“Mmmmm yes… That’s a good girl!” Yrelia moans very very loudly.

I’ve not seen my reflection during a blush, but from Tasii’s muffled chuckles from beside me I can only assume I am probably turning a very deep shade at that. Jevita peeks over Lule’s back, tries to grimace down upon the pallet the three of us share, but fails. She can’t hide a smirk as she takes in the full scene, then returns to her muffled conversation with Kque.

Fuck. Being called a girl still causes little flutters and titters of joy in my chest. Not to mention the… um… other memories that praise brings up from our time together.

“Stop it.” Tasii finally manages and lightly smacks Yrelia’s arm from her seated position beside us. “She won’t do that anymore if you tease her.”

It’s been two weeks since we left Deledita, and already checked our first lead to no success. We’re camping about halfway along the path between two major towns. Tasii wanted us to end the day beside one of the Julo trees.

It’s so big, and genuinely still scares me to be near. Our entire group could hold hands and still need Lule to help us wrap around it. It also… isn’t quiet. I’m still twitching at each creak and groan it makes in unison with the other smaller trees of the forest. Worried it might fall over and crush us and half the forest.

Yrelia lightly purrs in reply, peaks down her relaxed body at me.

I don’t release Yrelia’s foot, but I do stutter and stumble through some kind of rebuke and keep up with the massage. She’s done this for me almost every lunch and evening over the past two weeks of travel, as my new feet had yet to accustom themselves to the long roads, and I’d insisted she teach me how to return the care.

It feels sublime, on par with when she brushes and works my hair. But… that was just to toy with me. And fuck, do I love to hate how much it works! My body is already beginning to warm at the thoughts and memories and ideas it brings.

“What was your question, Ina?” Tasii interrupts my spiral.

“Oh! Right. Question. Yes.” I take a breath to reorient my thoughts. “You… keep referring to our routes, and… things. As ‘The Paths’, and I didn’t think anything of it but…”

I set down Yrelia’s left root and move to her bare right one. Tasii waits patiently, tearing at some hard chewy dark purple thing with her teeth.

“As I started learning languages, I found a few phrases that all seem to mean the same thing. All paths lead to Arudia.” I begin to work out the day of travel stress from Yrelia’s foot. She lets out another little purr at me, but it’s only to let me know I’m doing this right. So it’s easier to continue my questions. “I always assumed it was because of trade, or something. But… like… that doesn’t make sense.”

Tasii chews on her snack thoughtfully, but doesn’t answer.

“I remember some older stories, obviously not meant to be taken literally, but the characters said their versions of the same thing. Sometimes ‘all souls lead to Arudia’ or ‘Magic will always lead back to Arudia’ and even once ‘Arudia calls all magic back to itself’.” I huff, not feeling like I’m explaining my thoughts very well.

“You mentioned a frozen lake, and that Cultivation magic. And looking at your maps… all the roads really do seem to lead there from all around.” I glance up, trying to organize, to put together as many pieces on my own as possible. “So… when did people discover it all? Or… like when did it start being a source of this magic? The Dune Wall is said to be created by a Sun Spoken, is Cultivation the same? Could it be?”

“Huh.” Tasii finishes swallowing, “I didn’t know that. The women of Lyttoral believe a Sun Spoken built… like, the entire Dune Wall?”

I nod. “Yup. Xelida. She… I always loved hearing and reading stories of her when I was little. Even… well… It’s silly but she was the first person I tried to draw and paint.”

“Awww… “ Yrelia hums, cracks one eye through the pleasure of the massage to smile at me, “Was she your first crush?”

“I… I’m not sure. I would swim for hours and hours thinking about her, pretending to be her. It’s really hard to separate those two things for me back before my body changed.” I shrug and motion down to it.

That puts a thoughtful expression on her face. “That… yeah that makes a lot of sense. What about now?”

