Free The Loranth (Star Sojourner Book 1) by Jean Kilczer

head, low, fanlike gills protruded from folds of lumpy skin. He stayed low in the water, to keep his gills wet, I think. Mercifully the rest of him was submerged.
    He was not mammalian and I was glad.
    Christine was on her knees near the water's edge, lighting wicks that floated in bowls filled with oil.
    I went to the pool, fell on my stomach and brushed aside foam. Silver creatures wiggled away as I drank. I hardly noticed the chemical taste or the bitter coating in my throat.
    By the time I sat back and stared at the Loranth, I was His creature. Perhaps it was a neurochemical secreted from his body into the water, a chemical that attacked the nervous system or the brain itself and broke down will.
    I pressed my hands over my eyes as thoughts, concerns, the sense of self sloughed off and left me empty and open to his mindlink. There came a warm sense of wholeness. I don't know how else to describe it. But in that delicate balance of imagined fulfillment and freedom from pain and fear there came joy. And I knew His mindlink was love.
    Love of serving him, dying for him if necessary. I lowered my hands from my face and watched my master. I longed to wrap his power and glory around me like a protective cloak. His name was Sye Kor, and His name was holy.
    I crawled on hands and knees to Christine, smiled and eased the lit match from her hand. A thin line of blood, diluted by water she had just drunk, trickled from her cut lip, down her chin and neck, her left breast. She didn't wipe it away. Her smudged face wore an expression of such bliss it reminded me of angels on Christmas cards.
    I tried to light a candle, too, but my hand shook. I stared enviously at the ones she had lit. Each candle wore a halo of yellow mist. In the center of her small altar, hanging from a Tree of Enlightenment woven of twigs, was a gold pendant with a figure of the ChristLotus.
    She smiled and steadied my hand by the wrist. I was grateful as she guided it to light all the unlit wicks till smoky warmth and golden light played on our faces and kept away the evil that surely waited outside our sanctuary. Somewhere water dripped on stone.
    We were family; Sye Kor, Christine, me, and all the reptilian and amphibian hunter brothers and sisters. Perfect family, without petty jealousies and resentments to turn us away from the pure diamond of our happiness.
    And free. Free of all desire. Except the desire to serve our Master, which was the purity of desire.
    It saddened me to think of all the foolish mistakes I'd made in the past, mistakes that had driven Althea away from me and caused Lisa sorrow. No, I'd never belonged to such perfect family, except when my younger sister and I… I felt pain in the pit of my stomach. Why couldn't I ever remember her name? Her face? Why couldn't I forget her!
    Our Master watched me. I felt him probe my thoughts.
    “Welcome, Jules,” Christine said solemnly.
    The pain faded. Or was covered. What did it matter?
    “Thank you!” I took her hand in both of mine and kissed it. I sighed happily, sat back and stared at the candles.
    I can't ever remember being so exquisitely aware of each moment of existence. Except that time Jack and I spent a night in an illegal lotus lair down in the subbasement of Leone's council chambers, smoking from bowls that held the seeds of Nirvana in their crusted innards. Of course the next day Jack and his spikers raided the lair and closed it down. What a shame.
    “What a shame. Thank you!” I whispered again to Christine. If only Althea and Lisa were here with me. If only they could share our joy.

Chapter Six
    In the weeks that followed my baptism, Christine and I left our home only for hunts, of which there were many, accompanied by our reptilian brothers and sisters, and returned with much game, to the greater glory of our Master, who had a voracious appetite for such a sedentary god.
    It was raining the day Christine was almost killed. A landscape-carving rain that gouged the earth with