Maui, Hawai’i.

Sienna pushed the vegetation out of the way. Her feet touched the sand of this little cove that was her refuge, a well-kept secret of her Californian family that had immigrated there, originally for work, shortly before she was born: not even many locals knew about that place. It was her little brother who found it by chance, by getting lost walking among the trees and rocks, and once the initial adrenaline rush of being unable to find him had passed, it had become a treasured spot for childhood and teenage memories alike. It was where she had played with him many times, taken her first crush, had her first kiss, took both of her ex-partners, and where she would go whenever the world felt too loud as an adult.

But as she walked towards the shore that evening, something unusual caught her eye. Another young woman, who seemed to around the same age as her, was sitting on the rocks closest to the ocean, appearing to take in the view and merge with the landscape. A daughter of the Pacific in a knee-length red dress, with her long, curly black hair let loose and a white plumeria flower behind her right ear. While she was too far away to really make out her features, Sienna did not recognize her: everybody knew each other in her area of her town and she definitely could not put her finger on who this person could be.

Maybe she’s moved here recently, she thought. But as far as she knew, no one had moved there. Her neighbours would have told her. Perhaps it was somebody she knew after all, just dressed in new clothes, and that was why she couldn’t really put her finger on who it was. Or perhaps it was so recent that nobody yet had the time to inform the others that somebody new was here. It was a mystery either way.

Sienna had not walked half of the distance between them that the mysterious islander seemed to sense her presence. She turned back with a surprised expression on her face.

“Hello! Are you new here?” Sienna called out, running up to her. “I’m surprised you managed to find this place, because it’s a real tall order to stumble upon it on arrival!”

Looking at her from up close, she realized that her instincts were right: this was no one she knew. The stranger looked like any other Hawaiian, but this was definitely not a face that she had encountered previously. She was of average height, with a curvy body like many islanders, but her facial features had a sort of refined look to them. Her skin tone was a pleasant shade between light and medium brown, and her dark, slightly slanted eyes had something exotic, almost otherworldly to them. Her tattoos, too, looked pretty unique compared to the other ones she had seen so far on other islanders. They weren’t geometric and sharp, but instead flowery, with lots of softly curved patterns. Something modern, perhaps. Either way, there was simply a little je-ne-sais-quoi about this young woman that was out of place, out of the ordinary, but not in a bad or unsettling way.

Her eyes lit up as she admired Sienna from top to bottom, then back to top. She could not hold a smile.

“Well, I ended up here by chance”, she said. “I thought nobody would come here, actually. It looks pretty secluded.”

“It’s kind of a secret place, my family and I come here all the time, as well as a few others from here. It’s our little safe haven, if you will.”

“Ah. I apologize for being at your spot. Maybe I should go.”

“No, don’t worry about it!”

Sienna sat next to her on the rocks.

“Have you recently moved here?” she inquired.

“It’s a bit of a long story”, the mysterious islander eluded. “You’re beautiful, by the way. Got hair of fire.”

Sienna felt her heart swell a little.

“Oh, thank you”, she bashfully said, playing with her long, straight auburn mane. “It’s all natural.”

“Even better, because dyes are terrible on the hair.”

“You are really beautiful, too”, replied Sienna. “I really love your tattoos. They look kind of… modern? I’ve just never seen any like that around here.”

The stranger smiled widely.

“Thank you. And also, I love those eyes of yours. They’re the same colour as the sky in the middle of the day.”

“Awh, stop it!” Sienna blurted out, her cheeks reddening. “They’re not all that special!”

“You see, I’m used to only see dark eyes, dark eyes and more dark eyes. Even white people’s are most often brown. When I see such a pretty hue, I can’t help but love it. That’s how it works.”

A sort of electricity was starting to permeate the atmosphere. It wasn’t the first time Sienna felt this towards another woman, in fact, her most recent relationship had been with one.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

The islander looked at her with a glint in her eye.

“I’m Namaka.”

“Namaka? That’s a goddess’s name, isn’t it?” Sienna wondered.

“Correct. The goddess of the sea…”

“Indeed that is… a sister of Pele, I reckon.”

“...Who knows if I’m not a goddess, after all”, she said with a hint of ambiguous mischief.

“Yeah, I don’t buy it”, Sienna giggled. “A goddess presenting herself to me, some random mortal? No way that’s possible.”

“You don’t know how I got there. I could very well have come from the sea.”

The two laughed.

