I woke and the world was green.
Dappled sunlight warmed my skin in patches. Gentle wind, laden with the perfume of sweet, reedy earth, cooled the rest. My body was cradled in an expanse of silk, its fine and glossy threads caressing every cranny of my bare backside. Lilting birdsong tickled my ears.
That was good: I remembered music. I hummed along.
As the purring tune in my throat soothed my overwhelmed senses, I realized with some amusement and consternation that my eyes were still closed. I opened them and saw that the world was still green, as was I.
My hands were still my hands—big and long and good for holding—but they were green. I ran my fingers over my naked flesh, exploring and observing. Everything was the same vibrant grass-green except my freckles, small clusters of darker green-brown, scattered about me like little patches of moss.
Not all of me was the same as I remembered it to be, even beyond my color. I was much less hairy, for one thing. My skin was smooth except for a short shock of velvety hair that sprouted from my head and a matching brown tuft that spread out in a little patch below my abdomen.
These discoveries led me to another: my cock was missing.
I probed at the delta between my legs, heedless of any sense of propriety. What I found there was, as best as I could describe it, negligible. Nestled within the folds of a tiny pocket, shorter than the length of my thumb and just as narrow, was a small, vaguely v-shaped nubbin of flesh. Just below it was its mirror and reverse, a small, roughly triangular pinhole.
Did green people pee? I didn't know, but if had I been forced to guess, I'd say that was where the pee came out. Maybe other things, too.
When I stopped prodding at them, the nubbin and the pinhole fell back inside the enclosure of the pocket, protected and hidden. Only a slight crease distinguished me from a mannequin, a sight too curious to feel particularly emasculating.
Any further exploration was interrupted by the sound of soft, low laughter. I tried to leap away to hide, but there was nowhere for me to go. For all my struggle, I only managed to get myself stuck deeper into the weave of silk, the stringy innards of a person-sized pod, its nutty shell cracked wide open, exposing me to the forest. Exposing me to her.
She was a giant, well over two meters at the tips of her ears, and had a figure that would put an hourglass to shame. Her loose blue sundress contrasted against the dark red-brown of her skin. Like me, she was mostly hairless, though a wooly mane of white ringlets cascaded from the crown of her head and past her shoulders, framing a kind face that seemed at ease with laughter.
The almost-sheer dress hugged her figure and hid so little that I couldn't help but scan the outline of her tits, so full that they threatened to overflow, like rainclouds on the verge of a storm. Truly, her body was like water, receding beneath the overhang of her chest to an almost precariously narrow waist before crashing out again in a wave of statuesque hips.
Once again, there was more to discover: when the breeze rose and the dress clung especially tightly against her front, I could make out the shape of a huge, dangling bulge in the delta of her broad thighs. My heart. This creature, this goddess, was everything.
"Hello," she said.
Her voice was deep, but did not boom. It seemed simply to fill the space between us.
I tried to speak, but my voice had yet to find its way into this world. Perhaps I needed to rediscover it in the same way I had begun to rediscover my body. I should have been embarrassed, so silent and naked, but the way she looked at me, like I was somehow someone precious, put my mind at ease.
"You have questions," she declared. "We have answers for most of them, but don't worry about them now. We have nothing but time."
She reached out a hand for me to take. I grasped it without hesitation and it was warm, strong, coursing with life. She plucked me forth, dragging me out of the grasping silk with ease, wrapping her other arm around me and holding me in a close embrace, supporting my faltering body as my feet failed to find either solid ground or the strength to support the rest of me atop them.
"Take it slowly," she encouraged. "Let your body find its own way."
I closed my eyes again and breathed, in low and out smooth. She smelled like wet clay after a hard spring rain. I didn't want her to let me go—but I also wanted to stand beside her.
Perhaps I was stronger than I felt myself to be. I dug my toes into the loose forest topsoil and willed my heels to follow, feeling every bone and muscle slide into place, one atop the next, a fragile but stable tower. It didn't seem like it should be such a wondrous thing to stand under my own power, but it was just so. I wanted to leap for joy, but I wasn't about to risk it.
She let me go and circled me, plucking a few stray strands of silk from my body before she settled a soft, woven robe across my shoulders and cinching it at my waist with a length of hempen cord. I tried to follow her movements, but found myself instead entranced by the forest that surrounded us both.
It was astonishing. A vast, unbroken canopy of leafy green stretched out in every direction, supported by countless pillars of brown, gray, and white wood. From the intensity of the light in the near distance, I calculated that we were near its edge, but not so close that I could see the way free of its confines.
One cluster of trees was far larger and stranger than the others. Their bark was so gnarled as to seem woven out of great strands of earth and they had an almost-purple, almost-black hue like no other tree I'd ever seen. My pod was nestled among its roots and it wasn't alone. Five other pods of similar size and shape were scattered on the ground, all cracked open, all resting at the base of that strange tree.
I looked up again and saw countless other oblong pods hanging from the branches of the tree and its cohort. Most were soft and pale and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, hardly something that you would imagine could hold a full-sized person, but the similarities were too obvious to ignore.
My rescuer leaned down slightly to brush her lips against my ear as I stared up at the behemoth tree that had apparently given birth to me.
"What is your name?" she asked, almost a whisper.
My heart skipped several beats. What was my name? Did I even know? Who was I? Was I anyone at all?
"Breathe," she admonished, wrapping her arms around my chest and pulling me back into her bosom, so soft and so warm. "Focus on the here and the now. Let everything else fall away."
It took a few moments for the throbbing of my pulse to abate. I didn't know what I was, but at least I had a heart to pound within my chest, to pump blood through my veins. Her embrace did not calm me completely—she felt so wonderful against me—but it was more than enough.
"We are blessed with few memories," she said. "Now, new as you are, they will come to you in waves, but the gaps between them will grow wider with time. They will always be fleeting, fading as quickly as they flow. That is one of the gifts of this renewed life: who you were before doesn't matter and it never will. You are here and you are now and you can be who you choose to be."
She turned me away from the purple-black tree and took my chin in her hands, lifting my eyes to meet her smile.
"My name is Cinnabar," she said. "What is yours?"
"Indigo," I breathed.
It felt right. That was good enough. It would have to be.
"Welcome back, Indigo," she said. "Welcome to the new world."
Cinnabar kissed me on the forehead and then released me again from her tender embrace. My world became a little colder, but she did not go far and she held out her hands to me.
"Come with me," she offered.
I would have followed her anywhere.
A short walk saw us emerge onto a wide, hilly meadow, covered all over in short grass and tall flowers. The sun was blinding after the shade of the forest, but its heat was welcome. I felt as though I had been in darkness for longer than I could believe and now at last had been returned to the light. That wasn't far from the truth, Cinnabar explained.
"You were human once," she told me, "but you are human no longer. We call ourselves haoma."
"Is that why I'm green?" I asked.
"It is," she said. "Haoma were engineered from human stock, but modified significantly. One of many such differences is the chlorophyll adaptation that gives our newly-reborn their distinctive color."
"Chlorophyll?" I repeated. "Like plants?"
"The same," she concurred. "It wouldn't be precisely accurate to describe us as part plant—the reality is significantly more complicated—but it works well enough as shorthand."
I struggled to formulate my next question until I kept it simple: "Why?"
Cinnabar laughed, a sound as deep and warm as the sun above, on its lazy arc across the sky.
"That adaptation in particular has certain advantages," she mused. "For now, you will need for no sustenance besides water and light."
"I can photosynthesize?" I stammered.
"As you say," she agreed.
We stopped at the crest of one of the smaller hills in the meadow, which was bounded on all sides by trees. In the direction we'd come from—south, I decided, although our proximity to noon made that a tenuous declaration—the forest went on for as far as I could see. To the west, the forest turned wilder and, best as I could judge, extended far further. To the north, the forest was scrubby and gave way to a looming mountain that dwarfed the high embankment that girded the eastern side of the meadow. Near the base of that cliff were the smallest clusters of trees, less a forest than a collection of loosely-entangled orchards, all flanking the base of a wide stone stair that stretched upward and beyond.
