by Loki Renard
“Aster, what did you eat?”
“There was a mushroom. I ate a mushroom or three...”
Owen’s eyes widened. “You ate mushrooms? Without telling me? What did it look like?”
“Um, it was brown, but there was a blue-ish frill around the edges. It was a very pretty mushroom.” She looked up at him and his frown and felt a sudden, mortal fear clutch her heart. “Am I going to die?”
Chapter Ten
“Die? I don’t think so,” he said, quelling her fears. His fingers were on her wrist, taking her pulse, as she lay there blissfully naked. He laid her hand back down and sighed, rubbing his hand over his face before declaring, “I think you’re high.”
“I am?” Aster frowned slightly and turned her head from side to side to see if her brain felt funny inside its skull. It didn’t, really. But she did feel as though the shelter was alive, and as though the little droplets of water, which could be seen beading at the entrance, were diamond jewels. The whole world was made of beauty, and she was fascinated by all of it.
“You are,” he said. “Have you not noticed that?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “It all happened very slowly. I put it down to the sex.”
“When you come down from this, we are going to have a very serious discussion about what we do and do not eat,” he said. “But for now you may as well lie back and try to enjoy it.”
“You are made of stars,” Aster said, changing the subject to something more pleasant. She wished Owen could feel as she felt, and understand how wonderful it all was. “And I can feel the planet breathing. It’s all breathing.”
“Just as long as you keep breathing, that’s all that matters,” Owen said.
She could see his tension, his sadness. It was like an aura around him. She reached for him and pulled him down next to her. “We are going to live forever,” she told him earnestly. “And this forest is our friend. It shelters us and feeds us and it has everything we need. We could live here forever and ever and ever. We could make babies and they could live here forever and ever too.”
Owen smiled at her and stroked her hair. “We could,” he said. “But I don’t think that’s the ideal—”
“Shhh...” She pressed her fingers to his mouth. “You’re saying words.”
“I am saying words,” he chuckled.
“Words are not your friend,” Aster said, shaking her head. “Words make the world go away.”
“Weren’t you just saying words?”
“My words are different,” she replied with the impeccable logic of the stoned. “My words are the true ones.”
“Ah,” Owen said, pulling her into a close embrace.
She wound herself around him and pressed her face into his neck. “You smell like the dawn of time.”
“That’s a kind way of putting it.” Owen smiled. “I think tomorrow we’ll get started on turning some wood ash into lye. We have enough of it.”
“So many plans you have in your head,” Aster said, tapping the side of his skull with her knuckles. “Millions and millions of plans. How do they all fit in there?”
“The same way all this silliness is fitting into yours right now, I expect,” he said.
He was not pleased with her; she could sense that in the pores of her bones, if her bones had pores, which, she decided, they did. “It’s not silliness,” Aster replied. “It’s truth. Truthiness. We are from this planet, you know.”
Owen made a low groaning sound, as if he couldn’t quite handle the babble.
“We are from this planet and we are on it. And we can eat it and we become it and we grow from it and we go back to it and we are it. It is me. I are you. The isness is what is happening.”
“Mmm.”
“And the planet is from space, so we are also aliens. But we are at home, and we are also far away. So we are near and we are far and we are made of matter, but we are not matter, because we are light and energy— I’m hungry.”
“Yes,” Owen said. “Eating might be a good idea for you. What do you want? We have some pork, or we have some roots.”
Aster looked at him with shining eyes and made her meal choice. “I will eat love.”
He said something in return, but she didn’t hear it. She closed her eyes and was instantly amused by brightly colored tracers which swirled around and around and then became brighter and brighter until she was no longer in the little hut. She was outside it, above it, somewhere she couldn’t possibly actually be. In her fingers, she held a scrap of cloth from her undershirt, which had come loose in the rigors of every day life in the bush. It was wound lightly between her digits and when she looked down she saw it pretty and pink and buoyant in that place.
A great rushing of air buffeted her face, interrupting her inspection of the spectral fabric. She looked up and saw something large with great wings of iridescent green rushing toward her.
It was the tui. But it wasn’t small any more. It was huge, much larger than her and, as it reached her, its wings enfolded her and she became one with it and took off, soaring over the trees. She saw the world beneath them, a sea of green trees, jagged stone mountains and delicate water tracing fjords. It was a breathtaking sight, much like the one she had experienced in the helicopter before they had crashed. She had thought that she would be afraid to ever go up in the sky again, but the tui had taken that fear and borne her above it on wings that soared up and over the treetops, then tilted down to allow her to go skimming between branches and tree trunks.
Aster was not aware of any purpose to her flight, but it culminated above a clearing where the tui’s wings refused to fly further. Instead she found herself circling down and around until she saw dots of red and yellow. Men and women in overalls, tramping through the bush. They seemed to be searching for something very hard; there was sweat on their brows and dirt on their hands and knees. Whatever they were looking for, they wanted to find it very much.
As Aster watched, she came to the sudden realization that it must be her and Owen they were looking for. This was the rescue team. These were the people they had been waiting to come ever since the crash.
