0 comments/  14091 views/  0 favorites

Love You Forever

By: Moonlight_33



As they shoveled the last of the dirt over the fresh grave, and laid the flower left my mourners over the loose mound, she stood there, watching, disbelieving. A soft rain began to fall, as if compensating for the tears she could no longer cry. In the back of her mind she half expected him to pull up in his beat up old ford pick up truck to collect her and take her home. But the truck was a write off, a crumpled mass of twisted metal, and he would never be pulling up to take her anywhere ever again. 

It should have been a wonderful night, a night filled with romance and promise, everything should have been perfect. Now he was gone and with him her hopes and dreams. An engagement ring had been found in his pocket and he had told his mates to wish him luck. She would have said yes. Yes to spending the rest of her life with him, yes to having his children, yes to loving him forever. She would still love him forever, his ring on her finger where his family had insisted it belonged, but there would never be a wedding, or babies, or a chance at a happy life.

Crumpling to the ground, she began to sob, digging her fingers into the red mud that covered the man she loved. Slamming her fist into the slush, all of her emotions let loose in an uncontrollable flood. 

"Brody, how could you do this to me? How could you leave me? I love you, how could you leave me alone? I cooked your favorite dinner, everything was perfect. I was going to say yes Brody. How could you leave when I was going to say yes?" 

She had no idea how long she had laid there, crying, wet and covered in mud. A pair of warm hands embraced her shoulders and coaxed her to her feet, but her sobbing had rendered her exhausted and her knees buckled beneath her. Strong arms lifted her, carrying her to the front seat of a car she had never seen before, and wrapped her in a blanket. Her mind was as numb as her body as she sat there not knowing who he was or where he was taking her. In the back of her mind she feared the worst, her shredded heart wishing for it. 

Emma didn't remember arriving at her mothers, or being carried from the car, the first realization of being at her mothers home was when her mother helped her into a hot bath, gently washing her face and telling her it was going to take time, but everything would be fine. She wished somehow that she could believe her, but it didn't seem possible. To Emma Christian, life was over.

Her dreams were filled with one nightmare after another. Images of Brody's truck rolling over into the ditch, his body hanging lifeless through the shattered windscreen. Another might like this and she would begin to doubt her sanity could hold together. The images faded she was left with a mist that seemed to swirl and dance around in her head. Somewhere in the fog, an image was taking shape, forming, solidifying, and coming towards her with slow deliberate movements. She knew that walk, that face, that smile and those eyes. It was Brody. She reached out for him; tried desperately to hold him, but the closer she got, the more he faded back into the mist. She stopped reaching and began to cry. Even in her dreams life wasn't fair. 

"Emmy. Emmy sweetheart. Don't cry. I haven't left you; I will never leave you. Have faith my darling. I will love you forever."

The sound of his voice was so real, so comforting. She reached for him again, and both Brody and the mist were gone, all that was left now was the darkness. 

It was ten a.m. before her mother roused her from her restless slumber, insisting she come and eat something. The last thing she really wanted was eat, but at this point she would do just about anything to shut her mother up and make her happy. She sat the table, staring blankly at her food and making swirling patters in her eggs with the end of her fork. There was a knock at the door but she didn't even bother to lift her head to see who was there. 

"Hello Emmy." She froze where she sat. She knew that voice all to well. Her heart leapt with sudden joy.

"Brody?" she spun around expecting to find the last few days had been nothing but a bad dream and Brody had come to collect her and take her home. But the man before her now was not Brody, she didn't know who he was, but there was something about is voice, his eyes, the way he was smiling. She shook her head, trying to regain some control over reality. He mothers coughed a little politely. 

"Emma, this is Jake Fern, he brought you here yesterday from the cemetery. He just popped by to see if you were ok."

Emma eyed the man a little closer. He was a complete stranger, and yet there was something about him that was so familiar. Brody was the only one who ever called her Emmy, and those eyes. She looked at her plate, biting her bottom lip in thought. 

"Thank you for your kindness Jake, I was not myself yesterday. My mother made me this great breakfast, but I just can't bring myself to eat it. I so much hate wasted food, would you like it?" 

His smile broadened and became even more familiar. Taking the chair on the opposite side of the table to Emma, he reached for her plate and utensils. 

"Well, I too would hate to see such good food go to waist, and I did miss breakfast, I don't suppose you would have any soy sauce for the eggs?" He raised an eyebrow at her as he stuffed a piece of bacon into his mouth. Her mouth dropped open, stunned. Brody always had soy sauce on his eggs. She was beginning to think her own thoughts were crazy, there was so many things about this guy that reminded her of Brody, but that simply wasn't possible, Brody was dead. Jake finished the eggs, cutting his eggs into five thin strips and mopping up the remainder of the sauce. Brody always did that. It was too much. He smiled at her, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and pushing the empty plate back. 

"Emmy, I know your going through a lot of emotional stuff right now. I lost my wife a year ago and my world fell apart, but if there is anyway that I can help you, I want you to let me know. Never hesitate to ask for my help. I have been where you are and I might be able to help you get through it a little easier. And now that I have delivered my speech, would you mind if I picked you up at seven for dinner? I hate to eat alone and it might help you to get out. Providing of course you like Italian food."

Italian was her favorite; it was just uncanny that he could be so much like Brody. 

"Well, I guess. If you like, you can pick my up from my place at seven, but nothing fancy. It's not a date, just dinner and company." He gave her a warm smile, a smile that was so like; no, she had to stop thinking like that. This man was not Brody and he could never replace him. The resemblance was nothing more than posttraumatic stress on her part. He chucked a little, writing down her address and saying he would see her then. Even the way he laughed and waved; she shook her head, trying to rattle lose come sense. 

At home she showered, took another short nap and tried in vein not to look for things in Jake that were familiar to Brody. She had only known Jake for an hour at her mothers, and yet there was something about the way he found her, the things he did and said. Brody had said he would always be there for her. Maybe he still was, but in what capacity? The thoughts were still floating around in the front of her mind when the doorbell rang. 

Jake was dressed casual, but neat. His sandy blond hair flicked back in an almost rugged style; he was quite a good-looking guy. Emma picked up her purse and closed the front door behind her without inviting him in. she barely said a word as they drove to the restaurant, which turned out to be her favorite pizza place. Another coincidence? She was really beginning to doubt it. When he ordered for her, ordering her preference of toppings, she was almost sure there was more to this man than met the eye. She had to know. 

"Who are you Jake." Sipping his beer he raised an eyebrow at her.

"I'm Jake Fern, attorney at law." She shook her head.

"Either you have been spying on me for years, or there is a connection between you and Brody."

"How could there be a connection between me and your deceased fiancée? I never met the guy. But I would guess that if he attracted a lady like you into his life, he must have been one hell of a guy." 

"Yes, Yes he was." They ate the remainder of the meal with very little conversation, but her eyes didn't leave him for a second. There were so many little things that were so much like Brody, but the time desert came, she was all but convinced this man was Brody. There was of course one sure way to find out. 

After they finished at the pizza place she invited him back to her place, picking up some beer and a bottle of wine on the way. They sat together, watching the television and drinking quietly, neither one knowing quite how to act with the other, or quite what to say. Emma couldn't stand it any longer, she had to know. Standing to turn off the television, she returned to the couch, straddling Jake's lap, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him soundly. He was obvious stunned by her actions, but she pressed her finger to his lips and hushed him as she kissed him again. He might not have been Brody, but for one night he was the closest she was ever going to get, and she need him so very badly. 

Jake seemed to understand her need, hooking his hands under her ass, lifting her as he stood, their mouth never breaking the connection, he carried her to her bedroom. With four bedrooms in the house, he seemed to know exactly which one was hers and where to find it, kicking the door open and laying her back on the bed. The dress she had worn was Brody's favorite, with a funny latch at the back that had taken him weeks to master. Jake reached around and released the latch with ease, sliding her dress off her shoulders so that fabric would not impede his soft kisses. 

His kisses sent a shudder through her body and she moaned softly. Brody was the only one who had ever made her feel that way, ever kissed her like that. His left hand cupped her breast, squeezing and fondling, while his right supported her head, his mouth locked to hers in another searching, heated kiss. Their needs seemed to be almost desperate, both torn apart by grief and loss, both needing the touch and comfort of anther human being. 

He pulled her dress down even more, his hungry mouth seeking out her tender flesh, devouring her like a starving animal. She lifted her body to allow her dress to be pulled away more easily, her breasts falling free, her chest heaving with lust and the desperate need for release. Lifting himself from her, he pulled his shirt off over his head, not bothering with the buttons, his finger's fumbling with the buckle of his belt in his haste. Almost violently he pulled the belt free of his pants, undoing the clips and pushing them down his legs. His underclothing hit the floor at his feet at the same time as his pants, kicked aside in an untidy pile against the wall. 

He could not wait to take her, pulling her panties free of her body and sliding himself over her, his mouth hungry for the taste of her feminine juices and the warmth of her tender womanhood. With a powerful tongue, he licked and sucked, pushing and probing, lapping up all she had to offer, his strong hands cupping the cheeks of her ass as he lifter her harder against his mouth. 

His cock throbbed, crying out with a need of it's own that he knew he could not deny for much longer. Slowly, tenderly, he kissed his way up her body, his mouth finding hers in a hot and passionate kiss. Her legs wrapped around him, drawing him closer, squeezing him against her until he pushed his cock into her with slow deliberate strokes. 

Emma cried out at the welcome intrusion to her body, opening her hot center to take him deep into herself, wanting more and more of him. When he lifted her legs over his shoulders and pounded against her tender cervix, she began to sob with yet another bittersweet memory. That was the position she and Brody had liked best and that he would do that now confirmed in her mind that he was Brody. Looking up at the man who was expertly mastering her body, driving his hard prick into her like only one man could, his face changed for just a heart beat, but it was enough. 

"Brody, I love you." Her eyes welling up with bitter sweet tears.

Without breaking his rhythm, he whispered,

"I love you too Emmy Baby. Please don't cry baby." She was bobbing in both relief and disbelief. 

"But how? How could it be you." He stopped pounding into her, rolling over and drawing her over on top of him with his cock still buried deep inside her. 

"I could not leave without saying goodbye. I have this one night to make it right, let's make it count my love." She almost laughed with joy. One Night. Why could it not be forever? She dared not question it lest this one night be taken away. She could feel him hard and deep within her, making a little comment that this body he's chosen wasn't half bad, but his previous body had a bigger dick. He laughed and it was unmistakably him. With renewed vigor, she began to ride him, lifting herself up and down on his cock while he bucked and pushed beneath her. They were in heaven at that moment, joined together as only lovers could be, riding the waves of their combined passion and love. 

Emmy cried out, arching her back and shaking her head wildly. She was multi orgasmic, one of the things he loved most about making love to her, she was always wild in release. He could feel her body shuddering and convulsing as she came over and over again, her hot pussy squeezing his shaft in pulsing spasms of pleasure, and he groaned, hot jets of his salty seed injecting deep inside her. He reached for her, holding her to him and kissing her softly. A small tear that she could not see ran from the corner of his eye and down over his cheek.

"I will always love you Emmy, and I will be back in your arms again very soon." With a start she realized what was happening. He was leaving her. She clung to him with all of her might, desperately trying to keep him there, to keep him in her embrace where he belonged. Sobbing, she pressed her mouth to his in a desperate kiss.

"No baby. No. Please don't leave me, I need you so badly. Please, no." Very gently her rolled her from his body and kissed her forehead, wiping a tear from her face as he looked deep into her eyes.

"I wont be gone long Darling. I'll be back with you before you know it. Sleep now my precious love, sleep and rest easy knowing that I will love you, now and forever." He kissed her right eyelid, and then her left, the image of him fading as sleep came to claim her. 

Nine months later to the day, Emma lay alone in her bed, rubbing her hand over her swollen belly, feeling the new life that was created in that one magical night with the spirit of the man she loved. Sleep would not come, and she was growing restless, the discomfort in her lower back beginning to bother her more and more until at last she could lay there no more. Rolling over and swinging one leg over the edge of the bed, she felt something with in her give way and a gush of clear fluids ran down her leg, followed by a sharp wave of pain. It was time. Reaching for the phone, she was about to call her mother when another pain rocked her body, hardly three minutes after the first. There was another, and another, and she realized there was no time to call her mother, she called for an ambulance instead. 