"You're fucking with me," I scoffed.
"I'm not," she said. "Take off your robe."
I hesitated. Somehow, in the full light of day, the act of disrobing felt newly taboo, although that ignored the fact that she'd been the one who had dressed my naked body in the first place.
"Indigo," she addressed me. "You are safe here, I promise you. You'll need to get used to this or else you'll starve."
It wouldn't be the first time I'd taken my clothes off for my supper—a fragment of memory flitted through my mind, just as fleeting as Cinnabar had promised it would be—but never quite so literally. I considered that I had no reason not to trust her, so I did as she said, shrugging the robe onto the grass and exposing myself to the sun.
My response was instantaneous. That uplifting feeling I'd experienced upon entering the meadow was more than just a feeling. It was barely even a metaphor: I was a flower unfurling before the sun. The light filled me up, satiating a hunger so deep inside me that I had yet to feel its pangs. Or it would, rather, if I stayed here long enough. Cinnabar let me have a few minutes—a light snack—and then beckoned for me to come along again.
I picked up my robe and put it on loosely, neglecting to tie the cord so that my exposed front could continue to soak up some rays.
"For now, you said," I recalled. "Will I not always be able to do this?"
Cinnabar shook her head.
"It will last about a year," she explained. "As the green fades from your skin, you'll find yourself needing traditional nourishment more and more, but there's plenty of food in the ashram. You won't go hungry."
Distracted as I was by the sun, I'd have lost my way among the hillocks, but Cinnabar had led us neatly into one of those little orchards that I'd spied before. They bore fruit—real fruit, not people-fruit. Cinnabar plucked one and held it out to be. It was soft and fuzzy, teardrop-shaped and red-orange, like a cross between an apricot and a pomegranate. An aprigranate. A pomricot?
"I thought I didn't need to eat," I said, churlishly.
"You don't," she agreed, "but that doesn't mean you can't."
"What will happen if I do?" I asked.
There was something devilish about the look in her eye in that moment.
"Trust me, Indigo," she insisted. "Eat."
Maybe she was a devil, but I did trust her, damn me, so I snatched the fruit from her grip and took as big a bite as I could fit in my mouth. It was plump and sweet, spraying sticky juices all over my face. How long had it been since I'd tasted something so delicious? Maybe never. The explosion of flavor shot through my body like wildfire, pumping me full of a surging, almost violent energy. It was altogether too much. I didn't need this, but I wanted it, badly, and barely took the time to swallow before I scooped up another mouthful, mashing its tender meat between my teeth.
I groaned, despite myself. This fruit was so good that it was practically a sexual experience.
My cock agreed.
There it was. A familiar weight, already hard and at attention, bucking slightly as if it wanted to escape from the bondage of my pelvis and fly straight into Cinnabar's waiting hands. I blinked and looked again. Where had that been before?
I reached down to touch myself, sending an uncontrolled shudder through my body as I wrapped my fingers around its girth. It felt as it always had, only not quite. I fondled further beneath. The folds of what I'd had before had all but disappeared, the body of the pocket drawing up into the shaft of my cock. I had no balls, just shaft and smooth taint all the way back to my asshole. I shuddered again, glad to the discover that, at the very least, I still had that.
"In preanthetic haoma," Cinnabar intoned, as if reading out of a textbook, "the consumption of material nutrients will engender a buildup of kinesthetic energy that, if not properly dispelled, may cause temporary or—in extreme cases—lasting harm. Typically, such an excess is released through the application of vigorous physical activity."
I swore in that moment—though I was too distracted to say for certain—that I saw Cinnabar lick her lips. We continued to speak, but I couldn't help but notice that her focus remained not on my face but on my cock. That was fine: it held my attention, too. I went so far as to start gently stroking myself as I finished the last few bites of fruit and spit the sucked-clean pit onto the ground.
"So, uh, this is normal?" I asked, stupidly.
"Very," she confirmed, also rather stupidly.
Something she'd said made a connection in my mind, pulling me briefly out of the erotic haze.
"Wait," I stammered. "What does preanthetic mean? Am I a child?"
"Look at yourself, Indigo," she said, all mirth and kindness. "You are not a child. Your physical body is as fully adult as your mind. It is, however, as unsettled as your mind. Until you experience anthesis, your sex organs will be mutable, manifesting as they like when you are aroused."
I tore my focus away from my cock. I'd begun to stroke more firmly than I intended to and needed a distraction. Not that Cinnabar provided me with anything but more stimulation.
"And after anthesis?" I queried.
Cinnabar slipped her fingers under the hem of her dress and drew it smoothly up and over her head, exposing herself fully to me. She was gorgeous. Her tits, free of their confines, were perfectly bell-shaped and inhumanly large, their broad, puffy nipples a darker, browner shade of her lovely red skin. She, like me, had no belly button, leaving her tummy smooth and taut and adorned with a heart-shaped patch of wooly white hair above her—I gulped—extremely large cock. It already dwarfed mine in all aspects and it was barely hard.
She wrapped both hands around its base, the better to heft its weight, and lifted it up against her meadow of pubic hair, exposing her cunt below. It spread out from where her testicles might otherwise have been. Her wide, long outer labia were neatly parted by her engorged and perfectly mirrored inner labia, which were more vibrantly pink than the rest of her. Even from here, I could see a glistening coalescence of wetness gathering along her folds.
"When you achieve anthesis, your body will settle into its final figure," she announced.
Her low voice had turned husky and raw with arousal. At the sight of her so fully exposed, I had resumed my self-stimulation, which only seemed to turn her on more.
"Will it be like yours?" I asked.
"Your configuration will match your innermost desire," she explained.
She moved towards me as she spoke, drawing our bodies ever closer, and I resisted the urge to dive into the sea of her undulating flesh.
"It may resolve to be like mine is now," she suggested.
Her tits pressed into my chest, rubbing her thick nipples over my own hard and flat little buttons.
"Or it may resolve to be like yours is now," she continued.
Her cock rubbed against mine, batting away my hand with its mass, leaving a slick trail where its head met my shaft.
"Or it may resolve to another entirely, beyond or between our two figures," she concluded.
Cinnabar gripped my ass in both her hands and fell to her knees, letting her tits run the length of my frontside, down and over my cock. She enveloped me in her hot mouth, sucking in my length all the way to the base in a single pull.
Was this what that fruit had felt like when it was eaten? If so, it was consumed in ecstasy.
The red goddess worked her mouth up and down my cock, running her tongue in circles around my head with each successive pass, now and then flicking it sharply against the hole at its tip. While her mouth worked, so did her hands, kneading my ass and moving ever downwards and inwards until two fingers, slick with the spit that dripped between my legs, ran circles around the outer folds of my asshole, steadily encouraging it to relax and let them pass.
In the very moment that my asshole relented, accepting one full digit into its depths, Cinnabar released my cock from her mouth and, propping up her tits from beneath with her free arm, buried it in the soft flesh between them.
I gasped and froze, caught in the middle of too many sensations.
"Don't hold back, Indigo," she urged. "Fuck my tits!"
Well, if she put it that way.
I braced one hand against her shoulder, snaked the other through her mop of wooly hair, and thrust my hips with all the strength I could muster. With every jab, she slid her finger in and out of my ass in perfect synchrony. I quickly lost track of which of us was the one being fucked—and realized soon thereafter that I didn't care. I had an inkling that that this was the first of many lessons Cinnabar would teach me and I couldn't have been more pleased.
It didn't take long for me to exceed my limit, spraying forth my juices—not unlike the fruit—into the valley between her chin and tits. They pooled there for a moment before they began to drip down along the long curves. Cinnabar reached out with her tongue and lapped up a rivulet, ever so pleased with herself.
At some point, she must have liberated herself from my asshole, because I was empty and she was free to stand and take a few paces backward to where the grass was thicker and the earth was softer beneath the shade of a little cluster of fruit trees. She sat down and laid back, spreading her legs and planting her heels in the dirt, wrapping one hand around the base of her own cock and drawing it back against her stomach, leaving her cunt at the center of my attention.
