Time does not stop without external stimuli, even if the only tick of the clock is one's own thoughts. My will alone wasn't enough to end an eternity. What was volition in any case, detached from the flesh, it's strength and failings?

Everyone becomes a philosopher when there's enough time to think, and I lacked all save time and thought. I wished that I could imagine more than words, but both pleasant and horrifying vistas eluded me. There was the void, blank and non-existent.

Imperceptibly slow, the nothingness gained dimensions. There was nothing, but that was more than I had previously.

"Am I dead?" The clarity of the thought shocked me. It was in a voice instead of wordless thought.

"No, not at all." It was the Lady, but different. As if she her throat was a conch of brittle metal.

"What happened? Where am I?"

The void melted into whiteness that became the soft snows of a frozen tundra. I felt the cold, but after being senseless for so long, the discomfort was heavenly. A woman stood in front of me, knee deep in the snow, wrapped in luxurious silver furs.

She smiled, almost warm enough to expel the chill. "The witch-man obeyed my instructions and saved you; your body, your mind and your soul. With your garment maintaining the elementary vital processes, my influence can work to heal the damage you caused to that diminutive temple of yours."

"In your service." I had some approximation of a body, but it was a blurry thing at the edges of my vision.

"Indeed. But what was more important was getting you to me, directly through my interface in the sacral helmet. That interloper, the heresiarch, he managed to taint your brain with his own mental pattern. That had to be erased, lest you were left haunted by his vile shade."

"Did you... erase a part of my mind?"

"Yes. It was already gone though. There might be some memory loss, but the human brain has a miraculous ability to recover. With my help, it is unlikely you shall notice anything."

"I see." In truth, didn't, neither literally or figuratively. "Is Vesija alright?"

"He managed to survive the collapse of the Pylon without major injuries. But 'being alright' is a more complex than physical health, is it not?"

"Wait... The Pylon collapsed?"

"Alas, I couldn't regain control of the systems quickly enough. The mountain dropped on the steppe with enough force to crack the stone armour. The details are inconsequential. We remain safe."

"Can you let me out?"

"Better that you remain comatose, while your broken frame is mended. Beside, this way my promise is fulfilled conveniently and without discomfort or pain."

"Your promise? Oh, you mean..."

Her smile stretched into smirk. "I do. If you have anything further you'd prefer changed about your body, now is the time to suggest it."

"If you are already... Well... Can you see inside Vesija's mind, to see his... preferences? His ideal woman?"

The Lady appeared exaggeratedly thoughtful, tapping her finger against her perfect chin. "Reading a living mind is never precise. A mind is a process, one part already changing while another is observed. Besides, an ideal is rarely a concrete thing. "

"Can you, or not?"

"I can show you an approximation. Are you sure you want that?"

"Do it, please. Wait! Show the visage only if Vesija is fine with sharing it."

"Aah..." The Lady pursed her smirking lips. "Having cold feet? Don't worry. It's not something your man wishes to hide from you. Here she is."

The woman lost her furs, and the statuesque beauty within shrunk, with a bit of the lost height becoming width, especially at the hips. Presently, I stared at a Jaan dame, one built too sturdy to fit the classical ideal. However, the curves on her were truly matrician in their voluptuous abundance. In spite of small differences, she had my eyes, my chin, my hair. The woman of Vesija's dreams was Nerutaara, almost ––but not quite–– vulgar in her exaggerated maternal feminity.

Had he seen that woman in me from the start, or striven to mould me to fulfil it? That distinction didn't matter. I wanted to be the woman in front of me, and not for Vesija's sake, at least for the most part.

"You desire to be this? This bordertown strumpet?" The Lady shifted to emphasize her effortlessly narrow waist. "It's not much of a change. With my help you could be anything. Tall..." She regained her former dimensions "Exotic..." Her skin shimmered like that of my ancient combat gown. "Powerful..." Under that vibrant dermis, flexed muscles like burrowing animals. "A demigoddess among mortals. Anything within the limits of biology, and perhaps a little beyond."

"No." I felt my non-existent lips stretching in a calm smile. "I am enough if I'm as special to my man as he is to me."

"Then so be it. With that our dealings are concluded, at least on my part. You..." Her smile became mischievous and dangerously inhuman. "I'm sure you two shan't be able to resist my demographic designs. Now sleep, and dream of a bountiful summer."

If I dreamed of anything at all, I had forgotten by the time I realised that I was awake. The bare ribcage-rafters of the ceiling were unfamiliar, and in the air was that musky scent of a long-dead yet still serviceable house.

