Beta: Miranda Bell, and further assistance by Dominique
Notes: According to what I've been told, "sex" as New Zealanders pronounce it sounds like "six" to Aussie ears, & "six" in N.Z. pronunciation sounds like "sux." Wordplay ahead, be aware. Also, I've toned it down for easier reading, but one girl has a heavy French-Canadian accent.
* * * * *
Armed with degrees and a year's worth of work experience under their belts, Catherine and Nicola were ready to take their first 'real' vacation. All year they'd been saving up, pooling money. Absolutely, they had a plan. The women, one fine Aussie chick and one naturalized, were partial to a certain actor from a certain neighboring pair of islands. Along with various other activities, including the inevitability of them biting the bullet and going to see Hobbiton, Rivendell, and all the other now-dismantled sites for their own eyes, they would be indirectly, haphazardly, unintentionally looking for him. Or so they told themselves.
If ever there were two girls who were closer friends, the world might never have seen fit to tell of them. Catherine and Nicola met five years before during their first week of university in Sydney. They hit it off so quickly they soon were finishing each other's thoughts and sentences like identical twins or an old, long-married couple. They were both lovely creatures, long past any adolescent gawkiness. Neither could be termed the 'quiet' one or the 'smart' one or the 'funny' one. These were attributes they both possessed.
The girls looked nothing alike. Three generations ago, Catherine's family had been Anglo-Saxon Brit on one side, Scottish on the other, though her features were more of the Celtic cast. She inherited height from both sides. Her soft, wavy hair was not quite red, more auburn, but she considered herself a redhead. Pure green emerald eyes sparkled with easy-going humor.
By contrast, Nicola was barely over five feet tall. She'd grown up in Quebec and had not lost the accent. Her hip-length brown hair contained red, gold and silvery highlights. She had the large, piercing hazel eyes of many mixed French/Native Americans. Like them, she exuded a certain wildness. No one would ever put her in a cage.
Nicola always said she'd seen him first. Maybe that was true, but neither girl had given him any deep thought years ago as bleach-blond Cupid. Cute, but a passing thing. However, when the familiar face appeared in their favorite fantasy film series, volume two, that was it.
They saw him first on the plains of Rohan, hauling his mortally wounded cousin home on horseback. "Karl." They'd breathed simultaneously. The women had had to hold hands throughout the whole Rohan sequence. Cathy recalled wondering if her fingers would be broken as an arrogant, wary Éomer demanded, "What business do an elf, a man, and a dwarf have in the Riddermark?" Well they remembered the manly armor, the easy way he sat a horse, the long Nordic locks, and especially the intense dark eyes that undressed the world with every glance. Sure, they knew those eyes were hazel, but on screen they appeared a deep brown-black like pools of warm, liquid tar. Oh, to just fall in!
Their jet circled and veered east. Catherine, who had never flown before, let out her breath and asked, "You think we'll run into him?"
Not having to ask who 'him' was, Nicola answered, "Would be a major coincidence if we did. The islands aren't that small. Well, we can 'ope, eh?"
"And pray..." Catherine added.
"Famous last words, atheist," said the Canadian native.
"I don't think they'd be my last words at all," Catherine said with a wink. "If you could call, 'Oh god, oh Christ, oh fucking hell' words." Luckily, she had used a good enough sotto voce she was not overheard in their cramped quarters, "And I don't think that counts as prayer, either."
On their third day of sight-seeing and shopping, Nicola got wind of a local beach that was said to be worth going out of the way for. Hearsay was correct. The best friends surfed from early afternoon till the sun set blood-red over the ocean. Nicola's honey brown skin had slowly glazed to deeper shades. The little shack where they'd rented their boards was just about to close when they returned them.
When the beach cleared and they were at last alone, Nicola shucked her aqua bikini top and freed large, dark-tipped breasts. Tall, milky-skinned Catherine had seen her friend naked a hundred times but the woman's perfection never failed to amaze her. Nicola, for all that she was totally oblivious to it, had a body made for sex, with her generous breasts and the sleek little hips that at the moment she was rolling her bottoms down over. Catherine felt she was rather upside down by comparison; in other words small, neatly-formed breasts, and a generously proportioned bum. She shook her head, calling herself silly, and hooted over to her butt-naked best friend, "Nice rack! Don't scare off the wildlife!" Nicola squeezed her own boobs in Catherine's general direction and traipsed down to the waterline.
"Ah, the wildlife," Cathy mused. She and Nic had had their days. Darkness fell as Cathy sat, quietly reminiscing over her raunchier exploits, wrapped in a light blanket, on a large flat-topped boulder. She watched Nic piling sand into a messy fortress. The girl was so child-like sometimes. After nearly half an hour, she climbed back down and selected three burn CD's as soundtrack for the evening. She felt an odd tension, almost like she'd committed some minor infraction and was about to be confronted about it. The dark trance techno she'd chosen, if it worked like it usually did, would help her relax.
