trans_9 | It's nice to get a chance to relax together

Meluly is an early riser, when it comes down to it. If she's not the first to wake, she's probably an early second, but even once her eyes are open, she stays twined in against Katara. Sometime in the night, she got one of her legs hooked between Katara's, and her toes rub against the girl's leg absently.

But there was that other girl... She twists a little to glance at Toph in the other bed, her red eyes gleaming dimly in the darkness. "I wish there was a damn sunrise," she murmurs.

Twenty minutes later, Katara signed gently, waking up to the prodding from the other woman's toes. When she fully opened her eyes, she saw Meluly was still in the bed, wrapped around her, and grinned. She actually felt a lot better than she had in awhile. She looked over at where Toph was still in bed.

"Morning Meluly," she said, giggling at the tickling. "Do you want to exercize some today?"

And Meluly feels better, too. Even with her grumbly little complaint about the lack of natural light, having someone she likes to (platonically) sleep with has gotten her more relaxed and pleasant-feeling than she has since that little time spent in those hot springs in the Sensoriums.

"I always exercise," she says, arms wrapping around Katara and rolling to pull her up on top of Meluly, so she can squeeze her extra-tightly for a moment. "Lights on or off?" she mumurs. "I can see fine either way."

Katara laughed and hugged her back. "Me too. I like to keep fit as long as we're still stuck here. Wish I could get some more bending scrolls though. Ah well. I usually like the lights on though."

She disentangled herself from Meluly(begrudgedly) and started some of her yoga stretches, careful to make sure that she didn't pull anything.

Meluly slides over, half-stretching, and flicks the light back on, then settles back into a cross-legged position, completely uncaring about her own nudity. It isn't an assumption that Katara won't care (after all, Toph is still in the room, and Luly doesn't know about her blindness); it's just that the thought that it might be an issue literally hasn't entered her mind.

She waits long moments watching Katara before starting her own stretching... and almost inhuman stretching it is. The bending and twisting she's casually showing off, without even being properly warmed up first, would be the envy of any well-trained acrobat or contortionist.

Katara did pause in her stretching to watch Meluly. Of course, having seen her naked before it didn't bother her, but she had certainly never seen anyone able to do stretching like that, so she had to stare.

"Wow," she said, "How do you do that? If I trued, I'd probably dislocate a few limbs!"

Meluly pauses in the middle of a pose (http://girldujour.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/contortionist.jpg) that looks like it should be distinctly uncomfortable, but she isn't having any issues—her expression is still fairly placid. "My people are more flexible than humans, it's a genetics thing. And I've taken a long time to get better than most."

"Oh," Katara said, shrugging but still thinking it was the coolest thing she'd ever seen. She finished her stretching and then without warning started to do several small flips. The room was too small for her to do anything too big, but she leapt a few feet in the air and then finished up with a waterbending move minus the water. She did this for fifteen minutes, starting to build a sweat, and finally finished, sitting on the floor cross legged, sighing, her eyes closed.

"I'm okay," Meluly says as she starts doing quick sit-ups on the bed, putting the kind of effortless effort into them that shows a long time spent building up the muscles for it. "There are people who do better." She stretches again, twisting around to do some push-ups. "You said something about wanting tattoos like mine?"

"Not anyone I know," Katara said, and rose from her meditative position, walking over to Meluly. "Maybe one day it might be possible for me though, who knows?"

She grinned. "Yeah. Are they permanent?"

"Of course," Luly says, reaching with wiggly fingers to grab one of Katara's hands and pull her onto the bed. "Got it all done in stages. You learn to block out the pain after a while." She twists, tapping at her right shoulder. "I had to get this whole arm redone in uni, actually, when they replaced my arm."

"Pain?" Katara should have figured that would be involved, but she wasn't really afraid. Still, if she was going to have markings that lasted forever, she might as well get one in a less obvious place. But the part where her arm had to be replaced was something that stuck out in her head.

"What do you mean, arm replaced?"

"It's done with needles," Meluly says, having started doing a set of brisk sit-ups again. "There are ways to get rid of the pain, but that's kind of cheating the point." She pauses, turning to lean her shoulder towards Katara. "Look right here," she says, tapping on one of the lines.

There's the barest hint of a discontinuity, where the slight fading of the whites doesn't quite match up... "It was an accident in training, somebody set up one of the rigs wrong. My arm got pretty splinched and they had to get a med-sorcerer to replace the whole thing."