Wave after wave of contracting pain rocked her body as she lay back on the bed, realizing that the front door was locked and there was no way for the paramedics to get to her. The thirty steps to the front door were the most excruciating of her life, but she reached it just as the paramedic was about to knock. Opening to door, she found herself looking straight into the face of the man whose body she had made love to nine months earlier. She knew at once Brody was not within, the eyes were not his, nor was the smile, but his arms were just as tender as she collapsed into them. 

As he handed her the new life that she and Brody had created, she looked into the tiny eyes of her son and smiled. She knew those eyes, that smile, and as his tiny hand gripped her finger for the first time, she was sure she saw a glimmer of recognition in his sweet little face. 

"Welcome back Brody." There was gladness in her heart as she looked up to see the paramedic smiling at her. That he was here was only right and she wondered if he knew that this child was a product of his body as well. Somehow, she suspected he did. 

"Thank you for your help. My name is Emma, and this is Brody." Reaching out and brushing the hair back from her face, he smiled.

"It was a pleasure to help. My name's Jake, and it's nice to meet you both Emmy. Very nice indeed." 

Some how Emma knew that this was just how it was supposed to be, and she was happy. Now she had two men she could love forever, and that was just as it should be.

Love You Forever More...



Baby I am loving you to the full, just in heaven with you, can feel your warmth, your whole being touching my soul, feeling your exciting deep searching kiss as you touch my soul, feeling your love wanting my all, I respond and touch you too, as our kiss continues through and through.

We are just as one in our own special place, could be anywhere but just us, completely alone and enjoying the ecstasy of each other, given of pure deep penetrating love divine, wanting always for you to be mine.

You are so beautiful, so wonderfully feminine. So warm and so moist as I tease you with my finger tips and you pause the deep kiss and sigh. 

You begin to ravish me, lead me to the bed, I see the expression in your eyes, your stance and charisma, you slowly strip for me, so stimulating and divine, the way you remove and wiggle sending me in a frenzy, and when you are down to those wonderfully sexy undies, the black lace, sometimes a sheer silk thong to frenzy me and which I love so much, the deep red expressing all the passion I feel for you as I feel your body so warm, I sense your perfume so good, then you undo my shirt, I feel your fingers caress my chest, teasing down to my belt, unbuckling frantically - and we both know what we want, we both know what will enrapture our souls completely.

You prompt me to be seated on the bed, and I am so ready for you, you kneel there before me, beckon me with your small hands stretched out - to part my thighs and I am my all for you, feeling completely uninhibited with you because I know that is what you want to do and what I want you to do...

I see you head go down on me, then the pure sexual indescribable feelings within -and soon your head bobs up and down so gracefully as I feel the absolute joy and thrill of your mouth and tongue as it teases me sublime - you take it so slow as I stretch down my hands and find your firm breasts, caressing them, teasing each nipple with my thumbs as you so enjoy the suck of me, hearing your enjoyment of him , like you can never get enough 'Freddy', but then I feel you push him back against my tummy, prompting him, squeezing his breadth making him all so ripe to fuck, but for now to make it slow and wonderful, as you suck me more and more into a sort of wonderful oblivion You slither your tongue down along his length, tease his p-hole, push me back on the bed and smother my balls with your wet mouth, feeling you caress me there with your tongue, lick me there all over, watching your joy so good so wonderful. 

I hear your murmuring then, the passion takes your deepest of thoughts and wants, me feeling how you need so badly my fuck, to take you so roughly and I reply the deep urge I have for your fuck, just to touch and enjoy you everywhere, to kiss, to suck and feel you everywhere, just the wonderful sensual sensation of your lips pressing mine as we indulge in all the wonderfully passionate things we do

We change positions, you below and me on top, you are rubbing his head against your moistness, feeling him, squeezing and making me harder, stiffer, my pungent throbbing cock for you to have and to hold for ever, amen! - making him pre- cum and soon there will be no holding back, when our animal instinct emerges and we just do it, the deep fucking, you on top then me, the wonderful sixty nine position we can both enjoy the taste and nectar of each other together, then the kiss afterwards to seal our passion, to taste our all , so good and so very intimate...

Never stop baby, want that every time we make love and your very all, Baby, smother my face in your delight?, give me what I crave for, deep and lovely, tasting you through and through like you know I want to do.

Then you jump up on the bed, hardly letting Freddy go, you turn crouching over my face, and I smell the scent of you so absolutely enticing, my cock hardening more than ever - but you tease me, just gently swaying your gem over me, and every time I lift my head to taste her, you push my forehead down, squeezing my cock like you do, you bend down and I see your all - as I feel your mouth there again taking him all - then you lower and I feel the warmth and wetness of sweet gorgeous wet pussy sinking over my face as I lick her deep and thorough, around and around sealing her lips to mine, gently nibbling enough to make you yell out your wanting of me - feeling so good and wonderful, -just letting go and sucking all, wanting your all - stretching your gorgeous hind apart, mmmm so good, exploring you there, it is just I want you every way, want to fuck you there and everywhere till we find our waterloo, when we take the full surge our love can give, to compliment all that is our true love and feeling for each other.

The surge for how complete and gratified, the beautiful after- fuck feelings numbing our bodies as I kiss you this time so softly and so warmly, showing you just how precious you are to me...

"Time for seconds" you ask not so long after - then I know your are truly my sort of woman, for instantly the arousal strikes my passion like the surge of a volcano - and I want you again, the fuck maybe better that the first, we can take it even slower not before the no return surge comes, your fuck is my fuck and all I ever want, for you are my woman and no other can compare...

Love you forever more ...



Love You Forever Pt. 01



"Love You Forever..." started as an idea for a 3,000 word contribution to the Halloween contest and it turned out to have a life of its own. I have the complete story almost finished, so as I'm dedicating myself to the editing process, I'm releasing the lengthy story in sections manageable both for your reading and for my editing. The next chapter should be posted within a week from when this posts. I'm also planning on writing that shorter version, so if you enjoy this, there is more like it to come. Please spill your thoughts all over the comments.

*

What was it that was so fantastic about my Aideen that I could not let her go? My spirit, my shadow Aideen, will never leave me. She follows me always in my late life. She preserves me. She fuels my flame when it is dim red. And she haunts me. Aideen reminds me of the transience of my life. She, in her youth, and I, forever in my old age, will be together always. 

But I have one foot in the grave.

Part One: The Great Family

The child Aideen was born on the warmest day of summer of the first year of the new century, and I was born on the coldest day in winter, sixty-four winters before. She was born to a lovely natural farming man, name of Eoin. He and his family and lineage were local legends. Eoin's wife Cait was the only girl who didn't bow to kiss his handsome feet, or laugh bashfully at his wit, or claw recklessly at his flesh for the chance of having his handsome child and handsome land. No, herself was a fiery girl who didn't take any horsing or blackguarding from Eoin. And she could work the land alongside him, too.

Though, even such a legacy as Eoin's skips every third generation, for while he and his son, and his daughter Aideen, and the son and daughter that were born after, were of the same hard-working, kind-hearted, soft-worded and handsome way, his father was a crippling brute who died in a fist-to-cuff at a young age, and his mother a long suffering doter. Being the upright man he was, Eoin named his first son, Humphry, after the cross old brute. Most of Eoin's four brothers and five sisters escaped the family but some stayed nearby, and all were held in the highest regard wherever they went. Eoin could be found with his local kin and their families in church each Sunday morning. 

I was an old man when Aideen and I met, and she was just a babeen. Sixty-four years old and without a companion was I. I lived just a mile and a half down the road. My doggy died a fortnight before the girl was born. So as I would call over into the Connollys' house for tea or a talk from time to time, I would visit the green eyed little girl, Aideen. I would bring some small treat or pick some sours or blackberries from the side of the road for the baba on my way over. The look on her face as she enjoyed some sweet blackberry or pinched up her nose at the sours brought joy to my heart that I had never been able to feel before. I realized, in those moments, that I would gladly have married the first haggard betch on the hill if it meant having a family. But time had got on.

When I would arrive for tea at twelve, there the little child would be in Eoin's earthy hands as he stood behind the short wall in front of the house, or sometimes she would be in the cowhouse with Mrs. Connolly. Cait would be sat on the short stool with her head resting on the cows side, squeezing the milk out the teats into a zinc bucket, and there the babe would be playing in some fresh hay in the corner, away from the dangerous and powerful legs of the milk cow. 

If ever there was a child of the earth it was Aideen. She played in the soft grass, in the fresh hay, on the stone floor of the house. She was a smiling, precious creature among creatures. The Lord had truly blessed the Connollys, blessed the road they lived on, and blessed my restless soul with Aideen.

Soon the babe became a little girl with three dresses: her Sunday dress, her old Saturday dress, and her tattered weekday dress, which itself was once a new Sunday dress. Though none of the other little girls were as fortunate to have three dresses, no one would wager that Aideen was not the one who deserved it. She had two other new things too, a little brother and sister. 

The little boy and girl were be born to the Connolly's and then, queer enough, there was not another child to the Connollys ever after. It was a small family. If two children was a "gentleman's family", four children was certainly a "farmer gentleman's family", and it was the smallest one in Bonnakeen.

Now I would bring the littlest ones, names of Owen and Úna, the blackberries and the sours, and always be sure to shake the shy child Aideen's hand and pass her a coin. There was no need for her mother and father to find out. She would hold the coin, look at me and smile and run and put it some secret place.

**************

One occaision, I visited the Connollys by night. It was an October thirtieth and all were preparing the bonfires and making their costumes from rags and carving the turnip and practicing their pieces for the house calling the next night. We talked about the recent births and deaths in the community, the newlyweds, the widows and the widowers. We talked about the tragedies. I told them again about the blight on the crop and the blight on my family, the bad luck I had with the land, the stillborn horses and cows, the hens that plucked their own feathers. I told them about the blight on my family, the tuberculosis of my father and two sisters, the still born babies and my mother's stroke and passing, the one surviving sister I have in America. Since the famine, we have been a people in touch with mortality. 

Then we told stories of faeries for the children: the time old Micky Dan Morley shot into the wood with his rifle at them, the time they came into the Murphy house through the windows, the time brave and skeptic Eoin himself felt he was chased by down the road when he was coming home from the village one night. 

We told stories and I sipped my punch slowly. The whiskey warmed my bones, the sugar tickled my tongue, and the hot water steamed my eyes so that all was unclear except for the friendly voices of the Connolys. The warm blaze of the open fire filled my bleary vision fully. 

For a second, I felt a tickle at the back of my half-bald head, and brushed it away. Then, I saw a shadowy figure over the fire, a chill went through me as the shadow absorbed the warmth of the fire, and cold sulfur crept into my nostrils. Were my eyes getting the better of me? It wasn't Shep the dog resting on the iron of the hearth as I thought it may be. My vision so poor, my eyes blurred by the smoke and steam and tears of joy, I didn't know what I was beholding.

"Ara c'mere lookit Denny..." said Eoin hushedly, with dopey amusement on his face. "...What's Aideen up to?"

"My eyes fail me," said I. 

"Sure, young Aideen has cut your grey hairs with the knife off the table and burnt them in the fire."

"My soul, and why did she do a thing like that?" I codded, knowing the superstition well.

"My good man, it means you will be a bachelor no more. Aideen has locked you into a marriage with no escape," said Eoin "'twil be quite a marriage I should say," as he's getting more and more excited, talking through his laughter, raising his voice, trying to turn me as red as a radish. "What will the people say when I hand me daughter away to the old bachelor Denny Doyle!" Laughing harder, "I can't wait to get me hands on a piece of that land of yours, there'll be little Connolly-looking Doyls working that land in no time! Wwwwaaaaahahahaha!" said he, laughing quite literally in my face, his spit flying. 

"Assuming, of course, ye still want children. You do, don't ye Denny?" 

And so, good-natured kidder Eoin Connolly would not stop until he was insufferable. Cait tried to stifle him but he couldn't help himself from laughing at how funny it was that Aideen would perform the omen of our marriage. The thought of me, an old man, and his daughter together had him roaring.

