Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One Read online

  Belonger

  Daniel Six

  Copyright 2012 by Daniel Six

  Published at Smashwords

  ––and

  far beneath

  a woman sleeps

  in a meadow by a sea,

  lost to those who knew her

  once yet near to them in dream;

  but as the long night drinks to it the

  warm breath at her lip, so the moisture

  will condense, and commence to drip…

  A humble plant quivered, was still for a time. Then, in a dance of fragile desires it flowered, a novel thing in a changeless place of black and green. A woman slumbering near murmured words unknown.

  Later, casting off the seeds of dream, she woke.

  Her gaze swam at the revelation of a low-swept cavern and she sat quietly erect, reflexively twitching a mass of dark hair into proportion.

  From a little pool sunk in the grass a faint illumination issued, welling up to a pitched earthen canopy dangling fitful excursions of foliage. Stirred again by its perfume she touched the new flower, lingering on its dense knit, lost in recall. Finally she stood and stretched, terminating an age of anticipation with a valedictory yawn.

  Intrigued by her habitat she circled the pool twice, then veered onto a tangled lawn that shouldered up to the cavern perimeter, a circumscribing hulk of vaporous stone that was impassable anywhere she looked.

  Bemused, the woman returned to the water and knelt to regard her naked reflection. Tickling its surface, she sent tiny ripples questing to the tousled shoreline at her knees, intricate boundary of the known. Then, on the instant of some conviction, she dove unto her venturesome silhouette.

  Swept by momentum down a narrow, veering passage, she drifted toward a rounded breach, its lip softly fissured.

  Emerging deep within a flooded basin she halted, overwhelmed by the sudden proliferation of distance and detail. The surface high above was backlit to a refulgent sheen that filtered down the intervening densities to an all-permeating saturated green radiance, and the stony margin was riddled with fractured shelves switching crazily to blackness beneath. Her gaze followed to an abyssal sink, a place beyond reckoning or reclaim. She was perfectly, imitatively still for one measureless quiet in the pulse, then her arms flared for ascent.

  But an errant glance distinguished another person nearby, lodged precariously on a scowling extrusion of rock, dressed only in shadow. The woman hesitated, wondering at this drowned apparition, then swam over to haul on an exposed limb, stroking hard for elevation.

  She halted after a brief effort and turned to discover two figures awkwardly in tow, holding hands with a tranquil, finger-braided implacability.

  The woman paused, gauging the waterline far above. She blinked and softly relinquished her grip.

  The others drifted for a timeless, yearning instant, then succumbed to a final journey down, weighted by an untold futility, eyes darkening on a guessless dominion.

  A moment later they were struck from below by the woman’s hurtling reascension, borne by her will up to a new awakening, in air and light...

  Meeting

  “No!” Ione screamed, flailing for equilibrium. She staggered to her feet, whirling insensibly. “Don’t let them–

  Her voice faltered, fell raggedly silent as she beheld a menacingly desolate cavern, starkly rendered to a greenish visibility from somewhere far down its shifting extent. Next to her Emma spat a mouthful of water, flung her blond locks back.

  “What’s happening?” the smaller woman quavered, lurching erect. “Where are we?”

  “I don’t know! But they were going to–

  “No…” Emma gasped, remembering. Her eyes lost focus, blanked by a terrifying, tidal alienation.

  Ione keened in despair as her mind was raveled to the innermost refuge of self by an apocalyptic afterimage of the final scene. “Emma!” she piteously implored.

  They stiffened, stumbling together in blind stupefaction as their fragile new identities wavered. The past and present uncoupled to an impossibly dualized reality, and for the space of a single, ghastly breath they lost all differentiability from one another.

  Then their sopping, sobbing confusion forcibly reestablished independence. For a time there was no sound but a clenched synchronicity of breath as they huddled miserably in a mutual embrace.

  “So what were they gonna do?” a third woman inquired, voice modulated by a mixture of curiosity and concern.

