7 comments/ 44468 views/ 3 favorites Dances With Poodles By: hammingbyrd7 Copyright 2003, 2004 hammingbyrd7 "Are you sure you girls are going to be all right? Your dad and I never left you alone for a whole week before..." Jill and her twin sister Jamie looked up at their mom. They both knew that the worried look of their mom wasn't serious, that their parents were already packed, and would be heading to the airport in less than an hour. "Relax, mom, we'll be fine," said Jamie. "All seven of us are legal adults now, high school graduates, and we're all heading off to college on our own in a few months anyway. We'll be responsible, and we've promised not to let anyone else in the house while you're gone, not even our boyfriends, and we won't touch the liquor. You have our word on all of this." "I know I do, dear ones, and I know how firmly you stand by what you promise. Well, we'll call often, and be sure to ask the neighbors for help if you have a problem you can't handle." "You bet." said Jill, "But relax, mom. Remember, we have Frodo for protection!" (This was a family joke, Frodo was a three-year old, 70 lb brown standard poodle who welcomed everyone who walked in through the front door, and seemed quite hopeless as a watchdog). "Seriously, though, think of all the parents of the other kids. None of them is worrying about this at all." "You're probably right, my astute one." It was a fine summer morning in late June, just past graduation, and Jill and Jamie were thrilled to be spending the upcoming week camping out in their own home with five other members of their high school soccer team. The upcoming summer would be a bittersweet time for the young women, for they had forged strong bonds of friendship over many years, and they would soon be going their separate ways as they moved out into their adult lives. Jill, Jamie, Amy, Emily, and Katie had known each other since preschool, and they were inseparable. In their early childhood around the neighborhood, they became known as "the golden nickel", because all of them had blond hair and they always played as a group. In fifth grade, Sarah moved into the school district, a girl with jet black hair, but otherwise so compatible in kindness and humor that she was quickly absorbed into the group, officially becoming the sixth member of the golden nickel in spite of her hair. It was much later, at the start of their sophomore year in high school, when the girls first met Laura. Laura was a girl of Polish descent who grew up Bosnia and became a war orphan during the ethnic cleansing campaigns. She came to live with her grandmother's sister in the U.S., a distant relative she did not know, on a late August day when she was 15 years old. A description of her formal schooling, or lack of formal schooling to be more precise, made the school placement team first consider starting her as a freshman, rather than a sophomore, especially since she arrived speaking only broken English. But her great aunt insisted the girl seemed super bright, and they started her as a sophomore for a trial period. Within a month, the placement team was talking about their original concerns with wry amusement. Laura went from broken English to fluent English in less than three weeks. Her depth of understanding in mathematics and the physical sciences was so far above high school level that at first the science teachers kept spending their time trying to develop a program that would challenge her. They finally realized she was a true math and physics genius, with abilities far beyond those of her teachers. They talked with her great Aunt (whom Laura just called Aunt Irene), if Laura should move off to college early, but Irene thought the high school and the friends Laura was making were part of a needed healing from the war trauma. So during Laura's first sophomore semester, the school created special classes called "Advisory Math" and "Advisory Physics" for her, after-school sessions where Laura would describe her study efforts, and the teachers would try to suggest directions she might consider exploring. Her math studies were everywhere, her physics focused on getting to the cutting edge of quantum understanding. On her other subjects, Laura joined the regular classes, and enjoyed moving at the high school pace though English studies, social sciences, and various electives. She also had a very athletic build, and joined the soccer team within a week of starting school. It was on the playing field where she first met the golden nickel. The parents of the golden nickel wondered how Laura would be accepted by the group. Her endurance, power, and especially her ball handling skill on the field were of a caliber above high-school level, and the parents wondered if their girls would feel outclassed and resentful. In many ways, Laura's personality also was quite different. The members of the golden nickel had grown up nurtured and well loved, and their desires tended toward fun and adventure and enjoying life, and they were a little casual about rules and keeping promises. Laura was driven by her values and by a great passion to understand the physical world around her. She was intensely honest, incredibly focused on fulfilling any promise she made. Her personal motto in life was "carpe diem", seize the day. How would such different perspectives blend? The blending turned out superb. For all their differences, the girls shared a base metal of kind hearts and a love of life, and the blending of Laura with the golden nickel produced an alloy superior to anything that had existed before. The rest of the team picked up much of Laura's standards for moral character, and ability to focus on goals. Laura learned to laugh again, and this time with an American sense of humor. The time she spent in movies and malls and on the soccer field with her close friends helped heal her from her ordeal in Bosnia. By Christmas of her sophomore year, she was already the seventh and final official member of the golden nickel. The high school years rolled by, and graduation was only a month away. Jill and her boyfriend Steve were alone, sitting together talking in Steve's house on a quiet Saturday afternoon in May. Steve's parents were very rich, and off on one of their many vacations. Jill and Steve were very committed to each other, and had together picked Carnegie Mellon as a university that would support both their career choices, Jill in physics and Steve in drama. Jill was talking to Steve about Laura, and how she felt that Laura's reputation as the class genius might have prevented her from ever having a meaningful dating relationship. Jill was stunned when Steve quietly told her that he and Laura once had a date together. "What!? You and Laura, when?" asked Jill. "A year ago last May, just a few days before you and I started going together." "Just last spring!? Was it fun for her?" "No, not really," Steve said quietly, struggling to find the words to describe what he meant. "NO? Were you intimidated by her mind, or wasn't she cute enough for you?" Jill suddenly froze and thought to herself, "Jill, what the hell are you doing? This is no way to talk to Steve." Jill tried to sort out her rush of conflicting emotion. Steve, on the other hand, loved Jill dearly, took no notice of her sharp language, and just tried to give Jill straight answers to her questions. "Oh, Laura certainly is cute enough. Take your classic 5'6" perfect female form, stretch out the waist 4 inches until she's 5'10", add an extra layer of athletic muscle over everything, and you've got Laura. Her warm smile, and the way her smile lights up her eyes gives her a beautiful face. Oh, and those taut, upturned breasts ... hey, stop that, pumpkin! It was you who asked the question. And I never petted them, or even saw them. Really. She always wears such pretty dresses; a guy can't but help notice her front... She wears absolutely no makeup or jewelry though. That does take a little getting used to." "You never told me," Jill said softly. "I should have told you sooner than this," Steve agreed. "Her intellect is awesome; I think I was a little put off by it at the time. I remember when Laura took Mrs. Li's Intro to the Chinese Language class as an elective her junior year here. Laura was speaking Chinese fluently before the end of the semester. After that, Mrs. Li just started handing her the Chinese poetry that Laura now loves so much... I think I first remember seeing Laura in the middle of our sophomore year. She was having a very animated discussion with Mr. Gnepp, the math teacher who was running her "Advisory Math" class that term. He had given her a book on optimization techniques he thought she would find interesting. She was back in the next day, claiming the book was making a big error in Chapter 2. Not a typo, an error in thought." "This problem is much better approached with calculus of variations," Laura was saying. "Just set up the function's equivalent of a brachistochrone properly, and you'll see the book's error instantly!" "Mr. Gnepp was having a hard time following her", Steve continued. "I heard they fixed the error in the next edition, gave Laura a nice citation in it too. Pumpkin, what's a brachistochrone?" "No idea, of course. You think we've covered stuff like that, even in my honors math class? Stop teasing me, you fiend." "We met by chance at the end of school, on a very hot day at the end of last May. Laura was bubbling over with excitement; she had just learned her first paper for Physical Review Letters had been accepted. She handed me a copy. The title was "The Reality Creation Process, New Mathematical Constructs for a Self-Organizing, Incomputable Interface Layer between an Undetermined, Entangled Quantum State and an Immutable Past." She was so excited. She started telling me the paper was the first part of something monumental...." "It's just the beginning, Steve, but I'm on my way!" said Laura. "Read the books of Roger Penrose, he's written some good pioneering work on this. I only have the dimmest of views how this will evolve. It'll probably take me years just to build the mathematical tools I'll need to approach the physics. It will take several more years of theoretical work to lay down the physical principles. But then, experimental physics