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Authors: A.M. Price

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BOOK: The Fern Tender
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     Dreading her day tomorrow with the wheel, she kept playing along with reeling in the road. The lines flew by one by one on her left side, the trees passing by on the right, the black road ahead sucked under then wrapped over her tires. The curves creating depth, making a deep, almost hypnotic sense of immersion.

      Her hands were totally in tune with her eyes waving the steering wheel to the left then the right, back and forth. She had to fight to think of anything else besides just rolling up the world before her. Every once in a while, she was able to catch a grip and could chalk up the weird feeling of driving tonight to stress. Maybe this was a way to compensate build some calm before the storm that was about to happen in the world. Then the road would stream back and take control of her. She was rolling up and reeling in the world again all from her little white car.

     After a while, the ribbon of the dark road began to feel sexual, like it was moving through her. It was passing inside of her, tickling her thighs as it was wound up by the car. It felt good. Soon it felt like hands and fingers fluttering up her knee, then dancing up her inner thigh. Then the sensation of falling, like an endless drop of a roller coaster where the falling was deep and exciting. Her knee to her stomach was alive with amazing touching and movement.

     Lillian kept driving, her brain was somehow able to focus on one task but overwhelmed by some mysterious force that was now rearranging her idea of pleasure.  A deep hum of rising and falling orgasms. It was too much, she could not turn it away. It was supernatural and it was owning her now. A deep hum of rising and falling orgasms.

     She propped her left leg up exposing more of her body to the force that was funneling into her sex. It was coming in waves, splashed over her knee, traced up her thigh, winding through her stomach, then penetrating her by flowing counter clockwise across her clit and entering her. There it lingered, and she could feel herself falling. The sensation lasted three seconds, then five seconds, soon it was 20 seconds, and finally she quit analyzing it. She submitted to the force, and it repaid her with a constant hard throbbing orgasam like no other she had ever felt.

     She kept driving, now totally in the moment, in the grasp of the road that snaked through her body producing amazing feelings. Still even in the grip of a full body orgasm she wondered where it came from, who was doing this? She caught herself asking, does it matter? Then telling herself, I deserve this, the weight of the world has been on my shoulders, I can relax. I can have this today.

     At that moment, she clearly heard, “Do you like it?” Andrew’s voice came from her right breaking the silence. Glancing over into the passenger seat she saw nothing.

     Answering anyway, “I like it”, and going further, “Is this another one of your magic tricks?”

     “No. It’s not any trick. Do you want more?” He asked.

     It was getting more intense and she wasn’t able to answer right away. The scenery alongside the speeding car was blurring into a glob of tracers in the evening dusk distracting her. She could barely manage to answer him, the feeling was more intense and showed no sign of backing down. Pinned back to her seat with a rush of magic flowing through her, she blurted, “Yes, please!”

     Even after she thought the feeling couldn’t go any further, she could feel him pumping more of himself into her making her fall and fall some more. He began setting butterflies loose inside her, they lifted her up and her body felt like it was floating. Floating, then falling again, over and over.  

     Her body began to quiver, going into a state of amazement she didn’t realize was possible. Now almost blind from the colors streaming off the road, she stayed steady using the white line on the right to guide her while her, keep her on the road. Her body was now fully possessed. A conduit for him to lap her up from the inside out. He was taking her, all of her. She was letting herself go, letting the Andrew have her.

     Finally she began to pump back by lifting her backside up and encircling the channel of energy as it entered her. Gyrating, playing with it like a ball of mercury. Letting it change shape and morph into a malleable element of orgasm. Letting it find new entry points, into her ass, over her tongue, up her pussy.

     They were working together now and the ecstasy became even more intense. She called to him, “Andrew, take me, Andrew!”

     Like before, there was no answer.. The force had entered all of her now though through every opening. She didn’t have the stamina to call for him again. Now fully committed and barely able to control the car, she let it fuck all of her. She was bouncing up and down in her seat, getting fucked at 80 miles an hour all over her body. Possessed by her Andrew and some mystery she couldn’t comprehend. She was totally out of control of her own body, when she was normally the one fully in control. It  was a wonderful feeling to her.

     Finally, her foot came off the gas pedal, and the sensation waned. She pumped the gas again, hoping it would come back, but that slowed it down further.

      She pulled the road off the road to the shoulder. Drenched in sweat and her own wetness, she stopped. Taking a deep breath, she wondered what had just hit her. She had just fallen down a trapdoor of pleasure she didn’t know existed and Andrew was there too. It was discovery of amazing beauty during the twilight before the apocalypse. She wanted more, but she knew that getting back on the road and heading home now was the right thing to do. Leaving the mystery behind, she drove on.

     Dashing into the kitchen, she was just in time for dinner. Alena and David were sitting down to eat another one of David’s soups.

     “Momma! Yay! You’re home. We missed you,” Exclaimed Alena.

     “Hi family. Did you save me some soup and lemon pie!” Lillian asked.

     David responded in a calm but suspicious voice, “We did. Come sit with us.”

     Despite his limited intelligence, he knew his wife. He could sense something was different about her this time. She had been too stressed lately. Now, she seemed relieved, almost calm. It had been many months since she was this calm. He knew that she didn’t tell him everything or really anything about her trips to the Capitol or to the Ferns for that matter. Throwing himself into his work and Alena was his antidote to Lillian’s ups and downs, and her mysteries. It worked for him before and again this time he could let her latest mysterious behavior go.

     Lillian sat down, ignoring David’s feelings. She took a deep breath and noted how relaxed she felt. The crazy thing in the car ride and the day with Andrew had truly taken her mind off of the issues at hand. It felt good to be fully present with her family.