When I sputtered and did not move, she rose halfway, propping herself up on one elbow.
"Look at yourself, Indigo," she chided. "You're not done yet. Come finish inside me."
I did look at myself. I looked at myself for an uncomfortably long time. This body I was in, it wasn't mine—but I supposed that it could be. I was green, yes, but these were my hands and this was my cock and I was still hard and I wanted what she was offering so badly I could scream.
So why was I hesitating?
I bruised my knees on the ground with the force of my approach, positioning my cock at the entrance of her cunt, but not before I drew up her tits in my hands and suckled at her nipples. The sticky dregs of my previous orgasm still drenched her chest and the taste was a far cry from what I could remember—sweeter and almost refreshing, again so much like the fruit.
She stroked her cock gently, soothing it as if it were a wild beast. Indeed, when I contemplated taking it into any of my available holes, I worried that it might break me—but as appealing a thought as that was, my cock ached with need and I was distracted from any other purpose. When she danced a free finger around my head, lubricating it with her own free-flowing wetness, I could be patient no longer.
Cinnabar groaned in deep, gratified relief as I buried myself in her. I knew just from the sense of her—and from what I knew of myself, scrubbed clean of past or pretense—that mine could not be the best or biggest cock she'd ever had inside her, but that didn't seem to matter. My cock was the one that was inside of her right now, thrust after hammering thrust, my hips crashing against the spread curve of her incredible thighs, my hands holding onto her knees for dear life.
Focus on the here and the now, she'd told me.
We were the here and the now.
We were who we chose to be.
We were not alone.
And there was nothing figurative about that: another haoma stood at the edge of the grove, and the rhythm of my desperate thrusts fell apart as I saw her. The stranger was roughly my height but as thin and sharp as a harpoon. She was naked, too, although she held a pale sundress in front of herself, half-modestly, like it was a shield against a danger that she couldn't be certain she wanted to avoid.
"Come on over," said Cinnabar from underneath me. "It's okay."
Cinnabar lifted her heels and wrapped them around my lower back, pulling me forcefully back into her as I gasped in meager protest. She groaned at the feeling of me and I stopped complaining.
The other haoma drew closer at Cinnabar's request. Her tits were out—an observation that suddenly took on new meaning. For all the fear written on her face, she must be aroused by the scenario unfolding before her, or else she wouldn't have tits at all. Whatever she made of this, of me, she liked what she saw.
Thus emboldened, I allowed myself to examine her more thoroughly. She was just as green as I was, but it wasn't the same green. Hers was a dark blue-green, like kelp, which drew down to almost black around her nipples, sharp little things that protruded like stilettos on the ends of small and perky mounds. When she dropped her sundress on the grass beside me, I saw that she had a cunt between her legs, one which was adorably engorged, its showy inner labia curling outward and nearly concealing the rest of her folds.
Cinnabar gestured for the stranger to sit on her face, even as I continued to rut against her. I wondered if she might resist, were she not as drunk on arousal as the rest of us, but she did as she was told and straddled Cinnabar's head, giving up her cunt to be greedily gobbled. The stranger's back arched, almost as if she wanted to flee, but Cinnabar held her tightly by her hips and she soon melted into the feeling, mewling sobs of pleasure bubbling up from deep beneath her placid surface.
Hypnotized by her frenetic swaying, I reached out a hand, only thinking better of it at the very moment that she snatched it from the air and clamped it hard over her right tit. What a marvel she was, so strange and green, so far removed from everything and everyone I had ever known or loved. We would never be human again, and yet the way her body contorted as I pinched and rolled her nipple between my thumb and forefinger was as fundamentally human a gesture as I could imagine.
My reverie was interrupted by the slap of Cinnabar's massive cock, which flopped freely to and fro without her hands to hold it back. I grabbed hold of it around the base with my free hand and caught the stranger's deliriously wandering gaze. All her faculties of language had been stripped away by Cinnabar's relentlessly probing tongue, so I wordlessly communicated my intent. To my pleasant surprise, she comprehended my motives and joined in, gripping Cinnabar's shaft just below its bulbous head.
As I drove my cock into Cinnabar's cunt and the stranger ground her cunt against Cinnabar's mouth, we jerked her cock together, alternating pressure and keeping time with the pace of our wild fucking. We swam together in the ocean of her body, making ourselves one with her currents, riding high along her waves. Something began to roil deep in Cinnabar's belly and her cock started to twitch between our hands. She squirmed, trying to escape, but we held on tight.
We did not finish together, but it was as close as it could be.
The stranger went first. She shuddered and lost her grip on Cinnabar, shrieking with pleasure as she careened backwards and fell onto the grass.
I went next. I tried to extract myself from Cinnabar's cunt before I lost control of my orgasm, but she held me tight against her until I'd exploded inside, pouring out my vital fluids into the depths of her cunt.
With my very last strength, I gave Cinnabar's cock a few last, low tugs. It was enough. Her cock erupted like a fountain, spraying up and raining down on the stranger and I both. I caught a few droplets in my mouth as I collapsed atop Cinnabar and they were salty as the sea and sweet as molasses. Truly, she was everything.
She was also apparently limitless. Cinnabar showed no sign of exhaustion or wear as she rolled me off her chest and gently set me next to the stranger, among the grass. Her large, warm hands cradled me like I weighed nothing at all and once again she made me feel unfathomably like I was some kind precious stone, to be displayed with utmost care. Despite all we'd done, she still had the energy to kiss along our bodies, licking up and drawing away every vestige of our exertions.
The stranger looked significantly more relaxed now than when she had first lit upon the grove. She reached over with a limp hand and failed to suppress a giggle as Cinnabar nibbled along her sopping inner thigh.
"I'm Harriet," she declared breathlessly, "but you should call me Hattie."
I closed my fingers around hers and tried to shake them, but we were far too sunken in our afterglow for either one of us to move. In the end, we just held hands for a while, which was a perfectly pleasant thing to do.
"Okay, Hattie," I said. "I'm Indigo. It's a pleasure to—"
Cinnabar stopped me mid-phrase as she tipped my deflating cock into her mouth and gave it a thorough tongue-wash, flashing me an utterly unapologetic grin when she was done.
"—meet you," I finished, once the stars had faded from my vision.
////
I watched the changes happen in reverse.
My cock, grown flaccid, continued to shrink. Its shaft first compressed and then inverted, spreading out into the smooth enclosure of my pocket. Its glans reduced further and further until it could no longer contain my urethra, at which point the two parted, resuming their earlier state as a matched pair of tiny triangular nub and tiny triangular hole. Quick as anything, the pocket closed over them and I was returned to the state I'd been in when I first awoke.
Hattie's transformation was similar, if outwardly subtler. The lips of her vulva receded until they formed the outer folds of her pocket while her clit and urethra suspended in place, the former shrinking until it matched the latter in diminutive size. The most shocking change was the most difficult to see: her vaginal canal grew shallower and shallower until it vanished completely, leaving the space beneath her nub and hole just as smooth as mine before her pocket closed around them.
I took a moment to examine Hattie more holistically, now that our sexual organs and urges were temporarily diminished. Her rail-thin physique belied a fearsome power, based on the cords of well-toned muscles that already lined her shoulders, back, and arms. I could vaguely recall that I'd known a few swimmers rather intimately in my past life and she resembled every champion among them.
A sour fragment flashed at the periphery of my thoughts as I remembered what had so recently transpired between Cinnabar and me. Either she knew what I was thinking or she caught me staring at her belly, because she answered my question before I could ask it.
"It was safe for you to empty yourself inside of me," she declared. "You aren't fertile. None of us are. All haoma are eunuchs by design."
I released a breath I didn't realize I'd been holding.
"Our ejaculate is called sap," Cinnabar continued. "Cocksap, as a rule, tends to be thick like honey. It clings and gathers. Cuntsap, on the other hand, tends to be thinner like nectar. It covers and coats. Everyone's is a little different in taste and look and feel, but it's all broadly the same stuff."
"And there's no risk?" I questioned.
"None at all," she concurred. "Sap is entirely harmless. In fact, it contains a variety of vitamins and minerals that are quite enriching for a haoma to ingest or absorb."
