After... (a short story)

 I am still working on Through my Eyes. Again, but this short story has been bouncing around in head for several months. So, as a break from writing TMEA, I allowed After... to drift out of the shadows. 

The plagues that scoured the lands of people have affected women, giving  some mental powers that are energised in a variety of ways. The  remaining men lack such powers and fear those women. One morning, during her waking ritual, Harriet senses something different. 

After…

Spring had arrived, tingeing the gum trees red with new leaves and casting a purple haze over the jacaranda behind the house. Looking east Harriet could see whitecaps glinting in the sunshine on the distant bay, with the husk of the lighthouse standing as a silent sentinel above the partially inundated town. The veranda was out of the wind and in the sun so it would be warm enough for her morning ritual for the first time since the departure of what passed for winter these days. Dropping her robe, she slid open the door and stepped out, a zephyr ruffling her auburn hair.

The paddock before her stretched down to a wild hedge of wattle, banksia and grevillea. Breathing deeply Harriet stretched, flowed and paused in moves that owed something to Tai Chi, something to yoga and perhaps also to ballet. Eyes closed, she felt the sun warm her and the gentle breeze chase cooler tendrils across her skin. As her body flexed, she deepened her concentration and opened her senses. She felt the slow growth of grass in the paddock, dreaming quietly of lazy growth in the morning sun. Her senses slowly spread, quicker lifeforms swam into her purview: the pink and grey galahs, whickering softly as they nibbled the grass, wary of the sky and its high-circling threats. She felt a pair of sulphur-crested cockatoos jousting playfully in the sky, revelling in their flight and their game. Further out, her goats nibbled contentedly at the sweet new shoots that spring had engendered.

A listener, were there one, would have caught soft moments of a shifting, sliding melody that was both an accompaniment to and a driver of Harriet’s sensual movements. The zephyr toyed with her body hair, stroking sensation from her sensitive armpits and across her mons. Lithe movement accentuated the play of warmth and cool across her skin, playing with her buttocks, softly rounded stomach and breasts so that waves of goosebumps followed, raising the fine body hairs which in turn fed their sensations back into her aroused skin. Her areoles crinkled as her senses roamed wider, blood concentrating towards her nipples. The hedge hid a wombat burrow, deep and dark, she tasted the warmth of the mother-joey bond and moved on to an echidna, long snout raised tasting the scent of a female. Her labia gently swelled, moistening as the teasing of her skin aroused her further and her senses pushed wider.

There … there, in the thicket beyond the hedge, was something new, something very different. Neither a vegetable mind, growing slow and root-linked to its neighbours, nor a simple animal mind caught up in the immediacy of living, but one sending a tendril of sense back to her that fed into and fed from her, spiralling them both up towards a pinnacle they could not yet see, a tendril that grew thick and strong as it carried their sensations. Harriet moved faster, her skin sensing every touch of sun and air, the slickness of moisture sliding down her vulva to her thighs. And she could feel him sharing her sensations as she felt his, the hardening of his cock, the quivering drop of lubrication at its tip, his tongue’s sensual caress of his lips. He fed back to her the burning pleasure he felt as she pinched her nipples and squeezed her breasts.

Each resonated to the other’s sensations, returning them amplified and augmented by their own, twisting around one another, feeding both their flames until her senses exploded outwards as her body convulsed and moisture flowed down her thighs as she felt his seed burst from his cock and curve to the ground. Wracked by ecstatic convulsions, she collapsed to the wooden decking, gasping and nearly insensate, brimming with the energy of their mutual orgasm.

Slowly, conscious thought returned through the glow of receding pleasure. Never had she felt such a strong link and never before had she linked with man. It was both wonderful and deeply frightening. Males brought complications, distractions and conflict which limited her abilities but this male had taken her energy and fed it back, amplified and this had stretched her senses further than she had ever reached. At their height, she thought she had sensed something out in the bay – a pod of dolphins playing amongst the waves around Julian Rocks? Never before had she cast her senses that far.

Struggling to her feet, her orgasm echoing through her still, she used some of the energy to probe carefully towards the thicket. At the edge of her usual range, she felt him, running towards the crumbling highway that led to the empty town. She tasted the fear the encounter had awakened in him but behind this, she glimpsed his desire. Would that desire pull him back or would the fear keep him running? She also sensed that he was dangerously filled with energy – if he did not soon learn to manage that it would consume him.

Slightly unsteady, she reentered the house and dressed for the day’s tasks: the solar panels, both hot water and electric, needed a wipe down to clean the bird droppings and then there was the vegetable garden. But first the goats need her attention: she could sense the growing tautness of the udders of Calliope and Erato, her two current milkers. She could also feel Apollo’s interest in one of the young females and almost without thought, dampened his interest: mating would be on her schedule.

