The Grove

This story is unusual for me: a series of interconnected vignettes. Not all are entirely uplifting, or equally erotic, but I hope you find the result satisfying. There are fantastic elements but it doesn't feel like a good fit for that category; as it's short, I placed it here mostly as a catch-all. Enjoy!

* * *

[i.]

She hadn't meant to lose the path. Just wandered off in her thoughts, and suddenly the familiar woods didn't look so familiar. It had the feel of a bad metaphor: the Wandering Sister, Clara had called her, none too kindly.

And to her shame, the wandering thoughts had followed her right into the woods. Sister Jeanne hadn't intended anything more than a quick bit of exercise, and then the wickedness had slipped back into her, a week's spiritual work swept away with carnal desires. Robert's handsome face, his easy smile, his lean, athletic —

No matter. Jeanne ignored the prickling sensations, the feel of nipples against cloth, the heat further down. Desire was human, could be governed by the mind, even channeled toward the spiritual. Or so Helen claimed. Jeanne hadn't worked out that trick yet.

She moved cautiously, trying to retrace her steps. Ahead, there was something: oh, a beautiful clearing. Sunlight filtering through the leaves of a massive tree, a beech of unusual age. Jeanne moved forward, drawn by the sight. God ever provided beauty to settle a restless spirit, even Jeanne's.

Except it wasn't working. Even her underwear conspired against her, every step pressing and sliding cotton against her most sensitive parts, as bad as her fingers under the blanket when she couldn't stand it those late nights, when she heard Helen's noises through the wall. Jeanne grimaced, moving through moss toward the massive bed of roots. A quiet seat, a chance to calm her mind. Her own devotion, just her and God, so she could join evening prayers with a steadier heart.

The moss was sturdier than it looked, but the last couple steps were awkward. She reached up to grab a stumpy limb, and paused for a moment, enjoying the feel of smooth, warm bark in her hand. The spark of living nature, filling her with a cozy warmth. Squeezing the limb, she took one last step before letting go with a squawk, nearly losing her balance.

The branch was — obscene. Long, tapering, curved slightly, near the length of her forearm. She'd never seen a real one, but surely they didn't get this big. It wouldn't fit in Robert's pants.

A nervous hiccup: it was just a tree, and Jeanne's sinful imagination. The pictures in the book, side-by-side: relaxed and — the other condition.

Trying to pray, when she couldn't take her eyes off the obscene thing? Everything between her legs throbbed, and Jeanne sighed reluctantly. She knew one quick way to solve that. Afterwards she could calm herself with God.

Touching yourself down there wasn't a sin for women, Helen said once. The Bible hardly seemed aware of the possibility. Jeanne didn't think it was as easy as that, but she found herself reaching under her skirt. Pulling her panties to her knees and stepping higher, hand closing firmly on the forbidden limb, the healthy smell of trees mixing now with her unholy arousal.

Far better this than Robert. Jeanne's fingers found her wetness, more than she was accustomed to. The bark was smooth and solid under her other hand, and she wondered if this was what Robert felt like. She leaned closer, imagining what it'd be like to have a lover. Fingers swirling, breath short, she raised her skirt higher and higher, stretching on her toes, not quite accepting what she was doing until it was inevitable.

The phallus was too big. Its round head brushed along her opening, shoving her fingers aside to press against her most sensitive spot. Jeanne gasped and her body shook, legs turning liquid and forcing her to hold on with both hands, pushing the rough tip just slightly inside — oh, the ecstasy filled her now, a choir of angels singing in her head, and she gasped and laughed her way through the best orgasm of her life, the Spirit entering her to offer a glimmer of the joy Mary must have felt. Even afterwards she stroked the thing with her sweaty hands, thanking God for providing. He'd made her body, after all, and now He'd shown the way to a personal devotion, a love that required more than just her mind.

Jeanne would attend evening prayers with a sureness of spirit. No more the Wandering Sister: there were many paths to God. Her own room was full of possibilities, if she had the courage to grasp them.

* * *

[ii.]

"That way. I'm sure it's that way."

Bree Alabaster Kincaid shook her head weakly, trees blurring across her view, not all at the same rate. Not the right buzz for her. Third time wasn't the charm, no matter what Kelly said. Three weeks until they went their separate ways to college, and her friend had insisted they sneak off in the woods to smoke up.