We continued our visit into the small hours, but Eoin was distracted by his normally bashful daughter's peculiar prank, giggling and ruffling her hair as he drank himself as drunk as I would ever see in my lifetime. Could you believe the mischief on this night and it wasn't even Hallowe'en?

I decided politely and merrily to make my way at three o'clock. Poor Cait had to do the milking at seven.

"I wish ye'd take this one with ye," Cait gestured toward Eoin. "With his carry-on tonight. Wouldn't he ever stop it! I'll never be able to put him to bed, I fear."

I bowed my head and my cap at her and Eoin and walked down the little pathway to the gate. As I fiddled with the latch, Aideen slipped out to help me. She opened the tricky thing with familiar ease. As I exited I bent down to kiss her cheek. She grabbed my hand and opened my palm. Aideen reached into her apron and placed a weight of coins-- all farthings I had afforded her since she was a girl of four years. They glinted in the light from the fire in the house. Perhaps one hundred coins were over flowing my hand. I was put dumb.

"Well what is this for?" I asked Aideen.

"Pocket those. I've more," and she pulled out a hundred more. She was so quick and quiet that I had no time to do anything but pocket them and get ready for another handful.

"These were for you Aideen," said I to the child.

"Now they are for you," said she.

"If you insist, child" I thought these would all be spent on sweets and toys by now. "Yer a good girl. And old man could never ask for more."

She filled all of my pockets with coins and then filled my cap and I carried it.

"That's all my fortune Denny," said she when she had finished. She looked up at me and I could not forget the cherub face in the moonlight. She was proud of herself for something, maybe for saving an old man from begging with the beggars on Halowe'en night.

**************

Eoin had a flame growing in him that he needed out. The drink and the fire had lit him up like a house in the pitch of night. He and Cait slipped out to the barn separate from the little farmhouse and up the stairs.

"Eoin," said Cait, "ye have the look in yer eye."

"I do of course Cait, and isn't it you I'm lookin' at?" 

"Oh Eoin, ye have the devil inside ye."

"And he wants out, woman!" said he.

"I'll take him, I'll take him," said Cait, and no sooner Eoin had her bent over an empty whiskey barrel, unlacing her dress and pulling it over her head.

He pulled off his own clothes. His vest and shirt, his slacks and socks. He exposed his hairy chest and body, his inch thick black bush and his fat standing member. He slapped Cait's large rear until it blushed.

"Uh. Uh!" cried out Cait with each slap. "C'mon ye fecking farmer man, use them hard hands!"

He swung his club-heavy hand and stroked her rear again. 

"Ooo, ouch, ugh, Jaysus!"

"Ah yes, moo, me coo, me heifer girl." 

Cait began to moo and bello like a little cow, and her soft, fleshy opening dripped the clear, briny dew of a woman young again. She dripped so much with anticipation that the dew ran down her thighs all the way to her knees before the pure water evaporated off and left trails of sticky honey. Eoin continued to slap her rear and she continued to pour in trickling bursts. Eoin pushed his plump head against her quivering curtains.

"Ooohhh," breathed Cait, and she shivered and arched her back. Eoin gripped his wife's thighs, his thumbs hooked into the flesh of her sides. His toes gripped the floorboards. His strong arms pulled Cait back onto him, slowly and steadily, until her warm wetness swallowed him up completely. Eoin stopped when her arse backed into his legs and her tailbone pressed into his pubic bone. He made her so slick that his head went straight to the back of her chute. The pressure of his member on her walls was enough to make her shake and rattle in brief orgasm. Once Eoin knew he had her, he began to push and pull her off of him. Eoin pushed his hips into her's with great strength as well, his bull-like testicles slapping her clit with stinging strokes that heightened and shocked Cait's orgasm into growing levels of pleasure. Eoin started to ache with anticipation.

Cait was letting out little gasps and shrieks with every thrust, "uh, uh, uh, oh, uh." She took the extremes of Eoin's presence, the ins and outs, the stretching and shrinking, the satisfying fullness and the lonely emptiness. She bucked and moaned, grabbed and squeezed Eoin's testicles, hunched and arched; she heaved and gasped and drooled. And when all of the aches and pressures had built up inside of Eoin, he came. Eoin's tip was all the way back as the first spurt of come squeezed out between his head and her cervix. 

His bollocks contracted and dropped with each spurt. He felt his prostate inside him pumping as readily as his heart. His cock was painfully hard and growing harder as he came, stretching Cait wider and doubly wider as she was filled with his seed. Eoin retracted and pushed in again, and his cock pumped another ounce of milk into her. The third time Eoin thrusted into Cait, streams of the sticky stuff spit out of her and she trembled and fell to her knees. She slipped on come and found herself sitting in a pool as it seeped into the dry floorboards. It continued to pour out of her in a trickling gush. Her hair was all mussed, her legs utterly useless. Cait looked more like a foal than a mare, and Eoin, the mule, was standing over her with his huge cock still throbbing. 

Eoin helped Cait back to her knees. "There ye go my love." 

Cait felt the cream between her toes and felt it drying around her knees. As she opened her mouth Eoin eased her head onto his cock. The head scraped between her teeth and immediately filled her mouth. It touched roof and tongue, cheek and throat. Cait was so exhausted that relaxing her throat was easy. As the big bell-end pushed against her throat, she looked up at Eoin's blue eyes under his ruffled brow. She clenched her eyes shut and grabbed her husband's firm buttocks. She felt painful pressure at the back of her mouth, stuck her tongue out as far as it would go, and finally, his cock popped into her throat. She didn't gag. She just opened her eyes to look through streaming, uncontrollable tears at her man, and felt the come flow down into her belly.

When he stopped coming for a moment she eased two fingers into his hole and massaged his rock hard prostate. She squeezed his testicles and felt them contract some more.

"God almighty Cait!" said Eoin, as his prostate finally softened. His testicles laid still. His cock was at rest. Cait gagged out the huge thing along with some bilge and struggled to her feet. Eoin pushed back her hair and kissed her slimy mouth. Eoin dressed himself and Cait, then picked her up in his arms and carried her across the field. They were both so love drunk and sleepy for each other that the cold, silver night seemed to glow gold. He carried her into the house, up the stairs, and by the time he got into bed next to her they were both asleep.

**************

I walked down the road, red with embarrassment and affection for little Aideen, and for some time I didn't hear my stalker. In the trees glowing eyes hung above me, and as I paused to examine the faces of little carved turnip lanterns, I heard it. Like the dragging of a heavy load that turned into a quick rattle. I continued my brisk pace and the sound returned to its dull dragging. If I don't continue my trot will it strike? What kind of monster or spirit or demon stalks its prey on the eve of Hallowe'en? And to what ends? All of these things thought I, but I clenched the coins in my hat and refused to run, lest a single coin slip from my pocket. 

A poor man I was. A tight-fisted man now, I was not. I held on to these little farthings because each was a gift to me from my little Aideen, the child, and I was not to lose a single one. But the beast, it would not stop terrorizing me. My heart beat so fast I felt the pressure and pain and tightness of chest that a man of my age feels when he is near death. I had to rest in the middle of the road, the fields and trees were the faerie's place this time of year. 

I was alongside a field of the Goosey family-- one which every child and local knew well. It was Páirc an Brón --the field of the sorrows-- where a Famine house still stands, reclaimed by the earth like each of the twenty Donagheys that died there. I looked out at the field until I could distinguish the light blue grass from the dark hills across the river and listened to my stalker approach. I felt the cool wind on my hot face and thought about how it would take me, where it would drag me to, and what horrors I would see before I passed on to the land of the dead. Closer and closer it came, yet I could not see it approach. I looked out on the field until the shadows around the house began to move and strip themselves from the earth, they toiled and worked, their backs bent and deformed from the years of labor and malnourishment. They stacked wood, saved hay, and pulled up the rotten crop. The Donaghey spirits' slow, deliberate movements hypnotized me until the stalker approached and rattled again. I stood straight and the rattling grew quicker.

"Why won't you take me?" yelled I at the stalker. "Take me away! I'm an old man. I can't live with a stalker any longer." But it would not strike.

I continued to quicken home. If I could just make it in the door I could die in my own home, instead of in this cross old spot by the Famine cottage. After another quarter mile I was home. The stalker followed me all the way, but never took me. Perhaps the coins in my pockets saved me? I was rattling almost as much as the loud old beast, after all. And then I heard the rattling outside my door, incessant and loud, and a scratching on the old wood door began too. Yet nothing cast a shadow on my door's small window. I emptied my pockets into a vase from the china cupboard, set down my hat on the table, lit my lamp and went to welcome the terrible spirit into my home. I looked out and saw nothing. Then the thing pushed passed my legs, giving me a jolt and pallor. It was Shep, the Connolly dog! 

The little blackguards had tied some old cans to his tail and some chains to his middle. The cans rattled as he wagged his tail in the middle of the kitchen on the stone floor. A cruel joke to let Shep out to follow me, but at the end of the night I had a companion other than the bottle and we both warmed ourselves by the fire. I began the long count of the coins. Certainly, I had not afforded Aideen all of these. There were 959 farthings, nearly a full pound!

"Chrissakes," said I aloud. Nearly a full pound... all her fortune... her fortune... her dowry! I checked my pockets and had and the table for the missing farthing. Then I checked by the door. There it was inside the threshold. I must have dropped it as I hurried inside the house. The fortune paid, the omen made, and soon the wedding day.

I sat with Shep and talked it over with him all night until I fell asleep on the seat by the fire. A mischievous night, indeed.

**************

Woke in the dew eyed morn', crusty and dry from the drink the night before. But the terror was gone in the grey mist of this morning. I opened the door and old Shep bolted home. How the faeries never take a dog, I wonder. They meet other ends, I suppose. And the only true curses are from man to man. It's not the dead a man has to scare of in this life, it's the living. 

I carved a turnip for the spirits and put it on my doorstep. I swept the kitchen I slept in the night before, all warm and smokey and light-filled. I hung some apples from the tree in the garden by some string. The Connollys would be making five stops to different neighbors tonight on their house calls. They would go east to the Hickeys', then come west to the Breens' the Gooseys', my house and last the Corrigans'. They would dress up in their rags and masks and play games for All Hallow's Eve. Out of the curiosity in my heart I prepared a second game for the children, in addition to jumping for apples which they all know as the typical game to be played at my house.




Love You Forever Pt. 01



The knock came at near half-eleven o'clock and the children began to sing the song of the beggar and the faerie. I opened the door to let the Connolys in. It was Eoin himself, Humphry, Aideen, and little Owen. Baby Úna stayed home with her mother to greet any other travelers tonight. 

"Children, welcome! Eoin, you look like a new man yerself! And after all the drink last night!"

"''Tis good to be young," he smiled.

"You said it my boy. 'Tis a good thing to be young."

"And were you losing any sleep last night?"

"No. No, I did not lose a wink, in fact I had a visitor over the whole night long."

"You dirty old man! Who was it?" codded Eoin. "Was it Nance across the river, Denny? Ye had better confess because there are interested parties in yer house tonight!"

"Ah no, an old friend ye might know yerself." And the children shyly withheld their giggles and squirmed under their soot covered skins.

"By the name of who?" said Eoin?

"By the name of Shep the dog," and Aideen and Owen and Humphry burst into laughter.

Eoin turned excitedly to his family. "Did you rascals tie the dog and turn him on Denny? Ye did, didn't ye!" And Eoin joined them. "They really are a bunch of rascals."

"You didn't have any say in that I suppose, Eoin?"

"Oh, no of course not." Then he grinned. "Truth be told Denny, that's an old trick my sister who lives away from here told me they do to old bachelors like yerself. A terrible trick, in fairness."

"Ah but in good fun." I did not dare tell them of my hallucinations the night before. Tonight was about having the craic, as we say.

"Denny, you didn't light the bonfire yet." said Aideen.

"Can we jump for apples now?" said Owen.

"Yes of course children, but first I've another game I'd like to play," and I took out the saucers and the items. I placed on one saucer a bit of water, on another a piece of bread, on another a prayer book, another my mother's wedding band.

