David Russell writes

BLOSSOM REBURGEONING

Part III

She and Melville spent a relaxing couple of days of sightseeing, and amassed a quota of souvenir pottery and textiles. Now, as per schedule, they were to make the trek to the temple, retread that path she had taken with Hudson, and carefully noted – more assured, better equipped with plasters for sore feet. A rickety bus carried them along a rutted dirt track to the hill path.   

Apparently the temple had recently been used as a backdrop for a small pop festival – fortunately not big enough to disrupt the decor, though there were some subdued piles of ashes, suggesting camp fires. Now they were set for the supreme ceremony. Selene felt a little strange, carrying a holdall containing her flowing priestess robe on a hiking expedition, but the needs of ritual demanded perfection. As the temple came into sight, she nudged Melville to halt near some dense, prickly bushes.

“I’ve got to get changed” she said.

“You’ve got a great sense of occasion” replied Melville.  

Deftly negotiating the bushes’ thorns, Selene felt quite aquiver as her utility hiking gear came off. She had a flash of those cynical souls who might find her ridiculous, or want to put her into a context where she was ridiculous. This was the first time she had worn an exotic robe out of doors. The last major time indoors was when she starred in her school play. Then there was a flashback to her teens, when her heart palpitated as she changed to show herself in the swimming pool for the first time to a boy she fancied.

 

Melville held his breath: the moment he set eyes on Selene, he fantasised about seeing her exotically attired, and was agape as she emerged, swathed in flowing white splendour. Selene now found Melville’s eyes, and his very being, had become subtly suffused in magic and mystery; he could almost have cast off wings to descend to meet her. The stars above, and Selene before him, made his profundity truly iridescent “You lovely deity! All those legendary lovelies have poured themselves into you; now you’ve come down from the heavens!” he gasped. Quivering, they rejoined hands and tiptoed up the temple steps, curved and worn by the feet of past millennia. “Let’s get barefoot first” she whispered. Shoes and socks duly came off. Selene unbuttoned his khakhi shirt and threw it back, to reveal his tanned, toned shoulders and torso – not quite the colour of that ‘ideal’ boy, but getting quite close. The shorts were unbuckled and taken down, to reveal Melville, radiant in his black hipsters “Unrobe me” came the next command. Melville’s fingers had a delicate, almost breeze-like touch; the robe was laid gracefully, evenly down. Selene, adequately tanned, stood radiant in her white linen underwear. She beamed with delight. “I think your tan is natural, and that, like me, you haven’t overdone the sunbeds; I love striped men – let’s see if you are one.” The briefs came down to reveal a band of white, showing what his trunks had so often covered. “I love striped women” he replied breathily. She raised her arms as a signal to remove her underwear, so they faced each other in matching stripes, hers only a mini-shade away from her discarded underwear. “We are white and pure at our centres” said Selene with a giggle, delighted with their colour bands. They felt all of each other’s waists and muscles, relishing each other’s firmness, blended with slenderness – a true sense of serpentine wraparound. They felt to each other like two mirror suns, each streaked by a patch of white cloud. 

Her attire was spread evenly over a thick carpet of moss, providing a delicious cushion for their consummation. Wafting clouds gathered as their passion slowly built up, kindled by tender caresses. Then the flames caught on, seemingly fed by the breezes above. They knew that this was a land of earthquakes and volcanoes; the beatings of their hearts seemed to be echoed by the rumbling of the terrain, It felt as if their passion has escalated, with slow, deliberate dignity into a transcendental tsunami. With each pulsing thrust, the stars in the pellucid sky turned ever sharper and brighter, as if they had been refreshed by some cosmic eyebath. They felt they were the whole earth, and a delicious breath of sweet unpolluted air. The now liberated sluices of Melville’s love had transformed Selene into the First Visionary, the Prime Astronomer.

 

“You have carried me to subterranean depths and astral heights – Inferno and Paradiso clinched in one sublime tryst” she said. The loveliness of their bodies was infinitely enriched by starlight. After a lull of satiation, their passions were recharged in the darkness. 

“Get some twigs; make a bonfire: I want our upsurge to be answered by dancing flames!”

His response was like a bolt of lightning. The beacon crackled, emulating them, catalysing them, fluids truly aflame! 

They could return to routine level feeling gloriously fulfilled, as if wafted on a magic carpet of perfect serenity – a microcosm of the whole world being set at peace. The robe was organically stained with green but did not seem corrupted by what was, after all, such a pure ceremony. She would later get a great turn-on from washing it out. It would be new and fresh for when she came to cement her bonds of sisterhood....

 

Now to find the location of that beach party, this time without distracting company. They wore their costumes under their walking outfits, and so could proudly strip down without awkwardness of embarrassment ­– Selene in deep purple, a one-piece, which she found so sexy, combining a degree of concealment with a colour-lend evocative of a tropical night sky – and Melville in maroon; and took some proud, strutting ‘selfies’ before taking the plunge into the tropically heated water. As with the second boy, the motions of the water modelled, echoed and anticipated the motions of their bodies. They rotated over and under each other, until Selene gave the prearranged signal, raising her left hand, that they should return to the shore. 

Her wet costume held her in a tight embrace, fanning the inner flames of her passion, heralded by vapour. His body was poised like an impending wave, the force of blissful engulfment. As he stood, poised for the next transcendental step, his eyes and his body were once again suffused with that splendour which shone forth on the temple top. Another peak moment was to come for Selene. She had previously allowed suitable boys and men to touch the edges of her costume, play tentatively with her shoulder straps, and feel her breasts no one before, except that remote boy, had stripped off her bathing costume; now was the time for transcendence, as the costume steamed in the sultry air. The shoulder straps and the back zip put up a gratifying, arousing resistance, before abandoning themselves to joyful surrender. In turn she grabbed his trunks, so now they could flush with mutual revelation, emerging from their pupae, from their covered to their naked glory, feeling they had invisible wings, and could take to the air. The great contrast in the locale made their second tryst every bit as fresh and new as the first. The contrasting textures, moss and robe, sand and towels, made the two experiences utterly complementary. Melville bore down on her, softly, calmly, gently. His tongued kisses did full circuits of her lips and her body, initially rippling like a placid stream. Then slowly he became charged and suffused with all the power of a waterfall, and the surging waves of high tide. Still slender, he became the sea lover, bearing the essence of the one who had enthralled her then – gentler than Hudson had been, more delicate and sustained. She had learned from that greater strength of old, now to be the stronger. She became a marine vessel – a yacht, a submarine, a diving bell, a bathysphere, her buoyancy deliciously bolstered by his expansive magnificence. He had personified and epitomised the seductive ocean of her first encounter. He almost melted, blended into the sea. The water was suffused with fire, and made an incandescent vapour.

**

Indeed reality and responsibility now beckoned; holidays are finite. Selene had indeed fallen in love with the locale, and part of her could yearn to stay there forever. But reality was ever-assertive. The supreme career woman had to reenter the fray of solitary, successful independence. But her words of severance did not come so fluently as they had with Hudson, even though it had been pre-programmed that they should go their separate ways at the airport. A suppressed part of her, perhaps her inner child, wanted to beg him to stay. “We’ve got the net; we can always keep each other posted, wherever in the world we are.” They could well be mutual catalysts to each other’s careers. She was convinced she had boosted his ego and fired his ambition, with the equivalent of a one-off with a celebrity.