MARBLE & SALT (Lesbian)

Chapter 14 POOR PEEPING PYTHIA

Nota bene: the chapter features mature content!

Walking through the mirror wasn't all that pleasant: I have the feeling that Hebe and I are squeezing between two tightly pressed sofa cushions.

When we are breathing heavily and rubbing our faces somewhere outside, we are met by two absolutely identical women in their mid-thirties. Their distinctive feature is eyes. As if the maker set ambers in the healers' eyepits: there is no life in them just like in fossilized tree resin. The women wear long black dresses with slits on the sides that expose their nicely thick hips. Behind their backs, I can see someone flickering like a restless animal.

"Mistress! Mistress!" I hear a familiar voice. It's Mika, and the girl is really excited. Lord, only she is missing here! Hebe's student immediately falls silent as soon as she notices me in the arms of her dear teacher. Mika's lips are puffed-up; she's wrinkling her small forehead.

"Let us take her," one of the women says calmly. "She's so unusual! Smells like a witch, and there's no witch weaves like of a newborn." I don't know if fatigue finally affects me, but it seems to me that her hair, which is almost two centimeters short, is moving. I put my hand around Hebe's neck not wanting to go anywhere with them.

"Don't even dare to touch my Pythia!" Hebe hisses through her teeth.

"You need a healer's help. Your mother ordered us to take care of you," insists her replica.

"Take care of us in my room. We're not dying, for Hecate's sake! I don't want to scare Velia with your creepy 'doctor's office'! The sight of your ugly homunculi in the jars make me sick. But... You can't scare Velia with such bullshit, you're the bravest one," Hebe suddenly winks at me, probably hinting at my fungus in a jar.

"We'll have to report this to Queen Angerona. Your room doesn't have all the potions we might need! Stop being stubborn, Princess. You are as naughty as you were as a child," one of the women says irritably. I'm already confused which one of them is who, since they look like two peas in a pod.

"Sure, sure!" Hebe turns around and walks somewhere in the opposite direction from them. "Those stubborn old crones! The hell if they think I'm going with them."

I can hear footsteps behind us. Everyone has obeyed my capricious witch, and, apparently, they are following us. As we walk, I gently stroke her bad shoulder, and she finds my lips several times, but she does not kiss, more likely barely touching them, causing the sensation of a kiss with a petal of wild rugosa rose.

In the long hall, it is rather dark and scary, only the light of the wane moon, that has not yet disappeared, illuminates the cold stone decoration of the medieval hall. Several lamps are burning with a pale blue fire; they remind me of old ussr kerosene lamps with iron round stands and elongated, slightly puffy glass domes.

Everything seems like a dream: two women in black dresses, Mika in a new sports jacket, and my Hebe whose marble eyes reflect the bluish lamp flames.

The witch tenderly places me on the big bed. The whole room is illuminated with amber shine, but I have no strength to examine the interior decoration. As soon as my head touches the pillow, I feel uncomfortable: the figures of women standing by the bed look bizarre and grotesque. Their lacy snakes move slowly over the skin; their shadows on the walls flutter to the beat of the flickering flame. It seems to me that I do not exist at all; I am just a shadow, an imprint that was left on the wall after the hellfire.

"This is so amazing! A young Pythia! Hard to believe. Glory to Hecate, the mages didn't get her, and she did not die among the mere people," the healer witch says in amazement after she touched my wrist as if checking my pulse.