She said, “I know about penises and vagina stuff. From school. Do you like me?”
I looked over at the naked girl lying next to me and said, “Ariel, I do like you. If you want to be my girlfriend, I would like that very much. Allie and Christie and Bebe are my family and so are you if you want to be. If you want to live with us but not be my um…girl, that’s OK. But if you want to be my girlfriend, because you love me, that will be wonderful. I’d like that. But it’s up to you.”
I sat back on my knees and looked at her.
Ariel said, “Florin plus Pahu plus Ariel. I like it when you touch me. I was lonely but I waited. I told everyone that I was home now and that you were my family, but…well, am I?”
I sighed. She needed me to accept her, not just invite her. She needed to feel wanted. With the people that she had lived with here, she had been treated like a little girl, not a woman. She was probably 16 when they “left the Earth”, as she put it. She hadn’t been through the rituals of womanhood the way that she should have been. How could I help her now? She was 32 years old. Ariel needed a place to belong finally. And she was thinking about sex. Her comment about knowing about penises and stuff was an invitation to consider her sexually.
I started to ask Ariel if I could kiss her but decided to let our actions and reactions speak for us. Gazing into her eyes, as tenderly as I could, I leaned over her tiny body and lowered my lips toward hers. Ariel stretched toward me. I had one hand on each side of her shoulders, and as I approached, she didn’t shrink back. No, she lifted her head toward me, closing the distance between us. There was my answer. She wanted my kiss, the same way that she had told me several times that she liked it when I touched her. As her neck lifted off the sand, I slipped my right arm behind her head and cradled her as we kissed.
Ariel’s breasts pressed into my chest, straining to merge with me emotionally and physically. Our kiss was tender as I pulled her toward me. I didn’t know how much she wanted. I didn’t know how much I wanted. And I spent too much time thinking about it.
Was this OK? Yes. It was. Did I really love Ariel? Like I did Bebe, Christie, and Allie? Yes. Sort of. Just like with Allie, it took some getting used to. I did love Ariel, but she was so odd. Just like with Allie, at first I didn’t really know Ariel’s mental state. She had lived without human contact since she was 16; for about 16 years. And before that, she saw the world fall apart and everyone that she knew committed mass suicide. The damage was certainly extensive. How much of Ariel was left and how much would she be able to integrate with us again?
I continued kissing her, since she continued to kiss me, but I wasn’t really aroused by it. It was too tenuous right now. She was too much of an unknown. And we were not in a place, here beside the house with a lot of other people nearby, to be alone and contemplate making love. When Ariel took a satisfied breath and relaxed some, I smiled and lifted her to her feet.
Again, as if she could read my thoughts, she said, “Florin, I’m strange. I know that. We all are. You are as strange as anyone. But I’m home and you are my man. I am one of yours. I am one of your tribe and one of your women and soon, one of your lovers. I don’t know how to do that, but the kiss was nice. I like it when you touch me. And as strange as we all are, we are together. You love me but you don’t know how much. Scout told the truth when I asked her. You don’t know your answer yet. But I had to come to you. I belong here. You’ll see.”
I hugged Ariel and said, “Sweetie, of course you belong here! I know that. It’s just that nothing is the way that it should have been. But this is the real world, not what it should have been. Yes, you belong here. We are your family. Even if I’m still figuring it out, that is the truth. Do you want to know something? I like touching you. It feels good. It makes me happy.”
Wow. That was true. I hadn’t seen that before. I loved touching Ariel and having her touch me. I liked the way that she had climbed onto my back. I liked the feel of her legs on my face and shoulders. I liked it that she had been beside me, touching me all day.
I said, “Ariel, wow, I really do like it when you touch me!”
She grinned and said, “Me too. Now you’re telling the truth. Now you know. You do love me.”
I said, “I suppose that I must. I wouldn’t feel like this if I didn’t. Ariel, I…”
She said, “I tamed you. I held onto you and let you get used to me until I tamed you. You won’t run away now. You want me to pet you. And I want you to pet me. I can be a grownup. You’ll see.”
