CHAPTER 7 : NINA'S CATHEDRAL

Nina laid upwards down in the softly pink velour sofa, legs up over the backrest and back arced down over the edge. The small apartment looked unfamiliar when seen upside down, as if mirrored. She wore just a white tank top. The panties – a piece of hot orange sheer fabric – stretched thin between her raised thighs, filtering the morning sunlight like a cathedral window. She had just finished her prayer to sapphos and was reluctant to get up and into the shower. Either the pipes were too long or the water heater was broken. She had heard that if water sat lukewarm in the water tank, dangerous bacteria could begin to grow. She hoped that wasn't the case – the landlord took forever to fix these sort of things and she already regretted moving in here a month ago.

She ended up taking a cold shower, panties still stretching between her legs because guess what – the laundry machine was also out of order. Even when it hadn't been, her neighbours were the sort of types who broke all unspoken laundry room rules and she avoided the place whenever possible.

Quickly done, she clipped the dripping bikini panties onto the lower level of an improvised busy laundry line, right next to a few dry ones in see-through white she had gotten cheap in a 3-pack. The upper level was full as well and all the dry ones should probably go back in the drawer... later. She shivered a bit, but at least the space heater was working and she welcomed the embrace of a hot towel.

After a good five minutes she exited the cocoon and reached for a white panty hanging clear in the light, but then her hand moved up to the a more opaque pair with silly little green frogs printed on the plain white cotton. As they slid up, warm memories of Riona picking them out in the store surfaced.

Three minutes later she was back in the sofa giving another prayer to sapphos, frog panties still on as if they brought Riona back close.

She was interrupted when a strange cyan-haired half-naked woman suddenly appeared in the apartment, briefly surrounded by a occult looking circles and symbols. She wore a tight white top and an even tighter pair of white panties so low they even struggled to cover half her bush. She looked very athletic and the juxtaposition of all these elements was entirely surreal.

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Riona looked at Nina who had frozen in a strange position laying sunken on her back on the sofa seat, legs spread wide – out across a group of empty soda cans on a small table.

–– "Nice panties – a genius with impeccable taste must have picked them out for you."

Nina immediately snapped her legs shut but remained otherwise frozen, mouth and eyes wide open.

Riona suddenly had a disturbing thought. Even though those panties were there she had to ask something.

–– "Hold on... what year is this?"

–– "Uh, uh, Nu-ni-nineteen eighty five..", Nina stuttered.

–– "What month?"

–– "August..."

–– "So we had already met then, and it's after I moved... and about the time when I stopped hearing from you."

Nina suddenly jumped up standing.

–– "Who the heck are you? How'd you get in here?", she shouted, raising an arm and shooting the questions through a double barrelled finger gun, index and long finger held tight.

The nostalgic sight of the finger gun hit Riona right in the heart, but something was off – she didn't remember Nina being this short. Then she realised she was taller now. She had been 148cm but now she was 165, so Nina was probably somewhere in between.

–– "That's a long story... longer than you'd think.", Riona answered, looking down thoughtfully, running a thumb along an ear.

Nina narrowed her eyes expectation as Riona ambled over to the pink sofa and fell into it.

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–– "Aaah. It's been a while since I rested in anything something this soft."

She took up the length of it rudely leaving Nina standing, still in confusion.

As Nina was about to open her mouth, Riona raised a hand, and begun to unroll her entire story, adding enough intimate detail to make it clear who she really was. It took 20 minutes, then another 10 to answer Nina's probing questions. Finally she seemed to soften.

–– "Those are... quite radical.", Nina said, sounding more familiar as she nodded at Riona's panties.

–– "What? Want to trade for them?", Riona winked, getting up.

–– "M- maybe. Maybe I would!", Nina stuttered, promptly swooshing down the frog panties then leaving them dangling outstretched.

–– "Alright then you dufus.", Riona snorted, taking considerably more time to wiggle out of her own panties while Nina waited with a flustered look. Riona had actually paid for the pair Nina was dangling so it wasn't much of a trade, but she wouldn't mention it.

