Love You Forever

Part Four: Great Hope and Great Dread

I looked at a different Reenan, seductively adjusting herself in her new beauty and I turned my love onto her back. Her eyes were beginning to roll and her spasms becoming more few.

"You did this! You did this you witch!" Screamed I in the witch's face.

"'Twasn't me Denny, you did that

yerself

," said Reenan, softly sing-song. I could have murdered the coy betch.

"Don't be cute with me Reenan, what did you do?"

"It was yerself I'm telling you. It was necessary, too" And she held her holly phallus to her lips, suckling on the tip like a pacifier, lapping the red from the leaves and peering up at me. "Ye did a proper job I must say."

I looked down at Aideen. I tried to save her. She was turning blue, my queen. I pushed down on her lungs, squeezing the last air out, but when I released, she did not inhale. I listened to her heart, which was slow in pace and low in pressure. I began to panic and cry.

I was an old man with a shattered leg, my lover nearly gone, and stuck in the holly circle with a witch and no escape. I leaned over to kiss her lips for the last time, and with her mouth agape I saw the problem-- her pretty tongue was doubled over in the back of her mouth. I reached in and pulled the little muscle from her throat. I pounded her chest again and gave her my breath.

"She's coming back to us!" I shouted. "She's coming back."

Reenan just looked at me with that tool in her hand and smiled devilishly.

Aideen opened her eyes, and I had her once more.

In the small moments now when she is again far from me, I am reminded of how helplessly poor I was without her, and how rich I am with her.

"Denny..." cooed she.

"Yes my love?"

"I want you to suck the cream from my arse and feed it me."

She was back and in a silly bliss. So bold, my queen Aideen. I went down between her legs and lifted them on my shoulders. I opened my mouth around her hole and she pressed out a stream of come. I let her down and I kissed her deep, transferring all my seed to her mouth. She lapped it up, smiled, and smacked lips.

"I love you Denny."

"I love you too Aideen."

"Forever?"

"Forever." And I began to cry.

**************

Reenan resembled something of a young woman again, but the signs of her aging were already beginning to show.

"You are indeed fated lovers. And you, Aideen, are a mystic of Fifka, without doubt. She wouldn't give you up easily, would she child?"

Aideen shook her head in puzzlement.

"Aideen, there are many witches. There are many different understandings of the world. There are the lesser philosophies of the Fifkas and gypsies witches of the world. And there are the powerful, daring, masterful Reenans. There are more of course, child. You have an itch to scratch, Aideen. You want to see the world. You want to learn more. To strengthen the magic in you. I see you are ready to dedicate your life to this old man. He is your life's project and passion, for now. But what about when the time comes and goes for Denny Doyle? Will you be thinking 'what if?' when he is still gripping your heart with icy fingers?

"And you, Denny Doyle, you bumbling bastard. You enjoy the love of a lifetime. A gift that rarely comes to a man of your age. You had better keep her close and you please her wanting heart or you will find yourself alone longer than you can ever imagine."

I sat in my nakedness and my broken knee. I wanted to clothe myself from this witch. Aideen stood up, naked and attentive, tall and straight. Letting the warm night and the mist cleanse her.

The deed was done, the seeds were sown and now and forever after we would be reaping what yielded from our love and commitment.

"We will be going now," said Aideen.

"As you wish children," said Reenan.

We packed up and clothed ourselves. Aideen fitted her bog shoes. We fashioned the sling for my leg around her back and neck, and I hopped up. Reenan burned incense on the altar and leaned over it, inhaling the heady fumes. She muttered to herself and closed her eyes. As we shoved off she broke her foreign muttering to say to us:

"Thank you for joining me on the holly moon, children. Enjoy your love tonight."

Aideen turned her head and nodded. I held my hand up to give her a backward wave. I wrapped an arm around my love's neck and lit my clay pipe, and we started the treacherous journey back.

**************

We reached home well into the morning. We rested all day. Scaling the wall had not been the easiest task in the world, but I could grip with my hands and push with one leg and Aideen helped hoist me up from the top. The bog looked uglier in the day than in the night. Like an ugly lover, like a bat, it was not meant to be seen in the daylight.