I can’t help it as a little smile overcomes my face. “No. Bruises and such aside this body is… well… literally better than perfect. I still get little flashes… of… well not jealousy. But seeing someone and liking their body… but… then I remember and I can’t help but feel… like… really happy with this. Not wanting to change anything ever!”

“Hmmm…” Yrelia moves to sit up and I release her foot. “Your turn. Swap places.”

As I obey, Tasii shifts and asks, “But to answer your earlier question, Ina. No. A Sun Spoken didn’t invent the gemstones of Cultivation, although some have totally practiced the Art and studied them.”

“Oh.” I can’t help but let my brain pause and muse over that as Yrelia takes up a foot and begins to… Fuck she’s so much better at this than me.

My thoughts melt away for the next few moments. I try my best, but I can't stop a few little… sounds, from escaping my lips. Tasii is polite enough to at least try and hide her amusement at them, but I know that Yrelia is already smirking and using them to find the best places to work out the day's travels.

Two weeks since Deledita, four towns and villages, and in that time she hasn’t even begun to slow down in her… attentions.

It’s not like she’s always after sex or whatnot. Although, like, yeah she’ll pounce on me when I ask without hesitation. But that’s the thing! She’s just as happy to see me squirming in anticipation for a few days!

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It’s… not frustrating, exactly. So, she’s established, in both words and action, that if I want sex I have to ask. She might surprise me with a little peck or caress, but otherwise she is very very clear that she won’t initiate.

I asked her about it after three days had passed since Deledita, terrified that she didn’t want to do it with me anymore. I… I’d been too scared at the idea of my fears being realized. Or that my weird Amwella hunger had taken too much. Eventually my anxiety and needs were too much, and I had to ask in our first town.

“Hm?” Yrelia had given me a side eye while we stood alone outside a little store’s entrance within a little alleyway between buildings, waiting for Tasii and Kque to finish some business with the owner. I was too caught up in those thoughts to even care to pay attention to what they were doing.

“I… I guess… I was wondering why you hadn’t like… tried to do anything with me again. Sex, I mean.”

“Oooooh.” Yrelia smirks and glances up and down the alley. We’re alone, and hadn’t seen anyone pass by since I asked her to step out with me to get some fresh air.

“Did… Do you need time?” A fierce blush is already burning at my ears and cheeks, only tempered by the fear of no longer being wanted. “Did I hurt you? Or… like… if you’re not interested in me any–”

Her mischievous smile cuts me off. Warmth suddenly hot and very very alert in my chest and not so slowly tumbling down through me.

“Inaaaa.” She purrs, drawing out that last syllable.

I only stare at her, a little squeak might have escaped my lips. An attempt at communication.

“If you want me to do something, you need to tell me. I taught you this in Deledita.”

“Oh.” I whisper, “But… What if you want something? Do you? Would you ask?”

That gets a giggle from her. “I have been. Just not with so many… words. And nothing so urgent.”

“B… but.” I stammer, even more horrified that I’d missed her unspoken questions, “I didn’t even… What… How am I supposed to–”

She touches her fingers to mine, soft and gentle, and my bumbling catches in my throat. “It’s not like that. It’s an open question. I love watching people and reading them and flirting and making the women I love chew on my open ended question.”

A pause passes as I take that in. Worries and frustrations of a few days are still present, but get battered and beaten by that little phrase. Women I Love. Plural. And I’m included!

Then another fear spikes my fluttering.

“So… is this… offer, not just for me?” I whisper, “And if it is… then are they not interested? Am I fucking things up for them?”

She sighs, “Yes, Yes, and no.”

“I… What?”

Another smirk, “Yes, my offer is for them too. Yes, they might be interested, but are wanting to wait and let us have time together. So no, you aren't fucking anyones’ things up. Unless you want to, but then you need to ask them. I love group sex!”

I stutter and stammer at that last part.

She takes my hand fully in hers and giggles as she lifts them to give my fingers a quick peck. “Also… I don’t want to overwhelm you, Ina. This is all new and fresh, I really don’t want your early memories with us to be just sex. There are so many amazing and new things for you to take in and experience.”

