The Other Realm Ch. 03

III

Somehow I slept. Don't ask me how, for how long, or where we had driven. When I opened my eyes again, it was night and it seemed to me that we had slipped from the all-pervading metropolis that is Centrum. That is not possible--I know--for how can we have left 34 million people behind so fast? Then again, something was wrong with the time too, for we had departed Misty Leaves at something like 6 in the morning, when dawn was breaking, and now--now it was night? And we were clearly in the middle of nowhere: no street lamps, no buildings save for one, no pylons, towers, or even the dust beyond Centrum. Where we were, I could not tell.

At any rate, Lasci held the door open for me, and I stepped out. There was a strange spring to my step, as if the very earth was springy, spring-backed. I breathed in. The air smelled strange, too... a bit stale and... of sex. Yes, it reeked of sex. The very atmosphere outside this strange, blocky, dark, yellow-rimmed five-storied hotel (was it a hotel?) reeked of pussy and assholes. I looked up, craning my neck to see the bold letters in old, pink neon lights. Flickering, of course.

The door behind me slammed shut. It echoed, in my head. Slam, slam, slam. Aunt Hannah was suddenly beside me.

"What does it say?" I asked her.

But her hair was disheveled and she was covering her puffy tits with her free hand, and her legs looked wobbly. Best not talk to her. She could hardly stand.

And I craned up to look, again, at the big neon flickering letters. H. E. L. Hell, of course. Hadn't Lasci said she would be taking us to Hell? Speaking of Lasci--where was she? Oh, right here, right behind me, shorter than me, with a smirk and a swing of her wide, bountiful hips, and was that a crop she held in her hands, and was that a biting of her lips?

The limo was drifting away, slowly, as if expecting to catch us doing something stupid. Xanthi Raye was nowhere to be seen. I guess the limo was whisking her away.

A sharp fingernail edged me on. So I walked into the maw of Hell. Where it was so dark that it was bright. A fact I didn't understand. There was a curvy brunette, a receptionist of sorts, standing behind the darkest or rather brightest part of the room. She was watching loud porn on her screen, and ignored us. I admired her devotion to cock, I liked that about her. It showed strength of character. If I found the time, I would come for her. She looked promising, and the filth of her mind.

Onward and upward. A corridor, a flight of steps. Buzzing filament lamp. Not our floor, Lasci is going to say.

"Not our floor," said Lasci.

Moaning from some of the rooms, loud arguments in others; all female voices, never a male sound, except for those channeled by... by those things. TVs? Is that what you call them? Yes. TVs and bluest, filthiest pornography. Lust showed everywhere, in the rooms, in the TV sets brightening rooms, in the artwork hanging over walls, in the busty sculptures of women cupping their breasts and screaming Os of pleasure, in the glimpses of skirt I saw in doorways that quickly scurried off as we passed, me and Hannah and Lasci, on our trip to the fifth floor.

"We don't talk to the other floors," she said. "We have our own place."

A woman stood on the landing to the fifth. Naked, ass thrust out, cunt overgrown with a forest of dirty hair, face to the wall.

"She's furniture. Ignore her."

The fifth floor beckoned, swallowed our tired gulps for air which, up here, collected all the reek of pussy from the five floors beneath and thus smelled that much better, more enticing, more intriguing. Pussy. I could die happy on this floor, I knew it. But there were only a few doors. Five or seven, and some of them empty, said Lasci.

"507 is a Shaddati concubine. Tariq. She hasn't made mistress yet."

As we passed by 505, we heard masculine voices behind the door. Men on video. From their grunting, it seemed like they were fucking each other or up to something like that.

"Careena and her daughter Cristina like to watch gay men," said Lasci with a wink at Auntie Hannah, who turned beetroot and pinched her nipples hard, unconsciously. Stealing the opportunity, I grabbed Hannah's ass and slipped a finger between the walls of her soft thighs. Hannah squealed, and not unhappily. Oh yes, she was sopping wet.

The furniture woman with her ass thrust out moaned seductively from behind us. Everyone on the floor would have heard her.

"Yours is 503," Lasci said to me, "and yours, slut, is 501."

Before she disappeared in 502, I grabbed Lasci's crotch. Dry, of course. Latex doesn't wet. And I got a slap across the face, but nothing worse--if anything, there was a hint of a pleased smile. She vanished in a swish of rubber and warm aroma. A second later, Hannah angrily slammed her door shut and I was left alone.