She patted her belly and I tried now to stop staring—which was difficult, given that her sex organs didn't withdraw like ours. Her impressive assets remained fully on parade, inflamed and glistening from our carnal interaction.
"Consider yourself to have done me a favor in more ways than one, Indigo," she said. "You, too, Hattie. You let me drink my fill."
Hattie blushed, a darkening of her green cheeks.
"It's like we were made for this," I mused out loud.
Hattie blushed even harder at my comment, sending the flush up to her slightly-pointed ears.
"I'd rather go jump in the ocean," Hattie contended, "but sex gets the job done in the pinch. Next time you get like that, go for a jog or find yourself a partner, but whatever you do, don't ignore it. I've tried to withstand the feedback before and I promise you, Indigo, it's not worth it."
Her voice was a soft soprano, high and clear but not at all shrill, altogether pleasant to listen to. I wanted to talk with her more, but she had already risen. She picked up her sundress and began to pull it back on over her head, then thought better of it. Hattie had nothing left to hide from us and no cause at all to hide from the sun.
"I'm taking Indigo up to the heights, if you'd like to join us," Cinnabar offered.
"Thank you, but no," Hattie replied.
She wandered out into the meadow without looking back our way.
I retrieved my robe from where I'd discarded it and put it on properly, this time, tying the cord neatly around my waist. Cinnabar donned her blue sundress, settling it lightly over her astonishing curves.
"Maybe this is rude," I remarked, "but if Hattie knows better than to eat the fruit without a partner on hand, why would she do it anyway?"
"What do you mean?" asked Cinnabar.
"She was already manifested when I spotted her at the edge of the grove," I explained. "Doesn't that mean she'd eaten a fruit?"
Cinnabar laughed, understanding the source of my confusion.
She plucked another of the plump red-orange fruits off the tree and took a bite, carefully catching a drip of juice as it rolled down her chin and licking it off her finger. Was she trying to work me up again? If so, it was working. I could feel something in my delta—a stirring, for lack of a better word—though my pocket was still, for the moment.
"First," said Cinnabar, "these are called incarnadines."
She took another bite and then continued speaking—gracefully, somehow—with her mouth full of flesh.
"Second," she continued, "Hattie didn't eat anything before she manifested. You manifest when you're aroused, not when you eat. Especially now, eating will give you a surfeit of energy that can cause you serious discomfort and potential harm if you don't do anything with it. Sex is the common cure, but Hattie isn't wrong: you could just go for a run."
"So it wasn't the fruit," I echoed.
"Not in the slightest," she quipped. "The fruit gave you a nice boost of energy, but you manifested because you were horny as fuck."
Cinnabar had the nerve to wink slyly, but I couldn't argue against her observation.
"So that means Hattie saw us fucking," I concluded.
"It means that Hattie is still figuring some things out about herself," Cinnabar amended, "and that we happened to be in the right place at the right time to explore one of those possibilities."
When Cinnabar took her last bite of the incarnadine, she neglected to catch its drip, letting the juice dribble all the way off her chin and into her cleavage. I could feel stirrings, all right, but I didn't think I had another round in me. Abundance of energy notwithstanding, I had too many questions and was too eager to see the rest of the world I'd been reborn into.
"You mentioned a tour?" I suggested, briskly changing the subject.
I couldn't tell whether Cinnabar looked at me with pride or dissatisfaction, then. Maybe it was a little of both.
She led the way to the stone steps that cut into the embankment. I dared not count them, lest I be discouraged, but they were wide and long and easy to climb. Every stone had been placed by hand—or, given their size and depth, by many hands—and had been worn gently smooth by the passage of countless feet.
Bare feet, at that. It occurred to me as we climbed that Cinnabar had offered me no shoes or sandals and wore none herself. Neither of us seemed bothered by our lack of footwear. Perhaps that was another quirk of haoma biology: tough feet.
Cinnabar said nothing as we walked, though I caught her eyes frequently following my movements, silently assessing my progress, offering me no help that I didn't need but ready to catch me if I stumbled. To my surprise, I never did. This body was brand new, but it felt comfortable in a way that my human body—what little I could remember of it—never had, like it had been made just for me. It wasn't perfect, but it was perfectly mine.
The air around us grew cooler as we climbed higher. My robe did little to ward off the chill and I longed to escape from the shade of the tree-covered path. Cinnabar saw me shiver and reached out a steadying hand, spreading warmth through my arm where she held it, silently encouraging me to be patient a little longer. For her, I'd try.
A short time later, we crested the stairs and stepped out into a sunny junction, where another haoma waited for us. The light shining down from above immediately restored me to a more comfortable state, offsetting my sudden trepidation. Surely, Hattie and Cinnabar weren't the only other haoma in the world, but these first encounters still felt shocking and alien in a way that I couldn't quite describe. Perhaps it was a failure to recognize my new self in them.
The newcomer—in my backwards perspective—wore a high-collared, flowing blouse over wide-legged cloth pants in earthy shades of green-gray that contrasted pleasantly against the pale yellow-gold of her skin and the deep brown of her long, straight hair. She was shorter than me, which meant Cinnabar towered head-and-shoulders over her, although they each filled the space beside the other comfortably, as though they were very used to each other's presence. The drape of her clothes, combined with an inward-drawn posture, did much to hide her curves, but not so much that I couldn't guess at her shape. Her body was less extreme than Cinnabar's, but her bosom would be big by any standard measure and her bottom was delightfully round and full.
"Kyo," Cinnabar addressed her, "meet Indigo."
"Hello, Indigo," said Kyo. "Welcome to the ashram."
She held out both her hands, palms up, and I put my hands in hers, entranced by the natural invitation. The touch of her skin was electric, something altogether different from Cinnabar's patient, encompassing warmth. Maybe it was my imagination, but I could feel her presence coursing over me, up and down the length of my body beneath my robe, through every crevice and along every curve. When I gasped at this exciting intrusion, she let go of my hands with a giggle.
Her posture shifted as I took a step back and I no longer felt any shame over sizing her up before I even learned her name. She hadn't meant to hide from me at all. She'd wanted me to look. She'd wanted me to seek her sheltered places. And now that I had, she wanted to show how much more there was to her that I couldn't yet see.
Who were these monstrously sensuous beings?
"Kyo will be taking care of you while you stay in the ashram," said Cinnabar. "If there's anything you need, anything at all, go to her."
I had a clear picture of what some of those anything-at-alls might be, especially now that Kyo had unveiled herself, but another point had caught my attention.
"You called it that before," I noted. "The ashram. What is it?"
"An old word," said Kyo, "but one that fits this place. It is a sanctuary for those among us who wish not simply to live, but to grow. A place of striving. A place of care."
Her voice was sharp, but musical, like a plucked string. It pulled at you, pleasantly encouraging your attention.
"It's a village," Cinnabar clarified. "We built it in the hills overlooking the Crystal City as a refuge for the newly reborn. We wanted to give them—you—a chance to ease into their new existences at their own pace."
"It can be a lot to process," Kyo added.
"And it's better done up here than down there or out in the wilds," Cinnabar concluded. "We learned that the hard way."
There was pain underneath her somber tone. Lots of things had to be learned the hard way, but I could feel that Cinnabar regretted that this lesson had been one of them.
"The Crystal City?" I asked, latching onto the most tangibly strange detail of her explanation.
The two haoma grinned together.
"Let's go for a walk," Kyo offered.
She explained the layout of the ashram as we followed a well-marked path through the trees.
"This way, north from the junction, will take us into the heights," she said. "Cinnabar lives up here, as do some of the other less-social members of our community. If we'd gone west, you'd find yourself on the temple grounds, which is where you can find me, most often, if you don't otherwise know where I am. The way south, of course, would take you back down to the meadow. When we return, we'll take the path east, which will take you to the plaza and the roundhouses, where you'll be staying."
My head swam as I tried to form a map in my mind.
"Don't worry," Kyo said sweetly. "We won't let you lose your way."
