Transformation

Special Note:

Before you read this story, I must warn you that it is a very slow story. It is written by two people who love to read and who wrote it so that others who love to read can share this experience. It is not erotica even though it is erotic. It is meant to stimulate the biggest sex organ in our bodies --- our brain, and not that other part. It is more for the imagination than for the moving hands, if you know what I mean. Enjoy.

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She lay there in her bed, no longer asleep, not yet awake.

Her legs extended slowly towards the bottom of the bed feeling the cool cotton sheets. It was one of her three favourite sensations when her legs caressed the smooth and soft fabric so gently in the mornings. Almost as sensuous as running her hand across her belly and letting the tips of her fingers dance against the nerves in her skin.

She spread her legs to heighten the sensation by letting the backs of her legs take as much stimulation as possible and then stretched in a languid, sinewy way before returning to the original position where the sheets still held her warmth.

From cool excitement to comforting warmth, the morning glory was in full bloom. It was no wonder it usually took her a while to get out of bed in the mornings, especially in winter. She just loved the feel of the mornings while listening to the sweet sounds of quietness as the world lay still just before an energetic jump on the day.

If she listened carefully, she could just hear his deep rhythmic breathing. A sound that was music to her soul, as well as a reminder of the potential her body held for sensual gratification. A beginning and an end unto infinity of bliss.

She rolled slowly onto her back as her hands moved gently up across her hips and her stomach, tracing his touches with as much care as she could imitate. It wasn't as overwhelming, but it was arousing nevertheless. She imagined those big hands of his gliding across her skin, barely touching, yet burning through to the middle of her being. When she found herself cupping her own breasts, she tried to imagine what he must have felt when he had played with them in a delicate, almost fragile, manner. Her palms cradled them, as her fingers moved up and touched her nipples. The warmth, the fullness, and the softness of her skin contrasted well with her erect, thin nipples.

She caressed herself gently to reach the kind of peak she had felt under his hands and then stretched again. She still wasn't fully awake but she wasn't stretching to wring out the last remnants of sleep. Her body was feeling the arousal before her mind sensed the change and she was moving to explore the rising urgency she felt.

Elizabeth opened her eyes and moved her hands away from her breasts. She carefully swung her feet from under the covers to the floor and quietly sat up. Her hands organized her hair into a ponytail as her feet searched for her slippers, found them and, as they had done so many times before, automatically slipped them on.

So many times but not like this time!

She reached over, tugged at the hem of her nightgown which lay where she had discarded it on the floor last night. Not last night; in a different lifetime. She pulled it on and padded out of the bedroom.

The sun was not yet up.

She walked down the hallway wrapping her arms around her shoulders, hugging herself and feeling an inexpressible joy. She stopped outside one of the bedrooms, pushed the door open and looked in. She checked to see if he was there. He wasn't; she knew he wasn't but maybe even now she could say good-bye to him. The bed was still made, the pillows still carelessly thrown against the headboard. She looked for a long time then turned and pulled the door closed behind her. He wasn't there. She knew that. She knew where he was.

Lost and found.

In the kitchen she started a pot of coffee and stood, enjoying the aroma, waiting for the brewing to finish. She poured some into a mug, added milk and carried it into the living room where she sat down on a sofa and placed the mug on the table next to her. She shivered slightly and pulled her legs up to hold in her body's heat and then, reaching over, grasped the cup in two hands to take in its warmth and had several sips. There was a faint trace of light along the distant horizon. She made a slight sound as she sipped the hot coffee again.

Once upon a time

, her mind said. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, in a magical land just over the mountains, there was a beautiful young princess with hair the colour of sunshine and a handsome prince with eyes as tender as a newborn baby's.

She felt tears come to her eyes. For a moment, but only for a moment, she thought she would not be able to hold them back. She held the coffee mug close to her face and focused on its warmth and its aroma. She inhaled deeply, taking both the steam and the smell of the coffee into her lungs; lungs that had experienced an even more refreshing fragrance in that other lifetime. The tears did not fall as the steam seemed to have dried them up slowly.

