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Subject: {ASSM} The Mystic Treefort #1: Orgy In August [MF cons oral historical]
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Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 03:10:02 -0500
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The Mystic Treefort, Episode 1: Orgy In August

Chapter 1: An Old Friend Is Seen

Jack and Annie stood under the treefort. Ten years had passed since
they last visited here, deep in the woods behind their home in Frogton,
NH. The treefort was their place of childhood mystery. Here they had
met the Librarian and helped her mission to collect items, mostly
writings, but also to deliver messages, to people in the past, or the
future. Once, they had been to the moon.

Or so they told one another. Jack doubted his own memories, it all
seemed so long ago. "Do you really believe it all happened, Annie? I
mean, the way we remember it?"

"Of course it did, Jack!" Annie smiled. She had grown much in the past
ten years. Adulthood was being kind to her. To both of them, really.
"Come on! Let's go up and see if there's anything still there."

"Oh, brother," Jack said. He pushed back his glasses and looked up the
long rope ladder that swayed slowly in invitation. It felt like old
times except now the rungs felt too close together, too small. They
were meant for feet other than Jack's. They were meant for him when he
had been half the size of his current six-foot frame. It had always
been Annie who had gone first up the ladder, who had seen the mysteries
to be found in the treefort, and who had always had to encourage him.
Now he went first. He hoped for an empty, wooden floor.

"Oh, no," he said as he hoisted himself into the treefort. On the floor
lay a single book. On top of the book rested an envelope made of a kind
of heavy, yellow paper. It felt crisp as he thumbed open the flap.
"Annie? There's something here."

She pushed herself up through the square hole. They both weighed much
more than they had the first time they'd come up here, but the treefort
bore them as if they weren't there at all. Jack would have expected
creaking, or swaying, but there was none. The view outside the window
said they were many feet in the air but the treefort may as well have
been on solid ground for all the movement he felt.

Annie took the envelope and pulled out a sheet of something like
parchment from within. She read it out loud:

  Dear Jack and Annie. I am so pleased you came back now that you are
  adults. I have four more tasks to ask of you, tasks I could not give
  you when you were but children. These tasks require the skills,
  maturity, and development only adults can possess.

  I ask that you find me four more stories, from four more places deep
  in our past. You will find the story I seek in a dark corner of a
  dark city, with a man who can be both kind and unkind, and whose
  drive to seek pleasure reveals the city to have kind of ugliness
  that can only be understood by those who have lived there. The story
  I seek is one that has been banned, but he will know how to find it.
  You know the rest.

"That doesn't sound like much fun," Jack said.

"Were they ever fun, Jack?" Annie's voice made Jack looked up. "We
nearly died, time and time again. The river in Japan, or that pyramid
in Egypt. People tried to kill us, animals tried to eat us, and I still
have nightmares about what would have happened if anything had gone
wrong while we were on the Moon."

"But they were exciting! We learned so much." He tapped the notebook he
still carried in the pocket of his vest. "What we learned set the
course for our futures, Annie." Jack had chosen archeology as his
college major and had been accepted into the University of Michigan.
Annie was planning on an Art History degree after the summer. "Come on,
Annie. You know you want to do it."

"Of course I do, Jack. I just worry. We're not kids anymore. I doubt
the Librarian's going to be watching us quite so closely as she used
to. I... I'm scared."

"Funny, it used to be the other way around."

Annie nodded. "Where's the New Hampshire book?" Jack found it, in its
corner, in a leather bag. The other book, the one on which he had found
the envelope, waited for them. "Rome? We're going to Rome?"

Rome, 67 A.D., the book said. "That wasn't a very nice time in history,
if I recall."

"But, Jack... Rome. Can you imagine it?"

"We've been there."

"No, we've been to Pompeii. We survived Vesuvius. Two years later. We
never went to Rome, I mean, really Rome. Say yes, Jack."

"Okay. 'Yes.'"

Annie grabbed the book from Jack's hand and pointed to the cover. "I
wish we could go there."

A wind arose outside the treefort. A howling, mournful sound, not at
all like the joyous noise they had heard as children. The world outside
the window began to spin, and then the treefort began spin with it.
Jack's mind reeled at the assault on his senses, an overwhelming spiral
down the rabbit hole of time. The howling outside grew in pitch and
volume, blotting out all rational thought.

And then everything was still. Utterly still.

Chapter 2: Rome Stinks

Jack groaned and picked himself up off the floor. That ride had been
rougher than he remembered. Annie rose too, holding her head in her
hands. "Ugh," she said. "Jack?"

