Chapter 558: Chapter 558 - [Post-R18] When The Existing Fortification Needs The Timeline Of A Gentle, Patient Sapper For The Long Campaign

Tracing patterns across a strongly defined set of muscles, laying lazily along the bare chest that her husband-wife held her to... Elua finally stilled when she felt a shift in the quality of attention. A change from the warm and protective ’contentment’ that had been flooding through the somewhat calm tendrils ever since the reincarnator came back to more coherent thought. Altering toward something with more edges and feelings to it.

’Ah. She’s thinking about it.’

The swordswoman was quiet for a long while even then. Building up the rough shape of something that Qatrand already knew existed in her head, especially now after seeing El again... but hadn’t found the correct approach for quite yet. Her wife could have teased, or asked, or offered without allowing the delay. But in her head, she had just been given something extraordinary - and the least she could do was let her precious gem arrive at the words on her own.

"I want to try."

The low voice came out with a spiritual undercurrent that was a lot less certain than the words. ’Determination’ threaded alongside the ’curiosity’ - and both wrapped tightly around a dense knot of ’apprehension’. One that the former Yecine was doing her best to compress into something manageable, nearly the same way El had tried to *quiet* her own little shriek a while ago.

Which is to say, terribly obvious if you were not relying on only the physical sound of things. As the spirit-first ancient cultivator always comported herself. The brunette kept her response extra simple, letting her spirit do the rest of the major work.

"Okay."

A wash of ’encouragement’, but a kind without any ’expectation’ of either success or failure. Something she had learned to calibrate across her early years of working with nervous patients, so that they understood that it was more important to recognize things as they develop instead of anticipating off of her reflected thoughts. Her Qat was decidedly not a patient, exactly, but the principle applied when someone’s body was the territory being explored!

"I don’t know if I should... tell you what I want. I’m not sure I know what I want?"

Pigeon blues were staring at the ceiling instead of looking at the set of mint eyes watching her jaw. A chin that worked in a motion once, as if testing whether more words could follow. But they didn’t - that calloused hand resting over the brunette’s hip just squeezed once. Clearly an action meant more for the nervous one squeezing down rather than the utterly calm one being held.

"My love, can you sit up? Come here."

Elua pushed away and crossed her legs, while adjusting the dress that had remained more of a bunched suggestion of potential coverage around her waist... than something smoothed out to cover in the moments of aftercare. Once settled, she held both hands out with her palms up and waited to be joined. Until it looked like it only confused the blonde.

"Give me your hands, dear."

The swordswoman complied, eventually settling her larger grip into smaller, far warmer palms. Anxiety was constricting her blood flow just enough to make such a temperature difference obvious to the set of eyes that studied them. She hadn’t held them in any way like this in so long, and the ’reverence’ in her heart was almost clearer than her clinical assessment. She turned them over slowly, thumbs tracing the deepened callus lines from thousands of hours of dedicated heavy blade practice like she was performing palm-reading.

Which in a way... she was.

"You know, your hands have changed quite a lot since last time I saw them. I see two almost healed scars from Voidling damage. I can fix or leave that as you wish, just like I did for your shoulder wound."

"El..."

"I’m going somewhere with this. Be considerate for me, hm?"

She leaned down and kissed one knuckle, the one with a dislocation that had apparently snapped painfully and was reset by Zonnel during the strikeforce days. At least according to letters she had not forgotten. Then, El pressed both captured hands flat against her face before guiding the taller woman’s wrists and the palms attached down her neck slowly. Resting eventually on collarbones that the blonde’s fingers reflexively curled against.

Drawing a small pleased sound and smug smile that Elua didn’t bother hiding.

’Mhm. Her attraction is real. It isn’t that she has no libido.’

"Feel how warm I am to you?"

She guided one even lower with no particular urgency, through what gap existed between her covered breasts... to press flat over her sternum and down to the xiphoid process. Then the medical expert guided it accurately - with a little pushing lift of her left bust that was purely functional - to press into the fifth intercostal space, the apical pulse spot where her heartbeat was obvious to a sensitive cultivator.

"Listen to the rhythm of my heart. Close your eyes and just experience that for a bit, okay?"

Doing as told proved to be fairly effective. Gradually, the systole and diastole *ba-dum* patterns within the former Yecine started to grow closer with her wife’s. Lowering her heartrate, which helped smooth her anxiousness, and that too began to allow her blood vessels to dilate back to ’normal’ once more. Which El knew was important for now, at least, even if the next parts might ruin that small meditation.

"I’m going to put my hands on you now. Not to do anything in particular. This isn’t us jumping right to what I did a bit ago, okay? This is just to be there. And if something feels wrong to you - and I mean *wrong*, not just unfamiliar - I will know. You won’t have to explain. Or apologize. Or analyze it."

The cloud of ’affection’ so deep that it was clearly a mirror image of ’obsession’ settled down tight like a particularly well-fitted coffin over Qatrand gil Yecine. A woman who opened her eyes and met that spiritual gravity without flinching... because she’d *been* meeting that intensity from the woman who’d never use it to hurt her for as long as she knew she loved her.

"You just have to feel it. And this way I will feel it with you."

Spoken in all seriousness, her spouse could only reply with the same level of ’sober’ intent. Though the question was much quieter than the statement that had started this chain of events.

