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It must have been close to mid morning before she spoke to me verbally. A state of superbly suspended animation reigned supreme, a condition of natural nudity a prerequisite. Had we been any closer together I am certain our bodies would have merged into one, had we been any more relaxed then we might have become comatose and slept for ever and ever. So close together that our thoughts coalesced and banished any real need for speech. When we moved it felt as if we were suspended in some invisible liquid, in treacle or a sweet viscous oil perhaps.

We spoke of our needs, concluding quickly that food and drink came rather high on the list, so she rose from our nest and stood smiling, sunlight and shiveringly sexy to regard me.

“Did you ever realise any answers to those questions of yours?” she asked “About your friends, weren’t they?”

I looked at her blankly for, oh Sweethearts, in all our wanderings and musings together I had all but forgotten them.

I remembered Una and our time together and my escapades with George the boatman and for one wild moment wondered how, if, what they’d do if they ever got together. But the one was frightened, the other stuck in his ways, as anchored to his tribe and to the river as securely as Una was tied to her insecurities and her job.

And you know, I could have cried for Una, alone amongst most of the others I’d met, for she had, in all innocence had given herself utterly to me. In return I’d hurt her, mentally and physically, smitten her and bitten her, scratched her and pulled at her hair, scorned and rejected her when she most of all needed hugging and loving.

Then there were those others, the many, the half forgotten, some indeed forgotten entirely. What of them? Stepping stones or rungs in a ladder? Either might be likened to the race poor Una found herself losing in. Gateways perhaps, or doorways as some had suggested, places in which endings and beginnings came about. Ending and beginnings, because I knew that while I carried Her shell and pursued Her teachings, without one shadow of doubt, I’d have all the loving I’d ever wanted but never any real, long lasting friends.

……………

The Dutch girl stood deliberately in front of the window with the morning sunlight blazing provocatively between her legs. Was today the day I wondered hazily when whats his name came back. With all that had happened between us I had lost all sense of time.

Squinting against the light I looked up at her and, indistinctly for the sun ate avariciously at her outline, she gazed back at me. The hunger in my belly was not a hunger for food or drink but for the sustenance one body obtains from another, the succour and succulence only a sexual encounter can bring.

“Is it to……day?” I asked carefully.

And as I said it I wished for it not to be so, wished with all my heart that rather than fetching us some kind of meal she would get down, back into the nest with me.

She moved in the light and perfection bowed to her, slipped into shadow and radiated light, stepped away and every molecule of me wanted her back again.

“Today is today!” she answered, walking to the door but I knew not what she meant, feeling only desire rising ever higher in my breast.

I fidgeted uncomfortably when she left the room, wanting her desperately then scrambled to my feet hurriedly, expectantly when she came back.

“If you need to go……” she said “The little room is down here”

Eleven steps back down the spiral staircase we’d ascended how long ago? We’d passed the door, and me, with her hands on my arse had hardly noticed it.

I trod lightly on the dusty stone, warm breezes seizing me from down below. Brown bars always stink that way, scorched weed and singed resins, familiar and bittersweet.

Everything was there alright when I got to it. Kitchen, bathroom, and a little place to eat. And I, when first I’d climbed those stairs with her hands on my bottom had thought she lived and died in that turreted room alone.

There was a warm airiness about the loo when I sat down, as if a door to a sunlit world stood open somewhere. The aroma of the brown bar wafted, noticeably yet not unpleasantly, a familiar sweetness without the urge to indulge. When I got up and washed my hands I heard her in the kitchen singing.

……………

Prolonged lovemaking destroys one’s sense of time and place. Extended nudity removes mystique but adds intrigue and to a casual, outside observer and had there been one, the two of us would have been intriguing indeed. How might one person describe a fantasy to another when that self same fantasy was sitting before them, solidly and sexily real? Why would they bother anyway when, with hardly a pause in the proceedings the fantasy might kiss the fantasist full on the lips or entice them downwards, upwards, onwards onto yet another pathway of exploration.

Yea, a prolonged state of undress brings an increasing reluctance to put on even the most essential items of clothing. Even shoes in this instance as we were forever indoors. And all too soon that same state of undress brings about a blindness and a forgetfulness which, unless one takes some simple precautions brings about a condition which can be dangerously blasé.

There came a polite knock at our door at around midday and I, anxious to please, rose and went thither and opened it, much I might add to the messenger’s surprise.

He bore a letter in his pouch and fumbled for it whilst trying not to look at me. When the Dutch girl, similarly unattired, appeared at my side he almost fell down the steps.

It was a message from Giorgio, as might have been surmised and as expected the message informed us he regretted he would be late. By two more days. Oh Sweethearts! Bliss! Oh bliss, I really could have kissed the messenger, red faced and dithering as he was!

But he proffered his pad for the expected reply, so she drew a large X and wrote ‘get here when you can’ then our laughter chased the poor messenger boy all the way back down the stairs.

“He was looking at your thing all the time!” the Dutch girl teased.

“Might have been!” I agreed, growing hotter “But he was quick to look at yours an’ all when you first appeared”

Playfully we teased one another, her hair hiding her unfairly from me until, catching one another’s eye suddenly we both stopped smitten and then, in a flash we were in each other’s arms again.

“We must stop meeting like this!” I mumbled merrily.

“Why?” she asked all too seriously.

Prolonged lovemaking destroys all one’s previous barriers or, if there were none anyway it allows you to demolish some of the most tenuous and much cherished memories of those you might have once had, all over again.

Of haste we knew little, while in languor we bathed. I found myself licking her as she squatted, squashing belly to breasts while she played with my toes. Of restraint we knew nothing when on that plateau we played and soon I found myself as close to the edge as I’d ever been without actually going over it, as close to drowning in an ocean of euphoria as I’d ever been without actually succumbing.