What to do, then? I plonked down on my bed, turned on the audio all the way up, and switched channels. All porn, all hardcore. Fun, exciting, titillating even. But was it truly what I wanted to do now? I heard a loud, thumphing knock on the door. Must be the hotel manager, angry that I was disturbing the residents. But no, it was room service, very blonde, tall, thin and tightly dressed. She appeared in front of the TV with a wisp of a smile and a silver cloche on a trolley. I must have left the door open. Who knows, in this place.

"If you're hungry, there are 37 women in this place," she said.

"What's under that thing?"

"Four on this floor."

"But she told me that I can only speak with the women of the fifth."

"Ah yes, speak."

On screen, a busty woman was crying and masturbating to a cumming cock she was watching on her screen. Crying, I think, out of horniness.

"What's under that thing?"

"What's under that thing?" she said, pointing at my stained boxers.

"I'm sorry. I can't hear you over this noise."

She turned sideways, thrust her ass out, and crossed her eyes. Then, just like that, she was gone. I was curious. What was under that thing? So I got up and took off the cloche, expecting delicious food or, maybe, even something pornographic, something utterly blood pumping. It was just a small, plastic key, neatly arranged on a folded linen shorts. Strange, and the key smelled strange too. From some sense of habit, I put on the shorts and dropped the key in my pocket. Perhaps they wanted me to be dressed in something more decent. But who were they? The Other Realm? The Order?

As I thought these ponderous thoughts, there was a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder. I thought I saw some dust drift down from the ceiling, and the lights, after the flash, seemed dimmer. Rain struck the window, in torrents.

I wanted to go to reception. To that promising woman downstairs. And I had barely wished it that I found myself creeping down the stairs between ground and first floor. There she was, sitting behind reception, her mousy brown hair spilling over her heaving shoulders. A deep breath brought clarity to my mind. Moans of lust filled the quiet atrium, from both her TV as well as her good self. I was curious as to what she was watching, and she hadn't seen me come down. I figured that if I stayed to her side and outside her angle of view as subtended by her receptionist glasses, I would avoid detection.

So I crept up, hugging the fake, stained, unpolished marble and the big decorative vases filled with reeds that had gone out of fashion before Urbia's independence 1006 years ago. I squeezed through the swinging door and into the cubicle, still crouched, and watched.

The Receptionist was masturbating to a video of a black man deepthroating a white woman upside down. As she (and I) watched, the woman vomited over and over, and puke and drool dripped down her face and into her hair before splashing at the man's feet. The Receptionist--Lena? Let's settle on Lena--Lena was alternating between rubbing her cunt furiously and spanking it. I slouched into the space beneath her desk to watch her abuse herself all the better.

I had never in my life been so near to a woman's pussy, so up close and personal. I could see her thick clit responding to the sideways motion of Lena's hand, bouncing hard like a stiff bristle. I could see her fat pussy lips widening and throbbing as lust and stimulation brought them to what must have been the hundredth orgasm that night. A trickle of white ejaculate emerged from between her pulsing labia. Screams, shrieks, sluiced juices. The smell of cunt. Warmth, dripping liquids. All right there before my eyes, inches from my face. The stubble of receptionist pussy fur rasping against angry, horny, lusty fingers. Pornography sounding in the background, and rain, and thunder. Wind rapping wooden somethings outside, only Luscia knows. The rubbing out of ounce after ounce of pleasure from this woman's gash took precedence.

I think I left not long after the third or fourth orgasm of Lena's. I remember more screaming, nail fights, angry words, threats too. What happened then was uncertain, but I again found myself, scratched, damaged, somewhere on the hotel staircase, somewhere very uncertain, very dark, lit by lightning and sounded by creaks. A wooden bannister askew, and steep, steep steps. My breaths came heavy as I climbed towards my floor.

There at the top of the staircase was a woman, the furniture woman, except that this time she was the door to the landing, somehow. Part of it, or vice versa. I saw an ass thrust out of the door, nude save for a thin gray-brown rubbery material that hid nothing from view, from my angle. Beneath that, nothing, bar her luscious growth of curly black hair. Dirty, greasy. Her asshole a thick, well-used back entry, her cunt agape just as well. Both forming a rude exclamation mark. Legs spread, even though I could only see her ass.

