Sanctuary

We’re making love and she’s here. My entire world has changed - my mind, my language, my senses - even Tirin. But not his gentle, strong touch on my body, not the rising of pleasure together, the deep sweet exhaustion. Our loving after-embrace. But she’s here, not in body but in mind. Her interest surprises me. So very… human. Closed door, I show her and turn to my lover. What is it? He asks. Her. Ah, he murmurs, and strokes my hair as though the coarse tangles are silk.

Today is different. So many hours, days, months, of struggling to learn each other’s language, culture, world. She shows me myself and Tirin, my thoughts and feelings mixed up with his. I relive our lovemaking as I sit with her. She handles the intensity of this experience well. She’s adjusting, no longer constantly overwhelmed by so many humans, so many emotions. I show her couples - holding hands, marrying, raising children. Two, not three. She understands. Children confuse her. I show her pregnancy and childbirth, new humans. Aversion, fear. How are new beings of her species created, I wonder? But this is too much, no more for her today. I’m also tired.

The newcomers struggle I think. In our stories we imagined them arriving wise and advanced. I never conceived that they, in this new world, would struggle and suffer. I wonder if they have everything they need for health here. Perhaps they are refugees, not explorers. How are things Outside this strange sanctuary? I wonder if we’ll eventually be allowed to make contact with Outside. The newcomers aren’t conquering, they’re struggling. It’s easily felt from our own newcomer. She’s affecting the whole community. We humans can all feel it, especially now with what they awakened in us. They’re only empathic in their bonded triads. But humans’ emotions spill out of us, untamed and chaotic. So much feeling, so difficult to hold onto the edges of oneself. We naturally know how to build emotional walls. Newcomers have to learn, just as I learn to sort my thoughts from hers.

I feel weariness in my little community. We need a celebration. The days are long now. What festival could be more right in this temple than one for our earthly sun? Maybe our joy will make its way to the Outside, through the newcomers, the same way the Outside has leaked into this sanctuary and tainted our happiness.

She honors no closed door this time. We are all joyful, as I hoped. I fall on Tirin with the hunger that surely always follows such festivities. Feasts, fertility, dancing, lovemaking. I love Tirin’s new senses. He sees me now, through me, into me… I feel it. I‘m so open. We’re all open tonight. A great easy breath, laughter, in the community. We’re not the only lovemakers tonight. She’s with us and won’t leave. He knows. His kisses don’t falter. He’s hard-bodied and strong from the work of this place. His scent is earth and bonfire and sweat. His new confidence warms me. A leader now, with a new kind of vision. I’m glad. I need him more than ever. I melt under him. She’s in our minds - I hear the sounds of my own pleasure, and his, from the inside and outside at once. Tirin murmurs, softly. He hears it too.

My festival provides short-lived relief. I feel her grief again. I don’t understand how sex is accomplished in the bonded triads of her species, but she shows me thought and emotion blending totally. It disturbs me. Do they lose their identities in this merging? The empathic bond can’t be broken, she shows me. Can a new bond be formed? With a new triad? She tries to answer but I can’t understand. The images make no sense. I know she’s alone here, her two partners together Outside without her. I feel her loneliness. Bits of loneliness from every human here seep in and compound the feeling. Her edges blur. She’s overwhelmed. Banshee wail. I move close and put an arm around her - offering the human remedy of touch. Her skin is weirdly smooth, weirdly cool. She leans on me. She weeps with depth and ferocity, but not with sound or tears.

I lay awake tonight. Tirin is tired from his work. Such a twist of fate, from blindness to super-vision. It has to do with sound, he says, how it moves. The depths and textures he sees now remind him of what he long ago knew as color. He knows what’s solid and what’s crumbling, and has thus saved this place. Only the hiding place he found me is strong enough to escape rebuilding and fortifying. The place he found me when the newcomers arrived and the world changed. A hollow in this temple only seeable with his new vision. Inside the rock. I could hear them. Why me? It was too much. He couldn’t protect me from my own mind, but he gave me a safe place. Images, sounds. Why could I hear them? When the newcomers came, our senses suddenly heightened. We were vulnerable, photosensitive, gentle touch became pain, music became screams. We were confused, frightened. For me, it was my childhood again. Crowds, sounds, lights were burning on exposed nerve. Is that why? I grew to function, but now the overload resurged, far worse. Minds in my mind. Images, sounds, sensations, unexplainable things. Too much, too much. I hid and survived, until I learned to differentiate myself from not-myself. My mind from not-my-mind. My senses from other-senses. When I emerged I was ready to attempt communication. Thought-charades. I procured us this sanctuary, this temple of humanness, this living museum of ourselves. Only one newcomer came here with us. We were wary of her, but she’s part of us now. This is a good place, a safe place. What is happening Outside? My restlessness has wakened Tirin. He holds me firmly.