We blindfolded the children. First, young Owen reached for a saucer and got his fingers wet with the water. Then Humphry, a man I would not be surprised to find in the priesthood, took the prayer book. We blindfolded Eoin, who, like father, like son, took the water. Then we changed the blindfold and shuffled the saucers for what was to be the last time. I tied the knot tight around Aideen's head, pulling a fold down over her rosy cheeks to block out all sight. She was not to choose her fate; it was to choose her. Her father walked her over to the table. She put out her darling hands. One hovered over the prayer book, one over the bread. She reached down with her left hand, and as if the shine of the ring warmed her, it drew her hand to it.

"That's it Aideen!" belted out Eoin. "That's the one." And all the children beamed and laughed.

I was so curiously smitten with the child Aideen that I was ready to go set the bonfire ablaze and spend the whole night dancing around it.

"Now, so. It's your turn isn't it, Denny?" chided Eoin.

"Oh, no. I'm just your humble host tonight."

"No no now," said Eoin, as he tied the blindfold behind my head and pushed me toward the table. "A man can't avoid his fate, but he can know it."

It was all happening so fast I put my hands out to the left where I thought I, too, would find the wedding ring, but I did not know if I was here or there or in the middle of the room or by the table, and like an old buffoon, I stumbled on to lean on the table and grabbed, instead of one of the three items in saucers, my clay pipe. I was stunned and stupefied. I backed away to try to take another prize, but Eoin had already removed my blindfold, put my pipe in my mouth with some tobacco in, and lit it with a coal from the fire. 

"A fine prize for an old bachelor, wouldn't you think?" bellowed Eoin between roars of laughter, putting the tongs back by the fire. I gathered my wits and puffed on my pipe, pondering the events of the night.

"A fine prize indeed," said I, "Well, let's us all go to the bonfire and jump for apples." 

We went outside and Eoin deftly lit the wet bonfire to full blaze like a seasoned farmer could. The children jumped for the apples hanging from the tree and danced at the bonfire. I stood and puffed my pipe, letting the heat of the fire dry my withering skin, letting the light of the blaze blur my vision, mulling over the new omens that had found us. Aideen chose the ring; our paths were destined to cross, but it seemed destiny would come too late for this old bachelor. This pipe would be my warm companion for the rest of my life. And the omen of the clay it is made from, well, the horror chilled my longing heart. My friend Eoin's horseplay may have cost me dearly, and he had not an idea in the world. Tricks and treats, All Hallow's Eve, 1908.



Love You Forever Pt. 02



Check out part one for the whole story from the beginning if you like. As always, comments and ratings are more than welcome!

Part Two: Great Love, Great Loss, and the Great War

Years wore on since that night on the eve of November, and my visits to the Connollys became less frequent. My bones couldn't take the mile walk over the rolling road more than once a week. Humphry, or Fry as we'd call him, came more frequently to help me round up my poor few cattle for count and care with my old friend Shep. 

Fry was still a quiet boy, now of twenty, and very respectable. Still I sent my regards home with him to his family whenever I could and I still I walked down the road every so often to visit. But the best times were when Aideen came down the road to visit me on her way to the village. She was sixteen and had been out of school for years. Her unexpected visits were always my favorite part of the day. Sometimes she would make tea while Fry and I tended the farm, and sometimes she would stay long after Fry had left and we'd had our tea. The best of all was when she would come, have tea, and stop over to me again on her return from the village. She brought the bread and maybe some treat from a shop or a neighbor, and would stay until the small hours talking with me, eating stewed rhubarb and sugar. We traded stories-- I only had a few, but she had new ones all the time. Sometimes she would cut my grey hair by the light of the fire and the kerosene lamp and shave me. Sometimes we would play a game of hearts or thirty-one.

But the people were talking. I knew it to be true from the teasing I'd get when I saw her father, or when I talked to the people down the road. I never saw nor read a glimpse of shame on Aideen's face, but I knew. The hills of Bonnakeen were talking. They were talking over tea and whisky and beer about all the time that the Connolly girl, the child Aideen, was spending with the old bachelor Denny Doyle.

"Bless her heart, that Aideen Connolly, helping the poor old Doyle brother in his old age," says one.

"Aideen is the absolute life of Denny, without her he'd be gone yesterday," says another.

"Would you believe the sinful conduct between them? She, only sixteen, and he a man of eighty-two?" says a third. 

But they were all wrong, for there was no sinful conduct at all between us, and neither was it charity that brought her to me during the night. It was a true and beautiful friendship that kept us together so much and so often. Later that year, the voices faded as the violence in the Irish countrymen's blood boiled up and over and became the War of Independence. 

The Easter Rising swallowed all rumor. Hushed voices spoke of land and law and loss. The belief in omen and fate faded away. Violence accented the sudden, the unexpected, and the unforeseen possibilities in life. Catholicism became, more than ever, the national supernatural. The opportunity to shape the future was on the people's minds. There was a Great War happening in Europe, but the war that came home to Ireland was all ours. 

Fry fought for the Republicans, Owen farmed like his father and stashed an arsenal, and Úna ran messages for the boys in green. I will always believe that Eoin and Cait must have had some kind of prescience to give Owen the English version of his father's name, because eventually everyone would have to take an anglicized name in the face of the half-crazed Black and Tan squadrons. Aideen never joined the cause.

For me, it was not an option. I lived through the famine, I've seen the destruction of lives, and I was too late in years to share in the victory of the young rebels. Aideen and I were so close that our company kept us safe, for the most part, from the tragedy. Her closeness to me tacitly pushed her away from her family and her country. We were only us on a farm, on a road in Bonnakeen. 

************** 

One December day in 1918, she came to me at an odd hour in the day.

"They captured young Owen," sobbed Aideen through the door, "they'll make him tell... or they'll kill him... and none of us Connollys is safe anymore. And you neither Denny, ye poor man." And she sobbed onto my shoulder.

"Well what do you mean Aideen? I never wanted to be involved in this war, and I have nothing here to hide, save for knowing you."

"Ye don't know me well enough Denny."

"What are you talking about?"

"I told Owen. I told him not to hide the arms on our farm anymore."

"So they'll find nothing then."

"No!" sobbed she. "We hid them in the gullets here, on your land. The word is out Denny. Don't think that people have forgotten about us. Worse that we are friends and nothing more. Yer to be the target from the first word out of Owen."

My sorry situation was clear. I had been dragged into this conflict, living in this republican stronghold of Bonnakeen in the south, but I could still get out of it. Aideen and I spent all day looking for the tarps full of arms in the countless gullets on my old farm. We checked thirty gullets on forty acres. We trudged through the bog, the rusted thorny wire, the Queen's woods, the frozen streams, the overgrown lane on this dilapidated land that would make 1,000 countrymen cringe. We found the three bags, containing six rifles and five revolvers all in all. As we returned to the house, Aideen reached into the window of my crumbling chicken coop across the road and took out two boxes of bullets. 

"These I hid myself," Admitted Aideen, and well of her to remember. 

We walked together one mile up the road, and left them square in the middle. If the Black and Tans came to shake my house down, they'd find nothing. Whoever found the arms first, British or the Irish, could keep them. 

I was a reinvigorated man when Aideen and I walked my farm and dug out the awful guns, but when we got back to the house, we were both dirty and exhausted. We boiled some water that Fry had saved for me in the pantry and drew a small bath. 

First Aideen bathed in the pantry alone and then she drew a new bath for me, bringing the tub into the warm kitchen and drawing the drapes. She undressed me and washed my body. She washed away the dirt of the day and a week. She looked on my body for the first time with kind eyes, and I know it was not just my imaginings that I saw want in her eyes too. She heated more water in the black kettle that hung on the crane by old sooty hooks. She lugged the heavy thing over to me, dirty rags insulating her soft white hands and poured it in the tub so I felt the warm current convect through the cool water and surround me. She dried and dressed me and then the knock came. 

Three Black and Tan soldiers came through the door as soon as Aideen turned the knob.

"What the fuck are you doing here past curfew you stupid Irish cunt?" barked the man in charge. Pushing her against the pantry door, he repeated.

"Can't a good caretaker give her neighbor a bath?" 

"Not at this hour. You know the law better than anyone you Connolly scum!" The other two soldiers had their guns trained on us while the boss ran the show. He turned to his henchman and grabbed his rifle. "Besides, that's not what the villagers say. We hear everything," said he, dropping the barrel of the gun to lift Aideen's gown, aiming it at her feminine mound and pressing it into her pubic bone. Aideen muffled a painful grunt with her lips. He scrunched down her panties in front and nuzzled the tip of the barrel between her labia. She shuddered at the icy coldness that stuck to her flesh. As he pulled her up to her toes she felt the aiming spoke press into her hole.

Seeing the pained look on my face, the child Aideen flashing away before my eyes, one of the henchmen pushed me under the chimney between the seat and the fire. 

"Look away, you old bastard. Pledge the Queen." I crouched in the corner looking at the wall, declaring my allegiance to the Queen. I heard a few more grunts, a punch to the stomach and I started saying Hail Marys under my breath. I would've been killed if my man was paying attention, but his neck was craned way around to watch his superior at work, getting his on the job training. He thought I was pledging his Holy Mother the Queen, not my own.

Before the bastards could get her knickers off, a Captain in his uniform arrived. He burst through the door and started at the scene for a brief second before collecting his wits. "They found the arms down the road boys. We need them before the mics get them. Now, twits. Move." Aideen's man dropped his rifle and pulled his gob from her breasts. The three men quickly filed out in the same order they arrived, and the Captain followed slowly, taking off his cap to us to apologize as he left the scene.

Aideen walked to me on weak legs and I sat on the seat. We cradled each other. 

"Ye poor girl."

She shuddered, "I didn't think when you saw me the first time it would be like this Denny. We've paid so dearly for this war."

"It was the best we could do, my girl." Then I bathed her to wash the filthy feeling out of her.

We sat quietly by the fire as the real dark of five o'clock in winter set in. She sat on my lap for the first time since she was a tike. She turned and kissed my neck, and I kissed her head. Kissed my chest, then she got down on her knees, sitting on her feet, and unbuttoned my pants, pulled them down and took my soft cock into her mouth as it laid over my testes. Today was not like any other that I've known in this life, thought I. I must be in some other place. But she continued, she took my trousers all the way down and off, then undressed herself completely. I saw her young body for the third time this day. She stayed on her knees and avoided my gaze. Licking and suckling so gently with her moist mouth and her ruby lips. Her face was soft and swollen from the tears of the day. With the blaze of the fire at her back, all I saw was her dark outline. The joy and astonishment in my heart fogged my eyes, just like they had been fogged so many times before in the presence of this girl.

I felt it grow. I felt my cock grow in her mouth, slowly. She suckled so softly, letting the pleasure mount and last. She savored every drop of wet love that we shared, never swallowing a drop of saliva. My cock was bathing and floating in a vessel of saliva sealed by the dark and fiery lips of Aideen. Every now and then she'd let a stream of viscous drool spill out of her mouth, down my testes and onto the floor where she knelt. Aideen moved her tongue about my cock in circles until I eventually grew so that my head emerged from its skin. Once she felt it emerge she gazed up at me and the fire in her eyes was all I could see of her, the fire and a ghostly shadow. She let all of the saliva out of her mouth as she rubbed her lips on my cock, slid her teeth on the head, and more than anything else she did, she rubbed me with her red tongue. The tingling top, the wet bottom, her tongue rubbed me in ways I had never felt, soft circles and firm strokes. I felt rejuvenation, and those eyes watched me like an angel of fire's. She bobbed up and down, up and down on me, never looking away, never blinking. I saw her eyes transform to an orange from their usual emerald, and my grey eyes turned with hers as they reflected her gaze back. Sucking me and filling her mouth with my length and girth. She dropped her head down, slowly. I thought my cock had reached as far as it could, then a thin squeezing membrane and my head popped through and down her throat with a small noise.