She watched Kelly's ass disappear into the clearing. Bounce, bounce. What a fucked-up mood Bree was in. She needed to go home and nap it off, though she had this weird energy. Strange tingles all over her body, including some unsettling places. No way was she going to admit any of that to her friend.

Kelly's cackles greeted her as Bree pushed aside the shrubs and lurched into the clearing. It was dominated by a single big tree that had outcompeted its neighbors. Smooth bark, enormously wide trunk. A carpet of moss surrounded it, growing up the roots, more moss hanging from some of the branches.

"Look what I found," Kelly laughed, pointing at the tree and clambering up among its thick roots, trampling the moss. Bree shook her head again, regretting it immediately. Her vision cleared and it took a minute to realize what Kelly was pointing at.

Up around chest height, a single stubby branch. Not really a branch, more like a weird smooth growth with a rougher, slightly bulbous end — like a huge cock. Bree sighed at Kelly's predictability.

"Seriously, though," Kelly said. "Just look at that schlong." She grabbed it and climbed closer, then started to jack it off. "That's some serious wood. Almost as big as Brad."

Bree laughed despite herself, drifting closer. Kelly was right: it was more realistic than it had any right to be. Jutting right out of a smooth length of trunk, curving upwards. Way too big. Maybe she wasn't experienced like Kelly, but Bree knew it was comically large even for a porn star.

Kelly bent awkwardly, trying to get the tip of the thing in her mouth, just barely succeeding.

"For God's sake, Kelly," Bree said. Now she was stuck on the image of Kelly doing that to Brad, leaning over with her naked ass right in Bree's face — and where the fuck had that thought come from?

Kelly was running her hand along the shaft now, moaning ridiculously. She paused, winking back at Bree. "C'mon, you should practice. I'll quit embarrassing you if you just give it a try."

Bree groaned, trying to mask her discomfort. Best way out of these Kelly situations was to not make a big deal of it. So she lightly spanked Kelly and bumped her aside, then wrapped her hand around the thing. It didn't even fit in her fist. Rolling her eyes, Bree pretended she was jacking it off. She'd done that once, with an ordinary dick. One of Brad's shitty friends, at a party. It'd been a stupid idea.

This didn't feel the same, of course. But the bark was smooth, and the motion surprisingly easy. It felt warm under her hand. Alive.

Bree let go, feeling disconcerted. "Happy?"

Kelly pouted, but seemed satisfied enough. "That was the best treejob I ever gave. Wait, that means you gave it a Breejob treejob!" She giggled, then reached up around Bree to jack off the stupid limb again. Her breasts pressed against Bree's butt, and Bree sucked in a breath, startled. Then Kelly was stumbling back down to the level ground. "C'mon, I'm really sure it's that way."

Bree had a much better sense of direction than her friend, but she'd been enjoying wandering around, just the two of them, a bittersweet early taste of autumn. They'd been drifting apart anyway, and she knew nothing would be the same when they started school. Nothing the same.

She stared at Kelly's ass again, blushing. Bree was straight, wasn't she? But there was something inside her, more than just lonely wistfulness. A sense of breaking free, starting over again. College three states away, with thousands of new faces. Cocks everywhere, some probably attached to nice guys. But also soft limbs, curved thighs, open mouths and sweet trembling lips. Bree watched Kelly, her friend stumbling away to her own life. But not quite yet.

Bree found herself hurrying after, away from the giant wooden cock and toward whatever this new Bree might be. She couldn't wait to find out.

* * *

[iii.]

Kendra Adams watched her classmates leave the grove, off towards their new lives while she dragged behind, always unseen. Not that there was anything about Bree and Kelly in particular. It seemed Kendra's lot to watch, notice, and escape the attention she wanted and feared.

The grove confused her. She'd grown up next to this small forest, and she'd never run across it. The tree was bigger than any she could remember, and anyway she surely would've remembered a big realistic dildo. With the others gone, she advanced quietly, wondering if the illusion held up close.

Well, up close it looked even more like a dick. Gray-brown bark, smooth. Missing the testicles, which she supposed would be like big oranges if they were to scale. How much semen would that mean? Would it taste like a real man, whatever that tasted like, or something woody instead?

