APRIL 2004

Hermanas,

Her words, as I promised.  

Abrazos,
Dino

 

 

6 MARCH 2004

 

 

SEPTEMBER 2003

Lachlan and I had spoken of it almost from the very beginning.  Children.  A family.  For all his charming irreverence, he's never much liked the rules in this World of ours.  I understand now why that is so.  After learning about his past, how he'd walked in shadows for so long, how he'd lost his children, how he'd railed at this World when he had first crossed, demanding to be returned to his own time and fate.... it was easy to see where his dislike stemmed from.

A story he'd told me once about that night now made a hell of a lot more sense.  He told me how he'd entered the Temple's sanctuary, blithely crossed over the seal in the floor inscribed with the words 'None Shall Pass' and demanded that whatever power brought him here return him to his proper place.  It was just the kind of cocky thing a man like him would do.  The power was not amused.  From what I now understand of Dea, I can see why that would be so. 

He said he was expelled from the sanctuary and that he'd paid quite a price for his little act of defiance.  Told me he didn't get lucky for a year.  A year to the very day that he was tossed out of the sanctuary.  It made me laugh.  Terry would have been all over that.  Not the sex, he would have wanted to know what power controlled the unseen force that had expelled him.  Lachlan just shrugged and accepted it as something that just was.  It had already pulled him out of time and saved him from certain death.  He did not need to understand it to know that it existed and to be wary of it. 

Still, Lachlan has a stubborn streak a mile wide and though he'd had a brush with that power on more than one occasion, he was not afraid to test it again and again.  He didn't use the Naiads.  He didn't like living at the Temple.  He broke the rules and dated real girls.  He met a Sister and fell in love.  Spoke to her of family and children and his desire to be a father.... and in that strange serendipitous way things have of working out, he managed to find a woman who not only understood his desires, but who shared them herself.

I came to this World in a time when I was weathering the upheaval of some very real events in my own life.  I lost someone I loved very much and in the wake of that loss and sadness and despair, what I found with Lachlan was doubly blessed.  Not only was I thankful for this beautiful soul whose life was now joined to mine, but there was this sense that in a time of sunsets and shadows, that he was a sunrise.  A new beginning.  A man with whom I could share my heart and the thought of making a new life with him seemed... right, somehow.  Sunset and sunrise.  Death and birth.  The circle of life goes on.

We talked about it often.  About what it would mean for us.  For the others.  For the Game.  For the child.  What would it mean to bring a baby into this World?  Into this place where we share in each other's lives so intimately.  I have studied cultures all over the world and long ago come to the conclusion there is no one right way to raise a child.  No one definitive description of Family.  What makes the 'norm' for us any better than the communally raised children of the Yanamano or the patriarchy of Japanese or the matriarchy of the Hopi?  Nothing, to my mind.   

Perhaps it wasn't ever a big issue for me because my definitions of family were so broad already and I knew that we possessed the one most important ingredient.  Love.  Our child wouldn't just have the love of a Mother and Father, but of a whole extended family of Aunts and Uncles. 

Lachlan just laughed at my long, thought-out reasoning.  His was far more simple.  He pointed out it was possible for a Sister to conceive if she stayed inside the portal long enough.  "Why would that be possible if it was never meant to happen?" he'd said to me one night.  So Lachlan.  He is forever pushing every boundary. 

And to be honest, it was a boundary I'd wondered about for a long time.  Since I'd first read about the portals.  I'd never said anything to anyone, but I'd always wondered something.  On this side of the portal, we were fertile and the men were not.  Through the portal, they were fertile and the Sisters were not.  I wondered then, what about inside the portal itself?  If a couple made love there, in this bridge between both their worlds, wouldn't they both be fertile?

It is an idea that had always intrigued me.  And strangely, I wound up with the one man who was willing to entertain my strange notions.  To take a risk.  He'd never walked the same path as the others.  Not from the very beginning.  'Why start now?'  he'd said with this little laugh.  And so we talked and dreamed and began to make some tentative plans.  I never thought to mention it to anyone.  Pipedreams are like that, you know? 

