It’s agonizing and heavenly all at once.
In a distant part of my brain, I know I’m moaning, but I’m so lost in the sensations I couldn’t care less. My muscles tense and release in cycles. My wavy hair gets heavier and turns completely straight over my shoulders with the water. It’s nothing like the military wash I had in Ollanta, rushing and scrubbing myself raw. No. This is the peace of the Ukhu Pacha flowing over me.
“Your skin,” I hear the princess from behind me, but I feel no need to turn around.
I came to terms with my body a long time ago. Nothing the princess says can change that.
That is, until I feel her warm touch on my naked back. It’s gone as soon as I noticed it.
“I–I’m sorry,” she stutters. “It’s just… your back.”
I know exactly what she’s talking about. On my back is a thick scar about two inches long with a bursting star of lighter skin in the middle.
“I got thrown back onto a sharp rock during training years ago. The soldier pushed me deeper onto it with his foot.”
“That sounds unnecessarily cruel.”
“It wasn’t. I wouldn’t concede the fight, so he had to keep going. He didn’t want to.”
I feel no phantom pain from it the way I used to. I’ve had worse injuries since then, one of them healing on my shoulder right now, but this is the one that festered the longest before it healed, leading to the scar.
“You must have put up a good fight, if the healers didn’t get to this in time for it not to scar. I know we keep Serpent mimics on hand for the soldiers during extreme cases.”
“I did.” I smile, and fresh water falls into my mouth. “I won.”
I bask in the cold until I can’t take it anymore, and then I still don’t move. “You can touch it if you want,” I say, like a woman possessed.
For a while, there’s nothing, and I wonder if I scared her away, the princess terrified of touch. Then comes the whisper of sensation. Her fingers graze over my skin like the wind from a summer storm, warm and all-encompassing.
“The nerves are most likely damaged,” she whispers, but I hear it for the question that it is.Can you feel this?
I respond by arching my back into her hand. Her surprised gasp is all I need to dive further into a relaxation I haven’t felt in so long, maybe years.
Then it’s gone.
I turn around and step out of the range of the water. The princess is looking down and breathing hard, as am I.
I’m the one who breaks the silence.
“I’ll just dry off, and we can head out.”
“Okay.”
Neither of us moves.
“This one,” the princess says, pointing to a slash at my abdomen, healed and below a new wound I got yesterday.
“Halberd.”
She points to another scar, an almost perfect circle next to my belly button.
“Waraka, throwing out copper projectiles,” I explain the slings we used to shoot small balls of copper, wood, or anything in between.
Then, a jagged line on my thigh.
“Talons. We helped some locals with achullpasproblem.”
Those were nasty. Human-looking creatures of the night coming from caves to try to seduce and steal human lives.
