Genevieve stumbled giddily over a root and came face to face with a bunch of tiny blue fruit that hung like dreadlocks from a tree’s slim trunk. Long-bodied flying insects buzzed furiously around, as if drunk on its nectar. She noticed that a partner clung to every insect’s back as they shivered in a kind of sexual dance. She spotted two black and red striped frog-like creatures obviously copulating on the tree trunk, their shiny bodies bobbing up and down vigorously. She staggered back. Everywhere she turned, insects, birds and small amphibious-like creatures were displaying to a mate or already energetically mating. The forest throbbed with the sounds, smells and sights of sexuality and stirred her loins with a primal beat.
She suddenly thought it all too familiar, like a
déja vu
. As though she’d walked this very place before in another life… Then it came to her. Her erotic dream! This was exactly where she’d walked in her dream. Several more paces along the soft litter through the towering columns of trees and she made out where Azaes had stood when she first spotted him. There he’d shrugged out of his deep purple robe to reveal his magnificent naked body. Which meant that behind her was the tree.
She turned and sucked in a sharp breath. There it was, as magnificent and lofty as in her dream, the
vishna
tree with its thickly buttressed base, where she and Azaes had consummated their love for one another and for the universe. In her dream, that was. Her breaths halted for a long moment as her mind reeled with memories of that astonishing dream and the incredible experience that still lingered in her body. It seemed so real. Overwhelming longing dug into the pit of her stomach and the muscles of her lower abdomen twitched with yearning.
Genevieve swallowed hard. Then, gripping her lower lip with her teeth, she advanced toward the tree, where two large ribbons of its buttress split. When she was within its grasp, she stopped and drew in a long breath, then reached out and touched its smooth bark. She inhaled sharply and might have cried out, she wasn’t sure. Had she imagined it? The cool surface seemed to tingle like electricity beneath her fingers as though touching back.
It awoke a deep sexual ache that shuddered up her spine. Oh, God! If it was real! Submitting to a sudden compulsion, Genevieve disrobed and pressed herself, naked, against the tree.
Nothing.
Fool! There was nothing, except the musings of a lonely and stupid woman, she thought. What a foolish thought. Despite what Diaprepes said and Azaes alluded, trees couldn’t think, much less fuck, except in her crazy dream. And that’s all it ever was. Azaes was proof of that. The real Azaes was nothing like the Azaes in her dreams. God! What was she thinking? It was all just a ridiculous dream. He was gruff and belligerent with her. There were a few times, when he let her see a gentle side of him, that she thought she might like him. But every time she began to feel that way, he managed to get angry or spark her own anger. Genevieve quickly backed away from the tree. She stumbled and lost her footing, falling with a startled cry and landing with her rump on the wet moss.
Lying on her back, she fixed her upward gaze on the colourful canopy of furry purple leaves and deep purple flowers. Stirred by the hot wind, their fractal mosaic danced as if to an erotic symphony. They seemed to beckon and she realized that the compulsion to climb the tree remained as strong as ever. She scrambled to her feet and stole a glance around her. She was still alone. This time she took a few determined steps to the tree and hauled herself up one of its curved buttresses, gripping its smooth surface to climb and feeling the almost imperceptible bumps of the long orange lenticels against her fingertips like hundreds of little nipples.
She’d climbed many trees in her youth at home. This one was no different, thought Genevieve, as she crawled along a buttress to the main trunk of the tree, then wormed on her stomach, using her strong thighs and arms to hoist herself up with the epiphytic vines that draped down and the thick knobs as footholds. All the while she was acutely aware of the awakened muscles of her abdomen and an aching desire growing in her loins. Like riding a horse, she reasoned. Didn’t mean anything.
I’m just doing this out of curiosity, to see the beautiful blossoms
, she convinced herself.
Nothing more
.
