A Swinging Odyssey

Author's Notes: This chapter continues the story started in Chapter 14. All errors are strictly mine.

* * *

Pedro's rap on the doorframe of their hut woke Aiko and Gerald from their slumber. Their third night among these people had been quite restful. Only the waning campfires had prevented the camp from falling into total pitch-blackness. Even the noises of the jungle night had failed to disturb them. The croaking of tree frogs and the chirping of insects even soothed the couple. Their songs of these creatures signalled that there was no danger nearby.

"Did you have a good night's sleep?" he asked.

Pedro wore an adornment around his waist. Otherwise, he remained naked.

"Very good," Gerald replied. "It's obvious you've come here for a reason Pedro. What's up?"

Both Aiko and Gerald hadn't bothered to put their clothes back on. Nudity was normal here. The day was hot and humid. If they wore their regular clothes, they would have wash them again.

"Three things," he summarized. "Firstly, now that the new village has been set up, everyone except the children and those women assigned to care for them, are supposed to look for food. The women will explore the nearby jungle looking for fruit, nuts, roots and other edible plants while the men fish and hunt."

"We've enough civilized food for ourselves to last several days. They don't need to hunt and gather for our sake," Gerald pointed out. "We have to be careful what we put in our North American stomachs. On the other hand, we'd be more than happy to help in whatever we can as long as they realize we don't have their knowledge and skills."

"That gets to my second point," Pedro said. "I already told them about food," Pedro replied. "As far as they're concerned, you can eat what you brought with you, but even an unskilled person can be useful as long as they're willing to follow instructions. At the very least, you could help carry extra food back to the village."

"So that means Gerald will be away for the better part of the day helping the men while I stay behind with the women tending the children or gathering edible plants. Right?" Aiko said.

"That's right," Pedro said.

Aiko and Gerald exchanged glances.

"Of course, we agree," Gerald said. "Our very presence is a burden to these people. The least we could do to thank them for their hospitality is to help them in whatever way we can, limited as it may be."

Pedro informed the elders. They nodded in affirmation.

"And what's the third thing," Aiko prompted.

"You stink," Pedro laughed. "They smell the insect repellent you put on yourselves. They think animal poop smells better. If you don't want to offend your hosts' noses, you should use the local remedy. Keep the commercial repellent in you bag until just before our rescuers arrive."

"So what's the remedy?" Aiko asked.

"Arrieras ants," Pedro replied. "Their a type of army ant whose smell bad to other insects although to us they smell okay."

"Ants!" Aiko shuddered. "Army ants."

"Don't worry," Pedro said. "They're harmless to humans. Do either of you have aversions to harmless ants," Pedro asked.

"No we don't," Aiko replied. She was determined to do whatever these people did.

Pedro waved over a man and a woman. They took the couple to an arrieras ant nest, and showed them how to do it. They stuck a hand into the nest until it was covered in ants. Then they rubbed their hands together, crushing them into a mix of guts and chitin particles. Then they applied the crushed ant guts to their bodies.

Aiko and Gerald gamely followed suit.

"Look at this way," Gerald told his wife. Ant guts small a lot better than a tapir. Tapir stink really bad. If we had to cover ourselves in tapir shit, I probably would have taken my chances with the bugs."

Aiko only looked at him, unsure if he was joking or not.

* * *

An hour later, Pedro returned with the two elders. They had tribal adornments in their hands. The old woman placed two adornments around Aiko's waist.

"I told them you have two daughters at home," Pedro explained. "These adornments symbolize fertility, motherhood and the continuation of the people."

The old man hung a different type of adornment around Gerald's waist.

"This adornment represents full manhood," Pedro said. "Normally, a male of the tribe would get this adornment after his formal initiation into the clan. But," he laughed, "since you have fathered two children, you are obviously a man, although not a man of the tribe. These people are practical."

The foreign couple smiled. Although they were pale-skinned, largely ignorant of the ways of these people, and lacking in any skills useful in the jungle, they were happy. The gift of adornments symbolized this tribe's tolerance, if not acceptance, of their presence among them. It was a new adventure among people they really liked.

"Let's go," Pedro said. "It's time to go hunting and fishing."

Aiko accompanied the old woman to join the women and children. She wondered what her duties would be.

