Words were still a challenge for me. I had to settle for nodding.
And when she was done crying, and I guess I'd been crying too, we lay alongside each other, our arms still draped, sighing, nodding off for a few minutes together.
When we woke and breathed together for another few minutes, she kissed me and said "Now the staff," and rose, such a graceful, economical movement, whistling for her horse and calling its name. She had two lightweight wooden staves, about two meters long. She tossed one to me and I caught it in the middle, at its center of balance. She stood with the other about 10 feet away.
"This is a bo staff," she said, "and I can tell that you haven't used one before, but I'm going to show you. You'll need to get good with this, and between me and the others, you will, and it won't take nearly as long as you might think, not just because we already know you're a fast learner. Now, look deep into my eyes, into my soul, as I look into yours, then follow what I do. I'll go slowly at first."
And, widening her stance, which, damned testosterone, was a fucking sexy thing to do, she held her staff in front of her, hands together, and began spinning it, hand over hand, slowly at first so I could see how.
She was actually doing something my body knew well; a lifetime ago I'd dabbled at being a drum major for my high school band, so this, at least, was familiar. I spun it, tossed it upwards, caught it, still spinning. She nodded, impressed but also not, then switched to one hand, moving it to her side. No longer flipping it, just rotating her wrist, slowly at first. This was not something I'd done so much in my prospective drum major days, so it took a bit longer to get the hang of it, and once I did she rotated her staff back in front of her, changed hands, and brought it to her other side, smiling. She had such a beautiful smile, it made me look up and away from her hands as they moved, and that's why she'd smiled in the first place, so my body could find its way without looking. And with her smile, and her heartbreakingly lovely eyes and the motion of her hands and arms and staff, her ponytail swaying behind, one leg planting a foot forward or back a few times every minute, faster and faster, I began to see her beautiful soul. And now I was smiling, too.
Then with two hands again, the staff going under her arms, alternating sides, waiting for me to catch on to her rhythm and then speeding up, my eyes moving back to hers.
Her staff moving from one side to the other, faster, rotating in flawless almost silent rhythm, faster still, her hips moving with her wrists and the staff, my eyes found a new focus: her moving center, her core, her vulva, because all of this was very deeply hypnotic. Partly shaved, mostly just clipped short, it was like she was dancing, dancing with me, in complete control of her motion and my response to it, and my hands and wrists and arms were following exactly, and it was like being sucked whole into Mari's devastatingly hypnotic eyes again, and now there were three staves between us, and Callie's smile grew wider, and her staff's spin slowed and so did mine, and she stopped, her hands a little more than shoulder's width apart on her staff horizontal in front of her and so mine were too, and before I could react she very quickly bashed one end of her staff hard against mine, the only obstacle between her staff and my skull.
And then reversed more slowly, the other end of her staff coming up at me from below and mine dropped to block it, and then reversing again to come around like an axe chopping at me from the side and mine rising to intercept and then from the other side, and then from above and below and from either side and then spinning up and over her elbow and then everything started getting too fast for me to follow to describe to remember to follow to repeat and the staves made a kind of music banging together, like
Stomp!
like shrieks like my eyes were glazed over gazing into her eyes, into her center, into her beautiful soul and my own was communicating how very deeply focused I was on her, and she began using that, rotating her belly, her hips, one foot at a time, feeling more of that primal motion and my response to it and her outer lips were parting and I was well and truly throbbing and the sharp percussive reports of her staff striking mine like jazz in 13/4 time and I reached out to strike back and of course she blocked it easily but it was my first time and she was pleased, and her beautiful smile lit up her lovely face and we began trading blows, all of them intercepted before landing and then she swept down hard at my ankles and if that had landed it would have broken at least one of them but I hopped over the sweep and thank goddess she wasn't going full speed or I would've been a dozen times dead and my eyes roamed freely on the narrow way between hers and her center, taking in the gorgeous slim curve of her hips, of her toned belly and ribs and the slight swell of her shallow beautifully pointed soft conical breasts, slender neck and shoulders, smooth oval chin and slightly freckled face, thin sharp nose, and her eyes, oh, her beautiful eyes, her soul shining from behind, and she knew exactly what she was doing to me and it pleased her very much that she could do that and then...
She stopped. I stopped. Her juices were beginning to trickle down her legs, and I was so turned on by her and her motion and her eyes and her center and...
She dropped her staff between us. And I dropped mine on hers. And she took a step toward me, a hesitant step, and goddess she was so graceful, and I took a step toward her, our eyes deep in each other's, and then there were more slow steps and her hand reaching and my arms reaching and then we were on her blanket and my eyes were in hers in mine and she had such a beautiful soul and I was so deep in her and she was riding and then I was riding and then she was, and I wasn't going to come until she did and she wasn't going to come until I did and our eyes and our hearts and our souls so deep, our motions slowing, our bodies relaxing, her all the way down on me, pressing down on my balls, squeezing herself around me, my hands on her breasts and then her lips on mine and her tongue, and then...
"Three," she whispered, as much for herself as for me, but really it was for us.
"Two." And I could feel it coming and she could feel it coming, and we could feel it coming together, and
"One."
And my world changed completely, irrevocably, irretrievably.