The trade went through, making them look like criminals swapping illegal drugs in the night.

Nina's size might have been Small, but the frog panties felt comparably generous in size and quickly slid up into place, Nina's lingering warmth still present. The frog-spangled triangular fabric was high enough to cover all but the very top fuzz of a bush, but she ended up teasing them down a bit – only to discover Nina otherwise occupied.

There had been a midi panty with the same silly frog print in the clothes store, which Riona had gotten for herself and wore on the day she got smushed by that truck, or... would be, she supposed. Time was weird and she hoped Thuruchc-Khuun knew what it was doing. It seemed a little... unreliable.

Nina was busy struggling into the little white panties – a cheeky confused laugh and small comments accompanying the process. It made Riona flush. As expected they didn't end up covering much and Nina's characteristic two-finger landing strip was on blatant display, though this was nothing out of the ordinary given her predisposition for see-through panties.

Before any of them could follow up on any of their thoughts and lapse into passion, the strange magical circles and symbols started appearing again.

–– "Already!?", Riona exclaimed.

–– "Crud, grab all of the clothes and stuff you can!", she yelled.

They had agreed to return together. Nina really didn't have much keeping her here; Her few friends had moved, and her Serbian-Polish parents were total utter shitweasels according to a reliable report from a rebellious youth. Nina currently worked at a factory which was somehow still manufacturing a now rather dated computer without upgrading any of its components. Mostly women worked there, socketing chips, testing solder joints, and putting little QA stickers on. The company was probably going to shut down soon.

Riona rushed forth and had soon started to empty the top drawer of a clothing cabinet into the portal circle. A bunch of tops and shirts spilled out and were swallowed up. There were only a few mundane work clothes, and her few bras had been buried at the bottom. Nina rarely wore one under her tank tops – this made apparent by her mounds often poking points into the cloth. The ones she had were only ever worn when without a shirt, and were of course mostly of the see-through variety. Riona saw those strings and triangles disappear into the portal last.

–– "Good, that works! Just throw everything in!"

Nina followed suit, quickly emptying a closet with her boots, leather jackets, pants, skirts, fishnets, and a pair of rust red stockings just like the ones Cat Claw wore. She also tossed in the blue lid of a board game box, ALIEN written on its sides. Components long gone it instead shuttled her miscellaneous spare badges, chains, chokers, and a cool commando knife with a compass in the handle.

Riona pulled out the middle drawer and saw the second issue of Punk Lives with Beki Bondage on the cover. It was Nina's magazine stash and she suspected the more obscure fanzines and, well, other material was underneath. To the side was her electronics stuff – a badly repainted freestyle plus cassette tapes with laboriously handwritten spines, a calculator with lots of buttons, and a yellow mini arcade game which looked more fun than it was.

She emptied the contents into the portal, then reached the bottom drawer, only to discover nought but a single pair of panties in black. Where were the rest???

Riona shot into the bathroom to check and briefly froze at the sight. Pellucid panties in vivid teal, pink, green, orange and white hung like stained glass on a two level laundry line across a frosted bathroom window. She raided the display like a thief, paying no attention to the spread of hygienic products on a shelf – they likely wouldn't be needed.

Panties clutched in greedy fists she darted back out and scanned the small apartment. It felt like they were about to forget something really important, then she saw the familiar pink sofa. The sofa hadn't come with the apartment but was something Nina and Riona had bought new at a sale, and then used for intimate activity as things turned out.

–– "Get the shag sofa!", she yelled at Nina, but immediately saw that she was already loaded up with a cardboard box.

So Riona picked up the sofa herself. It weighed almost nothing to her and she had temporarily forgotten how strong she was now. Somehow it went into the portal, which had now started to tremble.

–– "Ok, time's up, let's go!"

They both jumped in and the portal collapsed, leaving a forgotten "Wendy Williams Plasmatics" poster fluttering in the draft... her skimpy spiked leather outfit and bikini bottom perhaps destined to entice the next tenant.