CHAPTER Twenty-Five - Heaven and Hail
The two women from Toni’s tribe returned about midnight. The rest of us were already asleep but I heard them come in. So did Toni. She got up and whispered to them for a few minutes and it seemed like she was having trouble convincing them to come into the house and sleep on the floor with the rest of us. Of course, the real issue was me. The others had gotten to know me over the course of the day but these two had been away, disposing of the dead. It seemed like it was all sorted out and they lay down near Toni but less than a minute later, both of them got up and went outside.
In the morning, when I woke up, everyone was getting up for the day. Most of them headed off to self-assigned tasks. One little group wanted to do laundry. For the first time in almost 20 years, there was laundry; bedding, towels, and draperies. There was a washing machine and drier in the house, but we didn’t bother to get it running now; the washing was done by hand using fresh water from the tank and then hung to dry outdoors.
At breakfast, I sat on the beach with my canoe. We had taken to organizing groups and talking about the number of people in a group as a ‘canoe’. My family was one canoe. Toni had three canoes. Each canoe was four people in our way of reckoning now. Toni had 13 people, but three canoes was close enough. And each of Toni’s canoes was its own little group, having a stronger affinity for each other.
I sat there with Allie, Christie, Bebe, and Ariel, eating some fruit. For the first time that we were together, we didn’t bother with fish for breakfast. Allie had caught one, but we left it for later. We didn’t need to make sure that we started the day with meat because we were comfortable that we would be able to eat it when we felt like we wanted to. Up until now, we had always eaten what we could get, assuming that we might not have food later.
It seemed like our attitude was shifting away from the scarcity mentality that we had been living with. The girls had lived with it for two decades; I had only lived that way for three weeks, but it was a definite change. The Nomads seemed to be changing too. When we had first met them, they were arrogant and threatening. They were confident and self-sufficient and didn’t care if we lived or died. Now it looked like they were more friendly with each other, and even with me and my canoe. We smiled and waved as we saw someone pass by and they did the same. They spoke to me when they needed to. Before this, if one of them needed something asked or said to me, they’d send a spokeswoman. Now they talked to me directly.
At one point, Bebe said, “Look at that,” and she pointed at two girls walking off to the house together.
I said, “What? Look at what?”
Bebe said, “Those two. They are smiling. And look, they are holding hands.”
I said, “Yeah. Um?”
Bebe said, “I haven’t seen that in a long time. They are comfortable. They aren’t watching for an attack from anywhere. They feel at peace. Probably for the first time that they can remember.”
Ariel assured us that the weather would stay calm until late afternoon. She warned everyone to be sure to be near the house so that when the sky got dark that we could all get inside. She told us that by two in the afternoon that we should start closing the shutters. Then she asked me to follow her down the beach so that she could show me something.
The girls were happy to let us go exploring and Ariel took my hand and we started southward, walking at the edge of the water in the wet sand.
Ariel walked as gracefully as ever. She didn’t cling to me now
, but we walked a foot apart, letting our hands swing as we walked. As far as I could tell, we weren’t really going anywhere in particular. What I did see though was that Ariel seemed older and more mature his morning. She was 32 but yesterday had seemed more like 15. Today, Ariel was a woman. A very beautiful, slender woman. Slender but busty.
Ariel seemed to notice that I stole glances at her chest as if I were interested and said, “I didn’t used to have boobs. Do you like them?”
We didn’t stop walking and I said, “Ariel, you are very beautiful. You have a lovely body. We were so busy yesterday that I didn’t take time to tell you.”
She grinned and said, “Yesterday, you didn’t notice.”
I said, “You might be right. It was all happening really fast and it was…well, all really surprising.”
