Of Sisters and Shadows – Chapter 8

Sometimes, when you bring your non-blood related sister with pseudo-incestual feelings for you home, you… ponder things.

Things such as: am I OK with our kissing escalating and becoming more and more frequent? Has she deliberately changed her body enough that I will be able to dissociate the current Amy from the one I grew up with? Will Mom kill herself, Amy, me, or all of the above as soon as she finds out what we’ve been doing and will likely continue to do? And how does sex with a biokinetic—I mean, you ponder things.

Normal things.

Logical things.

… Look, context matters, OK?

Still, even with all the context in the world, the one thing you shouldn’t be pondering about is…

What the Hell has she been doing in our yard?!

OK, OK, no need to freak out. Amy’s the expert, and she’s had her powers for years. There’s absolutely no reason for me to wring my hands anxiously just because, when we got back from our latest traditional defenestration, she went straight to the backyard and forbade me from interrupting her under threat of the pimpalypse.

No, she wasn’t referring to people with fur coats and ridiculous canes. Yes, I’m sure.

And it’s not like I’m anxious because she decided to isolate herself rather than press her advantage in claiming more makeouts from me. I mean, yes, they feel nice, and I’m emotionally needy, what with being isolated from everyone in my family but her, having had my ex-boyfriend die on me recently, and having been forced to confront things I’d rather have had left untouched for a couple of decades.

Repression! It’s a healthy thing to do, people! It’s worked wonders for my parents’ marriage!

…

I am about to go literally insane, and I’ve only been alone in the living room for twenty minutes.

OK, you know what? I don’t need to know what she’s doing. She’s free to have her little secrets, just as I’m free to take refuge in my own hobbies. I’ve always loved theorizing about parahuman abilities, and I just got quite a few juicy nuggets barely anybody else in the entire world has access to. That should keep me entertained for quite a while—

“OK, you can look now—”

“Fucking finally!”

Amy, for some bizarre reason, arches her elegantly sculpted eyebrow (so fucking unfair) when I almost instantly appear in front of her, floating just high enough that her nose is at cleavage level.

… For reasons.

Entirely normal, logical reasons.

Look, context matters, all right?!

“You’re too clingy,” she finally says, her tone as dry as Mom’s chicken as she crosses her arms and keeps barring the door to the backyard with her black wings.

I narrow my eyes and prepare my careful, measured counterattack.

“I don’t want to hear that from you, Miss ‘Don’t Let Me Go or I’ll Die!’” There. That should do it.

“That was literal! You just threw me out a damn window! Again!” Or not.

“You have wings!”

“I’ve told you these aren’t functional! They are too small!” she almost screeches like a bat, flapping said appendages for added, vampiric effect.

“It’s not the size; it’s how you use them,” I calmly state.

She looks at me in apparent astonishment before facepalming.

Then she grabs my arm, spins on her heel, and all but throws me to our backyard hard enough that I get a face full of… I wanna say, black elderberry leaves?

“There. You have your fucking horse now,” Amy says.

And my brain crashes.

…

She didn’t.

She. Didn’t.

Slowly, fearsome of the terrible truth, I back away and take in a robust plant covered by small, smooth, emerald green leaves. It’s just the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a well-cared-for yard.

Except it has four legs.

And a head.

OK. All right. It’s just a topiary. Amy has shaped a shrub into a horse that’s taller than me, and that’s mildly disturbing but nothing to get freaked out about. She’s even made a mane and a tail out of dangling clusters of little white flowers that rustle in the wind, so that’s… nice.

And then the perfectly nice, symbolic topiary neighs.

“It was a metaphor! I asked you for a metaphor, not for crimes against nature!” I yell as I turn toward her while pointing at the plant that just neighed at me.

“It’s a metaphorical horse. That’s why it’s a vegetable,” she explains as if to a slow child.

“That’s not what a metaphor is—”

“Nerd—”

“And it just neighed at me!”

“Yeah, it took a bit of work to shape the compost bladder so it would produce that sound when expelling gasses—”

“And I am the nerd?”

Amy, her eyes focusing after having gone a bit glassy while contemplating her multiple atrocities against the natural order, looks at me with yet another raised eyebrow that nobody should have without a pair of pliers, a mirror, a very steady hand, and years in art school.

“You ranted about pre-Socratic philosophers with Armsmaster, keep arguing with me about literary terms, keep bringing up your damn college classes—”

“You just made a dragon girl,” I interrupt, glaring down at her and winning the argument.

