Thanks, mom."
"You all right?"
"Pfft. I'm fine. Barriered right before they hit me. Focused on my right and they threw me into the fountain harder than I was expecting. A bit tender. Price of having such amazing kid sisters," she wheezes, pulsing biotics along her palm as she massages the bruise. She nods at their table. "Who are the new girls?"
"Didn't say," Kesh huffs, leaning close to one of the dangling pups and snapping her own teeth.
"Lanya, and this is Mascha."
The youngster puts her hands on her hips and leans closer, eyes narrowed. It's like being examined by a matriarch. A taele, but she has the same cutting glare.
"...Not sisters."
"Could've asked," Mascha mutters.
"Ah, no fun. I'm Sura Uahi Kesh Azrad B'Uvas and that's my ainthar, Kesh, but the pups call her mom, so when they're around, so do I! She's Clan Azrad, obviously. You look like you're new here. Since you haven't seen pups get into a scrap before and this spaceport is packed today, I'm going to say you're really new."
"Landed today."
"Got a place to stay?"
Masha snorts.
"Are you looking for work, by any chance?"
Kesh looks up from her charges.
"Sura..."
Lanya glances at Mascha, who nods.
"Actually, yes."
She pumps her fist. "Found you the new ranch hands, mom!"
As she walks past, she presses a kiss to the juncture of her mother's hump and neck, in a narrow gap in the plates. At the diner's door, she spins around and tips an imaginary hat.
"Some human vid nonsense she got into," Kesh huffs.
"Westerns," Lanya and Mascha reply at once.
"Oh, Goddess. You're going to get along with her, aren't you? The last one didn't and ran off. But Sura with more sisters is the last thing I need. Jobs are yours, if you want them. Doesn't matter if you've never seen a sakhoi before. From the size of you, you could punch a tyrlak. And keeping them off the herd is half the job."
She sweeps her notes and credit chits into a large bag that the bartender is holding open for her.
"Skycar's on the western ledge. It's an hour to the ranch, so if you need a bathroom break, or you two want to show this one what a proper maiden does when she's got someone up against a wall, now's the time."
"Kesh!" the bartender whines, pale scales flushing.
The krogan pats her cheek. "He's no good for you. You deserve better, kid."
"Thirty minutes?"
Masha takes a massive bite of her burger.
"We'll be there," she mumbles.
Sura holds the door open for her mother and her only slightly-mollified and less maddened sisters.
Lanya turns her seat to look at the bartender.
"Know any good walls around here?"
Lanya can still taste hot sauce from Mascha's burger, and the dreamleaf the bartender was chewing, ghostly flickers of sensation in her mind, tangled up in the afterglow of a three-way meld.
She fell apart so sweetly around her fingers, walls pulling and fluttering, her little fronds thrashing against Lanya's wrist after sneaking out of her azure to see what was so exciting all of a sudden. Crying out soft and high-like birdsong-each time she stretched back around a finger, then two and then three. Her breasts bounced with the force and Mascha pushed her head to the side to suck on the jewel where neck folds and crests meet.
Sura is waiting by the skycar-closer to a small freight truck, really-with her omni projecting their names into the air.
When they wave, she looks up from the vid-call and smiles.
The Lusian afternoon is bright and the air dry but not hot. The grass of the lawn is tawny brown, and the dirt kicked up by playing taeles and pups are pale dust in reds, browns and grays. From orbit, they were able to see a huge mountain range against the other side of the continent from this city. The far side of the range is all jungle, but for a single city. The mountains must be upwind and catch most of the rain.
As they approach, Lanya can make out the other caller: A female turian with red-and-black mandible paint.
"Hold your plates, gorgeous!" Sura laughs. "I'm not going anywhere. You're going to be a cabalist. The badasses. That's thirty years. Do your tour, do not get dead, get those government-mandated biotic kittens out of the way and come find me. I'm sure I'll have gone maiden by then or if not, a woman in uniform ought to do it. I'll be their evil stepmother when I'm not wearing you out. Sound good?"
"Yeah. That's...more than I could hope for, given...thank you."
"Be safe, Rixi. Write me and call me. A lot."
Sura kisses her fingers and presses them to the projection before signing off.
Mascha rolls her eyes.
"You really are a schemer. Lining up your first bondmate at what, twenty-five?"
"What?" Sura demands. "Firstly: I'm thirty-two. I just don't have my mom's curves...yet. We met at a waveball-rockball exchange tournament meet on Palaven. Just because I have a ways to go doesn't mean I can't be madly in love with her mind, does it?"
"It doesn't," Lanya replies, elbowing Mascha.
"Ow."
"Behave."
Sura taps on the back of the truck and the loading doors open.
"Sorry. Good news: It's clean. So-so news: there's crash gel. Bad news: No seats."
"...problematic," Lanya and Masha reply before looking at each other, snickering.
"There's only two full-size krogan seats and we've got the fight club separated in the middle. And you're, well...tall. I'll ride with you, though. You're going to be living in the house, might as well get to know each other."
There's also a window in the cargo area, probably because a krogan family might have krogan friends and need to have them ride in the beck.
"What's that?" Masha asks, nodding at a plain of cracked mud broken up by lumps of green moss growing in the shadow of...
Goddess. Ribcages. Krogan ribcages.
"Mhu'lak," Sura replies after a quick glance. "Huge battle during the Krogan Rebellions. The turians just got added to the mix but they sent troops anyway, knowing they wouldn't get most back. Half a million krogan landed at the far end. Forty legions of turians, about eight thousand asari and..."
She waves her hand towards the driver's seat.
