THE FAR SIDE OF EXILE

PART SIX

By Jo

Hope huddled in the small space under the round boulder, her knees pulled up, arms wrapped around them, eyes squeezed tightly shut. Waves of the blue washed over her, around her, through her and she would have cried out with it except her teeth were clamped too tightly to permit sound to escape. Her cells seemed to be exploding and her brain was so aswirl in blue she couldn't form a coherent thought.

After some minutes of this a vague awareness began to penetrate, steadily becoming stronger and stronger. She was being compressed. What she didn't realize was that since she had stuffed herself into the tight space beneath the boulder, her body had been growing, and growing faster than it ever had before. She was simply becoming too big to fit there any more.

OUT! It was the only thing filling her now. She had to get out! She MUST get out or be crushed to death where she lay. Blindly she struggled, pushing against the unyielding rock, trying to move enough to free herself from what was becoming unbearable pressure. Finally she broke free, rolled down a small incline until another large rock halted her tumble and she lay quietly against it, overcome by the blue, aware now of nothing but it.

The blue was taking her and she was helpless before it. More minutes passed as she became steadily more woman-like, her clothes ripped and lying in shreds about her. A small smile began to curve her lips. She liked the blue. It was soft...magnetic...beautiful. She lifted bare arms upwards, embracing it, actively now seeking more of it, wanting it.

"HOPE!" Cort called desperately, over and over and over as he stumbled his way through the jumble of rocks, boulders, and tors, every step hindered by undergrowth or twisting limbs and roots. He tried to keep Rachel with him, tried to keep her from falling, but they both fell repeatedly in their haste. Rachel was silent, her teeth clamped on her lower lip, in too much agony of heart to continue her earlier calls.

He lost all sense of where they were as they pressed blindly ahead. The size of the boulders and the way they continually were forced to make their way around them in wide detours created a veritable maze in which they floundered. He had no real idea anyway of which direction Sid had taken Hope or if she were still even in Australia, much less in the Park. But all he could do was look for her where he was. He had to do that. There had been that whisper of air as Sid had snatched her. It had passed by his cheek from back to front, so he was going forward, going in the direction he had been facing at the time. It was all he had to go on.

Sid, four miles away, was coming toward them, his progress easier because of his great strength and the fact he simply did not get tired. He'd gone about three miles when his sense of her blue began to grow stronger again. She wouldn't be able to hide from him much longer. He smiled. He was getting close, very close. He would take the little girl with him. She would be trained up in the way he wished her to go and she would be...his.

Cort paused, wanting Rachel to rest a moment, but she would have none of it. Shaking her head vehemently, she merely continued walking, saying nothing. Sucking in a great gulp of air, Cort went, too. He figured they must have gone at least a mile by now, though with all the twists and turns distance had become a vague calculation at best. They stumbled through some particularly thick underbrush, coming out abruptly at the edge of a rocky drop-off at least 45 feet deep. He grabbed Rachel's arm, pulling her back just before she nearly stepped off it. Then they just stood there, clinging to one another, out of breath, out of strength.

The cliff seemed to run endlessly to both sides of them with no way down immediately seen. "Damn!" Cort murmured. They would have to detour now, completely halting their forward progress. The chasm wasn't all that wide, maybe 30 feet or so, but it presented an impassable
blockade to their current path. Rachel buried her face in his chest, feeling utterly defeated. He had his right arm wrapped around her back and with his left he scrubbed his palm roughly across his face then clamped it over his eyes.

Hope, now aged to what looked like her mid-20's, sat up, looking down at her bare legs, trying to understand what had happened. She felt entirely...different, felt like she'd been in some confining cocoon and suddenly emerged, needing to dry her butterfly wings in the sunlight. So she stood and climbed up on a flat-topped rock, every bit of her childish clothing left behind where she had lain. Lifting her face to the sun, she raised both arms high above her head, tipped her chin, and turned slowly, basking not only in the light but in the glorious feeling of health and strength, of power and well-being that radiated through her.

