Soothsayer

She touches him and she sees herself.

In the nighttime dim of this stranger's bedroom, the crackling in her gut feels like a rope of lightning has wrapped around her, and Edward's world is pulled into her. It is a sensation so different than the usual one. Then, everything is different with Edward. She is pulled past fleeting doors, feels tugging on her skirt, and sees herself.

These are not solid like someone's memories, but faint and flickering, images of her form in the strangest clothes, in the strangest places. She sees herself smiling with a baby on her hip. She sees herself spinning around a ballroom in a magnificent white dress with a boy reluctant to move his feet -- Edward?

Noa glances down as Edward mumbles, shifts in his sleep, and she pulls her hand away. The images stop, sharp and sudden, the dark that comes after brilliant flashes of lightning, and Noa feels a void where a connection had only moments before existed. This quiet boy, this stranger, this alien is showing her herself in forms most bizarre. Is she alien, too?

Edward settles into his pillow, scratches his belly, and leaves his shirt hem riding up around his ribcage. The flesh calls to her, promising salvation and sanctuary. His stomach feels hot when she rests her palm over his navel, almost as if he is in the sweaty tangle of a nightmare, but his relaxed face seems to say otherwise.

Rational thought, however, evaporates when the heat of those stolen images course once again through her head, her heart, her veins. Her insides sizzle like electricity and she sees things. An apparition of herself takes form and it is reading to a group of children, their small dark faces - Roma faces - upturned to reveal large eyes. One child tugs on her skirt and the ghost of an image turns to steam and is replaced by the billowing cloud of another. Now, she is sitting across from a pretty girl. This blonde girl fascinates Noa - the girl is so pretty, why would she endanger herself by talking to this Gypsy?

Noa sees herself and it is like watching a mirror, like a dream she might have had. She reaches past tea cups and a basket of apples, and gently takes the other girl's pale, slender hand. Real, tangible Noa -- the one with her hand on the strange boy's belly -- flinches, but the blonde girl in her mind does not pull away from the touch.

Noa isn't used to people welcoming her touch. She isn't as pretty as the girls she travels with and the men come to her less frequently. She reads palms, sometimes, for infrequent men who want an excuse to give a poor Gypsy girl some spare change. But this touch with the blonde girl seems so different. Noa can almost feel the delicate bird-bones of the other girl's hand. She can almost feel the warmth and she wonders when she became able to tell the future. Because this certainly isn't her past. She is almost positive that this is her future; her future in Edward's paradise.

The girl in her mind - in her future - is smiling now, saying something about the weather, or about preparing dinner. It is all so domestic and Noa can almost hear this other girl's name, a light breeze tickling the corners of her mind. Wilma? Wendy? It must be Wendy. She whispers it to herself, Wendy.

"Win-ry," Edward mumbles, enunciating with care, his voice a cold front pressing down on the heat of the images in her mind, "you meant 'Winry.'"

Her images, her blonde friend, her Winry condense inside, filling her lungs, clinging to her bones, until it is all she can think about. She needs the images, this second life, to breathe, to clear the chill from her marrow.

She blocks out the confusion and the innocence in Edward's eyes. Instead, she sees him as a vessel, a pathway -- a portal to all of these visions. One palm, five tiny points of contact where her fingertips touch down to his trembling abdomen are not enough. Noa sees Edward's eyes widen as they watch her fingers grip his nightshirt and pull him up to her.

He tastes thick and cloudy like sleep and her body feels the hot swiftness of mental larceny once again. Edward makes a surprised sound against her lips and he tries to pull away, but she tightens her grip and the mental ghost of herself raises her hand to Winry's cheek.

She does the same, her movements echoing like thunder the lightning-bright image in her mind. Edward's cheek is cold, damp with the Munich night, and not at all the way she thinks Winry's would feel, but it is almost enough.

His hand presses against her chest just above her breasts, pushing her away and the contact is broken, electricity crackling to nothingness in the chill - silence, stillness after the storm. Edward gasps her name and she doesn't care what he's saying; she just wants to see this paradise again.

"What are you doing," Edward asks, or at least she thinks that's what he said.

If she tells him that she loves him, will he let her touch him again?

She settles on "kiss me," and she makes a silent offer with her dark, nomad eyes: Comfort me, and I'll comfort you. Because the small tent of fabric between Edward's legs tells her that he's not really in the mood to resist her wishes. He is simply a lonely, teenaged boy and she knows that despite his protests to the contrary, he's watching her and wondering how their bodies would fit together. There's a small glance of questioning, of hesitation, then he raises his fingers to barely touch the side of her neck, and they're kissing.

It's nice, she decides, the feeling of Edward's tongue sliding along her bottom lip, the soft tremble of fingertips at the nape of her neck. But it's not nearly as nice as the sanctuary she can see in her mind. If not for the sudden visions offered by Edward's touch, something would feel very external about the act, very mechanical and pulley-driven.

