A/N: OMG! I’m so sorry for the delay! You may now hit me repeatedly over the head with frying pans! ;; I am a very bad girl. Send me off to Castle Anthrax…not. Bad Zut! Oh, bad, bad Zut! slaps self to stop the cheesily misspelled Monty Python references Ah, go read the darn thing already. (Bet --’s gay! slap)

Shadow: Yup! MORE interesting!

Toireasa (my wingsister!): They are cool, aren’t they? I find them both rather endearing, actually – enough so that I wrote a second chapter solely about them! Never fear, I’ll get back to the actual plotline (such as it is) in the next chapter…whenever that is! rolls eyes at own moron-ness Nah, I’ve started in on it already, but no promises as to when it’ll be done.

Songwind: Yes, actually, I have read Mercedes Lackey (I am a bad little girl for stealing her ideas! slaps self upside the head, and then goes and throws daggers at her escaping muses) The only difference between my soulbonds and Lackey’s lifebonds is that not everyone in SoT has one (only some Mages do), and some people have the potential and it never comes to fruition. Other than that, it’s essentially the same.

Carter Tachikawa: It’s up! It’s up! Don’t threaten to chase me with a frying pan quite yet!

Moonwinges: Eh, if you’re homophobic, I would stay away from this. And frankly, I cheat – this one and "Iron Mage" (another one) take place in different time periods, but the world’s rules are the same; "Kiy" and "Shadowstorm" and "Child of Metal" all take place in the same world, and I have about five stories in the same universe as "Vampire of Dark Destruction." So essentially I have at least five fewer worlds than you think I do.

You are very lucky not to have to worry about rhyme scheme. . I am now very jealous of you. Not really, but… Well, I wish rhyming came that easily to me!

"Two Mages with one…can’t help loving each other." The sentence rang through Nehuschtha’s thoughts every time she stopped concentrating on something. In the middle of an exercise in the use of her new abilities, she would pause.

"Two Mages-"

And her concentration would be wrenched away from where it should not have been, getting her back on task.

Practicing the blade-work that Doe was teaching her and Angharad preferred not to learn, she would hear the words in her mind, coming in time with the blows. They matched her steps, when she could hear them, and if she attempted to silence her walking, the words would only take on the rhythm of her movements. They haunted her dreams, never left her thoughts. And they always were accompanied by images of the same thing: Angharad.

Damn that girl.

Gods, what am I saying? I don’t mean that… really, I don’t…just frustration.

Is it even possible? Loving someone who’s…the same gender as you? I’ve never heard of it before. Never knew it was a possibility until Angharad appeared… and I can’t ask anyone. Well, I could ask, but I’m not sure of the reaction it would get…

"Nehuschtha!"

She jumped. "What?" Her gaze turned to an exceedingly irritated Doe.

"I’ve been calling your name for the past five minutes! Concentrate!"

"On what?" she asked stupidly.

Doe shook her head in frustration, murmuring, "The things I put up with to keep Garnet from complaining…

"I was just saying that we’re about to need your assistance for something."

Angharad peered in, giving Nehuschtha a curious look, eyes wide with childlike innocence.

"What?" the Gaulish Mage queried suspiciously. With Angharad looking anything but serene, something was either terrible or something she was going to regret.

How do I know that? It’s only been a couple of weeks since we met; I haven’t talked to her enough to know that!

"We need to you to help power a communications-spell to let Doe contact our future teacher," the dark-haired teen stated.

"I guess," was the response, as Nehuschtha stood, joining them.

"Let me bring you both into a meld; you don’t know each other, and you don’t have the experience to meld with someone whom you aren’t familiar with."

Nehuschtha nodded in understanding, reaching out, feeling another sense – a light violet – clasping mental ‘hands’ with her, with all the ease of the same action between two people who were familiar. No trouble at all.

Another mind reached for hers, and she gripped it, pulling it in gently, feeling that tan-colored aura’s shock.

Already melded? How? Seamless and like nothing I’ve ever seen before… Then, silence, as though someone had pulled up shields and was no longer letting her hear the thoughts of whomever-it-was.

Standing in a loose circle, or perhaps a triangle, the three of them watched – two in anticipation, one with mere patience – as a figure coalesced, shimmering faintly and definitely glowing, out of the air.

Doe glanced away from the form, before giving both Angharad and Nehuschtha scrutinizing looks, and said, "You two may leave now; it’s not necessary for you to be here now, and I’ll be shutting it down soon."

Angharad nodded, but stayed there until Nehuschtha turned to leave, catching up to the taller teen within a few paces.

"What’s your aura color?" she queried, voice soft, looking up at Nehuschtha past the dark brown bangs that hung down over her forehead enough to impair her vision.

"Jade. Like what I am," was the curt response; Nehuschtha wasn’t in the mood for discussions with her main distraction – she wanted to be left alone, to ponder what had gone on in that linking.

"Then –" Angharad stopped, digging her heels into the middle of the path as she grabbed Nehuschtha’s arm and made herself into an unmovable anchor that was quite firmly not letting the taller girl go any further, "Listen to me, Jade!"

Nehuschtha shivered, at the way Angharad said it – and, somehow, something more in the other girl’s voice, something that whispered in her mind, This is what she’s going to call you in the public’s eye, because Jade is so impersonal…but you want your name to be coming out of her mouth, like the caress it feels like to you…

She shoved the obscene little voice away, telling it to take a walk that would preferably last until the day she died, which would be a very long journey indeed.

"Yes?" Nehuschtha turned, facing her, and gave her a look that should have frozen her in her tracks. Angharad didn’t even blink.

"If your aura is a light green – which I’m assuming it is – then I linked with you more easily than I did with Doe," the other girl stated. "Why?"

Nehuschtha shrugged passively, hyperaware of Angharad’s hand resting on her arm, and the way her beautiful eyes the same shade of violet as Nehuschtha’s mother’s flowers, only darker, gazed out at her from that face that she just wanted to touch, so badly it hurt…

"I don’t know. Ask Doe," was Nehuschtha’s response as she averted her eyes, staring at the ground in an attempt to keep her attention off Angharad.

"I’ve asked her things before," Angharad replied, voice steely, cold and sharp as a knife fresh pulled from winter snows. "She won’t tell me. So I’m asking you, in the hopes that we can figure this out together."

"Oh." Nehuschtha didn’t have anything else to say to that; how could she, when her attention was being drawn to other things?

Angharad sighed and let go of Nehuschtha’s arm, and seemed to whisper to herself, "Useless," but the other girl didn’t hear it. And the moment Angharad looked away, Nehuschtha was gone – she’d run away, and Angharad wasn’t interested in finding her.

Go review. Now. Otherwise my starving muses will all go bash YOU over the head with frying pans and I will continue quoting Monty Python at you! NEE! NEE! Where is my shrubbery?! No, thank you, I am not on anything, why do you ask?