I stepped up behind her. She was shut. There was no way to open the door that she was, so far as I could tell. I knelt behind her, looked up. It was a beautiful sight, sexual in ways that could destroy whole minds.

"Please open," I said.

I grabbed Lena's--I mean the furniture woman's--ass cheeks and pulled them apart, and when I did, her asshole gaped and puckered, as if in reflex, and her pussy throbbed for a minute. This throbbing came with a sinuous body movement that was both erotic and robotic. I touched her again and she repeated the same movement to the smallest fucking detail. I had seen this before. Where? Where?

"What do you want? A good fucking? My fist? You want me to smell your cunt, rim your ass?"

The reply came from everywhere, from the bannister, the sky, the stairs, her ass and the thunder. A great, all-encompassing female voice, the archetypal voice of seduction.

"Unlock me."

And just like that I understood. I took out the key, which, in the palm of my hand looked larger and thicker than it had under the cloche. This was its purpose, then.

Upon touching the cold tip of the key, the door woman's anus gaped wide and her dirty cunt hair stood on end in anticipation, as if welcoming the breach, inviting it in. The smell of pussy was extraordinary. The woman wobbled against her weird restraints, forcing herself onto the violating object. And, indeed, her asshole clamped onto the shaft and would not let go, even when I gave it a perfunctory tug. Very well. The key turned with surprising ease, as if the woman's asshole was lubricated for the action. And it might have been, who knows. Strangeness abounded.

As soon as I turned the key, I heard a loud something between a sigh and a creak coming from the walls, and the woman-door unlocked on her hinge.

The other side of the door was her upper half, clad in the same latex and a gimp mask. Her eyes were not visible through the fog on the other side of the glass, and she had a red ball gag in her mouth, so I wasn't expecting much from that end of her either. But I could see that her breathing was rapid. For what it's worth, I think she had enjoyed the hard metal key in her ass.

Back on our landing, the pussy scented air was getting to my head again. Loud moaning and thumping came from the TV in my room. I shut my bedroom door and stood in the corridor. Next thing I know was that I was knocking on 502 and the door was opening to reveal--flashes of demonic rituals, explosions of cum, women in orgiastic abandon--Lasci, hip thrust to the side and a sexy smile on her face. She was no longer in latex, but a busty cop's uniform that accentuated her curves just as well. Her tits, I noticed, were huge, for her frame and height.

"Whom to start with, boy?"

"Hannah... Tariq..."

We brought Hannah out of her room. Hair all over the place, in a skimpy, flowy thigh-high summer dress entirely out of character with this place of perpetual night. Murmurs of no with no real conviction. No panties. Lasci laid an arm across her waist and drew her forward.

Deep grunting was still coming from 505. Let that family enjoy a peaceful night. I knocked on 507. Nothing at first, then the door opened and turned slightly on its hinges. We shuffled in. There she was, this Tariq woman, sitting still like a cat at the edge of her bed, in pharaonic headgear and a modern skintight beige linen pants. She wore a chaos of metal bangles, pendants, necklaces and jewelry that partly covered her shapely breasts and heavenly, narrow stomach and finely displayed her light brown complexion. Her face was dark, thin, her nose beautifully arched in Shaddati form. She could have been a statue. She was not a tall woman, but somehow she exuded size. Tariq did not speak, nor make any motion. She sat at the edge of her bed, legs crossed, looking out of the rain-spattered window, her face and body limned by the flickering neon pinks and blues of the HELL sign outside.

After the receptionist and the door-woman, the maid and all the sexuality dripping from this forsaken place, I was raring to go, my pants bulging in anticipation. Even for a complete stranger. It would be much later that the strangeness of it all dawned on me, when clarity returned to my addled brain.

"Come," I said.

But she shook her head no. That's fine, that's cool. Absolutely. Persuasion by other means was called for.

And so as if Lasci had heard my thoughts, she yanked Hannah in front of Tariq, and pushed her head down.

"I want to see that small bubble butt in Tariq's face," she yelled at her, and shoved the small of her back down.

I sat down next to Tariq, touched her hand. She pulled away, and sat impassively looking at the sex scene unfolding before her. Hannah's ass was unclothed; that glorious 3-inch thigh gap exposed in full view of the dark woman. In here, the aroma of pussy was fainter, and I achieved new heights of clarity seemingly impossible two minutes before.