Edward is hesitant, young and unsure, and these prophetic visions are showing Winry sitting on the edge of the table facing her, feet dangling on either side of Noa's knees, all confidence and light. They're laughing - giggly and loud like girls should be. It's been so long since Noa really laughed, and she presses her tongue past Edward's lips. He groans, guttural and male, and it's good - just not as good as the musical blonde laughter ringing in her head. This act with Edward is primal, inevitable, destined by stars, God, and nature since the beginning of time. But with Winry -- with Winry, the act is one of choice, one of finding a welcoming port in the rages of a storm and liking it so much that one stays.

Edward's sleep-warm hand creeps - reluctant and readying for retreat - to the bottom of her shirt and she arches forward so his fingers touch her skin, craving the contact that bears visions.

Noa gasps against Edward's mouth when Winry runs those pretty, pale fingers through her hair, almost able to feel the girl's fingers on her scalp. She knows Edward probably thinks it's because of the way he's touching her, and she lets him think that. Anything so long as he keeps touching her.

But he pushes her away, breaks the contact to think for a moment, troubled eyes searching hers as if he's looking for an answer, a sign that he should proceed. He has such little-boy eyes, all large and golden and staring. She smiles as he grasps the edge of his shirt with shaky fingers that look like they don't want to bend, and he pulls it over his head. All of that skin, all of that possibility for contact grips her, hissing potential energy and she presses him down, knees snug on either side of his hips.

When the vision rips through her again -- through her legs, through her hips like riding lightning -- it's different and she feels a failure like trying to resume a dream interrupted by wakefulness. But the image of Winry is still there and she is intrigued by the change of scenery too much. This time, they are in the grass on a hill and Winry - this beautiful, Aryan girl - is close, close, so close and the realization tears through Noa's consciousness that they are so close where people can see them. They talk and touch and laugh without fear.

This springtime place is not at all like Munich. No policemen, no powerful men, no angry men are trying to keep her moving or still, wanting to keep her tucked away in a cart and traveling from town to town. Instead, it is a safe place where she can play in the grass with a friend who looks so different from herself.

She wants this paradise, craves it enough to unbutton her shirt, toss it aside and press her nakedness to Edward's nakedness. An electrical storm rages between them that only she can feel, hot and tangible like static, and Edward's fingertips rub up her back, over sweat-slick goose bumps. He is cautious like youth, charged like machismo and she lets him claim her lips again, opens her mouth for him, lets his fingers sneak beneath the waistband of her skirt.

Thrill surges across her flesh, and shock widens her eyes when she sees Winry roll on top of her and lick a line up her throat. Her hips jerk forward against Edward's, his hardness pressing against her heat, pushing him deeper into the mattress, and she cries out. Noa finds herself embarrassed for a moment -- Is Edward seeing this, too? -- wanting to cover herself, to invent alibis. But more than the fear, the shock, she finds that she likes it. She's not entirely sure how it will work, but Winry is warm -- She must be! -- and she is sure that Winry loves her.

She loses her concentration for the briefest of moments and the scene changes again. Now, she's on her back in a bed proper, and Winry is folded between her knees, sliding that pink, daring tongue up her thigh, up, up--

Noa grinds against Edward's hips, tossing her head back as his tongue slides from between his lips, his eyes looking like he's steeling himself for something monstrous, and she feels moist heat slip along the underside of her breast. His hips push up, his nails press into the flesh at her hips; he is braver now, nerves giving way to need. She tangles her fingers in Edward's hair -- always loose and flowing at night, almost as smooth as Winry's looks. Edward licks up the side of her breast and slides his teeth over flesh most sensitive and she knows she should feel something more - she should - but all she can concentrate on is the foggy image of Winry's fingers inside her mouth, inside her.

Noa feels herself swallowed by need: Edward's need is one that can't be satisfied until he get home, a need that prompts him to cling to Noa, his port in this ugly gale, frozen to shivering. But Winry's need burns deep through Noa's veins, pounding, pulsing, the kind of need that is not cold nor painful, but the kind that makes Noa want to scream out in joy that, yes, she is finally wanted.

She tries not to laugh when Edward - sweet, virginal Edward - rolls her over on his narrow, scratchy bed and straddles her. His youthful, overconfident grin grabs hold of her, an icy chill. She shouldn't be doing this to him, with him. She really does like this boy, though perhaps not in the way that her decreasing modesty might suggest. But he mumbles something about not being afraid and she finds herself simultaneously endeared to him and longing for the intimate familiarity she senses between herself and Winry. Noa gives him only enough time -- far too much time, her body cries -- to toss his pants aside and to push her skirt up around her hips with clumsy, shaking, mismatched hands before pulling him back down.