“And what’s your name?” asked Namaka. “You know mine but I still have no idea who you are.”

“Sienna. Like the city in Italy, or the colour. Nothing divine about that, except perhaps that saint who came from said city.”

“Ah, but that’s still sort of divine, too!”

“Right, that’s true…”

“But that’s a shade of reddish-brown, isn’t it? I think I saw that on painting tubes or something.”

“Yes, that’s it! My parents did not know that my hair would end up being… sienna in colour”, Sienna grabbed a piece of her hair, “and there I am…”

“Odd coincidence, isn’t it?”, Namaka winked at her. “Maybe nothing is totally random. Including how I ended up here while not even looking for it.”

Sienna blushed and turned her head away from her. It was a bit much.

“Who knows. Life can be such a weird thing. One minute things mean something and next thing you know, they don’t. It can get so chaotic that you wonder if there really is something at play or if life is just about that, chaos, and living with it.”

“Perhaps. I don’t think we’ll ever know.”

“If you’re really a goddess, you must know something”, Sienna joked.

“Pfft. Even gods can be ignorant of things sometimes, probably.”

“Probably? Just probably?”

“Yeah, just probably”, Namaka ended on a playful tone.

They remained there for a little bit, just watching the waves come to die on the shores of Maui. The seas were calm and the wind was caressing their faces. Sienna watched a thinking Namaka, taking in the sight of this beautiful, curious person, all the while wondering which part of the archipelago she was from. Hawai’i? O’ahu? Kauai? Maybe Maui itself? But realistically, it wouldn’t make too much sense to ask her such a question. She had already dodged the one about how she had come here. Maybe it was better to let her be mysterious for the time being and look for answers later.

To enjoy the moment, while it lasted.

“What are you thinking?” Namaka asked her.

“Oh, nothing!” Sienna let out, caught off-guard. “Okay, yes, I was considering how I could get to know you better. And I was kind of admiring you, too.”

The mysterious islander’s eyes caught a sparkle.

“Ah, knowing each other better comes with spending time together… in all the ways you can think of, if you see what I’m getting at…”

She turned towards her.

“I have something really weird to ask you about”, she resumed. “I don’t know if you will still want to spend time with me, however. It’s really a kind of unexpected thing to talk about with a beautiful lady you just met.”

“Go on?”

“...What is the most enjoyably sexy thing to you?”

Taken aback once again, Sienna took a few seconds to gather her thoughts. She had never actually thought about that kind of thing. She had a very “as-is” approach to sex, although not unintentional one bit. It was simply more of an everyday act than anything to really innovate on.

“Well… I think for one, I prefer women to men. I do like both, but… I do lean towards them. No one knows how to please a girl more than another girl, if you know what I mean.”

Namaka listened carefully, not letting her gaze wander at all from Sienna’s eyes.

“...I love curves, I love a pair of breasts squished against mine… kisses on my shoulders… slight bites… I love eye contact during the act… I love doing it in pretty settings, too. But if I were to choose the thing that I find the sexiest, I think it would be… getting eaten out, with a lot of kisses down there.”

She was still listening, almost waiting for more.

“...How about you?” Sienna finished.

Namaka smiled.

“Well, I have never been with a man, myself, but I do love a beautiful woman kissing my bosom. I love it when she undresses me, when she touches me all over, and when she fingers me. Mostly I love being on top, though. Being on the bottom makes me a little scared, not gonna lie. I can switch, but you’ll mostly find me on top. But mostly… I like breathing easy.”

Her dark eyes did not allow to see her pupil dilating, but they took on a new kind of twinkle. Something that said, I really, really like that, and in a way you wouldn’t imagine.

“Breathing easy?”

“Yeah. I just… really love it when I can breathe well, and when my partner can, too.”

Sienna wasn’t sure if she really understood what Namaka was about, but it just piqued her curiosity even more.

“Breathing…” she wondered. “...*that* can be sexy?”

“Weird, isn’t it? You don’t think whether you get enough oxygen or not until you start not having enough”, Namaka continued, her voice gradually growing more sensual. “Like when you hold your breath underwater and you start to get a little uncomfortable, because you need air, and you come up to the surface, and you breathe again… you feel it coming through your nose, or your mouth…”

“That’s… not something I really thought about, but it’s true.”

“Have you ever been to the hospital? Ridden in an ambulance?”