With goats milked and their precious gift safely stored in the fridge, Harriet climbed on to the roof. That vantage point, as she carefully wiped down the solar collectors, allowed Harriet to survey the land around her. The few houses she could see were slowly descending back to nature. Most buildings had already disappeared under the rapidly growing lantana that blighted the landscape. Only her assiduous destruction of its scouts had kept it from what she considered her lands. Her small herd of goats helped, eating new growth with relish, but they alone were not enough. She did not enjoy blighting a living organism, but lantana was a serious problem and it had to be done.

Away to the south, her nearest neighbour was miles distant – and meetings were infrequent: special occasions still coloured with an undercurrent of fear resulting from the plagues that had nearly scoured all people from the land.

Harriet sensed Joy and her daughter, Samma going about their day, witches like herself, as were a significant minority of the women that Harriet had ever met. Something in one of the plagues had unlocked female brains in ways that she and others were still exploring. Until this morning, she had thought only women were affected that way.

Harriet felt Joy’s acknowledging sad touch, as a finger gently drawn down Harriet’s cheek. What had happened to Joy was an example of the dangers surrounding males. A careful survey revealed no other humans were within her range, so the male had kept on running. With the collectors cleaned, she spent several hours judiciously using her store of power to encourage her food plants to grow and discourage weeds from germinating, stopping every now and then to send her senses across the land around her.

As the sun set behind the hills, Harriet carefully closed and checked the doors and windows of the house. She had fed the goats close to the house, carefully reinforcing their inhibitions towards eating her flower and vegetable garden and giving Apollo guard duty. He would serve as a watch on intruders and was capable of giving any such a very nasty surprise. Even though the batteries were showing a healthy charge, Harriet decided against using light tonight. In an empty landscape, any light at night was a beacon that could draw unwanted attention. That male – or his possible companions – could still be around, beyond her range but not beyond sighting a light in the dark. She prepared a quick meal of salad and goats cheese with flatbread, eating it as the light dwindled.

Lying in bed, Harriet contemplated how she might handle a recurrence of the morning’s contact. It had been so unexpected and the contact had ramped up so quickly that she had been a passenger on the waves of sensation and energy and then so dazed by the experience as to be unable to react quickly. In future, she would be ready to control and hopefully direct the contact. A mentally active male could be a serious threat to her and the other witches she knew. Lying in the darkness, she felt some guilt that she had not passed a warning to Joy; she was concerned that it would tip her into one of her bouts of deep depression. Tomorrow, she would have to speak to her – and then walk north the few kilometres needed to contact Alison, if she was at her house. They would, in turn, spread the warning. She would need to keep in touch with Joy and perhaps visit if her reaction to Harriet’s news was really bad. Samma was still only a girl and did not have the mental resources to help pull her mother from such darkness.

Several times, Harriet woke during the night, but Apollo remained calm and she felt nothing unusual on her lands. Dawn came and Harriet prepared for her daily ritual. The morning was perhaps a bit cooler than the previous day, but there was still sunshine and a soft breeze to entice her on to the deck. Perhaps it was the watchful caution she exercised behind her ecstatic dance, but arousal took longer than usual and her orgasm was weaker, so the store of energy was less than usual.

And the male was not there.

She warned Joy, who seemed to take the news without over-reacting, and then set off north along the increasingly weed-grown, cracking asphalt roads and warned Alison when she was in range. She, too, was startled by the revelation of an active male.

Harriet turned back, sweeping her mind through the countryside, searching but finding nothing unusual. By the time she reached home, her reserve of energy was significantly depleted. So in case she needed it, she spent the rest of the day in physical work – pumping water to the header tank in the roof, grinding chickpeas to make flour, cleaning the house and doing laundry. The appliances she had found in the house had long since ceased working, apart from the fridge/freezer, even though she had the electricity to operate them. So the sweeping, dusting and washing clothes were definitely physical. It was lucky that the lighting was all LEDs which were so long-lasting.

She went through the same routine with the goats as sunset approached, wishing that dogs had survived the plagues and had not been wiped out.

After another cold supper, Harriet settled down as for the previous night. Sleep came but she woke twice, checking on Apollo and the immediate surroundings as she lay in bed. In the grey before dawn, she woke from a disturbing dream. She could not recollect it but as well as feeling fear she realised she was very wet and seriously aroused. The strange combination of emotions and feelings chased her out of bed. She revelled in the sun-heated hot water as she stood in the shower. The water sluiced over her as she tried to wash away the strange feelings engendered by the dream. After drying herself, she ate a small breakfast of dried fruit from her trees and goats’ milk yoghurt.