"The krogan who loved them. Made a stand on that ridge to keep them in the lakebed, on the peninsula and off the mainland. Thessia sent everything they could. Huntresses, Paladins, Sundancer combat mechs, all of it. Kesh lost her first bondmate. Huntress. They'd met on the final push to the Rachni homeworld. She was stationed on the southern flank and Her unit was up against the best the krogan had. Arlakh Company. Last year, when I was sick, Kesh let me look at her bondmates' vid-diaries, and some from when her unit came by after she died. In one night, she took down a warlord, two battlemasters and fifteen soldiers, fast. Pistol and her sword. Blade wasn't dry a single moment, her friend said, from the first kill to the seventeenth. Like she was dancing. Krogan sniper got a lucky shot before she could catch her breath and get her barrier back to full strength. That was back when krogan armies had snipers, vehicles, tactics...reasons for war besides boredom."
Sura sighs.
"I think Kesh blames herself, a little bit. Most of the krogan who were biotic-which was a lot of them-went out to hold the line. But her bondmate wanted her back at the ranch with my oldest sister, in case the line didn't hold."
She chuckles.
"I think she thought Mom was already too old, maybe."
Lanya whistles.
"Oh, no. I'm not telling!" Sura chortles. "My oldest sister lived a long time. I met her, but I was really young. I sort of remember it-and she said Kesh was the cradle-robber in that relationship."
The screen on the divider between the passengers and cargo lights up.
"She would've been so proud of you, Sura."
"You were listening the whole time, weren't you?"
"Figured you were hatching an evil plan. I'm old, not stupid."
"What are those?"
Sura snickers.
"Cows."
"No, in the field next to the cows."
She wanders over to the nearest fence and kicks it, making the metal twang up and down the entire pen. A huge, rock-shaped, five legged something stands up, shaking dirt off-it looked like a small hill-and scurries over to the fence-line, holding an oversized upper right leg up for Sura, who lifts some knobby shoots out of a nearby trough and offers them.
"Hi, Lefty."
"Sakhoi. Native species. All the other sakhoi meat in the galaxy is from exported herds."
"They don't normally get this big. Mostly we raise free-range, in the main field. But this pen is the no-kill pen. People will pay a lot for sakhoi leg meat from the field-raised ones. They'll pay stupid amounts for sakhoi leg meat if nothing died. Siarists. Salarian Wheel-of-Lifers. Even a couple human religions that are usually vegetarian are getting into it. When a sakhoi gets its leg trapped and they really can't get loose, they tear it out. It grows back. Five hundred, six-hundred, eight hundred pounds sometimes, before it's shelled. Major credits."
"There're cameras to warn us and to document that it's a valid, accidental injury. That's when you rush out with a stasis canister and seal it up, and check on the sakhoi just in case it's bleeding. We've got foam for the wounds that disinfects but also stimulates regrowth. Barn the herd up. Smell tends to bring predators."
She knocks her knuckles on the beast's shell.
"I call her Lefty because she always loses the left feeder claw. Never a walking leg. Never the right-hand claw. Always that one," Sura jokes, nodding to the stump. "Wedges it in the dumbest places, too. Maybe her brain's lopsided. It's barely the size of an ajahe pit, anyway."
Lanya exhales.
"Seems easy enough."
Sura snorts.
"You'd think that. Trouble is keeping anything else from killing them. Krogan settlers-sexy asari bondmates or not-don't like boring so the wildlife here is extra spicy. See that over the barn?"
Mounted on the door of the barn is a five-sided plate at least four meters in diameter. Layna had thought it was part of a wrecked vehicle or the bottom plate of a feeding trough-metallic, nearly perfectly flat, but dented around the edges-but now that Sura called it out, she sees the creases in the bottom.
"Yeah?"
"That's the ferrous layer of the belly plate of a tyrlak. Three legs, huge claws, club tail, armored shell, short neck. Spits acid. Fast. Not any sort of smart, but they'll go after anything. Even asari. Mostly a danger to children and the non-biotic elderly, of course."
"That one was a male. Big. Mom wasn't home, dad was on the other side of the ranch, and the pups were so young Kesh would growl at anybody who got close. I wasn't supposed to be out. Came out to watch the ships flare as they went FTL. Rixi had just visited, and I wanted to watch her go."
"It roared before it charged me. I was so scared I forgot half of my safety biotics class from school."
She lifts her jacket, showing off a sleek weapon made of silver metal that shines like a beetle's shell.
"Mom got me this when I was old enough to go outside alone. Like the Disciple shotguns the huntresses use. Civilian model. One huge shell rather than a cluster, slower rate of fire, and a mode for longer range. Somehow I remembered to slide under the shell and I just unloaded into its belly. The red peg it's hanging on?"
"Yeah."
"We didn't drill that hole."
Lanya whistles.
"Yeah. Top half of the shell just peeled open. I was covered in guts. Lefty here came over to thank me for saving her, didn't she? Yes, she did!"
Lefty blinks dusky orange eyes at them. More than Layna wants to count.
"She rubbed some shoots on me and ate them. I guess they'll eat meat if it's only sauce. Minerals, probably. Sakhoi need a ton of minerals. Early settlers actually melted the shells down when they first cleared out a herd. Plenty of iron and a bit of nickel and tungsten. Saves a lot if you don't have to import bulk stuff for a building."
"Mom and Kesh found me, freaked out, soaked in goddess-shadowed slime, laughing. Kesh thought maybe I'd gone insane. But don't worry about tyrlaks. Pay attention, keep your barrier up and make sure they don't eat big dumb sweethearts like Lefty. First week of work, we'll take you to Gakar. He outfits all the workers around here with protection. Krogan or asari guns, worker's armor with plug-ins for omni-tool boosters. We'll buy. Hiring bonus."
Mascha's stylus dances over the etching glass she pulled out to take notes with.
"Collect legs that fall off, don't die, shoot monsters, free guns. Love it. Anything else?"
