Peter woke up with a start, his heart beating double time.  Turning his head, he saw that Ruth was already up and gone.  Grinning, he rolled out of bed and strolled to the stone balcony overlooking the small bay below.  Shading his eyes, he spotted her white hair surrounded by the bobbing snouts of the dancing porpoises around her.  She couldn’t get enough of the sea and they spent most of their days either on the beach or in the water.

 Leaning on the stone railing, he let the morning breeze caress his entire body.  It was going to be hard going back to wearing clothes.  T-shirts and shorts were the sum total of their usual attire.  Mostly they swam nude since none of them minded.  They didn’t quite have the island to themselves but the caretaker husband and wife kept out of their way except for meals and cleaning.

 They lazed away the days, swimming, eating, making love and just talking.  Ruth had told him stories of her early life and he’d countered with the tales from his youth.  They spoke of likes and dislikes and all the minutia of daily living that there had been no time for while they colonized the Moon.

 As to the future, she told him of the vision she’d been working towards since she first woke up with three other lives in her head.  He felt the same sense of awe that he’d felt when he’d first met her.  But mostly he just loved her more every day and took great delight in doing small things for her that she didn’t expect.  Her shy look of surprise always caught at his heart.

 Of course, the fact that she was an inventive lover with a passionate desire to map his entire body with fingers and tongue went a long way to keeping him a happy camper.  They’d been here for six days and he’d already fallen deeper in love than he’d ever hoped to fall.  His parents marriage had seemed so ideal to him that he’d always measured all women against his mother and worried that he’d never be the attentive lover that his father was.

 But it seemed the secret to a happy marriage was at basis the desire to love each other and put the other’s interests ahead of your own.  They’d discovered that even the small things that one hated and the other loved could be understood and accepted.  It really did help that he felt so comfortable with her that he was completely honest about his past, including the mistakes and the blunders.

 Her past was an open book especially after the media hounds discovered who was negotiating for Earth’s entry into the galaxy.  His jaw tightened when he thought about some of the things that had been written about her and some of the ‘suppositions’ made about events in her life.  Some of the right-wing conservatives had taken the whole Goddess aspect and blown it up into a crusade about cults.  He didn’t even want to think about what would be written, if they knew she was a healer.

 “Pretty grim thoughts for such a beautiful morning.”  Marag’s voice came from the balcony ten feet away.

 “Ah, just thinking about some of the press coverage and the idiots who make things up from nothing.”  He grinned sheepishly to the beautiful woman clad only in a gauzy oversized t-shirt.  “Good morning, Marag.  I was just about to go join Ruth.  I swear she’s going to turn into a porpoise one of these days.”

 “Well, I didn’t want to tell you,” she dropped her voice conspiratorially.  “The baby is half porpoise on her mother’s side.”

 He chuckled, his eyes going back to the sparkling water and his laughing wife.  “I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.  See you later.”

 Going back into the room, he pulled on a pair of shorts and some canvas slip-on shoes that protected his feet from the crushed shell paths.  Jogging through the halls and down the marble stairs, he met Eleni coming from the kitchen.  “Kalimera, Eleni.”

 “Kalimera, Sir.  Breakfast will be ready in half an hour.”  Her lilting voice gave a lovely accent to her English.

 “We’ll be in.  I promise.”  He nodded and jogged out the side door and through the bower of brightly colored bougainvillea that surrounded the whole house.  Down the long and winding path through small nooks and crannies, he jogged until he reached the rocky beach.

 Kicking off his shoes and sliding his shorts off, he waded into the warm blue water.  The blue was so deep; he could call it purple.  While he swam out to Ruth, he tried to remember who had called it ‘a wine dark sea’.  Byron, maybe.  Whistles and clicks greeted him when he neared his wife and her adoring fans.

 Surfacing beside her, he opened his eyes and slicked back his hair with one hand while maintaining his place with the other.  “Good morning, wife.”

 “Good morning, husband.  You’re late.”  She laid her hands on his shoulders and leaned in for their first kiss of the day.

 This one was special but then they all felt special to him, each one new and different.  Her lips were so soft on his, her taste so alluring that he instinctively put his arms around her and sank them both beneath the surface of the waves.  He felt her laugh into his mouth before he kicked hard and shot them both back to the surface.

