Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Natural bristle brushes on wooden handles, for everything from my body, hair, to my teeth she explains, are set out in a neat row. Corked bottles of various shapes and sizes make a pretty rainbow next to the brushes.
As she explains the brushes, I look to the partly partitioned side of the bathing room. I noticed each had one like it, but I couldn’t tell what was behind the wall.
“And that over there?” I ask.
Vabila follows my gaze, and an understanding dawns in hers when she turns back to me. She thinks for a moment, and as her attention sweeps over the shelf, she picks up another empty ceramic bowl and says, “Ah, this will help.”
Scooping water from the bathing pool into the bowl, Vabila waves me to follow before directing me around the partition. I almost instantly understand the purpose of the knee-height wooden box full of a fine sand with a sunken in middle. Next to the box, Vabila stands, looks at me, dumps the water, and then presses a black square on the wall. The sunken in sand of hole falls through to the unknown below the ship, and a fresh layer rolls in from the sides. A stone shelf, similar to the one nearer to the pool, showcases baskets holding various items one could use to clean and dry themselves.
“There is also one of these in every sleeping bunk,” she tells me.
“Oh, okay.”
“Always close a partition when you leave a bathing room so everything can be immediately cleaned. Back to the oils and bathing, then?”
I smile. “Please.”
As quickly as that, she and I return to the other side of the partition and she replaces the ceramic bowl back to the shelf.
Vabila touches the top of each bottle to tell me, “For your body … for your hair …” On the last, she gives me a look like earlier when she made the first suggestive comment about my evening with Bothaki. “For your mouth, and wherever you would like him to taste.”
My curiosity gets the better of me.
“How is it different?”
“Less fragrance. You are a female—his. Don’t you think he’ll want you to smell like it?”
She has a point, but the reality awaiting me when I have Bothaki alone again makes a nervous energy race through me.
There’s only one reason why.
I share it before Vabila does it for me. I have a feeling she probably would.
“I’ve never been with …” Saying a man doesn’t seem right, even though it’s true, but comparing him to the males on earth doesn’t seem fair. At all. “Anyone,” I finally settle on saying.
Maybe sharing with a stranger—basically, I haven’t known Vabila long enough to share those sorts of things even if I do—isn’t the best choice, but the second the truth leaves my lips, I feel better. Just for saying it.
Her reaction, a knowing purse of her lips and suggestive lift of her brow, helps to calm my new nerves as well.
“Everyone has a first, and every Hallan has a fate,” she tells me, gesturing to the pool that I allow her to guide me into until my breasts, neck and head are left above the surface. I stare up at her, and she gives me another playful wink. “Even he, finding you.”
“Me?” I ask.
Vabila nods. “You.”
She’s quiet as she retrieves brushes and bottles to line along the edge of the bathing pool. Once done, she kneels down where her claw-tipped fingers dance atop the surface of the water.
“He’ll wait as long as you need,” Vabila assures, “but fate has picked his mate, and things have already happened exactly as they should. Why question the pace of it now?”
The idea that Bothaki was meant to be hurt the way he was just to have me makes emotions well inside my chest that are hard to contain, never mind comprehend.
“Do I have to always like it—this fate?” I ask her.
Vabila flicks water at me playfully. “You do not, but that doesn’t make it wrong. Hmm?”
I wade a bit in the water, tipping my head back and letting it soak into my hair still tied into a tight bun.
“Don’t make him wait,” she tells me as I enjoy floating in the small pool of warm water just inches from the water falling from overhead. “Not too long, anyway, and the pain is worth the pleasure.”
“Why?”
She doesn’t answer right away like I expect her to. Righting myself, I look to Vabila.
She points at my stomach beneath the water, making a semicircle with her claw to express a roundness that does not exist. I can’t misinterpret her motions, or what she means to express. No, I understand her perfectly fine.
“You can’t possibly know that,” I say to her.
Vabila doesn’t even entertain the challenge.
“Fate,” she tells me, “isn’t done with you and my brother yet.”
Long after Vabila has helped me to bathe, let down, washed and braided my hair into a long rope down my back, and dressed me in a smock dress that leaves my arms and shoulders bare, I’m still thinking about her words of fate.