Starla's Recess
An "Interstellar Dreams" Story

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"Crawl in!" the guard pushed Starla towards a small hole at the base of the rough rock wall. The dark, dirty stone that made up the walls of the endless corridor deep in the bowels of the castle did little to reflect the scant light of the torches carried by her escort.

Starla dropped to her hands and knees and squeezed into the tight square passageway. She found that she had use her elbows and toes to shimmy along into the dark recesses of the wall. Even then she occasionally felt the naked flesh of her back and sides brush against the cold, rough surface. After crawling about 3 meters, she moved into a slightly larger pocket, but she was unable to see its extent until a second woman bearing a torch began crawling in behind her. When adequate light seeped into the pocket, she found that the volume, which was roughly rectangular, was no more that two meters deep and little more than a meter high and wide.

"Back up against the far wall!" the woman commanded. Starla complied, slowly twisting around and crab walking backwards until she felt the hard, lumpy wall behind her. The recess had a wet earthen smell that left no doubt that she was far below the lush green pastures that surrounded the castle - even further from the clear blue heavens above. Still, the air was not as stale as one might think. Perhaps there was a hole somewhere for ventilation.

Starla brushed small pebbles away as she tried to find the most comfortable place to sit. She leaned back against the cold wall and pulled her knees up close.

The torch and its bearer finally wormed into the small space. Starla took the opportunity to take in her deficient surroundings. Above, there was the occasional stalactite. The floor of the space dipped imperceptibly towards her left where a small grate was set into the stone floor. The walls to her left and right were featureless. Only the wall behind her contained anything more than stone. Cold, overlarge iron shackles hung from short chains at various positions. A maddening chill of excitement sparked though her system at the immense physicality of the restraints. It was, after all, into these that her companion was intent to secure her.

The other woman steadied her torch strategically against the wall by the entrance and slid up towards Starla. She pulled Starla's hair to the side over her shoulder and grasped a thick, heavy ring. She positioned the ring around Starla's neck, closing it as best she could. Then she set the teeth of a heavy tool with long arms onto the lips of the collar's opening. Trembling with effort, the woman let forth a grunt and the collar tightened with a resounding kerchunk around Starla's neck.

The neck ring rested heavily on Starla's collarbones and pushed gently against underside of her chin. A chain of heavy iron links, no longer than twenty centimeters, now connected Starla to the wall. The only exit from the recess may just as well have been a world away.

The woman sat back and studied Starla's face for a second. "You seem quite calm considering your fate. I usually expect struggling or tears."

"What is the use?" Starla asked. "I understand that you are only doing your job. I have no quarrel with you. And, besides, to where would I escape? There are twelve guards outside this hole prepared to see my sentence through. Anyway..." Starla paused for a moment. "This is only a dream."

"Wait a second, now," the woman said. "Only a dream? You are implying that I am nothing more than a fleeting apparition in some corner of your sleeping brain?"

"Well, yes." Starla replied. "I suppose that I am. Of course, some believe that every character in one's dream is actually the dreamer itself. So, you are actually a reflection of myself. Some even say every dream prop is actually an extension of the dreamer - these irons, these stone walls, your torch."

"That's interesting," the woman stated. "If you can move your body slightly to the left... I need to fasten this around your waist." She pulled a heavy ring from behind Starla almost 8 centimeters wide, anchored by chain low on the wall, and ratcheted it across Starla's stomach.  Once again, using her tool she closed the ring tightly. "How do you know that this is a dream? I mean, look at the detail of this metal."

Starla studied her new waist belt. It felt smooth and cool against her skin. The outside of the belt however was ornately carved with depictions of women struggling against various intricate bondage devices. She could see no seam where the belt had been sealed about her. She could find no key hole.

"The brain is an incredible thing, isn't it?" Starla said as she ran her fingers along the belt's designs. "But, you see, I'm practiced at achieving lucidity in my dreams. And, the first step to achieving lucidity is to realize that you are dreaming. It was during the reading of my sentence by the magistrate that I noticed the words 'We are a country of laws' carved into the stone wall above her chamber. Purposely, I looked away and then looked back to the words, but this time they said 'To question authority is to encourage our enemies'. Immediately, I knew that I must be dreaming. It's a simple trick that I use all the time. Anyways, I come from a time of interstellar travel, distant communications at the speed of light, integration of mind and machine... not this fantasy world of dark, timeless castles and Inquisition style sentences."

