Chapter 34: Sapphic Healing

“Now… there are many ways for a woman’s mind, body, sexuality, so forth, to be twisted…” Patricia gently stroked her fingers down from Belinda’s face, caressing first along her neck, and then along a shoulder. Belinda groaned, but barely stirred. “Weavers see women as a series of threads, of knots… but there are other levels, other… methodologies. You were taught to see, and feel what you do because of the way you were introduced… but you’ve felt something else, too.”

Claire shyly nodded. “When you touched me… it felt like… feathers…? I don’t know what you felt on your side, but… I’m guessing it was different…”

Patricia nodded, her smile softening as she moved her fingers so delicately back up along Belinda’s neck. All of Claire’s focus was directed towards the exact nature of the touch, looking for any slight detail, and any tiny bit of minutia that might just end up being the most important thing she’d ever seen.

If a slow caress of someone’s nose can be the difference between kicking the stair above you and falling forward, or falling down the stairs… Claire sighed, her eyes fluttering at the sheer beauty of Patricia’s fingers, and Belinda’s arched neck. I need to learn…

All of it.

There was a certain quiet beauty to the touch, a certain special way that Patricia’s fingers moved. She wasn’t following any threads, or moving between them. It was as though she was on some other layer entirely, but the effect was incredibly visible. Even without her understanding of Sapphistry, Claire would have noticed something special was happening.

Belinda was still comatose.

Though her eyes were just barely open, irises little more than thin slits of brown visible past the shadows of her eyelashes, it was clear she was lost off in her own little world. She’d been like that, while clumsily following given commands, since Claire’s poorly considered poke.

But even if she wasn’t reacting to Patricia’s slow, sensuous touches the way that Claire might, there was a reaction. The skin where Patricia’s fingers had been a moment before was a hotter red, not burned, but looking more and more deeply flush. It wasn’t an ordinary flush, but somehow deeper, warmer.

All of Belinda’s reactions were so subtle, so slight, but that meant that they all meant that much more.

It’s soft but I think she’s… trying to gasp… to moan… Claire’s teeth closed around her bottom lip. Belinda’s lips were only quivering the faintest bit, and only the softest of sounds could be heard, but Claire remembered how it felt to be so broken apart. The only things she could do were those she was instructed. Somehow… Patricia is reaching her… reaching her and… arousing her…?

Patricia’s eyes were hooded low—if not quite as low as Belinda’s. Her lips quirked in a playful manner as she ran her fingers down the other side of Belinda’s neck. “What do you see, Claire? Describe it.”

“You’re making her…” Claire stared. Each moment, the pads of Patricia’s fingers were drawing more lines of warmth, more lines of something so powerful, so demanding, that Belinda could only yield by burning for more, “It’s not just aroused… but it is…? It’s… deeper than arousal, it’s like… Like you’re… making her…”

She whined, closing her eyes and shaking her head.

“I can’t… I can’t express it. I know if you were doing it to me, it wouldn’t be… quite what you did before.” She sighed in disappointment, opening her eyes to watch Patricia tease along Belinda's shoulder.

Patricia nodded.

“Very good…! You’re a quick learner…” Patricia breathed out along Belinda’s ear. She didn’t make an audible sound, but the way her ears flushed, the way her breath trembled—so many small twitches, clenches, and other innumerable physical reactions made it clear that something was happening beyond mere sexual teasing.

It’s like I lack the language to express this! Claire pouted, squirming as she watched Patricia trace her way back to Belinda’s neck just as slowly as her fingers reached the younger woman’s shoulder. Vocabulary? Can English even properly communicate this…?

Doubt anyone making up words had this kind of thing in mind…

Unless Sapphists were doing that, too…

Lips pressed to Belinda’s ear, and her mouth fell open as though her jaw lost all tension, all strength to hold her lips together. Though such a small thing, the low, sustained whine that wriggled itself free of her throat was enough to make Claire’s whole body clench and her toes curl.

Though merely a soft whine, quieter than a whisper, it contained such desperation that it made Claire’s nipples throb and her clit ache. Her fingers twitched. Her lips felt remarkably dry.

Somehow… Patricia, she’s… She’s… Awakening something inside of Belinda, she’s…

Patricia’s lips kissed a path slowly down from the center of Belinda’s forehead, each kiss only just below the last. Her lipstick marks  remained before the next were formed, and Claire would have thought she was leaving lip prints behind if the waitress’s lips weren’t a much paler pink than the rich color she left in her wake. “What I’m doing, Claire… is called the ‘Excitement of Passion’… What you’re seeing, feeling?