She reached the first thorny branches and pulled herself through carefully, remembering only too well her painful fall through this layer. They formed an imposing barrier to would-be-climbers eager to sample the
vishna’s
sweet treasures above. The canopy squealed and shouted with the noisy racket of birds and rodent-like animals. Like the jungles of Earth, this was the most populated layer.
The climb to the upper canopy, which held the flowers, was relatively easy once she learned to negotiate the thorny older branches. Yet, her heart pulsed in her throat and she was panting. She chalked it up to excitement over physical effort. She’d only run her hand once against the spiky leaves, incurring a painful sting that lingered throughout the rest of her climb.
Within a short time, she’d moved into the higher layer of soft leaves and branches. Then she finally broke to the top of the canopy, some fifty meters high, and felt the sun’s heat. She seized in her breath. The view was breathtaking. This
vishna
tree was easily one of the tallest in the jungle, and her gaze spanned the purple and green and orange canopies of the various trees as they undulated down to the valley where the Eos village lay nestled within a bend in the large meandering river that Azaes called the
Vaas
. Beyond the valley lay more valleys and hills that gently rolled to a distant horizon beneath a blushing sky. This place was truly beautiful and its people seemed so innocent and peacefully integrated with the wild beauty of nature, the Eden of the Universe.
A sob escaped her and Genevieve realized that she longed for home
—
that is, a place she could call home, a place where she felt safe comfortable and at peace with herself and her surroundings. This could be such a place, but for the fact that it was not
her
home, nor were these people
her
people. They were aliens on an alien planet. No, she amended sadly,
she
was the alien and
she
didn’t belong…What was she doing here? Had she really been looking for Dan’s spirit all along? Hoping to make amends somehow? If only there had been some way for him to have known he had a son, even if it was only for a few months…If only she could have switched places with him, given him the chance to see his boy…Now the sobs came freely in a torrent and she buried her face with her hands.
Something was caressing her, holding her in a gentle embrace. Her eyes snapped open and she stared, incredulous. Supple branches covered in dripping flowers surrounded her in a soft mantle that was utterly and sensually exquisite. They gently laid her on a bed of furry purple leaves and interwoven branches. Genevieve swallowed down the last of her tears and surrendered to what was happening, not quite sure what it was, and reserving a small part of her mind to a tiny panic that she was some fifty meters off the ground.
Those fears dissolved like sugar in hot water as the flowers stroked and fondled her entire body with their wet and sticky lips. Prodding, licking and sucking, the long stamens and downy petals sent shivers of exquisite sensation surging through her. Every inch of her skin was teased and pulled and titillated. Her feet, legs and thighs, buttocks, back and shoulders, arms and breasts, nipples and throat and face and—Oh, God—every orifice! Like creatures with their own minds, the feral flowers snapped off their branches and fluttered into her mouth, willingly gaping and inviting them in. They dissolved to an intoxicating syrup that trickled down her throat.
She gasped as they flickered up her anus like sparks of fireflies. They swarmed around her crotch and she opened to them. They fluttered up her quivering vagina, pulling out a guttural moan from her. They filled her insides like Azaes’s huge dick, only in surging waves, like an ocean of penises. An orchestra of resonating instruments, each stroking a different part of her labia, vulva, mons, clit, then deep to her cervix and beyond, together making one giant fuck and sending her pulsing into another universe.
Bucking and arching like a horse on fire, she screamed as she came. It flooded out of her in convulsive shudders, jetting out like a great purple wave. It wet her thighs and spit out drenched flowers. She clamped her gaping mouth shut and continued to shudder and sob in the wake of her turbulent orgasm.
When her mind returned to where she was physically, she looked down at herself. Wet trembling flowers covered her body in purple. They shimmered like a purple sea in the evening light and lay all about her, stirring still, their tiny lips uttering some secret mantra on their dying breaths, a mantra of pure ecstasy. There was no regret. By leaving the branches, the individual flowers would eventually die but she intuitively recognized that this was part of their natural cycle and their ultimate destiny. Their gift.
She thanked them.