It was as she was doing this that Sid came around a tor and saw her. He stopped, staring in amazement and pleasure at the sight she presented. This was more than he'd ever hoped. She was completely grown and the blue had so taken her that she actually had a blue aura glowing about her form. Her form. Ah, she was perfection itself! Better than either Brianna. He indulged himself in his silent observation of her as she continued her slow pirouette atop the stone. Venus rising from the sea. No, that wasn't good enough. She was more magnificent by far than that.

When he could wait no longer, he walked up beside the stone, which left his face at the level of her knees as she stood there. "My lady," he said, his voice soft, almost a purr, as he held up his right arm toward her.

Slowly Hope lowered her arms and turned her face down in his direction, studying him as he stood quietly. "I know you," she said, and he smiled. "You are the Blue."

"I am," he replied, his eyes locking on hers.

"I am Blue also," she stated.

"I know."

"Do I belong to you?" she asked.

"I made you who you are," he said simply.

"I am perfect."

"You are."

"Do you want me to come with you, Blue?"

"I do."

She bent, taking his hand. The electric charge that passed between them as their fingers touched was so pleasurable it was almost orgasmic. Even Sid had not expected that. Neither of his Brianna's had ever generated such a response in him.

Cort dropped his hand from his eyes and turned his head to look across the chasm. His breath hissed sharply in. Hope. She was across the wide gap atop a flat rock. He knew it was Hope, but she was a woman grown. And Sid. Sid was there, holding her hand, and they were gazing rapturously at one another. "Oh, God...," he moaned.

Rachel opened her eyes, pulling her head away from Cort's chest, turning it to follow his gaze. Her mouth dropped open, soundlessly formed the word 'No!' then she jerked herself from Cort's encircling arm, everything inside her soundlessly screaming, and lunged toward the two distant forms.

Cort hadn't expected her sudden lunge as she ripped herself from him and before he could grasp her again, she'd gone over the edge into the gorge. "RACHEL!" he shrieked as she fell, turning completely once in the air before she impacted the rocks below. He staggered, unbelieving, his eyes going from her shattered form briefly to Hope and Sid, then back to his wife. He couldn't breathe. Breath simply would not come. Rachel! He had to get down to her! He started to run along the top of the cliff, desperate for a way down. About twenty feet to his left he found a
series of rocks that looked like he might be able to use to descend.

 His eyes kept going back to where she lay, a pool of blood seeping from the back of her head. She was dead. He knew it with everything inside him. The absence of her flooded through him. She was gone, but he still had to get to her. He made it about two-thirds of the way down and turned to look at her again, losing his footing on a sharply-angled rock, falling the last ten feet onto his back.

Hope and Sid walked over to the far edge of the chasm, looking down. "Do I know them?" she asked.

"You did," he replied, "but you have no further need of them."

Hope's eyes went from one quiet form to the other. "The woman has ceased to function," she stated.

"That is true," Sid affirmed.

"But the man still has the substance of life within."

"That is also true. But you have no need of him, my lady."

"I...I'm not...sure," she whispered. "I do not think I can leave him there."

"We need to go, you and I," Sid said.

"I know that," she nodded. "I wish to go with you but I do not wish to leave the man there."

"What do you want to do with him?"

"Can we leave him some place better than this? I think he, too, will cease to function if he is left where he is."

"One can only hope," Sid muttered under his breath. "Are you ready to go?"

"No," she replied firmly. "I will go but you must take the man, too." She turned and looked at him, swirls of blue in the center of her eyes.

He was fascinated by her. What had happened with her was wonderfully amazing. He needed to discover more about it. "Very well," he relented. "I can move him to the top of the chasm if you like."

"No, that will not do. Take him with us. Take him where we are going."

Sid pursed his lips. Help Cort live? What a strange concept. Well, perhaps he could dump him somewhere where Bud might find him? Maybe that would satisfy her. "All right," he said, and as he began to warp them, scooped up Cort's unconscious form, taking it along.

TO BE CONTINUED NOW AS PART OF "A LOVE FOR A LOVE" BEGINNING

WITH CHAPTER 7 OF THAT

LINK TO CHAPTER 6 OF "A LOVE FOR A LOVE"

LINK TO CHAPTER 7

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