.
As Oberon made his prediction, I noticed that his [Realm of Silence] had vanished, and my sister Amana and my first cousin twice removed, Dilorè, were joining us.
While I put some mouthwateringly tender fish in my mouth– it tasted like it might be bluefin tuna — the two girls took seats and gave me their greetings.
I wondered where Dilorè’s grandmother Somire was, since the two were usually inseparable, then spotted her sitting in Gelon’s lap, her arms around his neck. She was completely nude, but for some reason, she had manifested her wings.
For a moment, I thought maybe I had confused grandmother and granddaughter again, since Dilorè is a horrible flirt, but after a moment, I concluded I hadn’t. This was indeed the daughter, sitting in her father’s lap.
Fairy custom allows relations between fairly close relatives such as first cousins, but father and daughter is definitely still out of the question.
Although I was doing my best to not react, Dilorè saw my face and giggled.
“Grandmother gets drunk with just a sip, and her Daddy’s Girl side comes out,” she informed me with a playful smirk. “It’s okay though. Great Grandfather won’t let her do anything bad. He just looks after her until she sleeps.”
The servants were still hustling to put new snacks and food in front of our new arrivals, so Dilorè, who had sat so close to me that she was practically in my lap, leaned into me in order to pluck sashimi from my platter with the chopsticks she’d carried from the previous table.
Dilorè’s raiment wasn’t missing, but it was nothing but a gossamer slip, and, in order to reach the sauce, she was pressing her tit into my bare arm. I tried not to think about the warmth I was feeling there.
Her reaction to the fish after she popped it into her mouth was a bug-eyed cough. She swallowed and pounded her chest.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Way too much wasabi!” she protested, fanning her open mouth with her hand.
“I like wasabi,” I answered. “And when you pinch somebody else’s food, you get what you get.”
The fact that Dilorè was actually a couple centuries older than me was nowhere to be seen as she stuck her tongue out at me like a kindergartner.
“Settle down, children. It’s time for the show,” Amana declared.
When the White Moon dives behind the Blue Moon, it doesn’t just vanish. Different cultures have different reasons for what they see, but I know what it actually is. When the White Moon ‘sets’ behind the Blue Moon’s dark side, the light reflecting from the White Moon first comes through the Blue Moon’s atmosphere, producing a visible effect.
When it happens during the waning moons, that light forms an arc along the edge of the dark half of the greater moon before the lesser moon appears, outlining the perimeter of the larger moon.
The Dorians give a special significance to the disappearance when it coincides with the waning Half Blue Moon (and the parallel event of the White Moon emerging from behind the waxing Half Blue Moon.) These events don’t happen often, because it is only visible if it happens at night when the moons are up, and because usually the White Moon goes behind the Blue Moon at other times in the month. The roughly seven day orbit of the lesser moon around the greater moon doesn’t perfectly divide into the 28.3 day month…
A piece of Senhion’s knowledge startled me as I thought this. Like all Orestanians, Tiana believed that the Sun and the Greater Moon revolve around Huade once a day, and the Lesser Moon revolved around the Greater Moon every seven days, four times a month.
Naturally, Senhion knew better.
Huade was in reality the larger of two moons, and the Blue “Moon” was the actual planet, an enormous Super Earth type. Huade orbited the Blue “Moon” in a path far outside the orbit of the White Moon. The White Moon’s orbit actually was five times a month and closer to five and a half days per revolution. One revolution is ‘lost’ to the fact that Huade also takes a trip around the Blue Moon, with the additional day and a half being due to the fact that the White Moon always has to catch up to the constantly moving Huade.
Senhion’s scientific knowledge of the rest of the star system came back to me as well. A peculiar tidal-locked planet orbits closer to the sun. It has a hot side, a frozen side and a habitable band bearing life of its own between them. A huge gas giant much bigger than Jupiter has two living worlds amongst its satellites. And finally, a lonely planet similar to Neptune orbits in the distant outer system. To Tiana, the first two were merely bright stars and the third was unknown.
“Are you okay?” Dilorè asked me, looking worried.
I realized I had been sitting there looking gobsmacked. Even though it was information of no significance to my life, the sudden destruction of Tiana’s geocentric worldview, which had somehow invaded my subconscious while I wasn’t looking, was quite a shock.
At the end of the day, I was still from a country that flew to the Moon and put robots on Mars. I found it pretty disturbing that some part of my mind had bought into something as unscientific as the sun circling around the world.
Quickly, I laid aside the momentary psychological crisis to focus on Dilorè’s question.
“It’s nothing,” I told her. “I just thought about something that bothered me. This isn’t the time for it, though.”
I picked up my sake dish to take a sip, to cover how stupid I currently felt about feeling so shocked. Dilorè shrugged and picked up the sake the servant had just poured for her, then snuggled up to me while she took her own sip.
Being my cousin’s granddaughter, she was easily distant enough by blood by fairy rules. Actually, by mortal rules as well, I suspect. And like I said, she’s a horrible flirt.
“I can see it, Grandfather!” Amana declared. We looked up, and sure enough, the midpoint of the edge of the black part of the Blue Moon’s disc had acquired a thin trace of light, with the center of its arc touching the White Moon.
It was a first for me, but Tiana had seen it before. The whole process would take an hour, but the big event we were waiting for was the moment when the sunlit half of the lesser moon began disappearing, which would come soon.
“The mortals have a custom of kissing while the White Moon is kissing her lover,” Dilorè whispered into my ear.
