Author: Sailbad
Title: A Charmed Life - The Change
Part: 3 of 8
Universe: Jharum
Summary: The life of a woman given a special gift which changed her 
entire existence. Youth ever-lasting with a hunger for semen. The 
lonesome legacy of eternal life in a mortal world. 
Keywords: nosex, hist 

A Charmed Life
By Sailbad@storiesonline.org
Chapter 3 - The Legacy


The next day passed uneventfully but with Bess feeling much better than 
she had in years.  The morning stiffness and body aches that usually 
greeted her were gone, a new vitality surged through her she had long 
forgotten.  She met Kate again in front of the inn and like the night 
before they paid a visit to the blacksmith.  They continued this routine 
another fortnight.  Always finding him in the same condition, they 
slipped in, used him and slipped out.  Kate monitored Bess’ progress and 
was anxious for Bess to have a solid start and practice.  They found that 
the stable boy could be plied with a feeble ruse into thinking it was all 
a dream and the two women began visiting him every night after their 
visit to the blacksmith.  The boy easily fell for their ploy.  Bess had 
only to squat upon his body and spread her skirts over him.  She accessed 
him without using her hands, with the Charm alone, so that he never saw 
her secret.  He was a rich source of what they needed and could be tapped 
two or three times in a night.  

Bess was responding very well with newfound vigor and a fresh glow to her 
skin.  Meanwhile, Kate carefully schooled her at every opportunity about 
the weighty responsibility that came with this unique gift.  She reminded 
Bess repeatedly that people’s first reaction to strange things they did 
not understand was fear and that witches were still burned at the stake 
for mere superstition.  She admonished Bess not to reveal her secret to 
any one she did not have absolute trust in and then only if they could 
cope with the knowledge.  She stressed that the Charm was a gift that 
could not only provoke fear but jealousy as well.  She told Bess not to 
use her kiss too freely because it alone could draw suspicion.  That it 
must only be used to bind a man’s lust to her need or to blind an 
adversary and affect an escape.  Most importantly, Kate stressed the 
precaution of not remaining in one place long enough for people to notice 
her regressing age or that she did not age at all.

Finally, the night came when Kate announced it was time for her to go.

“But... what will become of thee,” Bess asked?  She had grown very fond of 
Kate, she felt fear for Kate’s well-being and, of course, being alone 
without Kate’s council.

“I will return to my betrothed whom I miss and wish not to be apart from 
any longer,” replied Kate.

“You give up immortality for a man,” asked Bess, incredulously?  Distress 
was overwhelming her, she wanted Kate to stay with her, she felt too weak 
to go on without her.  “Why?” 

“I want the life I was meant to have; mother and wife; hearth and home.  
I have found a good, kind young man whom I love very much,” said Kate.  
“I am to be his wife.  I will cleave unto him, share his life, bear him 
his children, and grow old with him.”

“And die,” asked Bess?

With tears in her eyes Kate replied, “When thou hast lost count of men 
thou hast given thy heart to, watching them all slowly grow old and die, 
then thou might understand my choice.”  She sobbed and began again, 
softly, “I will take again my place in the family of man...”  She was 
overcome with emotions, obviously very deep ones.  Losing her composure, 
she blurted out, ”I love him!  ... Were he ever to part from me I would 
await his return by the roadside for the rest of my life!”

That hauntingly familiar illustration struck Bess hard.  The sadness she 
felt for herself was eclipsed by a new sadness for Kate.  Bess had lost 
only one love and had grieved on him for years.  Kate had lost so many 
she could not count them all and had grieved on them for centuries.  And 
now she was facing it all over again.

“My apologies, but I carry a great lethargy, young Bess,” continued Kate, 
regaining her self control.  “’tis the sum total of much pain and 
loneliness.  For many hundreds of years I have stood apart from humanity 
and watched it struggle.  For all of those many years I have helplessly 
observed, an indifferent sentinel, neither helping nor hindering.  Now, I 
shall rejoin history and play my part in it.  I have had a rich, full 
life.  I regret nothing.”

Bess strove to understand what Kate had said.  Comprehension involved 
placing herself outside her common day to day existence, the only frame 
of reference she had ever known, and looking at life as one who did not 
really live.  She thought it odd to want to be a part of her world, the 
toil, the uncertainty, and the inevitable doom of death, but if she tried 
very hard, she could vaguely perceive the alienation of which Kate spoke.  
She let that feeling sink in a bit, wondering what effect it might have 
on her.  Nevertheless, a question still gnawed at her.  “Why me,” she 
asked?

“When first came to me word of thy sad tale I understood thy grief,” said 
Kate.  “Thou art worthy of this gift.  Make for thyself a fresh life, 
anew.  If thou wishest, pass the jharum on to another, but I meant for 
thee to have another chance for happiness.  Make it so, good Bess.”  She 
smiled earnestly and clasped Bess’ hand to her cheek.

“May I find thee and impart it onto thee again,” asked Bess, longing 
desperately to keep Kate in her life?

“Nay, good Bess,” said Kate in distress.  “Do not tempt me.  My path is 
set.”  She hugged Bess tightly.

It was Bess who cried but she knew there would be no dissuading Kate if 
she had already gone this far.  It was something she had obviously 
thought on many long years.  

Kate made her farewell short and simple.  After saying goodbye and good 
luck followed by another warning for caution, she kissed Bess, on the 
cheek, and she was gone.

--------


The first few weeks after Kate’s departure Bess felt lost.  She missed 
Kate very much and her guidance through this extraordinary mystery of 
life was priceless.  None the less, Bess kept up with her practice almost 
every night, using the strategy and precautions set forth by Kate.  She 
eventually lost count of how much life-giving semen she had taken from 
her quarry.  