“That’s my touches, my presence, held aloft like a lantern, as I help her focus through the grip of passion itself.” Patricia kissed between Belinda’s nose and her lips, a touch so soft on a place so sensitive Claire felt like she would have been shuddering whether Belinda was so far gone during the touch or not.

Everything Patricia does… Passion… That’s it…! Claire’s eyes lit up brightly, and she stared over her friend with a new understanding. Weavers focus on desire, on love and lust… and there’s plenty of that in how a Nightingale operates, but… Patricia isn’t touching those things…

She’s reaching for something… below those things, and above them…

Passion…!

Patricia sighed, kissing just below Belinda’s bottom lip. “I’ve seen that look in a woman’s eyes before. You’re beginning to understand, aren’t you? You might not know how to do it yourself, but…” Her lips kissed Belinda’s chin, and then just underneath. “You can feel the heat that’s rising up from inside of her.”

Claire squirmed, whimpering as she nodded her head. It was hard to stay still, but she remembered Patricia’s threat to send her to the chair too clearly.

Look, don’t touch.

You already did that a touch too much!

“I’m exciting her passion, nurturing that flame, and using my own as a lantern to show her the way back to herself…” Patricia slowly kissed down along Belinda’s throat. Each kiss was just as slow, just as gentle, and Claire could barely stop herself from openly salivating.

When Patricia’s lips reached the edge of Belinda’s white sweater, Claire groaned in agony. She wanted to see those lips move lower, to see her lips move along Belinda’s breasts, to see just how hard her friend’s nipples were under her bra. Her fingers ached with a longing to rip away her suit jacket, and then to move right to her slacks.

I want her to be naked so Patricia can show me everything it means to be a Nightingale…! Claire squirmed, rubbing her thighs together as she fluttered her eyes. I want to see her passion truly excited… I want to see Belinda cum!

Patricia laughed, raising a finger and waging it back and forth in playful chastisement. “You’re expecting me to rip her clothes away, or to touch her through them… but not all passion needs to be so… base.” Claire whimpered, and Patricia’s finger pressed over her lips. “Shh. I’m not insulting you. You take everything so… personally…

“What I mean to say, is that passion is about so much more than sex, Claire. There are some who believe our patron was asexual. This may very well be the case… and there are many Nightingales recruited who, though they possess a deep and abiding love of women, do not indulge their passions in such a way. You are hardly asexual—from a glance, at any rate—so… but it is important to not think like a weaver right now.” Patricia stroked her finger slowly along Claire’s top lip, and then sighed before tracing along the bottom. “Feel the excitement, the passion… with more than your cunt.”

Claire’s eyes widened, and her whole body shook as she felt the touch so much hotter, so much more raw and penetrating than she’d expected. At first Patricia’s touch had simply felt warm, tender, but the way that it moved both hinted at something more, and teased something so elemental up to the surface.

She could feel as what the finger inspired changed from a subtle desire for the other woman, and instead teased so much of why she found the other woman fascinating. It’s not like… a thread… or even a knot… it’s more… she’s teasing a feather deep inside and…

“Ohhhhh…!”

Claire’s eyes crossed, and she sank into the couch with a low groan.

“It’s not strong in the same way that a Weaver’s Sapphistry is strong… but it can work in such different ways.” Patricia’s hand drew back, and teased the same motion across Belinda’s top lip. “Weavers tie knots, or twist threads, in order to force certain patterns, beliefs, lusts, through their subjects. Nightingales work in a way that is very different… and that’s what allows us to loosen the right knots, soothe tattered threads, without ever understanding them.”

Patricia’s finger shifted, curling to draw back along Belinda’s lower lip.

Her eyes opened wide.

It was only for a moment, but the gasp, the groan deep inside of her throat, it sounded so very much less like Belinda was lost deep in something not unlike slumber.

That sounded like… like she was waking up…! Claire squealed, excitement mingling with the passion still hot in her lips. Patricia can really do it, and if I can do it, too… if I can learn how to touch that passion, to play with those feelings… There’s even more I could do, if I could use that and play with these threads…

Her eyes were still so focused on Belinda’s trembling form as Patricia’s finger hooked around again, stroking an almost spiraling oval along one lip before curling around to tease at the other, only to curl back around again and retrace a similar, yet not identical path. On every repetition Belinda’s eyes twitched in a slightly different way, and her whines, groans, and moans, shook out of her helpless mouth.