Standing at the veranda door, Harriet sensed out across her landscape and found nothing out of place, so she dropped her robe and stepped into the sunshine on the deck for her morning ritual. The air was still and the birdcalls penetrated the air. He mind’s eye started to spread across the paddock, but beneath the surface, she was watchful, with a mix of fear and lingering lust at the thought of finding the male again. Corellas passed overhead, the goats nodded as her presence flowed over them and her senses reached the wild hedge and passed on, approaching the thicket where he had been hidden.

Nothing.

She felt a confusing mixture of disappointment and relief, coloured by the remaining lust from the dream. She continued dancing, her thighs sliding eagerly against one another, her long hair teasing her swaying breasts, stiffening her nipples, arcing sensation down to her clit. She could feel the energy building – and sensed him reach for her.

His energy was huge, threatening to overcome her and trigger her into orgasm, but she sensed no malice, only curiosity and incandescent lust. Harriet pinched the connection, restricting the flow of energy and sensation between them. She wanted time to build trust before they exploded in mutual orgasm. She swirled her hair across her skin, teasing them both as she pushed their arousal down slightly. He pushed back, clearly seeking to rush to release.

On the edge of losing control, Harriet let the arousal level rise and fall in waves, each crest slightly higher, building their shared sensation. At each crest, she tugged gently on the connection, willing him towards her, towards the house. At each dip, she let her dance push her across the paddock towards him.

Harriet’s breathing was becoming ragged. She did not know how much longer she could resist the siren call of their mutual orgasm.

Crest, pull him closer. Dip, slip hedgewards.

The exquisite agony of denial.

Harriet reached the stile and swung a leg over. Her vulva slid along on the smooth top bar, splitting her labia and spiking her arousal so that she almost lost control. She closed her eyes and grasped the bar with both hands, squeezing on the link at the same time. Slowly, she pulled them back, taking a couple of shuddering breaths. She gently lifted off the bar, trying to avoid more stimulation, stepped down from the stile and looked out.

He was just a teenager – wiry, yet to acquire an adult’s muscle mass and his naked brown body was getting closer, fast. Waves of goosebumps slid across her torso. She could feel her wetness and see drips along his cock. She placed her right foot on the step, her left hand slipping down her abdomen, cupping her mons as another wave of sensation pulled them together. Then he was there, her hand grasping him and guiding him until he slid home and their arms crushed them together, skin to skin.

The shared sensation of his cock being stroked by the walls of her vagina and his cock sliding into her depths carried them close to the edge, but Harriet sensed the energy flow was wrong. His reservoir was minuscule. He could not take the flow she would push at him as they shared their orgasm. Desperately holding them from the edge, she traced along their link. There, there was the problem. His real energy reservoir was not open, just the vestibule.

The cresting and dipping waves were defining their movements, their stomachs slapping together at each crest as each delicious thrust slid home, the base of his cock pressing into her clit. Using that motion she pulsed energy against the closed gate.

His chest slid over her breasts, their nipples dragging against one another. So close!

As he pushed into her again she could feel him swelling, there were small twitches in his cock answered as she started to convulse around him.

Their mutual scream roused the corellas to flight.

Her energy smashed through the gate into the reservoir and his eyes flew open as his orgasm peaked again, pushing the sensations back to her. Together they shuddered and sank to the ground, arching against one another as their orgasms rebounded between them.

Thought ceased, there was only sensation.

Harriet eventually found herself again. She was seated on his lap, impaled on his slowly wilting cock, her legs wrapped around him. His eyes flicked open and she sensed his fear pushing past the wonder at what he had just experienced. She pushed gentle calm along their link. He was reacting like a frightened animal and she knew how to soothe them.

“Shh, shh.” She looked into his eyes and gently stroked his neck and shoulder. She carefully pulsed her vaginal walls, caressing his cock.

“Shh, shh.” She felt his cock respond to her pulsing. She felt along their link: his energy reservoir was nearly full and guided some to stimulate him. His cock hardened inside her.

His brown eyes looked at her and a smile touched his lips and his hips moved slightly, rubbing gently against her clitoris. She slowly rotated against him, stirring his cock inside her.

“Mmmm. I’m Harriet. Welcome, stranger.”

His smile broadened and his hands smoothed their mutual sweat away as he fondled her breasts.

Harriet slowly rotated her hips again. “You have much to learn – and I have much to teach you. Not just this.” Her muscled caressed her walls along his shaft. “But also this.” And she used their stored energy to fashion a gentle breeze that curled around them, simultaneously cooling and teasing them.

“Jared.” His voice was light.

She gave her hips a final swivel and lifted off him.

“Come with me, Jared. I have warm water to clean your skin and cool water to slake your thirst – and much else.