Then, one evening, while cleaning a window pane, she noticed her 
reflection.  Having not looked upon herself in some time she was shocked 
to see a woman she had not seen in years.  Most of the extra lines and 
sagging flesh were gone.  Also gone was a great deal of gray streaks in 
her hair.  Her age was indeed slowly reversing!  As the delight of her 
returning youth swept over her, close behind came the fear and dread that 
anyone else might have noticed.  Luckily, being a common maid, few people 
took any heed of her at all, but at this rate it would soon be apparent to 
everyone.  It was time to disappear, and fast.

..........

That was over four hundred years ago.  Liz found it hard to believe that 
after all she had been through she could still recall it all so vividly.  
The wealth of experiences filling a 453 year life was immense.  Liz had 
lived all over the world and had seen its many wonders.  She had 
witnessed four hundred years of man’s triumphs and tragedies; four 
hundred years of conquests and defeats; four hundred years of progress 
and regression.  In all those four hundred years of patient observation 
she had found the answers to questions the wisest men on Earth had never 
even thought to pose.  She knew the human race very well.  

Personally, she had made many fortunes and frittered them all away.  She 
knew the rewards of patience, caution, hard work and diligence and she 
also new the paralyzing debilitation of indolence, inebriation and 
depravity.  She preferred the former.  She kept herself busy with work 
and learning.  She had studied at the finest institutions in the world 
and mastered all the sciences, world history, art, and literature.  
Meanwhile, she kept her personal life pristine, tidy and manageable.  She 
was always ready to pick up and move at the slightest provocation.  She 
had become a master in controlling her life and guarding her safety.

“Guard ye well, Bess,” she could remember Kate’s dire warning.  Liz had 
followed Kate’s advice very carefully.  She made the rules an implacable 
creed from which she never strayed.  She never remained in any place long 
enough for anyone to notice she did not age nor get sick and she never 
returned to any place she had previously lived.  She used her kiss 
sparingly, only when she had to or when its effect could be attributed to 
some other cause.  If she ever used it defensively she made sure to avoid 
that person forever.  She did not expose her secret to anyone she did not 
trust, in fact she had never deliberately exposed it to anyone at all.  

The one lesson Liz had held highest was one Kate had never intended to 
impart.  Liz had never given her heart to anyone.  She feared the pain of 
losing a cherished love so much that she had kept all relationships with 
men to a very cold, distant impartiality.  She, of course, had taken many 
lovers, she needed them, but she kept them from garnishing too fond a 
place in her life.  She had made herself very safe but also very lonely.

It was a dilemma that tore at Liz - To relinquish herself to love and 
face loss or to protect her heart and dwell in cold isolation.  To 
nurture her emotions that end in grief or to shun anguish at the cost of 
perpetual longing.  The thought of Kate and her countless broken hearts 
was her constant reminder.  She missed Kate so much.  There was so much 
she wished she could have asked her.  Kate was the last person she had 
ever trusted.  Dear, kind Kate.  The only one of her personal rules she 
ever violated was her every five-year pilgrimage to Kate’s grave.  Kate 
had learned something Liz had not and she had given her life for it.  
After four hundred years, Liz was at a complete loss as to what exactly 
that lesson was.

What Liz had learned was how to get what she wanted from men.  She needed 
their sperm and the best way to get it was sex.  She found she could pull 
her Charm completely out of the way and engage in normal sex.  Although 
she was always tempted to engage a penis for the shear pleasure of 
engulfing that tender flesh and pulling it deep into Charm, she refrained 
for fear of discovery, unless her lover was very drunk.  She would suck 
up the man’s issue after he withdrew but there was usually a lot of 
waste.  This up-front approach was safer than skulking around in the dark 
for her quarry but it meant placing herself as a man’s love interest, the 
kind of attachment Liz had tried to avoid.  She often resolved it by 
temporarily becoming a prostitute.  It was degrading and sometimes just 
as dangerous but it got her what she needed, earned her a living, and fit 
in with her low-profile, gypsy lifestyle.   

Another hurdle Liz had to overcome was her age.  She had found that her 
age played a large role in what society expected from her and the 
influence she exerted over other people and situations.  There was 
behavior a young woman could engage in that would draw strong objection 
if an older woman tried.  Likewise, there was authority and credibility 
older women commanded that younger ones could not wield, not even with 
money.  Liz had found it practical to let her apparent age hover around 
late twenties to early thirties for most of her life.  Of course, that 
all changed in the early twentieth century when social norms came 
crashing down.  Now that Liz could assume any age she wanted and still 
enjoy a broad range of acceptable behavior, she kept her apparent age in 
the early twenties. 

The advent of detailed record-keeping, however, was a bane to her 
existence.  It made her ability to relocate and establish a new identity 
very complex.  Mass data storage and computer assisted retrieval made it 
even worse.  The freedom to give herself a new identity by virtue of her 
own word got replaced by an international system of verifiable facts, 
stored evidence, near instantaneous communications, and traceable 
history.  As the world grew, her options and freedom were rapidly 
shrinking.

Photography also terrified her.  She feared some day of coming face to 
face with a very old, undeniably identical photo of herself and the 
questions it would raise.  Running away from an old identity was hard 
enough but the difficulty of hiding from her own image, if it ever became 
widely distributed, would impose dire measures.  It would mean getting 
lost in places no one wanted to go.  She no longer had to worry about 
being burned as a witch, now she faced the horror of being kept like a 
guinea pig in a lab, or worse - dying on some cold dissection table.


By Sailbad@storiesonline.org


  
Charmed3