Her throat was soft and wet. It released me, and then swallowed me again. Each time I heard the workings of her beautiful mouth and throat, and her eyes burned in to mine. She hummed and moaned softly. She sucked on the whole cock and then just the head. I could feel myself contorting and stretching, compressing and expanding, growing harder and bigger still. I took hold of her copper strands of hair and she took my wrists, pinning them to my sides, burying her face in me, opening her throat to me and shaking her head vigorously. The sweet sparks of pleasure made me jolt and her eyes never left me. Even when I looked away I could feel them. Aideen crouched lower and went down again, hard, lashing her tongue in all directions. As her knees spread, her engorged labia touched the cool floor, wet with her own saliva, and as she came up off the floor, a trail of thin drool and sweet womanly nectar mixed and trailed to the ground.

Now she bobbed, coming completely off of me and slurping back down, all the way to her throat. Over and over again. My cock turned completely rigid and stood taller than ever before in my life. She swallowed the whole length and girth of it. As she pushed her throat's sphincter against my head and pulled back she made the gurgling noises of a hungry sow, but she showed no shame or embarrassment. Tears boiled out of her burning eyes, which seemed to blaze more yellow than the orange glow of moments before, they rolled down my thighs and mixed with the potion on the floor. I got harder still and her efforts doubled to get the whole shaft down inside of her. I started to buck against her uncontrollably, feeling her teeth press against my scrotum and pubis. As she felt me on the verge of coming she buried her face into me one last time, gripped my throbbing testicles and licked my sac. I cried out for Jesus and Mary and Joseph to save us and Aideen wriggled her face around, nuzzling her nose from side to side into me. I came a stream that lasted through many strokes of the pendulum of the kitchen clock. She grunted and squealed with possessed passion and delight. I poured my cream down her throat and into her belly. She needed not swallow for her throat lay relaxed and open, and my cock was past any resistance as I poured down. Then she backed off and plunged down on me again, pulling from me an equal orgasm to the last, making my back ache. Further spurts ran down her throat and at last I was spent.

"I love you Denny." 

"And I love you Aideen."

She got limberly up from the ground and sat on my lap again. Her back was scorching from the fire. I felt her heat through my clothes on my chest, and her hot arse in my lap.

"My, Aideen, you must be the talk of the village. Is that what you and the boys get up to after the dances?" inquired I.

"Oh God no Denny. I've never done a thing like that before."

"Sure then how could you know to do a thing like that?"

"I love you Denny. I have loved you for years. I was driven mad by the passion. I wanted you to feel young. I wanted us to discover ourselves together."

"You aren't telling me that yer still..."

She nodded and tears formed again in her eyes. She guided my hand down to her femininity and pushed my middle finger in just a little. There I felt her virginity. "As Holy Mother Mary, Denny." spoke she, softly in my ear.

I was beside myself. My mind mulled on these things as she returned my hand to her stomach.

"Aideen..."

"...yes, Denny?"

"You are from a small family."

"We are only four-- I hope we are four siblings still, Denny."

"Poor young Owen... but I had a thing in my head about your family..."

"What's that?"

"How could yer ma and pa have only the four children, and them married so young and for so long? Was it that they were doing the thing we just did now?"

"Yes, that's the case. That and more. They did commit sodomy to keep a small family, but also... they went to see Fifka."

"Fifka? The gypsy? I haven't heard about her since my youth. She used to be 'round these woods all the time! She even had a hut just outside the village, chrissake."

"She travels. She's never too far from Bonnakeen parish."

"And you know her well, do you."

"Well, I remember once going to her with my ma' and pa' when she was by the village. I was supposed to keep watch and make sure no one else saw them coming or going."

"I should say. Yer family have built a great reputation."

"After my parents were done Fifka came out with them, and ma and pa went down the road for their messages, and I went with Fifka behind the hut to play with her cats. There was Whitey, Blacky, and a checkered one named Daragh."

"I should say those weren't their real names," I chuckled.

"I don't know, Denny."

"So..."

"So she told me about the reality of all the superstitions us Irish have. She said the superstitions of the gypsies are very strong, but as travelers, they don't have the same knowledge of the plants and earth as a people connected with their land have, like the Irish. That was when I was seven, after the birth of Úna. Since then I've gone back to her whenever she's around. I have come to naturally know as much Irish medicine, spells, rituals, and omens as anyone, because I have the mind to remember them. And Fifka, she has knowledge of many European magics. I help her find the things she needs in the countryside."

"Have you ever had Fifka do anything for you Aideen? Pesonally?" Inquired I.

"No, no. I take care of myself." 

This Fifka business was news to me, and the rusty wheels started to turn in my old head. But I could see that this babe of the earth had been affected by Fifka, whether she knew it or not. Aideen's fire was not only born by her love for me, but by something Fifka had done. At least, I thought. You cannot spend so much time with a magic gypsy or befriend one without something rubbing off onto you.

"So what did Fifka do for your ma and pa?"

"I don't know. It could have been spells. It could have been prayers. It could have been herbs. It could have been all three, but Eoin is very virile and Cathleen is still fruitful, and they haven't had a babe since Úna."

"Eoin and Cait, they always were so happy with each other. Perhaps love is not a bond between two, but three or more. Maybe the matchmakers and gypsies and priests are all that keeps a pair together" pondered I. But I was the old man, too late in life to truly behold its great lessons.

"Sure I don't know, Denny." assured Aideen. "Christians have God as their third person, the Celts had Achtland and Adammair, Eve didn't find temptation on her own... but Denny, I love you from my own heart, and the bond between us is pure, it's like we don't need another thing in our blessed lives but each other, and nothing but ourselves has brought us together."

"And what about Fate? What about the game on Halloween, the hair in the fire, the bleeding-heart war that kept you here tonight?"

"Denny, I know all I can about magic and Fate, omens and serendipity, but the only thing I truly understand is my love for you, and it's pure, and simple, and it would not be so if there were other forces at work. The forces would have us torn from each other, the neighbors' gossip, the violence, the odds, the luck of the fecking Irish would keep us apart. But we are here together and we are the only ones who know that this is no abomination. It is the two of us loving each other."

"I always loved ye' my dear Aideen." And I began to cry.

**************

The years went on again, and Aideen and I never left that intoxicating embrace. It was a moment of awakening, and we didn't want to ever lose that feeling that we brought each other again. Fry stopped coming to help; the wild reclaimed the farm. We had only a cow and a garden. Aideen's soft hands pulled more milk out of Maggie than anyone else's could. Her earthen hands always pulled the biggest carrots, turnips, parsnips, and spuds. I could still chop the wood for the fire that burned all night, and all day in the winter. I had dug turf from the waste across the road when I was a young man, so we had a shed full of the dead land's fuel. 

We lived modestly and happily with ourselves, but there was never anymore sight of us. I ceased visiting the other four Connollys as did Aideen. Aideen made ghostly appearances in the village and spoke only to the postman or the constable, never to a friend or a neighbor. She kept her cloak hooded and close, especially when she went to Fifka.




Love You Forever Pt. 02



Mornings and nights, afternoons and evenings, whenever we were close and quiet, we made love. She brought me herbs from Fifka so that I could be virile and sanguine, but I never consumed them nor needed them. Aideen in every way could make me hard, make me swell and make me come. She would strip me, knowing innately the perfect touch on the shaft and head, the perfect tension of her hands on my testes. She gave the perfect tinge of pain in my body, bringing anticipation in my stomach. She massaged circles of pre-come into my tip. I licked and sucked her clit. I nibbled on her labia. I licked her anus, my favorite part of her.

She bent over and I spread her glowing white cheeks. I smacked them so they would blush, and I felt the heat on my own cheeks as I pressed my lips to her hole. I kissed and she puckered. I gave her a lick with the flat of my tongue from her clit over her salty slit and across her hole. She began to masturbate, rubbing her hard, swollen clit. I kissed and sucked on her rosy hole. I spit onto the tight pucker and it tickled her down her sex and dripped off of her. She used it to lubricate her fingers. The tip of my tongue dared her hole to let it in. I tested the center then licked across the rim in all directions. My love for her was so profound that I could love the taste. We were so pure and honest and knowing of each other, that I worshiped every part of Aideen, especially her most private places.

"Mhhh, ohhh" moaned Aideen's precious mouth. "Clean me Denny. I'm yours forever."

I loved her taste, the dirty girl. And eventually her hole did soften and relax. As she let all of her tension go my tongue explored some of the pink inside revealed. She moaned louder and twitched, she shook and dropped to the floor on her hands and knees with her arse in the air in front of me. Burying my face between her cheeks, I bore down with my tongue and licked as wetly and deeply as I could. As she reached orgasm, I pushed my hard, dripping cockhead in past her sphincter. She came as if to beg mercy, shook and fell to her belly. She felt the coolness of the stone slab ground on her cheek, her neck, her breasts. Her hand stayed on her clit as she shuddered on the ground.

I went down with her, driving my cock into her helplessly welcoming body.

"Oaaahh yes Denny, take meeee." moaned Aideen looking at me with her side-eye. Her copper hair was spread on the grey ground like rays of a setting sun on the harbor.

I pushed my cock again into her arse as she laid flat. Deeper each time I pushed, and a little further out I pulled. Her brow ruffled and she squirmed on the ground some more as her anal pleasure gave her orgasmic aftershocks. I felt her warm pulse through her tight insides. Aideen felt my own pounding pulse. Feeling my sensitive head gripped by her wanting arse and dragging past the barrier with each slow thrust made my heart pound. This kind of conduct was so hated by the church, so frowned on by a jealous society, that it proved our love to each other.

I licked and bit her ear as my cock took her arse until I came inside. As I pulled out of her, more come spurted on her arse cheeks, her back, and hair. The white goo crept down between her cheeks as if it too craved to get inside her beautiful, panting hole. Aideen was exhausted and satisfied, as was I. She rolled over onto her back and sat up to kiss me. Dust and dirt clung to her back, stuck there by the come, forming dark, twisting, spraying designs on her, my Celtic queen. Then she pushed me onto my elbows and put my softening member into her mouth. She sucked the rest of my semen out of the tip. She pushed back my foreskin with her teeth and took me all the way in, sucking, licking, and stretching me as she pulled off. 

She smiled, "I taste me on you."

I kissed her deep. "I taste me on you."

These days we were dirty, devoted, sodomized. But the reason why would be more disturbing to an outsider. Sometimes, there was no Fifka to be our salvation. How could we be sure that Aideen would not get pregnant? Aideen had blessed me with new found virility and she was herself a woman. Without a blessing or a recipe from Fifka, how could we keep an innocent new-born child away from our monstrous love. Our love was pure. Our love would not create, our love would not destroy.

**************

Our young love never went cold, but as we settled into our reclusive lifestyle, I thought it fit to make preparations for our future. Ireland had been tumultuously changing while Aideen and I had hit our stride. We were now part of the 26 counties in free Ireland, and rifles were still reporting in the valley as the Civil War began. He had distanced himself from the violence and now tacitly supported the free state. He had been a good friend throughout. He brought his bull over to us in the spring of '22.

"Lookit Denny, the bull is chasing the poor calveens around and they are just a year some of them, it's not right, the poor creatures," said Fry when he came over with the bull for the mating of my two heifers. We stood in the east field watching the event take place.

"My boy, I've been farming longer than you. Used to be a calf was a ready heifer when she was eleven months, not fifteen."

"He's too big for them, Denny, she'll break under the weight."

"It's the bulls that are the problem, not the heifer, bulls are bigger now than they were before. Still, she'll be fine. You watch." And she had better be fine because we could not be affording to lose animals, especially on the tight schedule Aideen and I had set for the calving and slaughter.

We watched the big ugly bastard mount the young heifer and look over at us as he mindlessly inseminated her. The bellowing was terrible, but the heifers legs didn't even tremble.

I sighed relief and gave Fry a wise eye. I smiled at a plan coming to fruition. Two heifers with two calves in addition to the two bullocks on the farm would make six beef cattle total.

"Whatever is in the soil here Denny, those heifers take it well," mused Fry.

"The limestone, boy, the limestone makes them strong, and my land has the most of it on the road." 

"Maybe the most in the valley I'd say after witnessing that."

"Well Fry, one day it will be in your family and you'll treat it better than a man like myself can, I'd say."