I kept my swollen knee raised up on a cushion as I sat on the seat by the fire. Aideen gave me some concoction and ointment to help it heal but the poor knee was shattered. I could not wipe the idea from my mind that Reenan had done this to me. For every risk, for every big step, for every ignored warning, we knew we would pay. But we persevered because we knew our love could mend it. And on that day, in my miserable pain, Aideen's love sufficed.

**************

The village was buzzing as doctor Bowie stepped out his door on a humid day in July. He put on his coat. Mostly he did this to cover the pit stains that had bled through his undershirt and turned his canary button-down deep mustard. Bowie and I used to be fierce mates in the public houses of Bonnakeen. I hadn't seen him professionally since my scarlet fever.

Somehow everyone knew where he was going, who he was going to see. Normally Bowie would say where when asked "And where are you off to today, Doctor?" But today the criminally honest man got flustered and just said: "

arda bóthar

"--high crossroads--. Well, information travels quickly from ear to mouth to ear again. Aideen and I, lovers in sin, lived near the high crossroads, and as Bowie made his way out of the village on the western road, the people were spreading the news. They expected some news about the state we were in.

Old decrepit bachelor (ha! hardly) Denny Doyle is soon to pass on, to leave his decrepit land to the Connollys, and the tricky widow Aideen will have her land for another man whom she will surely marry, and the yarn spins longer and the truth spreads thinner and before teatime is over I'm already dead and the undertakers are preparing a casket and handing a local drunk some money and a shovel to disturb the soil atop my poor mother's grave. But all for naught as the doctor came and went and had nothing to report to the village but a farming accident.

"And Doctor, when will the coroner be coming for Denny, lordhavemercy?"

"And how is Aideen, poor child, Doctor? She must be in a terrible state."

"No coroner will be coming today, or for a long time I'd say," Replied Bowie. "Poor child Aideen is better than ever, and Denny is still fit as a fiddle, save for is crushed knee. He was cliffted counting cattle in the commonage."

"Will he walk again, Doctor?"

"He won't walk again, so to speak, but he'll be hobbling for years I'd say!" he chuckled.

When he had come to the house, he was typical Bowie. "Denny, how are you keeping old boy?" asked he, like we had just bumped into each other on the street.

"Better than yourself, Bowie. Looks can be deceiving!"

"Ha! You blackguard, you are strung up like longjohns with holes in the pants!"

"And you Aideen, how are ye keeping?"

"Oh, don't you know, busy with your man here."

"He'll keep you busy, all right, he's a right slave driver in the fields. Up at five o'clock, break for supper, work until night time again.... and no teatime!" He joked, the codder, he saw the state of the farm out the back window of the kitchen, not a foot had treaded the lower fields for years, except for the poachers and fisherman and wild animals, and Aideen, when she was picking mushrooms or weeds.

He may have glimpsed the bogshoes in the corner, and the muddy walking stick, the sling and the apothecary of herbs scattered in different places around the kitchen, but he chose to ignore them, I think. What he didn't see, he couldn't report. And he would be willing to ignore a lot for a lovely girl like Aideen and his old drinking mate Denny Doyle. Though I hadn't been to the village in years for a sip of stout or a gulp of whiskey, we were friends. We understood eachother. We knew the other was too busy or too wrapped up and we didn't think it selfish. Good on Bowie for his prosper and business. Good on me for my young passion. Bowie and I were almost happy that my knee shattered to prompt this visit.

Bowie examined and tampered with my knee. Where does it hurt he asks? Fecking bloody well everywhere!

His honesty was bolstered by his friendliness and he told me the God's honest truth.

"The knee... for a man of our age... Well, when it's fucked it's fucked."

"Thank you doctor," my suspicions professionally verified.

"Thank you doctor," said Aideen, holding back a tear, knowing that no magic could reverse the damage. It was itself a magical sacrifice.

"Elevation you have, ice if you can manage. The leg will stay if it's taken care of. If you are lucky, there may be twenty degrees of movement. It will never straighten completely, it will never bend far. You'll need a crutch... maybe an old

gollogue

will fix ye! Haha."

I chuckled with him. What else could I do? "So, the visit?"

"Pro Bono, my friend. I suppose you remember what that means from our sessions in the pub? You've had a few pro bono pints in your day!"

"And ye lost more than a few bets to me, don't forget."

