title: bundeli
characters: lakshmi bai, petra
warnings: ?girls are naked?

"I know deserts, Madam, better than you know courts." The water splashed against the rocks with a light breeze. It crept like a snake through the gaps allowed by the canyon walls. Meandering in curling patterns that illuminated the waters below a pale, sandy green that was no more than waist deep. At the edges of the water, roots grew. Reeds heavy with long flowers, dropping in a low perfume that filled the browns and yellows of the landscape like a splash of colour.

"Is that your homeland?" Is the far quieter, timider response that was shedding heavy layers, unravelling pins in her hair, Orlesian fashions, as Lakshmi had come to know them as.

Utterly ridiculous, is what Lakshmi preferred to call them.

But Petra hadn't complained in the days and days worth of riding that had taken them here. Of course she hadn't, like a drinker of the blackwater, there was a deceptive strength that Lakshmi could not help but admire. "It is. Jhansi is but one long rocky outcrop against the landscape of an even greater desert."

Even if she was being purposeful cruel as Petra undressed. It took nothing for Lakshmi to unravel her dupatta. Baring her skin brown and scarred to sunlight, like an old friend greeting her. There had never been a chance to do this, in England. Not in the filth of the Thames, not in the cold of the weather and she would be lying if she said that it did not make her eager, playful almost like a younger woman might be ( like she had been, once ). Makes her fingers quick as they untie her choli from the back, leaving it on the top of the pile of her clothes. One brief look over her shoulder at Petra's effort told her she was still going. It left Lakshmi at an ease as she stepped into the water, feeling the muddy sand under her bare toes. Wading a little bit further before she could dive in the rest of the way. Her long, long hair drifting out into a wafting black cloud before she rose again as she swam a stroke forward under the water before resurfacing.

Pushing her head above the water again, she took a relieved breath at the cool, rising head and shoulders above the water to see Petra hovering naked at the water's edge. Arm crossed over her chest, her eyes downturned and unsure at the water. Like a statue in United India's garden, white marble and Italian grace. Only this one had both her arms and was far, far more interesting than the British ideal of feminity being something only useful when it was put on a pedestal in the garden to be admired and nothing much else. After all, where was the fun in that?

( She'd been told once that she never did quite seem to understand art. )

"Come. You will spare yourself nothing if you stand there all day. We may not have this chance again." She pushed up with an easy offer, to stand feet flat, feeling the water trickle down her breasts, her hair sticking against her skin. Pooling in the dips of lean muscles and soft edges. Her hand outstretched and waiting for the company.

Petra splashed in, a moment later, coming in close and Lakshmi took her arm as an anchor to direct over her shoulder, took her hand to wrap around Petra's waist and the other one a might lower, smoothing over her skin to take a firm grip and lift her up and against her water slick skin.

Kissing her followed, because kissing her was the gift for bothering to get out of all those layers because it had been playing on her mind since she saw that might be a chance for it, that she could get her out of those clothes, where they sent her red and burning in the sun. A sigh as she lifted up her weight easily, letting Petra's leg curl around with an easy balance. Skin against skin, body against body and the water that trickled down between them. The splashing that betrayed their movements if not their actions to the camp the other side of where they had quartered off from the rest of the messengers.

"You would have a better time in my clothes." Is the mutter Lakshmi makes against her mouth, when they part. "I loathe your dresses." Gently, carefully she let her back down. Reward given, and satiated as it might stand.

"You just don't like me in clothes." Petra countered, pushing at her shoulder determinedly. It had taken her too long to coax those shoves, to let her know that Lakshmi needed more than what soft hands could at often times give her when her body was this marred.

"Perhaps not. But I know how I prefer you better." It's murmured, low, warm, the tip of her nose brushing her ear and the kept laughter that she doesn't let out up and except right now, as she bent to slide one arm under her knee and the other under her back. Light as the feather Petra looked, exceptionally more so than without the endless, endless layers. Except it had been enough now, that Petra at least as the sense to look suspicious.

Too late.

Lakshmi fell back straight into the water all at once and dunked them both under the water.