Path: newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net!stamper.news.atl.earthlink.net!elnk-atl-nf1!newsfeed.earthlink.net!newsswing.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!newsfeed.cwix.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!newsread.com!newsstand.newsread.com!POSTED.monger.newsread.com!not-for-mail Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated Approved: ascem@earthlink.net Organization: Better Living Thru TrekSmut Sender: ascem@earthlink.net Message-ID: From: "Richard Schultz" MIME-Version: 1.0 Mailing-List: list ASCEML@yahoogroups.com; contact ASCEML-owner@yahoogroups.com Subject: New FFF: "Tantrum" 1/1(Uber VOY: Uber Janeway/7/B'Elanna)R Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 1068 Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 05:55:16 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.198.142.218 X-Complaints-To: Abuse Role , We Care X-Trace: monger.newsread.com 1104213316 209.198.142.218 (Tue, 28 Dec 2004 00:55:16 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 00:55:16 EST Xref: news.earthlink.net alt.startrek.creative.erotica.moderated:86410 X-Received-Date: Mon, 27 Dec 2004 21:55:50 PST (newsspool2.news.atl.earthlink.net) Title: Tantrum Author: R Schultz ( cousindream@msn.com ) Fandom: Not inspired by Star Trek Series: Nor VOYAGER. Rating: R for violence. Pairing: F/F love mentioned. Summary: It is a time of Swords and Wizardry, Demons, Elves, walled companion, Sevein. Sevein is tall, beautiful, scarred, female, and Red Mouser's lover. They're also skilled thieves. Sevein throws large axes. In the time line of this particular universe, this is the first story of the Red Mouser series. Disclaimer: Paramount owns Trek. This ain't Trek. Paramount can go take a hike. I write for fun. Scr*w ViaBorgCom. 5,200 words, December, 2003. Written for the FFF -- http://www.geocities.com/femme_fuhq_fest/ -- before being posted to the ASCEML. May be archived elsewhere if permission is requested first. Comments to R Schultz at:( cousindrem@msn.com ) --------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------- TANTRUM By R Schultz We were Infantry, let no one doubt that definition. We were mothers sons, every one of us. We marched in loose order, but disciplined for all that. We had scouts on horseback to our sides, and to the front and rear. We had officers on horseback amongst us. Our tools and kit, in a very large part, lay on the backs of our animals, horses amongst them. We were beasts of burden as well. I wore more than thirty kilos of food, a digging spade, two fighting knives, a good steel Baldor straight sword, tent pegs, a tent half, rope, whetstone, oil stone, awl and thumb-needle in a roll of leather. The leather could become a patch or be cut into cord to bind something together that had gotten cut or damaged. I'd paid good gold once, and gotten a fine steel push-spark tinder- gun for fire-making, and a tin box to keep punk in for the tinder- gun. Also, tinder stones, oil to burn, ungents, ointments, soap, a break-down grappling hook and silk-wool throwing line, and on this plain, four large stakes and a bundle of firewood. Five good steel fishing hooks and fifty meters of good silk and cotton mixture line for them. As well as a small iron pan, two canteens of ten-to-one water and wine, a skin of wine, an expensive tailor's repair kit, a flask of cooking oil, oddments of cloth (some of which I'd eventually use in my monthly flux), and a made-special-just-for-me leather harness on which I wore my kit and bags. That harness was damned expensive, as were the packs I hung off it. However, I'd carried kit in cloth bags only until it'd gotten soaked right through the one time. Now I had weathered black-brown leather with flaps and brass buckles and ties, and extras for that which wore out. Every one of us similarly encumbered, all this despite the loads the pack animals bore. Yet, with all our burden, no one could mistake us for anything but a company of fighting swords. We were marching in loose order, but no one strayed, no one lagged, we stayed a coherent body of fighters. We were Wolves. The Free Company of Wolves, someone had once termed us. Other mercenaries called us thus, as well as the fancy armored soldiers of the Empress. The city dwellers who might want our gold, but not our dangerous attitudes and sharp weapons within their walls, they also called us Wolves. The ones who spoke of us as Wolves and meant it as a compliment were the plains horsemen, the Nomad Barbarians. To ourselves we were The White Company. That was for our featureless ensign, our unit flag. Supposedly our unit dated right back to pre- Eden days, if you believed the Colony myths. The ones that stated this was Eden, and we came from a far world also called earth. As for me, I had my doubts. And why did we call our world dirt anyways? We marched across this wide plain, this undulating land of endless grass, and we never thought about our destination. When we marched no one could ever think we were a straggling band of scavengers, for we marched as a small army. We matched in columns, or squads, of three, with each of the three columns in a company, or maniple, supposedly being