"You are to summarily be spanked, hard, for fucking your nephew," said Lasci. "Which do you like best, the whip or the hand?"

"Ha--hand, please," said Auntie Hannah, quietly.

"And how. Everyone prefers the hand. You're no different than anyone. You're just a common slut who craves for cock, any cock. Say it. Say 'I love my nephew's cock'."

"I--I love my nephew's co--cock."

I touched Tariq's hand again. She let me.

"Say 'I'm a filthy whore'."

"I'm a filthy whore."

"Now with the hand you also get a side dish of good groping. Do you understand?"

Auntie Hannah nodded, her hands pressed against the window. Anyone walking outside would have seen her, half-naked in the hotel window. But I could have bet my scrawny ass that no one would be outside in this crazy rain at night. Tariq refused to budge, resisting my pull.

"Do you want me to spank you and grope you, then?"

"Ye--yes."

"Louder!"

"Yes, mistress. Spank me and grope me!"

"Let's get going, then."

Lasci raised her hand (she wore black varnish, nice!) and slapped Hannah's ass, hard. Her fingers dug into Auntie Hannah's left butt cheek and raised welts. Hannah yelped. In the meantime, I tugged on Tariq's hand. She refused, but it was a softer refusal, one with more movement to the arm. We were making progress.

Lasci's arm fell again. Right butt cheek. Another yelp. Another half-hearted refusal from the Tariq woman. She still sat upright and watched, and I next to her.

Another slap, another squeal. Hannah's pussy throbbed once, twice: the slut enjoyed the abuse. I put a hand on Tariq's back, traced her spine with a finger. She did not react, which, under the circumstances, was positive news. I licked a finger and made a small spit circle on her neck. She sat a bit straighter, but did not push me away.

Lasci gripped Hannah's ass and dug in with her black fingernails. She laughed.

"You're liking it, aren't ya," she said, and spat on my aunt's ass, and again. Spit gathered in the crack of her ass and ran down over her exposed back entry and down into her thin fuzz. Lasci cupped Hannah's crotch--ass and pussy both--gave it a squeeze. It made a squelching sound. Aunt Hannah gasped.

"She's so horny, god fucking damn it!" said Lasci at me. Lasci too was clearly excited, by the sight and by her audience; she was tiptoeing around on her copper heels, swaying her tight big butt lasciviously as she moved around my aunt's nakedness, touching her here and there, bending over so that we could see her properly, got a cuppa her filling. I could ravage the slutty little woman, if only I gained an upper hand. And she wasn't beyond reach. I saw it in the wide, hungry pupils she threw in my direction, even as she paraded and abused my auntie's cunt.

"Fuck yourself on my fingers!"

Hannah didn't need much persuasion. With a scared, excited squeal Hannah pushed her ass up and out, back arched, against Lasci's expectant hand. Lasci viciously thumbed Hannah's asshole and dug into her cunt with the middle fingers. The sudden intrusion produced a hell lot of cunt juice, and a drop fell to the dirty hotel carpet. Hannah gasped a second time, meaning it.

"Get fucked, now!"

Moaning, overexcited, straining but determined, Hannah fucked herself with Lasci's fingers. The room gradually filled with the sounds of lust, the squelching of wanting vagina and melting mind and, next to me, Tariq shifted a bit, leaning slightly against my hand which, at that moment, was caressing the small of her back. I could see what kind of movement it was, from the corner of my eye: the kind of backward shift of the ass, that slight, nearly-imperceptible grinding against the bed, that uncrossing and crossing of legs, that clenching of knees that signalled lust. Lust for the stranger, for me, for Lasci, Hannah, for any kind of encounter. For lust's sake, and out of pure sexual jealousy.

Lasci seemed to sense the change too. She turned and looked at Tariq and whispered "Wouldn't you want some of this too?" She winked at me flirtatiously and, while rhythmically violating my Aunt's pussy and ass, turned to stare down at Tariq.

Hannah's movements had become sharp and rapid. As if in synchrony, Tariq started to follow the plunging self-impalation of my Aunt with her own grinding against the bed. The bangles and pendants jingled and tinkled, and her pointed, cone-like nipples came to view between flashes of metal. Her body had taken over, seemingly on automatic even as she faced the scene with large, black, unblinking eyes watching through thick Shaddati mascara, not caring that I was touching her back. Or maybe even liking it.