"I'm okay." He stepped over to the window, looked down. The faint
nausea he felt vanished. "Annie, we're really here!" He took out his
notebook and pen, pulled off the elastic that held the notebook shut,
and began writing furiously: Marble columns everywhere, and they're
painted! Never saw that in the artbooks. Everything is bright and
garish. Lots of gold leaf. It's pretty crowded and everyone is wearing
a toga, but they don't look like what you see in the movies. Indeed,
they didn't, for the cloth looked rougher and heavier, the cut and trim
of it more utilitarian.

"Wow," Annie said. She looked down. "Hey, Jack, we've got togas!"

Jack looked down and sure enough, the two of them were dressed in garb
similar to that of the people walking. The cloth felt to be linen
rather than cotton, and Jack remembered that cotton was a New World
phenomenon, not something that would be found in ancient Rome. They
also wore sandals, the kind where the straps mounted between their big
toe and the rest. "Flip flops," Jack sighed. "I never could wear these
things. Annie, your hair!"

"What?"

Jack wished for a mirror, but neither of them had one. Annie's hair,
normally long tresses of brown that fell down to somewhere between her
shoulders, was now coiled in a striking flattened circular ziggurat
atop her head, held in place with gold wire decorated with pearls.
"You're beautiful like that."

"I just hope it doesn't mean I'm a prostitute or something."

Something in the Librarian's words came back to Jack, and he wondered
if that's exactly what she was meant to be. He hoped it didn't mean
they would have to trade her for the artifact the Librarian wanted. On
the other hand, every scratch, every cut, every bruise he had received
while travelling on the Librarian's adventures had been gone by the
time they'd gotten home. So maybe...

"Let's go," Annie said. "Let's find the parchment and go home. By the
way, who's Emperor?"

"Nero," Jack said automatically.

"The one with the fiddle?"

"That's a myth. There were no fiddles in Rome. The fiddle is a German
invention of the mid-12th century, developed from a Turkish
instrument." Jack had learned that just the month before.

"I'm sure they had musical instruments in Rome." Annie started down the
ladder.

"Annie! Wait for me!"

They must have descended from the only tree in Rome, Jack thought. The
road was just muddy dirt rutted through in places. It had rained
recently, but now a bright sun beamed overhead. Citizens of Rome milled
about in togas and other elaborate dresses, most of them stained with
mud about the lower hems.

"I'm hungry," Jack said suddenly as they broke from the protective
spell that hid their treefort and plunged into the very breath of Rome.
It stank with the smell of bodily waste, both human and horse. "Rome
never had a sewer system to speak of."

"How can you be hungry? I'm about to throw up," Annie said.

"You'll get used to it. These people lived with it every day."

"I'm not these people." Something growled about her midsection. "But I
guess I'm hungry too. It's been a while since breakfast."

They walked down the street and found an intersection. The road they
met was cobble-stoned and seemed to be much busier, especially in the
direction going uphill. Jack and Annie walked in that direction,
dodging several people, until an unmistakable smell reached Jack's
nose. "Annie, do you smell that?"

"I do!" She looked at him, her eyes wide. They looked about and found
the little booth that gave off the delicious smell. Jack checked the
purse at his belt and found it full of coins. To his amazement, he
could read the numbers. "Two, please," he said to the man behind the
counter.

The man put an iron pan on top of a grill and threw two logs into the
fire pit underneath it, then put two patties of ground beef into the
pan. As he cooked, he would sometimes splash the patties with wine from
a earthenware jug, and at the end he tossed on some chopped nuts. He
expertly cut open two bread rolls and put the patties in, then handed
one each to Jack and Annie. Jack grinned. "Hamburgers. Too bad they
don't have cheeseburgers."

"Who knew they made hamburgers in Rome?" Annie said.

"Someone must have. Isn't there a cookbook that survives from this
time?"

"You're the archaeologist, Jack," Annie said. They both grinned. Annie
said to the man, "What kind of nuts are those?"

The cook looked surprised. "They're pine, miss."

The burgers were actually good. After they were done, Annie said, "We
still need to find that writing the Librarian wanted. A dark story in a
dark corner of a dark city, by a man both cruel and kind."

"I hope she doesn't mean the Emperor," Jack said.

"I don't think Nero ever qualified as 'kind'."

