Now is not the time for maudlin, now is the time for partying! You've finished your revision! It's Christmas! Time to party and get happy, and take care of loved ones!
Guess who's still my loved one? I wrote you something harsh, and then naughty, and then nice! Anyway, don't go rocking the boat too soon, get your barring in the ocean first. Some bad things are actually quite temporary, I've found, and if some other things are fixed, those very bad things melt away. Its about limits. When did things work well? When did they not? "Silence is golden." Is one, but we there are others too.
Of course, we always keep learning on how to understand our limits… and always surprised. Every day spent intensely working (even on something you love!) means you need a day off. I remember reading in disbelief the rate at which you wrote the 1st Tara chapters… I thought you would burn out… So BE CAREFUL you big dummy! Otherwise, things get wonky.
You can override your limits too easily! And just plain average working is good enough for most jobs!
I won't be able to write for awhiles (I need privacy, and I'm heading to my mom's for x-mas) so… not sure when next.
Stay strong! And don't waste anything needlessly!
Tara moodily regarded Epona across from the fire. Night was falling more quickly, and a chill was crisp. The total, complete silence of the forest enveloped her like soft velvet. Epona was usually… receptive… after eating, but Tara didn't want to touch her after this wild discussion. Right… okay, she's a bit crazier than I thought. She wouldn't mind if someone else came along in my bed. Lots of people do that. She'd give me ideas and ask how it was. Tara shuddered. How would that even work! Crazy. She wants to know how the world works. That isn't too crazy. People tell her the gods made the world and she thinks the Gods are… just… just gods. People are just people. It is what it is. Crazy. She wants to be mine. Another crazy bit. She loves stories, and music… but never does anything… until she writes me love poetry. Love. Poetry. Double crazy. She loves me… and, okay, that one is crazy to start with, but she think it'll work somehow. That's really crazy. Always going a step to far… a step ahead… or behind. Making my head spin. I should stick her in chains! Anything! Tara's voice was furious when she spoke"You have to learn your place! Stop this! You think this is a game?"
Epona fell silent, blinking at the sudden harshness. The food had finally slowed her bewildering talk, it seemed. Tara felt safe enough to risk a question. "So… how important is all this story and magic stuff to you?" Epona's looked uncomfortable. "I guess I don't know anything else really. People just seemed to know what to do, what to want… and I just freeze up. Unless it's something big and wild, like a brother setting fire to the house or someone trying to hurt the people I love… I… usually know what to do then…" Epona's trailed off into unhappy silence. "And, so, the magic stuff is always… well… simple, but very hard. Half of it is just remembering seeing something from before. A good way to tire yourself."
Tara shrugged uneasily. "So… what'd you think will happen now? To… well, you and me?" Epona shrugged. "As it stands? I guess this is what's left after the romance leaves a romantic. Well, I imagine you'll keep me in the dark until you know how some things are going, and then you'll either keep me or get rid of me. So… I guess, if you get rid of me, I'll probably stick around Granny until she dies, and then I'll end my story. Or maybe you'll pick me… and then I'll stay with you until you die in a fight. I don't think I can stop you from fighting… but maybe someone else can. I guess I'll end my story then too. Or maybe I'll find games, stories and magic interesting enough to keep the story going on my own. Stories of love and laughter, games of passion and prestige… and ridiculous, stupid magic." She sighed. "Or maybe my family will be okay one day… but is this my truth? Or just your fear?"
Tara looked at her in dismay. So cold. This is exactly what I didn't want to hear. "End your story? What the hell? Why? You'd do that over that old bat? And why me?" Epona tried to shrug with sad humour. "I guess I can just see you clearly enough to know a bit about you. You're… clear. Most people hide themselves away. And you listen to me... But honestly? I don't really know why."
Tara looked at her, frustration starting to rise. "And me? What wonderful things await me?" Epona frowned. "You always win your fights… but when you fight yourself? How can you win that? And… once you've won, can you hold on to what you've won? And I mean that for both love and war… stop letting good things slip you by and stop letting bad things stay the way were when you found them." Epona raised an upturned hand to a tree. "Once something starts to grow… it needs water, light and space… and people, like trees, have dreams of water and light. You can't set it in stone. And if you can't stop fighting yourself and hurting yourself, ma'am… then you can fight me. You'd never ever lose… and sometimes… I'd let you win." Epona brought her hand to her face, and softly licked the length of her finger, eyes on Tara. "And if you lose by accident… I'd make sure you never regret it." She threw her head back and forth, hair hiding part of her face… but not her hungry, dark eyes.