 “Damn it, I keep doing that.”  He slicked his hair back again and grinned at her ruefully.  “I think I’m going to have to swear to not kiss you except on land.  Oh, and when we’re flying.”

 Her husky laugh did something extremely disturbing to his libido.  She was laughing more these days.  Whatever had been bothering her before the wedding seemed to have been resolved.  His mother had taken him aside and given him a stern talking to.  But since it was a detailed listing of things he should be doing for Ruth, he had sensed that she was okay with their getting married.  Somehow she’d known about the baby, he still hadn’t figured that one out yet.

 Ruth just said that it was a woman-moment.  He’d be eternally grateful that his mom had come down so strongly on their side.  With both he and Sam making what had to appear to be very odd choices to the world at large, it must have been hard on his folks.  The heart to heart that he and his father had had the night before the wedding had been a real eye opener for him.

 “Deep thoughts, love.”  Ruth put out a hand and rubbed away the wrinkle between his eyes.  “Anything I can help with?”

 “Dad and I had a long talk about life and love.  He’s still a little hesitant about Sam and Seth.  I told him what I saw when I looked at them but I don’t think he’s convinced.  The age difference is practically the same when you look at them and then at us.  But Dad seems to think that Seth was an unhealthy influence on Sam.”

 “Part of the problem is that he feels vaguely responsible because he brought Seth home to dinner that night.”  Ruth began to move towards the shore after a last caress to the snout of the white porpoise and a whistle to the others.  “I’m starved.”

 “Me too.  But from what Sam said, he’d already been struggling with it for a couple of months.”  He swam by her side until he could put his feet down and walk out onto the beach.  Sliding his shoes on and wiggling into his blue shorts, he watched Ruth slide a loose blue gauze dress with spaghetti straps over her head.  She had left off the eye patch this week and he found that the scars just made him sad.

 “That doesn’t help what Edward feels.  I’ve found that most men can accept and indeed, even enjoy the thought of two women making love.  But put two men making love in front of them and they are definitely squicked.  Of course, it’s the exact opposite for women.”  She grinned up at him and he hugged her close.

 “So, women would be fantasizing about Seth and Sam?”

 Ruth hummed appreciatively.  “Absolutely yummy would be my take on their relationship.  On a more serious note, I see no coercion or falsehoods in Seth’s aura.  He was simply waiting for Sam to come into his life so he could unleash all the love he’d been keeping inside.  On your brother’s part, he needs someone who will provide him with boundless affection and more love to replace the love that he dispenses right along with his medicine.”

 Peter thought about that while they walked up the path to the villa.  But spotting a perfect red blossom at shoulder height, he stopped and plucked it for her.  Kissing her cheek, he tucked it behind her ear and she smiled up at him with that sweet look of surprise on her face that he was determined to place there every day they lived.

 “I think I get what you mean.  Sam was always the one who knew what one of the other kids was feeling.  When he was thirteen, he started a friendship with one of our neighborhood kids.  I wondered why at the time because the guy was a bully and not at all the kind of friend that Sam had ever chosen before.”  He paused and thought back to the night he’d met Frank at an air base in Germany.

 “When I saw him flying out of Hamburg, I couldn’t believe it was the same guy.  He came over to me and shook my hand.  I didn’t know what to say to him but he surprised me by asking after Sam.  I gave him a short answer about college and medical school.  He smiled and nodded.  Then he told me to give my brother a hug for him.  He told me that if Sam hadn’t become his friend and given him a focus outside of the little piece of hell he called home, he would have committed suicide before he was fourteen.”

 “Some parents should never be allowed to have children.”  Ruth hugged him hard.  “Our Sam is one of those bright lights that shine where ever they’re planted.  And now he has someone to help him recharge and who will never let him fall.”

 “We’re both incredibly lucky, sweetheart.  Sam got Seth and I got you.”  Peter dropped a kiss onto her spiky wet hair.

 “Seth and I are the lucky ones, my Peter.  I think we’d both given up looking so the Hamiltons appeared like a miracle into our lives.”  She rested her head against his chest and he had the urge to sweep her up in his arms and carry her back to bed.

 “Food first then I’m going to take you to bed and make slow . . . passionate love to you until lunch.”  He promised her as they entered the side door.

 She laughed out loud, casting a flirtatious look up at him.  “I shall hold you to that, my Peter.”