Warm dust boiled under our feet as we ran, a myriad motes danced in the sunlight as we hurled ourselves into the turret room, stonework may have shook and shattered for all I know. If it did then neither of us noticed.

What our sole intention was, of course, was to come together, exactly together, climaxing as one. And in that, in one sweet effort oh Sweethearts I can report we succeeded utterly.

……………

“So did you get any answers?” the Dutch girl asked me.

Her nipples had shrunk right back down to normal which no amount of attention from me could immediately bring back.

“Answers?” I forced myself to ask, rather dreamily.

“The one about the woman with clap……” she reminded me and even then I had to think.

“Eight kids, all wrong ‘uns and pregnant with her ninth!” she prompted.

“Oh that was Beethoven’s mother” I said “Had she been persuaded to have that abortion it would have meant no little Ludwig. The kid she was carrying was him……”

“Sounds a reasonable enough answer!”

“I’ve never been able to do that with anyone else!” I confided, speaking directly into the Dutch girl’s ear.

“……no” she confirmed “I haven’t either. It’s been close sometimes but never……never as precise as that!”

For time indeterminate we lay silent only apart by the thinness of our skins. A new fire burned and new candles lit the room when darkness fell but to this day I don’t know who it was that came up there and lit them.

“Two more days!” she whispered in time.

“Whatever shall we do?” I asked.

Neither of us bothered to answer that!

……………

Georgio appeared on the second day, abruptly, tired out and late. He was also footsore, angry and hungry, not the most agreeable of states for a man to be in.

More as a courtesy than anything else both of us had dressed. That is to say we’d kidded and cajoled each other into putting on a selection of utterly inappropriate clothing in order to see if he’d notice and say anything.

Tired or not he greeted us warmly, heaving the bags he carried on his shoulders hurriedly onto the floor. I knew him of old and he sort of recognised me, then the Dutch girl introduced me and all was well again. If he did notice what we were wearing he made no comment, at least while he was slumped at the table gulping down soup and tearing at bread. Perhaps he was more of a gentleman than the Dutch girl had led me to believe, or perhaps fewer of the tales were true she’d told me about him. But he turned when he’d done and, taking the cloth I offered, wiped the food off his beard and with merriment in his eyes he asked pointedly of me:

“So, what think you of the tale so far?”

Seeing my puzzlement so openly displayed he laughed, whereupon the Dutch girl cried out “Stop teasing!” and I, not wishing to feature as the cause of an argument bowed my head and looked only at my feet.

I must say I like the way you are dressed, both of you!” he announced suddenly. “Let me guess; you are going to a fancy dress party?”

Some fancy dress I thought, looking down at myself. A yellow gauze blouse through which my upper works showed clearly and skin tight black trousers which accentuated everything else.

The Dutch girl cackled. Her top was a series of rags tied loosely on strings and her skirts matched it except the strips of frayed cotton were slightly longer.

“Welcome home Georgio, my sweet!” the Dutch girl said. “We’re not going anywhere!”

……………

He’d brought gifts for us both, pieces of jewellery, as might be expected, earrings and pendants and rings for our fingers and toes. We thanked him as he expected us to, in the turret room amid the mounds of tossed and tumbled soft things on the floor.

Oh I like a man who is nicely endowed. Not too big and not too small! Just right is exactly right. Too big can hurt and usually comes impeded by an equally cumbersome ego. Too small and, well sometimes that’s not an altogether bad thing. But Georgio was just right, comfortably tight and with the confidence of a man who knows what to do with it.

I learned the Dutch girl’s name sometime then, and though I heard him say it once or twice I had little hope of repeating it. Without dislocating my jaws anyway and those were busy elsewhere, both times, when he said it.

He was a muscular man with several scars from wounds, a strange tattoo and oddly mismatched body hair. Intriguing, again oh so……so much like the man I’d want to meet if and when I was a man myself. And he was a gentle man, for all his strength, mildly tempered and easily humoured. The Dutch girl and I gave our very best to him.

……………

We talked of our hopes and our fears in the drained interstices, matching experiences with mishaps, narrow escapes with the sometimes hilarity of the chase. Continents knew no barriers neither did time nor space. Somewhere all and everything could be both lost and found should the seeker have patience and guile enough to go in search of them. Ideas ebbed and flowed and the days, as usual, passed steadily.

One morning, completely by accident I caught a glimpse of the person who lit the new candles and made up the fire. She, it, was little more than a pale brown spectre fleeing swiftly, a sense of incense and innocence, the soft patter on dusty stone of it’s bare feet.

The Dutch girl caught my eye and winked.

“Pay it no regard!” she said “None. Some of the servants here would be of necessity deaf and dumb”

We sat on Georgio again after that, on either end of him as was our wont while the spectre slipped like an owl’s feather swiftly past his feet. But who it was and what is was remains a mystery to me to this day.

On either end of him, frequently, until our actions became less spontaneous and more mechanical until, desirous of a change Georgio said to me one day:

“I sense disquiet in your manner. Perhaps ere long you may enjoy a rest?”

“I only came here originally to meet and greet you” I told him “It was never my intention to stay……”

“Ah then……”

Parting was truly such sweet sorrow after that, some memories being close to too sweet to bear. But then, wheels turned and wheels within wheels, attitudes changed, tides rose and fell. I bought new boots and a more comfortable rucsac, two new bras and an up to date road map for the soul.

Our goodbye fuck lasted most of the day but I was not tempted to stay longer when we’d finished.

The evening tide bore me, within a tiny cabin aboard a merchant ship from Amsterdam to a land of giants, or so t’was said……

© Aahlu. 261010.