We were preparing for winters ahead, times when I couldn't work the land. Time would come when Aideen, hard-worker that she was, couldn't tend our few fertile fields alone. Time would come that Fry couldn't be asked to farm an extra property with no gain. I decided an icehouse needed to be built down in a small wood in the field of the house, Páirc an Tí, and stocked with beef so we'd always have it when we were no longer rearing cattle. By the time Fry started construction of the ice house with me, we had seven cattle. Maybe it was the limestone for we had an extra calf as one of the cows had twins.

With the three of us working on the ice house, and Humphry working at the rate of three men by himself, we completed it in a single summer. Aideen and Humphry barely spoke while they worked alongside each other. Their faces undeniably betrayed them as brother and sister, but you would never guess it otherwise. They were both a mysterious type, not like the younger two Connollys. And a little more of the mystery was revealed to me every time I worked with Humphry, every time I lay with Aideen.

When it was finished, it was a building fit for the Bungard property. Seven yards by three, five foot high, and all buried. We dug a pond down at the foot of the farm, thirty yards from the river bank, two and a half feet deep, fifty yards diameter. Humphry would help us to cut and tow the ice from the pond to the house this winter.

"So Denny, what are you preparing for exactly? I'd guess it was to keep you busy, but then you don't need me to keep yourself busy, do you?"

I paused. "I thought you might never ask that question Fry... That's why I asked you to help," and that was all we spoke on it. It was done, and Humphry didn't insist.

Aideen and myself now had a plan. Our life of simple subsistence had been enriched by a future. We would improve our love and take it to new heights. It was time to visit Fifka. Fifka had given us the means to make our universe perfect, to dedicate ourselves to only each other, to make me virile and Aideen sterile. But she was not the one who delivered our future to us. I remember well my last visit to the village...

**************

...Fifka's hide hut was sitting heavily on the soil up the main street on the outskirts of the village. The cats hung around in the shrubs and debris. It was a grey day in summer, before the good weather broke. Aideen did all the talking. For some reason I found myself to be Fifka's skeptic.

"Child you should know..." Fifka said in her gypsy tones, "this is not a matter for me at all."

"I have nowhere to turn to, Fifka. Our time is nearly up." said Aideen. "I don't know what to do."

"Neither do I, Aideen." said Fifka. Her flat eyes dwelling on our distressed faces. Aideen started to sob on me. I just looked down at the dirt floor. 

After some time of sitting in Aideen's sorrowful sobs Fifka spoke up. "Alright, you ever-loving souls... I can't help you two, but I know someone who can."

"Please Fifka? Please do. Tell us. Who do we need to see?" said Aideen.

"You must go to see Reenan if I've heard you right."

"Reenan? Reenan, sure she's a witch! They all say it." 

"My girl, listen to you! Didn't they say I was a witch? And don't you know better by now Aideen? Don't you know who you are? You know the life you chose. You know the friends you lost and the family you lost, and you know just how much you gained. They say you are a witch too." 

Aideen started to well up with tears again. "No they don't?"

"Of course they do. Jesus, child." And Fifka picked up her knitting. "This is your life. Look at me now and know that you are looking into your future. As long as you keep living the way you are, you'll be like me one day, or even like Reenan."

"No one even knows if Reenan is real... She's just a... a myth..." Aideen managed to say. She was weak and hot-faced, huddled over like she was going to be sick.

"Sure and what are you Aideen? The girl who went dancing in the village, the belle of Bonnakeen is a whisper in the wind, and the whisper on the lips now is about a young girl who danced with the devil. No one sees you ever except maybe once a year out the corner of their eye. And all they see is a shrouded figure creeping through the village. Does that sound like anyone to you Aideen? Does that sound like a myth to you? Does that sound like Reen--"

"Stop!" Cried Aideen. "Why are you treating me like this? You taught me everything I know about nature, about the plants, about charms, about life and death. Who are you to criticize me? You're the witch! You're the witch that corrupts the children of Bonnakeen and wherever else you travel. You're the foreign monster that is destroying Ireland. You're the one everyone forgot to hate once the war started!"

"Child! Call me what you will. Call me a witch, a whore, a devil-worshiper. I've heard them all, but a foreign monster I am not. The true monster was born in Ireland, and she goes by Reenan. I'm telling you how things are. I'm tolerated by everyone here, and I'm loved by some, and I help whoever comes to me. I'm not a witch like Reenan is a witch. Reenan is very real, and she brings destruction wherever she goes." 

Aideen just sat sobbing. She thought over her entire past, which had been laid out before her. She let her mind quiver over the moments that led up to this one. Her thoughts babbled over these moments like a stream over stones. Was her love for me dragging her through life into some dark future, or was it still the powerful, pure force that it started as? Did she want more in life than just me? 

Aideen thought about Reenan. Fifka always insisted Reenan was real, but then Fifka insisted a lot of things that were impossible to prove. She insisted that the soul was in the lungs, that badgers are the lovers of the earth, that sailors had no free will. Now the problem was, Aideen had to believe that Reenan was real if she ever wanted to be satisfied with her life's accomplishment: to witness the absolute greatest love that ever existed, to feel its power, to become the embodiment of love. Aideen wanted to use her magical knowledge to do this, as her devotion and love utterly defined her. Her purpose drove her to this moment, to shed her mentor and seek help from another.

Reenan the witch would not be likely to help us for nothing. Reenan's magic would darken our lives, but if anything could overcome it, it was our bright love. Right, Aideen, my love?

"I know where you'll find her," Fifka admitted. "She'll be at the stone circle on the night of the holly, in eight days' time."

"I always spend that night with you, Fifka." Aideen had always taken the first night of the holly-moon for her and Fifka to celebrate together. Fifka was a holly-born enchantress.

"Aye, child, but Reenan in more holly than I'll ever be. She is pure druid blood, that one. Back generations her line was Welsh. Now she brings the history and blood of the Welsh druids into her learned knowledge of the Irish druid practices." Fifka sounded more dejected as she explained more and more to Aideen and I. This was a day she hoped never would come. "Reenan will be there, the ritual will take place, and she will know you are seeking her, so go to her then, and in the meantime I'll tell you as much as you want to know."

"Thank you, Fifka." Aideen turned to me. "Are you sure this is what you want, Denny? This is what's best for us, right?"

"All I want is for neither of us to suffer, Aideen. I want this if you do," I assured her.

And the decision was made Fifka told us what to expect. Fifka told us how to react. Fifka prepared her student for the next step. When we left Fifka on the last day of our preparation, she looked like a lonesome woman, a lost woman. The way she carried her weight she was bared down by it instead of in charge. We country people picture a gypsy to be the strong stout and adorned woman. She was stooped instead of erect. She looked embarrassed instead of proud. Her rags didn't shine like silk. Her silver and gold had tarnished like a cloudy day. She had certainly lost something by turning us, especially Aideen, over to Reenan.

"Why is she acting queerer than usual?" asked I when we were returning home. "Can we not go back to her?... You two will be the same... Are ye not still friends?" 

"I don't know, Denny. Of course we can, Denny... of course we will, Denny... of course we are, Denny," replied she. But not one of us would be the same as it turned out, and Fifka and Aideen knew it best. Fifka and Aideen had lost each other. Aideen and I, as always and ever, had each other well.



Love You Forever Pt. 03



If you are following the different chapters, welcome back. If this is your first reading from the series, enjoy and try out chapter one if you like what you see here! All feedback welcome.

Part Thee: The Great Dark Decision

Aideen and I left the house on a night in July to seek out the enchanctress Reenan. We brought our special kit, under the instruction gypsy Fifka-- pouches of sundry ingredients, watertight leather slippers, a walking stick. We crafted bog shoes with vines, twines, and pliable stems. We crossed the road and scrambled through the rough path if that's what it could be called. Through high grass, across deep drains, and through thick wood. We skirted treacherous bogholes. It took nearly four hours to reach the waste, Aideen helping me every careful step, me using my blackthorn walking stick for extra balance. 

It was a warm, close, bright night of the full moon. The grove is in a small hollow surrounded by a great bog, a bog so great it's called a waste. The waste, like everything above the road until the other side of the mountains, is part of a commonage. It's owned by everyone and no one, a young relic of colony days. There was no turf cutting there. There was no grazing there. There was no road or house around for miles. On the north edge of this bog was a great rock shelf dotted with sundews and bladderworts and hearty pimpernels. Brave golden gorse, purple and white heather, polly holly grew. Short lines of sallies grew where they once served as fenceposts years before. Carpet moss and blood moss clung and hung. Lichen draped around the bark, the rock, the earth. On the east and west sides were sizable cliffs and slopes. They were so unpredictable and craggy and covered with furze that the people of Bonnakeen had a name for falling off-- getting cliffted. On the north side two great rounded crags rose above us, tipped with dark silver clouds. 

I had not been here since I was a boy. We descended the thirty foot rock wall from our Northern approach. A small feat for Aideen, a dangersome task for me. Aideen made her way down and put her hands together in the air for me to step down onto. I faced the wall and began to climb down. My leather slippers that gripped the wall were perfectly tailored for my foot, and the resin that fitted the roughened sole helped me cling, but the rock was slick. My knees quivered with weakness, and I damned my age as I hadn't since the years before Aideen entered my world. My left foot slipped off the wall, followed hastily by my overexerted right. I clung a sharp lip of slaty stone with my left hand and gripped a sturdy gorse vine with my right. I thanked my aged and leathery hands like never before. The dead spines of the gorse would have cut deep into a young sprite's soft fingers, but instead bent and ground into dust under mine. My right knee was bludgeoned by the damn wall, and both knees bled, but I hung only a few feet from Aideen's eager palms.

"Come to me Denny," said Aideen without fear. She never shrieked when I slipped, never winced at my blood. She knew what to expect and knew that our adventure would not go too far astray. 

I felt her hands emanating her warmth toward me. To fall onto her, to step into her palm, seemed only the right thing to do. I let go and slid down the wall until my right foot was poised in her interlocked fingers. Aideen's slippers sunk into the wet, muddy bog earth. I pressed my cheek against the wall's cool dampness and she lowered my foot to her belly, her knee, the ground. I lowered my right foot, but it could not carry any weight. My walking stick was too thin for the soft ground. As soon as any weight was applied it would sink three feet in. 

Aideen tied her ash and ivy bog shoes on, and mine on under hers for extra sturdiness. Taking my stick, I whittled and split the end like a Phillips screw. We crosshatched and tied more sticks across it from the scattered trees, and used a sally switch that Aideen fetched from some yards away to tie in a circle around the cross sticks. Gorsevine was woven in between to make a bog shoe for the walking stick. 

Meanwhile Aideen tore and tied some blood moss to my wound. She knew it would absorb the blood and disinfect the opening. She knew one day when tobacco was low men would smoke it and think of better days. She took me on her back. 

By tying her shawl, my shirt, and a large kerchief of mine together, we were able to form a sling that I rested my legs in, leaving Aideen's hands free to hold the stick. She picked her steps carefully across the bog. It would be difficult to cross without the bog shoes, impossible with me on her back. There was evidence at the surface of certain bogholes that it would be impossible for a horse to pass here. Even some deft-stepping mountain goats left unlucky skeletons behind. Many others remained buried, victims of the greedy ground in this sublime nature. With no thickets or streams between us and our destination, and only bogholes and soft ground to navigate, Aideen took adequate care and still made time better than we were making before.

My knee pained me. The knee cap was fractured, if not broken. I lost myself as I stared down at the reddish brown and black pattern of the bog. I lost myself as I stared up at the grey clouds and the bright white patch that the moon hid behind. I lost myself as I stared at the looming hills ahead. We grew closer and closer to the green-black circle of hollies. Sometimes I lost my sight of it as Aideen turned away to skirt another great boghole, but our orientation always returned. The air got warmer and thicker and closer as we approached, and the first muffled moan of thunder shook through the great hills. 

I hated this part of the world, the cross old bog and the great waste, and it was only up a hill from my farm. But I looked on, and I remembered back, to a happier time, to a happier place, where Aideen and I first made love. 

**************

When I deflowered Aideen she was still eighteen, and I was eighty-three. It was the spring in May and we walked down an old bohareen that wasn't frequented much anymore. It ran from our road to the manor house and eventually to the main road across the river at the bottom of the valley. The Bungard family had to flee in 1916 after the house was attacked. Though their influence was still felt throughout the valley, their presence was nothing it had been before. We walked down to a sloping field surrounded by stone ditches and young oaks. If someone had a spyglass on the hills across the river we would have been a sight that day!