The princess, she knew, wasn't that beautiful. And, maybe, too, the prince wasn't so very handsome either. It didn't matter. Life is not a fairy tale with chargers and stallions and ladies' handkerchiefs offered as tokens of love and esteem. It is a collection of unexpected and fleeting moments of time filled with exquisite happiness, excruciating pain, inexplicable satiation, and heart wrenching loneliness. Never a dull moment; except of course the dull

moments

between such moments, where the wait becomes a slice of infinite time folding onto itself.

Her prince had brought her so many of those moments --- and in just that order.

Fast forward to another time in the past.

Last year, in the early spring, Alan had abruptly decided that the posters on his walls were anchors to a childhood he had outgrown. A sudden commitment accompanied by a rush of energy and the posters were down, crumpled and jammed into a waste paper basket. The bed, pressed into a corner, had been placed the way a child would want it, so Alan moved the furniture to different positions. The child used sheets with comic book characters so Alan stripped the bed and the sheets joined the posters in the bin.

"Mom?" he called.

Elizabeth climbed the last few stairs and appeared at the doorway.

"Mom?"

"I'm here," she said quietly.

Alan turned to the door. "I need some real sheets."

Elizabeth surveyed the room. "Seems to me you need more than just sheets."

Alan looked in the direction his mother was looking. There were marks on the wall where the tape, which had held his posters, had pulled away the paint when the posters were torn down.

"A can of paint will fix that," Elizabeth helped with his perplexity. "The room needed to be painted anyway. The sheets are a problem, though. I don't think I have any 'real' sheets. We'll have to go shopping." She gave him a comforting smile. It looked like he needed it.

A boy was declaring that he was a grownup, but he needed validation from mommy. She gave it, in a subtle and quiet way, using a mode of communication that the two of them had developed over the years. They were able to say things without using words or sounds and apparently they both were in harmony at that exact moment.

"But I need a full stop at the end of this statement."

"I can only give you an ellipsis." She then went and fetched some temporary sheets and said, "I'll help you remake the bed."

She stood on one side as Alan grabbed a sheet and passed an edge to her. Together they laid it on the mattress and tucked in the sides and ends. As Alan looked up to see how his mother was making her folds, she was bending over and her blouse was hanging loosely away from her.

Alan looked and suddenly realized what he was seeing. Or rather, realized that what he was seeing was not what he used to see. The boy really had grown up, and Elizabeth too understood that when she raised her head and saw him so transfixed.

Whether it was the vacant look in his eyes, or slightly parted lips, or a held breath, Elizabeth knew a transformation had taken place and she wasn't prepared for such a transformation. It was a history making moment, and it lasted only that long. He came out of it and looked away guiltily; another indication of the metamorphosis. There was an adult male present in the room and Elizabeth couldn't stand straight under the weight of that realization.

She put out her hands on to the bed to support her as she leaned over. "C'mon. I haven't got all day. Finish your side." Alan finished his side of the bed rather quickly.

Elizabeth walked back downstairs. There were questions in her head but no answers. She felt lost but didn't know why. She could see where she was going but didn't know her destination. The wind blew her around and the lights went out on her. She had to lean on the counter to collect herself. She couldn't collect her thoughts though, as they were scattered all over the house.

Fast rewind to another time in the past.

The princess and the prince had met the way princesses and princes meet. The princess was turning the page in her storybook, the prince was doing the same in his, and suddenly, they were in the same storybook as if they had always been together.

The "before I met you" time for both was as shapeless and bereft of memories as the "since I met you" time was as concrete and filled with promise.

The first memory she had of their meeting was an accident. It was a busy time of the day at the food court in the mall. She was rushing to use her fifteen minutes of lunch time constructively and he was strolling away after an hour long break between breaks. She turned a corner around the big flower pot next to the Thai place and slam, bam, are you okay ma'am. She had her soda cup empty itself into her blouse and he was standing like a brick wall, just smiling. She was so pissed she couldn't even speak the profanities that were going through her mind.