The last light breathed its farewell to Nicola as she returned to their impromptu campsite. They'd hiked in with a sleeping bag each, a medium-sized cooler, the CD player, and whatever odds and ends fit into compact day-camp packs. Catherine unrolled a light tarp and was securing the edges with more rocks. "Hey," she greeted her friend. "This should help with the 'sand-in-embarrassing-places' problem."
The French-Canadian grinned. "I'll get ze fire going."
Soon a campfire lit the night and the girls snuggled down on their sleeping bags to watch it. This was one of their rituals, fire-watching. There wasn't a breath of wind; they weren't cold. It was just them and the flames, the sand, and the ocean.
"So, do you think zhere is a god?" Nicola opened their years-long debate after some time.
Catherine watched the crackling flames. She had not changed her position on the subject. Now that she had new ammo, she was going to use it. "If there were a god, he'd give me Karl." She cackled evilly.
"No, I'm supposed to get 'im," Nicola stated, getting up suddenly. She crossed to the cooler and squatted down, still stark naked, to grab fresh beers for them. Catherine couldn't help but admire the view. "We could share though," the first girl went on after a minute.
"Share Karl?" Catherine wondered aloud. "How do you share a man? He's only got one prick."
"Yes, but he's also got two 'ands, a mouth, and a bum. Surely we could find a way." The fire picked up golden glints in her eyes, which studied the red-headed girl for some dissent.
Catherine's peaches-and-cream complexion glowed like an infrared light bulb, even in relative darkness. In Catherine's opinion, even though she hadn't done anything too non-standard, her friend had an untapped kinky side. Once in a while, like this, it would slip out in some offhand remark. Deep down, she enjoyed it, but it still made the Aussie blush. "Well, dibs on his mouth," she said.
"Good!" Nicola retorted. "I get ze best for myself!"
"You're such a pig! There's more to a man than his 'parts.'"
"Yeah, well, like it's gonna 'appen anyway, n'est-ce pas?" Nicola had a point.
"What if it did? We're here... if he walked up to you in the street, would you turn in him down?"
"Oh, no. 'Ell no! I definitely would not turn 'im down."
"Turn who down?"
At the very edge of the light, just barely limned in the orange-red flickers, stood the owner of the low voice. The large, masculine form could've been there for a second or an hour, so quiet had he been. Nicola gasped in surprise and at her nude state but to her credit did nothing more than rise slowly to her feet and ask the stranger, "Wanna beer?" For her part, Catherine simply stared in disbelief. The details became clearer with every unhurried step he took in the girls' direction. His identity was unmistakable. How or why, she would have to find out; otherwise, Catherine's tidy mind answered itself, "This man, here, now, is Karl."
He presented himself with dark brown hair to his shoulders, a neatly trimmed beard, a deep tan set off by all-white clothes. He wore form-fitting button fly jeans and a short-sleeved shirt open all down the front. Catherine's seat put her at eye level with his navel, which did look mysterious in the middle of a patch of belly hair above those low-slung jeans. Fire threw unsteady patterns off his smooth chest. Half the shirt was open enough for Catherine to see one dark, flat nipple set on a subtly sculpted pec. She slowly raised her eyes to his face, almost as if to double-check herself. No, it was unquestionably Karl. He took the bottle from a slightly shaky Nicola and raised it to full, bee-stung looking dusky pink lips. Almond-shaped hazel eyes fringed by thick lashes flashed with amber highlights around their small campsite. Karl jumped slightly as he realized for the first time there was a second woman, one whose eyes were glued unwaveringly to him. "Oh!" he exclaimed. "Two of you!"
This put Catherine at an advantage she refused to let slip through her fingers. Remaining perfectly still, she locked her bright green stare into Karl's. "Well, of course there's two of us. Who did you think she was talking to—herself?"
"I couldn't hear you speaking over DJ Micro, here. I thought she was on a cell."
"Nope," Nicola put in. "She's live." Both girls were impressed he'd heard of their favorite rave artist.
"That's right, and I'm not nearly as naked as my impulsive friend over there. Who are you and what do you want?" It took every measure of self-control she possessed not to goggle at him or drool or something equally undignified. Nicola, on the other hand, had backed up two steps and literally dropped her jaw. Her huge jade-and-gravel eyes, so like Karl's in that regard they could be siblings, widened and darted back and forth between the seated girl and beautiful young man. The hand not occupied with beer gesticulated near-frantically. Catherine took her meaning loud and clear.
"Well, my name's Karl... Karl Urban. I was just out for a walk. I was surfing earlier up the beach a couple miles..." he threw out one corded arm in the general direction of behind himself, to Catherine's right,"...and it got dark before I knew it. I was about to turn back, even though I have no idea where I'm parked, when I saw a light, which happened to be your fire."
"It is dark tonight," Nicola managed, in a hopeful tone.
"No moon," Karl seconded.
"Yeah," Catherine said dryly," except Nicola's, which happens to be a full moon, eh?" She'd picked up the sarcastic use of "eh" from her friend over the years.
