THE WALK HOME
Chapter 5
“I like the outfit. The colour suits you.”
The air was still damp Saturday night, damp and cool, but not so cool that I needed a jacket over my sari. The wetness made the fabric stick in ways that were a little uncomfortable, but I still felt awfully good to be wearing it. I had my glasses on, too, putting up with a little moisture and the occasional drip off the trees landing on the lenses. For some reason, I felt like dressing to impress a certain friend of mine. And she noticed.
I nodded my thanks, but I was momentarily distracted. “Jess,” I began, “since when is there a chair here?”
She giggled. “Do you like it? I asked the resident manager to put it out for you.”
“For me?” It was nothing fancy, really, just a basic lawn chair. But then, there was nothing all that special about me putting on the sari and my glasses, so maybe we were both moved by ordinary gestures.
“Yeah, I saw how wet your skirt was last night, thought you might like a place to sit that wasn’t the ground.”
I smiled up at the window. “Thank you, that’s very kind.” I made some ceremony of sitting down, and I could sense Jess’ approval. It was nice that we could make each other happy with such small things.
“Well you keep coming by and spending time with me, I have to do something to make sure you’re comfortable.”
‘Comfortable’ was a bit of a stretch, but it was far better than sitting on the ground, which for some reason kept happening. I settled in, letting the two long bars that serves as legs shift a bit until they found a place of some stability.
“Now. Let’s talk about last night, Water-Bearer,” Jess continued. “You left me on a cliffhanger, you meanie. I’ve been thinking about it all day.”
I looked up. “Yeah? What did you come up with?”
“Come up with?” She giggled. “You’re the one with the dreams!”
“You were thinking about it all day!”
“You come up with better ideas!”
I crossed my arms. “Not saying a word about it until I hear your thoughts.”
Silence.
I gave her my own silence in return.
“Oh come on, Pree.”
I smiled and said nothing. I had put on the sari and the glasses for her, I had conceded enough. Not that I was feeling all that antagonistic; I was mostly teasing, and I felt silly that I would consider my everyday wear a concession, but maybe I would have worn my contacts if it weren’t for Jess.
She sighed heavily. “Fine.” If she’d held out another moment or two I’ve have crumbled—I wanted to tell her as much as she wanted to hear—but I was having fun in that moment. “What I imagined, what you—er, she saw in the forest. A magical forest creature, like you said. Vines were wrapping up the sprite’s legs. She stood there, just letting it happen, while she stared into a shining sliver flower three feet across that was slowly turning this way and that.”
I grinned. “Ooh, that’s better than what I have. A hypnotic flower, that’s cool.”
“And as the Water-Bearer watched the sprite slowly getting tangled up, the light reflecting off the silver flower caught her eyes as well...”
“Oh no!” I giggled.
“Uh huh.” Jess’ voice got soft, and I strained up to hear her, leaning back in the chair. “The light shimmered and bounced and danced, holding the Water-Bearer’s gaze. It was beautiful, fascinating, hard to look away from, and before she knew it she was walking into the clearing...”
... to stand back to back with her new friend, vines slowly binding them—us—together. Not that I could tell; the light that danced across the trees seemed to steal away thoughts and feelings as quickly as I could come up with them. The flower moved through the clearing slowly, not just in front of Jess but also spinning before me, pulling me in whenever there was a risk of realizing what was happening, and soon vines had tied the two of us together too tightly to move, standing back to back with our legs wrapped up together and our arms tight to our sides, both of our heads turned to keep an eye on the silvery petals.
The flower folded up and slipped into the woods, and I slowly started to come around, trying to move against the thick, rope-like vines tying me to my friend, and I felt her doing the same, but before either of us could say anything, we heard laughter from the trees.
“Well well, Jess!” The voice was light and high, almost childish, sounding a lot like Jess if she pitched her own voice up. “Seems this time I caught you! And a human to go with you!”
I looked around as much as I could. “Who’s there? What’s going on?” I asked.
A woman stepped out of the forest. No, not a woman, another sprite, like Jess: tall and thin with dark skin mottled like tree bark and dark green hair and eyes. She leaned against a tree at the edge of the clearing with a grin.
“Hey there, human. All wrapped up?” She laughed, and it sounded like sunlight. Not as pretty as Jess’ laugh, but with a similar effect; must have been something to do with sprites. Maybe their laughter just makes them shine or glow.
“What did you do?” I asked.
“I just put a little spell on you both and tied you tight,” the sprite said, walking into the clearing. “That’s all. Just wanted a little revenge on Jess, wasn’t counting on catching a pretty little human, too.”
I blushed. “Pretty?” The effects of the hypnotic spell were still messing with my head. I wasn’t able to stay upset after the compliment, which was unlike me; usually when I get mad, I stay mad. Sometimes for weeks.
She nodded, walking closer with a little sway in her hips. “What’s Jess doing with you, human?”
I swallowed, squirming in the bindings, and felt Jess squirming too. I struggled to think. “There’s a... a sorcerer...”
The sprite laughed again, standing right up close to me, looking me up and down. “You’re barely inside the woods, and the first challenge you come across stops you cold.” She reached up a hand to my cheek, and her eyes glowed, reminding me of the shine of the flower. “You’ll need to be a lot stronger before you can take him on.”
I felt her hand on my face, stared into her eyes. “Need to be a lot stronger,” I said, almost involuntarily. The vines fell away, and the glow from her eyes held me still; I couldn’t move any more than when I’d been tied up. Vaguely, I wondered what had happened to Jess for the vines to have gone slack and the pressure against my back to vanish, but I couldn’t look around to find out.
“She’s been banished,” the sprite said, answering the question I didn’t ask. “Sent away. Not far. She’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I nodded. “Back... in a few...”
“Shh, no words. You can answer if I ask you something.”
I nodded again. I couldn’t do anything but just stare and nod. No, I could do lots. I didn’t want to do anything but just stare and nod.
“It’s dangerous out here,” she continued. “You have to be careful.”
Be careful. Right.
“You don’t know the sort of dangers you face in the forest. Of course, sprites like me, we’re just playful. We’re safe.”
Playful and safe. Sprites like her. And Jess. Playful and safe.
The sprite smiled bright at me, and I smiled back.
And then, unexpectedly, she vanished. One second she was there, the next she was simply ... gone. Startled, the spell broken, I looked around...
“And Jess is standing there,” Jess was saying, “with an angry look on her face. ‘There! That takes care of that.’”
I slowly looked up at the shadow in the window. “’You banished her, like she banished you?’”
“’Like she banished me? No, I did it way better!’” I saw her head nod enthusiastically and her hair bounced every which way. “’Are you okay, Water-Bearer?’”
“’I still feel a little dizzy.’” And I did, actually, feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe I had been hyperventilating from the excitement, but that didn’t seem like me. “’I think I’m fine. Who was that?’”
“’An old friend.’” Her voice was sharp and sarcastic. “’We should move on, before she figures out where I sent her.’ ... And that’s all I dreamed up!” she said, and I could hear that smile cutting through the night again, as she stepped out of her role as narrator. “What do you think?”
I shook my head with a grin. “Like I said: better than what I have!”
Jess gasped. “Really? Wow, here I thought you were the genius storyteller.”
“Well, apparently I’m not the only one!” I said, getting up off the chair.
“Aw, time to go already? But I didn’t get to hear about your dream!”
I stretched. “You don’t need my dream! Your story is just fine.”
“C’mon, Pree!” Jess sounded a little desperate. “You have lots of time to spend in your nice, warm bed.”
My thoughts went to that nice, warm bed, and my knees went a little shaky. “Uh huh,” I said.
“And you spent all that time dreaming. It would be a shame to waste it.”
It would have been... “... a shame...”
“Besides...”
I had a few more minutes. “I have a few more minutes.”
“So just...”
I sat back down. The truth was, my idea felt awfully inadequate alongside Jess’ fun little story, and more than that I really didn’t want to let slip my little shower fantasy and what had prompted it—and yet, I found that coming back to my mind again and again. As I told the dream of how I walked into the clearing and what I found there, my mind kept going back to the vision of Jess whispering in my mind at the riverside, and the hot water of the shower and the movement of my hands, and things just got muddled up in my head pretty badly. I thought I managed to keep everything straight, anyway.
Still, my story of a magical bullfrog whose roar kept Jess trapped in an enchanted wind didn’t feel like it held up all that well, despite Jess’ encouragement. The frog couldn’t use his power against two targets at once, so when I walked into the clearing and it turned on me, Jess could get closer, and when it turned back to the sprite, the Water-Bearer advanced on it. In the end, I got close enough to catch it, and Jess used her magic to turn it into a little frog figurine that we could use to make the wind blow against anyone else if we needed it. She seemed delighted with that outcome, laughing and cheering me on.
I think I mentioned they way that the wind tore at our clothes some. I didn’t mean to, but trying to juggle a dream and two fantasies at once was difficult work, and I was already tired. Jess didn’t seem to mind too much. I think she might have added a thank-you kiss into the story as a joke, or maybe I just imagined it.
When I noticed my blinking was getting longer and slower and heavier, I decided to stand up; I still didn’t want to fall asleep outside. Jess said something and I nodded, and then she wished me a good night and I wished her a good night, and I don’t really remember the walk home or up to my apartment.
I do remember thinking about that thank-you kiss for much of my walk home, though. And I remembered being naked, and not bothering with pajamas, and the voice in my ear, and I imagined Jess lying in her bed, thinking about the story as much as I was, one hand on her breast, one hand between her legs, just like mine were. And then I imagined sharing a bed, her warm body curled around me, her kisses on my cheek and my arm, her gasps and moans echoing mine, her movements in sync, her hands working with mine until...
I clamped my mouth shut, swallowing my cries as best as I could, then gasping for air as my body shook with pleasure. I heard the ping of my phone at my bedside, but I couldn’t bring myself to move as I came down from the orgasm. As my breathing returned to normal, my body relaxed into the blankets, and everything went dark as I heard that tell-tale notification from my phone about a new message.
I saw two pairs of eyes looking back at me from the black. Blue, and green. Silver petals spun lazily in the background. All the colours meshed and morphed and danced with one another, and even in my dreams, I could feel my hands moving again. Or maybe I was feeling two sprites touching and embracing and kissing...