fifteen fighters long. Usually it was closer to ten, what with losses. On a plain like this we marched in three's of columns, side by side, a beast with many steel teeth flowing over the irregularities of land and through the grass and small streams without pause or deviation. Three sets of three columns, with two more such sets maniple or companies behind the first. On a plain such as this we marched in a giant square, three companies across and three deep in a battalion, four hundred and maybe five hundred fighting swordsmen and women, plus a larger number of others as our band. We marched usually three battalions deep to form a long regimental square. Added on and mixed in we had our own officers and stripers, as well as our battalion and regimental officer staffs of a few dozen each. We had our own Wizards, of varying use, and our metalsmiths, and bootmakers, and artificers, maker of things. Engineers with axe and adze, saw and plane, chisel and surveyor's plumb, skill and muscle. In addition each Battalion had its own company of archers, and Regiment had a battalion of Crossbowmen and women. Fancy Nomurean stirrup crossbows, the kind where you anchored the front with your foot in a stirrup while you cranked back the bifurcated bow. Range wasn't much, but they could pierce a suit of full steel armor, and they had the discipline to hold their line until a line of Knights on horseback came into range. Akkrat, the long-haired man in front of me here, he used to be a crossbow man in another mercenary outfit, but his aim was always lousy. Suicidal. He decided to be a swordsman before he got himself killed. I tapped him to get his attention. "If I get a new tent-mate, will you be okay with that?" I asked. "Yes, you going to get that big blond girl, the one with the axes?" he replied. He knew I'd been trying to get closer to her for weeks. I said yes, and he nodded his head. "Let me ask Perpe, he's still single, I think." With that he swung out of line and lengthened his stride to reach the head of the column. The column striper must have said yes, for Akkrat was back in a minute saying it was okay. Now to see if that big woman was agreeable. I THINK she does women. Feeling hopeful, and in a much better mood, I watched a quad of horsemen gallop by on our flank. In addition to all us free swords, we had four companies of cavalry to guard our flanks, front and rear, as well as a company of light scouts. These were usually ex-steppe barbarians on their small wiry ponies, with those horsemen directly under HQ supervision. Meaning under the Condotta's direct hand. They were his eyes and ears, and they had saved our asses many times. Behind my column and deeper inside the regiment we carried all the parts necessary to put together four small ballista. Giant bow-like machines, which when crank torqued down tight, were capable of shooting arrows as tall as myself. We were trained to suddenly flow to either side of a properly set up ballista, when faced by an enemy which thought they were out of range. Supposedly the White Company had won a small battle once by abruptly transfixing the Lord of an opposing Army with a single ballista when said Lord thought himself four times out of range of our crossbowmen or archers. The large Ballista double company had half the pack animals allocated to the White Company, just to carry the parts and the giant arrows. More than once I'd seen them pierce two Nomad horses, or two horsemen, with one arrow. Right through the one's buckler and both men's chest armor. The pile-up of helpless horses and men afterwards was impressive. I did not begrudge them the pack animals. I shifted the strap of my small target shield and then took a small taste of water. You never knew when you'd be able to refill canteens. Closer to hand we had a double company of slingers, stone throwers, usually on our flanks. Their slings were attached to two strong ash sticks, so that their awkward-looking slings had twice the range of a normal sling. Close up they could penetrate the usual boiled leather cuirass, whether covered with brass plates or not. They constantly looked for small round stones of the right size, and practiced just as constantly. The cavalry and scouts would put up stakes ahead of our line of march, and the slingers would practice on the slender lengths of wood. A company of them could decimate any band of cavalry harrying our flanks who came close enough. Most of us carried on our own backs everything we needed. As we did on that long ago late afternoon., out there on the endless grassland. Maybe we'd been defeated in battle, and we now exited the scene of our defeat. Or mayhaps we'd won, but still we had places to go and things to do. Elsewhere. We were retreating. Or advancing. Or fleeing. Or going to a new contract in a new place in a new war. I can't honestly remember. It doesn't matter. We marched, but we were always marching. We'd lost people I knew, I think, but that was always happening wherever we were. Disease, assassins, assaults, desertions. We marched across the endless plain for days, seeing nothing to break the landscape. Our compasses guided us, our few good maps, something. Guides. I forget. It doesn't