 The dining room was filled with light and an array of covered dishes that held their breakfast.  Fresh baked bread and sweet butter sat at one end of the table while the silver domes covered eggs, bacon, three different fresh fruits, caviar and cheese.  Ruth got a plate and immediately layered the salty feta over the scrambled eggs before topping them with the caviar.  Peter shuddered slightly and took plain eggs, bacon and some of the peeled oranges.

 Marag entered the room right after they sat down.  “Good morning, Ruth.  Still craving that yucky caviar, I see.”

 “I never liked it before, Marag but I just can’t get enough of it now.  I hope we can find a supplier for the Base.  Withdrawal symptoms would not be pretty.”  She winked her good eye at the laughing red head.

 “Oh, I remember how that goes.”  She filled a plate and sat down across from them.  “But with me it was kosher dill pickles.  I even went so far, as to drink the juice left in the bowl after all the pickles were gone.  I always tell Jimmy that’s why he likes sour foods.  I indoctrinated him while he was still in the womb.”

 Ruth laughed but Peter would have been willing to swear that there was a nervous note in her voice.  He picked up her left hand and kissed it.  “This child is going to have expensive tastes but I’m prepared.”

 “I hope I am.”

 “You are, Ruth.”  Marag smiled serenely.  “And if you ever have questions or concerns, I’m just an intercom away.  And so are Penelope, Mary, Lenora and all the other mothers on the Base.  You’re not in this alone.”

 “Thanks.  I just get a little overwhelmed sometimes.  It doesn’t seem real to me yet.”  Ruth quirked a lopsided smile at them both.

 “Wait until he or she starts kicking.  Then, you’ll know for sure.”  Marag sighed.  “Enjoy this phase while you can.  I have a feeling that Peter’s child is going to be a handful even in the womb.”

 “Hey!  No fair stereotyping.  I was a normal kid,” he mock pouted.

 The two women burst into laughter the exact moment that Wolf walked in.  The other man took a quick look down at himself as if wondering if he’d left something unzipped which made them laugh even harder.  Peter’s explanation made him shake his head while he heaped his plate with breakfast.

 “You guys are nuts but then I knew that going into this so it’s my own fault.”  He sighed dramatically and dropped a kiss on Marag’s head.

 “Oh, the honeymoon is definitely over.  I’ll have to surprise Eleni with my recipe for . . . cinnamon rolls.”  Marag batted her eyes at him and he smiled broadly.

 “Now that’s more like it.  I was getting withdrawal symptoms.”  Wolf pouted before digging into his breakfast.

 “Hey, I had a weird dream last night.”  Peter decided that since they were all together, it was time to share.  “The Goddess took me someplace weird.”

 Ruth stopped eating.  “Describe weird.”

 Taking a moment to put his memory in order, he went through the entire dream for his fascinated listeners.  Ruth was so pale by the end of the story that he almost stopped speaking.  But she shook her head and made a motion for him to continue.  Of the other two, Marag had turned almost as white as Ruth and Wolf had a deep wrinkle in his forehead showing his complete concentration on the details of the dream.  A tense silence fell when his voice faltered and stopped.

 “I’m missing something here, guys.  You act as if you know where I was.”  His eyes went from one to the other but stopped at Ruth.

 “The second colony.  One of the two that was not destroyed when Atlantis died.”  Marag was the one who answered him, her gaze distant and unfocused.  “I’ve dreamed of them before.”

 “The crystal nexus was strong and healthy.”  Wolf said hesitantly.  “There’s a veil between me and those memories like a thick curtain that I can’t get through.”

 “Do you want to?”  Ruth’s voice trembled a little.

 Wolf looked at Marag and they exchanged a wordless conversation before turning to Ruth and nodding.  She got up and moved around the table to stand between their chairs.  Taking a deep breath, she reached out and simultaneously touched them in the center of their foreheads.  Their eyes closed instantly and Peter watched in fascination while all three of them showed the rapid eye movement that he associated with dreaming.

 Her hands fell away and she would have fallen if they hadn’t reached out together to hold her up.  Peter was on his feet and by her side instantly, sweeping her up in his arms.  “We’ll see you later.  I’m taking her back to bed.”

 “Be gentle, Peter.  She lives the past so vividly that it will take her a bit to come back to now.”  Marag was holding onto Wolf’s hand with a tight grip that belied her calm voice.