How bizarre to have become the guide, the teacher here. I’m oddly satisfied with this life of teaching and counseling and directing and mediating. I love watching what the people here are creating, feeling them as they grow, knowing them in this new way. My times with her, especially, have developed an intimacy. Since our first touch we find each other fascinating and beautiful. My warm, wrinkled skin is as strange to her as her cool, glasslike skin is to me. She inquires about Tirin. I show her our first meeting. She shows me memories of herself and her partners. She has the advantage in this communication, knowing my world and my Tirin. Her memories in contrast are strange and foreign to me. My mind makes no sense of them. At best they‘re disjointed and disembodied, like a dream.

Today there’s panic here. Tirin tells me our water must be treated with a glowing object before she touches it. The water-bearers have lost the thing, and she’s ill. She’s brittle inside, he says, crystallized. We have a wise-woman here, a healer - one never accepted among human doctors before the newcomers came, but her knowledge serves well in this place. Our newcomer has become the healer’s assistant, yet we know nothing of her medicine or her body. Only Tirin with his new vision has a trace of understanding. She needs water. What will we do? She refuses to call Outside. A hush presses over the community. They look to me. What will I do? I’m so afraid. Have I failed us already? This place isn’t right without her. The balance is upset. We’re no longer safe here. I feel unsettled. Her mind is so quiet. I’ve become accustomed to her. Where is Tirin?

He’s at her bedside, touching her the way I’ve become accustomed to doing. She’s been in his mind, too. I sit with them. She’s weak. Water, I show her. Water, I plead. Cup breaking. Poison, she replies with feeble imagery. Tirin takes my hand. She says go to bed, he tells me. I know he’s right. He hears her, too, now. This feels natural. We follow her instruction, and promptly slip into exhausted sleep. She’s softly with us.

A strange thing is happening. Two visitors are here. Newcomers. They look the same as every newcomer, but I know they’re her partners. Tirin agrees. Can you tell them apart? I ask. He can’t. They look the same to us. Their thought and feeling signatures, though, are as unique as human faces. A strange sort of recognition we’ve developed, between species. I sense heaviness. Their loved one suffers, so they suffer. The water-cleanser is a small jewel with light inside. A strange shape. The jewel is only a container, magic is in the mesmerizing flicker. They find the water-bearers and tend to our ill friend. She’s become silent.

This place is anxious and upset. We’ve created a home here, a delicately balanced community. We don’t want her to die, and we don’t want her taken Outside. She’s part of us now. We’re uncomfortable with the visitors. Will this sanctuary be allowed to continue if we lose her? If it’s destroyed, what will happen to us? The days are much too long. The work of living continues as it must, but little food is eaten. Tirin shares my fears. I take my comfort in his body. She’s not with us. I’m used to the blending of my mind with his during our passion now. I feel alienated from him. We compensate as well as we can, until we reach frustrated release.

She’s well. She approaches me with the visitors. Never again. This place will remain only if she remains. They may allow us to continue, if I myself protect the object, always. I understand. I have only one choice, for myself, for all of us. I agree. The visitors place their jewel in my palm. A strange shape. It’s fashioned for me to keep around my neck and guard closely. Tirin informs me that it resembles a heart-like organ inside them. It hums. What magic is in this strange locket, I wonder? Homesickness sweeps over me. Dreamlike visions of seas and mountains, moving in weird ways, colors not of this world. Of their world. Ancient magic, like that used by the druids to build stone megaliths. Unusual - Tirin is in my mind. He would love to see those standing stones now with his new vision. She’s here, too! Homesickness gives way to the relief of familiarity.

Another thing, personal this time. They don’t want to leave her, but she asks to stay. They impose one more requirement before giving us their trust. Again I have one choice. Bonding ensures her protection here. I reach for Tirin. Must we? Will we? We’ve missed her. Her invasive presence is now comfortable and precious. I remember the erasure of self she showed me. I feel Tirin’s steady sureness. I feel her desire. Very well. Yes, three minds settle together.

I feel our Yes, in every part of myself. It overtakes me completely, like when the newcomers arrived and the world changed. But I’m not alone with myself now. I’m three lives, three beings, three bodies. I see, I don’t see, I see in strange ways. My water is water, and the light of a far-away planet. My skin is warm, my skin is cool. My body is male, female, and sexless. My secrets, my joys, and my sorrows run freely, unlocked, seen, felt - not always understood - always loved. The loving of a bonded triad can house no shame. Within this, there can only - be.

I’m back inside myself. Two witnesses sanctify our consummation. The strange locket is comfortably warm against my breast. Relief, joy, and arousal stir within us - there’s no knowing who emanates which. We’re complete now. We’re safe. We’re home.