The old woman led Aiko to a group of four women, all of them with baskets. One of them had an extra basket; she handed it to Aiko. They gestured to her to follow them into the jungle. She did.

For several hours, the five women found and eventually filled their baskets with the jungle's hidden bounty. If she had been on her own, Aiko realized, she probably would have searched an entire day and still not be able to find enough to cover the bottom of her basket, let alone fill it. She respected them for the jungle lore.

On returning to the village, the women sat down in the shade of a large tree, that hung over the village's source of water. Upstream was a spring but in this location, a pool had formed where children joyfully played.

One of the women offered her coconut water from a freshly cut coconut. Aiko gratefully accepted her offering. She drank it down; it tasted so sweet.

Aiko saw them examine her with their eyes. They're curiosity got the better of them. Although they knew about the outside world, they, as Pedro had earlier informed her, had never met an Asian.

They put their fingers through her hair and saw the black hairy patch between her legs. Her eye colour was dark. To this extent, she resembled them. But in other respects, she looked quite different. Her skin was white, while theirs was almost a bronze colour. Her almond-shaped eyes, with its pronounced epicanthic fold stood in contrast to their large round eyes. Her nose was small, almost delicate, whereas the indigenous women had larger, broader noses.

One after another, they touched her. One rubbed her skin with her finger. She looked at her finger as if she were expecting to see white paint on it. Aiko guessed that some of these people had never seen people with skins as pale as theirs. Another woman put her hand on Aiko's breast, a touch that was driven not by sensuality but by curiosity.

They chattered, often addressing Aiko, but of course, she could not reply. "Too bad, I can't understand them,' she thought. 'Yet they are so friendly and make feel at home."

* * *

The men returned well into the afternoon. There was excitement among. They were smiling and joyful. A couple of men were backslapping Gerald. Aiko wondered what had happened that caused Gerald to receive saw attention. He was smiling too.

"What's all that about?" she asked her husband.

"We were on our boats for quite a while following the riverbank. Some of the men fished while others looked for bigger game. I knew I couldn't help with the fishing, so I kept my eye out for game too. I was the first to spot the capybara," Gerald said proudly. "So we went after it. Pedro told him it would feed the entire village for the feast they plan to have tonight."

"Why should that make them excited," Aiko inquired. "Surely they hunt and eat them all the time. They're relative to the guinea pig. Native people living in the Andes raise guinea pigs as food. We keep them as pets."

"They were happy that I sighted the animal," Gerald explained patiently, "but it was not the cause of their excitement."

"Then what was it?" she asked again, a little exacerbated by her husband's apparent smugness. "Get to the point."

"What's this?" Gerald laughed. "You sound like a man. Usually, you want to hear the details. Now you want to get to the heart of the matter. So I'm giving you the story, and you'll find out soon enough why the men are so jovial."

Gerald was smiling from ear to ear. Aiko frowned.

"Just give me a chance to tell the story, okay?" he said. "Usually, you want to know all the details first. So I'm obliging you." He laughed again knowing he was keeping her in suspense.

"Anyway," he continued, "the men stopped fishing because all four boats were needed to surround the capybara and cut off its means of escape. Two boats of men moved to the shore, and two stayed offshore to cut off its avenues of escape by both land water. Capybaras are good swimmers, you know."

"So I've read," she said curtly. "Get on with it, Gerald."

"As we closed in, a couple of men jumped into the water close to shore. Then it struck."

"What struck?" Aiko asked.

"An anaconda."

"Anaconda?" she almost screamed. "That's the world's largest snake. One species, the green anaconda, can grow to almost 9 meters (30 feet) long. They're big and strong enough to crush and kill a man!"

"We were after the same prey. We were so intent on the capybara, we failed to notice the anaconda lying in wait below the surface of the water. It was about strike at the capybara when Rainbow jumped into the water in front of it. It wrapped itself around Rainbow, starting asphyxiate him. I did the only think I could think of. I grabbed a knife from the boat I was in and drove it through the snake's, killing it. I saved Rainbow's life."

AIko was agape. "You saved his life! You're a hero!" she said delightedly.

"Did you guys catch the capybara?" she asked.

"Nope."

"You came back empty-handed?"

"Nope. We came back with meat, snake meat to be exact."