 “I think he has the right idea, Marag.  Let’s go back to bed and reaffirm life instead of our deaths.”  Wolf was on his feet and drawing his wife to hers, pulling her into a hug.

 Peter nodded and left to climb the stairs to their room.  He’d have thought that Ruth was unconscious except for the strangle hold she had around his neck.  Eleni had tidied their room so he was able to set her down on the comforter before removing her sandals and gently urging her to stand up so he could pull off her dress.  She stood docilely, her skin cold to his touch and her gaze fixed over his shoulder.

 Deciding that warming her up was more important, he picked her up again and took her into the bathroom off their room.  It was marble everywhere and so white that it blinded especially now when the morning sun poured in from the skylight over the tub.  Ruth arched her back like a cat when he sat her down on the wide lip at the side of the eight-foot long, five-foot wide pool set into the marble floor.

 “Oh, that feels good.”  She blinked and came back to him.

 “You are a sybarite, Ruth Hamilton.”  He accused her laughingly and she hummed at him while he turned the taps on full.  The heater was solar powered and in this sunny climate, it never failed to provide lots of hot water.  Laying a pair of towels on the broad edge, he made sure their shampoo and soap was in place.

 Once the water was over eight inches, Ruth climbed in with a shiver of delight, her expressive face glowing.  Sliding in behind her, he gathered her into his arms and slowly rocked her while his strong hands stroked and rubbed her skin.  By the time he reached over her to turn off the taps, she felt less cool to him and he kissed her temple, content to just be with her.

 “The sacred silence.”  The murmur came from below his chin and he felt a soft kiss on his jaw when she turned her head.  “Thank you, Peter.”

 “I love you, Ruth.  We all need a silent space in our lives.  Sometimes when I flew and there was nobody up there but me and the fighter I was sitting in, it felt like I was one with the sky.  And if I went really high I’d catch a glimpse of black space and I wished hard I’d get to fly there.  Someday.”  He brushed his lips back across her temple.  “And you gave me the chance, Ruth.  You gave me a spaceship and an alien instructor to teach me how to fly among the stars.  Out there, the silence is like a soft velvet cloak that wraps around you like the softest blanket you’ve ever known.”

 “Hm-m-m, that sounds nice, my Peter.”  Her voice was drowsy and he hid a smile in her glowing hair, lit by the sun.  The pregnancy had made her need for naps paramount in their lives.  “I wish sometimes that we could just go flying until we ran out of solar system.”

 “That’s doable but what would the others think?”  He got the soap and began to lather it between his hands before spreading the silky bubbles over her breasts.

 “There are days when I’d like to not care what anybody thinks.”  She sighed.  “Sorry.”

 He dropped another kiss on her head and kept on soaping her.  “You’re entitled, sweetheart.  You’re not selfish enough.”

 “No way.  I’m one of the most selfish people I know.  I married you.”  Her gaze was loving and that note of wonder was back in her voice.  “I took you away from your adoring hordes of women.”

 Snorting back his laughter, he rinsed her arms and then soaped down her torso to the water line.  “Don’t be silly.  I’m the one who took you away from the adoring hordes of all the men who love strong women but couldn’t possibly handle you.”

 Her whole body shook with suppressed laughter.  “How very kind of you to save them from me.”

 “That’s me, kind and caring with an ever vigilant eye on chances to help my fellow men.”  He gently nipped her ear lobe.  “I’m very brave.”

 She turned in his arms coming up nose to nose, her silver eye shining.  “You are brave, my Peter, to take on someone with enough dark corners to fill a dozen alleys.  Not to mention several past lives.”

 He just transferred his hands to her back.  “I’m not afraid of any of your shadows, Ruth.  The only thing that frightens me is being locked out of helping.”

 Nodding, she acknowledged her tendency to keep silent about problems.  “All right, I’ll try and do better, love.”

 “Do or do not.  There is no try.”  He said portentously and was rewarded by a peal of laughter at his Yoda imitation.

 She leaned in and kissed him hard, invading his mouth like a conquering warlord bent on pillage and plunder.  He relaxed his head against the rolled lip of that end of the tub and prepared to be ravished.  It wasn’t long before he’d risen to the occasion and she took him inside her body, rewarding them both with her slow slides up and down.  Passion rose and peaked slowly, leaving them both boneless in the cooling water.