"Ah, how can I ever." There was a sigh and a long pause. "Let's not get sentimental, Denny. Best of luck to you and Aideen. The two ye are chasing a dream. I know you don't listen to the echoes that reverberate around these hills from the village-- don't start listening now."

A gas man, doctor Bowie. The craic we shared was unmatched. A friend I would love forever.

**************

"Crawl over me." I said one night as Aideen came to bed. Aideen had stayed up playing pennywhistle for a while, and I enjoyed the lively hornpipes and solemn ballads from upstairs as I rested my eyes.

"Come on then, crawl over me, my love." I couldn't move very well for my a leg, and though the pain was subsiding steadily over the weeks, I didn't want to upset my comfortable position in the bed. The smell of a freshly quenched fire filled the air. Standing by the bed she folded the bedclothes down to my knees.

I felt Aideen get in the bed with me. I felt one knee weigh down the edge of the bed, then the other on the other side of me, but she did not lie down.

Then I smelled something mingling with the wet, sooty, smoke. Her womanly musk blended sweetly with the scorched birch and oak and beech and filled my nostrils with a heavy odor. I opened my eyes but couldn't see a thing in the pitch of night.

I felt her ruby fuzz on my chin as my lips and jaw were surrounded by her soft vulva.

"Aauuunnhhh..." she moaned as she lowered herself onto my face.

"...uuunnhhh..." as I parted her lips with my tongue.

"...hhhnnna..." as my tongue reached inside her.

"...huhhh..." as I flicked her clit.

Straddling my face backward, she lowered herself further, so that her hole was against my nose. Her vulva pushed down and like vortex, it sucked me in. Equally did her tight hole draw me in with its scent.

Aideen rubbed her sex all over my face, first directing her hard clit between my lips for me to suck and lick, then allowing me to explore her briny pink inside. Then her plump arse covered my face fully, and I tempted her hole to pucker and give way. All the while she rose and fell, and when she wasn't stiffened by an intense convulsion of bliss, she would orbit around my tongue to make sure she felt all sides. All the while, she kept her hands in her wild curls, away from my painfully stiffening cock. I could only imagine her supple breasts trying to reach the stars from her swollen chest, her back arching as if to lift them to the constellations. And all the while she was grounded by me, held firm to Earth as if by the gravity of my mouth, and not by the world itself.

She lost herself in the battle between Earth and sky and rose and fell on me with all her weight, pushing her flesh into my teeth, pulling my tongue into her depths, nuzzling her hole onto my nose. My tongue was Aideen, my lips were Aideen, and my breath was Aideen. Our love was the channel by which she was reaching new heights of understanding in the universe. I was her tuning fork and she felt me resonate in her.

She rode harder and harder, panting and heaving, moaning and yipping and whining like a wolf in a clearing. Each fall and rise shook out a new vocalization of her pleasure. Her hands and arms stretched and cramped, releasing ancient tensions, clearing her view of a pristine and free future.

I never stopped giving my tongue to her. A smile replaced the twisted frowns of uncontrollable passion as she felt a new level of pleasure rising inside her. She felt the buzz of a distinct vibration rising through her spine from her tail to her brain. Incidental vibrations radiated outward from her core to her fingertips, her toes, her nipples and nose. She felt it coming, and she smiled wide with her lips, wanting the unknown. Her eyes were closed but, she saw more with them shut.

She bent over and deflated herself to allow a new breath in, a new breath that would release all her restlessness. Hands feverishly gripping her breasts. White knuckles tensed her arms all the way to her chest as she ground on me hard and rhythmically, her hair draped over my stomach. I could feel her fuzz was stiff and her body was covered in goosebumps. In silence, she began her slow to ascent. She arched her back and lifted her hair off of me as she continued to erect. Her tongue crept out of her smiling mouth to stretch to its limits and lick her lips. Ever so slowly she licked her lips from chin to nose to chin again, biting it the thickness that protruded, farther than it had ever protruded before. As her mouth and body moved slowly and firmly, her grinding hips continued their fervent

tempo allegretto

.

My cock dripped a constant stream of clear precome into a small pool on my abdomen. Her sex dripped into my mouth, down my face and neck like a trickling fall.

As she reached her full erect posture, her gyrations turned into thrusts and bounces. Her hands stretched to the heavens above her, letting her breasts gasp for blood. Locking fingers, showing her palms to the sky, she stretched as much as she could. She was ready.