I called Nash.  There was a man who understood pipedreams.  I never told him why I was asking, but when I did, you could almost hear the wheels turning in his mind.  I felt a bit silly, naturally.  I'm hardly the stuff of Nobel Prizes and mathematic principle, but even to my untutored mind, he seemed the right one to ask.  He'd come to prominence because of his breakthrough ideas on Game Theory.  (Funny, that!)  In short, he noticed that in a 'non-cooperative game', it was possible to treat each strategy as an independent coordinate.  This opened the way to prove the existence of equilibrium solutions.  Like the girls in the bar.  Each man can do what is best for himself and what is best for the game.  The idea that every problem has an equilibrium point.  A balance. 

So, feeling somewhat like an idiot, I called to ask him about it.  I remember.... I blushed the whole time.  Here was this great man with a brilliant mind... who I also had a bit of a crush on.  I felt all of twelve, like I was calling the star quarterback of the varsity team or something.  He was surprised at first and then tickled pink that a Sister had called him up.  He was distant, though.  I suppose I can understand that.  With his past, how would he ever know who was really on the other end of the phone line, especially if he'd never met her? 

It was a pleasant conversation, but I lost him the minute I'd finished asking him the question.  He'd started muttering and I could hear a door close and then the squeak of chalk on a chalkboard.  I waited ten minutes.  I think he must have forgotten he'd ever been on the phone to begin with.  Finally, I just hung up.  It was worth a shot, but I hardly expected him to have an answer.  Lachlan and I were really more 'fly by the seat of our pants' kind of people anyway.

Temple Week came and went.  I tried to find some time to have a serious talk with Nash but it never happened.  He was either busy or hiding or working or God knows what with him.  The whole week long, I only had one small encounter with him.  He bumped into me looking for Uma and was off again in that brusk, unapologetic way he has before I could ever ask him about the portal.  I don't suppose it really mattered much though.  Lachlan and I had already decided to find his portal and give the idea a try.  What's the worst that could happen?  Even if it didn't result in a baby, making love with Lachlan is always something I cherish.  And I have heard portal sex comes highly recommended.... heh.   

I can't help but look back on that time at the Temple and wonder about it.  Why had I never managed to catch up with Nash?  A week is a long time to be two ships that didn't ever pass in the night.  And then there was Dino.  He had come into my life so unexpectedly, and strangely, it was this time when I was contemplating a child with Lachlan that we became intimate for the first time.  Of all the men it might have been.... it had to be the one who wasn't safe. 

The more I looked back over things, remembering all the moments I ascribed to luck or serendipity, the more I wondered about Dea.  I resisted Dino so much in the beginning.  Felt uncomfortable with the idea that he might feel more for me than I felt for him.  I didn't want to hurt him.  I didn't want to hurt Terry.  I didn't want to hurt Lach.

I am a fool.

I know now I resisted him because some part of me knew that loving him would be playing with fire.  Love is not like a pie.  You don't divide it up and give each piece away until you have no more left to give when new people come into your life.  It grows as you do, given and returned as you share pieces of your secret heart.  I love Lachlan.  I love Terry.  I love Dino.  I love... others. 

It is a source of constant wonderment to me.  I might have a broad definition of family, but I think I had a very narrow definition of love... or at least romantic monogamous love.  I speak often about this World as a place of second chances.  That we are here to learn a lesson.  To heal old hurts.  And I wondered if perhaps, that wasn't my lesson.  The nature of love.       

Temple Week came to an end.  Lachlan flew Terry and Uma home again.  I came along for the ride, unwilling to be parted from Lachlan so soon after what we'd shared physically and emotionally in the wake of our time apart.  He wore my ring around his neck.  I wore his bracelet on my wrist.  Two little symbols that reflected something much deeper moving inside of us.