Starla paused for a moment, adjusting her body in her new restraints, wearing a confident smile upon her face. "You know, as I think about it now... This must be a recurring dream. I've dreamt this before - recently even. You. Me. This same small, cramped space. You sang a relaxing, quiet song as you worked. We kissed. It's not really scary and actually," Starla laughed, "it's strangely erotic."

"How so?"

"Well, I am naked and chained to this wall. Defenseless. And you, yourself scarcely clad by minimal strips of cloth and, certainly, of distinguished beauty, are restraining me. Exciting me. Teasing me." Starla's voice dropped to almost a whisper. "You can do what you want with me..."

"I will..." The woman cupped Starla's cheek for a moment and smiled. "Actually, to be honest, I quite enjoy my part as well. But... could you struggle just a little?"

Starla smiled, lifted herself off the ground a bit, and pulled at the chains which rattled slightly.

"That's a nice sound," the woman said. "Chains have a hollow, ringing sound when their shackles are empty, but when they secure a beautiful woman like you. Mmmm... I could listen to that sound all day."

Starla continued to pull on the chains. Her smile dropped away after a moment as she considered how restricted her freedom had already become. On the other hand, an erotic thrill began to pour into her body and her arms suddenly felt shaky, so she sat down and waited for the woman to continue.

"Could you raise your arm over here?" The woman pulled Starla's left wrist up to a wide band secured to the wall slightly higher than her head and proceeded to lock the iron efficiently around her flesh. "So, if we are not, but ether, where does your sleeping body lie?"

"Hmmm..." Starla thought for a while. "I was on the moon, but then, wait! Uh... we had loaded the ship... we had launched... Oh, yes! I must be on the Crystal Ship."

"Oh, really? Where are you headed?" the woman asked.

"Um... Teegarden's star."

"Wow! That's a long trip! Can you raise your other hand please?"

The woman encased Starla's right wrist and once again used the leverage of the long pliers to engage the locking mechanism of the cuff. After the woman had completed her task, Starla pulled on her bonds to test their efficiency. She could barely wiggle in any direction. The chains to her wrist bands were so short that they did not even allow her to touch her own face. Starla struggled a little more earnestly and smiled as the rattle of the chains echoed about her small box of stone. She felt a giddy feeling in her stomach and blood surged into her genitals swelling her lips and clitoris with a warm buzzy feeling.

Starla's captor sat back closer to the entrance and watched Starla for a moment. "You do seem aroused," she whispered.

"Mmm hmm." Starla moaned as she began rocking her knees in and out.

The woman brought two fingers up to her mouth and slightly pulled her lips apart. Her eyes were fixed on Starla, whose gyrations were growing in strength and frequency. The woman pushed the strap of her dirty white top off her left shoulder and pulled the material down across her nipple until it became exposed. She ran her moistened fingers around it several times and then pinched it to a tight nub. She pushed the second strap off her other shoulder and the garment slipped down until it caught on the flare of her hips.

Starla's eyes remained transfixed upon the woman's beauty.

The woman crawled toward Starla and guided her left ankle over to the side. Starla's breathing became more labored and her breasts heaved with each gasp. The woman wrapped an iron cuff around Starla's ankle, capturing it. Starla watched as the silhouetted figure of her captor struggled with the tool until the cuff locked with a harsh jangle of metal. The cuff's short chain ensured that Starla leg remained well to her side.

The woman moved towards Starla's right ankle, but stopped to graze the lips of Starla's sex with her fingertips for a fleeting paradisaical moment. Starla spasmed in her bonds and issued a breathy "Ah!". But the touch was too light. Starla was only left with its memory which she tried to somehow physically manifest again.