"Yeah. Barn them up at night if neither of you are out here, or on holidays, like tomorrow."
"Tomorrow?"
"Uh, Janiris? The holiday? House stinks of sex for like, a month?"
Lanya looks at Mascha, who looks right back. Sura groans.
"From the look of you, you're like, four times my age! You smell so much like azure that I wonder if you just popped that bartender like a berry, but you don't know about Janiris?"
"We had an odd childhood," Mascha murmurs.
"Very odd," Lanya agrees. "Batarians..."
"...a shipping container...cheese.."
Masha shudders.
"So weird. Pyjacks...tricycles..."
Sura holds up her hands.
"I...right. That's way more than I wanted. Now my brain is going to have to figure that all out. Come on. Remedial Asari Culture 101, this way."
Sura looks over her notes, then back up at her students.
Is this how matriarchs feel all the time? Telling people about stuff I know more about is amazing!
"...and that's the basics. Fertility festival. Sex and crops, but once we had spare crops, it became more or less just sex. Five days. You'll take turns watching 'the kids'," she scoffs, making quote-signs.
"I'll only be here one day, probably. I'm actually going to go see my friends for the first two. One's human. Loves the pups to death and they're never rough with him. He said it was Halloween on Earth...three days ago, or so? We ordered a rush shipment of candy. It's so cheap after Halloween that it costs the same even with the extra shipping. Should get here on day three."
"We're the help," Mascha points out.
"You're new in town," Sura retorts. "New is sexy. Uahi, Kesh, Argah, that's dad and you'll meet him at, I bet. They're old school. Janiris is where people meet people. Sometimes a matriarch gets a thrashing she really likes and some maiden suddenly gets a call about a job or someone drops a hint that gets something out of her way. Everybody pretends it's an accident-matriarch sneakiness and all-and never ask for favors. Just know it's a thing. "
Sura claps her hands together and rubs them.
"Let's go over it again. Touch, yes or no?"
"No," Mascha replies. "Stroke their skin with light, diffuse pulses of biotics, at least a few inches away."
"Then what?"
Lanya holds up a token. It seems to be a slice of the woody reeds nearby that was fire-hardened and lacquered.
"If you think they're interested, toss them a token. If they put it in their mouth, on the bed or on their stomach, or in their hand, that's what they want. If they toss it back to you, no."
Sura shrugs.
"That's the basics. Couples who don't share wear white and black paint. Their symbols match so that they don't get confused. Spices in it so you'll smell it if you're blindfolded. Believe me. The smell sticks to the curtains. Anyone with a red, green, and blue stripe is free-use, but make sure you find their partner. Gold stripe. They'll actually give you permission. They keep them safe, especially since a lot of them like to be tied to something or whatever so they can't see."
"I'm going to go sit on Lefty's shell and finish my homework. She likes that. Have fun tomorrow."
(Anatomical summary of the Asari)
Lanya blinks awake. It's not morning, not quite, but it's closer to dawn. Rather than darkness, when she turns her head to face the window, she sees the glimmering mauve of Lusia's magic hour, no longer the shifting red from the nearer star bounced off countless moons.
She also has a mountain of blue tit to look around. Ever the cuddler, Mascha is wrapped around her. She always has been, ever since they were woken by the scientists and the world came into focus around them in their shared cell. She had bunched herself up against the headboard so she could spoon Lan's top half and that has left her mashed up against the side of Mascha's breast.
Slow, cool, wet breath falls across her crests.
"Mas?"
"Erg."
"Mas."
"Soft. Shh..."
"Yes, the bed is very soft. But I'm awake and you're just whining, so let's get up."
A weak, fitful pulse of spare energy dances down Mas' skin.
"Fine."
She presses a kiss to Lan's neck folds and opens her arms. Lanya rolls out of bed and onto her feet before Mas can change her mind and go back to their usual lie-in routine: Seeing how many lashes of the tongue and strokes of her fingers it takes to pull Lan back under by burying her in orgasms.
"S'good that the family's mostly krogan," she jokes.
Mas chuckles.
"Beds our size?"
"Exactly. And high ceilings!"
She raises her arms and has them almost straight up over her head before they hit the wood and stone of the ceiling.
"Yeah. They seem nice. Time to stop running."
Their stomachs growl in close succession.
"Crops festival has to have good food, right?"
The moment Lan opens the door, she's faced with a svelte asari with what looks like a biotically charged whip coiled around her neck like a purple snake of pure energy. The handle is between her breasts, glowing with energy as someone in the living room below manipulates it. Each time a pulse wraps around the handle, the stasis fields in the cord swell, and the matron's breathing hitches.
"Blessed Janiris!" she pants.
"Uh, hi."
"Mistress wants to see if I can be good even if other people touch me," she explains. She presses a pouch of tokens into Lan's hand before taking one out and stroking it through her swollen azure, flushed nearly black with long-denied need. "You can't touch anywhere else. But you can try to make me come, if you want."
"I'm sorry. I really need breakfast."
She chortles.
"Don't apologize to me. That's not what I'm here for. What about you, tall, blue and quiet?"
Lan hands the pouch to Mascha, and as she walks away, she hears a surprised squeak.
"Can you take big?" she hears Mas ask. "And deep?"
Lan doesn't hear the reply, but she does hear a chuckle and spots a matriarch downstairs moving her fingers like an orchestra conductor, while another matron and a plump human woman each suck on one breast and focus their caresses on one of the lips of her azure.
Between her and the stairs, there's a guest bedroom flooded with so much biotic energy the door glows. A short line of nervous asari are waiting, many with their omni-tools open to electronic books. What looks like a sign-up sheet is hanging next to the door.
As she tries to squeeze by, she spots the title of the book the matron in front is reading: Akero for beginners.
"What's this about?"