in the science of consciousness! True exploration, honoring the great scientific culture of test and learn. What is the physical basis for free will to exist? I think I can discover it. It will be my life's work, my life's great thank-you present to God..." Jill was surprised to notice that Steve was starting to struggle as he continued to tell his story. "...Laura's Aunt Irene was spending an overnight at Angel Memorial with some medical issue. Laura was heading to the bus stop right after school when I met her. You know how bad the connections are from there to the hospital. I offered her a ride in my car, and to bring her back later to her apartment.... She was very grateful.... We got back to her apartment about 7 pm, so late Laura offered to cook me some dinner.... She's a great cook, by the way.... Her apartment seemed so small; Laura and her Aunt are really squeezed for space... And such worn-out furniture, very clean though... After dinner, we started talking. Laura was very pretty, walking around in her bare feet and with her hair unbound, wearing a thin cotton bright blue dress..... I .., I started lusting after her body...." "You what?!" whispered Jill. "I know, Jill, I know. I'm so ashamed now of the way I acted. I was an absolute jerk. I kept pawing at her body and trying to undress her. Worse than a jerk, brutish, way below even my usual standards of bad conduct back then. I..., I came very close to force mounting her. Any other girl I know would have been crying rape and calling 911. I was that bad." "Laura was firm but gentle with me. She kept saying, "Steve, we can't be this intimate. We don't know each other. You don't know me; you don't know who I am. You don't know what I am. Steve, we can't be this intimate." " "Finally I semi-yelled at her, "Well, just who are you, anyway?" Laura paused, and then started telling me about her life in Bosnia..." Jill could not believe what Steve was telling her, that he could have acted the way he described. She decided to pass it by for the moment and move on to her second astonishment. "Laura told you something about her life in Bosnia?" Jill whispered. "She's never even told anyone in the golden nickel about that, except in the most general terms. We all respect her right to privacy, of course...." "Laura told me everything about her life in Bosnia. At the end, I promised not to tell anyone else....... But I think I can tell you," said Steve, with a dawn of comprehension in his eyes. "No, Steve, I'm dying to know, but don't break your promise." "No, that's not what I mean. A few weeks ago, Laura came up to me between classes and said, "Steve, I think you and Jill are so close now that I consider you two as having begun your marriage dance. Between such dancers, there should be no secrets." I didn't understand exactly what she meant then, but I've just realized she was giving me permission to tell you about her. Tell no one else, though, not even Jamie. I think Laura wants this to be sealed inside what she calls our marriage dance...." "Laura was born in Bosnia to a pair of poor farmers who loved her dearly. She lived close to a village of great ethnic diversity, and even as a young 2-year old she was amazing her neighbors with her language ability. All she seemed to need was to listen to people talk for a few hours in their native language, and then she would begin to chat back and imitate it. Making lots of errors, of course, but rarely the same mistake twice if you took the time to correct her. By the time she was eight, she was fluent in a whole basketful of the languages of Eastern Europe: Bosnian, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian, Polish, Russian, Hebrew, Persian, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, and Albanian. She also had some limited abilities in Western European languages. It was her pride to make much needed money for her parents as an interpreter between neighbors as needed, and she was well loved and accepted by her community, as was her twin brother Edward, who was often by her side." "Laura had a twin brother?" asked Jill, and she felt a deep cold shudder rock her body to the bone. Jill loved her twin sister Jamie so dearly that her loss would be unbearable, and Jill began to dread how this story would unfold. "Edward was Laura's closest friend and great pride. He was like a deer, super graceful, kind and very protective of Laura. Laura said he was a phenomenal soccer player, able to make turns in directions so quickly, it seemed impossible. Laura spent many, many hours of her childhood playing one-on-one soccer with him. She spent much time practicing ball control, not to beat him, but to try to be a worthy opponent for him. Formal schooling was easy for Laura, but no one was pushing her very hard to study, and she spent her time playing with Edward, loving and caring for her two younger sisters Katja and Natalie, and chatting with the neighbors with all their interesting languages." "Almost all her memory of the first ten years of her life is of loving times. But the clouds of war were gathering. People began to move out, the society began to polarize, all the love and acceptance and the different languages began to disappear. Then the war started. Laura called it was a multi-year meat-grinder of insane hatred and stupid nationalism. Formal schooling disappeared for Laura. Across the last part of her childhood, from 10 years to 15 years of age, Laura and her younger sisters spent most of their time with a close friend of their family, a retired university physics professor. He was no blood relation, but Laura and her sisters loved him dearly, and they all called him grandfather. He lived in the nearby village, and Laura's parents thought it was safer for the girls there, rather than on the more exposed farm." "Grandfather spent much time being Laura's private tutor. He was amazed and delighted in how fast Laura could pick up math and physics concepts when he challenged her to do so, and he soon realized she had the ability to start reading college level textbooks on her own. Grandfather turned Laura loose upon his own library, filled with the textbooks from his teaching career. Laura spent a great part of her last five years in Bosnia in that library, lost in the beauty of the math and physics, trying to ignore the war that was just outside her window." "But the war did not ignore her. In the early spring, just a few days before Laura and Edward would have had their fifteenth birthdays; there was a raid on her family's farm by ethnic cleansers. Laura's mother was raped and killed outright, and her father and brother just disappeared. Usually in cases like this, the people just disappear forever, but in this case, the cleansers were very sloppy in hiding their disposal site, and Laura was able to help identify the bodies of both her brother and father within a week of the raid. Life all around Laura and her sisters was filled with fear, with her younger sisters Katja, now age 9, and Natalie age 7 trying to act braver than they felt." "About two months after they lost their parents and elder brother, Katja and Natalie were out playing near the edge of the village when a sniper shot Natalie. It was a single shot, with no one else around except Katja. 7-year old Natalie had been intentionally targeted. The bullet caught her just below her stomach, traveled down and shattered the base of her spine before punching out a large mushrooming exit wound in the small of her back. Natalie fell down in shock and pain, bewildered that she couldn't move her legs. Her sister Katja, in her grief for her sister, ignored the mortal danger of the situation, and rushed to help her. She was holding her crying sister Natalie in her arms and calling for help when a second shot from the sniper hit Katja directly in her throat, killing her almost instantly. Natalie continued to cry, being held in the arms of her dead sister. No one else dared approach the site. Natalie kept crying until she bled to death." "About a month after the loss of the two girls, the entire village came under a murderous attack by a large paramilitary force. It was in the dead of night, after 2 AM, and the sounds of screaming and shooting were all around and extremely close to the house where Laura and her grandfather lived. Escape seemed hopeless, but the grandfather realized that Laura was about to be raped and slaughtered, and he was determined to give her as much of a chance as possible to get away, no matter what the cost. He pressed a book into Laura's hands, and told her to wait by the back door to the garden, and to try to slip away when the chance seemed best. Grandfather then walked brazenly out the front door and began to loudly curse the paramilitary ethnic cleansers, coming up with such novel, rapid-fire strings of insults that the diversion worked. Insane stuff, almost funny, if the situation weren't so deadly. Like the attackers were unworthy to lick the rear ends of the slugs grandfather found in his basement, although he was sure that's just what they spent all their time doing anyway." "The attackers gathered around this crazy old man to laugh at him, opening a small window in time for Laura to slip though the garden and into the night. Her heart ached with love for her grandfather. Unlike the paramilitary, Laura knew that a grim river of steel courage was flowing just below the surface of the insane insults. Her mind grieved that she would never get the chance to express her gratitude to her grandfather for the sacrifice he was making. Her face broke into a deep grimace when she heard the shots that killed him, but she did not cry out. Absolute silence was needed to escape the kill net that had been established." Dances With Poodles "After that night, Laura was on her own. She spent her time foraging for food at night, and hiding out in the woods and abandoned, burned-out buildings during the day, all the time playing a deadly game of hide-and-seek with roving paramilitary rape gangs. She would sometimes sit and stare at the book her grandfather had given her. It was one of her favorites from the library, a Russian textbook by Butkov with the title of "Mathematical Physics." But she found she couldn't read it, she just stared at the book, unopened." "Her