Grail of the Summer Stars (Aetherial Tales) by Freda Warrington Page A

There was a line where genuine sociability edged into obligation, a time to say enough and good night.
    Stevie didn’t want to be treated as a charity case. They both knew, and acknowledged it with awkward, ironic smiles. “Tomorrow,” Stevie said, “I’m going to an old folks’ home.”
    “I know how you feel.” Fin laughed. “My family has that effect on me, too.”
    “They’re not that bad.” Stevie shared her amusement. “No, I go a few times a year. I help to serve party lunches, blow up balloons, all that festive stuff.”
    “You kept that quiet.”
    It was on the tip of Stevie’s tongue to add that there was a reason. In the foster home where she’d stayed the longest, the only person who’d shown her any understanding was the grandmother, Nanny Peg as they’d called her. Now Peg was small and frail and in a care home, but Stevie visited her even though Peg often did not remember who she was. Tomorrow she would sit and hold Nanny Peg’s hand and stroke her white hair. Not for the first time, Stevie felt guilty that she didn’t visit more often.
    She didn’t say this to Fin, because that might have led to explaining an episode of her life she was always trying to forget.
    “Anyway, I must get home to the ghost cat. Even though she’s departed the earthly plane, she still gets mad if I leave her alone for too long.”
    “You and your ghostly cat!” said Fin, rolling her eyes. “Honestly, I don’t know whether to laugh or call a psychiatrist!”
    “Stevie’s cat is a ghost?” exclaimed Fin’s daughter from the hall doorway.
    “It’s a joke,” Fin replied. “Don’t start pestering her. Night, Stevie. Happy Christmas, take care.”
    “See you in the New Year.”
    They hugged. Stevie closed the door on the treasure box of light, tinsel and merriment, and stepped out into the quiet, dark night.
    *   *   *
    Night fell. Rufus and Orla lay close together without touching, still fully clothed, gazing into each other’s eyes. Her tent was considerably better-appointed than his had been, with an air-filled mattress to cushion them. Her sleeping bag lay loosely over their bodies as an extra layer against the growing chill of the night.
    For hours they’d labored to help the victims of the earthquake, but the human world no longer seemed real. All the time, their eyes had been on each other, waiting for this. How incredible, Rufus thought, that their intimacy had once been so easy and natural: even more so, for bordering on the illicit. Now they daren’t touch each other. Their last encounter had been such a long, long time ago … He’d never dared dream they would meet again.
    Among modern human societies, their relationship would have been considered beyond sinful: an absolute taboo. Even in their own ancient, Aetherial civilization of the Felynx, where morality had been very much more relaxed, there had been raised eyebrows—not to mention Mist’s quiet disapproval—that only inflamed their passion.
    Orla touched a tongue to her lips. Her eyes glittered with fire—exactly as he remembered. Their auras mingled, heating the space between them until the ache of anticipation became unbearable. Yet neither of them made a move. Was Orla really her , or a perfect simulacrum, like Adam, sent to torture him? If she was real … he could barely believe this was happening … was it possible to recapture what they’d once shared? Perhaps they shouldn’t even try … yet her warm, alluring expression suggested otherwise.
    The ground began to tremble with a prolonged aftershock.
    “Now one of us should make a joke about the earth moving,” said Rufus.
    “The earthquake is due to faulting within the lithosphere of the subducted Arabian Plate as it grinds beneath the convergent plate boundaries,” she murmured.
    “I’m not sure that’s funny, but the way you say it sounds incredibly sexy.”
    “Oh, it is.” She smiled, more with her eyes than her mouth.
    They lay in silence,