"You must be new," the matron huffs. "Matriarch Lenura T'Shura is in there. Rich, smart, powerful. Needs to be an akertira like I need air."
"That's like a sub, right? Don't laugh!" Lanya protests, holding up her hands. "New to the colony. Was raised sort of nowhere. Visiting matriarch. Taught us a lot but not enough time for...that."
"Yeah, well. Last year I did terribly. She fell asleep during. And not because I wore her out."
Lan glances back to Mas and the sub-akertira, she realizes-dangling over the railing, limp and slack and giving a yelp each time Mas's fingers drive in. She watches a moment longer, knowing exactly what that poor bitch is in for. Mas unties the sheet she'd tied around her own waist and nudges her victims' legs apart while she gathers her stasis-numbed throat in another hand.
Lanya spots a server with a tray of berrybread and thauvi milk, waits for her to look up and beckons.
"How is she?"
Mas chuckles.
"She's a wriggler, Lan."
"Please..." the sub whines. "Do som-GODDESS!"
Lan glances over to the rutting pair, seeing Mas' formidable fronds sneak out of her azure. At least a dozen, curious, fleshy, each thick as her finger and longer than her hand. A few slide their outer ridges across juice-smeared thighs, chasing the source of the liquid.
"Taste good," Mas huffs.
Lan laughs.
"She's that sweet, huh?"
Mas nods, biting her lip.
"I can taste her, Lan. Like she was on my tongue."
The curious fronds immediately find something wet and pleasant and press together like the bulb of a flower, tips aglow with biotics and the thicker flesh at the base of each tensed up. As Mas pushes forward with her fronds, her partner's azure pushes out and squeezes down, creating a slick grind. Finally, she can push no farther, as her uncooperative fronds refuse to wrap around each other, preferring to bulge outward until the akertira whines and spreads her legs just to make more space.
"S'big," she huffs. "You're big. They're firm. And strong."
"They'll listen," Mas promises. "You got to squeeze down, gorgeous. Make them."
She moves each of the akertira's hands onto the railing-for leverage, she purrs-and grins at the akero who has abandoned even the pretense of paying attention to her playmates as she watches Mas ruin her pet with flashing eyes and fingers dancing to tighten the whip's fields.
"Berrybread?"
Lanya turns to the server. She's young. She could be a taele but for the obvious arousal: The swell of her pupils, the black flecks in her eyes as the need to meld literally spills into the whites of her eyes. The fitful flicker of half-controlled biotics dances on her scales. She doesn't want to be wearing that silk wrap held by the server's medallion that means she can't play.
"Thanks. I'm going to take some for my friend too, OK?"
"As many as you want," the server mumbles. "Oh, wow. Oh, Goddess. It's only my third Janiris, but..."
She's looking right past Lan to where the akertira droops like wet thread over the railing, panting. Then Mas thrusts and she comes alive, stiffening and arching her back to enjoy each stroke. Each time, she wraps her hand around the matron's throat and holds tight, suspending her for two sharp thrusts before letting her crumble.
Lanya chuckles.
"She does that."
"Yeah," the maiden sighs.
"When you're free, come find us. We're..."
"Big. I'll be able to find you. Thanks."
Downstairs in the main dining area, Kesh is face-down on a pillow the size of a mattress, draped in a well-worn handmade blanket, groaning happily and wreathed in incense. A priestess of Athame stands before her, head bowed, invoking the Goddess and her servants, asking that Tevura see the injustice of the genophage, and that Kurinth give Kesh's unborn pups the ferocity to fight it.
Not far off, a rough-scaled matriarch of the palest blue is lounging naked against a half-asleep bull krogan, drawing a single fingertip along his now limp-shaft with a small smile on her face. Lan hadn't really thought about what krogan looked like naked until...ten seconds ago. She'd never seen one in clothes rather than armor, let alone naked.
Not nearly as scary, she decides. Big plates of hard bone-some some pitted and some smooth as glass-cover almost his whole body, even the backs of his hand and fingers. They almost touch when he exhales, and spread apart on his chest when he inhales, revealing leathery brown scales. A row of thick plates to either side of his shaft and the four tightly packed, wrinkled balls beneath it suggests that if he hadn't fallen asleep so fast, it would have been tucked away. It's massively thick but not unusually long and the same brown as his scales.
The matriarch crooks a finger with her free hand and Lanya hurries over.
"Welcome. I'm Uahi. I'm told that my Sura found you."
Lanya nods.
"She is..."
The matriarch laughs.
"Ambitious? I've noticed, I assure you. Hopefully, maidenhood distracts Sura in a few decades. Otherwise, I fear we'll all end up paying her back by installments. She's clever. And there's no force in the universe more powerful than compound interest."
"I was going to say cute."
"Well, thank you. I do think she was some of my best work. I apologize for Argah. He's a lovely host...usually."
She nods to a tangle of blue, brown, and pink limbs. Three asari, a female turian and a human man and woman curled tight against each other. Shiny.
Uahi chuckles.
"Krogan make people curious. Argah would never stray-they're loyal, and krantt is everything-krogan love of their family is the quality about them that no one seems to remember. But at Janiris, I encourage him to. So many are curious about what it's like to be with a krogan, but too afraid. So many stories on the human extranet, after all."
Lan chuckles.
"So he's an ambassador?"
"When Kesh and I let him, yes. Do wander around. Don't let me keep you. We'll get to know each other during and after. Go meet guests."
"Thank you, matriarch."
"Aren't you formal? If that's how it's going to be, Blessed Janiris, nais imes Athame." [literal: woman under Athame / woman through Athame", semantic: "my sister through the Goddess."]
As Lanya circles the crowd, she hears a matron mutter to her friend that she's never seen a quad shot that empty.
"Best not overthink it," she reminds herself, wondering what they looked like before Kesh had her turn and before those revelers were so shiny.