Meanwhile, the woman drew the captive's right ankle away until it could be ensnared by the final cuff. After ratcheting the lock of the shackle closed the woman turned towards the entrance a tossed the long pliers through the tunnel. She looked back at Starla whose legs were locked, splayed with knees bent up, leaving her sex open - moisture gathering heavy from within.

The woman placed her hands on Starla's knees and slid them down in unison along the soft flesh of her inner thighs towards her sex, stopping just short from contact.

"Fuck me!" Starla gasped - her chin rising. "Fuck me, now!"

The woman sat back a bit and waggled her finger at Starla, shaking her head. "No, no! You said it yourself. My job is to excite you and tease you."

"No! Please! Fuck me!"

"What do you want me to do? Do you want me to stick my fingers in your pussy? Do you want me to massage your swollen clit?"

"Oh, yes! Please!" Starla was almost in tears, ineffectively yanking at her bonds.

The woman rose to her knees and Starla watched as she shimmied her garment down her hips exposing the scarred flesh of her mons where the slave brand had been applied years ago. The woman sat to her side and pulled the garment free from her legs. She tossed it over near the torch. She then began to stroke her own pussy, her thumb rubbing lightly over the textured contours of her scar while her finger slowly began slip into her sex.

Starla wished that her tongue could feel the scar's texture. She sought to kiss her captor, only remembering her bonds when the neck chain pulled taut.

The woman's eyes closed and she sat slowly working more fingers into her own sex. She pushed them deeper and deeper with each thrust. Occasionally, she'd pull them all the way out and lubricate the hood and flesh around her clitoris. With a final deep thrust, the woman crawled back towards Starla, pulled her hand from her sopping cunt, and ran her wet fingers, thick with scent, across Starla's lips, briefly allowing Starla to tease a finger with her tongue.

The woman brushed a kissed upon Starla's lips, then moved down to nip an earlobe. Chains rattled and Starla convulsed as the woman's hair tickled her naked flesh.

"Don't you love the sound of chains?" the woman whispered into Starla's ear.

"Mmmm hmmm..."

The woman bit Starla's shoulder and her fingers suddenly pinched and twisted a nipple causing Starla to yelp. The echoes of each point of contact vibrated throughout the shell of Starla's body unbounded by bone or organ. Electricity shot from synapse to synapse causing random muscle groups to twitch with pleasure, causing flesh to flush and sweat.

The woman drew her fingers with a weightless touch down the underside of Starla's breasts igniting a host of goosebumps which flared across her body. Next, she grabbed the waist iron and jerked it from side to side a couple of times, pulling Starla's pleasure ridden frame, reminding Starla of its presence. The captor, then, began to graze the sensitive flesh on either side of Starla's pussy lips. She placed the base of her right hand firmly on Starla's pubic bone and slowly eased two fingers into her cunt.

"Oh, yes! Yes!" Starla cried as she jerked about in her bonds, willing her body to proceed past the extent allowed by the chains. By now the woman was wrapping her fingers deep into Starla's pussy and heavily stroking the interior wall.

"Beg me," she said.

"Oh, please! Fuck me! Fuck me!"

"Beg me... to seal you in."

"What?! No! I want you to fuck me! I need it!"

The woman stopped rubbing for a moment. "No. Beg me to seal you in here. Beg me to cement the narrow passageway closed." She pulled her hand out of Starla's gushing pussy and placed the tip of her finger in her mouth which had formed a sassy smirk.

"Please don't stop! I need it bad!" Starla cried.

"Beg me..." the woman whispered.

"Ok... Seal me in! Please!" Starla felt a fever rush across her flesh as she heard her voice form the words. God! She ached! So close. "Seal me in forever!"

The woman cupped Starla's flushed face in her the palms of her hands and attacked Starla's lips with her own, nipping once or twice, exploring Starla's mouth with her tongue. Then she backed up to the tunnel and began to push her body through.

"No!" Starla cried. "Come back!"

Starla sat gasping, her body on fire with unrequited desire, listening intently to shuffling sounds coming from the tunnel, praying the woman would return.

"Please! You promised!" Starla yanked at her wrist shackles in earnest, yet with no greater effect. "Please!" Starla looked frantically about her small recess searching for a way to touch herself, or something to rub herself with. But, she knew she was searching for something that did not exist among the stone and shadow.

