Chapter 10

                                    

                                          
Chapter 10
                          
When one washed in the river, they wore white. Simple cloth. No adornments. It represented the purity of the river people joining with the source of their lives. The white kalasiris that Rune summoned for Lucia was not all that different from the one she had worn when she bathed to become a woman. He wore a similar kilt. Both of their feet bare, their hair down, not a single jewel to distract from the simplicity of the style.
                          
They dressed one another.
                          
It was part of the process. A man and a woman would walk into the river together to be joined as one and they needed to have no reservations about it. So they must see each other as they are, with no barriers. They bathed any impurities from their bodies in the bathing room, then took turns grooming each other and dressing in their white kalasiris.
                          
Lucia had always been told that it was a somber, serious affair. Probably made that much more awkward by the fact that normally a man and woman hadn't already joined together in a bed before that moment.
                          
Lucia and Rune, however, had. So though it was a serious affair, and they certainly didn't take the ritual as a joke, they were laughing and having fun. At one point, they got into a splash battle in the tub that made water go everywhere. While they were drying on the sunny balcony afternoon, they began kissing and messaging one another.
                          
It was tempting to let it go further than that. He certainly wouldn't have offered any resistance if she had asked him to make love to her right there on the balcony. She, however, wanted to wait until after they had washed in the river.
                          
Call it a romantic thing, she had said.
                          
Call it an exercise in delaying gratification, he had grumbled.
                          
However, he allowed her to escape from his arms unmolested. He promised retribution that night, to which she had given him a seductive little grin over her shoulder that nearly unmanned him. How was he supposed to resist an obvious call like that?
                          
Very painfully, it turned out.
                          
Her hands, gently brushing against his skin as she tied on his kilt, were only made that much more alluring by the aroused state she had left him in from the sunbathing. She gave him a grin that said she knew very well how much it was hurting him to resist.
                          
His wife was a vixen apparently.
                          
The retribution would leave her begging for mercy. Her smiled widened as though she were looking forward to the experience. He really hoped she was.
                          
After the bathing ritual came the cup exchange.
                          
Wine created from fruits of the river soil and the river water itself was traded between them. It was to clean inside their bodies as they had cleaned the outside. Washing in the river was meant to be a pure experience.
                          
Rune summoned two of his finest goblets and a bottle of rich, dark purple wine. He smiled at her as he poured her cup. Her heart stuttered but her hands were steady when she took the bottle and filled his cup in turn.
                          
"I've always wondered: why wine?" Lucia asked as she watched the liquid swirl about inside their cups.
                          
"Why wine what?" Rune asked as he set the half empty bottle aside.
                          
The two of them were sitting down on the mural of Luceria Ostia on the ground floor. They had chosen that place because it would be easier to teleport from there to the spot on the river where they were going to be washing. It wasn't so far upstream that the current could drag them off, nor was it so far downstream that they risked running into other people.
                          
That they had to be cautious of that fact made Lucia a little sad. The washing of man and wife should have been an event for her family to witness together. All of her friends waiting at the bank to envelope them in their arms upon their return.