matter, not really. We were always marching somewhere. And we now marched upon this plain. Grumbling, we rationed our water, but occasionally we'd come across a rivulet in shrunken banks where we'd rest, refill our canteens and soon leave. It didn't matter where we were going, we still had to get there. At nights we kept a wide perimeter and fortified the main camp. We dug ditches, planted our sharpened stakes, and slept the sleep of the truly sinless. I'm called the Red Mouser. My soft leather rain cape is made of the tanned hides of hundreds of small red prairie mice. I carried my steel tooth, my sword, and my smaller knives, on me. All the other things I carry are a means to the end of allowing me to bring my steel teeth to a place and time where I can kill other men or women. I'm a mercenary in the White Company Once I was born, once I was a child. I can't remember clearly that long-ago time when I was someone's clinging brat and hadn't yet spilled someone else's blood. But I can remember clearly that I had bacon in my kit bag that early evening, and how I meant to slice and fry some on my little fold-handle cast-iron pan. I marched the whole day thinking (as one did on a long march) about the few pleasures you yet had in front of you. I meant to soak and fry slices off my brick-hard lump of black bread, and while they were sizzling, I'd slice leaves of hard white cheese onto the frying bread. A feast, something to break the round of evening aches and weariness. Furthermore, I intended to ask my special someone else to join me with what she had to add to the banquet. It was customary to share when eating together. We'd exchanged a few words before this, and I meant to invite her to my side. Correction. I hope to get her to spread her legs for me. Sevein is a large and tall handsome creature, with large breasts. At nights I imagine how juicy she is. She was badly scarred (as were we all, though mine were mostly hidden under my clothes), with strong long legs. She probably accepted women in her bed, her smiles and touches had already implied that much to me. She probably also accepted men, even if she had no taste for them. It wasn't the sort of a world in the White Company where women could usually be only with other women. Considering the problem with getting in the family way from lying with a male, she probably had the three solutions I had as well. Hand, mouth, and more rarely, rear. A pregnant mercenary is not to be considered. Maybe she'd be willing to take her clothes off, if and when we made love. Everyone who could see would watch, but it wouldn't be the first time that way for me. Privacy rarely came to us. We might move away from the campfires, but we'd still have to be inside the perimeter. So I had more than one thing on my mind. Bacon, foremost, and a naked Sevein, if I could. After that I could hope she wouldn't die in the next damned war. You tried not to think about the dying. Or worse, the long painful dying, or the crippling and the life somewhere starving and freezing and utter poverty. Someone once said there were more ways of dying in this world then there were ways of living. So my mouth watered for the thought of a few slices of bacon first, fried bread and cheese second, and maybe a tall blond woman afterward. You could only live for the little joys, and don't wish for the bigger ones. As the sun started turning varicolored and wan, the White Company made a slight veer in the line of march. Eventually, as the shadows lengthened, we came to a rise in the plain, and we could smell the water that curved around the small place on two sides. The stream was on the other side of the camp, so I forgot any thought of fishing some fresh stock for my pan. The water detail was counted off, and took our canteens for refilling. The first order of business was for us to be directed into our camp, and that was the work for the Condotta and his officers, especially his engineers. The stripers of the maniples gave us places to pitch our tents, each column part of a company, each company part of the battalion, the regiment curling into a rough circle. Smiles, he's officer of our maniple, he rode down to the head of our column and told Perpe to give over our anti-horse stakes and pick up our axes, spades and pickaxes. We were on Latrine duty. Smiles gets his name from the face that never smiles about anything. Yet he's good-natured about his nickname and lets us call him Kapitan Smiles. The Regiment faced outward, and for an hour or so they dug an anti- horse ditch, with sharp stakes at the bottom of it. As we dug we also set our first go of sentries. Almost unnoticed a few one-time barbarians slithered cunningly through us on their way to someplace only they knew of. They went on their bellies, and observers outside our lines hopefully never saw them take their posts. Engineer decided where our latrine trenches would go. We'd fill them back in when we left. Lucky me had to help dig one. Fortunately it didn't take very long once our axe men had chopped through a millennia of sod taking root. For my efforts, I received the privilege of inaugurating our efforts. I promptly hitched my pants down and relieved the day's excess. Modesty