THE WALK HOME
Chapter 4
- Jess:
ew looks like rain :P
The message had come while I was on shift, but I didn’t get it until I got on the bus after standing in the drizzle for five minutes.
Friday traffic was always miserable. The bus route went through one of the busier neighbourhoods for night-life, and pedestrians tended to slow all the traffic down—traffic which was busier than most other nights of the week. It was a tossup whether Friday or Saturday was worse most weeks, but the other five days of the week had nothing on them.
This Friday night (technically Saturday morning) was especially bad. The rain was too light to actually impact the number of people, but was heavy enough to slow the cars down, especially the polite drivers that don’t want to soak passers-by. Which I appreciated, as a frequent pedestrian, but left me a little impatient. I had dreams to discuss! Stories to tell! I wanted to get off the bus and run to Jess’ apartment, to tell her everything I had seen the night before, to see where the story would go from there.
And just as the bus let me off, fifteen minutes late, my phone pinged at me. My heart dropped. Jess had compromised immunities. She probably couldn’t sit in the room in the damp and the cool air. She was cancelling. I knew she was cancelling. That was the only thing it could be.
I ran to an awning so I didn’t get my phone too wet as I pulled it out. There it was, a message from Jess. I hesitated, not sure that I wanted to see the message, but I knew I would have to eventually. Unless I wanted to pretend that I was standing under the awning to wait for the rain to stop.
And then the rain stopped, suddenly stealing my excuse in the most ridiculous fashion possible. I sighed and checked the message.
- Jess:
hope you’re not standing out in the rain!! woke up late and my stomach was bothering me :( will be there in a little bit!!
I quickly texted back a positive reply, explaining Friday traffic, rain slowness, that I wasn’t there just yet, not to worry. I tapped on the screen as I walked down the road, trying to avoid puddles on the ground and water falling from soaked trees. I hadn’t worn proper boots or a raincoat or brought an umbrella, so I was just trying to keep as dry as I could. At least, checking the weather, I had dressed down, not bothering with the sari and instead just wearing a long skirt and a comfortable blouse; that made life a lot easier in the damp.
As I turned on to Jess’ street her reply popped up.
- Jess:
never been so happy that someone was running behind!! lol be right there
It occurred to me as I approached the building that the ground was wet; a downspout from the ceiling sent a stream of water running under Jess’ window, down the sidewalk, and out into the street. I decided that sitting in that was probably a bad idea.
“You don’t look like a nerd tonight, Water-Bearer,” I heard as I walked up to the window. “You don’t even look like you. You kinda look like me.”
“It’s rainy, I didn’t want to get one of my saris wet.” I shrugged. “They get clingy. You doing okay?”
“Uh huh, just a midnight snack gone wrong, kinda. So why no specs?”
“Specs?”
“Glasses?”
“Oh!” I put a palm to my damp forehead. “I decided to wear my contacts again today, that’s all. I go back and forth on them.” I didn’t want to wear them my glasses in the rain if I didn’t have to; they were a pain to keep clean.
She tilted her head, and the shadow of her hair bounced in the strange light. “Well, I like you better in the bright dress and the specs.”
“Well tonight you don’t get it,” I said, feeling playful. I leaned against the brick wall; it was a bit damp but not wholly uncomfortable. “I dress for me, sari or jeans or whatever.”
“Yeah! Girl power!” She threw a fist in the air. Then she laughed. “Seriously though I respect that. Wish I’d had the guts for it before...” She waved a hand into the room behind her, “but I was too busy trying to impress people and shit.”
I hadn’t thought of it as taking any sort of stand or anything, I was just dressing for comfort given the weather. “What do you mean?”
Jess sighed. “I dunno, it’s not really important. I just thought popularity was more important than... well, than me.”
“More important than you?”
“Yeah, I decided that I wanted to dress like other people wanted, take the classes other people wanted, pursue the interests other people wanted, live the life other people wanted for me...” The shadow shrugged again. “That’s all in the past, anyway. So it’s awesome to see you just doing you, even if it’s just me living vicariously.”
I smiled. “Pretty sure that ‘me doing me,’ and even ‘us doing us’ is what going on the adventure is about, isn’t it?”
“You bet!” I heard Jess’ answering smile again. “So yesterday, you and the sprite went running off to the woods...”
“Yes, and I had a dream about that,” I replied, trying to sound mysterious.