The tui landed near them and began crying out with Aster’s voice. “This way! We are this way! This way! We are this way!” As the tui chirped, the scrap of fabric fell from its mouth and drifted down into the hands of a nearby searcher.
The man looked up and the tui bowed, then bounced away, and then called again. Aster tried to speak through it, but now the tui’s tongue would only allow for squawking and chirping.
The tui rose, circled three times and flew back toward the hut. Aster knew its mind and its heart, for they were hers. It was her body that slipped sleekly through the wind. Her feathers that cut the air in sweeping bows. For a long time they flew this way and that, Aster riding the currents of the wind, feeling the lightness of being. Shadows came and the moon rose and still they flew, flitting between branches, peering into dark spaces, rising above it all only to fall again. Eventually, however, the spell began to fade. The tui landed back outside their shelter and Aster fell from it and back into her own body.
“They’re near,” she said, opening her eyes. “They’re closer than we thought. I think they’re going to come for us soon.”
“Welcome back,” Owen replied.
To her surprise, it was no longer late in the afternoon. It was morning. She could tell by the dew on the ground outside and the crystal fresh air with a slight hint of coolness. She must have spent all night flying with the tui.
“I was asleep?”
“You were,” he said. “Well, passed out, asleep, I don’t know what you were, but you were out for the night, that much I do know.”
She could not help but notice his very, very grim tone.
“You’re mad at me, aren’t you?”
“I’m not mad,” he said. “But I am very disappointed, Aster.”
“That’s so clichéd!”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s true.”
&
nbsp; She smiled at him as the vague tendrils of her experience continued to slide over her mind. “You’re not going to be mad at me when you find out what I was doing.”
“You were lying passed out.”
“No, I wasn’t. I found the people searching for us and I told them where we are. The tui helped me!”
“Oh, Aster.” His voice carried sympathy and sadness, which knocked some of the excitement out of her. He didn’t believe her. He thought she was mad. Or stoned. Or just plain wrong.
“I did it,” she said. “I saw a man. I saw his face and we gave him a clue.”
“I don’t think you’re quite down yet,” Owen said. “Drink some water. I’m going to see about some breakfast. I found some eggs the other day.”
The mention of eggs made her squawk. “Not tui eggs? We can’t eat tui eggs! The tui is going to save us. The tui is our friend!”
“No,” he said. “Not tui eggs. They’re bellbird eggs, they have little pink splotches on them. I’m going to boil them up. You rest.”
“I don’t feel high,” Aster said. She didn’t feel high in the slightest. All the fuzzy warmth and out of focused feeling was gone. She was grounded again, unable to take to the tui’s wing, or hear the Earth breathing beneath her. The memory of those things was still strong though, so much so that she knew she would never forget. And she was certain that she had found the rescuers. It had been too real to be anything other than real.
She noticed that her wet clothing from the previous day was dry. She pulled on her rain washed underwear and was about to don her jeans when Owen stopped her.
“You won’t be needing those,” he said firmly. “I’m going to have some strong words with you after breakfast.”
Aster stared at him, very much unhappy. “It wasn’t my fault—”
“Whose fault was it?” Owen was speaking in what was close to a growl. “They could have been poisonous. You could be dead now. You were so damn lucky, and once I’m done eating I’m going to make sure you don’t ever eat anything I haven’t told you that you can eat.”
So he was mad, really mad. It made Aster not want to eat at all. It made her want to run away into the bush, but she knew that would go down even worse. She put her head in her hands and stayed quiet. There was no point arguing with him and she didn’t really feel terribly well. The mushrooms had left her feeling somewhat slow and a little headachy – nothing worse than a hangover, but certainly not an ideal state of mind to be arguing with Owen.
Breakfast was eaten in a tense silence. The eggs were delicious, but they may as well have been ashes in Aster’s mouth for all she could enjoy them. Owen had never, ever been this upset with her. She had never felt the kind of tension between them that she now felt. And she didn’t really understand why. Okay, so she’d eaten something that made her a bit loopy, but it had turned out all right and maybe, if her visions were in any way related to reality, maybe it had even helped in some mystical way. The forest world didn’t work the same way as the civilized one, she was sure of that.
The tui was there, but it was also silent, apparently equally affected by Owen’s bad mood. It sat in the branches above them and looked down with what Aster was sure was a mournful expression on its avian face.
Eventually, Aster sighed. “Let’s just get this out of the way then,” she said. “I can’t stand you being angry at me.”
“I’m not angry,” Owen repeated. “I don’t think you understand what you did. A lot of fungi carry neurotoxins. Some of them can make you delirious. Some of them can kill you. You cannot just eat whatever you find around the place without asking me first. I thought that would have been common sense.”
“I didn’t think—”
“That’s the problem. Thoughtless acts can lead to death out here. There are no backstops. I thought you understood that.”
Aster rolled her eyes. The lecturing was becoming tiresome, and more painful than any spanking could be. “Just smack me already.”
