The Cerulean Bathhouse - The Mistress' Rooftop

The woman who led Felina led her through the halls and up winding stairs, higher, higher, until they were at the top of the building. The cheetah padded lightly after them, tail flicking back and forth, amber eyes steady on Felina, watching her.

When they opened the door to the rooftop, it was hard to see anything, but the woman did not move forward. She simply gestured for Felina to keep moving forward. She would likely have to turn the corner of the rooftop and see the sparkling, once-magical city of Sakand spread out over the rooftops, the glittering bay beyond and the endless golden desert in one direction.

Should she keep walking, however, with the cheetah to guide her, she would come to a pavilion where there was the Mistress of the Cerulean, most of her covered, and the air about her was an ancient one.



"You wish to become Sabina Taliph," she said, smoking from an elegant pipe, sitting among pillows and rugs, her eyes closed, the sun gleaming off her obsidian horns and the jewelry at her sharply pointed ears. "Simply because you don't want to marry? Why not enter a convent?"

Zora (the cheetah) went and sat beside her, staring at Felina with those golden eyes.

When the mistress opened her eyes, the gaze of the Cheetah melted back into that of its usual brown, while the Mistress' own became the tawny gold that the large cat had only just had. She let out smoke from her nostrils, almost as if she were a dragon.

"Hmmmm," she ruminated, looking at Felina, taking another smoke, releasing it. "First, I must know what YOU know of Sabina Taliph," the Mistress said, "and I must know what you do not know." The words were somewhat cryptic, but she looked at Felina and waited for the young woman to answer -- to the best of her ability, anyway.

The Mistress of the Cerulean continued to smoke, her golden eyes watching... watching this misplaced white girl. It seemed she had the general idea, but none realized the truth until they were in too deep. Still, it pleased the Mistress that the girl seemed to understand that the Sabina Taliph were not just glorified prostitutes.

She took the pipe from her lips, then leaned forward to pick up a small handle from a bowl of murky water beside her. She tossed it into a burning brazier, and instantly steam surrounded them, pungent with the aroma of a shadowy, milky spice.

"Undress," the Mistress commanded. "I have seen your spirit. I would see your body now," she said.

They were on a rooftop, no less. Someone might see them. But the Mistress waited with her cheetah, who seemed to wait just as patiently beside her.

The Mistress of the Cerulean unfolded herself from the low settee she had been sitting on after the girl came over her initial hesitance and began to undress. She was tall -- very tall, the woman's body at least six feet high and her elegant horns giving her another measure of height that almost put her at seven feet.

She was striking to behold as she took off her double outer robes. She was lean -- not simply thin -- but very much with a quiet and feminine strength to her arms to told just be looking that to touch any part of her would be like touching satin over steel. She was curved, bountiful of breast, wide of hip, and her wide mouth and deep, golden eyes were artworks just of themselves.

She circled Felina as she undressed, taking measure of the woman's curves, her deficiencies.

Felina spoke as the Mistress came around to her front again, and without speaking, the Mistress lifted a hand and settled it between the curve of Felina's breasts, and she pushed --

-- and although Felina's body fell backwards, her spirit burst from her body, spiraling upwards, pleasure rocking through every tendril of her incorporeal body as she was suddenly in a world where everything around her was misty and hazy and made of dappled, muted light.

The mistress was standing in this world as well, but she still seemed to be corporeal, the only thing in this world -- that looked exactly like the roof top they had been standing on, same views, just with this new haze -- but her golden eyes glowed and shifted like mist akin to their surroundings.

"This is the spirit realm," the Mistress told the incorporeal Felina. "Can you feel the pleasure?" She wondered at the girl, her golden eyes intense upon her.

"It was warm and relaxing, it swims through your entire body, caressing every inch, inside and out, soothing your body and soul and mind. But when we are not here in the Spirit Realm, we only reach this sense of satisfaction in bursting, fleeting moments of intense sensation."

Her voice was warm honey, coating Felina from her head to her toes, a silk embrace of the mind. Felina's body floated back, as if she were lying down, but she, of course wasn't.

"For most, sex is an earthly pleasure, a single thrill until the next. For the sabina taliph, sex is merely a journey to a nirvana, and their touch and their bodies help bring their lovers to the glorious fullness that is... here."

She said the single syllable, and her dark hand touched between Felina's naked thighs and an overwhelming tide of sensation surged over the young woman, meant to steal her breath and thrill every nerve.

And when Felina settled again, she'd find the spirit realm gone, her soul back within her body lying on the floor, and the Mistress seated back where she originally was.

"As Sabina Taliph," the Mistress spoke after several moments, "you will help guide your clients to fulfillment. True fulfillment, as but a taste of what you've had. These secrets and treasures are not taught to anyone, and the responsibility is not one taken lightly."

"You will become a slave to this, Felina DuBerri," the mistress told her point blank. "Your life will not be your own any more. It will be a service to others."

"Yes," the Mistress answered, her gold eyes steady on Felina's face. The Mistress was more than aware of the suffering of others, and the lack of joy there was in a mortal's life.

"I do not promise that you will become Sabina taliph," the mistress told Felina as she pulled her shift onto her naked body that still trembled from a shocking -- and short lived -- release. "Only you can promise that. I will give you the lessons, but if you fail them, you will be asked to leave and find a new slavery for which to dedicate your life."

The Mistress picked up her hookah, and Zora the Cheetah looked steadily at Felina. "You may go. Ydessa will find you room and board within the bathhouse."

[ End Scene ]

She was sitting upon pillows on the ground, an array of paperwork laid out before her. From this place, one could see over the glittering rooftops of Sakand, the floating lights that danced among them and the cerulean canals that slithered between. One could see the blue palace, the golden temple, and the emerald water gardens from here as well, as if the very city itself were a decadent crown upon the earth.

"Please, sit," the mistress said to Hansel von Dietzhoff, not looking up from her work. Her horns elegantly sloped up into the air, a veil drawn up over her hair. Her somber expression was tipped downward to her paperwork. Zora the cheetah circled Hansel once, then moved away from him to collapse with a graceful sigh onto its pillow near the mistress' knee.

"You enjoy Yaia?" the mistress asked, getting right into things, and finally lifting her gaze off her scrolls and foreign paperwork to look at Hansel. Her dark eyes were like the abyss -- intimidating and unending blackness that were full of the secrets of the unknown.