Jack nodded. A voice cut through the hubbub of the bustling
intersection, shouting out "Attention, citizens! The Emperor has
announced that today at the Coliseum there shall be lions! Boats! And
the gladiator Casus Maximus shall fight two men at once!" The crowd
around the crier turned and boo'd briefly at that last, but Jack was
already thinking.

"The Coliseum? Annie, you know how these missions go. We probably have
to go there."

Annie put a finger to her mouth. "I don't know, Jack. Did you see that
crier? He had no scroll, no paper. I don't think most of these people
can read. We won't find a story at the Coliseum."

"So what?" Jack said. "And you never know. The Coliseum is certainly
one of the darkest corners of the city. And it's where famous people
go. We have to go there, just like we had to go to the Olympic fields."

Annie said, "You're probably right."

Chapter 3: Blood and Terror

The Coliseum was easy to find: Jack and Annie just followed the surging
crowd until they reached the gates. The Coliseum was a massive
construction, a huge round building of concrete and marble, decorated
in gold and painted in hues of yellow, red, and green. It was a sight
to behold, the most magnificent single building Jack had ever seen, and
he had seen many.

Neither had noticed that they were being followed until a short man
missing some teeth approached them. "Sir? Lady? Why are you in this
line? Are you new to Rome?"

"Yes," Jack said automatically. "We're from... from the provinces."

"Your clothes mark you as clearly from the upper families." Jack looked
down, and could not tell what about his clothes made the difference. He
looked at the man suspiciously, wondering if he was facing a pickpocket
or a thief. Or some kind of cutthroat. "Through that door, please, kind
sir." There were other people, the kind who radiated wealth, going
through what looked exactly like a turnstile made of wood. Jack and
Annie decided to follow them.

Inside, the Coliseum reminded Jack of a high-end sports arena. People
lined the hallways already, and what looked very much like a passel of
clowns cavorted in the middle, but their act was not what Jack
considered funny. They all sported enormous wooden penises and much of
the laughter that the audience gave seemed to arise from each
pretending to rape or assault another.

The usher sat them down, handed each of them a leathery cup of watery
wine and left them. "I'm not sure..." Jack said.

"I'm not either. Remember, you suggested this."

Jack nodded. More people were settled around them, and Jack noticed
that almost all of them were scarred, pocked, or marked in the face in
some way. None of them had escaped from the ravages of disease. Jack
was grateful, suddenly, to live in a century where most diseases were a
thing of the past. This past, he thought.

A blare of horns announced the arrival of the Emperor, who took his
seat only a few yards away. Jack could see him clearly, a middle-aged
man swathed in a purple toga and accompanied by a tall, thin man who
talked animatedly while the Emperor waved him off. "That's Nero, Jack!"
Annie said.

"Wow," Jack said. He had never thought of meeting the Emperor of Rome,
although he had met a few kings along the way. "He ruled the world, you
know."

"What was known of it," Annie said. More trumpets, and the games began.
Jack took out his notebook and scribbled in it furiously, but Annie
buried her face in his shoulder from time to time as they both watched
the mounting horror in the center ring. Men were slaughtered before
their eyes. Annie and Jack were no strangers to death and destruction:
the San Francisco Earthquake and the eruption of Vesuvius had created
no illusions for them. But the blood on the floor of the Colosseum was
not wrought by unfeeling nature. Here, men killed one another,
apparently for the mere pleasure of the crowd. Even as he wrote Annie
said, "Jack, I want to leave."

"Ah, a man of letters!" said a voice behind them. "I am so pleased that
they teach writing out in the provinces. I have not seen you here
before, and I assure you that I know every literate man in Rome. What
is your name, young man?"

"Jack...us. Yohannus."

"Yohannus. You must be from the Eastern Provinces, then." Jack nodded.
"And your wife?"

"This is my sister. Anna."

"Anna." Annie turned away from the butchery in the center stage and
looked up at the man who was talking to them. "By Jupiter's beard! What
a face! What skin! You have not a trace of the city upon you, my dear.
How fortunate you must be! You must both come to my party tonight. You,
for your beauty, and you, young man, for your letters."

Jack said, "I would, sir, if I knew where to go."

"Oh! I am Petronius Magister, and I live in a small villa near the
palace. Find your way to the Palatine Hill and ask for my home. Make
sure you get there just before dusk."

Jack nodded, suddenly sure that this was the man they had been sent to
find. "We will do that, sir."

A scream went up from the center stage. Annie turned and blanched.
Those slaves who could not perform useful work, those thinned and weak
with disease, or those who were crippled by accidents, were being fed
to lions. Bloody heaps of human viscera littered the sawdusty floor.
"Jack!"