Ariel said, “It was the first time that I had been with people in a really long time. I didn’t know how to react or how to notice a lot of things either. But yeah, my boobs. You want to hear about them? When I got here, I was 14. But I was a gymnast and pretty thin. Thinner than I am now. So, I had like an A-cup breast. And when we crashed, I was the smallest one on the plane. And for however long we were here at your house, I was like a stick. For several reasons. For one thing, I worked really hard all the time. It kept me skinny. Kind of like a little boy. For another thing, I hid. The men here weren’t all crazy and gross like the ones at the trade village, but I was waiting for you, so I kind of stayed skinny on purpose. And I didn’t want to eat because I didn’t want to grow up and have them notice me. The women would tell me that I was going to grow up and then this family or that family would take me in, and I’d be their wife or whatever, but I didn’t want that. I had clothes and all, because we all did but I didn’t wear a bra because it wasn’t comfortable.”
I said, “But now you are beautiful. Wait, I mean you were probably very pretty before, but…”
She laughed and said, “Oh, stop it! It’s fine. I am what I am. In a few minutes, I’m going to let you touch them. Anyway, after they all left, and I left and went to somewhere else to live, I slowed down. That’s when I learned to listen. And when I slowed down, my body started to um, develop. But it really started to grow when I lived in the water.”
I said, “How did you do that? You told me that you can sleep in the water?”
She said, “Yeah. I swam really slowly because I didn’t have anywhere to go. And I had ditched my clothes and I just floated a lot. I’d just lay in the water for days and nights. I don’t know how many. It kept my legs in shape, but I wasn’t working out, and my boobs started to fill out. I was really happy about that. I knew that I was weird because I was so small, so when I started to look like a woman, I was really happy. I wondered if you would like how I looked. I thought that you would want to touch my boobs and if I didn’t have any that we probably couldn’t be married. We could be brother and sister, but I wanted boobs if we were going to be married. Thank you for not lying to me yesterday.”
I said, “About what?”
She said, “About how you feel about me. You aren’t good at lying, are you?”
I said, “I have never really needed to.”
She said, “I’m glad. You like me but you’re afraid of me. But I know why. It’s because you don’t know if I’m all here or not. Maybe I went crazy during the plane crash, or maybe I made all that stuff up and really it was me that killed all those people here, or maybe I’m still a child in the way that I think. But I know that you don’t really believe those things, but you are afraid that you might believe them anyway. Or that you don’t know me well enough yet.”
She paused for a minute and then continued, saying, “But you know what you know. Florin, look inside and tell me what you know.”
I thought for a minute as we walked farther down the beach. What did I know? I watched her walk beside me and tried to figure it out.
I said, “Ariel, I know that you really do belong with me and the girls. I know that I am falling in love with you. Ariel, every step we take right now feels like a step closer to your heart. I don’t quite know what I’m saying. I feel things right now that I didn’t know how to feel a minute ago.”
She said, “You are learning to listen.”
I said, “Um, maybe so.”
She said, “Ask the sky. Hear the wind. Be inside.”
I took a breath and said, “Ariel, you are part of me, aren’t you? Like a part that I needed to be looking for.”
She gripped my hand tighter and said, “No. A part that needed to wait for me, not looking for me. Did you have a wife before?”
I said, “Um, no. I um, kind of never wanted one. I…you know what? I guess I felt like none of them were right and that I had to wait for something else. Ariel, were you really on the plane? With the others? Did we meet before?”
Ariel said, “I was on the plane. I’m not Pahu. We never met until yesterday. But I waited for you and it sounds like you were waiting for me. But not just me. Who was Pahu?”
I said, “Well, when I was here, before the cataclysm, there was this girl my age and we kind of got to be friends and we kind of had a crush on each other. When I left with my dad and grandfather, I never saw her again. I think that she was taken somewhere safe. She wouldn’t have waited for me, just like I didn’t wait for her. I waited for something but not her.”
Ariel said, “But I did. Florin plus Pahu. To me, Pahu is Allie and Christie and Bebe. Florin, I know the answer but tell me. Will you love me?”
