Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One (31 page)

“
It’s just ahead!” Ione
whispered, awestruck by a radiance to overwhelm any gnome
glow.

They completed the climb as quickly as their
weeping orbs would permit, reached a foliage-choked exit at last.
Then they were clambering up into a copse of giant, aromatic
flowers.

“
We made it!” Emma whispered
in disbelief.

“
It’s the sun,” Mark
wonderingly confirmed, holding out his hands as if to cup its gold
emanation.

They squinted about for a while, waiting for
their eyes to adjust. Then, still blinking a little, Ione gently
pushed through tall fronds to emerge on the forest floor of the
Laplands.

Fine grass flourished
everywhere, an impossibly green carpet from which trees
vaulted to
secretive,
swaying canopies
. Flora of countless
distinct varieties abounded, flashing tones from every possibility
of the visible gamut, and
an almost
forgotten phenomenon
w
hispered past them; the wind, which carried a sex of novel
odors to her nose. Emma found herself laughing despite her
exhaustion.

“
I can’t really believe it,”
said Ione, taking her by the hand. They wandered out into a
sprawling glade bordered by thickets of densely flowered plants.
There was no sense of anything unfriendly; it didn’t seem like the
kind of place skulks would frequent. Emma took a deep breath, let
her eyes shut for a moment, just for the pleasure of reopening them
to such beauty.

Manassa plucked a handful of small pink
blossoms and wove them into her black locks. Soon Emma and Ione
were similarly adorned. Mark resisted this feminine whim, but loved
the effect on the women, even going so far as to suggest certain
colors for each.

“
Let’s go explore,” he
finally suggested, adding a last flower to a green garland on
Emma’s crown.

“
Take a look around, then.
We have to be able to get back here,” Ione advised, distracted by
the novelty of popping fat blueberries in her mouth. “In fact, we
should probably be a little more organized about it,” she decided,
and they marked the exit from the Lap with thick bouquets of
lilies, stationed at three points around it so as to be visible at
any angle from which they might return.

“
Which way?” Emma wondered.
“Wanna follow the wind?”

Ione sniffed the air appreciatively. “Good
idea—it might even guide our way back as long as it blows
consistently. I’d like to see where it’s coming from.” Mark and
Manassa gamely agreed and they set off in a loose formation led by
Ione.

They followed a natural path winding through
the glade, smelling and fingering verdant things softly revealed by
sunlight, so unlike the hard emanations of the gnomes in their
subterranean world. Mark seemed truly at peace for the first time
Emma could remember, and Manassa was utterly at home amidst the
lush bounty of nature, a giant flower in an endless garden.

They wandered on, noting the
route taken at various landmarks that arose from time to time.
After a while the vitalizing aura of so many living things banished
any remnant memory of the long ascent through the tunnel and they
were laughing and joking gaily. P
icking
their way through ticklish
floral
bowers, they passed grove
after
grove of parti-colored
arrangements, chattering in
happy
abandonment of
their
responsibilities
to the Lap
. Emma sang
a
raunchy
ballad
out of some
ancient memory
,
soon
echoed by
the others
, and they skipped through
many alternations of nature to finally arrive at a wide
body
of water fringed by a
lush escarpment of tall, orange-flowered plants
. A moist aroma that had slowly thickened along the way
coalesced to a dominating pungency, ambassadress to the whole
circle of living odors.

“
This lake must drain into
the Lap,” Mark realized.

Ione nodded reverently. “That’s our
freshwater source.”

Emma closed her eyes to dwell totally in the
moment, and no one said anything for a time.

Mark finally cleared his throat. “Is there
anything we wanna do here, specifically? Should we be getting
back?”

Ione stared the way they had come, hesitantly
resuming the obligations of leadership. “Yeah. I suppose so. Now
that we know the way we can return any time we like.”

“
As long as we’re willing to
climb for it,” Manassa reminded them and took a huge draught of
sweet wind drifting off the water.

“
I don’t wanna go back yet,”
Emma grimaced. “We could take a look from there,” she offered,
pointing f
ar
around
the lake
to a wooded promontory that reared
to an elevation higher than any
thing else
within sight. It offered a potentially breathtaking view of the
Laplands

“
Let’s do it!” Manassa
genially concurred.

“
I don’t know…” Mark
hesitated, glanced to Ione.

Emma smiled to herself, certain neither he or
Ione really wanted to return. “We got lucky. It’s morning here. We
can head back well before the sun starts to set. There should be
plenty of time.”

“
Alright,” Ione decided
following a brief, inward consultation, obviously compelled by the
prospect of more fresh air and green things. Mark voiced some
perfunctory misgivings about the wisdom of leaving the Lap society
for so long, then surrendered in good-natured resignation to their
collective desire. He slung the adventure pack over a muscular
shoulder, relieving Manassa.

“
Okay, then. Let’s
march.”

T
hey
made
their way around
the
lake, bantering about anything
that came to mind, mostly the beatific imagery of the Laplands,
resplendently illuminated from behind them by a steadily ascending
sun.

Mark and Manassa were in
front now, treading a narrow passage through a spilt cascade of
green and pink foliage.
Manassa looked
utterly relaxed,
her
sensually rolling
behind
a
constant
lure
to
the eye
. Emma
decided the other woman had already forgotten
their encounter in the tunnel, which was probably a good thing. But
Mark had obviously seen them. Emma thoughtfully scrutinized his
thick penis as it swung hypnotically through a narrow interval of
visibility between his thighs. She knew him well enough to be
confident he wouldn’t bust her with Ione and didn’t want to ruin
the pleasure of their present situation with future complications.
Annie and the other janes were watching the Lap. She decided there
was no reason to worry.