A woman's gasp from somewhere to my side made me try to turn my neck, but a vice grip kept my head in place.

"Vesija! Come up here!" It was Mirra's voice shouting. "Right this instant! She's awake."

Stairs drummed like a giant's xylophone, and hurried footsteps approached the bed until Vesija's ragged visage appeared in my restrained field of view. With eyes red and sunken, he seemed sleep-deprived, sick, at the brink of tears, or all three at once.

"Neru..."

"My Vesija." I tried to hug him, but my arms didn't move. Fear crept into my heart. "I can't––"

The man managed a smile, a kind little twist of his lips. "Relax. I overrode your suit's safety mechanism to make sure your body couldn't move. Here..." He reached to press his thumbs into the sides of my neck. "There."

"Now help me out of this suit." I moved to get up, but he pressed my shoulder down.

"I need to examine you first."

"Ah, no need." Again, I made an attempt. "I'm fine––"

"Please, Neru. I saw you... your..." Vesija's voice cracked into a wheeze. "I need to make sure."

"Alright." My faint smile managed to infect the chirurgeon.

"Well then", Mirra said. She had been standing at the stairs leading down from the room. "I'll draw a bath and have it warm up. It should be ready for her, when you two are finished."

"Thank you", both me and Vesija said.

The moment after Mirra's departure hung in the air.

"Shall we get on with the examination?" I asked.

"Oh. Right." The chirurgeon places his huge hands on my throat in a grip reminiscent of thorough throttling. The surface of my gown flared into a dance of flickering colours that followed what I assumed were my bones, nerves and blood vessels.

"Your suit has exceptional integrated diagnostic tools", Vesija said as he caressed my neck. "While I do lack the proper interfacing equipment for a full study, the patterns on its skin aren't that different from systems I'm familiar with, even if these are significantly more complex than anything I've worked with before."

"Fascinating..." Though the remark was genuine enough, my tired voice made it sound rather sarcastic. "Can it see if my neck is repaired?"

A smile crept on him. "Yes. But I need to check on your cardiovascular system. The brute-force life support of an open suit left several of your organs damaged, while it fought to save your brain."

"Oh. Did the Lady tell you why I opened my gown?"

"She explained it as well as I could understand it. I hope you haven't developed a predisposition to self-sacrifice."

"It's inborn. Inherited."

"Right..." His hands wandered down my chest in a manner most chaste. Red and gold pulsed underneath his fingers. "Your heartbeat is slow but strong, like that of an endurance athlete." He took a deep breath. "I need to check your abdomen. The suit indicated massively increased blood flow there, and at first I feared internal haemorrhage. But now... It's what I think it is, right?"

"Yes..." I nodded to reassure myself. "I do hope so."

As the physician's fingers slid and twisted over my belly, the concentration on his face turned into a frown of bemusement.

"What does it say?" I asked.

"Well... I'm not sure. Presumably the suit is unconcerned about anatomic details without immediate implications to the wearer's heath. What it does tell me... I assume this colouration here is supposed to indicate that you aren't pregnant."

My slow but strong heart stopped being slow and felt quite frail. "That means... It thinks it's possible for me to be pregnant."

"Right."

"Help me out of this", I commanded. "Now."

"I will. I will. Just... Let's take care. You've been comatose for almost three weeks."

"Three weeks", I mouthed.

"Yes. So please humour me."

"Alright." I lay still and let him start hatching me from gown. Freed, my neck could move without any unease save the expected cramp. Once my upper half was bare, I lifted myself on my elbows. To my surprise I managed it. The suit must have maintained my muscle mass, even if the joints had become terribly stiff.

Vesija's gaze lingered on my bosom. "Could they be bigger?" The remark was as dry as a physician's, but obviously it came from the man in him.

I examined the weight as it shifted on my chest. "Do you like it?"

He pushed a lungful of air through his nostrils in an elongated snort. "They are spectacular." With one finger he lifted the heft of one mammary. The utter professionalism in the gesture plastered a grin on my face.

"The Lady ––ever so gracious–– offered me additional reward in form of mystical transfigurations. I thought to accept mild touches here and there. If the new weight turns out to be unpleasant, I can always have them shrunk."

Vesija snapped from his daze. "Right."

"Don't worry. We shall have to test drive them before I decide either way." The grin that had crept on my lips disappeared. "Let's continue."

