Arkis patrolled the forest outside the village. Walking the wilds gave him a small measure of peace, as it reminded him of the roaming times, the good times he had with his wife so many years ago. Suddenly he stopped, for he noticed tracks in the fluffy forest loam. A small group of people had passed by there, towards the village. He knelt down and touched a fuzzy leaf hanging from the broken stem of a nettle plant. The tiny hairs on the leaf still prickled his fingertip, indicating that it had been broken recently. He followed the trail.
Meanwhile, Gern stopped walking towards the steaming pool of the sacred spring. He cupped a small pile of gemstones in his hands, but they were momentarily forgotten. In the light of the red moon, he had just caught glimpse of Lu, her naked body framed by a rising column of steam that emanated from her seat on an outcropping of rock above the pool. It was as if the heat of the hot spring was being drawn to her. He stopped and stared at her in awe as she sat meditating. She was absolutely still, with only her wafting hair of oily black smoke fluttering in the rising air.
His heart swelled with a warm, peaceful love. She was everything he had ever wanted in a woman, and more. He knew in his soul that she was who Gaia meant for him to share his life with. Whether he lived to old age or met his death in the next battle, she was worthy of all the love he had to give. No regrets, no aspiration for more than nature would allow. He was hers, for as long as she wanted him. He knew that even if he lived a long life, he would one day die, being mortal; and she, immortal, would live on, forever young.
He did not expect her to never take another lover. That would be cruel to wish upon someone who lived for millennia beyond him. He hoped she would live for so long, and if he had to sacrifice his mortal life to save hers, he would gladly give it. And if he lived again in some other body, some other form, he would gladly sacrifice that life, too. He was a father because of her, and for the first time in his life, though he was not yet old, he was at peace with no longer being young. He had reached true maturity.
Lu felt the glow of his love, and opened her eyes. She didn't even need to try to open an empathic link with him. It came freely whenever he was near. She closed the gates in her mind, adding a prayer of thanks to Gaia at the end, though Labolas taught her that such closing prayers were not necessary in meditation rituals to achieve the desired result.
She stood up with an easy bound of refreshed energy and stretched, lifting her arms above her head. With Opal's help, her belly had recovered quickly from the stretching it had endured from holding her child, and her abdominal muscles had returned to their usual tautness. A couple of days after Awenn's birth, her breasts swelled with milk, making them teardrop from her chest. The swelling subsided when she fed her infant daughter, and after many days of sporadic feeding, at last her daughter fell into a somewhat more regular sleep cycle, allowing her some time to herself.
She looked at Gern, and smiled. He smiled back, and the mutual joy brightened them both into grinning at one another. Lu leapt down from the ledge and dove into the pool with the sleekness of a magma eel, and a moment later, stood out of the shallows. She felt her sex grow silky with sudden arousal, even though she had not been thinking about coupling with him. Her body had gone through many changes lately, and after refreshing herself with magical energy the idea of using some of it enticed her.
"Lu," Gern said, "look, I found these gemstones just laying in a pile off the side of the trail!"
"You're touching them?" Lu remarked with a scrunch of her face.
"They look polished. Rudy, amethyst, and carnelian. Who would just leave these lying around?"
"I did," Lu said as if it should have been obvious.
"Oh. Do you want them?"
"No," Lu said, again, as if it should have been obvious.
"Do you mind if I give them to the village gem cutter?"
"It is strange, but I don't mind."
"I know our ways can be strange to you," Gern said as he set the gemstones down with a smile, "but we like to imbue some of our inner beauty into things."
"Wash off in the water, and you can share some of your inner beauty with me." Lu smiled. She slid her hand over her protective pelvic crystal, and willed it to release itself from her skin. The translucent crystal became heavy in her hand, and she pulled it away. Gern walked towards her as she set the crystal down on a portable wooden table containing the multitude of vegetable oil pots that provided her nourishment. Their baby lay asleep in a nest of ferns nearby, woven by Opal, who combed her algae-smooth green hair beside.
"Opal," Lu said, "Gern and I will be back in a little while."
Opal smiled with a blush, and nodded her approval.
Lu thought about inviting Opal to join them, for she also sensed arousal in her, but somebody needed to keep watch over little Awen. Lu trusted Opal completely, as Opal had a special connection with the child, being the one that initiated her into the waking world, and Lu into motherhood. Lu took Gern's hand in her's, and they walked down to a lower pool amongst the cascading reservoirs of the hot springs. There they locked lips in a gush of sudden, unbridled affection, and Gern yanked his belt loose. They both felt a surge of yearning to join as intimately as possible, their feelings shared between them lucidly in their empathic link.
"Do you know how much you mean to me?" Gern asked.
"I do," she replied. "you are also that to me, and no one can ever replace you."
Gern kissed her again, and pushed his heavy leather kilt down to crumple around his feet. His phallus swayed heavily, already half-swollen. He pressed his hips to Lu's as he placed his hands at the low flares of her hips. The smoothness of her skin against him spurned a tingling in his seed giver, which began to rise between her thighs as she leaned into him on her toes. She moaned into his mouth has she felt the top of his shaft nudge against her bare mound, and Gern groaned though a smile as restraint became too much to bear.
He pushed her up against the cliff wall, his love member springing free and elevating to its fully erect angle. He knelt down on one knee and bent Lu's ebony leg over his shoulder, giving his tongue open access to her slit. He laved at it with his mouth muscle, her heat bathing his face. His nose nudged the top of her nether lips, massaging the nub of her hot flower. She moaned through an indulgent smile as she felt her cleft become slick from without and within, and she caressed his broad shoulders.
With one hand, Gern stroked his length, enticing it with a rehearsal of the sensations to come. As his arousal elevated, so too did her's by grace of her empathic link with him. He fondled his love member until he felt his hand smear his leaking excitement over the tight skin.
Lu longed to feel him inside her. She communicated her passion by tugging at his hair, careful not to burn it with her elemental power. He gave her pedals one more long lick with the flat of his tongue before rising up, keeping her leg bent over his shoulder. He hooked a hand under her other knee, and she felt her core become juicer as he pressed her up against the cliff, spreading her open.
She laced her hands together behind his neck, and her dark eyelash-rimmed pools of violet gazed into the radial forest of his irises. She felt his love, his loyalty, and his complete acceptance of who she was and what she meant to him. She marveled at him, and leaned toward him to kiss.
Gern's lips met her's as the tip of his shaft found her lips below. He felt her opening to him, her hot cleft like a volcanic fissure between two separating continents, the force in his heart just as unstoppable. They moaned in unison as Gern's hard length slid into her. His full shaft was enveloped with one smooth upward stroke, and a slippy bath of heat sent shivers up his spine.
Lu knew her elemental power could not harm him if she didn't wish it to, so she let her energies flow. The pool beside them boiled, filling the air with a plume of steam that flowed down the mountainside. Gern kissed at Lu's neck as he slowly withdrew from her depths, her nether lips squeezing him, protesting the removal. He pushed into her a second time, faster than before, and then a third, grinding his pubic bone against her hooded pestle.