"We'll go." He led her past the cheering crowds, out of the Coliseum.

Chapter 4: Petronius Magister

They found a quiet restaurant in which to pass the rest of the
afternoon. Rome was full of restaurants, all on the ground floor of
what looked to be apartment buildings. The restaurants were open to the
streets, for Rome had no glass, and so no windows. Jack saw shutters
folded back, to close against the rain, but even the shutters had
little openings to let in light. There was no artificial lighting. At
night, Rome must have been a terrifying place. He mentioned this to
Annie and she said, "No wonder Petronius wants us there before dusk."

"Have you figured it out?" Jack asked.

"I bet we're after the Satyricon. Most of it has been missing for
centuries," Annie said. "But Petronius... his parties were always a
little overboard, weren't they?"

"It's Rome," Jack said. "Everything is a little overboard."

Annie nodded. "I'm frightened, Jack."

"And we should be. We're not kids anymore. I sometimes think that The
Librarian had done something to us to make sure we would get home
safely. Besides, wasn't it always you going in headfirst, and me being
the one to say you should slow down?"

"I guess so." They sat and ate their food, a thick soup of ham and root
vegetables. "We should go."

They asked a man standing by the door which way to the palace, and he
pointed with a bored expression. "That must not be an unusual
question," Jack observed.

"Rome was a tourist town along with everything else," Annie said.
"Everyone wanted to go see the palace." The streets were crowded. Annie
noticed the overwhelming smell of everything: men, waste, oxen, straw.
Rome could not hide the fact that it was completely dependent upon the
vast farmland that surrounded it: there were no plastics, and no
refrigeration. This was a land that was truly "just in time" in its
agriculture. And over it all, Annie smelled baking bread. She mentioned
it to Jack.

"That would be the dole. Rome kept the peace through 'bread and
circuses', literally. If you were a lower-class citizen, a plebeian,
you were entitled to one free loaf of bread a day, and free admission
to the Coliseum. It was enough to keep you full. And Rome kept its
water supply independent of the Tiber. Everyone dumped their waste into
the Tiber, but the water came through the aqueducts from above where
the river fed into the city." He glanced around. "A million loaves of
bread a day, Annie. All by manual labor. Bakers boys would make the mix
at dusk, and then, hours before dawn, they would wake up and knead it
for an hour, forty-pound loaves each, with their feet, and then the
oven masters would bake it. A million loaves. That's what you smell."

She shook her head. "Wow, Jack. It's unimaginable."

"Rome was, I think." They found the palace. Jack was silent for a
moment, then pulled his notebook from his pocket and began writing:
Look at all the cloth! And it was red, not purple! The entire palace
looks like it's dressed and ready for a night on the town. Even the
columns are wrapped in linen. Is it a show of wealth, or a real
aesthetic decision?

Annie came back from talking to a man wearing a bronze headdress with a
feathered ruffle running along the top of his head. "He says
Petronius's house is over there."

"Just a second." Jack was madly sketching what he could capture of the
palace, trying to preserve this memory. He had insights into Roman
culture that maybe no one had ever had. "The fashion cycle lives in
Rome, Annie!"

"Jack?"

"The fashion cycle! Nobody ever recorded that." He pointed to the
palace. "I think it's the fashion cycle. This year, the style is to
decorate your house in red. Let's go to Petronius's house and find out
if his house is decorated the same way."

They found the address the guard had given them easily. In this part of
town, the roads were perfectly flat, inlaid bricks tightly fitted and
mortared together. They passed a road crew of about twenty men sitting
on the ground, working in two-man pairs hauling back-and-forth a heavy
stone with rope handles while other men went from team to team,
offering sips from a skin to the workers or dribbling oil in the path
of the stone. Jack said, "We have huge machines that make the roads
flat and smooth. They do it by hand. They're sanding the road down by
hand."

Annie turned away from the construction team and approached Petronius's
house. The house was indeed painted red. An old man stood at the door
and nodded. "Master Petronius said you would be coming, a tall young
man and his magnificent sister. That must be you. Ioannus and Ioanna,
from the Greek Provinces?"

"Yes." One thing Jack had learned from The Librarian: how to lie. How
to tell people what they wanted to hear. When they were younger, they
had often gotten away with their exploits by explaining that they were
on their way home, to their parents. He wondered what excuses they
would have to master now that they were adults.