They reached the base of the
hill in good humor, only a little tired from the trek. The sun was
high overhead now, but a wide flotilla of
little clouds had wandered in to join the adventure, shading
them pleasantly.
Before climbing to the
lookout they took the opportunity to wash off in the lake, soaping
the journey away to leave freshly scented flesh. Renewed by this,
they
trod up to the promontory, a thick
projection of grassy turf randomly clotted with thick
roots.

“
Wow,” Emma
breathed.

They were now thrust far out
over the lake, a vantage that rendered a supernal view of its oval
expanse and the enveloping forests. Emma could see all the way
to
the edge of the Laplands,
where the greenery
thinned
and fine sand
warmed the air to a shimmering
lutescence.

Manassa pointed over the distant tree line.
“Is that desert?”

“
Yep,” said Ione. “We’re
surrounded by sand in every direction.”

“
This really
is
the highest
elevation,” Mark decided, turning in place several times to sweep
the entire horizon in awe.

“
Let’s rest over here,” Emma
called from a judiciously chosen site on the lawn. She spread the
blanket and Mark set the pack down, joined it a moment later on the
ground. The others followed and Emma passed around a variety of
fruit picked along the way. There was no need to open the bottles
of juice they had brought.

She felt her vitality gradually return as a
slow, humid breeze caressed the hill. Vapor was massing at higher
altitudes, softening the sun to a pleasant glow. She stretched
luxuriantly, stared at the longer forms of her companions. Manassa
looked utterly relaxed, grinned at no one in particular as she
twirled a lock of hair. Ione’s wind-kissed nipples were at
half-erection. Emma knew from experience Mark was diplomatically
suppressing an erection.

“
Tell me something,” he said
after a while.

“
Yeah?” Emma lazily
drawled.

“
You said you have memories
of many things besides the subterranean world. How about this
place? Have you been here before?”

Emma met Ione’s gaze for a moment, decided to
let her companion try to explain. Ione sat up, took a long
breath.

“
The answer is
‘maybe.’”

“
You mean you can’t
remember?” Mark clarified.

“
No.” Ione shook her head.
“I mean my memories of this place are contingent on the future that
results from them.”

He stared, blinked slowly. “Ione, what the
fazzuck are you talking about?”

She sighed, and Emma sympathized with her
confusion, a back-of-mind irrationality that had troubled them both
since awakening to Manassa.

“
I’ve been here before,
Mark. Emma, too. We remember the ascent from the Lap, coming to
this place, staring out onto the Laplands… But the
reality
of those memories
depends on something that may or may not take place
later.”

Mark chewed on this for a moment. “Okay. I
guess that makes sense. Except for everything you said, which
sounded totally fucked up.”

“
It
is
fucked up,” Emma dolorously
confirmed, shaking her head. “The only way to deal with it is to
kind of ignore the whole business.”

“
Is it this way for you,
too?” Mark questioned Manassa.

“
No,” she replied with
instant certainty. My memory is blank before waking to encounter
Ione and Emma.”

“
That’s how it is with me
too,” Mark mused. “I don’t recall a thing before meeting the three
of you.”

They were quiet for a little.

When Mark spoke again the low timbre of his
voice carried troubling intimations of despair. “What am I supposed
to make of all this?” he wondered. Emma sighed sympathetically, put
an arm around his brawny shoulders.

“
After all, how can you
assign meaning to any experience arising from a…
conditional
reality?” he
demanded.

“
I don’t know if you can, in
the mundane sense of the word,” Ione wistfully
counseled.

“
Well who set it up this
way, or caused it to happen?”

“
I would give much to know
that, my friend. I can tell you this, though; whoever it is has a
command of reality that operates outside “truth” in some arcane
way.”

“
But you must have
some
idea where all this
is going,” Mark conjectured. “Even if it’s just a possibility or
probability of future events…”

“
No. That’s the very
consequence of the confusion we grapple with,” Ione replied.
“Whoever is manipulating us operates from a context independent of
our circumstances, and the destiny to which they
belong.”

Mark shook his head in
confusion. “It almost sounds like you’re talking about two
different
kinds
of
reality, not just distinct perspectives on what is fundamentally
the same world, like you and Emma might share. How could that
be?”

“
That’s the darkest
question,” Ione quietly acknowledged.

Emma molded herself to Mark’s body, lay her
head on his tensely reared shoulder.

“
Tell me one last thing?” he
requested.

“
Yeah?”

“
Was I here with
you?”

Ione stared at him and Emma
understood her hesitation. She knew that Mark and Manassa had been
on this hill.
Their
histories weren’t confused at all, but she had no notion as to
their future at all.

“
You were here,” Ione
admitted. “I knew that as soon as we arrived.” They fell silent
again.

“
How can I trust anything
that’s happening?” Mark sadly pontificated. “How can we trust each
other?” The wind sighed across the promontory. “And what is
real?”

Emma reached down between his legs to grasp
the erection that had reflexively developed from her proximity.

“
This is real.”

She reached over with her
free hand and tumbled the items
from their
adventure kit
into view
.
Mark stared distractedly, tormented
by the implications of their discussion, then his eyes narrowed in
interest at the toys ranged before them.