At the rate she seemed to reacting, that technique would take hours, or days to rouse her from her broken state, but Claire couldn’t imagine that was the end.

This was clearly foreplay.

I wonder how many Sapphists know techniques from multiple… conspiracies…? Claire quivered. Maybe I could travel around, learning everything… Coming back home from ‘business trips’… Date night with mom… Belinda could fly with me…

Her cheeks burned as she rubbed her lips together.

Watching her best friend of so many years arch and yearn made it impossible to look at her the same way. That process had already begun in the diner, but she couldn’t stop noticing more of just how gorgeous she was. From the arch of her neck, the warmth of her skin, the softness of her hair, the depth of her eyes…

She’s so… beautiful…

How did I not notice that before…? Is it because she’s not… the type I usually go for…? Claire clenched her thighs. She would look amazing in a big, thick sweater…

“Now… notice the way her pupils have grown…?” Patricia gestured to Belinda’s face with the hand not still stroking her lips. “Notice the way her heart beat races? You can’t touch her—or I’ll slap you—but you can see it in her neck here… and here…” Patricia gestured carefully, and then licked her lips. “All of these are very important signs…”

Claire nodded, fluttering her eyes in an effort to shake away a glaze that settled over them amidst the display. “Important signs… yes… her passion is so… yours is so…”

“I sense very strong passion from you, too Claire.” Patricia fluttered her lashes at Claire, looking suddenly so intense as she stared right Claire’s browns with her deep green eyes. “That’s what I was trying to feel when I touched your face. Your passion. It took such little to excite it… you barely needed the chance and it rose to the surface… and for a woman you only just barely met.”

“You’re… beautiful, and you were being so thoughtful, so sweet, so…” Claire breathlessly shuddered. Patricia wasn’t touching her but she could still feel all of her skin just as flushed as Belinda’s. She could feel her own heart beating so quickly. Her eyes felt hazy and lustful.

Her own passion was right at the surface, shining bright inside of her like she possessed lantern all her own.

Patricia hooded her eyes. “It doesn’t hurt that I also have certain… traits you enjoy. Mae, and Sophia, were both very curvy women when they were younger, and the last time I saw them they’d matured very gracefully. If you enjoy their company, I imagine that I must inspire a similar feeling…?”

Claire whimpered.

“You aren’t… some… people aren’t just… replacements for other people…” A sharp pang of agony flickered at the light inside of Claire’s lantern. She clenched tight around that feeling, like closing the door to protect the candle flame from a strong gust of wind. “There are things about you that are like the things I like about them, but… You’re also just… I can’t describe it right now—not when I’m this horny, but… you have something different, special to you…

“Just like Elizabeth, the girl I asked out before all of this started…” Her voice caught in her throat. “Just like Belinda…

“I can’t limit who inspires my passion… when it comes to women, I just… I want milfier women more, sure, but… Then I get to know any woman well enough… and… and I want them, too…!” Claire whined, feeling so pitiful as she glanced back to Belinda’s trembling eyes. “I don’t know how I missed how beautiful she was, so close to me, so… thoughtful, forgiving of my mistakes, but… she’s always made me feel so passionate, so supported, so… driven…

Patricia smiled, and nodded in a way that felt entirely too knowing. Claire whimpered, trying to understand, but she couldn’t.

Instead she could only whimper and stare at Patricia, pleading for answers.

“Now that you understand…” Patricia’s finger rose from Belinda’s lips, and moved along Claire’s one last time. “Gather up that passion in your lips… your passion for her… not your desire to have her or to change her, but to be a guiding light, to offer your candle flame as a light, and a source of heat, to hers…

“Call her back.”

Claire wordlessly nodded, and closed her eyes as she leaned in close to Belinda’s lips.

Once they were close enough that Claire could feel the heat from Belinda, the smoothness, the texture and the ignited passion just out of reach, Claire’s eyes rolled back into her head. It was so strong, so warm, and so many feelings she’d misinterpreted all rose to the surface.

“I love you, Belinda…”

Their lips met, and both women moaned as Belinda’s arms draped over Claire’s back.