 He gathered up his strength and got them both out of the tub without killing either of them.  She was still limp and he pulled her white terry cloth robe around her before carrying her to bed.  Making love usually put her out and he toweled off before sliding in beside her.  She nuzzled his shoulder, acknowledging his presence even in her sleep.

 Peter sighed and napped a little, waiting for her to wake up and explain just why his dream had spooked her so badly.  There were so many trip wires in her present life that had been laid in her previous lives.  Most of the time he was glad that he didn’t have any past memories but there were moments when he felt very young compared to the others.  Even Toby had memories to share with her and all he had was this life to offer.

 “The other colony was an experiment and the colonists were ruled by one of King Orion’s family.”  Her voice was contemplative and her left hand rhythmically stroked his chest.  “His older brother wasn’t chosen by the people to rule when old King Grapa died and the tension was strong between the two brothers.  The colony in what is now Egypt wasn’t far enough away for Ares so he chose a spot as far away from us as he could get.”

 “Ares, as in the god of war from Greek mythology?  It looked like the Southwest except for the pink clouds.”  He ventured when she fell silent.

 “Not quite far enough away.  Yes, that Ares.  He took three thousand colonists with him including some of our best engineers and priestesses.  Their craft was experimental and the colony site was hostile in the beginning but they had equipment much like the Ikiiri gave us and they dug in, surviving the first year then the second.”  She sighed against his shoulder.  “Communications were sporadic because of solar flares but everything seemed to be going well.  Then the Goddess came to me and told me of the invaders who were coming.”

 Falling silent, she seemed to be reliving those old memories and Peter pulled her over him like a blanket, breaking her out of the past.  She smiled at him and kissed the dimple in his chin.  “Thank you, my Peter.  We got a small warning from them when the wormhole opened up although they didn’t know what it was.  With hindsight, their message makes sense now but at the time we wondered what in Tartarus they were talking about.”

 Peter thought about what she was saying and had a dawning realization that he knew what she was going to say next.  “We’re not talking the Southwest and it can’t be either of the poles because even six thousand years ago, they were frozen.”

 She looked down at him and nodded.  “Mars.  The second colony was on Mars.”

 He tried to wrap his mind around the concept that in recorded time, humans had been space traveling but it didn’t make sense.  “If they could travel out to Mars, why didn’t they come back to Earth after Atlantis sank?”

 “Don’t know but I suspect that King Ares saw what had happened or got warnings from the Egyptian colony after we were destroyed and decided to cut all ties.”  She shivered and laid her head down under his chin, her voice muffled slightly.  “They must have thought their world had come to an end.  The technology that brought us to Earth was in the process of being lost and the only ship large enough to move between the planets, King Ares had.”

 “Wait a second.  Are you saying that the Atlanteans weren’t from Earth?”

 She raised up and looked down quizzically.  “Of course.  Present day humans are a blend of genes from two different worlds.  I hadn’t mentioned that before?”

 He could feel his eyes getting wider while he shook his head no.

 “Oops.  The first settlers were fleeing a civil war back on the home planet of Atlantea.  The legend I knew said that the ship fell into a vortex and came out in uncharted space near a world of unsurpassed beauty.”

 “Earth.  And the vortex was probably a wormhole.”  He ventured.

 Ruth nodded and smiled affectionately down at him.  “Sorry about that, Peter.  I didn’t keep it back on purpose.  I guess I just never mentioned it because there was already so much for everyone to come to grips with.”

 “No problem.  It keeps a little mystery in our marriage.”  He slid the robe off one shoulder and caressed the silky skin revealed.  “And now, we get to go rescue our cousins on the red planet.  But not today, love.”  She shrugged the other shoulder so the robe fell off completely.  He rolled them into a reversed position, unwrapping her like the precious present she was.

 “Not today.  They’ve waited this long and today is just for us.”  She agreed breathlessly, arching into his roaming hands.

 “I love you, wife.”  He nuzzled a peaking nipple and felt her sigh.

 “And I love you, husband.  Today, tomorrow and for all the days to come.”  Ruth threaded her hands through his hair to hold him there.

 Mars could wait until after Peter made love to his wife again

. . . and again

. . . and again.

***********************
End of chapter 48