She blushed and resumed grinding the current batch of leaves, trimmed from a tree that might be useful as a new kind of cold medicine, given the two plants that had been its magically conjoined parents. “This morning.” She debated a long moment, then asked, “Teral, do you . . . strongly miss physical intimacy?”
“Now that’s a loaded question,” he murmured, stroking the antlered rabbit-thing before lifting it off the worktable an arm’s-length from hers. He carried it to the edge of the Bower. Releasing it, the Darkhanan Guide came back to her table, not to the one he had been using for his examination. He leaned his hip against the stout wood, watching her work. “For a man, the physical urge is very real, a literal pressure for release. It doesn’t harm a man not to achieve release—no matter what capricious young lads may try to tell a young lady to get into her bed—but there is always that urge. It diminishes as one gets older, of course, but it is always there.
“From what I learned while sharing my body with my Guide, Alaya, women don’t have the same pressure, as it were. Urges, oh yes,” he agreed. “A woman seems to have a lot more capacity for pleasure than a man. I was privileged to learn these things from her as we shared her form, even if it was my body while making love with friends and dear companions. Of course, our tastes varied; I still prefer making love to a woman as a man over making love to a man as a woman, naturally. And it’s very different while wearing Aradin’s body than when I wear my own . . .”
At her wide-eyed look, Teral leaned close and murmured in her ear.
“He might get mad at me for telling you this weakness, but if you take your feet and gently stroke his manhood with them, he’ll be delirious with pleasure. I myself am more of a breasts-to-manhood type. That really gets my blood flowing,” the older Witch added candidly, straightening back up. He smiled at her, enjoying her flustered blush. “So I suppose the answer to your question is yes, I do miss physical intimacy. But it is Aradin’s life, not mine.
“And as lovely and charming and wonderful as I find you, too,” Teral added, lifting a hand to brush back a wayward curl of her hair, gently tucking it behind her ear, “it is still his life, not mine. I knew it would be, long before I ever met Aradin and became the Guide to his Host. And I knew it long before I became Host to Alaya as my Guide. This is the way life is, as a Witch. Of course, given how strongly the young man is falling for you, this means that you have more say in what happens in any ‘physical intimacy’ than I do.”
She considered his words for several seconds, until the leaves were a well-ground paste, then reached for the purified rainwater to dilute it into a liquid for the testing sheets. “Kata and Jinga have declared that . . . male-and-male pairings, and female-and-female pairings, are just as acceptable as male-and-female pairings. But it’s still just two people. Three and more are . . . Well, they’re not directly discouraged by scripture, but it is considered implicit, since we only have a God and a Goddess in marriage, not . . . well, a God and a God and a Goddess.”
“I wouldn’t build a long-lasting relationship like that unless all three were equals and equally amenable,” Teral agreed, shifting to lean back against the table again, giving her a bit of room. “They say that a triangle is the most stable form of structure . . . but it is only for a physical structure. Two people manage a relationship much more easily than three. There are some lands where they manage three or more in a relationship, but they are rare. However, for a bit of physical fun, if all are agreeable . . . it can be quite pleasurable.”
“I’ll presume you speak in general, since there’s no way for the two of you to ever be in two places at once,” Saleria said. A corner of her mind did wonder what it would be like to be with two men at once, but she wasn’t about to share Aradin—who already carried Teral more or less everywhere he went—with a third man in the equation. That would be more than unfair to Teral.
“Not exactly,” Teral said. “It is possible, if rare, for there to be two of us at once.”
“You mean, in the Dark?” Saleria asked, dubious. “I wouldn’t think anyone would want to make love in a place where the dead roam.”
“No, I meant in life, in two separate bodies.” At her sharp look, he folded his arms across his chest and rubbed at his gray-streaked beard. “It’s not often discussed with outsiders, but there is a way for a Host and a Guide to manifest in two separate bodies. We call it the wedding-gift of the Moons, for in the light of both Brother and Sister Moon—reflected via mirror or spell onto both sides of a Host’s body—the Host and Guide can separate physically.