She… looks away from me and bites her lip.

“It was only one time…” she mutters.

…

I wanna bully her.

“Oh, I am sorry, did Princess Twilight Moonshadow Iris want to make an exception clause? The first biological aberration to reflect an internet fetish doesn’t count? Buy one biomod, get one rule 34 for free?”

“You’re mean…”

“That coming from the ice cream traumatizer.”

“One! Time!”

“Just how many allowances do you want me to make for your royal self?”

Amy’s eyes narrow…

And she pounces.

Clods of dark earth fly out at the sudden jerk of her wings’ claws digging in and propelling her forward, and she smashes against me hard enough that we both end up crashing against the rigid leaves of the pseudo-horse behind me.

“Just a few more,” she says, eyes lidded.

And she kisses me.

Her lips find mine, and I don’t even think to stop them from opening as her tongue slides into my mouth and bifurcates, the twin tips dragging over my palate and tickling me behind my teeth in a way that makes my eyes cross before I involuntarily close them.

And I…

I moan against her. Against my sister.

Against Amy.

My shield floods with arousal and the sheer wrongness of it, even as one plays into the other, and I carefully ignore how I’m broadcasting this to the one causing these emotions.

My mind keeps replaying memories of her. Of loving her, but not in this way, of kissing her, but chastely and on her cheek, of embracing her…

But… reassuringly. Supportingly.

… A bit like this.

Because both my arms and shield are wrapped around her, and she shifts between them, her body rubbing against mine as we both descend until our feet touch the ground.

She’s… She’s still a bit shorter than me. Even after she decided to grow, she kept herself below me.

So I lean down as she tilts her head back, and her tongue retreats as our lips keep touching. Without moving. Just…

Just kissing.

But not chastely.

“I…” she says, her eyes no longer filled with… With our teasing, joking, and sometimes too-serious fights.

I stare at them.

I remember that moment in our bathroom, when she changed them, and I almost broke down. Because I… I enjoyAmes’ new body. I like how she looks, and I love how she moves.

But the thought of losing that part of her? Of never again looking into brown, nearly painfully ordinary eyes?

It almost broke me.

I don’t realize when I cup her cheek, when I brush her curly hair behind her ear as our faces remain close enough that every new breath tastes of her, of the new aroma she’s layered on top of her old one.

She used to smell like a hospital, the disinfectants harsh enough that they covered her natural scent.

Now she has that touch of warm chocolate that she’s laced her saliva with, but there’s also something else, something that runs a bit deeper, like an old forest, like moss-covered rocks by the side of a river.

And, as I’m trying to decide what this all means, what I should do with the realization that Amy is my Amy, yet also mine in an entirely different way than I ever wanted…

The horse neighs.

And I burst out into laughter.

“I’m gonna mute this thing…” she mutters.

I, still bent over and holding my belly, lift one finger in the universal gesture for ‘Give me a minute; your violation of the natural order just broke my laughter button.’

She, for some unfathomable reason, harrumphs.

And starts fiddling with the most vocal equine statue ever made.

OK, OK, that was fortunately timed, because it just gave me an excuse not to hold Ames in my arms and shield while looking longingly into hazel eyes with a jagged ring of honey, and…

…

I was just about to do something… impulsive, wasn’t I?

Gee, how out of character of you, Vicky. You’re definitely known for being such an introspective, calm, restrained, not at all passional person. I wonder what could’ve gotten into you to act like that.

I don’t know, Vicky Alter. Maybe it was my hot sister’s bifurcated tongue, or whatever pheromone she’s decided to add to her body odor that makes me want to rub my thighs together when I catch a hint of it. But, really, it’s a complete and utter mystery, and it definitely doesn’t have anything to do with the way she’s tuned her body to hit all the right buttons—

“There. Done. This is now a non-clamjamming horse,” she says, clapping her hands twice in the universal gesture for ‘That’s a job well done, and I now have the rest of the day to come up with new ways to make Darwin cry.’

…

“Change me,” I burst out in what is definitely a well-pondered course of action that is not born out of a momentary impulse.

“What?” she asks, rapidly blinking in what is definitely not somebody pondering whether her incestual crush has finally cracked under the pressure and lost what remained of her parahuman mental health.

“I…” I look at the horse, then at Amy’s wings, then at hair more lustrous than it ever was, skin clear of any blemish, limbs slender yet toned in all the right ways… “I… My…” Come on, Vicky, just… just tell her. “I’m scared, you know?”