I choked slightly but told the truth when I said, “Ariel, I do love you. More with every step. It’s just that…”
She said, “Then give up. We all love you as best we can.”
At that moment, it was as if something came loose inside me. Ariel stopped and backed up to a palm tree and leaned against it, still holding my hand. And I felt something let go of me. The thing that had always been with me; the thing that made me wait; the thing that never connected deeply to a woman, NORG or human. It let go and my being crashed against Ariel. In that moment, I saw myself rush across the air between us and merge with Ariel. I was still a foot away, but my inner self was already inside her, kissing her soul. My invisible being was fondling her invisible breasts, pulling her out of her body and into mine as I was pulled into her. Suddenly, she was Eve and I was Adam and I knew that she was my mate, flesh and spirit. Visible and invisible.
And it wasn’t just my confidence toward Ariel that changed. But that could wait. Right now, I wanted her. Like I had never wanted anything. What was happening to me?
Without explaining, I stepped across the chasm that had separated me from everyone else that I had ever known and took Ariel’s face in my hands and I kissed her. I was sensitive to whether she was resistant or not, I wasn’t going to force myself on her, but I also wasn’t going to second guess anything too much. Ariel’s body would tell me what she wanted. I knew that from now on that I would listen more to the girls’ reactions than relying on our words. The next time I saw Christie, I would know if she wanted whatever I was doing by how she reacted, not because she had reassured me by saying so.
Ariel answered my kiss by leaning into me and devouring my lips and tongue. Her breasts pressed against me, her nipples poking at my chest, and I didn’t need to be shy or ask her for more permission than that.
This was so much clearer than words. The next time I saw Allie, I wouldn’t ask her if she wanted my T-Shirt; I’d hand it to her and if she didn’t want it, she wouldn’t take it. If she wanted me to touch her, she wouldn’t pull away when my fingers brushed against her body. I would listen with my hands and eyes, the way that I would with an animal that I was training or caring for. Body language would be infinitely more reliable than speech. Even if they were simply complying with what they thought that I wanted, if I listened, I’d be able to tell before I went too far.
As Ariel and I kissed, I slid my hand down her back and rested it on her tiny buttock. As I did, she pushed against me even harder a
nd raised her leg on that side to put it around my waist as best she could. That couldn’t be anything but an invitation. She was opening the door to her sex, spreading her legs around my groin, asking me in. I wasn’t banging on the door; I was whispering to my love and she was throwing the door open to welcome me. My right hand ran down her neck and landed on her breast, fondling her tenderly. This was good.
But suddenly, it wasn’t. Far sooner than I had expected, Ariel jumped involuntarily. It wasn’t at my touch but something outside our embrace; as if she had spotted a tiger rushing at us. I immediately disengaged and turned to see what could be wrong.
Ariel hissed, “Hurry. We don’t have much time,” and she pulled me in the direction of the house.
After just two strides, I felt what Ariel had felt seconds before: the air pressure had changed dramatically. Looking quickly around, out to the south, over the water of the atoll, I saw what looked like a white curtain, and I felt a breeze start to blow from that direction. It wasn’t a fog bank, and I couldn’t tell how far away it was. Maybe 200 yards. At that point, the Earth disappeared, hidden behind a wall of white. Above us, the sky darkened even more. South of us, there was a wall of white and in front of us was the jungle and the house that we hoped would provide safety.
I had seen rainstorms come in like this before. Rain so hard that there was a distinct line where it separated a torrential downpour from dry air. But this wasn’t a rain storm. We were just in sight of the house when the roar became thunderous, like it was about to roll over the top of us as we ran for shelter.
Ariel screamed, shouting, “Everyone inside! Hurry! Run! Run!”
Most of the women were still outside as we ran from the jungle toward the house, but some had already started moving, seeking shelter indoors; a few others were seemingly transfixed, staring blankly at the wall of destruction coming from the south. Ariel kept yelling, and when she reached the nearest girl, she pushed her hard, nearly knocking her off her feet.
The Dark Atoll Page 25