The man nodded, showing as much trepidation as I felt. Yet his hands shook not all, while my fingers strangled the bedsheet underneath. The rest of my gown blossomed from around me.

It is disgustingly self-indulgent to be amazed of one's own body, but perhaps I may be forgiven. The small bare mound of soft flesh, split between my thighs, had formed perfectly, at least on the surface. Had it not been part of me, and had even a shred of a poet lived within me, I might have intoned some dreadful sonnet about my metamorphosis.

As it was, I stuttered a question: "Is it all proper inside?"

"A pelvic examination is required to know anything."

"Well, can't you do it?"

The physician recoiled. "No."

"What? Why not? Haven't you done it before? I mean, the women on the prairie can't just saunter to a specialist."

"I have, a few times."

"So what is the prob––" I paused to reflect on the answer. "Professionalism."

Vesija nodded. "We need to find someone else."

"Where are you going to find another qualified physician out here, where ever we are?" I grabbed his wrist. "And just to bother with a routine inspection she shan't understand the significance of?"

He sighed. "A frontier physician doesn't exactly have the luxury of rejecting his work on flimsy moral grounds, does he? Alright. I'll perform the examination. But do understand that this has never been anything save work and duty."

"Wait now... Are you trying to make me jealous, of that my man could have prostituted himself to lonely prairie widows?"

The skin of his face flushed with blood, more than it had from the sight of my ample offerings. Yet in a moment he too found the humour in the matter. "Get off the suit and on your back", he said with a smile. I complied, and he took the gown, which curled into a compact bundle, and placed it next to a bladder of honeydew. The proboscis slithered out greedily like the hand of a man dying of dehydration and plucked into the succulent vein to recharge.

"Lift your knees." The physician grabbed my ankles and guided them to the correct position. "Keep your gaze up in the rafters."

"Is that actually necessary?"

"Yes. Stay still. Tell immediately if there's any pain. Usually, I'd ask the patient to mention any peculiar sensations, but, eh, well... Alright. I'll start now."

I pressed my palms on my eyes to keep my arms from shivering. The physician's thick fingers were cold on my incandescent skin. His touch travelled down nerves that I recognised but which were in wrong ––or perhaps now correct–– places.

Though Vesija had pretended his administration was detached and professional, my body responded to his caress with heat and tautening. I hadn't expected to still feel that agitation on my own flesh, yet there it was. He must have noticed those minute changes, as his breath became tightly regulated yet wavery.

"The outer parts..." He paused to swallow. "They are all there and formed more or less correctly. On to... This should absolutely not hurt."

Two rods separated what never had done so. By each inch into me, a shred of my dread dispelled, replaced with odd heated optimism. Another hand pressed on my abdomen. Though the pressure both inside and outside was gentle, my breathing stilted.

Then the hands withdrew, and I looked up at the physician askance. "Are you done already?"

"It's a short operation." Though he glanced at the moisture sticking to his finger, the physician's expression betrayed nothing.

"And..? Is everything alright?"

"The anatomy is as expected of a healthy young woman." The broad chest peeking between his loose shirt heaved with a heavy breath. "I can't ascertain anything further." He leaned towards me with one hand on the bed.

I couldn't have wrenched my eyes from his even should I have wanted to do anything less. My lips opened, expectantly moist and welcoming.

There was a knock on the structure of the stairs. I jerked the blanket on myself. Though she hadn't ascended all the way up, Mirra called: "The bath is ready and warm!"

"I can walk by myself", I protested for the third time, though my frame already lay firmly in Vesija's arms.

"That might be true, but I can't allow you to risk losing your footing on these rickety steps."

The stairs were indeed twisted and steep. And little did I truly mind being in those powerful arms, nearly as thick as my thighs.

Behind the flimsy walls, children drummed the floors with running heels, a family argued in a tired foreign tongue, and someone tortured manic airs out of a whiny flute. We came to the bathroom, where the complete lack of personal touches told that it was communal.

Nevertheless, in the moisture of the air flowed the subtle scent of purifying salts and sensual fruit. A gift from Mirra, presumably.

"What sort of house is this?" I asked, as I unwrapped the towel.

"A makeshift tenement building to house Hitunnan refugees." He helped me to the warmly wet embrace of the bath. I didn't feel weak, but my legs shivered under my weight. Vesija continued: "Mirra got us the attic, bless her soul. The next town over would have been much too far for me to carry your insensible frame."

"Oh. Where even are we?"