And again, there was this strange timing of events.  We stayed with Terry and Uma, very much in the spirit of two couples that enjoyed each other's company.  We did not play musical beds and yet it was that trip where Pandora's Box was opened for the first time.  On the same afternoon I met the Black Knight in Terry's office, across town, Uma and Lachlan were having a little meeting of their own, complete with ghosts from their past. 

And yet strangely, in the wake of that, Uma and I met up later and had the most extraordinary conversation.  Odd, isn't it, what happens when you toss a pebble in the pond?  Uma had once written long ago of an adventure with Maximus inside a portal.  It had gotten me thinking about babies and portals.  I'd asked Nash a fairly innocent question that had sparked some wild spree of conjecture and theory and had culminated in Nash telling Uma his findings because he believed she and Terry would wish to have a child if they could.  Now Uma was telling me that this crazy far-fetched notion I had about the portal being an equilibrium between the two worlds wasn't really so crazy after all. 

Neither was the idea that she only had this gem of information because she and Terry were interested in putting it to use themselves.  It was an instant, heartfelt bonding moment between two women who found out they weren't exactly so different after all.  Not about how they loved.  Not about what risks they were willing to take to have what they really wanted, even in this strange World of ours.  No matter what the World, is there any gift more precious than a child created in love?

Lach was over the moon when I told him.  But not in that wild crazy way you might have imagined.  It was so much softer than that.  "I knew it," he said.  "I knew it in here."  He tapped his chest over his heart.  We made love.  We made plans.  Things started to move faster and faster. 

September.  Our mad month.  He had a visit with Ann.  I had one with Nash.  Oddly enough, I ran into Terry in the Temple's foyer.  I was coming.  He was going.  Seems we were both there to do a bit of research.  We shared a secret smile.  He said, "Lassie."  I said, "Charlie."  A little nod and a kiss on the cheek and he was away.  It made me feel warm inside.  Lachlan and Terry, two so very different men and yet under it all, they wanted so many of the same things from life. 

It made me laugh too.  I could just imagine how Terry would approach all of this.  Reading up on everything, flowcharts, dry runs, schedules and stopwatches.  I almost felt bad for Uma.  Heh.  Lach was so much... easier... about it all.  The memory of that conversation still brings a smile to my face.

 

 

Time passed.  I knew it was resting heavily on his mind.  On mine too.  What if we didn't find it?  Would all our plans be derailed by that one stumbling block?  I had this flash of what might happen if we didn't find it.... what if we had to attempt this in a different portal?  The Brother it belonged to would have to be present to access it.... which only left one choice.  Terry.  I shuddered at the idea.  Sex in an elevator with Lachlan while Terry was there?  The thought left me cold.  I wasn't even sure how he was going to manage it.  He might have done some wild things, but when it comes to Uma, he's incredibly private.  He would do it to make a child with her but he wouldn't like exposing her like that. 

I had a million things running wild in my mind while I was at the Temple.  Nash was... well, Nash.  Even though it was an official visit, he's still Nash.  I saw him twice but he was involved in some new theory and it had held most of his attention.  To be honest, I was glad.  I wanted the time to think.  It's funny how things work out.  I came to see Nash and yet it was Dino I wound up having a wild time with.

A conversation of ours had taken a quirky turn.  Boots.  A blindfold.  A man.  We logged the visit on the calendar at the last moment.  Lachlan and I were so close to leaving to go look for his portal.  October was our month.  He'd gotten it off from work.  We'd made noises to the rest of the family about it being our 'honeymoon' so we wouldn't be interrupted.  September 30th, I walked up the steps to Dino's home.

One night, I'd told him.  One night was all I could give him.  I didn't tell him about the portal or the baby we wanted to make or any of my other secrets.  Part of it was selfish.  If it worked, I knew a baby would change everything.  Change how I played the Game.  Change how the others played it with me.  Lachlan wouldn't stand for it.  For the time I carried his child, there would be no more casual partners for me... even if they were not casual.  I felt the same way. 