Kendra blinked, baffled by the strange directions her brain took. Like she lived at an angle from everyone else, not quite in their world. The grove was silent, and so she sat and took off her shoes, wiggling toes in the glorious moss, no impression left when she pulled them away. Soft and springy, like her bush.

The thought raised, she had to satisfy her curiosity. Pants off, underwear and all, because she somehow knew no one would disturb her here. Tight black curls between her legs, springing back to the touch, except in the center, where her wetness stuck the hair all together. Not really like the moss, truth be told. She knew you were supposed to shave it all off, but it was such a chore and it was always itchy. Easier to leave it, until it grew lush like the moss.

She trailed her two fingers between the lips, exploring, for what good it'd do. Another thing that didn't work quite right for her, this disconnection between brain and clitoris or vaginal walls or wherever you were supposed to feel it. Like her mind was in yet another place, watching it all, curious but little more.

Kendra's body parts responded, true enough. She lay back on the moss, watching the sky and adding a second hand, holding the lips apart, brushing just the fingertips alongside her clitoris. But today she was so distant, mind angled too askew from her body to send the weak signals that sometimes triggered a Kendra-flavored orgasm, with its little flickering candle of satisfaction.

She tasted herself on her fingers, wondering what a man would think, if it somehow happened. That was the missing ingredient, she suspected, the thing that would make everything work properly, if only she could figure out how to align herself with other humans. With men, their alien eyes and steady strength and penises that waxed and waned, tilting through the air and, if she was lucky, maybe right into Kendra's slanted world.

Kendra stood and moved to the outthrust penis-shaped limb, remembering what Kelly and Bree had been doing with it. The cock had a pleasing solidity, smooth bark that stayed slightly slick with the juices from her fingers. That was the biological point of her lubrication, after all. It was oddly reassuring to see that it worked, even on this facsimile. She tried to mimic Kelly's motions: obviously the more experienced of the two. Whole fist surrounding it, fingertips unable to meet even when her stroke ended beneath the head.

It was strangely satisfying. The wooden penis was more real than any of her imagined interactions, even if the scale was wrong. No human faces or words to send her mind away to the shadows, where she usually lived. She smelled herself now, and she thought it was a good smell. Fingers reaching between her legs for more lubrication, then sliding along the tree once more. The tree liked it. A man might even like it. Her pussy twitched slightly, like it did before an orgasm, and it was more than that: twitch, twitch, up into her groin, her stomach, her breasts. Her small uneven breasts, that she never paid much attention to.

Feeling dazed, Kendra leaned down, putting her lips on the end. She could just fit it in her mouth, and from this angle the shaft looked immensely fat. Foreshortened. Kendra tried imagining a penis inside her, and her imagination did better than usual. When she brought a thumb down lower, it slipped inside, and she actually felt it. Her own warm, hard thumb, more satisfying than any feeling she'd ever had down there. Deeper, deeper she pushed it, trembling fingers dancing around her clitoris.

This is what it'd be like. She'd look the man in the face, and let him actually see her. See her, and press his cock inside her, and that would be her anchor, the thing that held her mind in this world, with all the other humans and their laughs and loves and penises and ecstasies and orgasms. Oh, God, she was coming, and she was going to hold onto this cock, lips stretching, mouth open to the silent scream, her thumb being crushed by muscles she didn't know she possessed, everything dissolving in the most glorious sensations of her life. This was what it meant to live in her body. This is what awaited her, when she found a man.

* * *

[iv.]

"Everyone has regrets," her aunt had said. "Now's the time to air them out, see if they're the real deal or just some bullshit you made up because the future's scary."

Kelly liked Aunt Peggy, and God knows she was easy company compared to Mom, especially in this insane month before the wedding.

Going on a run was a good decision, and not just because she needed to keep it up for the wedding dress. Running made space in her brain, a place for reflection. Kelly hadn't been in these woods since before college, before Stephen and nursing school and everything else. Were those old memories a regret she was facing? Sweet Bree, their crazy week of experimentation, a secret she hadn't even told Stephen about?

In, two, three, out, two, three. Easy running, all the time she needed. It'd been just some fun with Bree, hadn't it? She barely remembered that afternoon, with Bree so awkward and Kelly so stoned that it'd taken her a half hour to figure out what her friend was suggesting. No, it'd been fun, but mostly because of Bree's reactions to it all.