The old man bowed and allowed them to pass. They entered a square
atrium. The roof was open to the sky, and the floor was dominated by a
stepped square pool of water inlaid with blue tiles.

"Come in, my friends, come in!" Petronius Magister stepped through the
doorway and beckoned to the two of them. Jack wondered how it was that
he and Annie were both taller than their host. They were both taller
than most of the people around them. Petronius merely bowed to the two
of them and they responded in kind. Jack looked at Annie quizzically,
then shrugged and led them into an inner room. Here, the air was thick
with smoke and the smell of cooking food. A Roman party lay before
them, a U-shaped collection of heavy, hand-made wooden tables ringed
with benches on which to lie. Petronius introduced Jack and Annie to
several of the guests. "You have heard of Pliny the Younger?" He
indicated a fat man with lively eyes, behind who stood another man with
a stylus. Jack realized he was looking at Pliny's writing slave, who
recorded every word the man said. As his eyes adjusted, he saw many men
and a few women, most of the men portly in one fashion or another.

Jack bowed as the names and ranks were tattled off, and Petronius
indicated a seat near his where Annie and Jack should recline. "Thank
you for coming. I know this crowd far too well, and the stories they
will tell will be far too boring. You, at least, can tell us of your
travels. Where are you coming from?"

"We were last in Vesuvius," Annie said. Jack looked at her then nodded.
It was at least the truth. "My brother has a fascination for water
works, and wanted to know how the aqueduct there was made."

"Ah!" Petronius said. "So not only a lettered man, but an engineer!" He
seemed suddenly to have lost interest in them, for which Jack was
grateful.

Chapter 5: Jack's Time

He took out his notebook and began noting the courses set before them:
pastries and breads stuffed with vegetables and some meat, mostly ham
and duck he learned. The "entertainment" was a trio of musicians who
played percussion, and a following trio of women who danced
provocatively before peeling off and placing themselves at the hands of
some of the men who proceeded to paw them through their dresses. Jack
coughed and tried to look away, but if he were to be honest with
himself, the wine and the women were more than he wanted to bear. The
Librarian had called these trips "missions," and this certainly felt
like one. But now he was older and able to question the sanity of these
"missions." What was he trying to accomplish here?

A women-- a prostitute, Jack reminded himself, slipped an arm around
his shoulder. "Young master, you do not seem to be enjoying yourself."

"I am not... accustomed."

"Ah, well, allow me to make you feel accustomed, then!" Her hands were
on the back of his neck. Jack felt her touch rise like a wave within
his body. He had had a few girlfriends but had never succeeded in
getting much past first base. This woman was ready-- had been paid to
be ready, he tried to remind himself-- to be whatever he wanted.
Suddenly, he wanted a lot.

The end of the party started. Some of the men had chosen to take their
wives or the offered attention of hired women right there. He looked
around. Annie was not among those present. She and Petronius were
missing.

"What's your name?" he said.

"Acuzia," she said. "Shh. You are new. That is well. Allow me." She
took his hand and led him down a hallway to a small side room. Acuzia
pulled him close, her hand on his crotch. He was as hard as a sword.
"You are all a man, young Master. Did you go to the bathhouse today?"

"What?"

"Have you bathed?"

"Of course," Jack said suddenly.

She smiled and dropped to her knees, lifting his toga and disappearing
underneath it. Her head rustled dangerously close to his crotch, and
then her mouth surrounding his cock. "Oh, brother," he gasped as the
wetness of her mouth drove all they way down the length of his cock.
She suckled at the root while her fingers tickled his scrotum. His toga
pulsated with the action going on underneath; in the dim lamplight it
seemed that his clothes had been invaded by something less than human.
And yet the sucking was so strong and suggestive his come rose within
his groin. It seemed to bubble up from his balls and through his cock,
held back only by some weak dam of inexperience.

The dam burst. Jack came with a shout, and Acuzia held still, making
gurgling noises as she swallowed. She pushed out from underneath his
toga. "Young men are often ready twice. Are you ready, sir?"

Jack found his cock still hard. "I... I think so."

"Good." She tossed off her own dress, a white shift held with an
embroidered belt. Jack had never been this close to a naked woman
before in his life, and Acuzia was a prime example of fully-flowered
womanhood. Her body was lean and comfortably developed, her breasts
hung from her frame like tempting fruit. Only her hair, with its oils,
seemed out of place and unfamiliar. "Come, have me."

