And just like that, at Lisle kitty's provocative words, Gerlinde was again reminded how far from the snowy creature she pretended to be that she actually was.<br/><br/>Gerlinde had spent many an hour reflecting on her scars and on her willful savagery.  She would spend minutes in the shower counting the whip strokes she had laid on an inmate the day before.  She would lounge in the mess hall, poking around a pile of spaetzle, thinking of the bodies she had stared over with a shroud of guilt on her shoulders.  Stillness was so often a time to listen to the silence, and hear the whistle of her scalpels through unwilling skin, the clack of the doors she locked, the crash of bombs, the tearing of letters home, and the silence itself - the sublime cruelty of silence that she crushed so many moral protests, so many higher hopes, so much fragile decency.<br/><br/>She was snow, she would tell herself.  She was cold, antiseptic steel.  She was the instrument of the Reich, all hard metal, hard cock, hard urges.<br/><br/>But the lips she touched to Lisle kitty's brow were firm, not hard.  Her arm squeezing the kitty closer was supple, not hard.  She was not hard in her chest.  She was melting through the blankness, butter through the blank white of baking sugar.<br/><br/>She leaned her head back enough to take Lisle puss' big, urgent eyes in the cradle of her own.  Gerlinde did not fear showing them the wet and the keen anxiety there.  She knew that there was strength enough - conviction enough - to see them both through.<br/><br/>Thoughts of conviction brought her mind around to the impending doom.  But doom was an empty, formless thing - an abyss, but a yawning abstract, as untouchable and unknowable as a dark pit surrounding a plummeting body.  There was no need to worry about it.  There was nothing to affix to and worry.  There was only the rush of falling in its dark inevitability, and the anticipation of the impact at some mysterious time below.<br/><br/>Gerlinde sighed and lifted a hand to stroke one of Lisle pussy's supple biceps.<br/><br/>"It's...like playing chess, kitty."  Gerlinde said.  She sniffed, but excused her the moment of emotion.  "Yes, we are in a scary, trapped place.  I will admit I do not see an obvious way out.  But it does me no good to think other than there must be a way to get out of it."<br/><br/>And Hicke, Gerlinde thought, had moved boldly to put her in check.  This was a move schemed to intimidate.  But it was a vulnerable move as well.  There must be some way to not only escape, but to defeat her opponent.<br/><br/>"I am the one, between us, who has the most...moves to play.  So I am trying to remain calm and to think of how to...win."  The ice chips were set aside on the ground, and Gerlinde's hand raised to brush Lisle kitty's belly again, warming its fingers there.<br/><br/>"Did you have an idea, though?"