They'd fallen out of touch, but Bree was coming to the wedding, bringing a woman with her. That made Kelly happy, to think maybe she'd been there at just the right time for Bree. She'd never minded trying something new, and her pussy had responded all right even if her brain wasn't entirely on board.

No, Kelly decided, no regrets at all, except maybe drifting away from a friend.

Still, Kelly figured she was working her way around to the real regrets, the stuff in the pit of her stomach. She'd met Stephen freshman year, and that was that. Bam, bam, and now here she was five years later, settling in with the man she loved. But on some things she'd settled a long time ago, hadn't she? Almost before she knew what was happening.

If she decided after all this time to count Bree, that still made only three lovers. Kelly had dumped Brad before college, but for a brief time she'd been licking a friend's hairy pussy in the afternoon and then fucking her boyfriend half the night. Kelly had burst into college feeling like a sex goddess, and she'd hit Stephen like a locomotive. He still loved her, still thought she was sexy as fuck. And after all the work she'd done to get in shape, Kelly was finally feeling sexy as fuck again.

There it was, then. While Stephen was away last month she'd gone out to the lake with college friends. Plenty of glances from the guys, lots of "Stephen's a lucky man," and she'd eaten up all the attention. Chris was there, more muscles than ever, same old lopsided grin, and sweet Jesus that bulge in his suit. One beer too many, and she'd actually groped him, not that anyone else had noticed. She'd been trying not to think about it since.

For all Stephen's diligence as a lover, he wasn't particularly creative. And he wasn't even as big as Brad.

God, it was so banal, but she kept imagining the tool in Chris's shorts, twitching under her fingers. Chris was big enough to pick her up easily, had done exactly that. And that grin, like he already knew what she was thinking. One last fling, right?

Running sometimes made Kelly a little horny, and now she was well past that. Whatever, these woods were quiet. Maybe all she needed was a good wank. She turned off the path, wiping the sweat from her brow as she picked her way between trees. And then suddenly recognition struck, and she almost laughed.

Full circle: the magic grove with the magic tree. When she stepped inside, she saw the magic schlong was just as ridiculous as her hazy recollection. Pristine moss, like no one had ever visited here, even though it seemed she'd barely left the path. God, she remembered it now, that day with Bree, with Kelly kind of horny and Bree's thoughts going an entirely different direction. What a glorious place for a wank.

She pulled off her sports bra, flinging it on the moss, shocked at her own boldness. A moment later, she was stepping out of her athletic shorts. The shoes could stay, she decided and that made it even more lewd. And if someone caught her, maybe it was destined. She stretched her arms, looked up at the warm foliage. Air the perfect temperature, kissing her nipples, whispering around her thighs and ass. An ache deep inside her, that only deepened when her fingertips slid between her pussy lips, finding the hood that forever hid her clit.

Kelly was moving toward the tree before she knew it. For all Chris's assets, there was no way he approached the size of that wooden dong. And Kelly had the shocking realization that she was going to fuck the thing.

It was as she remembered: easy steps up among the roots. Her hand grasped the warm wood, just a bit rougher on the end. She'd made Bree play with it, and in retrospect that left a guilty taste. But maybe it'd provoked the stuff afterwards.

The thing jutted high against her stomach. Kelly wasn't large, and she'd never tried to fit anything bigger than a shampoo bottle. She bent over, stretching her mouth around it. So much more experience than the last time, though it hardly helped on this monstrous thing. With Chris, though, she'd give him damned good head. The tree's clean woody taste filled her mouth. Kelly wondered if anyone had ever fucked it before. Who knows how long this glorious dildo had been there, waiting. It must have serious blue balls, somewhere there inside the trunk.

Kelly grabbed the dick, used it for balance as she stood up. This was going to be awkward, but that only added to the excitement. She stood on her toes, and she still wasn't tall enough. But there were solid branches above her, almost perfectly positioned. Plenty of handholds. The fat tip bumped along her flat abdomen, tickling the cropped triangle of brown hair. She moved her hands closer to the tree, left leg reaching higher and finding a shallow foothold. Almost high enough, but a clumsy bump gave her an unpleasant jolt. She did need to be careful, much as she wanted to just jump on the thing. Chris had been gentle when he picked her up. Implacably strong.