Chapter 4: The Medicine Woman's Visit
The sun was a brute, hammering the cracked earth into dust. It raised the scent of hot sage, dry clay, and the faint, sour tang of the old juniper’s bleached bones. Lusa sat in its meager slice of shadow, the medicine woman’s pouch of cedar and sage held tightly in her lap. Her fingers traced the rough stitching. Protection. The word felt like a smooth stone in her mind.
The silver-haired woman, Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé, had left an hour ago, her truck dissolving into a shimmer on the heat-warped road. Her final words to Nizhoni had been too low for Lusa to catch, but the air between the two elders had changed, growing dense as storm air. Now, Nizhoni stood at the doorway of the hogan, her gaze fixed on the empty horizon, her expression unreadable.
Mara found them like that. She came around the side of the dwelling, her boots kicking up little puffs of dust, her shirt stuck to her back with sweat. She’d been in town, a jarring world of asphalt and loud colors that still echoed in her nerves. Seeing Lusa so still, so intent on the pouch, and Nizhoni so silent, sent a sharp spike of unease through her.
“Hey,” she said, her voice grating in the quiet.
Lusa looked up, and her face brightened, a sudden, radiant shift that squeezed Mara’s heart. “You’re back.”
“Who was here?” Mara asked, nodding toward the tire tracks in the dirt.
“Asdzą́ą́ Nádleehé,” Nizhoni answered, turning. Her eyes were dark pools assessing Mara. “She who names things.”
“What did she name?” The question was out before Mara could stop it, edged with a defensiveness she couldn’t hide.
Nizhoni’s lips quirked, not quite a smile. “She named a blessing. Gave a gift.” She looked at the pouch in Lusa’s hands. “For protection from tangled spirits. From confusion.”
Mara felt the words like a physical touch, a cool finger on her spine. Her eyes flicked to Lusa. “You need protection?”
“Everyone needs protection,” Nizhoni said simply. She stepped back into the cool dark of the hogan, leaving them alone in the furnace of the yard.
The wind chime gave a listless, bone-click rattle.
Mara walked over and crouched in front of Lusa. The dust coated her knees. She pried one of Lusa’s hands open and laced their fingers. Lusa’s skin was warm, dry. “What did she really say, Lusa?”
Lusa thought. Translating the dense, melodic flow of words into Mara’s linear language was a process of distillation. “She said my heart is a clear spring. That it draws what it draws. She said… to be careful what drinks from it.” She looked down at their joined hands. “She said some thirsts are not for water.”
A cold knot formed in Mara’s gut. Jealousy, hot and acrid, rose in her throat. This woman had seen inside Lusa, had spoken to her heart, and had left a warning. A warning that felt, unmistakably, directed at her. The possessive urge that followed was overwhelming. She needed to erase the touch of that visit, to reclaim Lusa in the most basic, physical way possible.
She stood, pulling Lusa up with her. The pouch fell to the dirt. “Come with me.”
“Where?”
“Here.” Mara’s voice was tight. She led her the few steps to the side of the hogan, into a narrow strip of shade offered by the sagging roof. The adobe wall was rough and hot against her palm. She turned Lusa to face it.
“Mara?” Lusa’s question was soft, curious.
“I need you.” It was a growl. Mara pushed Lusa’s loose dress up over her hips, bunching it around her waist. She exposed the curve of her ass, the pale skin a stark contrast to the sun-baked wall. The vulnerability of it, here in the open yard with the wind and the distant crows as witness, made Mara’s breath catch. She unbuttoned her own jeans, shoved them down just enough. Her cunt was already wet, swollen with a frantic need that was equal parts desire and defiance.
She spat into her hand, slicking herself, then pressed her dick, hard and eager, against Lusa’s entrance. “You’re mine,” she breathed, hot against Lusa’s neck.
She pushed in. Not slow, not gentle. A single, brutal thrust that buried her to the hilt.
Lusa cried out, a sharp sound swallowed by the vast sky. Her hands flattened against the rough adobe, her body arching back against Mara’s. It was too dry, too sudden, a burn that quickened into a deep, filling stretch. “Oh—fuck—”
“Yeah, fucking take it,” Mara grunted, her hips already pistoning. She fucked her with a hard, driving rhythm, her balls slapping against Lusa’s thighs. Each thrust slammed Lusa’s front into the wall, a punishing counterpoint. Mara gripped her hips, fingers digging into soft flesh, holding her steady for the assault. “This is what you draw. This is what drinks from you. Me.”
Her words were filthy, raw. She bent over Lusa’s back, her teeth grazing the tendon in her neck. The scent of sun-warmed skin, dust, and their own sharp sweat filled her nostrils. The world narrowed to this: the tight, hot clutch of Lusa’s body, the slap of skin, the choked, sobbing noises Lusa made with every deep drive.
“You feel that?” Mara panted, her rhythm becoming erratic, frantic. “You feel me in your guts? That’s me. No one else. No spirits, no medicine women. Just me filling you up.”
Lusa could only nod, her forehead pressed to the wall. The friction was a fire, the fullness a breathtaking anchor. The intensity wasn’t just pleasure; it was a sheer, overwhelming truth. Mara’s jealousy, her fear, her want—it was all being poured directly into her, and her body sang with the devastating honesty of it. Her own climax built, not as a sweet wave but as a pressure rupture, triggered by the sheer, claiming force of Mara’s possession.
“Mara, I’m—I’m gonna—” Her words fractured into a gasp.
“Come,” Mara commanded, her own control splintering. “Come on my cock. Do it.”
The order tipped her over. Lusa’s orgasm ripped through her, a silent, seismic shudder that clenched viscously around Mara’s length. The violent tightness pulled Mara under. With a final, ragged thrust and a guttural shout that scared a crow from the juniper, Mara came, pulsing deep inside her, her body collapsing against Lusa’s back as the spasms wracked them both.
They stayed like that, pinned to the wall by gravity and spent force, breathing in ragged unison. Mara’s softening dick slipped out, followed by a trickle of their mingled fluids down Lusa’s thigh.
Slowly, Mara pulled up her jeans. She gently tugged Lusa’s dress down, smoothing the fabric. She turned Lusa around. Lusa’s face was streaked with dust and tears, her eyes wide, dilated, profoundly calm.
Mara cupped her cheek, her thumb wiping grit from her skin. The fierce heat in her had banked, leaving a smoky, complicated ash. “Did I hurt you?”
Lusa shook her head. She leaned forward, resting her forehead against Mara’s collarbone. “You were loud,” she whispered. “Outside and in.”
Mara held her, staring over her head at the endless, indifferent blue sky. The medicine woman’s pouch still lay in the dirt where it had fallen. A gift for protection. From confusion. From tangled spirits.
Mara knew, with a sinking certainty, that she was the tangle. She was the thirst. And as she held the clear spring in her arms, she wondered, with a fear colder than shadow, what would happen when a thirst like hers could not be quenched.