  They twisted to discover another figure nearby in the gloom regarding them with interest. Water issued from a tumult of black hair at her shoulders, sluiced off rampant breasts down to…

  Ione blinked in astonishment at the stranger’s groin, gaze rising belatedly to halt at the slight inclination needed to make eye contact. She faced a rare woman, taller than herself.

  “Who are you?” she demanded, wincing at the squelched triviality of her voice.

  “Manassa,” the stranger gamely supplied in a whimsical contralto stilted by some recent, evidently strenuous exertion. Ione scanned the cavern about them, kept talking to occupy her fear.

  “I am Ione,” she stated, carefully conveying three distinct syllables, “eye-oh-knee”. Abruptly conscious of her dripping bosom she moved to cross her arms, abandoned the gesture half-way. “That’s Emma,” she added, nodding minimally toward her partner, who was staring raptly at Manassa’s crotch.

  The little blond started, looked off in embarrassment. “Hey…” she whispered, fidgeting on a humid carpet of grass.

  Their introductions fell silent as they solemnly appraised a massive subterranean chamber, lit by a faraway gleam that reduced its knuckled turf to jumbled lineaments of shadow and verdancy.

  “Where’s the bed?” Emma wondered, eyes narrowing in surprise.

  “Bed?” Manassa wrung her hair, absently sprinkling them all.

  “Yeah. We were all in bed together…” Emma trailed off in bemusement, unable to resolve the memory.

  Ione turned to the stranger. “How did we get here?”

  Manassa gestured to the shadowy basin at their back, still faintly roiled by their emergence. “Found you in there.” The cavern grew elaborately quiet as their softly reverberating conversation lapsed again.

  The confusion of awakening threatened to return and Emma fearfully retreated from thought, simply watched the other women to divert her apprehension.

  Ione’s fleet and elegant physique was embellished only by a slight surplus of rump, to which her fine brown hair plunged in a fretful curtain. Far surpassing Emma’s fleshier form in stature, she was a commanding presence even in silhouette, tautly poised on beautifully tapered legs to exploit a customary advantage of altitude.

  Next to her, Manassa’s black tresses tumbled down narrow shoulders and lithe arms to tickle a voluptuously broad bosom. From there her figure swept wide to massive thighs that expressed the strength of flowing wood, and her great rounded calves were planted with an authority that visibly conveyed up the long line of her body. Slightly taller than Ione, she bore herself with a loose, unselfconscious readiness that subtly diverted the eye to her great middle mass.

  And there, the feature of her anatomy that captivated Emma was her utterly hairless vagina. Emma had never witnessed such a powerful image of femininity, covertly studied the smooth folds of the huge woman’s vulva and the thick clitoris between, roused to pink prominence.

  “How did you drown?” Manassa was looking about curiously.

  “We don’t know,” Ione hesitantly supplied, warning Emma to silence with a narrow look before turning to survey the unlit reaches of the cavern. “Are there skulks around?”

  “Skulks?” Manassa ec
hoed.

  “Men that lurk in places like this,” Ione explained, surprised at her ignorance of something so basic. She sighted down the visible extent of the chamber to a jade glow emanating from afar that touched grassy inflections of earth, glinted down a silent planarity of water to their right, sinuously pacing the only obvious means onward.

  “You know this place,” she decided.

  Manassa shook her head. “Nope.”

  “Well, was anyone else here before we… woke up?” Ione pressed.

  “Huh-uh.”

  “So this is all unfamiliar to you?”

  Manassa nodded without hesitation, untroubled by this dubious accounting of circumstance.

  Ione regarded her skeptically, then turned away, brooding on uncertainties.

  Emma felt the alienation of her broken history circle again, threatening to overwhelm the bare realities of the present. Stepping close to her lover she pushed for a quick resolution.

  “Whatever’s going on I don’t wanna hang around here talking about it, Ione.”

  Manassa nodded to the reasonableness of this, and Ione reflexively employed this new solidarity to assert herself.