Jess clapped her hands. “You did? That’s great! And before you say one way or the other I don’t care if you really had a dream or if you’re just making things up, I wanna hear it!”
“Okay, well,” I said, turning to face out to the street, leaning my shoulders against the building. “I was having trouble sleeping last night—”
“Ooh, let me guess.” Jess leaned down closer to, and I heard her papers rustling. “I mean, it’s only relevant because it has something to do with the story. So you must have been lying in your nice, warm bed, and—”
I laughed. “You’re right, I pictured the sprite in the tree—”
“And she poured out her sleeping dust...”
I nodded. “Yep, that’s it. I was watching that happen, imagining it happen. And as I was imagining it—”
“You fell asleep and you started to dream,” she finished for me.
“I slumped against the tree,” I said, relaxing a little more. “Or, I was watching as that happened, and she climbed down out of the tree, and she leaned on me and started whispering in my ear...”
“And you were helpless.”
I couldn’t stop her. “I couldn’t stop her,” I said, pressing my hands against the wall.
“You were asleep, you were dreaming.”
And her words shaped my dreams. “Her words shaped my dreams.” I pictured Jess leaning on my shoulder, whispering in my ear.
“And what she said was...?”
“Let’s go on an adventure,” I breathed.
“That’s great! And then?”
The sun on my left, the sprite on my right, the forest ahead of me, running through the open field towards a danger that I didn’t know existed. The villagers knew of the forest, of course, and so as a child I had been told stories of people wandering in there and coming out changed, and on some level I knew I would be different when I walked out.
“Well, that makes sense, it’s a story, and stories aren’t interesting if the characters don’t change.”
But I didn’t really care. I wanted to have an adventure, and the adventure was waiting for me in the forest. As we reached the border of the forest, the sprite—
“What’s her name?”
I blinked, my imagining stuttering to a halt at the interruption. I felt a bit of a chill, my legs were cold. “Huh?”
“What’s her name? The sprite?”
The sprite? I had just been thinking of her as... I looked up to the shadow above me. The window seemed a long way away. “She hasn’t told me,” I said, flushing.
And there was that wonderful, inclusive laugh. “Well, since you’re you, in the story, how about the sprite be me?”
That was too perfect. It fit too well with what was already going on in my head. I shifted in my spot, feeling the cool damp of my skirt against my legs. “The wild sprite, Jess.”
“Suits me!” The silhouette spun as though showing off a new outfit. “So Jess took you by the hand and you went running off to the forest...”
I dreamed about that forest, big and dark and full of magic. Jess had my hand as we crossed the border from the plain. “I’ve never come here,” I said, and the sprite smiled at me, pulling me forward. This was her home, after all.
As soon as I crossed into the shade of the trees, I shivered. The canopy was thick, and blocked out much of the light. I was dressed to walk the sunny path and bring water back to the village. Seeing my discomfort, Jess made a motion with her hands and—
“Said a few magic words,” the voice floated down to me from the window. “’Warmth of the summer sun, fill the Water-Bearer with your shining touch.’”
—and I felt warm spreading from my chest all the way out to my fingers and toes. I smiled at Jess. “Thank you,” I said, and I didn’t question what the sprite had done. It just seemed perfectly natural that my friend (who I had met not ten minutes before) could do these things.
I let myself be led a ways into the forest, deeper and darker, but still safe and comfortable and warm. The river burbled along softly, and Jess never really stopped telling me about our upcoming adventure, about a mean sorcerer who was taking all the good out of the forest: chopping trees, enslaving woodland creatures, blighting the land. I started to imagine Saruman destroying the woods to build his army, but of course my dream-self had never read Lord of the Rings, and neither had dream-Jess, so when I brought it up in the dream I didn’t know what it meant and Jess had never heard of it, but it was a dream so even though it didn’t make sense it was brought up and then dropped like nothing happened.
A moment later, we heard a noise in the woods, and we decided to go into the—
“And Jess said, ‘I’ll go investigate, you stay here...’”
Jess decided to go into the forest while I waited by the path by the edge of the river. I heard the noise again, and...
“And then I woke up,” I said. The burbling of the stream was echoed by the water sluicing through the downspouts and out into the storm drains. The dim sunlight filtering through the canopy in my mind looked a lot like the soft glow of the reading lamp some distance above me, and the streetlight shining down on me. The sound of the sprite’s voice... well, of course that was the same as Jess’ voice.
“That’s awesome,” Jess said, awed. “What’s going to happen next?”