Aiko looked toward the boats. The men were dragging a massive green snake onshore where they would butcher it into more sizable chunks.

She also saw Pedro, the two elders, Scar and Rainbow approach. They had been holding a conference.

It was the old man who spoke. He had an adornment in his hand.

Pedro spoke. "Gerald, the elder's message is this: You are a very brave man who put yourself in danger to save the life of a man you barely know. Only a warrior or someone who has done an exceptionally brave act in defence of his tribe can wear such an adornment. He, the elder, and Scar, are the only two men who are allowed to wear such an adornment."

The elder spoke again.

"But he is in a quandary," Pedro explained. "He cannot give this it you as long as you are not of the people. He asks that you honour them. He wants you and Aiko to join the tribe so that he may properly honour you by offering you this adornment. It includes the snake's fangs."

Gerald asked the obvious question. "How do we join the tribe?"

"Through an initiation ceremony at tonight's feast. It is very similar to the one that would take place, if a man or woman from another clan were to join."

"And what does the initiation ceremony entail?"

"A dance followed by a physical union that symbolizes tribe unity."

"Physical union?" Aiko asked. "What do you mean?"

"Sex," Pedro said smiling. "Remember every woman is, to use a 'civilized' word, married to every man, and every man is married to every woman. Therefore, you join the tribe by, if you'll excuse the use of an inadequate English word, 'marrying' into the tribe. Of course the marriage has to be consummated."

"Oh," Aiko said stretching out the sound.

"And what about you," Gerald asked Pedro.

"I've been invited to join the tribe too. They say I have brought much good luck to their people. Good luck is something to be kept."

"Give us just a minute alone," Gerald said.

Pedro walked away.

"Let's go for it," Aiko said. "This is so exciting."

"You're insatiable," Gerald said smirking.

"So are you," she replied. "But we aren't really doing anything we haven't done before. The only thing that's different is this totally unexpected turn of events."

"True," he agreed.

Gerald signalled to Pedro. Their guide was talking to Scar and Rainbow.

"Tell them we would be very honoured to be of the people," he told Pedro.

* * *

Some of the men butchered the snake and the spent a good part of the afternoon repairing their boats and fashioning their hunting spears. Gerald joined several others in search of brush and wood for the night's campfires. Some where placed near the huts, but a one particularly large pile of brush was placed in the clearing where the lovemaking had taken place. Pedro told them that the ceremony adopting them into the tribe would take place there, out of earshot and eyeshot of the huts.

Aiko helped the women prepare the evening's feast.

When the clan's chores were completed, the men and women separated. Pedro explained to Aiko and Gerald that every man and women would don ceremonial paint in preparation for the three's initiation into the clan. Only the elders and the two women who were still having their periods returned to the huts taking the children with them. They would tend the campfires while the festivities took place.

As dusk approached, the feast began. Everyone, men, women and children partook of the food hunted by the men and gathered by the women. Aiko and Gerald restricted themselves to eating snake meat because it was thoroughly cooked and therefore presumably safe to eat.

After about an hour later, the children and the four adults assigned to care for them and to tend the campfires near the huts followed the path through the forest back to the huts, leaving eight women and nine men behind including the three to be initiated into the clan.

After a few more minutes the ceremony began in earnest. Some of the men began to dance and chant. Each threw bark into the bonfire. Then the women joined them, also throwing bark into the bonfire. Aiko and Gerald assumed that tossing bark into the bonfire had some ritualistic significance.

Later, they noticed that the burning bark gave off an aroma thaty was pleasant but otherwise indefinable and unidentifiable. Obviously these indigenous people knew what they were doing. Gerald thought it might be some sort of offering to a local deity. He doubted that its purpose was to keep the mosquitoes at bay. The smoke and heat from the bonfire was more than adequate for that task even without a coating of freshly crushed arrieras ants rubbed into their skin.

Aiko and Gerald saw the dancers gesture to them in an obvious invitation to join them. They got up. At first they watched the indigenous dancers in an attempt to understand the rhythm and the sequence of the dance steps. Once they got the hang of them though, they danced around with their soon-to-be clan mates.

After a while, Gerald felt a bit strange, almost as if he were on some kind of high, and he was feeling hornier. Gerald suspected that the burning bark had both a hallucinogenic and aphrodisiac qualities.

