Homelands: Autumn
Part One
Chapter Sixteen
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You might want to read Chapters One through Fifteen first.
This is primarily an incest story, but it is also sci-fi/fantasy. Supernatural forces play a prominent role throughout the novel.
All characters are over eighteen. All acts are consensual.
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A soft breeze blew up from the sea below, carrying a hint of saltwater with it. With a shiver, Mom pressed her back against my chest, wrapped my arm around her shoulder like it was a shawl. We stared out over the balcony of our cottage, sipping chilled wine.
"So. You're really serious about this?" she asked for the umpteenth time that day.
"Fraid so. At this point, I think there's no turning back, even if I wanted to. If I tried, Brianna would do something even worse than sending me undercover. I'm sure of it."
Mom sighed. "Probably right."
I kissed the top of her head. "Are you sure
you're
going to be safe? Promise me you'll be careful while I'm gone."
She popped an elbow in my ribs, though not with any real force. "That's my line."
I laughed.
"Seriously. I'm expecting a promise, mister. Or you don't get to fuck me again."
"That's an empty threat. You couldn't turn me down if you wanted to."
Mom paused, sipped her wine. "Maybe so. But you should still promise me. I'm your mother, and that means I get to demand such things."
"I promise. I'll be careful."
"It would be nice if you didn't make it so obvious that you're just humoring me."
"You think I'm planning on getting Devoured or something?"
She sighed, leaning her head back against my chest. "It doesn't have to make sense, honey. I worry. It's what I do."
"I know," I said, kissing her hair again.
When we were in the throes of ecstasy, it was easy to stop thinking of her as my mother. Not that I forgot, exactly. But the balance between lover and provider tilted heavily towards the former. And when we were under a veil, I tended to think of her just in terms of the latter, though it was never long before I started to develop a vague sense that we were not like other families, that few guys spent time wondering whether their mother was trying to seduce them, or would be open to being seduced by them.
Times like these, when she was very actively playing both roles, made my head spin.
But it was every bit as intoxicating as it was disorienting.
"Here," Mom said, pulling a silver pendant shaped like a leaf out of..., well I'm not sure where she'd been carrying it. "I want you to have this."
"What is it?" I asked.
"A good luck charm." When I didn't reply, she said, with a sigh, "Of course. You don't believe in luck. Well, maybe it's magic then."
"What does this `magic' charm do?" I asked.
"It marks you as a favorite son of Autumn. And that keeps you safe." Perhaps anticipating my reaction, she elaborated, "It suppresses people's desire to harm you. Won't stop them from doing so if they're really intent on it, but they're less likely to be so in the first place. The more energy you're carrying, the more effective it will be. But it's never going to be foolproof, mind you. Don't let it become an excuse to be reckless."
I took the charm from her and gasped when it sank into my chest. My flesh parted before it then closed behind it without leaving a scar. "Where did you get it?"
"There's probably eight or nine of them in the various Autumnal Courts. They're as old as the courts themselves. Most of the more prominent families have one. Your father and his mother both have one. You can be sure Silas does as well."
"So. Favorite son," I said.
"Autumn's," Mom said with a faint grin.
"Right. Autumn's." Presumably Liz, who had been Devoured by her daughter, and Tara, who had been exiled by her mother, were not given any. I guess that meant Mom had not just been, up until now, one of Autumn's favorite daughters, but her mother's as well. "Tell me something, Mom. How long have you been part of this world?"
I felt her back stiffen. Evidently not the follow-up question she expected.
"Since I came of age. More or less the same as was true for you, though we waited a bit longer with you so that we could initiate the four of you at once. Why?"
Gathering up her silky hair, I swept it aside to expose the back of her neck, which I then kissed several times. "Well, it's just... obviously time is a funny concept when you call two entirely different worlds home. Worlds that experience time quite differently. So I don't know what time, or age, means for us, at least not after we reach the point where we switch back and forth between these two worlds constantly. But I don't even know how old you are. If that's actually a coherent question."
She didn't reply for a while. When she finally did, all she said was, "It's not, really."