I got to my feet, trying to brush excess water off my skirt. My legs weren’t soaked, but they were uncomfortably wet, not that that was a huge problem since I was about to head home and could easily change. “Honestly, Jess? I don’t know,” I replied. “But I’m looking forward to finding out.”
“So do you run away? Do you chase after her? Do you sneak into the forest to find out what’s going on?”
I smiled up at the window again. “The last one, I think. I’m going to tiptoe through the trees to see what’s going on and how I can help.”
“And you’re going to find some forest creature—”
“Some magical forest creature,” I clarified.
“Of course!” Jess giggled. That laugh was so wonderful, even after only four days I could see myself getting quite addicted. “You’ll find some magical forest creature engaged in deadly combat with your guide.”
“Oh, no,” I said, shaking my head. “Not deadly combat. No, it’s something much more sinister...”
I could sense Jess’ anticipation, but she said nothing, waiting dramatically...
“... and I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.” I grinned.
She clapped her hands, delighted. “A cliffhanger! You sneaky little...”
“Sneaky! It’s not like I even know yet!” I wiggled my hips, trying to unstick my clothes from my legs. “I have to get out of this skirt.” I waved up to the window and, impulsively, blew my friend a kiss. “See you tomorrow night?”
I heard her blow me a kiss back, loudly since I couldn’t see her. “I should be here!” I turned and headed for home, and she called after me, “You’d better have a good story!”
I threw up another wave over my head without looking back and finished my slightly uncomfortable walk home. Every couple moments I paused to pull the skirt from my legs; why had I sat down? I wasn’t even sure when I’d done that, and I’d thought that it was pretty obviously a bad idea, but still I had sat down on the grass. It was something to puzzle over as I jogged up the stairs to my apartment. By the time I opened the door, I had decided that it would just be one of the great unsolvable mysteries of the universe.
Without waiting a beat, I peeled off my skirt, kicking off my damp shoes as I did. My socks were uncomfortable against my feet, so they were next to go, along with my wet panties. I walked down the hall towards the shower in just my shirt and bra, letting my braid out and trying to pull the knots from my hair. I turned the shower on and stripped off the last of my clothes, waiting for the water to get nice and hot before stepping into the stream.
Hot, definitely. The water hit my knees and made me jump; it wasn’t too hot for my hand, but my legs were cold and my hands weren’t. It felt like it was scalding me for a moment or two before my body caught up with reality, and then it was the best feeling in the world, at least in that moment. The steam heated the rest of me, so as I moved more fully under the water from the showerhead, that wonderful feeling spread throughout, like the warmth of the sun from Jess’ spell. I couldn’t help but make the connection as I pulled my hair apart, grabbing my brush to get the job done faster and better.
There were two warring ideas in my mind, neither of which were about getting clean: the magic I was about to witness in the woods, and just how taken I was by the thought of Jess’ voice in my mind leading me to an adventure.
And this time, I wasn’t lying in bed, trying to dream. I finished with the tangles in my hair and put my brush back in its place. The warmth was so nice, and part of me was still in that forest by the river, and part of me was still under that tree sleeping and listening to Jess’ voice in my ear. And another part of me was in bed the night before, my hands on my breasts, thinking about the magic that the sprite could pour into my head.
It wasn’t the first time I’d touched myself in the shower. Wasn’t even the first time I’d been imagining a woman as I did. It was, however, the first time I was picturing a real person, someone I could talk to, share stories with. My hands worked at my breasts as I pictured sleeping beneath the tree with Jess’ voice in my ear, then slipped down under the hot spray, imagining what else the voice might’ve told me as I fingered my pussy. I imagined that the Water-Bearer’s village must tell stories of sprites kidnapping helpless young women, dragging them off to be ... I didn’t finish that thought; instead I just lived in the idea of magical sleep and enchanting words for a minute or two until I muffled orgasmic cries with an unused washcloth. I didn’t live in an empty apartment building, not like Jess did.
I took a breath or two, cleaned up quickly, and turned off the shower, towelling off. I wrapped my hair in a towel and my body in another and made my way to my bed, flopping down on top of the covers. A quick check of my phone showed a text message waiting for me, from Jess.
- Jess:
the story better be worth the cliffhanger!! I can’t stop thinking about it lol
I didn’t reply. Grinning to myself, I put my phone down and lay my head on the pillows. The moment the black closed in, two blue eyes met mine, and I fell into dreaming.