The work day just seemed to last for an eternity. Rose had to remain at the office, she had to complete her errands, and she had to do so completely naked. It was so, so,
so
embarrassing. There were no other words to describe how she felt. And yet, for some reason, she also felt oddly...fulfilled working in that state. More than she ever had before. And whenever she got a moment to stop and think about it, all her thoughts could only turn to one thing.
Caroline Connors.
Something about the office nudist just...made Rose feel warm and fuzzy inside. The woman was a bit pushy, yes, but the pushiness seemed like it came from a place of affection and for some strange reason, Rose felt like she needed to...please her. Not sexually of course, though the intern did indeed do a plenty of that and she still had the wondrous taste of Carol's blossom in her mouth to prove it. It was more like Rose just wanted to make Carol...happy. If the older woman was so willing to shower Rose with affection, then it was only fair that Rose should deserve it. And nothing pleased Carol more than the sight of Rose's bare-naked body, if the sultry smiles and soft caresses she gave the intern every time they passed by were anything to go by. In that, Rose was able soldier on despite her embarrassment.
Of course, when the work day finally came to an end, Rose faced a new problem: how was she going to get home in the state she was in? She didn't have a car and she doubted the bus would let a naked girl ride. She wasn't a Zenrist after all and she didn't have the tattoo marking her as one. However, Carol was quick to swoop to her rescue once again, offering to drive the brunette home herself. Knowing she didn't have any other choice, Rose agreed.
It was admittedly very surreal to ride in a car as a nude passenger with an equally nude driver. Clothed people passed by the both of them as they rolled through the downtown marketplace, and neither woman got so much as an aside glance despite their brazen nakedness. It was actually kind of off-putting in a way. After being the center of attention everywhere she went for so long, getting so bluntly ignored now made Rose almost feel as if she had turned into a ghost.
"So, this is your place, right?" said Carol as she brought the car to a stop.
"Hm?" Rose murmured, waking herself up from her thoughts. She checked outside. Yes, this was her place all right: a drab blue building with six apartments, one of which she called home. For a moment, she wondered how Carol could have possibly found it. She didn't recall giving the nudist her address. But then she remembered all the other odd things the woman had learned about her that Rose hadn't said out loud.
If having sex with me was enough for her to find out about my job to find the butt copier and how my boss can't ever get my name right, learning my address couldn't have been hard either.
"Yes, this is the place. Thank you."
"No, thank you," said Carol before leaning over to give Rose another kiss. "I had a lot of fun today." Rose didn't fight her. She just leaned into the nude woman and parted her lips to welcome her inside. The feeling of Carol's tongue flicking against her own caused a great surge of warmth to erupt all throughout her chest.
"Yeah, I...guess I did too," said Rose when Carol pulled away. She wasn't so sure about that to be honest. She never felt more embarrassed in her life being naked in front of so many people. But every time she thought about how Carol held, kissed, and pleasured her, she couldn't help but remember how good it felt and how much she wanted to maybe...feel it again, and that just seemed to outweigh the humiliation. Despite herself, Rose couldn't fight the shy smile from spreading across her face as she looked at Carol, who in turn was smiling at her, softly, gently, lovingly. "Yeah, I really did."
"You know," said Carol, laying her pointer finger on Rose's bare thigh and running slow, lazy circles around it. "I think you should really call her."
"Call who?" said Rose.
"Your aunt. June."
Just like that, Rose's uplifted mood fell like a rock, as did her smile. "Why?"
"Because I think she really misses you."
"No, she hates me," Rose said with a bitter snort as she turned her face away. "She opened herself up to me and I spurned her. She offered to...do stuff with me and I ran away without saying a word. All that was between us is in the past now. She and I...we're now done. Forever."
"You don't know that."
"That's how I would feel if I was her."
"Well, she's not you, childe. June is her own person with her own feelings."
"Then why hasn't she called
me
?" Rose nearly screamed, balling her hands up into frustrated little fists while she squeezed her eyes shut to block the tears that were threatening to pour out of them. "If she cares about me, why hasn't she attempted to contact
me
?"
"Maybe for the same reason
you
haven't called
her
," said Carol, her voice sinking to a stern, lecturing tone, not unlike the one Rose's own mother directed to her in the past. "She's hurt and scared that you'll reject her again, with more finality than you did the first time she came forward to you. And from what little I gleaned from you, I can tell she was still working through her own conflicting feelings. I understand that...it can't be easy to reject what modern human society has long deemed taboo."
"What are you talking about?" said Rose.
"You know. Incest."
"Oh." Rose turned away from Carol with another flustered blush. Goddess, why did the conversation have to turn towards this subject? However, now that she was thinking about both it and her last conversation with June, she started to feel curious about something. "Miss Connors."
"Please, call me Carol."
"Carol...what is...the Zenrist religion's stance on...incest anyway?"
"Well, between male and female blood relatives, we think of it the same way everyone else does," said Carol. "Brothers and sisters, fathers and daughters, and so on...just the very thought of them copulating is...sickening to me." She wrinkled her nose to punctuate her point. "Same as it was before I converted to Zenrism."
"And...between women?"
"That's another subject entirely. The taboo against incest is honestly a recent one for women. Long, long ago, when the Goddess still walked the Earth with us, women were able to conceive children between themselves."
"Really?" said Rose. That was a new factoid about Zenrism she hadn't heard about. "How?"
"We were taught how by the Goddess. But you see, the way we made children then was different from how we make children now. It was not like how the native animals of this world reproduce by mixing their genes up with another to produce a child. As we women were created by the Goddess, so too did we create women much like She did."
"So...does that mean...?"
Carol nodded. "Yes. Genes play no part in Zenrist reproduction. Two women could be born from the same womb and be completely different from their mother on a genetic level. And they could later bear daughters of their own, who would in turn be different from them. The health problems that typically plague animal populations that suffer from inbreeding cannot happen to Zenrists because we are not like them. We are something else entirely: creations of a higher being. Hence, Lovers of Zenriah never had a taboo against incest because there was no reason for it to be taboo. Daughters laid with their mothers all the time, as did sisters, and cousins, and yes, even aunts and nieces."
"Aunts and nieces," murmured Rose contemplatively.
That must be why all the Zenrists she spoke to said there was nothing wrong with her feelings about me.
"Mm-hmm," murmured Carol with another nod. "It was only when we lost Zenriah and Her gift of creation that we lost the ability to conceive daughters. And in that, we had to imitate the reproductive methods of the animals we shared the Earth with in order to keep our own numbers from dwindling. And that's when we had to, understandably, develop an instinctual revulsion toward incest. Unfortunately, even though sapphica could no longer produce children, the revulsion extended towards relations between all blood relatives, even those purely between women.
"But Zenrism recognizes that such taboos are not needed between women. Furthermore, our doctrine decrees that every woman is born a wife to a million others. As such, she is sworn to honor her wifely duties to every one of those millions."
"Every...one of them?" said Rose.
"Yes. Every one of them, regardless of how much blood they share. It is not a sin for a mother to make love to her daughters, a sister to her wombmate, or even an aunt to her niece. In fact, it is expected and
encouraged
for them to make love to one other."
"Make...love," Rose repeated in a very quiet whisper.