Amy, yet again, blinks. Though more slowly this time.

“Of what?” she says, pointing at… around me? I guess she’s trying to point at what, to her, is an invisible shield, but she just looks really uncoordinated.

It kinda makes me chuckle.

“I… OK, I know my shield is now much better than it was, but… For years? All I could think about was how normal I actually am. How somebody double-tapping would be enough to end me. How I… How I kept acting like I was invincible when I really, really wasn’t, so… I don’t want your full Mary Sue package, but something that would make me a bit more durable? I… I would like that. Very much,” I say, ending up scuffing the toe of my right boot on the grass of the yard.

Amy looks at me.

And I…

I know.

I know this is something she wants. I’m not sure how I know, but I sometimes caught her when she erased a pimple or a scratch. I saw the way she looked at me, studying every pore of my skin in ways that made me almost shiver without understanding why.

Not until her Shadow spelled it out for me.

Because… Because I likedit, that way she devoured me with her eyes, even if it also scared me a little bit. And I knew just how much she could do to me with a single touch, but that only made the shivers almost irrepressible, and now…

Now I unclasp my cape, and take off my shirt, and so I’m floating in the middle of our (thankfully enclosed by a tall fence) yard, my back to Amy’s version of topiary, and I’m just wearing my boots, my skirt, my spats… and a lavender sports bra that does things to my cleavage I never quite realized until I felt Amy’s eager eyes on it.

She takes a single step, and she’s once more in kissing distance, her smell surrounding me, filling my chest, making me gasp.

Her hands… They rise, the tips of her fingers on my temples.

“Are you sure?” she says, something lurking behind hazel with a ring of honey.

Something dark.

I… I swallow, the shivers once more lurking just beneath my skin.

And I nod.

Her right hand brushes my hair back, and then the branches of the horse behind me wrap around my body, the leaves falling away as the bark softens until it feels like silk against my bare skin even as each branch sprouts thin tendrils that crawl over me before twisting down, pressing against my skin… piercing it.

It should hurt.

But I stare in fascination as not a single droplet of blood wells up in the uncountable depressions of my pale skin, as the sensation they evoke is no more than a mild tingling that runs deeper and deeper with every beat of my heart until I feel my bones pulse.

Then the branches split and keep crawling until they reach over my cheekbones, across my scalp…

Beneath my clothes.

And I gasp.

“I can’t create from nothing,” she whispers, her voice as dark and dangerous as I ever thought it would be if she gave in and did this. “I need materials to reinforce your bones. Lucky for you, I’ve got a root system gathering them from two blocks around us as we speak.”

She tilts her head to the side, looking at my flushed face, seeing how my chest rises and falls with unsteady breathing even as a plant splits to trace my ribs and wrap around my breasts.

She smiles.

It’s… not a nice smile.

I like it.

“Well, as Ispeak,” she comments, almost idly, as her left hand dips from my cheek, down my neck, and to the tendril lying over my collarbone until my shivers finally stop being under control and I shake under her touch, restrained only by thin, silky branches.

I could end all of this with a single thought. I could whirr my shield into razor blades that would cut away any trace of her living statue away from me. I could fly away. Away from her touch.

A part of me is displeased by knowing that.

And that part is thrilled when I feel something wash over my bones and beneath my flesh, something that feels like cool, molten gold should feel as my shield throbs with it all, and I throw my head back against lush foliage and moan up to the sky.

“I could make this feel like anything I wanted, you know?” she says.

And there’s… a bit of hesitation in her tone. Something not quite in line with what she’s doing or trying to look as. But…

But I still shiver.

And then the warmth I felt radiating down from my skin shifts, and my muscles relax all at once as impossibly smooth branches thicken to hold me up.

To restrain me.

And Amy kisses me.

My eyes flutter as her tongue comes in once more, the wood around my arms creaking in protest when I reflexively try to hug her as she explores my mouth.

She pulls back.

Looks at me.

And she dons a smile I’ve never seen on her lips, but that fits her more than any of the ones she fakes.

“Hold still. I’m doing delicate work in here, you know?” she teases me with a lilting tone, her right index poking my breastbone as all the silk tendrils pulse around me in fattening bursts of sap that make them dig just so against my skin.