     They had a wonderful dinner and a sweet dessert. Lillian read to Alena. She took a shower and went to bed. Turning off her mind for the day was hard. The car ride and conversation with Andrew were both firsts, and she wasn’t able to let them go as easily as she would like. Exhausted though, she let her thoughts shift to tomorrow. As amazing as today was, tomorrow loomed large and it slowly pushed out all the wonder she experienced today. After that, it didn’t take long and she was in a deep sleep.

     When she reached the ferns the sun was just piercing the thin clouds over the tips of the mountainside. In the mid morning light, she could tell there was a recent jaguar kill. The grove of palms closests to the Spring was littered with fur and bones. Another monkey had been culled by the large female.

     Normally Lillian would have studied the scene some more and maybe taken notes, at at minimum recorded the kill in her spreadsheet. Today was different, she was anticipating the next reading of the wheel.

     Lillian moved past the kill area and followed the trail down to Beverly Spring. Slipping quietly through the ferns, she made her way to the large rock that bordered the Spring. She positioned herself on the top face of the large stone, just like she had done hundreds of times before and waited. The Spring was perfectly still. She felt as if it was staring back at her. Trying to relax, she shifted her positioning and waited.

     Finally the Spring began to come to life. The same familiar colors began to emerge, and she could make out a circle being formed. But it was not the wheel, not the shape of what she had seen unfold so many times, not the same process she had anticipated. “Where was the wheel? Where was the wheel?” she thought anxiously. “What is this circle?”

     The strange circle was morphing, pulsing, moving in and out of the center of the Spring. The colors streamed around the frame of the circle. There were brighter colors now that she had ever witnessed, almost neon, glowing purples, reds, greens. It was a beautiful sight, but again she asked herself where was the wheel? “Am I too late? Maybe I screwed up and should not have gone to the Capitol yesterday but instead come to the Ferns.”

      A guilty panic began to settle inside her. Then the circle stopped moving and it became apparent what it was making. Her guilt subsided. She now knew it had been waiting for her. The colors bled into a golden brass color, then the shape formed a stop watch. “A stop watch?” again she was mystified. She turned her head to think, then moved her eyes back across the image of the stop watch and could now see it. It was ticking. And above it in a deep royal purple, it read 24 Hours.

     It was clear. She didn’t need to think on this any longer and the guilt left her. She had 24 hours, the world had 24 hours.

     Wasting no time, she sprinted back to the village. The school girls had finished lunch and were playing in the grove near the river. They stopped their games every once in a while to run back to the picnic tables and take long drinks of the fruit juice their mothers made for them. The boys were on the other side of the river taking their break from working with the men on the new fish ladder they were building alongside the dam. It was a normal weekday afternoon.

     Lillian rushed into the middle of the school girls, and wasting no time yelled “Where’s Regina?”

     “In the school office,” replied Alena. “Why Momma, what’s wrong?”

     “Nothing baby. I just need to talk to Regina.” Lillian tried to soothe her daughter’s and her own panic.

     Rushing into the office, she found Regina looking through her grade book. “The wheel has stopped and given me a reading of 24 hours,” Lillian blurted.

     Despite the news, Regina answered in a calm matter of fact way, “OK. Let’s convene the Elders board right now.”

     Lillian sent Alena and Edie to gather the others. Regina cleared out her office and hastily set up some chairs and tables. The board was five women; Regina-Ellen’s Mother was president, the other members consisted of  Lillian’s Mother, Lillian, and two others. Together, they made up the governing body of the the Colony and The Ferns. The board normally met in the village hall but it was full of all of the Samhain decorations. The Autumn Harvest festival the largest holiday in the village was next week. So the school office would have to do for today’s meeting.

      They were all assembled within a few minutes. The school was the center of the village. The houses spread outward from the school so calling an impromptu board meeting was a 10 minute exercise.

      Regina asked, “Lillian can you explain to everyone the latest reading of the wheel please?”

      “Sure. As you all know the wheel has been slowing recently. It has consistently been more and more sluggish. It’s been worrying me, as I’ve noted in my reports. Well, I was afraid of this but my reading today showed not a wheel, but a ticking stopwatch. It popped up in place of the normal wheel and showed that we have 24 hours before the reset.”

     “What did it say about the Colony? How will we be affected?” her Mother asked.

      Lillian replied, “It didn’t say anything. I’ve been talking with Regina about this and as far as we can tell from our records of other resets or basically other apocalypses, the Colony has remained unscathed. So, we don’t know this for sure this time, but history is on our side.”

     As the keeper of all records and protocols Regina butted in, “It is worth noting that our customs, magic, and belief in intellect and logic seem to act as a spell, protecting us in past resets. We, like our sisters before us have kept our values the same, so I do believe the reset will pass over the Colony. I can’t say for sure, but we will know tomorrow when the wheel chooses its names. If someone from the Colony is named on the wheel, when it stops, then we are safe.”

      “What are the next steps Regina?” asked Lillian.

      “Go to the Capitol now. You will need to tell the President and you will need to find Ellen and bring her back.” Regina brushed back her hair at the naming of Ellen and clenched her jaw.

     Perplexed Lillian stared at Regina, “What? Ellen? Why? She left us. Why and where does it say this?"

     Regina shook her head and replied, “I’m happy to show you all the rules of the reset in The Book of Ferns. It clearly spells out that the current Fern Tender, the previous Fern Tender, and The leader of the board, me, all need to meet at the Spring for the final reading of the wheel. All three must see it, then report back to the rest of the Colony.”

     Knowing there was no room for debate with Regina and the rules, Lillian stopped the conversation with “OK. I’ll leave right now.”

     She ran back outside and found Alena. “Momma what’s going on?”

BOOK: The Fern Tender
11.39Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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