The cocoons had hatched in the weeks before and the golden butterflies fluttered from the daisies and dandelions, the pimpernel and the bachelor buttons. I laid her down in the soft milk grass and we kissed eachother gently. I pulled her close to me by the small of her back. We nuzzled and held eachother close. We kicked off our shoes and dug our toes into the grass and the earth.

Sometimes a cloud passed overhead, casting a moody shadow over the valley, absorbing the sun's heat so that all we could feel was the island moisture and the cool sea breeze in the air. Aideen tasted like the sea all over. She sat over me and taking my member, rubbed my head between her labia, over her clitoris, up and down. I kicked off my pants and took off my shirt, and only then she lifted off her light spring dress. She got me hard enough that she felt I could break her. She lowered herself onto me and a delicate furrow came across her face. She looked into my eyes for help. She couldn't break herself, so I moved upwards into her. Her strength to resist gave out and she let herself fall onto me. Her back stiffened and a breeze came up. I felt her nipples harden on my chest. She felt me harden inside her. Aideen sat up and looked down to see the warm glowing blood trickling around my abdomen.

She rose and fell, spreading the blood and letting herself open to me and the world. After a few painful moments she was holding me tight, biting me, rocking and grinding. I felt that she was the one taking my virginity. I came into her soon, and she mixed a pink potion as she ground on me. She was invigorated by my slippery cum and used it to help her climax. All the while I twitched and moaned under her. She was mine and I was hers, and she brought herself to a late orgasm as the sun burst hot on her back, casting her shadow over me. And as she collapsed on top of me, another nimbus eclipsed the sun.

Aideen's knees were muddied and scratched, her vagina sore and sensitive and brand new. We put on our clothes and walked slowly back to the house, up the bohareen and down the road in our bare feet.

**************

We trudged on the slow ground, finally approaching the circle of hollies as a thunderhead awoke me from my reverie. It was a large circle of perhaps thirty old hollies and a stone ditch around them. There were fourteen large stones on their side forming the ritual stone circle. At the altar stone was a figure in a green velvet gown with a black velvet cloak. She was looking down at the altar stone, preparing some kind of incense and elixir. Aideen carried me up to the altar. I dropped down onto my left leg and took the stick for support. Aideen and I both opened our pouches and took out the ingredients: acorn, holly leaf, green hazel nut, salmon eye, berries of Bonnakeen. Reenan did not look at us as her wrinkled hands took the ingredients from ours, examined them, and handed them back. Scraggly grey hair poured out of her hood and hung in front of her bowed head, obscuring her face. She took our holly leaves and placed each in a small mortar hole with fresh water. 

Lightning now struck the peaks and sides of the great southern crags behind Reenan. There was a shudder in Reenan's droning mutter that made it noticeable for the first time. She spoke some form of Welsh Gaelic, or Latin, or was it Irish? There was no telling. The midnight hour was approaching. The moment of the full moon was approaching. Reenan took the acorns and popped off the caps, took the bonnakeen berries and placed them in the caps, took the young green hazelnut and placed it in the cap. We did the same. She squished the pink juice out of the berry so that it dripped down the soft nut. We placed the amalgam fruit on the altar. 

Reenan pointed her gaze upward, but we still did not get a glimpse of her face as she peered through a shroud of grey toward the moon behind the clouds. She brought a withered hand in front of the shroud and placed the eye of salmon on her protruding tongue. Aideen and I did the same. Reenan pulled her tongue into her mouth, and as we did so she reached out to our throats and held them so we would not swallow. She removed her hands and with her blackened nails gently drew our eyes to a close. We felt her place the nut in our right hands and close our fingers around them. We saw red lightning through our eyelids and felt electricity in our bodies. The rumble nearly knocked all three of us to the ground. We thought we felt the first drops of rain, but it was Reenan spraying us with the wet leaves of holly. She placed the leaves in our left hands and closed our fingers around them until the thorns pricked us, a strange sensation to my hide-tough palms.

With the next strike of lightning I began to see. I saw the grove we stood in, and in it I saw a little black haired child in green and a red haired child in white. There was also a little fair haired boy in his oversized cap and suspenders. They all were playing in the sunshine, climbing on the stones, chasing butterflies and eating blackberries that make their mouths and fingers sticky and purple. They all played London Bridge and fell onto the ground with their soft hands resting gently on their chest, fingers laced and the grass grew up around them, the briars grew in from the fringes of the circle around them, and the snow fell on them, and when it melted away the next year only their small withered skins and bones remained.

I felt a thud and opened my eyes as soft rain started to pour down. I looked to my right and saw Aideen looking over at me, smiling --beaming-- at me so that her cheekbones looked like little crab-apples.

"Rise, children," said Reenan.

I think we had both forgotten where we were completely, and our hearts were filled with anxiety again to face the witch.

"Swallow the eye," said Reenan.

"Is it done?" asked Aideen to Reenan.

"The bed is almost made. So when it is time to sleep you may, but first you must chew and swallow the eye." Reenan's voice was surprisingly clear and friendly. It did not sound like the raspy grumbling we heard from her mouth before.

We chewed the gummy thing and swallowed it down. 

"Now you must crack the nut and eat it." 

We uncapped the hazelnut, put it in our teeth, and popped open the soft shell. We used our teeth and tongue to separate the starchy husk from the watery meat, chewed and swallowed. 

"Now you must eat the holly leaf."

We placed the thorny leaves delicately in our mouths and chewed, avoiding the piercing of the barbs. The bitter tea taste filled our mouths and cleansed the salmon from our palate.

"There's only one more thing..." Reenan she sweetly, as she pushed back her black velvet cowl. Her appearance was shocking. Though she had gray hair down to her waist, she had long roots of shiny black. She had one glassy gray eye, forever opened to its limits, with crow's feet that branched across the side of her face to her ear, while her other eye was a sultry dark blue beauty. I noted several more things of the same peculiarity. Her nails had healthy quicks and half-moons, but they grew out into scraggly claws, and her beautiful smile had in it just one snaggled canine. I imagined what surprises distinguished the supple body underneath her garb.

"Maybe you'll see, faithful Denny Doyle," said Reenan.

Aideen looked at both of us with questions written all over her face, but that confused look soon turned to concern and jealously as she saw that I was staring at Reenan's body, and she was coming around the altar on my side. Aideen was able to perceive all that was happening between us three, and as if Reenan's garb was suddenly transparent, we could see her nakedness. Her body was supple, indeed. Medium breasted, short black pubic hair and a pale, flat stomach. But from her belly button a spiraling scar grew and turned black. So too did crooked spirals grow from her nipples, and branching scars grew down her legs. It was mesmerizing to both Aideen and I and Reenan smiled as if to say "What fun is the Holly moon if I can't enjoy the festivities of the flesh myself?" Aideen was jolted from her hypnosis.

"What was the one thing Reenan?" asked Aideen. But Reenan persisted. "What was the one thing we had to do to finalize the act?"

Reenan stopped, surprised by Aideen's will. "Very well, persistent child Aideen," said she as she glided back to her side of the altar. "Before I will give you further instruction you must prove to me your love for each other." 

"How do you mean?" asked I.

"Your girl. She knows, Denny."

Aideen looked at me softly; she let her hair fall down over her shoulders. Her eyes were helpless and ashamed but she knew better than I that we had to follow through with Reenan's wishes. She unbuttoned her tweed jacket fashioned for a man. 

It was a jacket she had found it year before on a stone by the small waterfall down the road from our house. A bar of soap sat up in the stream, held back by a ledge of a rock from coming over the edge off the four foot drop and plunking down into the little pool below. It had the effect of making more bubbles than usual in the pool. Aideen took the tweed jacket and dropped it in the pool. She scrubbed and dunked and wrung it out in the soapy water. She draped it over a nearby branch and started to wash herself in the cool clean water, first her hands, then her face, then her arms, her armpits, her feet and ankles up to her knee. The water was dripping down her chest and breasts making her dress all wet. It was such a dreary day turning drearier, but the thought never came to mind that the tinker who surely left his best coat would be thinking of it soon, and would be turning back to get it. Aideen took off her old rags so that she was in the nude. Some ferns obscured her from sight if someone was coming down the road, but if someone were to pass her by they could not possibly miss this water goddess bathing alongside them. She did not think of that either. 

She washed herself, spending time between her legs with her slender fingers parting her throbbing cold pink lips. The nipples on her swooped chest stood out in the same cold pink as did her rosy cheeks and mouth. Maybe a passerby would think she was roses in the snow. Likely not. The snow had not begun to fall and springtime did not linger. She washed between the flesh of her bum and around her peachy hole, and as she was ready to finally enter one opening or the other she heard strolling steps and the bark of a dog. The child Aideen poked her head through the ferns and saw coming over the hilleen two well-dressed tinker vagabonds, one in a coat and one without, and a wolfhound walking beside them. One twirled a twist of sally branch and the other held a hazel walking stick, never touching it to the ground. 

They were barely in eyeshot, so Aideen put on the fashionable tweed and quickly crossed the road as far over as she could without being pricked by a briar. With the slight bend in the road they could not see her walking two hundred yards ahead, and in her bare feet they couldn't hear her. Once she found an opening in the brush, she hopped the ditch into our western field, from there she ran with her knees well bent like a hare, her sheer feet avoiding cowdung in the soft wet grass. She hopped over the garden stile, walked to the porch and opened the door gingerly with such great excitement and pleasure and humiliation all at once. 

Here she was before me, all wet in an expensive tweed with her arse showing out the back, her hands deep in the hip pockets, her hair draped over the broad shoulders. A sight of beauty and passion and she hung the jacket and warmed herself by the fire and her cold body was for me that night. What a girl was Aideen, what a blackguard. I would love to have seen the tinker's face when he saw the old dress in the place of his fine coat. It would bring him half the warmth and none of the respect of the tweed. And somehow our house was undisturbed by the tinkers that year, while all the other homes in the house were being scavenged in the night or solicited in the day by some con tinker or other.

It was that wet, embarrassed passion that appeared to me now as the mist fell on her rosy hair. She undressed, and so did I. Her fair unbridled bosom glowed between the lapels and struck my soul so that it was her beauty that was the lightning and my rolling blood that was the thunder. I began to strip. I took my raggy coat and shirt off my bony shoulders, but when I stooped over I felt the pain in my knee. Aideen let her dress fall around her shoulders and down to the ground where it gathered around her bog shoes. She wiggled one small foot out of her slipper, the other one out of the other so that she was only in her panties and socks. 

Little beads of water, suspended on her copper wire, began to penetrate its shine. It soaked into her locks, making them straighten and darken. Reenan stood poised with her wrinkled hands gripping the altar and holding her head before her body. Her blue eye darted back and forth from one of us to the other, and each of us could feel when the eyes were on us. Aideen felt the gaze and felt a warm empowerment. I felt the gaze and felt a cold fear.

Aideen felt only the magical power of our love on this stage by the altar in the circle in the valley of waste. I felt far from home, far from our little open fire in the smoky house on the road down the hill. With Reenan beaming her mysterious gaze at her, Aideen took the opportunity to wash all my worries away. She bent at the knee and closed her eyes, biting her lip so hard it turned white. With her left hand she grabbed and pulled on her labia through her panties. Then itslid down her panties, over her clit and into her pussy. Two fingers stayed there, massaging her sensitive button with small wet circles. Her knees bent together and her back arched as if to keep the skillful hand at bay, but she pulled from herself a twitching orgasm and little puppy barks. Slowly she returned to us from her trance but she was still drugged by desire. She took two steps toward me, keeping her fingers inside of her. The blood pounded back into her bitten lip so that it hung swollen like a spring fuchsia. 




Love You Forever Pt. 03



She slipped two steamy fingers from her fragrant sex and put them on my tongue. Instantly I remembered why we came here, why we took part in the ceremony, and why we needed Reenan's help. I tasted my purpose, I lived a life, I loved a love. Her eyes met mine as I sucked her fingers and she was my Aideen. It was like we were home alone where we wanted to be. 