I looked sidelong at her with a rueful smile. Dilorè had been making passes at me daily. She took another sip and looked back up at the moons, looking perfectly innocent. The trace had grown and brightened a bit.
“Amana is going to kiss your grandpa, you know,” she noted as she watched it.
“On the cheek!” Amana shot back. “Don’t give Little Tiana weird ideas about me!”
“What about your grandmother?” I wondered, glancing over at the drunk in Gelon’s lap again. Then I said, “Never mind.”
She was sound asleep, her head against the Crown Prince’s shoulder. One of my cousins was feeding him, because his hands were full of daughter.
Dilorè giggled again. “Happens every time. Grandma never learns.”
“She’s doing it on purpose,” Amana declared. “Nobody does things unintentionally at two thousand years old.”
“Well, we were off on the other side of the world for thirty years,” Dilorè rationalized. “She’s still recharging her Daddy energy.”
“You two have been back for almost half a year!” Amana retorted.
In contrast to some of the other attendees, I noticed that Manlon’s girls, whom my Tiana side had classified as straight-up bimbos on first impression, were actually behaving themselves.
I had interacted with those two several times since meeting them. They were real disciples, and legitimate mages. Both had graduated from the magic academy in Royses. When they weren’t flirting with their master, they were very competent.
Their outfits were not quite as reserved as my own, but they weren’t as pointlessly exhibitionistic as most of the gowns and raiments here. Pasrue was in a long royal blue spaghetti strap gown with a neckline low enough to show ample cleavage and Talene was wearing a lace kimono over classy underthings. They looked very elegant, actually. And instead of hanging all over their master, they simply sat very close. Talene was feeding him sashimi with her fingers though.
But at the table next to ours…
I blushed and quickly looked back at the moons. The arc of light formed by the Blue Moon’s atmosphere had now spread over half the dark side’s edge, and the first hint of White Moon may have begun vanishing.
Dilorè laughed brightly at me. “I guess Larahàn didn’t want to wait. So she chose Nemfere this time? I thought they were fighting.”
“Looks like they made up,” Amana concluded.
“Isn’t that a little more than kissing?” I demanded. I mean, Nemfere, like Somire, had dispensed with her raiment, and we wouldn’t be R-15 anymore if I described the actions of Larahàn’s hand.
“Well they’re normally close, so I guess this is going to be the make-up sex,” Amana explained.
“Are they really going to…”
“And over here, you don’t even want to kiss me,” Dilorè sulked with a pouty moue, although the corners of her lips were slightly curled upward.
This was the other reason I really wanted to get going back to Orestania. Dilorè wasn’t the only one trying to crawl into bed with me. Princess Larahàn, a fellow royal granddaughter, had made more than one serious attempt. I was glad her attention had now focused on Nemfere, although this was a tad more than just attention.
I did my best to ignore the couple, despite Dilorè encouraging me to watch. Helping myself to one of the salmon and caviar blinis the servants had brought her was all the entertainment I needed at that moment. I followed with a piece of salmon sashimi and another sip of sake. Ignore them, ignore them…
At last, the arc suddenly brightened at its midpoint and shortened in length, and after several seconds cheers rang out as the first bit of the White Moon had visibly disappeared.
Dilorè tackled me with a full-court-press smooch on the lips before I could react. In retrospect, I should have been expecting it. I was just stimulated enough by that time to allow it for several seconds, until her hand started exploring.
I peeled it away from my bust.
“No,” I told her firmly.
“Awww…”
Did she seriously think I would let her do that in front everybody? Right next to the King? I gave her an eye-rolling head shake.
“According to my mother,” Amana informed her, “Little Tiana has actually kept her virginity until now. You should probably give up.”
“What, really? At your age?” Dilorè retorted, looking at me with surprise.
I’m only fifteen, though, I wanted to complain.
Yeah, I know. Fairy standards.
She noted, “She’s half vampire. Did you know that vampires won’t even let their daughters take blood from the opposite sex unless they’re engaged? They’re terrible prudes.”
Elianora had warned Owen not to let me do it. There was too high a risk of a male provider taking the next step. He forbade me from feeding on men because of that. Of course, I prefer feeding on girls anyhow, so it was fine.
The night proceeded without any additional live sex performances, but I did end up having to dance with three girls, including Dilorè, as the music turned to waltzes and polkas. The night had turned into a rather lovely, albeit very yuri, ballroom scene.
Gelon claimed a dance with me as well.
“I suspect your servants didn’t pick that gown,” he noted as we waltzed.
I laughed, a little self-consciously. “I’m afraid that’s true, Your Highness. I’m just not able to wear what they picked. I almost died of embarrassment when I had to wear Lady Serera’s armor.”
“Your choice looks quite lovely though. You’ve become the alluring and mysterious lady vampire at the ball. My daughter had intended to come over and compliment you for it.”
The servants had brought out a futon for Somire. She was fast asleep next to the table where Gelon had been seated.
“Do you still wish to leave us?” he wondered.
“Yes, Your Highness. I need to go to my King. I also need to deal with some other unfinished business.”
“That unfinished business is the reason Esteemed Father doesn’t wish you to leave, though. We still haven’t worked out a way to detect fairies who are possessed, and the clan that is threatening you is the most powerful clan in Faerie. It’s too dangerous.”
“Would they really still try to do something to me?” I asked. “Even after what Màra did?”
The universe has an ironic way of answering my questions, sometimes. It was barely two seconds after I said that, when an enormous blast shook the valley, and the Great Barrier of Tëan Tír lit up with shining ripples spreading out in the afterglow of a massive blow.