was for city ladies who could afford their privacy, who thought of it as their high-born right. For the rest of the White Company, there were those unlucky few who had to stand watch, until relieved after their two hours or so. The stripers and officers had to constantly circle the perimeter, and woe be to the fool who dozed while on sentry go. Night was upon us, and the company pooled pieces of wood and large handfuls of previously gathered plains grass (now dry) for the unit camp fire. Dozens of knock-down skillets appeared in the fringes of the friendly blaze, and Sevein was suddenly alongside me. "Sevein," I began, but she interrupted me. She quickly bent down and gave me a kiss. "Does that answer your questions?" I laid a somewhat unsteady hand on her side and she brought it up to cup her breast. "You don't know what rules I might have," I said. "It'll be days before we reach our destination," she smiled. "Time enough for us to thrash out most of our problems. Unless you wish to tell me what to do in all things." She put a hand on my hip. "That might not work," she pointed out. I think we'd already gotten most of the rules explained to our satisfaction. As I sliced pieces of bacon off my chunk, she sliced pieces off her jerky and threw it into my pan. She had some biscuit she carefully crumbled it into the fat, weevils and all. She showed a marvelous control by slicing thin leaves off my chunk of hard white cheese. She brought out two potmetal bowls, and we knifed the meal into the mostly clean metal. I made up some hardbake of flour, soda, and much- watered ten-to-one wine in the pan, then allowed that to become baked and edible as we settled down for a much needed meal. I never got to eat that bacon. At the edge of our perimeter there rose up to stand on two hind feet the biggest bear any of us had ever seen on the western steppe grasslands. He rose up seemingly out of nowhere, and he beheaded the nearest sentry with a single swat of his eighty-centimeter forearm. The sentry was a man I knew. He was another typical tight-curly-black- haired Lacedian named Pontus, and I knew him to nod my head at, but otherwise he was just the left-handed scimitar fighter at the other end of my maniple. The giant Bear lumbered forward, and as he did a nearby sentry shouted the alarm. Two troopers at the edge of the horse-line stood, and retreated to the sides as the giant beast easily negotiated the lines of stakes. Almost like he was dancing, one said. Both of them heaved their javelins at him, but missed, due to the surprise and speed with which the black-brown monster moved. Four, five hundred kilos he was, and tonight he had a tantrum. Man avoids the bear when he can, with good reason. For a bear is a temperamental beast, and not entirely sane according to our view. He will take a fit of pique and attack a man innocently walking on a distant path, a half kilometer away, and be on top of the man with his claws and temper out before the traveling human even knows his life has just shortened. Then again they can decide to ignore someone breaking in on their hibernation in a cozy hole, and scare them away with just a mild grumble from deep in his throat. Nothing more. No one knows why or how, or even whether the arrival of the White Company had spooked this particular one in some way. But this one, he had a raging temper tantrum, now. He meant to kill us all if he could. In a dead run, a bear can out pace a horse at a full gallop, though the bear will get tired a lot sooner. But for a few minutes he's the fastest thing you're ever liable to meet. He was in a full raging tantrum, and he was moving full bore in only the space of a mere half dozen steps, once he was inside the camp itself. Now is when we lived up to the reputation of Wolves. The two sentries who'd missed with their javelins ran to reach the bear as it lumbered past them. A slinger idly looking at the night sky and standing in the wrong place at the wrong time, he had the presence of mind to draw his sword and immediately whirl to meet the bear. Bartarbas was his name. His sword cut a slice of meat from the giant animal's left arm in passing. In return he received a dent in his iron head cap and a headache for days to come. The bear then received a javelin in the upper chest, and roared his anger as he swatted it out of his bleeding flesh. Blees was an ex-sailor who threw his fighting knife into the thigh of the beast, just as another man, a barbarian with a scimitar, took a fleeting slash at the right hip as it speeded past. Blees tried to stay clean, oiled his hair and had sweet-talked me once into letting him put his member in my rear. I had felt flattered that he had washed his entire body beforehand for me. I carried the scent of too- sweet tropical flowers for a week afterwards. Both Sevein and I stood bolt upright, finding our weapons as the roaring from the Bear penetrated our relaxation. It was headed straight for us, me, Sevein, my column. Perhaps the Empress' troopers would have held firm, grounded their spears, and accepted their losses as the giant Bear was transfixed by a dozen long poles of wood with sharp iron on the ends. Steppe horsemen would have scattered and returned, to