"I get more freedoms than most slaves do." The woman's face had reappeared in the tunnel's entrance - her smiling eyes sparkling in time with the dancing flame of the torch. She was smoothing some form of clay along the bottom of the entrance with a trowel. "I think it's because I'm so good at my job."

"Wait! Don't seal me in yet. You promised!" Tears started to seep from Starla's eyes. But, the woman continued her task, finally fitting a first stone along in the corner of the entrance.

"It's probably not necessary to brick the entire three meters of the entryway, I guess. Heck! I could just seal the part out by the corridor. No one would know the difference except you and me." A second brick slid into place next to the first. "But, regardless, I do fill the entire tunnel. It usually takes three or four hours to complete."

Starla whimpered, unsuccessfully pulling at her ankles, trying desperately to bring her legs together and squeeze the lips of her pulsing sex. Instead she remained as she had been, exposed and agape. "No..."

"After I finish filling in the tunnel, I use paints and dirt to blend the color of freshly laid bricks so they match the ancient stone of the castle... And tonight, when I am alone in my cage, I'll pretend that a lover is searching for you. Trying desperately to save you. They will wander the maze of corridors looking for your entrance. But, they will never find it. All the while, I'll be stroking myself, rubbing my clit, shoving my fingers into my pussy... Thinking of you..."

The second row of bricks were almost complete now.

"And sometime in the future, I may even wander this very corridor, calling your name, though you won't be able to hear through all the stone. I'll try hard to find where your entrance used to be. Maybe, I'll even think that I've found it, but... I could never dig through all this stone. And, again, night will find me masturbating again and again."

The woman stopped her work and looked at Starla through the remaining narrow opening. Starla's mouth was open and her limbs jerked randomly as spasms of fearful ecstasy echoed about her naked form.

"So, you are dreaming. And you are asleep on the Crystal Ship on the way to Teegarden's star. A little math... hmmm... Teegarden's is about twelve and a half light years away and the Crystal Ship can go about one quarter of the speed of light. So, it'll take four years to travel one light year which means it'll take... uh... fifty years to reach your destination. Fifty years. Certainly, then, not only are you asleep, you are actually in stasis - hibernation, if you will. So, this dream could last fifty years."

The woman added a few blocks along the top row as Starla considered this information, tears creeping down her cheek bones then dropping to her chest.

"No need for food or water..."

An icy feeling knifed its way into Starla's stomach and mingled with the heated pleasure that was bottled there. "Please..."

"But wait! They say that time moves more slowly in the dream state... particularly when you are sedated. I've heard that one second of real time encompasses twenty seconds of dream time. So, we should multiply fifty years times twenty... Fifty times twenty is... one thousand. One thousand years!" The woman let out a dramatic whistle and slid the next to the last stone into place.

Starla whimpered quietly.

"Hmm... what would it be like to be locked in a small dark hole for a thousand years? Mmm... I get horny just thinking about it."

"No!" Starla said suddenly. "Dreams don't last that long! They end!" Her voice seemed to quiver a bit, though. "You can't measure the length of dreams with a clock!"

"Ok. Whatever you say. It's your dream, after all. But, here's one more thing that I was thinking about... You said that this is a recurring dream..."

"Yes, but it never went this far before... we would kiss and the dream would end, and..."

"Did the dream end? Did you ever wake up?"

Starla sat trying to recall. The sound of her breath slowly rising to a faster pace.

"Maybe this is actually a dream within a dream," the woman smiled through the last small opening. "And, if I recall, each level deeper dilates time even further. Twenty times one thousand years is twenty thousand. Twenty times twenty thousand is four hundred thousand. Twenty times... I wonder what span of time may just as well be forever for the human mind. Hm. That'll give you something to think about at night before you slip into unconsciousness. Good-bye, Captain Starla. I have a million things to do. And so, may we dream together again some day."

And the woman slipped the final brick into place.

Starla's eyes darted randomly searching the dancing shadows as the torch and the sound of brickwork slowly faded into the darkness.

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