"Needles? Really?" Well, it sounded painful, but she would go through t. That wasn't a big deal. She'd gone through more painful things anyway: Hama's bloodbending came to mind. "Well, that's okay, I don't want to get out of feeling the pain anyway. But what would that tattoo be?"

Katara observed the imperfection, although it was very, very slight. "Well, I'm glad you were able to get your arm back. It gives me hope for Paco...even if I think the guy is kinda a jerk."

"It works by injecting the ink into your skin," Luly says, holding a hand towards Katara so she can poke and prod at the tattoo patterns if she wants. "It hurts for a while until all the needle spots heal up." She looks Katara up and down. "It depends on the meanings," she says, ruffling her hair back from where it's gotten a bit floofy after the sleep and warming-up. "Everything I have, there's a meaning to all the pieces and how they fit together."

Katara does poke and prod a little, because she's never actually touched a tattoo up close. Sure, they had them back at home (heck, Aang had them), but with the exception of Aang, she'd hardly seen any tattoos. Even when she did, it was usually a rough kind of man that usually had them: Combustion man came to mind.

"I know you told me about this before," Katara said, running her hands over the markings, "But what do they all mean again?"

"It's all different things," Luly says, and reaches to snag Katara with her other arm and pull her into a half-hug, heedless of her own lack of clothes. "The one down my arm here," she says, reaching around Katara to loosely point at one of the complex patterns down her right arm, "marks me as a survivalist. A lot of my people have similar ones... we have an easier time of it than Humans." She grins, teeth a bright white contrast against her lips. "We're a lot better with eating uncooked stuff."

Katara definitely couldn't have been redder when she came into contact with Meluly's bare skin, especially considering that she was still in her underwear anyway. She stared at the mark on her arm in awe, which was only compounded when Meluly told her the tattoo's significance.

"Wow," Katara said. "What do these other ones mean?"

"They're..." And Meluly starts explaining. It's a complex web of meanings—she has to backtrack a few times and re-explain things, or even fumble around for the right words for some of the odder ones. It's all too much to take in at once, but it's like a mini-biography written into skin. Obvious advertisement: this is who I am. Take me or leave me.

Katara might face some embarrassment when Meluly gets to the tattoos that go up her upper thighs, though...

If Katara hadn't been taken aback from Meluly before, she definitely was now. While she was sure that she would never go as far as Meluly with all of the tattoos, she also began to see that she really wanted a tattoo, like Aang. She was also very interested in the stories behind all of Meluly's tattoos.

"And what about...uh..." She gestured to her thighs. "Those?"

Meluly moves, settling into a relaxed semi-seiza position. If it weren't for the lack of clothing it would be entirely modest... And then she starts explaining. Most of the patterns there, and that almost-not-quite twine in to private areas, are relatively benign, but some, it seems, do indeed relate to sexual preference (with a little giggle, she manages to avoid expositing what the details are). And then there's one in particular, where there's a little sub-design just past her bellybutton, entirely encapsulated by the rest...

"That one's a reminder," she says, her smile getting a little smaller. "First boy I ever loved... he isn't around anymore, but that's based on one of the designs he did for himself."

Katara did turn pretty red, but she was also still interested in what all of these markings did. While the things she said to Katara were relatively new to her, and certainly while Katara didn't know much about a first love, it was still really good to hear about them through Meluly's point of view. But more and more, Meluly's ways of thinking were starting to settle into her head, and she was beginning to feel less embarrassed.

"That's so sweet," Katara said. "These tattoos are all so beautiful, Meluly."

"Thanks," Meluly says, and lets out a pleasant bit of a sigh, relaxing back again and loosening up her grip on Katara. "I made most've'm myself, actually. I guess I've got kind of an eye for it." She bites her lip half-consciously. "Why don't we go to the Sensoriums later? I could try some patterns on you. If you want to try it."

"I agree," Katara said, grinning. "I think it'd be a good idea. If I were to get one, I think I might want to have it on my back, or maybe my arm. I want to make sure that its something meaningful, like what you have."

Though she did wonder is the ones on Meluly's thighs hurt a lot.

"Your back..." Meluly thinks, and rolls over a little, tugging the sheet with her to cover up her feet. The one point of her that can't quite manage to be comfortably warm enough even in this temperature, apparently. "It should have something to do with what drives you."

[and, in the morning]

Re: [and, in the morning]

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