grandfather tried to give her something to cling to, something he knew she thought beautiful. But it wasn't enough, Jill, not nearly enough. The beauty of mathematics alone can't be a shield against that kind of horror. Everyone that she had loved had been taken from her. Laura told me they have a saying in Bosnia, 'War's an evil bird, feeding on the dreams of the children.' When Laura was on the run, she began to have nightmares about that bird, fearing it was chasing her, stalking her, determined to eat all her dreams. The nightmares were a horror to her, becoming worse and worse each night through the weeks on the run, until one night, in a nightmare that Laura was deathly afraid would be the last dream she would ever have, the war bird finally caught up with her...." Laura's dream... "When I entered the dream I was walking in a forest, Steve, along the banks of a swift, blue river. I was naked but totally unashamed. I was walking on soft, wet grass; cool beneath my feet, much nicer than the bullet-ridden bodies I had to walk across in my other dreams. I tasted the water of the river and it was delicious, clear and pure, much different than the bloodied water I was forced to drink in the other dreams. Strange, I thought, that the war bird would pick such a beautiful place to devour my dreams, for I could feel his presence close by, and I knew that my time of running was over." "As I walked I came to an enormous stone bridge that crossed the river. It was massive, impossibly large, an eight-lane superhighway kind on bridge, spanning the river in the middle of the forest. And there on the other side was the evil war bird. After weeks of hearing it searching for me in the darkness of my other nightmares, I finally got to see it in the bright sunlight of the forest. It was huge, five story building huge, and jet black. It was shaped somewhat like a grotesque ostrich, with a great serpentine neck and a tiny head holding its tiny, evil brain. It had a huge, spherical belly, covered with black feathers, hugely fat and heavy from all the dreams it had eaten, and I saw in its tiny eyes its great hunger to devour mine." "In the last instant before the war bird crossed the bridge, Steve, I realized what the bridge was really made of. They were the stones of my hate, great stones of hate mortared together with the guilt of my survival, and the frustration and the hurt of all of my losses. All of my desires to punish, to strike back, to take revenge, sitting there as great stone blocks of hate in the bridge before me, making a path for the war bird. And I felt the presence of a loving God inside of me, giving me a great power and a great choice to make. And I chose God's path, Steve. I turned a white-hot starfire God had given me onto the bridge and into my own mind, burning the bridge and burning away my ability ever to make such stone again. God's fire was within my mind, but I realized in joy it was not a malicious fire, but a refining fire. And I poured the power of that fire into the stone and into my mind. I burned the stone down to its molecules; I burned the stone molecules down to their atoms. I used the starfire to strip the electrons away from the atoms, to fission their nuclei into hydrogen." "At the end of the dream, the bridge was gone, and I had lost my ability to hate. Even the guilt was gone; I could finally accept in peace that my grandfather gave up his life as a gift for me. The war bird was howling in frustration, for he was far too fat and heavy to fly or swim. I danced in the grass on my side of the river, naked and free. I laughed at the war bird, and mocked him! "Oh, you stupid, evil bird," I cried. "Such an easy choice to make. I've lost my ability to hate, but I've saved my ability to dream and aspire! Such an easy, obvious choice to make! You stupid bird. Oh, you stupid, stupid bird!" Steve continued, "Laura had that dream, Jill, just before she was rescued by a patrol of U.N. troops. She got lucky in getting her status as a refugee orphan so quickly, and in finding her Aunt Irene here in the U.S... When you first met her in September three years ago on the soccer field, it was less than a month after she had defeated the war bird." Jill sat silently, tears in her eyes, overwhelmed, unable to think of a thing to say. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying Laura is a pacifist. Heck, look what she did for Jamie last Christmas. If you're doing something outrageously evil, she might well become furious at your actions. She might use great effort to stop you from what you're doing. But she couldn't hate you, wouldn't want to hurt anything you held dear, as a means to get back at you. You could be the greatest torture in her life, and her greatest desire would be, as she puts it, to join in a dance of forgiveness and re-direction." "I should know," Steve said quietly, "She offered just such a dance to me. After Laura finished telling me her story in her apartment that night, I started to cry. I felt so ashamed. What kind of a monster had I become? I tried to leave. I couldn't bear for her to look at me. But she physically stopped me from going out the door, pulled me over to the couch instead, saying that I shouldn't drive in this condition, and that she really didn't want me to leave anyway. She piled a whole bunch of cushions in her lap on the couch, and I was soon lying down on them, face up, still crying heavily. Laura was gently holding my head, and my right ear was pressing into her right breast. I couldn't believe she was trusting me enough to do this, after I had just come so close to raping her. But it didn't feel sexual at all. It felt healing. No, more than healing. Healing suggests getting back to a place you once had before an injury. Laura was helping me to become something new, something better. Laura called it re-directing." "An honor, Steve," Laura said softly, "It's an honor for me to help you re-direct." "We stayed like that on the couch for more than half the night. Sometimes we talked about our dreams and aspirations. Other times we were just quiet, I listening to the slow beat of Laura's strong heart in my right ear." "I awoke the next morning on the couch to the smell of frying omelets and toasting bagels. We talked lightly about our schedules for the day, it was clear we had a promise with each other never to talk about the previous night with anyone. I drove her back to school in time for our first classes. I spent the day wondering how to thank her, wondering if I should ask her out. But that felt wrong, like a patient asking his therapist for a date. The very next day after that, I met you. I have so much to thank her for; I never would have won your heart without Laura's help. I love you, Jill. I love you as my wife to be." "I love you too, Steve. I'm glad you've won my heart, and that I've accepted yours in return. The world isn't quite ready to accept permanent commitments from people as young as we are, but I also think of you as my husband to be. Laura's right, our marriage dance has begun." Steve and Jill sat quietly on the couch for quite a while, gently holding each other, while Jill slowly absorbed all she had heard. "You don't know what I am. You don't know what I am.," Jill said softly. "What?" asked Steve. "Oh, I was just thinking about Laura's remark as she was trying to fend you off. Maybe Laura's grandfather was the first person to guess what Laura truly is." "What do you mean?" "Laura and Jamie, and you, of course, are my closest friends. I've been so fascinated by Laura's genius that I've read many biographies about other ones, from Archimedes to James Gleick's book "Genius" about Richard Feynman. None of them came close to achieving what Laura's achieved with so little formal education. Math and spatial relationships are considered right-brain activities. None of the great math geniuses I know of had genius language ability, a left-brain activity. Well, Carl Gauss was good, but not a genius linguist. All the great philosophers of the human condition I know of, Jesus, John Milton, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Abraham Lincoln, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., they all seem to be left-brain geniuses, with no obvious special math abilities." "Maybe there are three kinds of geniuses, Steve. The type-A or type-B genius is a one-in-a-million shot, and there are a few thousand of them on the planet now. Very innovative people who discover new ways to look at things, the right-brain type-A people pushing the cutting edge of knowledge, and the left-brain type-B are the people who inspire us with their keen insight into the human condition." "And maybe, just maybe, there's a type-C genius, a one-in-a-million times a one-in-a-million shot, a one-in-a-trillion shot, a one person in a 100,000 years for the whole planet kind of genius. Someone we don't even have a word for, because we never had one before, at least not in recorded history. The type-C genius has phenomenal math ability augmented by genius language ability, has synergistic genius from both the right and left brain. This type of genius doesn't push cutting edges; the type-C genius creates knowledge light-years away from the cutting edge, and then begs the rest of the world to catch up." "I don't understand the concept of physically destroying your brain's ability to hate, but I think that's what Laura was literally able to do, honoring, as she would probably put it, the great minds of Jesus, Gandhi, and King." "I don't understand Laura's papers on quantum reality, but I do know the quantum science community is going absolutely nuts over them. I think Laura is developing the math and experimental physics simultaneously now. Her latest paper in Physics Today is a detailed proposal for something she calls a quantum interface resonance experiment. Laura says she can set the whole thing within a month once she starts her summer program at Cal Tech after July 4th; that the entire experiment is just two interferometers, a few beam splitters, and a modified photo-multiplier." "Think how insanely aggressive both Cal Tech and Princeton were for Laura to join them with her National Science Foundation scholarship. Both offered to let her write her own description of what a quick doctoral