Somehow I doubted it would be that easy. I'd spent a lot of my human life lost—I didn't have to remember all the details to know that much. I could feel it in my bones. Or, I supposed, in the memory of my bones, my phantom former self.
"If Kyo takes care of us," I asked Cinnabar, "what do you do in the ashram?"
I didn't mean it harshly, although I realized it could be taken as such a moment after the words passed my lips. Typical, for my brain to move more quickly than my heart.
Cinnabar barked a quiet laugh at the question, but Kyo answered for her.
"Cinna takes care of us all," she said. "She's as close to a leader as the ashram has—and some might say even more than that."
"Stop it," Cinnabar chided, her words suddenly strict. "I am none of that. I'm just the village headshrinker, Indigo. I'll be checking in on you from time to time—and you can come see me whenever you need to talk—but don't expect to see much of me outside of that. I'm a bit of a shut-in, I'm sorry to say."
"It's never too late to change," Kyo scoffed. "You were the one who taught me that."
I was overcome with a momentary sense of vertigo in that moment as I grasped at the depth of the relationship between these two. I had recognized that they were comfortable around each other, but this sudden flare of tension exposed just how shallow a reading that had been. Had I ever been as close to anyone as these two were to each other? I'd only caught a glimpse and it was still a dizzying level of intimacy. They went beyond friends, beyond lovers, beyond kin. I wondered, then, if they might not be very, very old.
When I couldn't work up the courage to ask that question, I changed the subject.
"How many of us are there?" I asked.
"In the ashram at large, fewer than five hundred at any given time," said Kyo, "but that isn't what you wanted to know, is it?"
I shook my head.
She smiled, patient and a little bit sad.
"You are the fifth to emerge," she said, "and the last of your inflorescence. They've been waiting for you, Indigo. You'll meet them very soon."
Whatever other thoughts I might have had were driven out as we left the shade of the forest and stepped into the blinding-bright sun. Cinnabar placed a warm and steadying hand on my chest, gently urging me to stop where I stood. Once my vision adjusted to the new light, I could see why.
I gasped, clutching a trembling hand to my open lips.
We stood at the furthest edge of a high cliff that dropped away into a massive, winding chasm, so deep that its bottom was cloaked in darkness. To the west, it terminated in the side of the great mountain, split open like it had been struck by some godly axe. To the east, it fell away into the distant glow of a sparkling ocean, its luster rendered dull by comparison to the object that pierced the land directly opposite me.
Cinnabar had called it a city, but it resembled no city that I had seen before. Whether due to the reflection of the sun or by some incomprehensible mechanism, I found it difficult to fully make out the details of the place. It seemed almost to shift as you drew your focus across its bulk, eluding capture at every turn. There were a few things I could conclude, however.
First, it was massive. I remembered skyscrapers. I'd lived in them, once. A fragment washed over me: the view from the balcony of my 37th-floor loft. Sunset over the metropolis. I had beleived that those buildings were tall, but they were nothing on the order of this. It defied all conventional ideas of scale.
Second, its surface was comprised entirely of glass. Most of its irregular spires were clear, although their size and thickness rendered them a milky white, but a scattering of towers were brightly colored in hues of pink and teal and gold and violet. Even though I couldn't quite see it in its whole, I was certain that it was beautiful.
Third, it had most certainly been constructed. For all the haphazard arrangement and odd angles, there was something a bit too perfect about its criss-crossing bridges and latticework of supports, something a bit too regular about its apertures and inclusions, something a bit too contained about its sprawl. It was not an act of nature, but the work of skilled hands.
"That is the Crystal City," said Kyo. "It is the hub of orthodox haoma society and it is forbidden to sprouts."
I looked at her, confused. Spots danced in front of my eyes, but I still longed to gaze at that too-brilliant place. What must it be like to be on the inside?
"It wasn't always this way," Cinnabar explained. "In the days before we built the ashram, many newborn haoma ventured into the City. Most did not return. When we sought them out, those we could find had gone wrong, their anthesis twisted by exposure to that place. The rest were dead. Their dream became a nightmare. We couldn't let it continue. There are too few of us to begin with."
Cinnabar stepped in-between me and my view of the Crystal City, her gigantic presence eclipsing it entirely. She put her hands on my shoulders, her warmth easily bleeding through the thin fabric of my robe, somehow more nourishing than even the touch of the sun above.
"You are too important, Indigo," she insisted. "That's why we built the ashram. To give you time to become who you want to be, without restrictions—except that one. Can you forgive us that?"
My heart skipped a beat. I felt a swelling between my legs. If she'd asked me to leap into the chasm, I'd have done so and done it gladly.
But then, another pair of hands encircled my body, folding themselves across my heart. Kyo's bosom pressed into my back, nothing but two layers of cloth separating her electric skin from mine. Her breath danced along the half-moon of my left ear.
"I know what that desire feels like," she whispered. "I know how much you ache to throw yourself into the abyss. Going into the City would be just the same as that. Don't do it. Stay with us for a time, until you're ready to face the world alone. Please, Indigo. Trust us."
The current of their intermingling energies was overwhelming, but I found a sort of calm while drowning in that ocean of sensation. There was clarity to be found at the bottom of the sea.
Whatever the Crystal City was, it was one thing most of all: intoxicating.
I closed my eyes, sheltered in the space between their bodies. I was as much a stranger to myself as this world was strange to me, but they were giving me a chance to change that on my own terms and in my own time.
"How long does it take?" I asked.
"It varies," said Kyo, her breath now tickling the nape of my neck, "but most haoma undergo anthesis roughly a year after their rebirth."
Her hands had begun to travel down the length of my body, easing the cord at my waist so that my robe parted for her, but did not open fully. I felt her fingers on my thighs and I spread them, giving her unobstructed access to my cunt.
My cunt?
My eyes shot open and I tried to look down, but Cinnabar caught me by the chin, denying me my chance to observe myself.
"Anthesis is a culmination of collected experiences," said Cinnabar. "It isn't a ticking clock. It will take as long as it needs to. This place will be your home until you are ready to leave."
Kyo punctuated this last statement by running her fingers up and down my outer folds. I was drenched already and it seemed a great act of willpower for her not to simply plunge inside with the way I was inviting her in. When I whimpered, she relented, sliding a single finger—I couldn't tell you which one—all the way into my depths, only to draw it back out a moment later and graze her now-sodden fingertip across my clit.
"Oh, fuck," I grunted as my body buckled, irrationally trying to escape from this exquisite torture.
Cinnabar slipped her thumb up across my chin and over my bottom lip, hooking it between my teeth and my tongue. I knew that if she stayed there for long, I'd start to drool all over her beautiful hand—and I did not care.
Kyo picked up speed, running her finger around my clit in tight circles, breaking her rhythm by slipping the finger back inside every time she felt my pleasure begin to crest and then starting over again. When I thought back on it, the whole thing had happened in no more than a minute or two, but if you'd told me that I was experiencing the best hour of my life, I'd have believed you.
My climax broke with a soft scream and the unexpected feeling of several gouts of hot liquid running down the inside of my thighs, directed downward and away from soaking the hem of my robe by Kyo's cupped hand. I'd never been more glad to not be wearing socks or shoes out in the wilderness.
Kyo produced a handkerchief from somewhere within the folds of her outfit and wiped down my inner legs in less than the time it took for my cunt to recede back into its pocket. Somewhere in the post-orgasmic haze, Cinnabar released my head from her grip and let me rest it instead between the titanic mounds of her tits, such that I had to pry myself reluctantly from her warm embrace when I returned to coherence.
"We can stay here for as long as you'd like," Kyo offered, standing nonchalantly a few steps away like she hadn't just had her fingers up inside of me.
I glanced across the chasm, but I held up a hand to shield my eyes. I didn't want to be blinded by those gleaming spires again. Perhaps there was something for me out there, dancing in the rainbow light, but whatever it was could wait. There was more than enough excitement to be found on this side of the divide—I was thoroughly convinced of that. And maybe, just maybe, I wouldn't fuck it all up, this time around.
"No need," I said, turning my back on the Crystal City. "I trust you."