Owen lifted serious, strained eyes to her. “You could have killed yourself, and there would have been nothing I could have done. You would have died out here; do you understand that? In agony, most likely, and there would have been nothing—” His voice cracked and she could see the supreme effort it was taking for him not to break down at the thought of losing her that way.
His emotion triggered a welling of guilt within her. He really wasn’t angry with her. He was sad and worried by the idea that she might do something from which he could not save her. Aster knew very well that there could be no greater nightmare for a man like Owen.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her tears flowing where his would not. “I am so, so, so sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t thinking. I was just hungry.”
“You have to promise me never to do that again,” he said as she came to him and wrapped her arms around him and pressed little kisses all over his face.
“I promise,” she said. “I really, really, really promise. I do.”
His arms came around her and he held her closer and tighter than ever before. “You’re all I’ve got, Aster.”
“You’re all I have,” she replied. “And I am so, so sorry I made you worry. And I won’t ever eat anything you haven’t told me to eat again. I promise.”
He patted her bottom, appearing to accept her apology. “Do I have to spank you, you think?”
She squirmed about and tried not to nod.
“I think I do,” he said. “I think it will make us both feel much better.”
Aster agreed, although she could never have articulated it. At Owen’s urging, she slid over his thighs, her pantied bottom lifted to the sky as she submitted to his discipline. It was quite a different thing when she knew she deserved it, and even more of a different thing when she felt fairly guilty about her misbehavior. She felt his palm spread across her cheeks and slide over her bottom in slow circles.
“I love you,” he said. “You’re the most important thing in the world to me, and the thought of losing you is...”
“I know,” she said softly. “Because I feel the same way.”
They were bonded more closely than Aster had ever imagined being bonded with anyone. She lived and breathed him, as he did her. As his palm began to fall, she did not feel chastised or punished. She felt cared for more deeply than ever. That was not to say that he was gentle or soft. His hand clapped against her panty-clad cheeks with quick, firm swats, which ignited spots of intense heat even through the barrier of her underwear. Why he kept them up she did not know, but she was not of a mind to question his methods.
She stretched out and relaxed into the spanking, allowing his palm to paint her bottom a bright shade of red beneath the hem of her panties. As it continued, she began to grow uncomfortable, but knew better than to complain. The heat of her bottom was nothing compared to the pain she knew that she had inflicted upon him with her thoughtless act.
Owen stopped spanking for a moment and readjusted her panties, pulling them snugly over her cheeks so that the gusset was pressed against her lips, holding them with a tight grip. Then he slid his hand down and patted her pussy with a light, possessive touch before returning to the task of discipline.
The little interlude had changed the tone of the whole affair. Aster felt a growing tingling in her clit as her hips rocked back and forth over his thighs, his palm stinging her sweet cheeks and exhorting her to further wanton grinding. She was fast approaching a clandestine climax, his palm painting heat and pleasure over her bottom. After the tension and the drama, all she wanted to do was find sweet release, some way of taking that pent up energy and releasing it. Her mouth fell open as she started to pant a little, her hips humping his thigh as he spanked her harder and harder and—
THUD THUD THUD THUD.
A deep sound not unlike an exceptionally large and loud heartbeat suddenly emanated from a point in the sky above them. Aster and Owen both looked up to see a helicopter hovering above.
“Holy...” Owe
n slapped his hand hard against her bottom. “That’s them!”
Aster leaped up from his lap, yanking her jeans up as she went. “I told you I told them!”
“That is not.... hell,” Owen shook his head. “I don’t care how it happened, they’re here!”
They both stood and waved their arms back and forth, even though it was unnecessary because the door of the chopper was open and men were being lowered down on long cords. Like angels in red and yellow overalls they came, looking just as Aster had dreamed or imagined, or seen with the second sight of the stoned or whatever it was that she had done.
In mere moments, everything changed. It was the oddest feeling. The wilds seemed to slip away as their rescuers landed and began asking them questions. Owen answered most of them as Aster stood, stunned at the sudden intrusion. Her climax had not eventuated and had instead turned to a dull throbbing between her thighs, more frustrating than enjoyable.
She had been waiting for this moment for days and days and days and yet, now that it was here, she did not feel the overwhelming relief that she had so imagined. She felt numb, and disconnected and more lost than ever.
“Aster,” Owen said, taking her hand. “Are you all right?” His touch grounded her and she looked at him and nodded, before looking over her shoulder to the bough where her friend the tui had so often sat, singing his raucous song. But the bough was empty, as was the entire clearing. The helicopter must have frightened their friend away.
“The tui,” she said. “He’s gone. Have you seen him?” A harness was being attached to her as she looked around for her avian buddy, but she didn’t care so much about being rescued at that moment as she cared about where the bird was. “Where’s the tui?”
“She’s delirious,” one of her rescuers declared. “Let’s get her up to the chopper as quick as possible.”
“I am not! I just want to say goodbye!” She pushed at the rescuer’s hand and tried to take the harness off. She didn’t want to be swept up into the sky. She didn’t want to be taken away. She wanted to see the tui again. He deserved thanks for all he had done, that strange bird with the white baubles of feathers and the fine curled coat.