Jack let her lead him to the bed. She lay down on it, her legs opened.
He glanced down momentarily, stripped off his toga, then lay between
her thighs. In moments he had lined up with her sex and then he slipped
inside her. She was like a pool of warm olive oil, soft and
unconstricting, yet Jack knew that he was in for the real first fuck of
his life. He tried to get the rhythm right and soon found that it came
naturally. He didn't have to think about it at all. He looked down at
Acuzia. Her eyes were closed tight, one hand on her mouth, a knuckle in
her teeth. "Yes, master, take me, take me."

Jack didn't need to be told twice. He slipped in and out of her with
the long strokes that his body already knew how to use. Acuzia moaned
gently and Jack knew that he was about to come for the second time in
less than an hour. He felt it, now growing inside him, and again it
built and built until it spilled out of him, a shout, a jet of semen.
And then it was over.

Ashamed of how mechanical it had all seemed, Jack pushed off her and
sat on the edge of the bed. "I'm sorry," he said.

"For what?" Acuzia pulled herself up to kneel beside him. "You did what
you were supposed to do, young Master."

Jack noticed for the first time that Acuzia smelled: of oils and fish,
of clove and garlic, of her sweat and now his. It was not a memory he
wished to treasure. "I am not used to Rome."

"This is not Rome," she said. "This is life close to the palace. We are
what the gods have made us to be." She pointed to the door, which was
decorated with a hammered shield onto which an erect penis had been
carved.

Chapter 6: Jack find Annie. Annie finds the Book.

"I must find my sister," Jack said suddenly. He pulled his toga back on
hastily and walked out into the hallway, almost bumping into Annie.
"Annie!"

"Jack! What have you been... oh."

"You didn't... with Petronius, did you?"

"No, not like you have." She glanced through the door at Acuzia. "No,
we just talked. About Vesuvius and Greece and what I know of the wider
world. He was fascinated that a woman could read and write." She
reached out with a scroll. "He gave me this. A gift, he said. It's the
complete Satyricon."

"It's what we came for. Let's get out of here."

Annie nodded, giving Acuzia one last look, and then the two of them
were heading for the door. Annie said, "Too bad. I think he's hoping
I'm going to come back."

"I'm not coming back," Jack said. "We have what we came for. I wrote a
lot in my notebook but, I would not want to live here." Annie nodded.

The night was very dark when they stepped out. "Jack," Annie whispered,
"I don't think it's safe to go out at night here."

"We have to go back to the treefort," Jack said. "We can't stay here.
We've got the scroll."

Annie nodded. They walked quickly down the hill, away from the palace.
To Jack's surprise, the streets were active and busy with people, and
laughter came from one corner, where many people were surrounding a
stage. On it, a naked woman and a man cavorted before their pratfall
embrace to the laughter of the audience. It was some kind of farce but
Jack could make not sense of it and he didn't care to try.

They were unmolested as they made their way to the edge of the city. It
was then that they heard footsteps. Frightened, the two of them ran the
last hundred yards to the treefort, climbed quickly, and got in. Jack
looked down. Two black-clothed men were peering up at them, but Annie
had the New Hampshire book open. "I wish I could go home!" she said.

The wind began to blow. The treefort shook. "Here we go!" Annie
giggled. The roar of the wind grew, louder and louder. The treefort
seemed to spin rapidly, faster and faster. The roaring grew until it
blotted out all other sounds, and then everything was still. Utterly

Chapter 7: Home

Jack opened up the parchment, but his ability to read Latin had ended
along with the enchantment that had taken them to Rome. He could make
out the individual letters, but he couldn't read a word. He smiled and
put the scroll down onto the letter L. The Librarian would come to pick
it up later. "Well," he said, "That was interesting."

Annie smiled at him. "And you got laid."

"Annie!" Jack said. It was not the kind of thing he expected to hear
from his sister's mouth.

"Jack," she said, laying a gentle hand on his arm, "We've been through
so many things before. At least this one wasn't so dangerous."

Jack nodded. Together, the two of them left the treefort and, confident
in the reality of their childhood and each other, they walked home
through the quiet woods.

--
Orgy In August is copyright (C) 2008 Elf Mathieu Sternberg and is
available under the Creative Commons Non-commercial, No-derivative,
Attribution-required License.  All other rights reserved.

Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.pendorwright.com/

Elf's latest stories are available in paperback!  Buy
the genderbending novel _Sterlings_, available
now from http://stores.lulu.com/elfsternberg 

-- 
Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights
reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated.
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