He didn't help her or anything. Just said, "Be careful, next time," and walked away.

She was more upset at the fact that she had only few minutes left before she had to get back to the store and tend to that cash register that had become an extension of her arms after a year and half of pounding its keys. Her food was all over the floor as the wetness travelled from the tip of her breasts to the end of her cunt. She was wet. Her pussy was wet. But it was the syrupy, thick fluid from a coke glass that had made her soaking wet.

That sensation stayed with her for weeks to come.

She asked Woo at the Thai place to call for the cleaning lady and ran back to the store. For once, Mr. Rutherford showed some compassion and gave her another ten minutes to clean herself up. She had to buy new clothes at employee rates to change into and before her minutes were up, she was back at work, clean, dry, and hungry.

She didn't even remember what he looked like because she only saw him from waist down as she was on the floor while he stood towering over her. When a strange young man joined the queue, she didn't know it was the same man who had knocked her down. He waited patiently for people in front of him to finish then approached the counter and placed a paper bag in front of her. She looked at him inquisitively. He smiled, again, and said, "I figured you may still be hungry." And left.

The man who had knocked her down, was going to knock her up one day. But she didn't know it then.

Fast forward.

Thursday they shopped. "Look, we can afford to get you a bigger bed. There's enough space in the room for one."

She continued without giving him a chance to answer. "I remember when your dad and I went shopping for your bed. We were amazed at how quickly you'd outgrown the crib. We wondered how soon you'd outgrow the bed. I'm sorry he's not here today." She looked down and bit the corner of her lip.

Alan reached over and took her hand then released it, put his arm around his mother's shoulders and pulled her towards him. He kissed her forehead. "I know."

"You do?" As soon as the question left her lips, she realized that of course he did. He knew through that special mode of communication they had developed between them. Her loss was also his loss and her emptiness had its reflection in his chest as well. They had learned not to open the wound and there she was scraping the crust a little. "I am sorry."

He kissed her forehead again and pulled her against his body as shelter. She shifted, put her arm around his waist and briefly laid her head on his shoulder. The bandage was being applied before the bleeding started. For that moment their world was each other and the rest of the world moved around them.

They rejoined it. As they turned to walk to another store, his hand slipped from her shoulder, down across her back, accidentally touched her and then he took her hand. Alan remembered the soft feel of her breasts pressed against him a few moments earlier and now the warm feel of her butt across his fingers. He entwined his fingers with his mother's to squeeze the shaking out of his hand. She squeezed back equally and she knew he was thinking about her and the touch. Both of them were looking down the storefronts.

"Thank you." She said it quietly. She squeezed once more and slowly pulled her fingers away. The touch had its own affect on her. It was an accidental touch, but it was not the touch of her son. It was the touch of a man who was comforting her. The intimacy of their sharing had appeared in that touch and her body responded to it with a strange understanding.

He was looking off to the side when she looked up. He didn't see her eyes; didn't know she was looking; didn't know how she was looking at him.

She took his arm. "Is this okay?"

"Sure."

"Here's where I wanted to go," Elizabeth said as she directed Alan into the store entrance.

Her prince had brought her to the very same store when he first moved into his own place. She was by then his woman and he wanted her to help pick a bed --- their bed --- although she was nowhere near the realization that he was making future plans for both of them. He knew where he was headed. She didn't. Life was too short to conquer the world and she didn't know where to start; couldn't start because she didn't have the resources; never started because the world was not for the conquering, as she learned after years of hoping, and failing without even trying. He knew it from the beginning and never tried; didn't need to try; he knew his place in the world and he knew her place in his life. She refused to accept anything.

Memories weighed her down. "I'm going to wait here and let you look around. When you've got some idea of what you want, let me know." She sat down on a bed near the front of the display and leaned against the headboard. Alan wandered without any pattern among the beds on display, occasionally drawing his hand across one of the headboards. Amazingly, the headboards had the softness of his mother's behind.