Tara grimaced. Fight her? Thin arms, tired green eyes, delicate hands and an agile face. Such a brat. The kind of person you saw after tearing down a castle gate and killing the guards, and found hiding beneath a bed. The last person between yourself and the treasury key or a nice ransom. But she doesn't have a penny to her name. Ha.
"Fight? How would we do that? I already know your weakness." Tara smirked. "I'd run around town naked…" She leered at the girl, and pushed her breasts together "…and show myself off to anyone who looked. I'd even do it during some important festival, since you can handle distractions oh so well. How long would you last then?" Epona looked dismayed. Her eyes fell to Tara's bunched up chest. Tara sneered at her… but she isn't looking at my breasts. She's looking at my hands. Tara felt her mouth go dry. Who the hell looks at hands! My breasts! Right here! My body! That's what you want! The girl's eyes trailed back and forth, lost and stricken. Say something damn it! Epona looked away. She seemed angry for once. At last! Tara's grinned savagely, eyes flared.
"Ma'am… life is already unfair. Why do we have to make it harder?" Epona seemed… sad. She's sad. Sad and disappointed? Really? Oh, that's just great. There even appeared to be moisture in the corner of her eyes. Really? Now she's crying. Faaantastic.
Epona's face scrunched upped and she huffed, blinking a few times. "Some philosophies say you should armor yourself against the harsh world. I want to live in a soft world. I want you to live in a soft world. Maybe it's about knowing your limits… that's how it can be soft… Did… I ever tell you about when I got sick with a bad cold? I think you always wanted to hear that story…" Tara eased back, and, as nonchalantly as she could, tried to shift her front. Damn it, a strap is hitched… I think I just popped out… ah! "Yes! That would be great!" She said it almost startling loud. That would be great? Gods, kill me now. Epona blinked hugely, twice.
"Well… once upon a time, I was working and studying, and doing all the things I thought I had to do so I could be happy… later on. And trying not to worry about things, right there in front of me. Me and another girl washed dishes for a villa where elders came to live… a place of strange humor… happy people eating and talking, and well worn doctors. Every day, people would smile at me as I brought them their food, and ask me if fish was on the menu. Every day, the kitchen cook would take me aside and say: 'The other girl does twice the work you do!' She probably said the same to the other girl… and I was also in school. In Roma, all the schools are temples, or used to be temples, or both. People obsessed about the truth, and being 'higher'. But the truth came from basic ideas everyone agreed on. If you change the basic truth, you changed the 'higher' ideas. It was a forest, and we were monkeys swinging from branch to branch, trying to reach fruit the other monkeys hadn't eaten yet. If you changed tree, you could eat different fruit, but then some monkeys wouldn't like you for eating the wrong fruit. Other monkeys climbed to the top of their favourite tree, and liked shouting down at the smaller monkeys. The only difference? Unlike most monkeys, they didn't throw their waste at each other." Epona's smile flashed. "Well, not often anyway." She continued "so, I was very nervous, and scared. I usually did things by just remembering what the teacher had written, or said a few. I didn't even realize I was in a tree, in a forest! All I could tell was that branches got tangled in other branches, and made a big mess! I thought the world was just one thing: it's just branches." Epona rolled her eyes comically. "Not seeing the forest because of a tree? Oh, I couldn't even see the tree! Sooo… I was pretty much the smallest and dumbest of the monkeys."
"One day, the most important monkey in my favourite tree looked at me and said: 'Oook oook?'... umm… I'm not quite sure anymore… He was the monkey who decided if you were good at picking fruit. He had clocks that spun backwards in his office! And lots of other strange things and shapes. He made them when he wasn't hooting at us monkeys. I liked going to his office to stare at them, so I had to come up with questions as an excuse. Since all I knew was branches, it didn't matter what tree I was in, only the fruit! Of course, this meant I fell down a lot… so either way, I was in his office a lot.
Or maybe he said: 'How did you even climb up this high to start with? Don't you know what this tree is about? And you have to do a project on this tree!'
I was shocked! 'I'm in a tree?' And his eyes just popped! 'Yes! Look at your GPA down there! If you fall too far, you could die!'
Or maybe he never said a single word, and spoke only with his eyes and his hands, in the monkey way of speaking.
Suddenly I didn't know where I was anymore! The world was spinning!
And I couldn't sleep! I was in a tree!
And I was getting tired from work.
And I couldn't sleep! I was in a forest!
Oh no, I'm a monkey! And then… I caught a cold.
"Gone in 3 days" I sneezed.
It stayed. "Gone in a week!" I coughed.
It stayed. "Gone in three weeks…" I hacked.
And then I was fired from washing dishes because I wasn't doing very well anymore.
And then… a test. Find the shape a string takes when hanging between two tacks.
It stayed. I failed.
The next day, I was one of the last people to turn in that's days work. When I sat, I sneezed. As I wrote, I coughed. As I erased, I hacked… and when I was done, I leaned back for the first time that day… and I tried to cough. I couldn't do it. At all! I couldn't breathe, or even flute. Nor make a single toot. I thought… I have five minutes before unconsciousness... at least I'm going to die doing something I enjoy.
Then, I carefully got out of my seat and quickly walked out of class. If I died in front of the other monkeys it would bother them. I calmly got up, and walked out. I rushed to the closest bathroom, locked the door behind me, and leaned over the sink, and fought for my life. Needless to say, more than a few ugly sounds were emitted. You know, it's always painful to hear… or see a beautiful instrument so misused… I like to think I have a nice voice… and other people have nice things too! But they shouldn't be proud… they should just be happy! Epona's eyes pointedly (and finally, Tara might think) trailed to her chest… but by now Tara was too intent on the story to think of puffing out herself out!
Tara cut through the sudden veering of topic. "So I guess you lived, huh." Epona sighed dramatically "You just ruined the story! But… I can tell you that… yes! I made it out alive! And, as I leaned over the sink… I finally understood simple harmonic motion! You see, if a pendulum swings, when you push it is terribly important! If it's at the highest height of the swing, you can push it very fast! If it's half way in its swing, then it's harder to add push. Or… when you're leaning over a sink, and hitting your chest and coughing, you have to time the hit to the cough! Like a drum!"
Epona smiled and clapped her hands a few times...
Tara didn't take up the beat.
Epona carefully lowered her hands, not hiding, but rather exaggerating her embarrassment into a ridiculous pout. Tara shook her head, disbelief plain as the rain. "So you nearly died… over what?" Epona's pout returned to her more serious mien. "I nearly died over not knowing my limits. I was under pressure at home, school and work. And those stresses were amplifying each other. My mother was pressuring me to work, my work was pressuring me to do my best, and my schooling was going bananas. I tried to separate each into a box… but it's all connected. I was putting too much pressure and worry on this…"
Epona leaned forward, towards Tara, her hand a tiny fist. She rapped her knuckles on Tara's chest. A point between Tara's breasts, as if on a closed door. Tara stared at the dainty hand, so different, and so similar, to her own.
"It's all connected… but the angle you look at it from matters. Even if you never see the ground, you know you feel a pull downwards. Even if we never see the gods, we feel a pull to love each other, at least. Now, you're worried about something. You're in a tree, above the ground. Remember when you were at your happiest, when everything was right… wasn't it almost the same as it is now? Maybe you had more of some things, or more money, but you haven't changed that much. Now, you feel under siege… and your mind is filled with confusion… or a terrible, terrible clarity. Or what you think is clarity, but feels a lot like fear. You need to let things flow between the boxes you've made. You can't fight wars, find money, find love, and heal the world all at once. Things will get better. Don't make a big decision right now. You know you push yourself harder than you should… you have limits… and sometimes you can't break them, but sometimes you can but shouldn't!"
Tara stared, her face tight. "Who took care of you when you got sick?" Epona looked away. "The same person who pushed me to work when I shouldn't have. The person who helped me see a doctor… a doctor who told me it would 'pass in a week. Get some rest!' and when I went back three weeks later, even worse than before… they still told me to get some rest. But still no medicine… So, when she caught a cold, she rushed to the doctor, and she described my symptoms… and she got medicine. Which we shared. I got better then… it was… so scary." Tara nodded. "Your mother took care of you?" Epona nodded. "And after I got better, but still didn't have work… she smiled and said 'you know, doctors offer a lot of money for people to take new kinds of medicines.'" Tara shook her head. "She wanted you to sell your body to some quacks with some half baked pills?" Epona nodded. "Sell my body, but not my mind, to the magic. It hurt a lot to hear that."
Tara shrugged uneasily. "Well… we all have to sell something." Epona rocked from side to side a bit. "Yes, but no. It was a bit of a bad joke mostly, but with a germ of truth… anyway… I found a tiny job offering… and then my mother spent the entire day combing through billboards, taking down the offer so others kids wouldn't see it." Epona raked her hands threw her hair. "I got the job," she added.
Tara nodded. "You needed the money." Epona looked at her hands. "I needed it, it's true. But my mother made more money than most families with both husband and wife working. I knew I needed to stand on my own, but why did she have to push so hard? Things were hard already… but not because we needed money. That was only… a symptom." Tara sighed. "I don't know what to say… so… shoulder to cry on?" Epona rubbed her face vigorously, a peculiar moue across her face. "Nah!"
The dark haired girl leaned back a bit, "If you do too much, you lose perspective, my mystical, marvellous mistress." A spark of humor crossed her face like lightning. "You have to be nice, and not naughty! So I might just have to spank you now!" Epona crossed her arms. "On the bum," she added threateningly, the arch of her eyebrows poised into raised curves.
Tara's eyes slowly widened, from hard spoon, to tea cup, to saucer. "You wouldn't even get close." Epona hmphed! "I'd get close enough, I bet! I'm the villain now!" Epona stuck her tongue out, a wicked gleam in her eyes. "Now imagine if you had two girls… whenever you acted naughty, at least one of us would be able to spank you!"
Tara wailed in horror! "Goddess! You've found the one thing to ruin threesomes for me. Perfect! Ah!" Epona nodded, looking suddenly thoughtful. "But… that explains why you like having good chairs so much! You spend a lot of time keeping your bum safe from angry girls!"
Tara leered, wiggling her eyebrows. "Not that safe."
Epona stared, sudden emotion and heat across her gaze. "Can we… please?" Tara chuckled. "Can we what?" Epona's eyes trailed down… to Tara's hands. "Can we have some time for soft things?" Tara laughed low… and slow… "I'm not sure my schedule of drinking and eating will let you find a spot." Tara looked as smug as a cat with cream as she added. "It's mostly drinking." Epona got on her hands and knees, and crawled slowly towards Tara. "Please… let me drink you… from your soft place."
Tara threw her head back as if to laugh… but smiled but said nothing. "I'm listening… make it good." Epona looked nonplussed for a moment before she rallied. "Please ma'am, let me feel your sex beneath my mouth, and my hands… and… umm… if I said nectar? Too much?" Tara nodded "Bit overused, I think. Not much of a flower girl." Epona paused in her progress, and kneaded the ground with cat like frenzy. "Oh no! Umm… How about a reversal of negative words? Dangerous… but it can be… intoxicating!"
Tara half smiled, and gave her a thumbs up. "Go for it!"
Epona swayed back and forth. "Umm, okay! Oh… your poisonous blossom, and it's sharp thorn! Let me dull the edginess of its worry with my tongue, and flood the plains of your thighs with the salty joy of your inner sea." Epona finished in a low, throaty voice. "Can I please please you? Please… I need you. And if I make you happy…" She had crawled close enough for Tara to reach. Tara looked down at the enervated form of her slave. Is she my mouse, or my snake? "Beag luch, you do some terrible things to me…"
Epona pressed her head against Tara's knee. "I'd do them everyday… I'd make what you need." "Make what I need?" Tara growled, her voice heavy "What do I need?" "Something soft?" Epona's voice was hopeful. "Something hard." Tara grasped her thin shoulders and pushed her to her side. Epona folded beneath the warrior. Once above, Tara tucked her heels against Epona's thighs and grasped the girls clothes, pulling and parting them, barring her chest. Almost desperately, Tara planted a kiss on the skin, breathing the smell in, inhaling the familiar comfort of a warm body. She found a softer swell, and swirl her tongue along its center… sucking on a reddened nipple. For an eon, Tara did nothing else, ignoring what might have been wails of pain or cries of passion. "Too much noise…" "Your hands… more… use them more…" Tara laughed. "More? More of these?" She held a fist beneath Epona's nose.
Epona raised her head and kissed it. She giggled. Tara, almost hesitantly, unclenched her hand, and felt Epona kiss her open palm… and a swirling lashing of tongue followed!
Tara's eyes flared "You…! Oh you… you crazy little minx…" She planted a firm kiss… and another… Tara's eased herself, lowering down close enough to kiss in retaliation! She grasped the girl's sides, and Epona gasped, twitching as if Tara had switched her. Epona's shudders continued… vibrations of body giving voice to passions of heart…
Epona lolled beneath her, languid and deliciously warm. "Ma'am… please… let me… your nectar… like this… on top!" Tara smiled… almost blushing. "You sure? You might drown." Epona made a sharp sound! "I won't! You'll keep me safe… even from yourself!" Epona tried to wiggle herself downwards… towards the warrior's softness…
Tara looked up, away from the wicked thing beneath her. What do I do now? "Hey, we said that's overused." She tried to keep her voice even, despite the growing fire in her belly… Epona blinked. "But… yours is way, way underused! Now… if you move a bit… I can finally overuse it! Please make as much heat as you can!" Tara chuckled, "I remember when I could barely get you down there…" she shifted herself forward… until a quick tongue hit her in just the right spot. She gasped, and dug her hands into Epona's hair… feeling soft hands raking fire along her back… Because sometimes finding the right words means saying nothing at all… those soundless groaning words that break silence… or the sounds of Epona happily (and only occasionally) gasping for breath!