I sigh. “Okay. Yeah. That… that makes a lot of sense. I think.”

“So…” Her smile drips with promises and implications and memories, “If you want me to fuck you. Just ask.”

I did, sort of. And I told her that, and asked her to. I was… well I was thinking we would wait till we were back at camp or something… But nope. She was insistent that right then and there would be perfect for me.

And to my surprise. It… kinda was. Sex in that alleyway shade from the midday sun was exactly what I’d needed.

Back in Lyttoral, at the temple, we were all discouraged from having sex outside our scheduled duties. It wasn’t… like… they didn’t do anything if they found one of us entangled with a Frekia, duenna, or each other. It was just seen as wasteful, and there was a sort of… social discomfort that could be directed at them if word got out.

I’d stumbled in on, and been stumbled across (only twice with Jawdat thank fuck), during the act. There was always a lot of little yells of apologies, rushing to cover and get dressed, begging to keep it a secret… and shame.

Fuck that was the worst part.

But out here… it’s the opposite. Sex is just… like… a thing they do! And while there are little courtesies in regard to noise levels and such, especially when camping ten feet from one another, everyone seems to expect it and celebrate it.

I’m sure someone saw me and Yrelia in that alley, almost certain Tasii or Kque heard me through the window of the shop. But… after we finished and regrouped, they seemed really happy for us, for me. Unspoken little compliments and a few spoken ones felt like a light shower after a long spell of dry heat upon my soul.

I blushed like crazy at it all, but I couldn’t help but relish the support and care as I felt another part of me that I didn’t realize was damaged begin to heal.

“You had a question about the Paths,” Tasii prompts after a few minutes, stirring me from the brain melting stupor of Yrelia’s touch on my feet.

“Mhm…” I sigh, rebuilding my thoughts, “That seems like… a title. Was wondering where it and that saying about leading to Arudia came from. Also why that lake is always frozen and when that started.”

“Oh yeah… No magic stuff for our little temple girl.” She murmurs.

My heart flutters again amidst the massage, and I don’t fight the next sensation as it starts at the back of my neck and trickles down to the toes.

“Well… Everything I’ve heard says that a star, or a piece of one, fell from the sky. Women from all over were drawn to it. The Academy is the only permanent settlement ever to survive that lake though.”

“Why?”

“The lake… although it’s honestly more like a forest, is always shifting. It’s only about a day's walk across, but it’s not flat and the gemstones and weird plants that grow there move with it. The only stable point is at its center, atop a little mountain. The Academy of Erudition.”

“As for the Paths…” She shrugs, “It’s a bit of a… metaphor, I guess. A turn of phrase to describe women who don’t want to settle in one place, so they walk the Paths. Going anywhere and everywhere their feet take them.”

“Oh… That sounds… really really nice actually.”

Yrelia chuckles, able to take a foot in either hand and work a magic on them I couldn’t match with both my own. “I knew it from the moment you stumbled into sight, you’re like us. Never happy being stuck in one place for too long. I think you’ve got a good amount of Wanderlust in you, Ina.”

I can’t argue, but I also can’t agree as I stare up at the big spooky Julo tree as it creaks and groans against the wind. I love traveling with these women, and will love to have the final pricks of anxiety pulled free as I learn to balance the sparking flame at my core. But… fuck I am having little panics at a big tree, and I worry the wider world will terrify me too much!

But… I can’t imagine leaving them. And as much as this big outside scares me… I can’t help but feel excited to see it all!

That night, I fall asleep between Tasii and Yrelia. We’ve done this quite a few times since Deledita. The first time Tasii had… well not wandered over. But as we were setting up camp she seemed to deliberately move to set up near us, so I suggested she overlay her sleeping pallet with ours. From some sounds I could have swore echoed from the other side of Lule I think she might have been trying to give Kque and Jevita some space to be together.