A saleswoman moved so that Alan's path would take him directly to her.

"First time buying a bed on your own?"

"Yeah. No. Yeah, I guess. My mom's at the front but I'm trying to find something. I don't know. I'm just looking, I guess." He didn't like how it sounded when he told the saleslady that he was with his mom. It somehow at that moment didn't sound right.

She knew how to handle his type. She moved in closer. Close enough that Alan noticed and felt the change. "Single or double? Something a bit funky or something that will fit anywhere? Once we've decided that, we can talk about prices and delivery dates. Come with me. Let's check out the doubles. We have selected samples on the floor and I've got a complete catalogue back at my desk."

Elizabeth watched. She was too far away to hear any of the conversation but she didn't need to hear it. The saleswoman's body language said it all. She regretted sitting down. She should have been with him. To do what? She couldn't say. But she should have been with him, that she knew.

"I'm losing the child he was, now I'm losing the man he will be," Elizabeth thought as she watched the two of them walk from one bed to another. She couldn't tell if it was a sigh of sorrow, of loss, or simply of defeat that escaped her lungs.

Alan moved to put some distance between himself and the saleswoman. She should have been with him so he didn't have to do that. She could have been the distance between him and the woman. Why? She didn't know that either.

She was with her prince when a similar lady had tried to sell him a bed. Her saleswomanship had hit a snag with Elizabeth as the extra variable. This was another situation where she should have been that extra variable, as a mother of course, and Alan would be spared the cheap tricks of the saleswoman.

Alan had the saleswoman show him several additional display beds, who then hovered over him as they went through the catalogue. After several more minutes, Alan stood up abruptly. His eyes made a fleeting, final inventory of the saleswoman and everything she was offering. "No, not today, I think. Nothing here that really makes me say 'I want this one!'"

He walked back to his mother. She stood up and they talked quietly as Alan pointed in the direction of a couple of beds. "In our house," he said, "you've always had class. Class on a budget, but class nevertheless. She couldn't show me anything with class. We'll have to look somewhere else."

Maybe her prince didn't need the extra variable either. But that was a different time, a different scenario, and Elizabeth with different insecurities.

"Are you working Saturday?"

"Not until 3:00. Can we go looking in the morning?"

At home, Elizabeth turned the key in the latch to let themselves in. After she closed and locked the door, she turned to Alan, impulsively put her arms around his neck and held him close for a few moments. Then she faced him, put her hand on his upper arm to pull him closer and then kissed him on his cheek. "Night, sweetheart."

"Night, mom." He returned the kiss then wrapped his arms around her shoulders pulling her towards him. "Thanks. Saturday."

"Saturday." She hugged him back and felt the strength in his body. She let her body relax against his and held him close to her for longer than necessary. She tilted her head back and gave him a quick kiss on the lips. "Don't stay up too late."

Elizabeth turned and walked from the room. Alan looked at her back as she moved away and instinctively his eyes focused on the area that he had touched earlier. His heart skipped a beat. Just like the view while they were fixing his bed, he realized that what he was seeing was not what he used to see.

Alan's thoughts turned to how fragile she felt in his arms and how he wanted to hold her just a little longer. Why? He couldn't say. This shopping for bed was an experience that had made him want to hold her longer --- and tighter. He was declaring that he was a grownup, and he had done something that grownups normally do. He had gone shopping for a bed with his mother; actually grownups don't do that. He had gone shopping with a woman, one could even say with the woman in his life, as she was the only woman in his life. But it didn't seem right. It was not a fulfilling experience. It didn't have the intimacy that grownup couples, man and woman, would have shopping for a bed. It didn't feel as good as it should have felt and he wanted to hold her a little longer and a little tighter to feel grownup. The boy needed his mommy to make him feel grownup. He felt pissed. He stayed up late, pissed at himself, and fell asleep angry.

It was somewhere between that half-asleep, half-awake state when he also realized about the softness that his mother had pressed against his chest.