I hadn't planned on having that one last night with Dino.  And yet, I couldn't keep away.  I kept thinking, if this works, it will be a year before I could touch that intimacy with him again.  A year.  I wanted to make a memory with him that night that would last us both a year if it had to.  We did.  What happened between us that night was unexpected.  And profound. 

His last words to me... they seemed to say so much.  Resonated so deeply with where my mind was in that moment. 

 

 

More serendipity?  Or was it Dea again, testing my resolve?  I left before dawn to meet Lachlan at the Temple.  The next time I passed a night with Dino, it would be with Lachlan's child growing in that warm dark space below my heart.  It was never a question of loving one more than the other.  I was never torn in my desires.  I never agonized over the decision.  I felt only rightness and peace.  There was no real choice at all.

 

 

OCTOBER 2003

We found Lach's portal.  I told a small white lie in the diary I'd written about that time.  We were never packed for the tropics.  We had known our destination for weeks.  North, to Canada.  It was a somber time but also a time filled with so much unexpected joy.  On a hilltop overlooking the fertile fields below, we found his portal and I remember thinking it was just so overwhelming.  We hadn't just found his portal, we'd found the one thing that had threatened our dream.   

My eyes had filled with tears and he'd  kissed me.  Long and slow and deep.  Moist eyes.  Moist mouths.  The ebb and flow of blood as our hearts pounded.  I remember thinking I'd died then.  Or maybe, that at that moment, it was then that I'd first truly lived. 

Our first try was a dismal failure.  We took a blanket to the hilltop.  I teased him about making love in a Canadian autumn.  He shivered and pulled a face.  Told me he was freezing his tits off.  I told him better his tits than something else.  He grinned and retorted he already had a warm place in mind for that portion of his anatomy.

It was just this sweet silly time for us together.  We fooled around, both with each other and the mechanics of getting it just right.  We finally hit on the ideal solution.  We left the blanket square in the center of the portal, planned to make love in the soft grass nearby and then when we were ready, when he was close, move to the blanket and finish.  Cocky as ever, Lach said that only he really needed to finish in that time.  He didn't want me to feel pressured.  Said that he'd take care of me on the other side.  That 85 seconds wasn't a limit on our lovemaking, it just governed his orgasm.  His first orgasm he told me with a cocky wink and a smirk.  So Lachlan. 

We spent four afternoons on that hilltop, cheeks pink from the cold bite of the wind and from our exertions.  I still remember his face. Smiling at me.  Collar turned up against the wind.  His hands inside my coat and his body inside mine.  How he'd lay with me on the blanket after, his hand between my legs to hold in his precious gift of life.  We would watch the clouds blow overhead and talk and dream.  And then we would get up and straighten our old fashioned clothing and go back to the little hotel we were calling home.  Lost in an earlier time.  Lost in love.   

We stayed inside the portal because we wanted to stretch time.  To carve out for ourselves a unique time that was just ours alone.  No Game to intrude.  No other lovers.  Nobody but us.  There was also another reason.  It allowed us a second chance.  When I got my period, it broke my heart.  How could we have felt as much love as we had together on that hilltop and not made a baby? 

I was devastated.  Lachlan was too.  We came out of the portal long enough to check back in with the real world, so to speak.  I called Terry.  Lachlan took a long walk.  I'm willing to bet he talked to Uma while he was gone.  It seemed like the most natural thing in the world for me to discuss it with Terry.  He was easier to talk to in some ways than Lachlan.  I knew I had to be strong for him.  It wasn't ever that I couldn't share with Lachlan what I could share with Terry, it was more I knew we were at this place where I needed to be building Lach up not weighing him down with all these stupid fears of mine.

Terry felt much the same.  And I would guess Uma and Lach probably shared a few of their private concerns as well.  It was such a strange time for us.  We'd been lovers.  And friends.  And it seemed we were sort of disengaging from one of those things and moving closer to the other, becoming a support system rather than rivals for each other's affections.  I shared with Terry my profound sadness.  He shared with me his fears he may not be able do the job.  The thought of opening up such a private part of his life to anyone who cared to look at the wall of the glass lift as it sped down the building just didn't appeal to him.  We both needed safe harbor that night and we both found it.