It was true. I did trust them. And maybe that made me an entirely different kind of fool, but I could live with that. I'd made worse choices to gain favor with worse people. If I had the read of them right, the only one here who could let me down was myself.
When Kyo smiled at me, there was a hint of tears at the corners of her eyes. Not sadness, but relief. Perhaps it didn't always go this easily with the other—what was it she'd called us? Sprouts?
I considered my new body, fully grown but not yet fully realized. I pondered my green skin. I thought of the way my cock had lifted up from between my legs, like a new shoot bursting through the soil, or the way my cunt had felt unfolding, like a blossom before the morning.
The moniker fit. I was a sprout. Watch me grow.
The three of us made our way back down into the forests of the heights. On this return trip, I spotted a few dwellings scattered among the trees with wide berths between them. One in particular stood out among the rest and I was oddly unsurprised when Cinnabar slowed as we approached it.
It was a simple enough structure, all wood and concrete, but the entire back half of its first story was framed in glass, like the visor of a giant's helmet, set down onto the earth. It would give its occupants an unobstructed view of its pretty patch of forest, but it also gave anyone who stood outside an unobstructed view of the space—and occupants—within. Despite the exposure, it seemed warm and inviting in there, its smooth surfaces draped in soft fabrics, its neutral tones accented by bright spots of art on the walls.
"This is my cabin," Cinnabar announced. "You'll visit me here when we have our chats, but not today."
I must have looked especially disappointed at this declaration, because she leaned down to brush her lips against my forehead, but she didn't argue the point further. She'd made her faith in Kyo's abilities plain and for all the strangeness that surrounded us, I felt no danger here, nor any fear of coming to harm.
Cinnabar's warmth lingered on my brow as she stepped back and went down the path to her cabin alone. By some unspoken agreement, Kyo and I watched her all the way until she opened her front door, gave us a little wave over her shoulder, and stepped inside. Some petulant part of me wanted to wait longer, to see what she looked like as she settled in, but a lingering propriety set me moving again.
"It'll take us a little bit to get to the roundhouse," said Kyo as we descended through the heights. "What else would you like to know?"
"Where are we?" I asked, starting with the largest question I dared consider. "Not right here, I mean, but beyond that. Is this a country? Is there more to this place than just the ashram and the Crystal City? Are we even on Earth?"
"No, not on Earth," Kyo confirmed. "This planet is called Greenhouse. Earth is out there among the stars, but it's half a galaxy away. The humans who made us weren't from there, either, nor did they have contact with anyone who was, or so I've been told."
"So it's not just us?" I asked. "There are humans out there, too?"
"Maybe," she said, cautiously. "We haven't had contact with humans or their representatives for more than four centuries. They grew us, they left us, and they never came back. It may not be just us in the universe, but it's just us here on Greenhouse."
I thought that might bother me more than it did, but I'd considered that the universe might be better off without humans a long time before my first death. That I got another chance at life without any humans to mess it up sounded pretty good, actually.
"To answer your other questions," Kyo added, "no: we have no nations, nor governments, nor flags. There are other settlements on Greenhouse besides the Crystal City and the ashram, but there's little reason for you to venture out to them, at least for now."
"And later?" I pressed.
Kyo shrugged.
"We have all sorts among our number," she said with a laugh. "Artists, makers, thinkers, explorers... If you want to follow in their footsteps, any one of them would gladly take you on. There's no money, here, and no scarcity except that dictated by the balance with our environment. You don't need to earn your keep. Your life ahead will be what you make of it."
It sounded like a dream. Or a nightmare. What a mess I could make with all that time to waste.
"When are we?" I asked. "How long has it been since I died?"
Kyo pursed her lips, as discerning which answer I deserved—or maybe which answer I could handle. Instead of an answer, she offered a question.
"What do you remember about your life before?" she asked. "Is there anything that could help us place you at a point in human history? Technology? The state of the world?"
I willed what fragments I could to the surface.
"I remember cities," I said. "And people. And jazz."
For some reason, that last thought made my head hurt. The memory of rhythm and melody pulsed and hammered and then pierced through my brain like a hot needle, if only for half a second. I tried not to worry about it. There was too much else to worry about.
"Unfortunately," said Kyo, "there have always been cities and people and jazz. They're facts of human life. Lovely, but no help at all."
I sighed, like I'd heard that phrase before. Perhaps it had been said of me.
We passed through the junction and this time took the eastward path, which would take us into the rest of the ashram, if I remembered correctly. Unlike the dirt path up to the heights, or the long stair down to the meadow, this road meandered, descending gradually in several short flights of sand-brick stairs, each one ending in a stately terrace that was ringed with garden beds, electric lampposts, and comfortable-looking wrought iron benches.
Kyo gestured to a bench as we crossed the third or fourth terrace and I followed her lead, taking a seat and letting the metal soothe my heated backside. We sat awhile in silence, watching the wind flutter through the trees. The breeze smelled of salt from the ocean, coming in from the south and the east. Different birds sang different songs and I tried to trace the arc of their melodies.
"I'm sorry," she said, unprompted. "That wasn't a fair question to ask you. The truth is that we have no idea how far away we are from our temporal origins—any of us. Some remember cities and some remember starships, but none of what we know gives us more than the broadest of guesses as to where we might fall on any calendar you'd know by name."
She placed her hand on my thigh. It was comforting, not stimulating, although it wasn't hard to feel how the one could quickly become the other when she was involved.
"At some point in the past," she said, "a human mind was captured and stored in perfect stasis. At some point later, that soul was injected into the mycorrhizal network of the soma grove on a planet called Greenhouse, half a galaxy away from Earth. Four hundred and seventy years ago, the first haoma emerged from her ripened pod. This morning, the last haoma followed in her footsteps."
I jolted in a way that had nothing to do with Kyo's electric touch.
"When you say 'the last,'" I questioned, "do you mean 'for now,' or...?"
"I mean forever," she confirmed. "We could be wrong, of course. Nothing in the grove has gone according to predictions for the better part of the last two centuries. We've been wrong before."
"But you're not wrong, are you," I muttered.
She shook her head.
"We've tested every variable," she said. "We've exhausted every measure. We're not wrong. Not about this."
I didn't know what to do with that information. Being the last one didn't make me special, it just made me late to the party. The bar was closed and the orchestra was winding down. If I'd arrived a little sooner, they might have considered me fashionable, but instead they called me what I was: a fuckup who couldn't bother to be on time when it mattered.
Kyo gave my leg an encouraging squeeze. I leaned into her, resting my head on her shoulder. One of the lampposts flickered to light as shadows fell across its crown. It was later than I'd realized.
"Don't let it bother you," she said, gently righting me and standing, ready to go. "Worry about the here and the now. You'll have time to figure out the rest, later."
"You sound like Cinnabar," I remarked.
"Thank you," she replied, with a smirk. "Now, would you like to see where you're sleeping?"
I closed my eyes. Fragments of bedrooms, opulent and squalid in equal measure, flooded my awareness. So many bodies. I could remember none of their names.
////
We stopped at a fork in the road. The footpath in one direction was wide and well-used. It wound down a gentle slope and into a cluster of two-story buildings that marked the perimeter of a village square. Even from this distance, I could hear the telltale murmurs of merriment and civilization within.
"That's the plaza," Kyo explained. "You'll go there tomorrow to see Song, the tailor. She'll fit you for new clothes. After, I'll meet you and the rest of the sprouts at the public house and we'll have a drink. Ekene's springwine isn't due for another week, but I'm sure she'll open a barrel early if we ask nicely enough."
It struck me as odd that I'd be consuming liquor on only my second day in the world, but I reminded myself once more that I was not a child, however new my body.
"I'd love to take you down there tonight," she admitted, "but I think it's best that we be patient. Your mind needs time to rest and process, no matter how gracefully you've accepted everything we've shown you so far. There's no use in taking you back with me if you won't last the night."
I blushed and tried to ignore the fizzing in my delta at the idea of what it might be like to spend a night with Kyo at the temple. Something told me that we wouldn't pass the hours in quiet contemplation.