At one point as they circled the bonfire, Gerald found Aiko beside him. "I think the bark they're throwing in the fire is giving me a horny high," he told her.

"Yeah, me too" she said, "and we might more sensitive to it because we're not used it. I've never, ever taken an drug unless it is prescribed by a doctor or a dentist."

"Same here," Gerald said, 'but it may be seen as a grave insult to our hosts if we were to leave."

"I know. We can't leave," she agreed.

Then they lost track of each other. They continued to dance and breath in the acrid odour of the bark burning in the bonfire. Time and space seemed to twist. Otherwise their senses remained clear but also more acute.

Time seemed to both flow and stand still. The rhythmic dancing and chanting continued as men and women circled the bonfire.

After a while, Gerald realized there were fewer dancers around. The chanting was not as loud as it was earlier. Something was happening.

* * *

Men and women began pairing off, clasping each other in various intimate ways.

Gerald sought out Aiko again, and saw her, in all her glorious nudity, still gyrating around the bonfire. Then one of the men approached his wife. He couldn't tell who it was; it was too difficult to distinguish faces in the flickering light. He thought it was probably Scar. But whoever it was, there was no mistaking he was in a full state of arousal. His dark and sturdy erection stood in sharp contrast to the bonfire that backlit it.

Then a second man approached her. It was Rainbow. He was certain of that. How could he not recognize the face of the man whose life he had saved? Of course, the feather in his hair gave him away too.

Gerald didn't see what happened afterwards because a woman suddenly embraced him, diverting his attention away from his wife. She put one hand on his cock and used the other to cup his balls, massaging them delicately. She had the unusual ability to stroke up and down his cock and massage his balls at the same time. He couldn't judge her age, but her figure suggested she probable had at least one child, maybe more. That didn't matter to Gerald; he did not discriminate based on age, although he had his preferences in physical types.

He loved Aiko, yet she was not his 'type' when he first met her. Or so he thought at the time. He had not even dated an Asian women, let consider one as a lover and eventually as a wife and the mother of his children, that is, until he had met Aiko. He had fallen in love with her, married her and fathered two girls by her.

'Maybe I'm kidding myself about what kind of woman is my type," he thought. 'In my swinging life, I've enjoyed all types of women. Maybe the truth is any woman can be my type. But one thing is for sure,' he continued to think, 'I wouldn't trade my wife for any other woman in the world.' Then he realized what he was thinking wasn't exactly accurate. 'Correction,' he thought 'I would trade her for another's man wife but only temporarily.'

He smiled. The woman raiding the treasury for the family jewels looked at him questioningly. She broke Gerald's reverie by dropping to her knees and taking him into her mouth, while continuing to massage his balls.

He gasped. He closed his eyes 'Oh man,' he thought, 'that feels so good.'

Gerald wasn't the kind of guy who let a woman do all the work. Nor did he want to shoot off prematurely. He wanted to take this dusky woman in orbit with him. He pulled her back up. He wrapped his arms around, stroking her up and down her back. Once in a while he settled on her luscious hips. He followed their contours to her equally ample ass, stroking and squeezing her ass-cheeks.

She giggled and smiled at him to show her delight and to encourage him to continue. She ducked out for a few seconds only to bring back a mat or reeds. They got onto the matt and continued their embraces and kisses. They lay down beside each other. Gerald saw the lust in her eyes. This woman was about to experience something she probably never imagined in her wildest dreams, sex with a white man.

The woman lay on back. She opened her legs, exposing her most intimate female parts, for him to see, in a universally understood invitation. Even in the firelight, he saw moisture glisten between her legs. She was apparently more than ready. But rather than accepting the open invitation, he lay down beside face to face. He let his hands travel all over the body. Once in a while he suckled her tits. She moaned in pleasure.

Gerald turned himself around so that they were in a 69-position. She swallowed his cock, sucking it eagerly. Gerald licked her pussy, travelling up and down her labia, never missing to slide his tongue over her clitoris or sticking his tongue into her vaginal opening. Her vaginal nectar had a very different taste to that of other women he had performed cunnilingus on, different but very good. He attributed her taste to exotic character of her daily diet of fruits and roots, insects and fish with the occasional snake or capybara thrown in.