Two nights later, Lachlan surprised me with one of the most thoughtful gifts he's ever given me.  He wrote a diary for me.  I was surprised that he would share such a moment.  He is an incredibly private man.  I cried when I read it.

 

 

He'd made what had been this thing that had broken my heart into something truly beautiful.  Put aside his own hurt and sadness to comfort me.  Shared with all of you this private intimate part of himself as a gift to me, to ease my pain.  He would have never dreamed to share such a personal moment otherwise.  The account was crude and graphic and so full of love that it took my breath away.  To know that he saw me that way, that he felt those things?  It was profoundly moving.

A few weeks later, we were ready to try again.  It was different this time.  From the first moment we strolled up to the crest of that hill, hand in hand.  He unfurled the blanket with this little sparkle in his eye.  I smiled shyly and blushed.  It was late summer inside the portal but we were dressed warmly.  When we emerged on the other side it would be late autumn in the Canadian outback, frosty and cold.   

We fell into the warm sweet grass.  It tickled my face and I could smell the rich, fertile earth below us.  It made me think of the earthy scent of a man that rose from under his arms and between his legs.  We kissed under the summer sky.  I felt dappled sunlight dance over my eyelids.  I felt his lips on my face.  I felt his breath hitch as I touched him.  He smiled into my mouth and kissed me until I was sweating in my heavy wool coat. 

What a strange picture we must have made, two people dressed for winter in the heat of summer, kissing and fondling each other in the tall waving grass.  I forgot about the portal.  About babies and time limits.  We rolled in the grass like young lovers, caught up in this unexpected moment of heady passion.  I opened his pants.  He pushed up my skirt. 

His mouth left mine to breathe against my neck, "I want to see you, Blue."  He rolled to his back.  "Come on, girl... sit down on me... ride me... oh, GOD!"  I moved over him, a joyful cry breaking from my throat as we joined.  The wool of his pants was rough on my thighs.  I felt the sun, warm on my shoulders.  I felt Lachlan, warm and strong and virile under me. 

He watched my face, my hair blowing against the backdrop of the rich blue of the summer sky.  He never once looked away.  I wondered about the moment he was making in his mind.  Was he taking a picture of this moment as I was?  Something to remember for always? 

His hands were strong on my hips.  Sweat beaded on his upper lip and dampened the edges of his hairline.  His eyes were hooded and dark.  His mouth open.  Panting.  He surged harder under me, grunting with effort.  The tendons in his neck taut with strain as he arched and thrust.  No more the gentle lover but a man, my man, lost in the throws of passion.  I joined him there, my head thrown back, my throaty cries of pleasure hanging thickly on the afternoon breeze. 

My hands tightened on his shoulders as I felt the pressure in my hips wind tighter and tighter.  His hands fluttered against me in the way that they do that tell me he's so close.  Realization seemed to wash over us both at the same moment and we pulled apart from each other.  I whimpered.  He groaned low and deep in his throat like an animal as he lost the sweet, damp warmth of my body. 

His hands were rough as he dragged me to the few short steps blanket.  We crashed down upon it heavily.  On his knees, sitting back on his heels with the thick wet column of his cock rising up from the dark curls between his legs, he looked like virility come to life.  I felt the female counterpart to that, soft and wet and open between my legs.  Dripping with need and want and love. 

He helped me come down on him, his big hand spread wide at the small of my back, pressing hard to bring me as close as he could.  The world rippled around us, time bent and stretched.  I felt the wild swirl of the portal's pull and then that shift, that stabilization before the next shift would bring us through. 

One thrust.  Only one.  Wild and hard and so powerful I couldn't breathe.  The low growl in his throat broke at the end of it.  He pulled me to him at the same moment he pushed in so deep and let himself go.  I cried out and came, clinging to him, my hands gripping his shoulders hard, my back arched.  Lights danced in my head.  I heard his harsh groan.  Felt his body pulse.  Felt a power swell, washing from him to me before it rippled outward from us both.  The world spun away in a hazy swirl.