Lan has no idea what's going on in the rest of the house-where Mas is, whether it's been an hour or four days-because she's too busy watching. The couple is beautiful, both of them: Him long and lean and golden-brown, his chest dusted with dark hair, and her dark and shiny and juicy with springy hair dyed bright blue, with golden piercings in her nipples and framing her pelvis, standing out on her dark skin like gold coins twinkling in the night. She's on her back, legs over his shoulders and quite clearly bored out of her mind in a way that makes something in Lanya angry. Something she's not sure came from the asari.
"Put a baby in me, Mike."
His thrusts falter and his brow furrows but he hides it by picking up the pace a moment later.
It shouldn't be hard, Lanya thinks. Every inch of her body drips with the primal, the female, the fertile, from her breasts his hands don't quite cover to the plushness of her hips when he grabs them for leverage.
"Good berrybread, huh?"
Lanya spins around to glare at her oldest friend, cell-mate, classmate, bedmate.
"Don't sneak up on me!"
"What the hell! Get off me!"
They both turn back to the woman. She's gathered the sheets up over herself and is glaring at her-boyfriend? husband? What do humans do, anyway?-with such disappointment that it hurts Lanya to watch.
"Coming was your idea," she huffs. "You wanna have a spare, go find two and count me out."
"Let's go that way," Mascha whispers, "Then loop back."
They pretend to admire a nearby painting and the husband breezes out of the room, token-bag in hand, and within moments has his cock buried in the throat of a woman with free-use stripes. Her girlfriend looks uneasy, but whatever the signal she's sending by rubbing her fingers doesn't mean 'stop him'. Yet.
"Come in," comes a whisper from the bedroom.
"You all right?" Mas asks.
Mascha? Being concerned?
The woman shrugs. It does amazing things to the sweaty, heavy curves of her breasts.
"Ellen."
"I'm Mascha, and the one just realizing she's a boob girl is Lanya."
Ellen laughs.
"You like?"
Lanya nods eagerly.
"Mascha and Lanya... Like Abbott and Costello?" Ellen teases, her smile all glimmering teeth and shining pink lips.
"Bonnie and Clyde?" Mas suggests. "Thelma and Louise. Let's go with that."
Lanya swallows her nerves.
"If you don't mind my asking...did he hurt you?"
Ellen rolls her eyes.
"No. Or, not right now. I think-I know, I just lie to myself a little-that he's had affairs. Outside of places like Janiris orgies. I've wanted to cheat myself. We make an awful lot of sense on paper as husband and wife but not as much in person."
"That's sad."
"Yeah. And divorce means hiring an Alliance-certified lawyer, and a banker and...fuck. Almost as much money as just giving him half. And I'm afraid, you know? Maybe you don't. You both look gorgeous. Like whatever Thessia had for Vikings. Throw a woman over your shoulder, take her off and fuck her wobbly in a dirt hut. I'm nice-looking. For now. But I guess I've gotten used to being Ellen of Mike and Ellen-Ellen and Mike, here on Lusia, love that asari sass-and divorce means being the woman who couldn't keep a husband or at least some people will think that. I won't even live a thousand years to get a bunch of do-overs!" She jokes.
Ellen grabs something off a nearby shelf and pulls a lumpy, paper-wrapped length of something out of it.
"Either of you smoke?"
"No. Lan?"
"Uh, Hallex? No."
"You're fucking adorable," Ellen teases. "It's weed."
She seats the joint in her lips and without thinking, Lanya leans forward, gathers up her biotics, and tries to remember what Matriarch Aethyta said about making fire-heat-rather than pulling atoms apart with warpfire. Eyebrow raised, Ellen leans forward towards the ball of red heat hovering in her palm.
Merely approaching is enough to light the paper.
"Well," Ellen muses. "That's handy. Real gentlewoman, this one."
She pats the bed beside her.
"If you want to go, I under-"
"No!"
"Goddess, Lan. It's Janiris. If you want to fuck her so bad your brain collapsed, ask."
Lanya opens her mouth. Closes it. Looks at Ellen sprawling back on the pillows, legs apart, belly sweaty, her slit a beacon of pink between dark lips.
"I could use some company."
She's gorgeous. And in season. And her mate is incapable an-
Lanya shakes her head. Where did that come from?
She feels a cool tickle across her crests and behind her jaw and down her neck. The air around her tastes like the marijuana, and dry air coming in through a cracked open window, and vanilla and Ellen's sweat.
The threat fronds. Yahg. It's the yahg in me.
"...and now we're talking about a baby. Mike would be a good father. Probably. But the idea of being pregnant with him as my husband scares me."
"Why's that?" Mas asks, stroking Ellen's side.
Ellen shrugs.
"He's not a big fan of...y'know."
She glances down at her lap.
"I really don't," Lan reminds her.
"Down there. He...maybe he thinks it's gross? It's not an easy talk to have."
Lan lunges. She curls her hands around Ellen's hips, pulling her up into the air. With her height and Ellen's short, juicy frame, this leaves Ellen's head dangling in midair somewhere around her navel.
"Whoa!"
"Is this OK?" Mas asks, following the question with a growl too soft and too low for Ellen to hear.
"Unless she's about to bite me, yes."
Lanya takes a bit of nut-dark thigh between her teeth but doesn't press. She does growl and it makes Ellen's hips jump.
"Why don't I hold her head?" Mas suggests.
"Hold me up for wha-"
Lanya licks a broad, slow stripe through Ellen's folds, splitting the pink, hot flesh around her tongue and flicking the golden piercing above her clit with her tongue.
"FUCK! Message received. You don't mind pussy."
"Can we...uh...?"
Mas touches her fingers to her temples.
"The meld thing? Yeah. Yeah! I've always won-"
Flashes wash over Lanya's mind.