program would be like, with Laura just coming out of high school. Their real passion is the get Laura engaging with their research faculty as quickly as possible. Look how eagerly they agreed to Laura's suggestion that she split her time between the two campuses. Do you realize how unprecedented that is? I think they suspect what I suspect, what Laura's grandfather suspected three years ago, that Laura is a great treasure for the entire planet." "A treasure we almost lost," said Steve softly, still thinking of Laura's ordeal in Bosnia. "One more insane sniper targeting another innocent child, just one more snap of a twig in the deadly games of hide-and-seek with the paramilitary, and we would have lost her forever, never even realizing the greatness of our loss. How is it possible, Jill? Even with the most insane religious thoughts possible, even with the most bizarre, ethnic hatred possible, even with the most evil nationalistic pride imaginable, how could it be possible to hold an innocent 7-year-old child at play in your gun site, and then pull the trigger? I sometimes have nightmares about it." Jill softly caressed Steve's head for a long time. His question was unanswerable. She finally said, "Steve, I want you to know my faithfulness to you is unchanged. I forgive you as Laura has forgiven you for the way you acted that night. I will never bring up the issue of that night again, unless you want me to." And then Jill smiled, and said "And you know, this finally explains my warnings from Kathy, the girl you were going out with before me." "You know Kathy?" "A little, she hangs out with a very different bunch of kids. We move in very different circles. But Kathy is a nice person." "Kathy's a very nice person," Steve agreed, "much nicer than I smart enough to appreciate while we were dating. What did she say about me?" "Not a good press at all, I'm afraid. She kept telling me that you were a taker, and would tend to whine a lot when you didn't get your way. She warned me that the more she tried to open up to intimacy in her dating relationship with you, the more controlling you became. She also said not to be lured by all your money, that you weren't the least bit generous. I kept telling her you weren't like that at all. You are kind and generous with people, playful and affectionate in your love for me, and I don't think I've ever heard you complain about anything. Her warnings and my experience with you were so completely opposite, I wondered for a long time if she were playing some sort of cruel hoax, but she seemed very sincere. She kept saying you would have needed a complete personality transplant to be behaving the way I was describing you." "Wow. Kathy was making a very accurate observation, Jill. My character has changed a lot. Whenever I feel like whining now, I think of Katja, spending the last moments of her own life trying to comfort her dying sister in her arms, and I think, what God given right do I have to whine about anything? Maybe the only thing Kathy missed is that Laura's master surgeon knife cut deeper than just my personality. Laura, and you, Jill, helped me transplant my dreams, my aspirations. Where my dreams lead, my personality follows. I love you so much, Jill. You've become the better part of me, and the better part of what I dream to become." "Oh, Steve, I love you dearly too. You are the light of my life, the fire of my loins! And speaking of my loins, here, let me give you your graduation present a few weeks early...." A month passed, and Jill and Jamie's parents were flying over the Atlantic, off to a second honeymoon in Scotland. The seven young women were camping out in the very large living room of Jill and Jamie's house, sleeping bags and air mattresses arranged throughout the room. They had had an early dinner, showered, and were all in their pajamas. The plan was to perhaps chat for a bit, and then sack out early. Everyone was looking forward to early morning hiking in the nearby national park the next day. Jill was sitting on the floor next to Laura at Laura's sleep site, helping her unpack. Jill had been admiring all the different stuffed animals her friends had brought to sleep with, and she wondered with amusement if Laura had one. But when she looked in Laura's duffel bag, all she saw under the clothes was a thick, somewhat dirty book. She pulled it out to look at it, and was not surprised to see that the author was Butkov. Jill glanced up and noticed Laura was giving her a warm smile. "You carry it around to honor his memory, don't you? As a way of expressing gratitude..." "Yes" said Laura, happy that Jill knew her story, and thrilled that her closest friend understood her heart so clearly. "It's the only thing I have from my past life. When I ran from my grandfather's house that night, there was no time even to dress. I was in bare feet and pajamas, just clutching a jacket and that book. Fortunately it was summer! After a month in the woods, the jacket was badly torn, and the pajamas were in shreds. I was effectively naked from the waist down when I was rescued. The Dutch troops were so kind, Jill, with such kind respects to avert their eyes while some made a small room for me by holding up blankets, giving me some privacy to change into some of their spare clothing. That book is the only thing I have left; plus all the memories, of course." "I'll miss you so," said Jill, after a moment. "In another week you'll be at Cal Tech, 2000 miles away. You are so much a part of my life; you've helped me become what I am in so many ways... I think you even helped me get accepted to Carnegie Mellon." "Oh? How so?" "It was somewhat amusing. I was touring their campus last winter, talking to a physics professor in his office. He was very pleasant, attentive, but I could tell it was the end of a long day for him. Our conversation wandered to quantum mechanics. He was surprised I was so versed on all the new breakthroughs. I told him how you and I have practically been living together for the last three years, and his eyes lit up like a Christmas tree. He started madly dialing on his phone. In a few minutes, we had almost all the physics and math department professors jammed into his small office with us. It turns out a math professor there was doing a final review on your book "A New Mathematics" for the publishers, and the two departments were going bonkers over it." "It's stupendous!" this one woman professor kept saying. "Calculus advanced from algebra by embodying the concepts of limits and infinity. This new mathematics is just as major a step, embodying the concepts of self-organization and incomputability." "It'll be the math of choice for studying self-organizing systems," another professor said. "Quantum interface layers, weather turbulence, biological sciences, stellar and cosmic evolution, economic dynamics, the implications are staggering." "They especially liked your extensions of Lagrangian formalism, with generalized momentum coordinates, and how you called your new math Boltzmann formalism, with generalized entropy coordinates." Jill then smiled at Laura and said, "The physics professors were asking me about your experimental proposals. I think they forgot that I wasn't you! I tried to tell them all the analogies you told me as best I could. They wanted to know what experimental results you were expecting. Boy, was I on shaky ground! I made a vague explanation on how two interferometers would probably be needed to capture both ends of the interface entanglement. "But it was your theoretical work they were in love with. "Just three short equations," this one professor said, "proving a self-organizing interface entanglement is computable on the classical side, but must be incomputable on the quantum side due to the counterfactual influences."" "I quoted you verbatim from the first time you tried to explain this to me: "This is all so obvious! How could you ever hope to compute the effect of what hasn't happened in a self-organizing phenomenon? The beauty of the physics is that all the counterfactuals get absorbed and resolved in the interface layer, resulting in the computability of all classical, immutable processes."" "Oh, Laura," sighed Jill, "Obvious?! I'm just so glad they didn't push me on explaining your math on this to them. I know what a tensor is, but what your self-enfolding flow tensors are, I have no idea... I made a comment that we were such close friends, I was sure I could get you to Carnegie Mellon as a guest speaker for a talk or two. They were ecstatic! I knew then my acceptance to CMU was a done deal." "Ha! Amusing indeed... It's so gratifying to delight people with my work, Jill. It brings back memories of my grandfather. Just after New Years when I was 14, I had finished reading the math section of his library, and I kept asking him where the books for the next step were, I wanted to know the answers to how self-organization would be encapsulated into the calculus. We spent half the evening trying to understand each other. He finally realized what I was talking about when I showed him my idea for a feedback contour, and I asked him how I could integrate it." Dances With Poodles "He looked delighted, laughed, and said, "Oh, Laura, You won't find those answers here. I think you're the first person even to recognize the question!"" "Such a wonderful man, I miss him so.... I'll miss you too, Jill, deeply. You've helped me as much as I've helped you. Socially, you've been a great mentor to me, as well as my dearest friend. I am so shy around people sometimes, especially young men my age. I'm so timid about my femininity. You have such a wonderfully relaxed approach to relationships. Well.... It'll be great to visit CMU, make the talks on Fridays, and we can share the weekends together." "Okay.... Steve told me how horrible it was for you after your grandfather was killed, being hunted by the paramilitary for more than a month, and being haunted by the war bird.... Wasn't there anyone who would give you shelter?" "Jill," sighed Laura, pausing a long moment, and finally saying: "You don't grasp the insanity of the hatred. My mother was Muslim, my father Christian. It was an unusual combination even before the war. My parents' union and their progeny were abhorrent to the