"What if nothing you do feels like anything?"

The ’apprehension’ that had been within the young spirit condensed into something more specific. A ’fear’ that was clearly not new, but one that had perhaps never been spoken aloud before. El knew for sure that *she* had not spoken of it herself, much. Though rather than being scared of it... she had simply long accepted some things as a possibility along the path of her ’fortress’.

’She’s worried that the suppression techniques when she was young did something permanent and irreversible. She doesn’t know if her body works the way it should. Hah, why is she so good?’

Elua er Goltbred did not allow any of that realization to surface as ’pity’ or ’concern’. Not against someone that the ancient cultivator would move an entire mountain for, to leverage an entire world, and fling it all right at the sun if it somehow fixed things they way whatever Qat wanted. Sooner or later, after getting the desire clarified... it was simply a matter of will to the brunette.

"Then we figure out why - and if you desire to, we fix it. The study of cultivation and its effects on form... be it spirit, body, or the world around us is literally how I killed time in the past, darling. But I would be very, very surprised if you feel *nothing*."

"You don’t know that."

"No, I don’t. But I do know that you respond quite well to kissing. That you respond to my sounds. That your spirit had been doing something rather aggressive to mine for the better part of an hour. In the first place, sensation doesn’t have to exist the way you think it should."

Thumbs stroked reassuringly along the tendons standing in her husband-wife’s wrists. One of which pulsed with a heartbeat she could feel distinctly and rapidly. Though still not as high of a pulse as a few minutes before. Leaning forward until she had closed some distance, fingers touched over the same pulse checking spot as she’d made her husband-wife check. Just a bit under the left nipple.

"The important thing to remember is that we do have time. And rather more importantly, I have you - and you have me. Even if we had no more ’times’ like I just had at all, that wouldn’t ever change."

While the suit’s jacket and the shirt underneath had been removed earlier, a set of trousers remained all this while. A lot of men’s clothing used suspenders by way of fashion choice on the continent... but the Yecine tradition eschewed that in favor of belts. And lately, Qatrand had made her own change to the design requested from her exclusive tailor.

Side adjusters were now what kept the woman’s pants fitting well upon her waist - a fad which was spreading quite rapidly in her territory and beyond. And for current purposes by a particular wife, it left only the single button at her waistband to need deal with. However, she only set her fingertips to rest there lightly as she asked with that contact... and a spiritual ping of ’request’ for consent to continue.

"Slowly."

"Of course. I’m in no rush now - and neither should you be. Thank you for the trust."

Fabric unbuttoned, tugged low enough to expose the extra sharp cut of iliac crest and skin that flinched at the fresh air. Elua traced a line with one fingertip along the very edge of exposed skin, well above where anything could be considered explicitly intimate. All while she watched her lover’s face for discomfort.

The blonde’s expression didn’t visibly change, except a brief dilation of her irises, but her spirit flickered with something like a startled ’awareness’. Not ’pain’. Not ’pleasure’. Just a feeling as if a part of her body had been set to ’quiet’ for a very long time and was being asked to speak a language that it couldn’t quite remember how.

’There you are. Muted, but not gone. Easier than she feared.’

The medical knowledge she carried offered her several likely explanations, most of them certainly related to the *prolonged* hormonal suppression during the critical developmental periods of her body. Something that of course the young heiress had tried discussing with the young ’heir’... but when Qat said she wanted to present as close to male as possible, that ’young’ girl had caved and taught everything she knew to do that effectively and ’safely’.

Neural pathways responsible for erogenous sensation required specific hormonal environments to develop their full sensitivity. However, years of deliberate interference with those environments would not erase the *capacity* entirely. The underlying physical structures were there, she could sense that much with light palpation and a penetrative lance of spirit...

But that’s why she could also tell things were ’off’. Things that would take a while to teach a cultivator’s body to return to normal, certainly more than a single physiotherapy session would accomplish.

"Feel anything?"

"...I think so. It isn’t what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Something more like... what happened to you."

Clearing her throat, turning her face, the low voice from the blonde gained a slight edge of embarrassment to it. The ugly laugh that escaped the brunette in turn was involuntary. Perilously close to the sort of giggle that would undermine the serious atmosphere she was trying to maintain. But while she wished she hadn’t been laughed at for saying it, Qat could feel the warmth behind it.

"My love. I was pent up with several millennia worth of memory funneled through a very hormonal body that makes too much of *everything* if I let it. That is not a reasonable baseline for comparison. But you’re not exactly the opposite extreme, yourself." 𝑓𝑟ℯ𝘦𝓌𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝑐ℴ𝓂

A hand moved to rest against the side of a strong jaw, tilting the set of pigeon blues down to meet her mint green. With a smile and a content sigh, she sought once more to put her fully at ease. Because she knew with time, she could fix the problems she felt. As long as her beloved wanted her to.

"You are allowed to feel things quietly. You’re allowed to feel things slowly. And you are certainly allowed to feel things differently than I do, because we are in fact two separate people. Despite what our spirits seem to be trying to accomplish today. And keep in mind *you* started that with me..."

"I wouldn’t have even known how to if you hadn’t taught me."

’How shameless... I also taught you how to kiss me, but you certainly held back from doing that for long enough, in comparison!?’