eventually harry it to death. But we were the Wolves. We were infantry and we swarmed to the attack. The White Company did not show its back to any enemy. Each step the bear took found another javelin thrown at him, each breath he took found another sword slashing at him, two swords, three. We were Wolves and we attacked. Seven grabbed up one of her Labrys throwing axes, and began to whirl it above her head even as she began the run to meet the beast. My sword was in my right hand and my fighting knife in my left, and we ran the few steps to meet the threat barreling straight towards us. On each side of us I could tell others also took steel tooth in hand and attacked like the Wolves we were. No time to string a bow or crossbow, no time to find a mounted cuirasser to spear him with a long lance. We were Wolves and we attacked NOW! Ahead of me a column striper grounded a spear in the grassy soil and awaited the charge. The bear rushed upon him, impaling himself on the spear, and killing the spearman as it continued its rush. It was short and stocky Perpes, my own striper. Unlike most Issaurians he was neither tall nor slender, but he was a decent trooper. He died between one heart beat and the next, and I suppose that's the best way for a mercenary to go. Akkrat now had to find another tent-mate, I thought, when I heard who had died. The spear wobbled in the giant bear as his tantrum built, and on each side men and women rushed in to slash and cut and stab. The blade of a broken sword stuck out from his left hip, his left arm hung limp and flopping, and someone had opened his scalp somehow, almost blinding him. Then I was upon him, and I tried not to see how close his claw came to me as I swung under his blow and sliced a line through his front right hip, whirling as he moved. I sliced another line in his buttocks as he began to slow in his rush. Sevein's double-bited Labrys axe struck in his upper right chest when she threw it, and stayed wedged between his ribs. Akkrat was knocked down or tripped, and the bear trod upon him. His breath left him and ribs broke, but the Wizards repaired him in the wake of our sudden frenzied fighting. I turned and ran to pace the dying beast, following him, trying not to block other Wolves as they struck again and again at the screaming giant bear. Sevein had someone's halberd in hand and raised it for an overhead blow, but the still swinging claw backhanded her as she neared. The bear now was bleeding from a hundred cuts, his bowels had spilled out and tangled his feet, and he still managed to move. When he turned slightly to roar at someone who sliced off his right paw, I pushed my sword into the soft parts of him and dove for the earth, trying to roll out of the way. I saw him at the last there, standing in the middle of my campfire, head down, screaming like a woman in labor, sparks falling up into the sky over him. Someone had brought the halberd back, or maybe it was someone else's. He had the fortune of a few seconds to aim. The long heavy steel blade took the bear in the back of the neck. The black-brown fury slowly began to fall forward, great shaking still moving its bulk, distorted cries still coming from its mouth. It lay down as an animal should, until a large Mountain Barbarian took his massive head off his thick neck with a single clean blow of his two-handed blade. The blood sprayed near two meters. "NOW will you die, you bastard you?" the Barbarian asked loudly. I was covered with blood, and around me the entire battalion seemed to have gathered to fight. We Wolves came to kill the deadly intruder come into our midst with his livid rage, his wild temper tantrum, his murderous claws. We all had wounds and exhaustion and bear and human blood sprayed upon us in varying degrees. Further about us the entire camp had arrayed itself for defense and counter-attack, thinking human foes had attacked us and penetrated our perimeter. Kapitan Smiles pulled the spear through the carcass, and shook his head at the size of the beast. After a while I stopped panting and elicited the aid of a dozen strong men in rolling the bear onto its back, so that I could retrieve my good steel sword. It was good Baldor steel, it was not bent, and only a little nicked on hard living bear bone. It was the most expensive thing I owned, and had once again proven its worth. An engineer had to break the bear's ribs with a large hammer before Sevein could waggle her Labrys axe out of its chest. Eventually the officers straightened us out again. Once sorted, the perimeter was re-manned and we began butchering the bear for his meat and fat, and a little fur that might be made into something useful. I never did find my bacon or my frying pan. It was as if the damned bear had stomped my frying pan straight into Hades. If so, I hope the Devil or his Demons found it useful. Those good at butchering immediately processed good chunks of the bear into sizzling food. He had lots of fat on him, so I suppose it was autumn when all this took place. Not one of us wondered why the temper tantrum came on him and why that brought him raging into our encampment. It was an unanswerable question, and all of us no longer expected answers