  “Yes. I agree. We need to find somewhere safe. Figure out what’s going on.” With a last, unhappy glance to the dim lake behind them, she strode decisively in the other direction.

  Emma glanced up to Manassa, received her quizzical expression as a form of agreement, and they followed together.

  Ione picked her way along at a careful but unlingering pace, silent and encouraging of the same by the functional set of her shoulders. Behind her, Emma cultivated a loose state of alarm, keeping near Manassa as they clambered about disheveled slopes of sweating foliage, splashed through winking, webworked puddles, skirted dark pools steeped in mystery. The channel of water advancing along the right side of the winding cavernway grew steadily broader, and after a while Emma decided it was moving slowly in their direction of travel. She remained watchful for any evidence of men where shadowy declinations of turf could hide them.

  Had she once felt at home in places like this? It seemed inconceivable, but Emma knew it was true—though they were far from the cheery subterranean apartments where she had once dwelt in luxury with Ione, beautifully decorated natural chambers lining a sultry stream of pure water…

  The passage widened around them, became gradually better lit. Ogling Manassa’s plenteous flesh as chance allowed, Emma fought down a growing desire to break the silence, full of questions and waiting for something to happen. She let her imagination wander a maze of associations that arose unbidden, shifting territories of experience that defied context, fathomless but constantly suggesting something... She was about to suggest a respite when Manassa swung without warning to the bank of the channel at their right and pointed.

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s what? Hey!” Emma exclaimed. “Ione, look!” Her companion swiftly joined them, frowning Emma to a lower tone.

  “It’s a bedboat,” Emma whispered for Manassa’s benefit.

  They surveyed its upturned bulk, a smoothly contoured form only partially visible above the waterline. Lonely and unlikely, its presence magnified the native tranquility of its environment to a sinister vacuum of stimuli, and for a moment they probed the darkness in renewed concern for the proximity of men.

  Without consultation Manassa threw a leg into the stream to test its depth, then waded out to the middle where it was deep enough to float her bosom. Obtaining purchase on the rounded prow of the boat, she planted her legs wide and threw her weight down, slowly righting it. The headboard cabinets at the rear of the craft disgorged volumes of water back to the channel and Emma could see the mattress was gone.

  She looked to Ione, who shrugged to cover her annoyance at the stranger’s boldness, and they joined her to complete the recovery of the vessel, bailing water from its steadily exposed interior till they could loft it high enough to drain completely. Manassa let it topple recklessly and Emma giggled at the resulting shower despite her apprehension, earning a measured scowl from her lover. They peered inside.

  “Normally there’s a mattress and oars,” Ione complained. “But even so it might be of use…” The tall woman looked away for a moment, remembering something from long ago Emma guessed, then shrugged and vaulted acrobatically over the side with a lateral whirl, wincing as her knees came down on bare wood. Taking position up front, she directed the others to follow with a nod.

  Manassa aspired to board in the same fashion, but failed to account for the tendency of even a broad boat to roll from such a maneuver, and Emma whooped as she tripped and tumbled over the other side, nearly capsizing the craft.

  “Fuck!” Ione blasted, toppled to an ignominious heap. She scrabbled back into position with a snarl and Emma winced in expectation of her temper. But Manassa surfaced with a bawdy laugh, filling the cavern with a friendly ambience for a moment, and Emma saw her lover’s vexation relent to a veiled disdain.

  A second effort landed the big stranger nimbly within the bedboat, and Emma followed her on, chuckling quietly as she closed and latched the headboard cabinets at the rear of the vessel.

  They drifted for a while at a pointlessly tentative pace, but eventually the stream bore past a guttering countercurrent and the boat moved decisively from there, oriented where necessary by a strategic kick over the side. Emma had engaged Manassa in carefully whispered exchanges when Ione was preoccupied, and they began to converse more openly as the way broadened, distancing them from the tangled vegetation encroaching on the channel at either side, hiding potentially anything.

  “Are we going somewhere in particular?” Manassa gamely inquired. Emma caught Ione’s calculating pause before she responded.