Goosebumps swell and surge up her arms, up her chest, over her back when Edward touches her again. She feels them on her neck and her cheeks, and still she sees Winry. The other girl's pale breasts are pressed to Noa's dark lips, Gypsy tongue tracing higher to her neck and earlobe. Noa can almost taste it as she touches the Aryan girl's lips with her own. She is almost shocked out of this unearthly exploration by the feel of Edward's prosthesis on her hip and his slow stroking of the moist heat between her legs.

"Can I?" he asks, some of that endearing confidence draining from his voice, high-pitched uncertainty seeping in.

She wants to scream 'yes,' that he won't break her, that she's been taken by men far less gentle. Instead, she whimpers and pushes her hips forward, letting his fingers sink into her warmth.

Edward's proximity - near her, on her, in her - brings sharper images, higher contrast, scenes that she can almost feel. She almost feels and clearly sees Winry's legs tangled with her own, inextractable, indistinguishable but for the difference in tone, dark night creeping into the faint pastel of sunset. It is so vivid, so vivid, and she can almost smell the sweat and the desire hanging humid in the air around them. She can nearly feel the damp warmth on their bodies.

The sweat on Edward's body is cool, though, chilling the warmth brought on by Noa's visions. But his face is flushed, red and warm and he presses it to her chest until she arches forward for contact more complete.

Winry gasps, Noa gasps, Edward gasps -- a circuit of pleasure, of warm contact in this cold place. Edward rubs himself against her leg, a pace off by just half a count from the beat of Winry's fingers sliding in and out of her. It is distracting, maddening, and Noa craves symmetry in her storm. She remembers the way Winry rolled on top of her, plays it over in her head, and mimics the movement.

Edward is warm and hard and ready beneath her and he looks at her as if she is too far away. He craves what she craves, and she slides along him -- heat and wet, need and hunger, and she presses down. The contact -- sudden, simple, searing -- makes the images explode in her mind, color so bright as to be painful, and she is filled.

Winry's face is flushed, the same faded red as the hooded jacket hanging from a nail in the room where she made love to Noa. The movements, the sounds pushing from raw throats are frantic now, cracks of lightning, shaking and jerky. Edward's hands are on her hips as she slides forward and back, moving in time with the sway of Winry's breasts, weighted pendulums giving in to the gravity of want. Everyone cries out -- sweaty, seeking noises -- and Noa's mind is so loud, she fears her head may burst and all she can feel is Winry, Winry --

"Winry!" she cries, body plunging down once again on Edward.

His eyes squeeze shut, sadness replacing lust in the color of his cheeks and "Winry," he agrees, soft and lonely, "Winry."

Their flesh is so close, and she knows their bodies are nearing release as the images come faster and flashing -- still lives, slide shows, no time for movement now.

Winry. Hill. Sex. Winry. Breasts. Legs. Desert. Drought.

Edward's fingers sink deeper into the flesh of her hips and bring her forward, a cry breaking forth and she's not sure from whom.

Noa. Winry. Together. Tea. Temple. Green bird feathers. Cloaked cage. Shattered red ring.

"Winry..." Her voice is soft, pleading, and Edward thrusts into her, no more caution, no more restraint.

"Winry," he echoes. Noa closes her eyes, bites her bottom lip.

Winry. A girl with thick glasses. Apple pie. Soldiers. Marching. Soldiers, soldiers, dark alley.

Noa pauses atop Edward's hips, looks down at him, and his rhythm regains its pace. He looks like he's back in Munich and not in far-off childhood memories.

Noa. Desert. Scarred man. Screaming baby. Empty ballroom. Spin faster till you're dizzy. Soldiers. Sunken city. Soldiers. Crumbled temple. Soldiers, her face on the ground, hands behind her back.

Noa whimpers, but Edward only moans and moves faster, guiding his climax.

Soldiers pressing into her, raping her, tearing her. Stop, stop, pink ballgown, wicked eyes, Edward dancing, suit of armor.

"Edward, Edward," she moans and grips his shoulders for stillness, for safety, and tries to stop the movement with her knees pressed to the mattress. But Edward moves faster, makes her moan despite her fear.

Blue flashes, red flashes, splashes of blood. Noa, baby, ballgowns. Shapeshifter. Monster. Edward blade chest blood death door door Door screaming black tar --

She cries, comes, feels Edward fill her with one final thrust upward and it feels like horror. She flings herself from him, contact sizzles, circuit breaks. She huddles at the foot of the narrow bed, blanket pulled tight to her chin, and Edward lies in quiet daze -- virginity lost, reflection grave. She hoards distance, isolation, piles on the extra blankets to separate herself from Edward, from channeling anything more monstrous.

Her mind is empty, chillingly quiet, but for faint afterimages. Too many coldly grinning faces swim in her mind, in the torrent flood that washed the solid ground from beneath her footing. Edward snores softly and leaves her grappling for comfort, alone in the cold Munich dark, shivering against a draft that Edward's blanket doesn't quite block out.