ethnic nationalists on all sides, exactly what they stood against. Their fanatic visions of the future were so dark, Jill, entirely bereft of love. Their hate had stripped the love from their dreams.... Hatred... is such a consuming emotion. It consumes your ability to compromise, to negotiate, to forgive. It consumes the inner vision of your empathy, blinding you to your neighbor's perspective. Ultimately, it can even consume your survival instinct, think of suicide bombers. Hate wasn't the only thing my people ever had, but it finally became the only thing they had left. In the end, the society became so insane that no one would accept me, and I became an extermination target for all the warring extremists." "My God, my God," whispered Jill, taking hold of Laura hand. "How is it possible you don't want revenge?" "You should know, Jill. We studied John Milton together in honors English this year. Remember book nine of Paradise Lost? How revenge, seeming sweet at first in contemplation, turns bitter upon execution and recoils back upon itself? Once I recognized this in my dream with the war bird, the desire for revenge became easy to discard. Why would I want to degrade myself?" "Dearest Laura, I still can't imagine how you held onto your sanity and your faith through that hell... I know you're a Christian. Did your family follow your father's religion?" "Not exactly. Both my parents took time as teachers. The religion my mother taught me from the Quran was a religion of love, tolerance, and deep reflection. My father's teachings were very similar from the Bible. My brother followed my mother's faith. I felt the need for a redemption I couldn't possibly earn, and followed my father's faith. Katja and Natalie were too young to choose... Did you ever hear Ellie Weisel's Nobel Prize speech, where he made the brilliant observation that the opposite of love is not hatred, but apathy? I think the opposite of hatred is forgiveness. Think of the parable of the Prodigal Son. The decision of the father is to either hate his son, or forgive him. In the parable of the Good Samaritan, the choice of the Jericho traveler is to love the wounded stranger, or ignore him. Such keen insight Weisel had, to see that the true opposite for caring for someone is not to care. This is how I held onto my faith through the hell, Jill, with these parables, because I could hear the ring of truth in them, that forgiving and caring is what an infinitely good God would want His children to be." Laura and Jill got up still holding hands and joined their friends, who were sitting in a circle on the floor, chatting near the living room couch about their high school teachers. After nuzzling both young women, Frodo stretched out and appeared to be taking a nap nearby. The topic drifted to whom the women felt had been the most difficult teacher. "I would vote for Dr. Livingston," said Emily. "She would pile on the work with no consideration at all for the work loads of the other classes. She ruined my spring break in my junior year with her unexpected term paper assignment. She's a real bitch when it comes to piling on the work." "Well, what about Mrs. Gouch, in English class?" asked Amy. "The kids used to call her Mrs. Grouch behind her back. Not too much work, but so arrogant. I swear, she would sneer at you if you expressed a different opinion than hers. She was much bitchier than Dr. Livingston." "Now there's a question," said Katie. "Laura, what's the definition of a bitch, someone who's arrogant, or someone who's being inconsiderate?" Jill noticed a deep frown cross Laura's face, extremely unusual, before Laura said "You can define it anyway you want, I suppose; as arrogance, as inconsideration, or of course as just the female gender of the dog. It's been my experience though, that the use of the word more accurately identifies the anger of the sender, rather than the attributes of the recipient." "What do you mean, Laura?" asked Katie. "I saw it in the war. The men in their hate would start calling each other sons of bitches, as a way of dehumanizing their neighbors. Once you have dehumanized your neighbors, you can start exterminating them. "Oh, life could be so wonderful; all our problems will magically disappear, if only we can somehow kill off our S.O.B. neighbors." That's how they thought, so incredibly stupid..." Laura gazed at Frodo for a moment, then added "... and so tragically ironic, given that Frodo is now demonstrating to me that in loving trust, perhaps he is quite my superior." "What in the world do you mean, Laura?" asked Amy. "Take a look at Frodo, Amy. He's totally stretched out, totally relaxed, totally vulnerable. He's awake and alert, lying there watching me, hoping I'll come over and pet him. If I were trapped in a room with seven creatures twice my size, creatures much more powerful than I, creatures who were a lot different than I, creatures with more arms and less legs, creatures who had minds beyond my understanding, could I ever be that relaxed while that vulnerable? Perhaps Frodo offers me a depth of trust beyond my ability to return. With Frodo as my model, perhaps a bitch is something I should aspire to be..." "Well, with that thought, my dear friend Amy," said Katie, laughing, "let me pay you a fine compliment and say that I think you are a great bitch!" "Oh, thank you", said Amy, "My dear friend Katie, you are so kind! But no, I must insist, and I'm sure my dear friends Jill and Jamie will agree, that you are much the greater bitch than I am!" "Actually, we think you're both great bitches," said Jill laughing. "What?!" said Katie, in laughing mock anger, "Impossible! I would say that Amy and I are each lesser bitches than either you or Jamie put together!" "Ha, ha, ha!" said Laura, in a burst of laugher, "I'm not sure I got that, but I am sure I don't want to." "I would vote that Jill is less bitchy than Jamie, but more bitchy than Sarah," laughed Emily. "What?" said Sarah, laughing too, "Surely not! I must insist I am as least as bitchy as Jill, and I would be willing to match my bitchiness against Jamie in a bitch duel anytime she finds the courage!" "I think I would vote that Jill is perhaps less bitchy than Laura, but Amy is definitely more bitchy than Emily," said Katie. "Oh yeah, well I'd vote just the opposite!" said Amy. "Oh yeah, well, why don't we prove it!?" challenged Emily with a shout, barely able to speak through her laughter. "Let's all seven of us vote on who is the bitchiest of all!" "Done!" shouted Amy, accepting the challenge, "and the winner will ... the winner will become Frodo's sexy bitch date for the night!" "Done!" yelled Emily. "You in on this, Jill and Jamie?" "Oh, but of course!" laughed Jamie. "You in, Laura?" asked Jill with a smile. "What?" said Laura, "an inverse popularity contest, and sex with the dog as first prize?! You can't be serious!" "Oh, you wouldn't have to have sex with Frodo," said Amy, "just a sexy date. Imagine the last really sexy date you had, but one without intercourse. There's a big difference between the two, don't you think?" "Well..." said Laura, blushing, and looking down at the floor. "Oh, don't tease her like that, Amy," thought Jill silently, with tender compassion for her friend, "I don't think she's ever had a really sexy date..." As Laura looked down, the other six girls caught each other's eyes, and in an instant all agreed for whom they would vote, if they could get Laura in on the game. "Well, count me in!" said Sarah. "Me too," said Katie. "Well, Laura?" said Jill, smiling at her friend. The bonds of friendship were too strong to resist. "Okay, I'm in too" said Laura. "Great!" said Amy, "I'll get seven slips of paper, and we'll have a secret ballot! Laura, you can be the vote reader." A short time later, Laura was dumping seven folded slips of paper out of a hat. "And the first vote is: Laura! And the second vote is: Laura! Oh, no, I could be getting into trouble here! And the third vote is: Jill! And the fourth vote is...." Laura looked up at her six friends smiling at her. She slowly unfolded the remaining votes, and said, "Me? All six of you think I'm the bitchiest person here? Amy, why did you all vote for me?" "Well," said Amy, with a warm smile, "you said it yourself. You can define bitch anyway you want. We liked your definition best, the female gender of the dog. As a date for Frodo, which of us would be a better date than you? It's you who are always brushing him. You probably play more Frisbee with him than all the rest of us put together. And you're the only one I've ever seen give him a bath, Jill and Jamie included. You bathed and brushed him today. When we come in from a soccer game, it's your leg he always presses his nose into first, even before Jill or Jamie, and they live here! Frodo loves and accepts all of us as family, but it's you he adores...." With sudden insight, Jill realized everything Amy said was true. Jill and Jamie used to brush Frodo as needed, but since Laura had been coming over so often over the last two years, he never needed to be. Laura would always find the time to do it first. She got into the habit of giving him a monthly bath too, far more often than the twins or their parents ever would do. It never occurred to Jill's parents to pay Laura for all this work, it was just something Laura really enjoyed doing. "Well," said Laura, staring at Frodo as he lay nearby, "I'm not sure exactly what I've promised to do." "Well," said Jill, "first of all of course you don't have to anything you don't want to..." Laura smiled back warmly, understanding, "Still, what should I do?" "Well," said Emily, with a mischievous grin, "you could start by dressing more like Frodo. In the dog sense of the word bitch, you should be wearing nothing but a collar!" "Whoa, Emily!" thought Jill, "I wasn't thinking of anything that explicit!" But before she could reply, Laura agreed to Emily's tease. "True," said Laura, "but if I take Frodo's collar off, perhaps I won't have to wear mine either! Okay!" Laura stood up and removed her pajama top, and then her sleep halter, becoming completely bare from the waist up. She stepped out of her pajama bottoms, hesitated a moment, and then removed her panties, becoming completely naked. She sat back down on the floor, in a pure L shape, back straight up, bare legs together straight out in front of her. She clapped her hands together and said, "Frodo! Come cuddle with your bitch date for the night!" Frodo bounded up immediately and lay down alongside Laura's bare right leg, pressing his back along her leg, and lifting his head and resting it on her thigh, halfway between her knees and hip. Laura removed Frodo's collar and gently began massaging his powerful neck muscles. Frodo gave her a soft whimper of bliss and closed his eyes. Laura looked at her friends. "You know, we've seen each other naked in so many locker rooms and showers, I thought this would be easy, but it's a little embarrassing to be so bare while you're not..." Feeling an overwhelming need to support her friend, Jill immediately got up and took off everything she was wearing. The other girls quickly followed. They all sat back down again, feeling the tingle of the sexual situation. They had never done anything remotely like this before. The minutes rolled by with no one speaking. Laura continued to massage Frodo's neck. "What does it feel like?" asked Sarah. "Actually, it feels really nice." answered Laura. "Frodo is all soft silk and warmth across my leg, and I feel the breathing in his throat across my thigh. Thank you all for suggesting this date for me, it really is very pleasant." Laura continued to gently caress the dog's neck. Katie was lost in thought, thinking of dogs and wolves mating, and how their biology might be different than humans. After a while, she asked, "Laura, does the virgin bitch have a hymen?" Laura, still feeling self-conscious about relaxing naked with her friends, totally misinterpreted the question to be a personal one. She replied, "I the bitch am not sure. I might have torn my hymen, at least partially, doing various spin and pivot kicks last Christmas. But you're right, both in body and experience, I am quite the virgin. How about you?" "Me? Oh, yeah, I'm still a virgin, too. Sarah, you, and I are probably the shy part of the golden nickel, and haven't done much with guys except kissing. Am I right, Sarah?" "Yes and no. I am shy and a virgin too. But Bill and I have been expanding our sexual relationship as our commitment to each other has grown. Bill's very eager, but considerate of my need to do this slowly. How about you, Jamie?" "I lost my virginity to Mike late last fall," Jamie said quietly. "What?" said Katie, "Jill, you never told any of us." "Hey, I'm not going to gossip about a thing like that about my sister," said Jill. "I'm sorry I did it, of course." said Jamie, looking at Laura in particular. "Several of you warned me that perhaps Mike was not a good prospect for me. How about you, Amy?" "Me? I lost my virginity a long time ago. I know I'm considered the black sheep of the nickel when it comes to promiscuity, though I've changed a lot in the last year. All of you have really helped me on this. I've been very fortunate, more than I deserve. I never suffered consequences with diseases or pregnancies. I took so many stupid chances, two, three years ago. Hopefully I'll find somebody at college who will be agreeable to my new, go slow approach. How about you, Jill? You and Steve are so close. Has he popped your cherry yet?" "No, and we're both very committed to saving vaginal intercourse and possible pregnancies for marriage. We... We have been exploring anal intercourse, very recently, just dancing around the edges of it. Emily, you're the last one who hasn't spoken up." "I'm not the wild vixen I pretend to be. Still have an intact hymen. Gary is very sweet and is happy petting my breasts as the hottest parts of our dates. We might get more physical at college. The longer we stay together, the more natural sex seems to become." The conversation ended for a while. The girls were becoming very relaxed with their intimacy, though for all of them, especially Laura, there was a rising level of desire for sexual expression. All of Laura's friends had very kind thoughts for her, realizing this moment was probably the first moment of her life she was exploring her own sexuality with other people, and the fact that she was cuddling with Frodo was welcome in the sense that it was enabling them to be a part of their dear friend's exploration. Jill, though, was feeling a growing conflict of emotion. She wanted very much to support her friend's first attempt at sexual expression, but also had growing concerns about not crossing any boundaries of appropriate behavior with Frodo. Laura and Frodo both became very relaxed as Laura continued to massage Frodo's neck. Frodo had not stirred in a long time. Laura felt both sleepy and sexually aroused, and she felt a bit bewildered about what she wanted and how to proceed. She finally made one last effort to ignore her sexual desire and said, "It seems my date is falling asleep. Perhaps we should call it a night." "Oh, no," said Emily, laughing, "You haven't gotten romantic with him yet! Play with him, show him your eagerness for romance!" "Oh, Emily, No!" thought Jill, grimacing, "We shouldn't push this teasing any further. This would have been the right place to stop!" Jamie also looked very worried and she took hold of Jill's hand. "Frodo, do you want to play?" asked Laura. Those were the exact words Laura used with Frodo when offering to play Frisbee with him. The dog awoke immediately and gave a joyful bark. His obvious joy woke up the whole group. Laura assumed a classic dog play position for him, kneeling with her arms held out straight in front of her, her head low to the ground, her breasts on the rug beneath her, and her hips held high in the air. Frodo barked again in joy and began to romp around her. "Laura, are you sure you're okay with this?" asked Jill quietly, feeling very distressed, and noticing the obvious sexual arousal of Laura's body. "You really don't have to do anything you don't want to..." "I know," Laura replied. "This really is turning into a very sexy date! Is this okay with you? This is my first experience with arousal, and I'm acting without thinking. I don't want to embarrass you by acting sexier with Frodo than you expected me to be..." Jill and Jamie turned to face each other, both with deeply worried looks on their faces. Jill whispered "It really isn't okay, is it? And we're the ones at fault for pushing her into this... She needs our help, our guidance." "Yes", whispered Jamie.... "You're the one who's dearest to her. Would you be willing to be Frodo for her?" "Oh, Yes! I really want her to experience how beautiful sexual expression can be. But not with Frodo!" answered Jill. She got up, grabbed Frodo gently by the back of his neck, and ran off with him to her bedroom. Jamie knelt by Laura who was still in her dog-play position, and placed her hand on Laura's flank. Feeling Laura trembling with her arousal, Jamie began to whisper in her ear: "Laura, last year you kept giving me such wise counsel about Mike, but in the heat of my arousal with him I totally ignored you for months. That horrible day I was a complete idiot for yelling at you to leave me alone. You spent your Christmas evening searching for me anyway, and found me just in time. I think you saved my life, and I'll never forget how you risked your own life to do it. You jumped in and gave me the chance to escape with little more than bruises. That experience taught me it's never a good idea to act without thinking. Laura, please allow me to express my gratitude for all the love and care you have given to me, and to counsel you now in return. Jill and I want to help you explore your sexuality, but to go further with Frodo would be a mistake. Trust me. Please allow us to be Frodo for you instead." Jill came backed from her bedroom a few minutes later, carrying a box and a tube of lubrication. She sat down next to Laura and the other women who were sitting in a close circle on the floor. Jill opened the box. "What's that, Jill?" asked Sarah, "A phallus?" "Not exactly, it's called a butt plug. I gave it to Steve as a present." "Steve puts it in his ass?" "No, silly. I gave it to Steve to use on me. It's the smallest size they sell. Steve and I are gently trying to stretch my sphincter muscles a bit before we try intercourse there. Laura, can I try this on you? You can pretend that it's Frodo's penis." Laura gave a quick nod. "Where would you like to try this?" Dances With Poodles Laura tried several positions of kneeling; finally decided she best liked resting just her head and shoulders and arms on the couch. Her breasts were hanging freely beneath her. "This feels really bitchy" she said, closing her eyes. Jill moved softly to sit by Laura's left leg. Jill reached over and gently caressed the back of Laura's calf. Laura opened her eyes, looked with love into Jill's eyes, and gave her a quick nod of approval. Jill began to caress the calf, ankle, and bottom of Laura's foot. Jill petted Laura gently, in a very relaxed manner. Jill was a bit surprised about how much she wanted to do this, how loving it felt to caress Laura, and how sexy it felt to be expressing such intimacy with her friend. She continued her slow caresses, slowly expanding them to include Laura's hips and thighs. Laura's breathing eventually became very deep and slow. She looked up at her friends around her, and said "I never realized. I never realized sexual arousal would also be this relaxing." She sighed, and re-closed her eyes. All seven women were becoming very aroused, and feeling a bit kinky. Jill would occasionally chant softly, "Laura is our bitch in heat; Laura is our bitch in heat." Jamie came and sat by Laura's right leg, hugged her about her long waist for a while, and then began to caress her hips and thighs. The other young women gathered close around, very quiet. Jill and Jamie caressed Laura at a slow, leisurely pace, feeling Laura's body gently drift back and forth from total relaxation to sexual trembling. Both of them would occasionally caress up her inner thighs and stroke her pubic fur with the backs of their hands, and then gently slide their fingers across her anus. Jamie eventually began to concentrate her caresses on Laura's inner thighs and ass, giving the stimulation more and more sexual focus. Laura began to buck back with her hips as Jamie's caresses would press against her anus and labia. Taking this as a signal, Jamie spread Laura's ass cheeks and Jill began to stroke Laura's anus directly with a lubricated finger. Laura inhaled a couple of soft gasps, held her breath for a long moment, and then let out a deep sigh, relaxing and spreading her legs. She rocked her hips and arched her back, raising and fully exposing her anus and labia in an obvious offer to Jill for penetration. Jill noticed that Laura's outer labia were quite prominent and aroused beneath her anus, but still tightly pressed shut. Jill wondered if Laura wanted anal or vaginal sex. "Laura, can I open your sex?" asked Jill. Laura nodded a quick yes. Jill reached under Laura and cupped her pubic with one hand for support. With her other hand she gently opened Laura's outer labia. Jill turned and saw that Jamie was lubricating the plug, then turned back to Laura. While her outer labia had been dry, Laura's inner labia was very wet with Laura's desire. Laura's scent filled the air, sharp and sweet. With great kindness, Jill gently separated Laura's inner labia, and thought "Why, Laura, you haven't broken your hymen, it looks fully intact to me." Jamie positioned the lubricated plug at the entrance to Laura's vagina, but not wanting to deflower Laura, Jill waved Jamie off. Jill considered, and decided to use her fingers instead. After applying a generous amount of lube to her hand, she returned to stroking Laura's anus, but in a more energetic manner, lightly penetrating the anus with her fingertips. Sarah and Katie moved and sat close to Laura on either side, in front of Jill and Jamie, leaning on the side of the couch, close to Laura's shoulders. Sarah reached up and lightly stroked the side of Laura's left breast, which was hanging freely under her. Laura and Sarah gazed into each others' eyes for a moment, and then Laura gave a deep sigh of approval. Sarah began very soft caresses down the breast to the nipple, and Katie began to imitate the caress on Laura's right breast. Amy and Emily sat nearby, holding each other. Time seem to flow very slowly. Laura would occasionally chant to herself "I am Frodo's bitch in heat, I am Frodo's bitch in heat," picking up Jill's earlier chant. Then Laura gave a small buck back with her hips against Jill hand. Jill responded by sliding the first part of her index finger into Laura's anus, feeling the sphincter muscles dilating and providing access for further penetration. Laura's body began to tremble from the pleasure. With her other hand, Jill reached under Laura and began caressing her pubic, letting her fingers dance in the curls around the folds of Laura's hooded clitoris. Laura fell into a dreamlike state, both deeply aroused and deeply relaxed. The emotions she was feeling were totally new to her, and she felt overwhelmed by their beauty. She began to fantasize, and to speak and share her fantasy with her dear friends. "I am a bitch in the forest, running with my pack, cold winter air in my muzzle, cold snow beneath my paws. So fast, so fast I can run! My sweet wolf Frodo races with me as we dash through the forest. The trees are a blur; clean, good air filling my lungs and body; my strong hip and shoulder muscles let me fly across the snow! I am in heat for my first time, and my wolf is racing with me in our mating dance. He nips at my back legs, I nip at his. We leap back on our hind legs and push each other with our forepaws, admiring each other's strength and balance." Jamie swung her leg over Laura, laying herself down along Laura's back, mounting her. Amy unwrapped herself from Emily and moved down to Jamie's vacant spot and began to caress Laura's thigh. Jamie tried to push enough of her weight onto Laura's back to simulate being mounted by a wolf, supporting her remaining weight with her feet on the floor and arms on the couch alongside Laura's arms. Feeling Laura's body trembling with sexual arousal beneath her, Jamie felt overcome with feelings of caring love, and she buried her face in Laura's hair and began to nuzzle the back of her neck. Jill continued searching and finding rhythms for her coupling with Laura. Watching Laura closely for any discomfort, she slowly pushed her index finger fully into Laura's ass and began to caress her rectum. Laura was an active participant in all of this; her breathing became very ragged as the pleasure of the pretend mating flowed through her body. Laura continued her fantasy. "My sweet wolf nips at my back legs again, and nuzzles my anus and vulva. I lick his anus, and sac, I can taste his desire for me. My wolf mounts my back. I brace my four legs to support his weight. I feel his penis sliding in the fur of my belly as he seeks to find entrance. I lower my hips, helping him to find me, and I feel his penis find my vulva and slide into me. So big! The thrusting is so sweet!" Jill began a gentle thrusting rhythm with her index finger, sliding her finger in and out of Laura's rectum, and feeling Laura's anus fully dilate under the stimulation. With her other hand, Jill wetted her fingers in Laura's flowing labia, and returned to stroking the hooded folds around her clitoris. Intent on her attention to Laura, Jill did not notice the deep arousal of her own breathing, and she ignored the mounting sexual tension within her own body. Laura began to breathe in gasps as she continued her fantasy. "My sweet wolf swells within me and releases, honoring the promise of his mating.... His knot locks me into his mating. I stand still and pant as I am being fertilized... His siring sperm churn within my bitch vagina, finding the openings in my dilated uteri.... I am being fertilized! The wolf sperm travel with a great, good purpose across my bitch womb, and find the openings to my bitch tubes. My bitch eggs wait in expectation, calling for the siring sperm.... Wiggle, wiggle, yes! In! The promise is sealed, I am impregnated! Again, again, five promises of new life deep within me." Laura then began to arch her back, stiffen and cry out, but it was not from pain. Jill felt Laura's clitoris emerge from the hooded folds, and she responded by switching to a fast, deep thrusting stoke into Laura's rectum, her hand a blur. With her other hand she rapidly pinched and released Laura's exposed clit. Laura's back curved into a deep arch as her orgasm hit her. Amy had been holding Laura's thigh, and it felt as if Laura's thigh were filled with thick ropes of steel muscle. The bulges in Laura's calves were huge, with her toes and feet locked into deep curls. Laura was breathing in deep, ragged gasps, moaning with her overwhelming pleasure of Jill's stimulation. Laura cried out "Release, Jill, Release!" as she raised her head. Jamie responded by biting down lightly on the back of Laura's neck, pretending to be a dog clamping down with a mating bite on his bitch. Laura accepted the domination of the neck hold without hesitation, with complete trust that her friends would never hurt her. Jill and Jamie were so in tune with Laura's mind that they immediately knew the true meaning of Laura's cry, and Jill changed her anal thrusts to slow, downward thrusts deep into Laura's rectum, pretending to release sperm at the end of each inward thrust. "Oh, it's so hot, ..... so hot, .... Ohhhhh," cried Laura, as wave after wave of her orgasm swept through her body. Jill gasped with astonishment as her own hips rocked forward involuntarily and her own body began to orgasm in sympathy with Laura. Jill looked down in wonder and saw that the deep rhythmic toe and foot curling of Laura's bare feet were in perfect synch with her own moist vaginal contractions and pretend ejaculation thrusts, two dancers embracing in perfect harmony in the final movement of their mating dance, Jill embracing Laura's clitoris with her hand, Laura embracing Jill's finger with her rectum, two dancers, sharing orgasm and release in perfect step and union. Jamie released Laura's neck as the last tension of Laura's orgasm left her body. Amy felt the thick steel cords of muscle in Laura's thigh melt away, her calf muscles rapidly relaxing and her feet uncurling. Jamie licked the back of Laura's neck very softly for a few moments, and then gently dismounted her as Jill also decoupled. Laura stood up, looking very sleepy. Her six friends gathered around her and guided her back to her sleep site, where she lay down face up on her air mattress. The six women sat in a circle around her, Jill and Jamie by her head, Sarah and Emily on each side, and Amy and Katie by her feet. Feeling her friends surrounding her, Laura continued to speak her fantasy: "The months roll by and winter melts into spring and early summer. My bitch womb is swollen with the promise of the next generation. I am lying in the soft, wet grass in the cool of the late night. My birthing time has come." On hearing this, Amy lifted Laura's left leg and held it up and away from her body. Katie then did the same with Laura's right leg, resulting in Laura's body being rocked into a human female birthing position; her legs held open wide and up in the stirrups of her friend's arms. "I pant with the effort. Push! Push! I am pushing my first promise through my left uterus." On the first mention of the word push, Emily reached down and placed the palm of her hand across Laura's womb, pushing down and simulating a birthing contraction. She continued the rhythmic compressions of Laura's womb as Laura continued her fantasy. "New life is coming, push! Push through the uterus and into the birth canal. Push! New life is coming, push, new life is coming. Push! New life is here! Oh, he's so cute! Look at his tiny muzzle! He is so beautiful. My child is so beautiful! I lick him clean, and place him in my soft belly fur, and let him begin to suckle." Sarah, who was sitting at Laura's side, bent down and began suckling Laura's right breast. She was very gentle at first, but as she felt the nipple swell within her mouth, Sarah became carried away with emotion and she began a very energetic suckle. "My right uterus begins to contract, another promise is coming! Push, push, new life is coming, push, push, new life is here! Oh, she is adorable! Oh, my children are so beautiful! .... Lying in the cool grass at dawn, my birthing is done." Emily also was becoming overcome with emotion. She ended her birthing compressions on Laura's womb, and placed her right hand on the top of Laura's left breast, pulling up and making the nipple taut and vertical. Emily's mouth descended on the nipple and she began a strong, wet suckle, cupping the underside of the breast with her left hand and squeezing and stimulating the milk ducts deep within the breast. Under such intense stimulation, Laura's tit seemed to swell and fill Emily's mouth, and Emily deeply imagined she could taste Laura's sweet, warm milk flowing into her mouth. Laura reached up and caressed the back of Emily's neck, holding Emily to her breast. "Five pups suckling me, I find such great peace. I am fulfilling the great, good, true purpose of my life." Holding Emily to her breast, Laura let out a long sigh and began drifting into a deep sleep, offering her friends one last sign of trust. In the last of her conscious thoughts, reality merged with fantasy, and she fell into sleep as a mother nursing her beloved children and friends Sarah and Emily. The six girls sat in silence around Laura, in awe of what they had witnessed. All the young women felt so privileged to have stayed with Laura throughout her mating and birthing fantasy. "I think she had two minds just now," said Jill. "One mind deep in her fantasy, and one mind knowing that her six friends were here, that dear beautiful mind sharing her fantasy with her friends, trusting that they would never mock her about this." The six women looked at each other and nodded. Emily in particular felt overcome with emotion, feeling that she had been washed clean with forgiveness and redemption, and she started to cry silent tears. She had teased Laura into acting sexy with a dog, and Laura had responded by accepting Emily to compress her birthing womb and to suckle milk from her breast. Amy wrapped her arms around the shaken Emily, and together they went and lay down to the far corner of the living room. Sarah and Katie paired off and did the same in the opposite corner. Jill and Jamie sat silently by Laura for awhile, not saying anything. While Laura was fully sated from her experience, the other six women definitely were not. Amy and Emily were trying to be as discrete as possible, but were actively engaging with each other in the far corner of the room. The other corner was quieter, but Jill and Jamie were dimly aware that Sarah and Katie were sleepily caressing each other. Jamie herself felt very aroused, and had to stop herself several times from petting Jill. "This feels really strange" she thought. "If Frodo had mated with her, do you think his sperm would be trying to find an egg?" whispered Jill. "They might, I don't know if the chemical keys for finding the egg are the same or not, between human and dog" whispered Jamie. "I did see Laura with a maxi-pad about three weeks ago, at the gym showers. She could well have a ripe egg in her now." "I can imagine it happening. Her uterus runs along here," Jill whispered, vertically caressing Laura's pubic very lightly with a single fingertip. "The sperm traveling across her womb here," with a fingertip caress across the abdominal wall. "Her egg would have ripened here," pushing down gently with a finger of her other hand on Laura's left ovary, "and the sperm and egg would enter the fallopian from opposite sides," finishing the caress and bringing her two fingertips together and directly over the middle of Laura's left fallopian tube. "The swimming sperm and ripe egg would finally meet right here, and then ... red light, absolute zero. All the genetic locks and keys wouldn't match." "It's just as well, Jill. Can you imagine the hell we'd all catch if Laura birthed a puppy in five months!?" "Or a human child in 9 months?" "Or, what?" whispered Jamie with a frown, "something in between in 7 months?" "Eww, yuck, Jamie, don't go there!" "Sorry." Jill sat quietly for awhile, lightly petting Laura's head. "Such a gentle soul, Jamie. We're so blessed to have her. Without her, our spirits would be pale shadows of what they are now." "Gentleness balanced with courage, Jill. When Laura found me last Christmas, she opened an escape path for me by allowing Mike to corner her. As I ran for the police, I could hear Laura pleading with him to end the fight and just let her go, and all the while it was Laura who was landing all the blows. Mike was enraged with murderous intent and kept screaming at her that she was a fucking bitch. It's been six months, and I still can't believe Laura finally ended the fight by breaking Mike's jaw with a spin kick. She must have been flying! Good night, Laura, I love you... Pleasant dreams, my guardian angel." Jill and Jamie felt both very sleepy and very aroused. Jill covered Laura with a light blanket, kissed her goodnight and got up to leave. "Sleep with me, sis?" whispered Jamie. Jill hugged Jamie and agreed. The twins lay down together, Jamie curling around Jill's back. Jamie heard a faint whisper, "Oh, Amy!" from Emily across the room, as Emily orgasmed under Amy's skillful hands. It was a soft hiss, meant for Amy's ears alone, Jamie barely heard it. Jill sighed in contentment as she was held in her sister's arms, and fell asleep. Jamie remained curled around Jill's back enjoying her warmth and gently stroked Jill's breast until she too fell asleep. Jamie awoke briefly later in the night, from a dream of finding a new boyfriend. Her hand was still gently cupping Jill's breast. It felt loving to do so, but now totally nonsexual. "We've come back. We've finished our exploration" thought Jamie. "This night will be like a dream to us, never spoken of, never repeated, I'm sure of it. The rest of the week will flow as if this had never happened." Jamie glanced over at Emily sleeping naked with Amy, curled like a child and cradled in Amy's arms. "Well, perhaps one small change, perhaps the pretend wild vixen will be just a bit less bitchy. Ha!... Oh, Jill, my dearest darling sister, I love you so... I wish you all the happiness in the world!" Jamie gently kissed the back of Jill's neck and returned to sleep. During the night Frodo managed to open the door from Jill's bedroom and he came to Laura to sleep by her side. Without waking, Laura had curled up around him for warmth. About two hours before dawn, Laura awoke slowly from a vivid dream. Her eyes were moist with tears, but her mind was deeply relaxed. "It's their love," she thought sleepily, "It shields me from the pain." Laura often dreamt about her family, reliving the memories of her childhood. Over the last year, her most frequent dreams were memories of her brother Edward. In the dream she just had, Laura had been 13-years old again, walking on a street in her village. A couple of neighborhood bullies starting walking alongside her and were teasing Laura about how sexy her new breasts were looking. Laura was being quite embarrassed by the teasing, and then her brother had come over and put a stop to it. "Not from the sorrow, of course. But it is right to keep and feel the sorrow. It honors Edward's goodness. The pain, though, would drain the happiness from my life, and their love shields me from it." "Ah, my friends, you love me so much!" she thought. "I've lived with you all for years, I know how firmly heterosexual you are, and you know how shy I am with my sexuality. You re-oriented yourselves for me tonight, to help me begin my exploration. You love me so much, I love you so much." Laura gazed at the dog sleeping in her arms. "And now, Laura, you have some thinking to do. I know what I almost did with Frodo was wrong, but why, what principle did I almost violate? These amazing Americans, they are so loose with the rules sometimes, and now I've become American! I've started to see rules as restrictions, rather than as guidance, something that keeps me out of trouble. I have adopted the motto of the smithy: Strike while the iron is hot! It's useful for exploration sometimes, true. Sometimes, I need to explore first, and then only later do I understand the perspective of the place the exploration has taken me. I would be too timid with my frontiers if I did not journey beyond what I understand. But the principles must soon follow the exploration." Dances With Poodles "Remember who wrote the gospels, Laura, three explorers, and a poet. It's the right model for me. As God's child, I should face the future with the heart of an explorer, and the soul of a poet. God's principles are God's poetry to us, written as love letters from God to us, creating for us a place to stand. Be an explorer, Laura, but don't forget the poetry!" "The great principle of equality. It's called woman's lib here in America. When men and women meet, we meet as equals. We practice it here in America; my culture in Bosnia did not. My new culture here is healthy, not perfect of course. My old culture fell apart. There's a lesson in this." "Sexual expression should be between equals, and should be proportional to commitment. Between adult and child, or human and animal, equality of expression and equality of commitment are impossible. The child or animal will be victimized. It is intrinsic, unavoidable. You are God's creature, Frodo, I am God's child. Sexual desire should not bridge such a gulf. Sincere apologies, gentle creature, forgive me. In the eagerness of my arousal, I did not recognize that I was about to victimize you. Sincere thanks and gratitude, Jill and Jamie, for saving me." "Other things can bridge the gulf: Trust, compassion, respect, even close physical contact. A good master can pet his dog, and treat him with gentleness and respect. Remember Romans 10, Laura. God is a good master to me, owning me as His child, guiding me, redeeming me, and loving the trust I give back to Him. But God doesn't have sex with me, Frodo, and I shouldn't have sex with you. Yes, done, the principle has been established, the rest follows. I will never think to have sex with animals again." Laura began to drift back into a deep peaceful sleep. "Perhaps at college, I'll find someone nice, someone like Steve." Her last drifting thought was almost entirely from a sleeping brain, and came purely from her newfound American playfulness. "Oh, my dearest and sweetest friends, as pretend Frodo, you were magnificent!"