  “That depends. The priority right now is determining where we are. And how we got here.”

  “It’s getting easier to see,” Emma reported, stealing an opportunity to examine Manassa’s increasingly plain femininity.

  “So are we,” Ione noted. “Sit down.” She turned to Manassa, continued in an even tone.

  “Emma and I were part of a community that once existed in secret down here. Do you know anything of the hidden women?”

  Manassa shook her head. “No.”

  Ione slowly appraised the huge stranger.

  “We were betrayed by skulks. Do you know anything about them?”

  “Huh-uh.”

  “But you have seen men before. You know what they are and what they look like, right?” Ione pressed.

  Manassa nodded. “Of course.”

  “Well then your complete ignorance of their activities around your home is difficult to understand,” Ione glowered.

  “Hmm. Yeah. See your point. If we meet any maybe we could just ask’em whatever you’re interested in,” Manassa offered. “Being real casual about it naturally,” she amended as Ione’s demeanor went rigid.

  “Does that actually strike you as a likely outcome in a confrontation with a bunch of stiff-dicked strangers? Just chit-chatting about whatever?” Ione turned away. “You couldn’t understand them, anyway. Skulks don’t make any sense.”

  Manassa appeared to think it over. “Well, we haven’t met anyone threatening yet, and Emma said you have no past. Like me. So why worry about things till it’s clear we need to?”

  Ione looked away bitterly. “We have a past, or pieces of one at least.”

  “They just don’t make sense exactly,” Emma hurriedly qualified. “But we know about skulks well enough,” she promised Manassa. “And there’s good reason to be afraid if they’re around. Trust me.”

  The stream split to accommodate a small island mounded to the cavern ceiling with gauntly outflung arms of sweating shrubbery and they fell silent as its bulk drifted secretively by.

  Ione continued to question Manassa for a little and Emma withdrew, simply waited to see what information she would extract. For this was her lover’s way; the various leverages of secrecy had long served her as a doyenne, one of
the rare women charged with independent leadership of their kind.

  But after a while Emma grew bored with her exclusion from the interview, which Ione conducted in a steadily unfriendlier tone. Regarding Manassa’s whimsical visage, free of any guile she could detect, Emma made an intuitive decision. Capturing water in a cupped palm with an overboard scoop, she slurped it ostentatiously, overriding her partner’s tense control of decorum.

  “Hmm… Seems okay. But maybe we should try to find the Lap, just to be safe…”

  Ione glared.

  “What’s the Lap?” Manassa demanded, brow lofted by Emma’s little drama.

  “A huge subterranean reservoir that’s specially protected from contamination,” she explained. “See, skulks fouled our home with soap. Dumped it upstream of our aquatic salons, ‘cleaning’ us out by tainting the water till it was undrinkable. We fled through the caverns, but they hunted anyone who attempted to find a fresh supply, capturing us a few at a time.”

  Ione turned to face Manassa, spoke for a moment with totally uncynical dismay. “They closed off tributaries to hem us in as we tried to escape. And finally they surrounded us as we slept…” she trailed off emotionlessly at the memory of that confrontation.

  “What happened?” Manassa prompted, eyes wide.

  Emma shrugged, stared helplessly about. “The doyennes ordered everyone that was left to flee to the Lap in small groups.” She cringed at the shriveling disorientation that arose at any consideration of their history beyond that point. “And that’s the last thing that makes sense to me…”

  Ione blinked and turned away from them both. They were silent for a time as the bedboat drifted on.

  The green radiance disclosing their path had brightened steadily, was now almost painfully intense. Emma could see it originated directly ahead, a frenetic scintillation on the water.

  They entered a broad chamber, from the depths of which emerged a brilliant fan of emerald light. Ione gripped her arm with a compulsive urgency and Emma’s breath caught. Far beneath their boat lay an unmoving form, a muscular man staring up. Its features were clean, precise, rigidly handsome; a functional mask that fascinated and alarmed even from a distance.