Suddenly warm brown hands gripped her shoulders. Then her face couldn’t move. Her eyes rolled around wildly as she tried to move, she tried to scream. She finally saw deep brown calm eyes in front of her face. Those warm brown eyes felt at once alien to her and yet familiar on a deeply personal level. She didn’t know what it felt like to fall in love, but she knew that she loved these deep brown eyes that calmly stared deeply back into her own brown eyes.

  “It’s all right,” a calming voice said that she only half heard, like she didn’t know what hearing was, like her ears had been stuffed with cotton balls. The young woman gazed deeply into the warm brown eyes that held her attention.

  “Calm down, focus. Just be here with me, in this time and place.”

  The voice was so calming and so soothing, the words just sounded so peaceful. She didn’t want to do anything but focus on the gorgeous eyes in front of her, and the soft sounds of the voice that told her what to do.

  “You and I are free. You are here in your own body; the Shadows didn’t get you this time. Though it was a near thing even for me.”

  The things that kept her head from moving softly slid away from her and she was free to move. The gorgeous brown eyes softly moved back, and she was able to see a beautiful brown woman. She couldn’t remember who this woman was, nor could she tell why she felt so comfortable around her. She also didn’t know why she felt so warm and happy right now. Was this love? She had never been in love but thought that if this was love then she wanted to keep feeling it for as long as she could.

  The woman standing in front of her watched her sit there. Her heart was pounding, and she couldn’t stop staring at the image of beauty and grace in front of her. There was a warmth flowing from this person. It felt so good to just be with her.

  “Do you know who I am?” The woman asked suddenly and directly.

  She thought that she knew her. There was something so intimately familiar about her. Amanda had had her very essence corralled and put back together, guided, and in some cases, manipulated by this other woman’s mind. She didn’t know these things as facts but just the whisper of emotions and feelings that the experience had left behind. Amanda knew the woman’s favorite color, her favorite song. She felt like she knew all these things. She studied her somewhat sharp nose and the flawless curvature of the woman’s cheek bones as they wrapped back around her skull to her gorgeous long black hair.

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  She nodded, “Yes, I know you, I know you so well.”

  The woman nodded. “What is my name?”

  She frowned deeply. She knew this person, more intimately than she knew anyone in her whole life. But her name? That ethereal thing that was slipping out of her mental grasp. She tried to think but it was easier just to gaze into those lovely brown eyes. It was hard to focus, her brow furrowed. She didn’t want to disappoint this image of perfection in front of her. She would die of embarrassment if that happened.

  “Ansuya,” she said as something in her mind shifted. “Your name is Ansuya Das, Elder of the City Under the Mountain.”

  Ansuya nodded and smiled warmly, “I’m very glad to hear you say that.” The tall woman studied her for a moment. “What is your name?”

  “Amanda Miller.” She was starting to piece together more and more. She felt a huge rush of blood to her face as she blushed deeply as she stared at Ansuya. She couldn’t understand why she had felt such love towards this woman a moment ago. She wasn’t a lesbian or anything and the thought of her falling in love with another woman, especially one like Ansuya, was so embarrassing and something that she would never ever confess to anyone.

  “Are you alright Amanda?” Ansuya asked suddenly concerned, “you are blushing really badly.” The Elder stepped forward and placed the back of her hand along the girl’s forehead.

  Amanda tried not to flinch or give away anything. “No,” her hoarse voice squeaked out embarrassingly, causing Amanda to blush even more.

  Ansuya arched an eyebrow, looking at the young woman as a wry smile creased her lips. “Very well, do you feel well enough to walk?”

  Amanda nodded and tried moving her legs. They didn’t so much move as jerk themselves along.

  Ansuya reached down and softly massaged the girl’s legs. They had been lying down for who knew how long and even she had had a hard time standing up. She was much more experienced than Amanda and her body responded to her with just a little bit of coaxing. The young woman still sitting down would need a little bit of exercise before Ansuya was confident that the girl could even stand up let alone take a few steps. Ansuya stopped rubbing the girl’s legs and gently helped her to her feet.

  Ansuya looked around and noticed immediately the steel construction surrounding them. They were either in a factory, refinery, heavy industrial plant, or a ship. She had noticed the soft movement of the ground underneath her, so she was inclined to believe that they were on a ship. A ship? How had they gotten onto a ship? Had Aceso and her pack jumped carelessly out of the Whyte Plain? It was the most plausible explanation if they were on a ship.

  Ansuya tried to move the young woman out and away from the other girls who were lying on the ground in a row next to where they had been. The girls were sleeping, possibly drugged, and Ansuya was suddenly reminded of Kenneth for some reason. If this was a ship than it probably was some sort of transport ship. And if those girls had been drugged, then it was a slaver ship, and that meant that both her and Amanda were in no less danger here than they had been when she had struggled to get both her and Amanda out of wherever it was they had come from.