She led me down the other path, which skirted the plaza and sloped down along a sharp embankment that eventually broke way into a sheer cliff. With all our traverses up and down through the ashram, I'd lost all sense of just how high up we were, or how near we'd come to the oceanside. Now I saw that it was a very long drop to the rocky shore below, where the waves lapped like roiling ink in the oncoming twilight. There was no railing—I could just leap off and end it all, if I chose—but I was oddly unafraid. My feet had no trouble finding their way among the weatherbeaten furrows of this unloved road. It felt inexplicably like I was walking home.
The narrow walkway opened up into a wide plateau where I discovered eight nearly identical buildings, arranged in a semicircle along the cliff's edge.
"These are the roundhouses," Kyo announced. "Each one has ample accommodations for eight haoma. Once upon a time, they were full to brimming every year. Now, we only use the one."
She pointed at the roundhouse just left of center. It wasn't actually round like its name implied: they were all decagons, ten-sided, one-story affairs, although they were raised half a story above the ground on fenced-in columns. Each roundhouse had a front staircase and a back porch, each of which was accessed through a sturdy entrance. Their other eight faces held windows, through which I guessed one would find empty bedrooms.
"I picked out Room 3 for you," she said. "I hope you don't mind. The eight rooms are identical, technically, but there's a certain quality of early morning light in that one that I find particularly pleasant—and I hoped you'd feel the same."
I tried to answer, but I found myself suddenly overcome. They were all such small, simple things—a roof to shelter me from the sun and the rain, clothes to keep me warm in the cold and cool in the heat, food to give me strength, bodies to give me comfort—and yet I knew beyond the shadows of my memory that none of them had ever been offered so easily to me before. Had I ever received a gift in my human life that didn't have a hidden price?
Rocked by emotion, all the exhaustion I had yet to feel came crashing down around me and I swayed on my feet, suddenly weary.
"Sleep well, Indigo," said Kyo, turning to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow."
By the time I found the courage to watch her leave, she was already out of sight, gone around the bend of the embankment—or over the cliff, but probably not.
The front door of the roundhouse that Kyo had indicated was emblazoned with a polished brass numeral one and I internalized my new address: Room 3, Roundhouse One, The Southern Ashram, Greenhouse. I could live with that.
I opened the door without knocking and went inside.
The sounds of sex greeted me in return. Someone was fucking in Roundhouse One.
Whoever it was, they weren't being even a little bit subtle, but I still closed the front door gently, so as not to disturb their pleasure with my unannounced arrival. There were too many things to be curious about happening all at once, so I started with my immediate surroundings. Where was I, right now?
As I'd seen from the outside, the front door was mirrored on the opposite side with a door that led out to the back deck, each one at the end of a short hallway. At the center of the roundhouse was a simple common room that featured two curved sofas, each with more than enough space to fit three or four people on them, and a low, circular table in the space between. You'd have to sit on the floor to work comfortably at the table, but there was more than enough room between the table and the sofas to do just that.
On either side of the roundhouse was a bank of four evenly-spaced doors. Just like the roundhouses, they were numbered one through eight, counted in alternation out from the center of the arc. Room 1 was just to the left of the hallway that led to the back door, while Room 2 was just to the right. Room 3—my room—was left of Room 1.
It was mostly dark inside. I'd passed a bank of switches that would likely have turned on some sort of interior lights, but that was more of a disturbance than I wished to make. It wasn't necessary, either way: lights set in along the edges of the ceiling and the floor faintly flooded the space with just enough of an ambient glow to find my way.
At last, I could ignore the hypnotic, thumping groans of someone getting thoroughly and expertly pounded no longer, so I cast about for the source of my distraction. The doors into three—Rooms 3 and 5 on the left and Room 8 on the right—were shut tight. Since I knew that Room 3 was mine, I had to conclude that whichever of my fellow sprouts weren't fucking right now were either absent or holed up in the other two. Of the remaining doors, three were open wide and two—Rooms 2 and 6, both on the right—were just slightly ajar.
The closer I drew to the right side of the roundhouse, the more obvious it became that it was Room 2 that was currently and rambunctiously being cohabitated, no matter how much the sound bounced around the angular interior. Some part of me knew that I should just make a beeline for Room 3 and try to sleep, but still I drew closer and closer to Room 2 until I could easily peer through the crack in the door, trying desperately not to make a sound.
The light within the room was moody and low, casting the tangled bodies in the middle of the floor in a stark relief of deep, writhing shadows and glowing, ecstatic curves. One of the pair was short and plump and the other was tall and slim and they fit together like puzzle pieces, two asymmetrical halves of a perfect whole.
The tall one was on top, dragging the length of her cock languidly in and out of the short one's cunt even as she feverishly curled the fingers of her left hand deep inside her own cunt and grappled the short one's tit with her right hand for something approaching balance. The short one's knees were spread wide and her toes dug into the plush carpet, but both her hands were on her own cock, stroking herself with furious intent.
I eased open the cord of my robe, exposing myself to my own exploring hands, sliding them down towards my delta. My cunt waited for me, no longer hidden from self-examination. Fascinated, I ran my fingers along the outer labia, which were slightly puffy and just-barely parted by my rapidly engorging inner lips. When one of my fingers slipped off the narrow ledge, tumbling into the ocean deep within me like it had a death wish, I let out a haggard gasp.
The two in the room immediately went still and turned my way.
"Ooh," said the short one, with delight. "She's here!"
The tall one drew her cock all the way out of the short one with a loud slurp, setting her partner into a fit of groaning giggles, and rose to her feet with unearthly grace. As she approached me, some part of my mind screamed that I should be anxious, embarrassed, ashamed, but instead I felt only awe.
She had the kind of beauty that just wasn't fair. A slim waist and curving hips that flared just enough to match the spread her wide-spread, naturally gravity-defying tits—not especially large, but exactly the right size for filling out the cup of a bikini or a pair of grasping hands—all over legs so long that they didn't seem like they would fit her petite frame, but oh, they so very much did. Her hair shone like silver in the low light and hung around her shoulders in tousled waves—the sort you paid extravagant sums to recreate, but you could tell that she'd simply woken up this way. That was the only bit of hair on her body above her neck, a point which I might've examined more closely if I weren't so distracted by her swinging cock. It was impressively long, almost as long as Cinnabar's, but its slimmer girth made it altogether more approachable. Unconsciously, I licked my lips.
"Hi," she said. "I'm Nikola, but everyone calls me Nix."
Her voice was husky and bright and the sound of it made my cunt squeeze with excitement. She held out one hand for me to shake and I took it, not caring how wet my fingers were.
"That one is Muriel," she added.
She indicated the haoma splayed out on the floor, who was still lazily stroking her cock. It wasn't more than average in length, but it was so thick that it really did take both her hands to effectively stroke.
"Hi!" she said, from the floor. "Who are you, then?"
My throat caught and I struggled to remember my name. Seeing my distress, Muriel rolled forward and climbed to her feet, crossing the distance faster than I would have expected. She took my face between her hands, went up on tip-toe, and kissed me square on the lips. I gurgled, unexpected pleasure busting up my insides, and offered no resistance when her tongue parted my lips and snaked around mine.
"Sweetie," she cooed, when her lips retreated from mine, "we're so glad you're here. What's your name?"
"Indigo," I whispered.
Immediately after I found my voice, I yelped in shock and mild pain as Nikola's teeth sunk into the nape of my neck. Somehow, while Muriel had been kissing me, she'd slipped behind me, leaving her standing just outside the room. She ran her hands up my legs, under my robe, slipping it off entirely as she marched me forward, into their domain, neatly kicking the bedroom door fully shut the moment she was clear.
Muriel kept pace with us until she stood her ground at the center of the floor, placing her hands on my chest and her mouth on my sternum, laying down a sopping column of hungry kisses. Nikola, too, scoured my back and shoulders with her sharp teeth and hot breath, rendering me helpless against their two-pronged attack.
Both their hands ran over my belly in little circles, widening their radiuses with every pass until they ran through my little tangle of hair. When, at last, they deftly walked across the folds of my cunt, Nikola dug her fingers into my thighs and parted me wide, fully baring my drenched hole.