to such. Most of us had a slice of the bear that night, and the rest of him was roughly cooked and parceled out the next night. We marched on the next day, our pace neither slowed nor speeded up. We had someplace to go, so we marched. Our Wizards fixed those of us up that they could fix. Their magic was not always to be relied on, after all. Even now they could knit us back together, but none of their skills were much use in removing scars. Well enough. It felt safer getting my slash marks repaired and no fear of future infections. Their job was to ward us from the evils other Wizards and Magickers might throw at us, not to expend their life force curing every cut or hurt. Working Magic, unless you had the luxury of really carefully preparing things, cost a Witch or Warlock a price paid in vitality and longevity, not gold. Which is why there's always the danger of living sacrifice with a Wizard. Too many of them weren't above using someone else's life force to work a thick spell or charm. This time they had the luxury of carefully crying their Magicker words and drawing their symbols or making their motions in the air. That night Sevein had her good Brandy which she laid on my wounds, and bound them up in prime spider web and charmed cotton cloth. In any event, the next day we left a few deep buried bodies behind us on that little rise in the steppe, and went our way. I took a few moments to say farewells to Perpe, my striper, as well as Bartarbas. I ritually burnt a piece of paper so that he could write his soul's name on it when he faced the nether Gods down below. Silver was on their shuttered eyes, the Ferryman's Fees. We buried them deep so the scavengers wouldn't have them. Just the conqueror worms. We were all worm meat, after all. It was the next night that we danced. I'd been to the Wizards and Sevein decided I was fit enough to dance with her. Some event like that defense against the bear became a heroic epic saga, if a good enough herald came to write and sing it. In a gathering of soldiers like the White Company, one or two of our Wolves, or three, were usually of the will, talent and skill to create such a stirring song. We also danced and sang to honor our dead, which we very often don't have the luxury of doing, not in a time of war. There were hollow flutes of differing lengths, glued together and played by the ex-Shepard's in our midst. We had drummers whose normal job was to keep the step when we deliberately walked into assault, or in formation. We had shrill whistles, horns, and hollowed out tubes of wood which could be beaten. And those who watched could clap their hands, or even stand and stomp their feet in rhythm, if they were of a mind to do so. The would-be heralds gave their lines first, and then, after many good-natured hoots of derision and much heart-felt applause, those of a mind to might dance. Most of us imitated a form of combat for our dances, though a few Issaurians ran mock gauntlets of swords carefully never quite touching the bound `captives' who screamed in mock pain. Sevein stood, and began to twirl her throwing axes into the air. Sheer utter bravado, displaying her bravery, skill, reflexes and stupidity in equal order. She always caught them by the handles, though my heart lodged in my throat a few times. Then I arose before she was done, to dance my Dance of Teeth. My sword twirled in the air as well, and it's wire-wrapped hilt always found my right hand. My long fighting knife joined it, and then I danced around and around Sevein, my pantomime daring her to fight me with her axes. We were more bluster and threaten than dance, but we stayed to the steady beat of instruments, feet, and clapping hands. Sevein brought her Labrys into play, downswinging at me, letting me block her blows with crossed blades and fierce cries. Two more such as ourselves quickly joined the mock combat, and then a pair of big Hillmen with their giant two-handed swords, all of us whirling and crying taunts as fierce as any Barbarian before their tribes. This was our tribe. We were the tribe of the Wolf. At the finish we were covered with sweat, and Seven and I whirled out of the circle for our own true combat. We undressed completely, and laid down in the fragrant grass, ignoring those who watched. "Make me scream," she commanded me. So I did. She was as wet and welcoming as I had hoped. After I drank her again, she rolled me over and spread my legs. "Don't open your mouth," she demanded. "Be quiet." I didn't succeed, but she forgave me. I can clearly recall gathering some flowers large pods, and breaking open the sacs to scatter the eight seeds each hope of the future bore. I've never seen the like since and still do not know the name of that unknown flower. We met more than once, Sevein and I, and we went back to our campfires and wrapped ourselves in blankets and under our two-person tent. Neither of us set any store in there being a tomorrow and we did not seek the impossible. Tonight was enough. ---------------END ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ ASCEM messages are copied to a mailing list. Most recent messages can be found at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ASCEML. NewMessage: