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Note, to make reading multi-part stories easier, story links (links with dejanews.com or www.qz.to, NOT the review or profile links) will open up a new browser window. When you are done reading the story, or section of the story simply CLOSE the story window.


"Aphatos" by Yosha Bourgea (emerging sexuality). Fiddler: 10, 10, 10
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=385735495


"Aphatos" by Yosha Bourgea reviewed by Fiddler.
http://www.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=385735495

The author recently reposted this story and asked if we remembered it. Some
of us do and remember it as a classic.

The frame of this story is a man's indistinct memories of his first love at
13. The girl was 16, an almost unbridgeable gap.

In the story, however, they manage to bridge it. She leads him on a morning
exploration of a neighboring patch of woods which her generation had made
their playground. They exchange small wonders, a few confidences, a few
kisses. They make love.

Memories after that time become fragmented, but the narrator keeps walking in
woods to evoke the bittersweetness of what he has had and lost.

Bourgea fulfills Fiddlers law: "The best writers are the worst posters."
Download this one and reformat it. The experience of reading the story
without the distractions of the over-long lines is worth the effort.

Ratings for "Aphatos":
Athena (technical quality): 10
Venus (plot & character): 10
Fiddler (appeal to this reviewer): 10