I want to thrash around. I want to throw my head back and moan like I never let myself moan unless the house is empty. I want to tear my arms off her restraints and flee the maddening torture of being at her mercy and feeling good about it.

But I can’t, because Amy doesn’t let me.

And that’s so fucking hot.

Then, my lips tingle, and it spreads across my cheeks, my forehead, my scalp, my neck…

My breasts.

And it travels down across my whole body, rushing through my spine, swirling around my navel, lingering on my hips…

Brushing past my sex.

Ghosting over my thighs.

Circling my behind.

Sheathing my calves, my arms.

Dipping between my fingers and toes.

And… and then everythinglights up at once. Every stretch of my skin tightening and relaxing, almost beating even as I feel something liquid slide over it.

“It’s harder to cut now. A bit more sensitive,” she whispers hotly in my ear, the ear that’s tingling with all the same changes rushing through my body.

Then my skin stops shifting, even as it keeps radiating waves of heat, and my muscles tense one by one, harder than when my arms tremble in the tension of trying not to struggle, before soothing in waves that travel left to right and right to left, my body shifting minutely inside my bindings.

And a vine pushes past my lips as my eyes widen, splitting into a thousand tendrils that brush every spot of the inside of my mouth before tying my tongue down and wrapping around each individual tooth, caressing the inside of my cheeks as I feel my palate shift minutely, the alignment between teeth becoming that much more perfect.

“I’m making you a bit more symmetrical. You already were. You… You looked like a piece of art, a statue, but now… It’s not that you look better, Vicky; it’s that you look more like you,” she says with an adoration and reverence that make me want to scream.

But she won’t let me.

“Your… Your tendons. They’re slightly more elastic but not so much that your joints will get unaligned. Your muscles will never atrophy, you will never waste away. You will… You will always be as beautiful as you look to me.”

I could moan. I could bite my lip. I could rub my thighs together or even pinch my painfully hard nipples.

I could cry.

But she won’t let me.

“And… You’re not bulletproof, not really. But you’re tough enough now that… that you won’t die outright. That no single injury should be enough. That you’ll always be able to get away and run back to me.”

Her tone… that something dark is still there, but it’s warm, and it’s like it melts and drips into my ear, seeping into my brain, making me…

Making me nothing.

Because she won’t let me!

Hot waves radiate from my skin to my bones, rivaling the warmth of the sun on my bare skin, and my muscles pulse with the conflicting need to tear the wood off me and my own struggle to hold back so I can keep being held, so I can keep feeling a thick vine throbbing between my lips as it feeds my teeth whatever it is Amy is gilding them in. And then something else shifts in my belly and chest. I can feel my breasts firm up as my heartbeat becomes stronger, steadier, and I breathe with an ease I never felt before, not even when I was an athlete and devoted myself to training my body like I, later on, did my powers.

I…

Amy looks up into my eyes as I remain suspended by the life she’s shaped just to hold me in her grasp.

And I feel the slight thorns, the almost imperceptible wooden needles, withdraw from my whole body at once, retracting into the silk wood binding me as my new teeth are unwrapped, and the vine turns into something single and wetly retracts, evading my obscene kiss.

I could sob at their absence.

But Amy keeps touching me, the hand on my collarbone dipping a bit lower, brushing over the top of my sweat-dewed breasts, her touch seeming to ripple down and vibrate on my nipples until I clench my hands hard enough that my nails sting like her thorns should have.

Then her eyes hold me steady in a silent question that I don’t answer even as the sensation runs deeper, harder, and I shiver and shake to its rhythm.

I don’t answer. Not with words.

But I don’t pull away.

And so the waves crash,and they explode across me in shards of raw pleasure that echo through my shield and to her until Amy falls to her knees, her moans twinning around mine as the branches around my neck splinter when we both throw our heads back and shake, and shake, and shake until…

I’m kneeling down on soft grass, surrounded by shattered wood, my arms wrapped around a sister that looks nothing like she should except for hazel eyes ringed with honey that I almost cried at the thought of losing.

We’re… We’re shivering. Together. Still overwhelmed by what we just did to one another.

And then the mists of the Bay come back in, singing a melody of emotions my mind is too muddled to decipher.

For the first time since Amy took away my voice, I speak:

“God. Fucking. Damn it!” I justifiably complain to the manager.

“At least this time, it’s not a horse,” Amy growls.

And, before we rush out to save the day, we hold one another, laugh, and kiss.

I’m still burning down that damn horse.

… What remains of it.