Sun...sea...grass...running...wood floors...squeaking...hard, orange, ball...leaping...flying...water cascading over her skin...hands tangling...another woman's hands...dark thigh sliding around pale...rocking...palm covering her mouth when she moans...nice three-pointer, co-captain.
Everything else goes away. Three things exist: Her body, Ellen's, and Mascha's, visible as Ellen sees her, impossibly massive and bright. Everything else is blackness. Unimportant.
So this is it, huh?
You're beautiful.
Wanting...tears...lonely, sad, angry...staring at her omni-tool...investigator sighs...paying good money for bad news...tapping in a code...CONTRACEPTIVE IMPLANT DISABLED flashing on screen...walking back into the bedroom...feeling light...he's already asleep.
Don't focus on him.
That might have been Mascha. With Ellen between them in the meld, she can't tell. Ellen is what draws her in.
Stupid...it's a stupid idea...she can't help herself...breasts swollen, heavy...aching...doctor beaming at her...lifting a tiny body into her arms...a tiny blue body...tiny lips on her sore nipple...relief.
Lan breaks the meld in surprise. Mas soon follows suit.
"You really like that fantasy, huh?"
"Mmm-hmm."
Lanya flicks a nipple piercing with her fingernail and the shiver passes through Ellen's entire body along with the moan.
"Just the baby, or all of it?" Mas asks. "I hear human pregnancies are different. What's your dream pregnancy?"
Ellen laughs.
"Besides lack of morning sickness?"
"Obviously. We're asari, not dumb."
Ellen giggles.
"No laughing," Lanya demands, poking a finger into the softness of Ellen's tummy. "Makes your breasts...I...I want to take this seriously and listen. I can't think when you're so sexy and so happy."
"Flatterer. I guess...hmm. I'd been so busy being afraid of the bad things. Ice cream, pickles-don't ask, it's a weird thing our appetites do-foot rubs..."
Ellen trails off.
"There's more."
"And I can tell you're not in my brain, so, rude for figuring that out," Ellen complains. "It's dumb."
"I really doubt that," Mas interjects. "I just pulled your company's extranet site up. No way you're dumb, Miss Senior Vice President."
Ellen sighs.
"When I go off birth control, even before I'm actually off, when the hormones are still mostly there...I start thinking differently. Telling myself I turned it off because I want a baby, and then that becomes having a baby is why I'm here and I guess..."
"So you really don't care," Lanya rumbles, hoping she doesn't sound too stupid or doesn't drop her voice right out of human hearing. "Long as you get bred."
Ellen's pupils swell.
"I...yeah. Like if I didn't want to be bred, used to make babies, why did I turn it off? So I think I'd be really horny, when I was pregnant. I like it rougher, when I'm off birth control. I'd want it so much that the baby thinks it's at a rock concert."
"What about a little blue baby?" Lanya asks, feeling her threat-fronds quiver. "You couldn't hide it. No excuses. Everyone would know you were just some alien's whore. Your husband. Strangers passing on the street."
Ellen's hips give an eager little jump and her thighs tremble.
"Yeah," she mumbles, swiping her tongue across her lips. "Could one, or maybe both of you, fuck me? Please? I really need it and after that talk. I won't freak out. Promise. I know a little bit. Vids and stuff."
"Oh?"
"Yeah. It's like a sexy blue onion. That moves."
Masha laughs so hard she nearly dislodges Ellen from her lap, not that it would hurt. She's entirely in Lanya's control, one hand under her neck and the other keeping her leg over her shoulder. Light as a feather.
"Sexy blue on-" Mas huffs. "Lan, let her down a little? I think maybe she's been upside down long enough."
"Nooooo..." Ellen pouts. "World's all spinny and blue and muscley."
"Eleven...twelve...ooh, lucky thirteen. Hello to you too," she chortles as the frond pulls away from the rest and twirls around her finger.
Ellen flicks her eyes from Masha's face to her-what did they say it was called? crown-and back. She smooths the slick flesh with her palm, giggling when the fronds chase her skin, swaying and curling to hold the touch as long as they can. She puts her hands fingertip-to-palm one on top of the other and makes it past halfway. And she knows damn well that's ten inches-she's not an idiot when it comes to husband selection and she knows what she likes-so she doubts any human man alive is this long. No, she's sure of it.
Two of the fronds, side by side, would be respectable. Three would be plenty. Four would leave her feeling Friday night until Tuesday morning.
These bitches are lucky I don't know what's good for me.
"Oof. Blue-ribbon onion, here. I'm gonna need a bigger pussy."
"S'fine," Mascha groans. "You...your hands are really soft."
Lan laughs somewhere behind her. Thinking got hard a long time ago, when powerful fingers spread her, and two more slid inside, deep, and curious, and attentive.
"They react to you," Lan whispers. "Not her. She had that whole thing in a sub upstairs."
"You're fucking joking."
"Did the vids not mention that?"
Ellen chews her lip. She did find some of her husband's Fornax videos, but they were asari being fucked, not doing the fucking. Very 'Humanity, Fuck Yeah!' stuff. Human men with asari women who looked even more unimpressed than the human pornstars. Probably because they have three hundred years of better to compare to.
If ten-foot miracles of science have a little extra frondage-probably the case-lesbian porn is missing out.
"Reflex," Mascha huffs. "They try to get touched. If something means more touching, they'll do it again."
Ellen hums.
"So if I sort of..."
She cups her palms around the bulb at the base-where her fingers don't even get close to meeting-and squeezes. A ripple travels down every single frond at once and Mascha moans.
"Again," she pleads.
Ellen does. Again. And again. And again, and little beads of glowing bluish-white cream bead at the very tip of each frond. Pressing in harder, she feels her fingers meet, and she gives a congratulatory rub to the lips of Mascha's azure with her thumbs.
It's sexy pottery. As long as I keep her enjoying it, they hold their shape.
Lan's hand comes down on her butt and she shudders. "There's a new drug on the market. Well, soon to be on the market. Supposed to let people have hybrid babies. Some salarian kook made it."
Ellen smiles.
"Course he did. Our accountant got a triple shot of espresso one day and...never mind. What's your point?"
She feels the cool metal of a tube of something rolled against her back.
"That's a hypo. I have some."
Mas' fingers land on her temples and in an instant, they're both inside her mind again and everything's black.
Not make believe. Not pretending until you come. Real.
Uhh.
She's too turned on to think, Lan.
Fuu...
She tries to make them believe it. Daydreams about big, smooth bodies in bed with her. Waking up on her side after a nap, arms so long they fit around her belly with ease, spreading her tender lips and pushing in, right away, because that's what she's for, making blue babies and the mother-father? stud-who put one in her has a right to pussy in the meantime. About shutting the door on a crowd screaming 'slut' and 'alien fucker' at her and smiling because her little blue baby is asleep on her big blue daddy's chest.
Please.
The meld dissolves. She hears a grunt of discomfort behind her and a hiss and the clatter of metal on wood.
"The whole vial? Lan, she'll have like, ten."
Please! Yes. Yes, please!
"Hard," she pleads. "Hard, Lan."
Thirteen eager, weeping tips flutter around her pussy and then they find somewhere warmer and twirl around each other.
Christ, she's turning it int-
Thought becomes impossible as a massive, ram-rod straight, spiraled cock with a fat head that shivers and tickles her walls pushes into her slowly. Little by little, Lan pushes inside her, training her fronds to stretch and spread Ellen but also learning her pussy, clinging tighter to each other when she clenches hardest, narrowing their combined bulk so they can push forward without hurting her.
She lowers her lips over the tips of Mascha's fronds. She'll train it after it's in her throat, goddamnit, she needs to be filled.
She's so fucking full. She feels so fucking good, mouth around her cock, cock in her throat, sputtering, holding, swallowing, feeling the same from the other side. Hot fluttering slickness clenching her flesh, a cock like she's never had-never dreamt of-claiming her forever, driving into her so deep and hard, even when it's slow, that nothing else will ever be good enough. Fingers that have never felt hair before smoothing her afro, fingers in her hair, blunt nails massaging her scalp, soothing her as the world darkens but doesn't blacken as she draws what little air she can around the spiral of the gathered fronds. Her clit so small and delicate between her fingers, her fingers so massive and soft as they stroke her clit.
Fuck.
Tight.
So big.
Goddess, her mouth is soft.
Ellen wills herself to think, to do more than just be.
I like how you feel, in my mouth.
Promise I won't let you off, then. Just three times a day. For meals...
Fuck. She...she...she came from that.
Too good...too hot...too tight...
Come in me. Breed me. Please...
The first thought Ellen identifies as hers-not the general 'Ellen is amazing' swirl of the other two-is that asari pussy tastes like sweetener and it makes her laugh around the half-softened, somewhat shrunk, but still hefty, candy-cane-spiraled shaft resting in her throat.
The coughing, sputtering, sneezing aftermath is less than sexy.
Her first thought after I want to die is that Mascha didn't seem grossed out.
"Sorry," she sniffs.
"Eh. Once we got you unplugged, it was kinda cute. Like...what're they called, Lan? Not ealiass. The Earth ones."
"Rabbits."
"Right. Little scrunchy nose. Cute little bunny!"
Ellen shoves her face into the comforter and groans.
"Get out of my bed," she hollers, lifting an arm and pointing towards the door. Or the window. Or fucking Andromeda for all she knows...She's seeing colors humans don't see, and she's pretty sure that's the afterimage of gravity dripping down the walls.
Something shifts on the bed above her. She turns to see Mascha pushing herself off the bed.
"Absolutely fucking not! Get back here! Jesus Herbert Hoover Christ, it was a joke. Human females need to be cuddled. Especially ones kept in captivity for breeding. But shut the door, maybe? So it's just us?"
Lan growls.
"Our female."
"Ours," Mas agrees, stroking the rim of her ear with a curious finger.
Argah rubs his head-plate against Uahi's back and slides out of bed, leaving her to slide into Kesh's front as the mattress recalculates the weight. Glancing back, he sees Uahi turn around and sleep-drape onto Kesh, curling herself so that she touches as much as she can touch. Easier on Kesh...females don't have head-to-toe plating and her smaller hump and longer limbs makes it easier for both: Uahi's hands meet around her back as she nuzzles back to sleep and her cheek can find bare skin for the meld while her leg hooks over Kesh's with ease.
Worried he'll wake them otherwise, he calls on his biotics and lifts the nearest knit comforter off the pile by the window cove-this one must have been from when Uahi was really stressed, it's massive-and lets it hover over the bed before dropping it.
"Sleep tight, ladies."
He really needs to eat. Kesh denned up in here the instant she thought she might have felt something harden inside and Uahi pushed her biotics through plates and flesh, stroked this and that looking for the harder, heavier mass of a sac, then grinned, and prayed for the Goddess to keep the pups strong.
Here's hoping.
So they're off the hook. But that human couple wanted a sendoff, husband and wife both. And no one warned him about how humans fuck. Acrobatic little pyjacks.
It's pitch dark in the bedroom-they all like it that way-but their robes hang on pegs over a heating grate, so he can find them in infrared and slip out the door.
It's early, everyone's still asleep, probably. Sura's standing outside the window with her friend, digging around in some orange plastic bucket and watching the sakhoi. Her human friend-Tom? Tim, it was Tim-is standing next to her and the pups are curled up at his feet, faces pressed into his blue jeans and shells facing out. Like slightly fidgety rocks. Probably out cold.