“No, not ever. My little brother though, he was in and out of there because he found absolutely every possible way to hurt himself. Breaking bones, inhaling or tasting things he shouldn’t, cutting himself… the doctors ended up knowing him well. I was nowhere near as much of a daredevil as he was when we were kids!”

“Ah, so you don’t know the pleasure of being given extra oxygen… but let me tell you, that’s the thing I look the most forward to whenever I have a medical emergency.”

Sienna raised a hand to her mouth in concern.

“Oh my god, have you had…?”

“Well, a few accidents in life. I had to undergo surgery to take out my appendix when I was around fourteen. Had a few syncopes in high school. A few years back I got hit by a car. And more recently, a few months ago, I had another incident that required medical attention and could’ve been it for me. Nearly each of these times, as I rode in the ambulance, or when I woke up from that surgery, they gave me oxygen… and I wish I could have had the privacy and strength to take off my clothes and touch myself.”

Namaka’s eyes were full of those peculiar sparkles, and she had this smile on her face that said everything.

“Or maybe had a mirror to watch myself breathe… or another patient to play with, particularly if she needed some air, too. I could be in pain or half-conscious, I was still feeling incredibly wet om it.”

“My god… this is a super unusual kind of kink”, said Sienna.

“Am I a psycho to you yet?” Namaka jokingly asked, but still with a hint of anxiety.

“Not at all! I just have never heard of someone being into that. I know some are into autoerotic asphyxiation, but… this has to be the first time I hear of someone being into oxygen. In a sense, that’s… good? Better breathe too much than not enough maybe?”

Namaka laughed.

“Well, now you know that’s a thing! For every thing that exists, I bet there’s someone out there getting off to it...”

Confidently, though watching for her reaction still, she put a hand over Sienna’s. Her contact felt strange: it was tangible, it was of flesh and blood without a doubt, but it felt as if she was touching her very soul.

“If you want, in a week’s time or so, you could come to my place… and we could explore that together. I just want you to be a hundred percent okay with it.”

She was tempted for sure, but wasn’t sure whether it was too out of the ordinary for her or not. In fact, she wasn’t quite used to kink or any kind of non-vanilla play. Except some exploration that remained within the realm of practices considered normal, like using toys with her ex-girlfriend, Sienna had never partaken in any kind of fetish play, let alone in anything medical.

“...I’m not sure, but I may come”, she replied, lost in the Polynesian’s black eyes. “I can’t really give you an answer right now.”

“If you’re not into it, that’s fine. We can… do something else. Some regular things. Or nothing at all.”

“I’ll see, honestly. Where is it?”

Namaka told her where she lived. Strangely enough, Sienna knew where it was, except the number in question was that of a building that was already abandoned when she was little. It had probably been renovated, she thought. In fact, she hadn’t really been in this area for quite a while, so that was a legitimate possibility. Still it surprised her that she had never come across her in the past if they lived this close, she thought.

“You’re free to come or not”, Namaka told her. “But in case you don’t… I want you to know I really liked being around you, and that this moment will stay with me.”

Something in the air, again. Sienna felt a twinge in her lower stomach as this mysterious islander’s face leaned in a little closer. Their eyes met, then closed, and their lips locked in a kiss.

Although Sienna wasn’t much expecting it, it felt like she was overcome by a wave of excitement. Namaka’s lips were soft and she wasn’t really eating her face out: she was bold, but gentle about it. After letting each other go, Sienna actually went for it a second time. The second kiss was even better than the first: it probably lasted twice as long and left her with a feeling of wanting more.

“I’m going to have to go now”, said Sienna. “Are you going to be back here tomorrow?”

“I don’t know if I will... but you can be sure to find me in a week’s time”, Namaka replied. “At my place, remember. And be sure that you truly want to come and see me, otherwise it’s not going to be any good for us.”

“I will. You can trust me on that.”

Namaka smiled bittersweetly.

“Good night, Sienna.”

“Good evening to you too.”

As she pushed the bushes aside once again, this time to go back home, Sienna didn’t know how to feel about this encounter. It was real, of course, but so peculiar that it might as well have been a dream. All that she knew was that Namaka had captured her mind and heart. There was just something unexplainable about the connection they shared that drew her in, despite having never known each other before.

Something divine? Maybe not to that point, but definitely something that was out of this world. Something unexplainable, perhaps entirely unbelievable, for sure. It was no ordinary encounter...

Walking up her street, she raised her gaze and caught a glimpse of a waxing crescent moon.