A fire flickered ahead, and their hearts lightened.
Bill and Kerri had gone camping to connect with each other, but neither of them had camped since they were children. They went hiking and got lost in the windy, branching trails until darkness came. Rumors of bears played on their imaginations every time they saw a dark shape, and in the feeble light of a waning crescent moon and a few stars, blocked by tall oaks, most shapes were dark. Civilization was a long way away. They each had their phones to serve as flashlights, but the batteries of both were nearly drained.
The light that danced ahead had to be a campfire. A campfire meant a campground; a campground meant a well-marked trail back to their own site.
They walked forward, and the fire loomed larger. For a moment they thought it might be a forest fire, and knew fear again, but it didn't seem to be spreading. And besides, they heard voices. They plunged forward, along a game trail they'd mistaken in the dark for something man-made, until they came to a clearing filled with people, a throng of a hundred or so.
"Uh," Kerri said.
Half the people, men and women, were entirely naked. Everyone was at least half-naked. They moved around a huge bonfire, bare breasts shining in the light, cocks both erect and soft bouncing as men moved about. Some of the people stood near the edge, talking animatedly; others danced with wild abandon in circles around the fire.
Kerri's husband was transfixed by the sight of all the naked flesh.
"I'm not sure..." Kerri said, but even she knew the alternative of wandering about the forest lost wasn't a real option.
"Hmm. Yeah," said Bill.
"These people all came from somewhere," Kerri said. "Some big path, probably. We can find it and keep going."
Bill nodded and started around the edge of the clearing. But his eyes did not seek out the edge, where a path might be found, but strayed to the inside, where flame-light danced across breast and thigh. Kerri followed. She had not been very sexually experienced when she had married Bill, and she, too, was fascinated by the moving bodies. One man's cock, even semi-hard, was larger than her husband's. Another was rock hard, stroked casually by the naked woman who chatted with the man it belonged to. Another was shrunk almost to the point that it vanished between large testicles.
They nearly bumped into the crudely carved wooden table in front of them. Simple round earthenware bowls, or perhaps they were cups, lay on it, miniatures of a giant punch bowl with a ladle. A bronzed, broad-chested man wearing only a sarong around his waist handed them each a cup. Without thinking they both accepted. The water ran out hours ago, and they were thirsty.
"I'm Dane," the man shouted as he ladled the red drink into the cups. "Enjoy the Primal Brew!"
"Bill," Bill said. "Nice to meet you."
"Let's get out of here," Kerri whispered.
A woman came and insinuated herself between them. She put an arm on Kerri's shoulder, and another on Bill's, and so tight was the space that one bare breast rubbed against Kerri's chest, and the other against Bill's arm. Kerri looked at Bill, who didn't seem to mind. In fact, he was taking a good look.
"Give me some Primal Brew, Dane. I love how it makes me feel," said the woman.
Well, thought Kerri, at least she'll need one of her hands back for that. "And how," Kerri asked, "does it make you feel?"
"Free," said the woman. "I'm Luxuria, but you can call me Lux. First time? You still have all your clothes on." She moved forward, spinning as she went, and rubbed her hand on Bill's chest. Then she plucked at the top button of Kerri's blouse, without undoing it. "Loosen up! And drink!"
Dane, in front of them, scooped up liquid from the punch bowl, but did not pour it into one of the cups. Lux spun again, and went to her knees. She opened her mouth and tilted her head upward, and for a moment Kerri thought she was going to give Dane a blowjob. But then Dane tilted the ladle over her mouth and poured the liquid down her throat as she swallowed. Then she got to her feet and danced away.
"Wow that was hot," Bill said, sipping from the cup he'd been given. "Stuff doesn't taste that good, but I'm thirsty. I'll drink anything."
"Bill! It's probably drugged!" Kerri hissed. "That's why everyone has their clothes off. They're all stoned."
Her whisper must have carried further than she expected, because Dane laughed. "Maybe we have our clothes off because we want to."
"Do you swear there's nothing in the punch?" Kerri asked.
Dane just smiled. "If I did, would you believe me? Some people swear there's some drug in it that removes their inhibitions. Others are sure it's just colored watered-down gin. Believe what you wish - oh, she's about to speak."
A hush settled over the crowd. Forty feet away, at the edge of the circle, a woman with long blonde hair, dressed in a diaphanous white robe, was lifted onto a wooden pedestal. In the flickering light it was impossible to make out what sort of carvings adorned the platform, but there was a suggestion of curves lasciviously entwined.
"By day we walk the streets, surrounded by concrete and steel," the blonde said. Her nipples jutted against the white fabric, and there was no doubt she was braless. "We wear the personas society requires of us; restrained, civilized, calculating, analytical, competitive."
"Hear, hear!" shouted someone, and there were many murmurs of assent from the crowd. All dance and talk and stopped to listen to this woman.
"We come here to cast that all aside!" The woman said. "To be in nature. To be our natural, real, inner, true selves. Passionate, loving, uninhibited, barbaric, unrestrained. Free! But some of us," and it seemed to Kerri that the woman looked right at her, "need a little help. So by Freyja, by Aphrodite, by Freyr, and by Dionysus, I cast this spell, that we all might be unrestrained in our passions! Stripped of our personas, we will be our true, primal, sexual selves!" The woman pulled at her robe, and it came off easily, falling to pool around her feet. Her breasts were high and full, her limbs sleek, and her body evenly tanned as if it had never been clothed in the sun.
Kerri wanted to be free. But more than she wanted to be free, she wanted to be enchanted. Around her, men and women kissed and groped and stroked each other, sometimes for merely a moment until they switched partners like at a square dance. The spell's effect seemed real to the others, and she wished to fall under its power. But it couldn't be real.
The priestess, for that seemed the word for her, walked toward them, her hips swaying as she walked. The revelers reached to touch her breasts and belly as she strode through them. She picked up a ladle, dipped it into the punch, and held it with all the imperious grace of a queen with a scepter.
"You are lost?" she asked.
"Yes," Kerri said. "We just -"
"Yes," Bill said at the same time. "Our campsite -"
"But you didn't ask for directions when you got here. You stared with fascination. And lust, did you not? Drink, then, and join us." She lifted the ladle above her head, and dribbled red liquid. Some of it ran down her chin and her neck, but most of it she swallowed.
"Not," she said with a laugh, "the way I intended to get messy."
It took Kerri a moment to get her meaning. She glanced at Bill, and he was staring at the naked woman, speechless. It amused her to see him at a loss for words, and she thought there would be no harm in playing along. "And how did you intend to get messy?" she asked. Without thinking, she took a long deep drink of the punch to quench her thirst.
The priestess smiled. "Ah, the elixir, and the enchantment. You feel them both, don't you? You can feel your desire. I saw you looking around at the cocks of our men."
Kerri wasn't sure if she felt anything or not, but she didn't deny she'd been looking earlier. "You didn't answer my question," she said.
The priestess turned to Bill, and said, "I dreamt that my lips, my face, my neck, and my breasts would be painted with the cum of some tall, handsome stranger, while his companion enjoyed himself with others." She winked at Kerri. "And now that you have both drunk of the Primal Brew, and heard the spell from the gods and goddesses of old, I know that we shall have our desires."