"Hnfh," she sounded when her body shuddered, a small muffled cry that one would miss under the sound of a leaf falling on the windowsill. Her chin jerked up so that her head touched between her shoulder blades. She spasmed over and over, each with its own resonating vibrations. I came without stimulation, I gasped for breath but received only flesh and fluid. Come erupted into the air and fell like beads of white amber onto Aideen's eyelid and lips, her neck and her breasts, her belly and fur.

I lay in wait for her body to rest, feeling it as it rattled through my head. I relished the exhibit of pleasure on her young body. The girl could not stop exceeding the probable, defining the possible.

Finally, her arms fell to her sides. Gently she ran her fingers up through the come in her pubic hair, dragging the seed in streaks on her body until it thinned like paint off a brush onto canvas, then wetted again as her finger dragged through the next clinging collection on her belly, up to her chest where she rubbed the rest in like a salve for her reddened breasts. She licked the come from her lips and opened her eyes. She felt the clumped lashes of one eye bat against her brow. Last, she used all the might that might be returning to her knees to lift herself from me.

I breathed in the fresh air, tinged with the love in the air, tinged with the residue that covered me. Aideen weakly got under the bedclothes and wrapped herself around me. I felt burning heat from between her legs on my thigh. I felt her sticky soft skin against my side, and we both fell fast asleep.

**************

Summer was leaving us quickly. A question presented itself which hadn't in quite some time. Aideen and I had to wed. There was a spiritual, legal, and familial commitment.

The final judgment of the church of Bonnakeen was that our marriage could not be. We were widely supposed to be an abomination in the village, the church the bastion of this belief. Between suspicion of fornication and Aideen's satanic reputation, we never thought it wise even to approach our father of the cloth. We went west to a small village in the mountains of county Cork, where a sister of Eoin lived.

As witness, on Aideen's side of the aisle were Eoin and his sister, her husband and two children, Cait, Fry and Úna. Úna was a solemn young woman, changed by the death of Owen when she was a child. Fry looked very at home in the church, were it not for Owen's death he would be a brother by now instead of a farmer. Eoin and Cait, to be sure would have never aged a day but the death in the family has that wearying effect. The occasion today was, for the Connollys, a bittersweet moment. Eoin, I know, saw Aideen as another casualty of the war, one wins in battle, dies fighting, or disappears, and Aideen it seemed had done the latter.

On my side of the isle was only Doctor Bowie in a grey suit. A young strawberry heifer of mine stood tied outside the chapel.

And that was the entire party to our wedding. It was as much a formality as a celebration, but everyone will look back on it fondly. Weddings were too few these days, new life was too seldom these days, and the funerals of young men were many.

The kiss was as natural, the applause joyous as expected. We went for drinks at an old spot in the locale. It would be my last pint out, and it was good to share it with the obliging Connolly's and in-laws, and my good old friend Doctor Bowie.

"To Denny and Aideen," they toasted.

We all returned to the house of Eoin's sister, Peg, and slaughtered the bullock and ate hardily. Spuds and carrots, parsnip and turnip, all cuts of meat, and we drank from a half tierce of porter. The remainder of the meat from the cow was for Peg and the family to keep.

We had the children's room while they slept with their parents. We made fast and quiet love in the small bed.

**************

The river flooded and the pond froze before the grass stopped growing that fall. We cut the ice and slaughtered the cattle with Fry. And things from there, they kept getting better. All errands were sorted, and I was happily hobbling around the house with my waking stick. The winter was hard, it came early and it lasted late. It tested me with its chill. We ate our stocked meat. Warm stew, crackling fires, putine and tea were our sustenance. Aideen and I kept eachother warm with our caress, our mouths and our bodies. We had a white Christmas, a white new year, and a white February. The most snow that ever fell on the road in my lifetime.

I had no reason to wander around the farm. Still, I would say from time to time that I should go down to the river, that I should throw a net in and catch me a salmon, but I rarely did. Fishing was two full days of work and walking for a cripple like me. These are the sacrifices of the life from the sacrifice of the body.

Aideen and I loved looking out back window of the kitchen at the snow on the fields. The brilliant greens of Ireland were gone with the transformation of winter. Scraggly trees and a great white blanket. Winter was washing the canvas for spring to paint.