"Figured as much. It doesn't really matter anyway. I'm just curious. I mean, I've got a pretty good idea of how old I am, because we all spent eighteen years in the mortal world, after you got pregnant with Nat. And it wasn't long after she turned eighteen that all of this began. But I can't even begin to wrap my head around how old or young you are."
"That's just the way of things. Very few of us can keep track of our age beyond our first eighteen years. In some extenuating circumstances, one of our kind will be separated from their families and won't discover who they are auntil well into adulthood, so they can count past eighteen without things getting fuzzy. And
some
families violate the stricture against premature initiation. But when they're found out, they're dealt with harshly."
I shuddered at the thought. If not for social norms, I'm not sure I'd even have a tinge of residual guilt about having recreational, consensual sex with the adult members of my family. Especially since we weren't even human. But the fact that I felt no guilt about consensual acts amongst adults didn't mean I was okay with child abuse.
"So, basically," Mom continued, "unless they make a point of keeping very careful track of exactly how much time they've spent in each world, all any of us knows is that they're over eighteen, older than their kids, and younger than their parents. More or less." She caressed my forearms tenderly. "Of course, we do sort of age, even after reaching adulthood. My natural appearance, if you want to think of it that way, looks older now than it once did. But part of that is psychological. When you play the same mortal role long enough, you start to
think
of yourself as getting older."
"Makes sense," I said.
"Don't speak too soon. It's even more complicated than that. The representation of the mortal world that you know isn't the first one we've created, or the first one I've lived in. If I told you the mortal calendar year in which I was born, you wouldn't believe me. But the number of mortal years that have passed since I was born would make your head spin for the opposite reason. I've seen the Y2K panic, and the 9/11 attacks, three times now. So depending on how you look at it, you might think I'm only a few years older than you, or old enough to be your great-great-grandmother. I remember playing the part of a woman in her forties better than I do a woman in her sixties, but I've been that too. I'd lived a long life already by the time I married your father."
"I see," I said. "I wish I could've known you when you were younger."
Mom laughed awkwardly, sipped her wine.
"Sorry. I guess that's a weird thing to say."
"It's...sweet," she said. "But, baby, let's not do this. There's so much pain down that path. For you, in the parts that I care to remember. For me, in the ones that I don't."
Mom finished her wine in a big gulp and stepped away from the balcony, leading me by the hand back inside. I stared in awe at the way her fat ass moved under the blue and white pinstripe men's dress shirt that she wore. Besides the shirt, the only other thing she wore was a pair of white socks. Perhaps because she sometimes had dressed like that when I was kid, back when she was thinner and Dad's shirts still fit her, the outfit did as much for me as the racy lingerie she usually wore.
I let her pull me along for a while, but after a few steps I sped up and swept her up into my arms. She laughed as I did and threw her arms around my neck, raining kisses on my cheek. I carried her like she was my bride over the threshold to the master bedroom.
I fucked her hard. I fucked her soft. I fucked her silly. I pleasured her orally. She did the same for me. I grew an extra cock so I could DP her all by myself. I turned into a centaur and ravaged her with a cock twice as large as the largest I'd ever let mine get.
For a time, we moved to the jacuzzi. There, Mom turned into a mermaid and gave me a killer blowjob, her head fully submersed underwater the entire time.
It seemed I'd never get over the simple beauty of stark color contrasts that her face offered. Her pale skin, deep brown eyes, long lashes, thick brows, full lips, and lustrous black hair made for a killer combination. And her makeup exaggerated the effect.
I wished I could slow down time. Having remembered a trick I'd learned from Iva, I managed to have hands everywhere without actually having more than two arms. Hardly a second went by that I wasn't simultaneously groping Mom's fat ass and huge breasts while holding her hips, shoulders and ankles, caressing her thighs and calves, and running my fingers through her soft, thick hair.
Similarly, when I went down on her, my tongues were deep inside her, caressing her labia, giving her a rimjob, and flicking her clitoris, all at once.
And she performed similar feats. Not to the same degree, but that was fine with me.
Our efforts took a lot of energy. But we were feeding off one another constantly, more than making up for what we expended.
After several hours, we finally took a more than two minute break. "Think maybe we should eat something at some point?" Mom asked.