Then she found herself convulsing yet again with tears. She’d come full circle. Tears of sad loneliness and remorse had begun this incredible experience, and here she was crying again
—
but this time in exultation at participating and witnessing such aching beauty. It was almost more than she could bear. Yet, she felt enlivened and strangely comforted, as though a million little hands had stroked her with reassurance and the cold dark universe had opened up briefly to share with her its secret inner light with promises of home.
When she’d calmed her mind and wiped her face, Genevieve started her climb down the
vishna
tree, solemnly contemplating what had just happened. As with her dream with Azaes, she’d felt like she’d joined with all of Eos during her climax. For an instant she’d seen and become part of every aspect of it, its flora and fauna, its people, right down to the individual molecules, particles and waves that made up matter and energy. It had been nothing short of magical.
By the time she reached the thorny lower branches, she’d rationalized it as an elegant and lucid hallucination. The sexual experience was real enough, but even that had likely been no more than a delirious masturbation. Certainly the flowers were aphrodisiacs
—
she’d just confirmed that they were hallucinogens, too, and remembered Azaes’s use of them in the potent mixtures he drank for inspiration. As for her dream, what Azaes had said in it about Dan being with them, in the whisper of the wind and in Azaes’s smile for her
—
those words had obviously sprung from what she’d desperately believed. She’d simply orchestrated it in her dream with eloquence. As for choosing Azaes as her metaphor to deliver her version of the truth, she’d always known that beneath her prudishness lay a feral vamp yearning to exercise her erotic imagination. She’d been fascinated with Azaes and his people since he first appeared on Earth’s Holo News fifteen years before. Her lucid dream and even this experience now were simply manifestations of her own fantasies.
Genevieve dropped to the ground like a cat and absently looked for her clothes while brushing off the remains of the dead flowers stuck to her body.
Her robe… it was gone!
Chapter Seventeen
“Looking for this?” she heard an all too familiar voice growl.
Mortified, Genevieve turned and winced with shame at seeing Azaes. He stood several meters from her, holding her robe. He was clearly enraged with her. His face was deep purple and tight like the lid of a boiling pot about to steam with pressure. He looked a little frightening and she swallowed hard.
As she stood in naked shame, facing him in silence, his face gesticulated as he tried to form his words. For a moment nothing emerged until he finally blurted, “You joined with the
vishna
and without a partner. That is unprecedented. It’s forbidden. It is not—not—” He cut himself short, unable to continue as rage boiled over. Perhaps he was trying very hard not to beat her, she thought with some trepidation. While he’d often displayed contempt and frustration with her, she’d never seen him this angry. She shrank back as he lunged forward. But it was only to thrust her robe into her hands.
“Come,” he commanded in a throaty growl and swung back to the compound where she was staying. He didn’t wait for her to follow.
Genevieve hastily dressed as she scrambled to keep up with his long stride. She felt compelled to say something in her defence: “But, I didn’t—”
“You did!” he shot back without bothering to stop or turn to address her. “The whole forest heard you.”
Her face suddenly burned and she was shamed to silence.
When they entered the house that was her temporary home, he swung his arm impatiently for the door of her room to iris open and let her enter before entering himself. There he paced like a caged lion, throwing contemptuous glances at her, eyes sharp like knives.
“You have no idea what you’ve done,” he remonstrated in a voice that barely reigned in his fury. Then his eyes fixed on her and she felt her whole body grow hot. “You’re a disgrace. To yourself and to me. You’re like all the other humans. You’re so… so primitive. So
unrestrained
.” He threw his gaze off her in contempt and waved a dismissive hand. “No one wanted me to bring you back,” he muttered, as if to himself. “They said I should have let you just die out there. They warned me that something like this would happen. But I convinced them, at some cost. I convinced them that you had a purpose, that the Epoptes spared you for a reason. Now
this
!” he swung his arm out toward the forest. “You’re a disgrace,” he repeated. “You’re a—a—”