"A small town at the border of Jaanland. Two days' walk from the Pylon these days." Vesija stepped to leave, but I clasped his wrist.

"Lock the door and stay", I said.

"I thought you'd prefer a moment of privacy."

"Oh, recently it happens that, in fact, I've been alone with my thoughts for far too long." I smiled at him. "But I don't mind a moment of privacy, as long as it's shared with you."

Before we were back up at our roost, Vesija's shirt had become too wet to be kept on. My towel had slipped off in a heated struggle on the twisting stairs, as I had fought to help the man shed his now damp trousers, while he hurried to carry me like a beast hauling its prey up to a safety of a tree branch. His hurry indicated a fear that others might try to share his prize.

When I managed to pull free, the soldier already stood in attention. I giggled the silly titter reserved to little girls too precious to be chastised overmuch. The man stepped from his fallen trousers, grabbed me like a wrestler and hoisted me over his head high enough to slam me into the attic ceiling, should he have wished so. The sudden ascend left me no less giddy. I could only marvel at his strength, as he walked us to the bed and dropped me on the already warmed cushions with little ceremony.

My bubbling laughter didn't stop, even when the man got on me. "There must have been something in the perfume Mirra left", I said.

"No. I would have smelled it." Vesija's lips gnawed the skin of my neck. "But I do smell you and your maddening scent. If I wasn't familiar enough with human anatomy to know it to be uncharacteristic to the species, I'd readily estimate that you are undergoing oestrus."

"Maybe I am."

At my hungry grin, the man stiffened, but not in the manner I desired.

"We should handle the matters of contraception."

In the cauldron of my body, agitation boiled into a small fury. I wrapped my legs around his. "There's nothing that can happen that either us should mind."

The man answered only with his lips. I pulled him down, and though I lacked the strength to actually move him, the hefty body descended on me. This resulted not in the outcome I expected, but my fingers were dextrous and positioned the assault ready for the next charge. As abysmal as that metaphor is, it aptly described my emotions at the moment. In spite of my amorous eagerness comparable to bloodlust, chiefly I was terrified.

The entrance might finally prove my fancies to have been false, by being painful or worse numb. The joining could feel wrong in an alien manner I'd presently experience to my immense chagrin. And afterwards, what then? Had I trapped myself by letting this male have his way with me?

My jumpy anguish ended up short with the unhurried surge of rigid masculinity. I gasped from a pinprick pain, moaned from the tantalising scintillation of my nether nerves and bit my tongue from the shame of my wanton outburst.

The man paused, leaving a part of his weight on hips and my vulnerable flesh stretching around his rod. He kissed my cheek and asked: "Are you alright?"

I tightened my clutch around him and whispered: "It hurt a little."

"Nothing unusual with an untouched maidenhead."

"What? I had... Why didn't you tell me?"

"So you wouldn't fret about it, and find the expected pain to be tenfold of the actual thing."

"Well, I might––" The warm pressure wiped away my need for petulance. Instead of words, I used the movement of my pelvis to remind the man of the task at hand.

Vesija is in fact a clumsy lover, at least when he intends to remain careful. I, however, couldn't have cared less, when the formerly virginal tissue cried an aria of sweet torment.

And, just as our lips reconnected, it ended. The whole frame of the man jerked, while warmth poured between us. Vesija made an effort to thrust again, but withdrew from me.

The disappointment wasn't something I could avoid. Nevertheless, I welcomed the man's embrace that pulled me against his bulk. One of his long arms held me and mauled a teat, while another sent its fingers to the freshly defiled crevice.

My frame twisted with the recontinued pleasures, and I pressed my cheek on his large shoulder. His hand knew my anatomy well, and in little less than the span of a dozen breaths, he cleansed any misgivings I might have had with him.

Though I shuddered with a rather obvious climax, he carried on his administration, in a manner more akin to a caress.

"Was that enough?" he murmured into my ear.

"For..." I had to fill my lungs and try speaking again. "For now."

The man rubbed his own seed against my inner walls. "Are you sure there isn't anything you might regret?"

"I shan't regret a thing."

"If you say so. But if you let me, I'll keep you inseminated until you forget what it feels like not being gravid."

Instead of the dread I should have felt from such a remark, he had only reignited the mindless heat. I let a small curse and an invitation to slip from my lips. The man complied and mounted me once more.

This time he wasn't restrained by weeks of pent-up tension, threatening to spill out at any hasty movement. He left me satisfied and more than a bit sore, before I allowed him to return to my side in more calm caress.