And no doubt about it. I cupped her ass and she didn't flinch a single bit. If anything, she pressed harder against my hand and even started to ride it a little with her shapely butt, rubbing linen hard against my skin to the point where it would have been uncomfortable, had it not been so damn erotic. I was not displeased.

Bent over herself, and ass pushed out sideways so that I--or we?--could see, Lasci worked her fingers in Aunt Hannah's cunt and rosebud. The squelching came faster, a patter of drops formed on the carpet, and Tariq was positively rubbing my cupped fingers. Had she been naked, I would have been digging into her clenched rim. A general smell filled the air that was not pure lust, but something else too: sweat, certainly, with undertones of piss and shit. Hannah was truly a filthy woman, mind and body.

Intoxicated on this sight, and still reeling from the effect of this place, things started happening quickly.

"Look at that, honey cunt," said Lasci hoarsely. "You made the tenant wet her pants."

I looked and, true to her words, a dark wet diamond had formed in the seam of Tariq's pants. Was she having an orgasm already, or was she just excited? How much time had passed, anyway?

A clock somewhere heard me and chimed three times. A woman giggled in the corridor and I heard a resounding smack and a squeal. Fuck you, said an excited, very feminine voice. Who?

Next thing I know I was pushing Tariq's legs apart at the knees and she, resisting, caved at the last moment. Tariq was leaning back on her arms now, bangles and shit swept sideways and breasts heaving, pointing up. Beautiful. Body insinuating. S-curves. Snakelike. Thighs apart and grinding hard against the bed. Face upturned and lips bitten. And then, as Hannah somewhere moaned that she was cumming, oh-my-god she was cumming, Tariq shuddered and lifted off the bed, and her voice, transformed, lashed out in godly, terrifying notes, in divine unspeakable consonants that resounded off the walls and paralysed me in sexual terror.

"Sheman siu ku-lukku nerdiq!--Ashtemoth saki, sa-ki, saki hanneh!"

Tariq was having an orgasm. She buckled and twisted in orgiastic, satanic bliss. I was frozen, a pure seeing machine. Fallen to the floor, Hannah twisted her legs together, the lashing of Tariq's voice summoning something orgiastic in her, and she trembled top to bottom, liquid flowing freely down her vibrating thighs and dripping all over the carpet. Lasci, for her part, had her eyes rolled back and was gutturally going "uh-uh-ahuh". The orgasms went on and on, three women coming together in my presence while I, out of my wits, stared with a cock shocked into semi-flaccidity.

What the fuck went on, I had no clue then. Later, I would know enough to call Hannah's orgasm a 'hypergasmic seizure', a moment that she would describe as:

"The best orgasm of my life, and believe me I've had many. It went on and on, I was conscious--but just barely. Not even your cock could make me cum like that, baby!"

That came much later. Now, Tariq's sinuous movements came slower and Lasci came to, popping back into animated life on her high heels. But Hannah was still trembling and she was unresponsive, and her cunt still throbbed uncontrollably.

"Let's get her out of here," said Lasci in a low, lioness' voice.

We half carried her, half-dragged her to my room. I think. It gets a bit hazy around here again. The next thing I remember was that Aunt Hannah was still unconscious. She lay on the bed, ass sideways, her pussy weeping happy milk and her clit hard and standing to attention. She was, amazingly, still trembling all over. She was still mid-orgasm, probably helped along by the loud moaning and thumping of three girls fucking themselves on rubber dildoes stuck to a glass window. The TV, I mean.

Lasci's was kneeling in front of me, and as for me--well, do you blame me for having a stiffy? I had been denied for ages, it seems.

"I want you to paint her big gaping bullseye of an asshole. Flood it with spunk, boy!"

Lasci gazed at me through beautiful, lascivious, extended eyelashes. How could I say no to that round, small, lust-twisted face? She may have held back so far, but she was at her breaking point. I could see it. She was already kneeling, eye-level with my dick, stealing occasional glances at it. Her words were spoken boldly, and tried to convey dispassion and distance--"cum on her, boy!"--but really and truly, they were for her enjoyment, for her body's sake. She was breaking. Her instinct was taking over and she would soon be slavering over my cock like her life depended on it.