"You know what to do, sugar," she said.
"Do I ever," Muriel agreed.
She dropped to her knees as she ran her tongue in a straight, plummeting line down my frontside, running right over the nub of my clit, which sent a spasm through me that might've been dangerous if I weren't so well-supported by Nikola. Her elbows safely girded my waist, her tits pressed firmly into my shoulders, and her cock nestled neatly between the cheeks of my ass, leaving me nowhere to go when Muriel's tongue plunged deeply and directly into my cunt.
Muriel's tongue jackhammered into me once, twice, three times, and then began to do laps around my labia, swirling across my clit with each pass, her track made easy by Nikola's spreading hands. Stable as her grip was between my legs, Nikola undulated around me, rocking her tits against my back and sliding her cunt through the crease of my ass.
I had no illusions that I was in control of this situation, so it was an incredible relief when Nikola said, calmly and clearly, her lips pressed against my earlobe: "We're going to fuck you, now, Indigo."
Muriel completed one last rotation of her tongue around my cunt and then stood, moving over to sit on the edge of the bed and spreading her legs wide. She dipped her hands into her own cunt and drew out a glistening trail of wetness which she slathered over the head of her egregiously thick cock. I'd never seen so strong a look of "Come hither," in all my days.
But Nikola wouldn't let me go to her, not yet. She dropped behind me, mimicking Muriel's earlier bath but down my backside, culminating her journey by sticking her tongue into the depths of my asshole. I squirmed at the intrusion—no matter how welcome or familiar the sensation, these holes of my were new and untested.
"You tell me when she's ready for me," Muriel requested. "I'll be waiting."
She deposited another finger-scoop of sap onto the head of her now thoroughly slick but still entirely menacing cock and I figured out exactly what they had in mind for me.
Nikola gave no verbal response, but she held up two fingers in Muriel's direction in what might equally have been a curse or a countdown. Her tongue dug deeper and deeper into my ass even as her fingers slipped into my cunt, the combination of which released any further anxious tension I'd been able to contain. Stars danced in front of my eyes as Nikola's tongue bottomed out in my ass.
"She's ready," Nikola giggled, leaving my asshole wet and gaping as she withdrew.
In a daze, I let Nikola march me over to the bedside and spin me around. Muriel took firm hold of my hips and together they gently eased me down, settling my puckered ass onto the massive head of Muriel's cock. There was some resistance but there was no pain. With a low pop, she slipped inside.
"Oh, fuck, yes," I blurted out.
Muriel held the head of her cock inside my ass, pressing no further inside until I could adjust to her unreasonable girth.
Nikora laughed and kissed me on the lips. Her lips were thinner than Muriel's and had an intensity to them that seemed to draw me into her. My tongue followed, diving into her mouth and sloshing around her tongue. I groaned between her lips as Muriel drew me downwards, burying more and more of her cock into my ass, little by little, until I found myself sitting on her lap, supported by her generous thighs.
I broke away from Nikora with a needy whimper and leaned back into Muriel. Her heavy tits—an attribute I had not failed to notice but had not yet had the chance to fully appreciate—cushioned my arching spine when I bent nearly to breaking. My hips moved half of their own accord, half propelled by Muriel's strong hands, encouraging her to thrust into me once, twice, three times before she held me tight against her again.
"She feels so good, Nix," Muriel moaned. "You need to give her a try."
"I fully intend to," Nikola agreed.
My eyes—which had gone hazy and half-lidded at some point in our exertions—shot open wide when Nikola slapped the head of her cock against my clit. She met my gaze, her eyes practically blazing with erotic intent, as she ran the tip of her head up and down my cunt, just barely parting my vulva but never quite slipping inside. Muriel, blessedly, did not move me on top of her, but she flexed her cock in my ass with every one of Nikola's strokes, causing some indescribable part of my anatomy to do tumultuous somersaults.
"Oh, fuck," I whined.
Nikola pushed the tip of her cock just past my cunt-lips, waited half a moment, and then drove the rest of it inside with unexpected force. With that, I found myself sandwiched comfortably—if deliriously—between their two bodies, an all-encompassing bundle of delightful flesh. Nikola buried her face into my shoulder and screamed as Muriel began to move beneath us, fucking her as much as she was fucking me, their two cocks practically rubbing against each other inside of me, separated by no more than a thin wall of tender flesh.
Truly, in that moment, I felt no walls between us three. In all the life I'd had before, had I ever been so free? Had I ever felt so much joy? I couldn't remember and I didn't care. I was here. I was now. I was me, at last.
Muriel and Nikola took turns thrusting against each other inside of me and I did all I could to assist them. I wrapped my arms around Nikola's neck and planted my toes in the carpet in an attempt to lighten Muriel's burden, but it didn't seem much to matter. They passed me back and forth between them, sharing me as easily as they shared the load.
After several minutes that felt like hours, for all their intensity, Muriel's cock swelled and pulsed, stretching so violently that I was afraid she might actually hurt me. She burst forth not a moment later, sending a river of cock-sap deep into my unspeakable parts. My body convulsed as it received her torrent and I unleashed my own, showering Nikola with a cascade of cunt-sap that sprayed out from the gaps between me and her cock. She fought against the tide with harder and harder thrusts, but soon she lost her footing and tumbled back onto the carpet.
Without Nikola to hold me there, I slid down and off of Muriel's cock, plopping my sap-filled butt onto the floor between her legs. Muriel shivered at the sudden cold and her cock jumped and slapped against my cheek, nuzzling me wetly as it slowly softened.
Nikola clambered to her feet before us, her swaying body slicing through our post-orgasmic haze, panting and fluttering like some kind of lust-drunk angel. She smiled wickedly and stroked her long cock, going faster and harder until she showered us both with her cock-sap, its hot droplets sweet and bitter as tonic where they landed on my outstretched tongue.
I didn't see her fall, but when my eyes refocused she lay crumpled beside me, her head pressed gently against Muriel's knee. She giggled when I tried to give her a thankful caress and ended up simply groping her tits, but I think she got the idea. Muriel ran her fingers through my too-short hair, letting her fingernails course pleasantly across my scalp, causing me to nearly purr with satisfaction.
Every part of me wanted to stay, but I couldn't. Not tonight. I had my own bed. It was my first night in a new home. I needed to sleep in my own bed tonight or it might never truly be mine. I knew it didn't make sense, not really, but I also knew that some things about me might never change, no matter how far away in time or space I was from who I'd once been. Our rituals mattered, even if we couldn't say why.
"Thank you both," I murmured. "I am so excited to get to know you better."
"Us, too, Indigo," sighed Muriel, from above me. "And the pleasure is all ours."
"Do you need a hand getting to your room?" Nikola inquired.
"Come on, Nix," Muriel countered. "You know you'll just want to stay there if you follow. You'd better let her go alone or none of us will get any sleep."
Nikola harrumphed, but she didn't argue the point.
"I'll be okay," I assured them. "It isn't far."
"Well, you know where to find us if you get lost," Nikola laughed, slapping my ass when I shakily managed to get up onto my feet.
I didn't bother to find my discarded robe in the mostly-dark and unfamiliar room, certain I could retrieve it tomorrow, and crossed the common area in my skin. A prickle on the back of my neck suggested someone was watching me through a just-cracked doorway, but I didn't bother to confirm. I wondered if it was the last of them, the one I hadn't met already—the one I hadn't fucked already—but if it was, I knew she'd be there in the morning. There were only five of us; I couldn't imagine a world where we didn't learn to get along.
The door to Room 3 closed behind me with a whisper-catch and I stumbled over to the bed within, slipping beneath its covers without hesitation or need to comprehend my surroundings. The details were another thing I could worry about tomorrow. The bed was soft and it was cool and it was mine—that was enough, for now.
How many years had I slept before I woke this morning, I wondered as the last lights of my consciousness flickered out. Of equal consideration, how many times had I come, today? The answer to both questions was the same: too many and yet not nearly enough.
Laughing madly as I embraced sweet darkness, I slept.