First things first, a huge THANK YOU to pippin of Sapphic Kinks, who made the hot new banner for this series. Sapphic Kinks is a website like no other, an artful repository of everything lesbian and kinky.

Secondly, I’ve started work on what I am hoping will be a new book. It’s a crossover between Lesbia and the Iskendar series which more or less began my F/F web writing seven years ago. It’s the evolution of what was going to be my next Ayla based book, and I’m having fun with it, hopefully it will be fun to read too. So updates may or may not be slower or faster here as I do that. Okay, back to Cadet.

“Get the hell off me, Grisham,” Sarah snarls. Grisham has her pinned hard. It doesn’t look comfortable at all, the way she’s pushed into the uneven ground. It would probably hurt you, but Sarah’s more physically resilient in a lot of ways.

“Hell no, girl,” Grisham says. She kneels up and snaps a pair of handcuffs on Sarah’s wrists. “You’re going to be spending a lot of time in my jail,” she adds. “You’re going to see a lot of me. We’re going to get real close, you and I.”

You’ve heard that threatening tone before, when you first met Grisham. Of course, in your case, you ended up with a nice hot shower and a comfortable bed. Sarah probably won’t be that lucky.

“I’m not going to spend more than a day in your jail,” Sarah snaps back. “You think I can’t break out again? You think I’m not going to turn those concrete walls of yours into dust? Hell, I’ll chew my way out of there if I have to.”

“Then you’ll be gagged,” Terra says sternly. “You can quit giving Grisham attitude, you’ve bought this on yourself.”

“Go to hell, mommy,” Sarah says, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

“I’m not your mother, girl,” Terra replies.

You see a flash of hurt in Sarah’s eyes, and feel the same in your chest. Damn, Terra is cold. They obviously share DNA, so why is Terra being so nasty?

“You got that right,” Sarah says. “You’re a whore to the military. That’s what you are.”

“Don’t you dare speak to Terra that way!” Grisham takes her turn, yelling at Sarah.

Suddenly, Sarah looks really small and sad between them. She’s still defiant as ever, but you feel sorry for her. All she wants is someone to care, but all she gets is yelled at.

“Hey,” you say, speaking up for the first time. “Ease up, alright.”

Terra and Grisham’s heads snap toward you, like two snakes seeing a tender juvenile lizard hatching on a beach.

“Cadet, now isn’t the time to be talking,” Grisham says, warning you.

“I think it is,” you say bravely. “This is all happening because of how you treat Sarah. I mean, god, Terra, you are her mom, right!?”

“It’s not that simple,” Terra says, her lips pursed together. “And now’s not the time to talk about it.”

“When is the time? When you finally get me killed?! Fuck you,” Sarah snarls angrily. You can see little almost invisible tears beading at the very corners of her eyes.

“I’m trying to save your life!” Terra exclaims, frustrated.

“Why? Because you gave me it and now you feel guilty?”

Terra shakes her head and looks to the roof of the cave for a moment. “Okay,” she says. “I had hoped for a better time to talk about this, but apparently I’m never going to get one of those.” She crouches down in front of Sarah, who is still cuffed and pinned by Grisham, and her tone drops into a deeply serious register.

“I didn’t have a choice in your creation,” she says. “Twenty something years ago, I was assigned to a top secret mission. We had a medical. I was sedated. When I woke up, they told me I was clear. What I didn’t know until more than fifteen years later was that they had taken genetic samples from me…” she corrects herself. “They took my eggs. And they used them to create not just you, Sarah, but dozens of soldiers.” Her voice is bitter at the recollection. “I might never have known, but I found out by accident. A classified document was routed to me by mistake.” She lets out a little sigh. “Or maybe it wasn’t a mistake. Either way, I did some investigation. I discovered what they had done. And I still couldn’t do anything. You weren’t mine. You were their property. I did what I could anyway, but by the time I could get to you, out of the dozens who had been created, only you were left.”

Her voice cracks a little as she reaches out to brush the stray hairs off Sarah’s dusty forehead. “I’m not your mother, because they never let me be your mother. We were both robbed of something, Sarah. But I’ve got you now, and you have to stop running away from me like this.”

There is a heavy silence, broken by a little sniff. Sarah is crying. She’s trying really hard not to, but she is. So are you. Your eyes are watery with emotion, and when you look at Grisham, you see that she is looking decidedly weepy too.

“I didn’t know that,” Sarah mumbles. “I thought you just didn’t give a shit. I mean, you kept working for them. The people who made me.”

“I didn’t have a choice,” Terra says. “Not if I wanted to get you out. Now I have you in my unit, I at least have a chance to make what went wrong go right. But I know how you were conditioned. They made you into a soldier. They deprived you of every emotional need. They turned you into what they wanted you to be. I couldn’t come to you with some maternal parody and think you’d forgive me and forget everything they taught you to be. For the moment, you didn’t need a mother. You needed a commander. So I tried to be that. I know you’re angry. I’m furious. But we have to get through this together. Okay?”

After a moment, Sarah gives the smallest of nods. “If I say yes, will you make this behemoth crushing my spine get off me?”

Terra smirks a little. “If I say yes to that, will you agree to at least follow my commands?”

“I guess,” Sarah says with a half-smile. “I mean, maybe.”

“I figured,” Terra says. She looks at Grisham. “Stand her up, but keep the cuffs on. I don’t think she’s quite processed all that yet. It’s been almost a decade and I still haven’t.”

“Am I still going to jail?” Sarah asks the question as Grisham hauls her up to her feet with one easy motion. Her clothes are caked in dust, her face too, except for one little trickle down her left cheek where a tear escaped.

You’re happy for her and Terra, but sad too. You can’t imagine what Terra must have been through finding out that biological betrayal, and then looking for her offspring only to find most of them having passed without ever meeting her. What her superiors did was evil, and now both Sarah and Terra have it forever written in their souls.

Instead of answering the question Terra reaches out and pulls Sarah, still cuffed, into what might be her first hug ever. Suddenly, a second trickle joins the first, rolling down Sarah’s cheeks. Then there is a torrent of dust and tears, washing Sarah’s face clean and muddying Terra’s shoulder.