So I performed. I pulled down my shorts--I was still in the same stained shorts I'd been in when we left Aunty Hannah's?--and jerked off. It didn't take long. My aunt's rim was rock solid, still clenching and unclenching from her continuing rapture. I pressed the tip against her hole but did not push in. I respected my Aunty, you see? And I wanted to deny Lasci the pleasure of seeing me lose my wits and fuck another woman. Perhaps even holding out the hope that I wanted to preserve my cock for her asshole.

When I was about to cum, I pulled Hannah's ass cheeks apart. Lasci's face was so close I could feel her breathing on my balls. The thought of Lasci sucking down my balls sent me over the edge, and I exploded on Hannah's asshole, thickly. So thick, so ropy, that the semen did not drip. As if in response, however, a new rivulet of clear ejaculate ran down the curve of Hannah's thigh. Was she pretending to be unconscious? I couldn't put it past her, knowing the depths of her depravity.

Anyway, my priority right now was Lasci, who was looking at the perfect bullseye half in astonishment, and fully in desire. Her breath came ragged. It was time to act.

"That was--" she started breathlessly, but at that moment I sank my middle fingers in the crack of Aunty's ass and scooped out the great dollop of cum that had so lately departed from my penis. She fell silent. She knew what was coming.

I grabbed her by the nape of her back and she went "aaaah".

"Open your mouth, slut," I said.

She obeyed. So I dumped my shot between her big, beautiful lips and she fed on it like a hungry dog, her eyes glistening large, beckoning me to treat her like the important whore that she was. Her tongue snaked out between my fingers, not letting a drop go by, and I scooped every last bit of the man splash I had made on my aunt and let Lasci suck it all down. I could only imagine how wet she must have been, but her policewoman's uniform hid all of that from my prying eyes, naturally.

Lasci was broken, but the second she was finished feeding on my cum, she called upon her last reserves of dignity.

"Get that thing out of my sight, you worthless piece of shit," she said in mock anger.

I played along. My thing was wetly back in my shorts, even though its size prevented the complete containment of my package.

"Masturbate for me," was her new order. "And do it over your shorts, I don't want to see it again."

Which was entirely belied by the fact that her face was inches away from my shorts, by the fact that she was staring at my bulge, and by the fact that she bit her lower lip. But anyway.

I had been backed up for too long, and the air here--well, it did something to you, aside from all the lusty women, of course. So it took far less than you would think, to come again. With a short quiver, I splurged; it felt like I was passing through a black tunnel of earth and being reborn on the other side. When I opened my eyes, cum was beading out on the non-genital side of my shorts and dribbling loosely down my shorts.

Lusci moaned, rolled her eyes back and, finally and decisively, broke down. She likely came, then. For a second time in less than five minutes Lasci ate my boy juice, hoovering it up through the thin fabric of my shorts. Her lips opened suggestively and her small teeth closed on my strained penis. Her tongue restlessly hounded my clothed glans and shaft.

We were like this, then. Me standing, Lasci on her knees worshipping my cock, and my dearest aunt in the final, weakening throes of a long orgasm, with the remnants of my cum drying on her beautiful, tight rump. Lasci was making hungry noises and looking me straight in the eye when the door blew open and Xanthi barged in. Behind her was the frail-looking, sexy house maid. The TV, in collaboration with the intruders, froze midway through a scene where a young brunette was impaling herself on her bathroom door knob, her face a mess of orgasmic pleasure.

"What have we here?" boomed Xanthi Raye in a surprisingly deep voice. It was the first time I heard her speak.

Lasci froze in fear. As for me, well, a big part of me was pleased that I had come twice before the second intrusion of the day (or was it two days?).

"I--I" stammered Lasci, getting up and brushing her hair nervously.

"Shut up," growled Xanthi. Lasci's lips smacked shut, a comma of cum punctuating her lovely face. "Of the twelve hundred whore mistresses, I ended up with the sluttiest cock addict for a personal assistant. Do I have to read your duties, Whore?"

"No, I'm sorry. I just--"

"What? Did you have to wolf down his cock when no one's looking?"

"No, I--"

"Let's see here."

Xanthi Raye's hand disappeared down Lasci's police pants. Lasci gasped.

"I thought so. A sopping mess."

Lasci turned beetroot and hung her head. Xanthi, disgusted, instructed her to sit down and take care of Hannah.

"As for you," said Xanthi, turning towards me. She continued in an unexpectedly soft voice, almost husky, (or was I imagining it?): "you did well. Come with me, we're visiting the abbottess."