The maiden who volunteered to be the food server this year appears by his side so fast he wonders if she used a charge.
"Blessed Janiris, host."
"Hmm," he grunts.
"Fresh kaffe's in the pot, two steps forward, one to the left."
"Thanks."
"You're welcome. I expect another go, by the way. Gotta give me some reason to come back..."
"You fuck like a thresher maw, little one. I think you bent a plate when you came. I know I've got a bite."
"Yes, and I bent it back," she teases, bouncing up on tiptoe to kiss his neck where she'd drawn blood yesterday...now nothing but slightly-more-tender skin. "Go check on your guests. I'm not serving, so I want to make sure all the food is covered up."
"Good kid," he says to no one in particular when he finds four pots, one large one and three smaller ones labeled Uahi, Kesh and Argah behind it.
He drinks as he walks, picking his way around the larger piles of bodies so he doesn't step on anyone lighter than he is. That crazy akero-Tekh? no, too krogany...wait, yes. Tekha T'Vasir. She's in the corner, alert, awake, gleaming with her biotics as she presses kisses to the foreheads of her sleeping human and asari pets, one after the other. The human still has the stasis-whip coiled around her, a loop from her shoulders to between her legs and she fidgets when a pulse of biotics makes the beads grow wider and spread her.
Morning, her nod seems to say.
He shakes his head and gives a dismissive wave before mounting the stairs.
Strange. Matriarch T'Shura never leaves the door open at night. He built the damn house, so even when he climbs them, the stairs won't creak. He chuckles when he sees the new help's names on the sign-up sheet. Never too early to try, he supposes.
He pushes the door open.
He doesn't realize he's dropped the kaffe cup until he steps on one of the shards.
On the bed, the dark-skinned human that Sura introduced them to-Ellen? definitely need to have a guest list next year...-is slumped diagonally against the headboard boosted up by a small hill of pillows. The Matriarch is slumped over...Lanya. He can tell by the larger crest-scales. Lanya's under her, her crown shoved lips-deep into the matriarch's azure. Mascha is just as deep in the matriarch's ass and somehow sleeping mostly upright, with her back to a relocated dresser. Eezo-laced lube, engraved barrier, lift, pull and stasis whips and other ake'min bits and pieces are all over the massive bed around them and what looks like an actual paper book titled Learn ake'min in an ake-minute! is on the nightstand.
The matriarch's cheeks are crusted with dried...that does explain why she's face down with her head between a human's legs.
"Wow."
He gathers her mug off the table by the door and an etching-glass pad falls out from under it.
It's in the Matriarch's handwriting.
Names? These three deserve the world!
Also, tell your neighbor I'm buying that plot on your fenceline.
Love, Len.
The broken pieces of mug behind him float past him and into the trash. Small arms wrap around him from behind and a blue hand plucks the etching glass from his hand.
"You could've slept in."
"Never can, the last day of Janiris," Uahi sighs. "Kesh is restless. Dreams about protecting the pups, I think. I got up to get her something to help her sleep. She should be better soon. I wanted to give you a peck on the plate and check in with Sura. I'll do that and then go back to bed. The rest of the day is your problem."
"Good luck with that maiden," she teases. "Make sure she knows I'll be very disappointed if she melts my bondmate."
"That's sweet," she murmurs, looking at the note. "And Kesh worried! Not even their first shift and they're fitting right in. Hmm. Rather literally. I'll just go make sure there's some balm and salve salts next to the tub in this room's bath."
I write various things for various sites including AO3, and others (see my profile).
If you want to know more, I have a Tumblr (alephthirteen-writes dot tumblr dot com) that ties it all together-every site I touch, I link there in a pinned note-and I also I post musings and ramblings about my various headcanons, characterizations, character and trope rants both for and against, and follow fanartists I like.
Asari Anatomy
See "Asari - External Anatomy" under "Intelligence"in the Systems Alliance Officer's Codex
'maenu' or azure - The maenu (Zessau dialect, 'gateway') or azure is the externally visible genitalia of an asari, presenting as a slit with two powerfully muscular lips that pull apart to reveal more delicate and intricate lips, the kuranja and the birth canal and crown.
ilai'kis or 'crown' - The ilai'kis (Zessau dialect, 'blue flower' after a particular form of Maidens' Blush wildflowers) or 'crown' are a group of smooth, touch-seeking, mobile structures in asari genitalia, rooted just inside the birth canal. Made up of a series of thirteen 'fronds' or 'tendrils' that seek out contact with the other partner. Fronds are massively sensitive to touch, heat, neurological activity and, to a smaller degree, taste. Typically, far longer and thicker in purebloods, as well as being more active and more controllable with practice.
teve'nisun or 'jewel' - The jewel or teve'nisun (Zessau dialect, 'mind hammer') is a marble-sized bundle of nerves at the back of the skull, under the crests and above the neck-folds, where various ganglia from both structures gather and enter the brain directly. Exceptionally sensitive to both touch and dark energy, it is an erogenous zone of crippling intensity with the right partner, especially a biotic.
kunaja or 'clit' - The asari clitoris or kunaja (Zessau dialect, 'tree of wonder'), which forms the innermost lips, coils around the entire birth canal and the muscular ring sealing the womb. Presents externally as three ridges in a forked arrangement, the largest and central of which can push outwards using muscular tissue behind it and 'lean in' to contact.
sil'atr or 'crests' - The scaly crests on an asari's head are properly called sil'atr (Serraci dialect, ancient term, derivation of compound form unknown) and serve the dual purpose of cooling the brain and providing specialized sensory organs. These organs detect shifts in electricity, as well as nearby fluctuations in mass and velocity, gravity, and dark energy. These are called the "Four Pillar" senses and are essential to the precision of asari biotics.