Cold air.  Soft wet touches on my face, like the brush of angel's wings.  Snow.  His touch surrounding me like an anchor.  I opened my eyes.  So much love in his staring back at me.  Crystal snowflakes glittering in his lashes, dusting our hair and shoulders.  He kissed me.  His mouth was warm and wet.  The little flakes were icy cold and melted with the heat of our kiss.  He drew back and joined our hands.  He was wearing the ring I'd given him.   

"Ever and always."  He touched my heart.

"Ever and always."  I touched his.  

I felt weak.  I felt powerful.  I felt the disorientation of the portal's pull.  I felt love.  He moved us, arranging me on my back and curled himself around my side, pulling my legs up over his and using his big body to shelter mine.  He pulled the blanket over us and we lay there, touching and murmuring to each other as we watched the first lacy flakes of winter touch the prairie. 

He nuzzled into me.  His lips were warm.  The tip of his nose was cold.  He smiled into my throat.  "It must be love....."  Pulled back to show me his cheeky smile.  "A Queenslander laying about in the snow...." he added with a chuckle. 

I giggled.  "Must be."  

Our words were light and sweet and teasing but the look we exchanged in that moment was anything but playful.  And I think it might quite possibly be the only time in his life Lachlan Curry has ever lingered in the falling snow. 

The rest of the day was magical.  Soft little dusting of snow that made everything look clean and fresh and pure.  He bundled me in his scarf and we took a walk through town.  He bought me a new charm for my bracelet.  A little golden snowflake.  He held me in his arms and we watched the snow fall while they soldered the tiny gold ring that would hold it on forever. 

Afternoon turned to evening.  We both missed the slower rhythm of his portal, the feeling of home our cozy little hotel room had become.  We went back, stealing those last few precious days together.  He took me flying.  As is typical of Lachlan, he didn't worry about 'oh, we shouldn't do that in case you might be....'  Instead, he just kissed me, swept me up and told me any baby of his had better get used to slipping the surly bonds of earth.  We flew.  We laughed.  We loved. 

And strangely, because time moves faster in the portal than it does in this World, we'd not only experienced the despair of failure but also the elation of success before Uma and Terry had even gotten the results back from their first attempt.  Funny how life works, isn't it?

After an afternoon of private celebration, we called them.  Simply overflowing with joy, too elated with the news not to share it.  To let them know it was possible... that it could happen... that it had happened.  Sweet merciful God.  A child.  A world away from each other and it was as if we were together.  We wept and laughed and spun in giddy circles with Lach's phone pressed to our ears.  We must have looked like crazy people.  I think we were.

A few days later, we arrived home.  There was a little toy car on the doorstep with a bow on it and a little tag that said, 'Congrats, mate!'   Beside the toy was a beautiful bunch of white flowers and a card for me that was so very, very Terry.  And I mean that in the best way possible.  The envelope said, 'Congratulations, Mum!'  The card said:

 

   

The next morning, when I woke up and sat down at my computer, I found this waiting for me. 

 

 

I screeched.  Lachlan came running.  I told him the news.  He swung me around.  We cheered and laughed and promptly had our first rather unpleasant introduction to morning sickness.  Later, after a cup of tea and some coddling from my favorite pilot, I wrote him back. 

 

  

And so it began.  The seeds sown for the future.  And I mean that in so very many different ways.  The babies.  The strengthening of our relationship with the man we adored.  The way our other relationships were already beginning to shift.  The cracks of light beginning to seep from Pandora's Box.  The heady joy that we had crossed the first hurdle.  The knowledge that we had only just begun this extraordinary journey.  The knowledge we could not keep this from those we loved.  Not with the kind of life we led.  The elation we had created life.  The sheer terror that the piper might one day exact too high a price.  And as always, the knowledge that a ripple cannot be made in this tiny pond of ours that doesn't eventually travel and touch every last one of us.    

 

To Part Three

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