She helped me up onto the stone altar and removed my bog shoes. She pulled my pants and shorts down past my purple knee and laid me down on my back gingerly. She took off her socks, took off her panties, bent over and took a sip of holly tea from a mortar on the altar. Then she bent over my stiffening member and let some drops drip over it, swallowing the remainder. The cool sensation of the tea awakened my senses even more as Aideen slid a finger into my hole and took my member in her mouth. I was instantly hard as the stone I laid upon. She took me all the way down her throat and came off of it over and over, never once gagging or pausing for breath. She was like a woman possessed, determined to take me inside her as deep as possible. She came off of me with prolonged revelry in her face and all over her body. She could feel her throat stretch and slide over my shaft, my thick head, and off the tip, then her tongue did the same, licking the crack of the head. Her grazing teeth and swollen lips followed. When she stood above me, a two foot trail of holly tea, fish eye, precome, and saliva trailed from her lip to tip, and we held a gaze until it bowed and broke under its own weight. She slid the finger from me and entered it into her mouth, relishing even the dirtiest representation of my being.

She mounted me on the altar. Her hair was now heavy and dark, dripping over her shoulders and back like slimy green moss in a trickling waterfall. My thick cock slid into her wet tightness and she looked to the sky, past the clouds and the brightness of the moon. Her stare found bright Venus. She leaned on my chest with her hands and rested her weight there so as not to cause my knee pain. I looked at her, glowing and elegant and rugged all at once like a wolf of Venus, and my eyes followed hers to the wandering star. I reached up and fondled her breasts, her nipples that dripped warm water. She moved only with her gyrating hips. Her clit rubbed on me, I touched all parts of her softness inside. She dripped down my testes onto the altar and we came together, following the planet on its path to a new position in the shuddering universe. She leaned over and kissed my lips and lay on top of me until I shrank inside of her full nest of love.

After some moments had passed and we were resting in the storm, Reenan broke the silence.

"You certainly love him, child. I could feel it running through you, you helped him to find Gwena with you," her voice carrying an unsettling youth and wisdom. 

"Gwena?" asked Aideen.

"The wandering star, child, the white swan. Ye have a future indeed, a wandering future and a steady past, a vine on a wall on a house on firm ground."

"Your man though, what's wrong with him? Show us you love her, Denny. Show us the love isn't gone. A man has given his eyes to me for true love. A man has given his member to a lover who went across the sea. I know many a man who has given his soul for a single night of bliss. And you, you won't even sacrifice a worthless knee. 

"You give nothing Denny, you receive and you give nothing. You are a doting old man with nothing to give, not even a future. You are not long for this world without me, Denny. Why should I give your future to you? Why should I fill a dry well with fresh spring water? Why don't I let it run dry? Why don't I poison your well, you wretched old man? Show me your true love for the child, Aideen. Show me why my fellow enchantress should dedicate all her life to cultivating the love between you."

I wasn't frightened. I wasn't insulted. I was filled with bravery from Aideen's caress. I pushed her onto her back so that she reclined and pulled my legs from under her. I got my head between her legs and licked myself away as it trickled from her. I nibbled and sucked her little fold, I licked up and down her slit, all the way down to her puckering hole and back up to flick her clit. I buried my chin in her and I sucked and spit on her love. I pulled myself up to her and plunged my stiffness inside her pussy. I thrusted to her harder than I had ever before. Our bodies clashed and resonated. I fucked her to the back of her canal. I held her by the tits and squeezed. We both yelped and panted as our carnal act was met with prevailing love. Aideen's head lay back off the altar, looking ahead at the inverted dreamscape of stone and grass and holly. A bolt of lightning clashed in front of her eyes, striking the ground before her. We felt the sound and light and electricity at once, as one indistinguishable force that consumed the moment. 

Our hair stood on edge, and so did Reenan's. How Reenan did not conduct the strike from the wet ground puzzled me, but I wasn't confident that it wasn't just luck. She moved to where the lightning had struck in front of Aideen and me. From under her cloak she produced a smooth wooden phallus. It had several holly leaves and berries on it. She lifted her dress with blackened fingers, showing her young, raven mound. She used her old hand to part herself and reveal her pink hole. And with the young hand she pushed the live holly into herself. We both watched the thorny leaves bend back and scrape past her flesh. The half-foot tool entered in its entirety. She ground it like pestle in mortar and twisted it in full rotation. She pulled it all the way out. The residue of sex and dark blood tipped the thorns. She started to push and pull vigorously. A knob at the bottom curved up to rub her clit. I never slowed my pace with Aideen.

Reenan took such pleasure from watching us I did wonder who I was aiming to please, but Aideen and I fixed our eyes on eachother once again. We kissed and sucked and I hammered my hips into hers. My knee felt like wet powder as pain shot all the way down to my foot and up to my ears. 

"Yes Denny, yes," cried Aideen. "Fuck me Denny, please, come. Please come to me Denny," and her brow twisted and her eyes squinted and her lips frowned like she would break under me.

"Fuck!" screamed I, in agony and ecstasy. "Fuck Aideen, I'll come to you. I'll give you my love," and I thrusted harder, faster, and spit flew from my gasping mouth.

Aideen became so tense she was frozen, and I fucked her stone-hard body, and as my cock stiffened as hard as her pussy was tight, we both came and came again in shudders and spasms and bursts of liquid and noise.

Still, Reenan was not satisfied. I rolled my love over and brought her to her knees. Now, fully on my knees I entered her from behind, knowing that after the passion subsided, my leg would be doomed to uselessness. I was still coming as I entered her again. She shook too, and I kept on, needing her, giving to her. I pounded at her door until her hands slipped from under her and she fell to her tits and face and her pussy contracted so strongly and forcefully that no more come could squeeze through my strangled cock. I leaned over my Aideen, she turned her head to me, and we kissed, wetly rubbing our tongues as I entered her arse. Her pussy continued to contract as she came from the anal pleasure. Her pretty ring was strangely easier to move about in than her pussy when left it, which was now impenetrable.

She lifted herself to her hands once more as I held her hair near the scalp and thrusted firmly in rhythm. We both watched Reenan touch herself as I fucked my love in her dirtiest place. I looked Reenan dead in the eye, letting out nasal grunts with every thrust, grinding my knee into the stone a little more. Aideen fingered her clit, now huge and agitated like a plump red currant, covered in our come. She flexed her ring on me, clawed at my aching balls, tried to buck back on me to fuck herself but I refused to let her. Reenan wanted me to bear the pain and the effort. I held her still and fucked her hard and intently, grabbing her all over, holding her head still by her hair. I entered her arse and exited completely, all the while staring Reenan in her grey eye, which remained awake while her blue one stayed serenely shut. As I came for the last time, I pushed myself deep inside my love Aideen and gave her shaking anal climax, making her scream out for me to save her from it. I pulled out as I came, and caught her as she fell to her stomach, shaking, quietly grunting, staring straight ahead at nothing. Everything, her throat, her wind pipe, her jaw, her vagina and her sphincter clenched and released repeatedly. She let out a short burst of air but could not inhale. I was looking at Reenan with triumph when her eye started sucking in the wrinkles of her face and turning dark blue.

I looked down at spasming, dilating, contracting Aideen and realized that something was gravely wrong.



Love You Forever Pt. 04



Part Four: Great Hope and Great Dread

I looked at a different Reenan, seductively adjusting herself in her new beauty and I turned my love onto her back. Her eyes were beginning to roll and her spasms becoming more few.

"You did this! You did this you witch!" Screamed I in the witch's face.

"'Twasn't me Denny, you did that yerself," said Reenan, softly sing-song. I could have murdered the coy betch.

"Don't be cute with me Reenan, what did you do?"

"It was yerself I'm telling you. It was necessary, too" And she held her holly phallus to her lips, suckling on the tip like a pacifier, lapping the red from the leaves and peering up at me. "Ye did a proper job I must say."

I looked down at Aideen. I tried to save her. She was turning blue, my queen. I pushed down on her lungs, squeezing the last air out, but when I released, she did not inhale. I listened to her heart, which was slow in pace and low in pressure. I began to panic and cry. 

I was an old man with a shattered leg, my lover nearly gone, and stuck in the holly circle with a witch and no escape. I leaned over to kiss her lips for the last time, and with her mouth agape I saw the problem-- her pretty tongue was doubled over in the back of her mouth. I reached in and pulled the little muscle from her throat. I pounded her chest again and gave her my breath.

"She's coming back to us!" I shouted. "She's coming back."

Reenan just looked at me with that tool in her hand and smiled devilishly.

Aideen opened her eyes, and I had her once more. 

In the small moments now when she is again far from me, I am reminded of how helplessly poor I was without her, and how rich I am with her.

"Denny..." cooed she.

"Yes my love?"

"I want you to suck the cream from my arse and feed it me."

She was back and in a silly bliss. So bold, my queen Aideen. I went down between her legs and lifted them on my shoulders. I opened my mouth around her hole and she pressed out a stream of come. I let her down and I kissed her deep, transferring all my seed to her mouth. She lapped it up, smiled, and smacked lips.

"I love you Denny."

"I love you too Aideen."

"Forever?"

"Forever." And I began to cry.

**************

Reenan resembled something of a young woman again, but the signs of her aging were already beginning to show.

"You are indeed fated lovers. And you, Aideen, are a mystic of Fifka, without doubt. She wouldn't give you up easily, would she child?"

Aideen shook her head in puzzlement.

"Aideen, there are many witches. There are many different understandings of the world. There are the lesser philosophies of the Fifkas and gypsies witches of the world. And there are the powerful, daring, masterful Reenans. There are more of course, child. You have an itch to scratch, Aideen. You want to see the world. You want to learn more. To strengthen the magic in you. I see you are ready to dedicate your life to this old man. He is your life's project and passion, for now. But what about when the time comes and goes for Denny Doyle? Will you be thinking 'what if?' when he is still gripping your heart with icy fingers?

"And you, Denny Doyle, you bumbling bastard. You enjoy the love of a lifetime. A gift that rarely comes to a man of your age. You had better keep her close and you please her wanting heart or you will find yourself alone longer than you can ever imagine." 

I sat in my nakedness and my broken knee. I wanted to clothe myself from this witch. Aideen stood up, naked and attentive, tall and straight. Letting the warm night and the mist cleanse her.

The deed was done, the seeds were sown and now and forever after we would be reaping what yielded from our love and commitment.

"We will be going now," said Aideen.

"As you wish children," said Reenan.

We packed up and clothed ourselves. Aideen fitted her bog shoes. We fashioned the sling for my leg around her back and neck, and I hopped up. Reenan burned incense on the altar and leaned over it, inhaling the heady fumes. She muttered to herself and closed her eyes. As we shoved off she broke her foreign muttering to say to us: 

"Thank you for joining me on the holly moon, children. Enjoy your love tonight."

Aideen turned her head and nodded. I held my hand up to give her a backward wave. I wrapped an arm around my love's neck and lit my clay pipe, and we started the treacherous journey back.

**************

We reached home well into the morning. We rested all day. Scaling the wall had not been the easiest task in the world, but I could grip with my hands and push with one leg and Aideen helped hoist me up from the top. The bog looked uglier in the day than in the night. Like an ugly lover, like a bat, it was not meant to be seen in the daylight.

I kept my swollen knee raised up on a cushion as I sat on the seat by the fire. Aideen gave me some concoction and ointment to help it heal but the poor knee was shattered. I could not wipe the idea from my mind that Reenan had done this to me. For every risk, for every big step, for every ignored warning, we knew we would pay. But we persevered because we knew our love could mend it. And on that day, in my miserable pain, Aideen's love sufficed. 

**************

The village was buzzing as doctor Bowie stepped out his door on a humid day in July. He put on his coat. Mostly he did this to cover the pit stains that had bled through his undershirt and turned his canary button-down deep mustard. Bowie and I used to be fierce mates in the public houses of Bonnakeen. I hadn't seen him professionally since my scarlet fever.

Somehow everyone knew where he was going, who he was going to see. Normally Bowie would say where when asked "And where are you off to today, Doctor?" But today the criminally honest man got flustered and just said: "arda bóthar"--high crossroads--. Well, information travels quickly from ear to mouth to ear again. Aideen and I, lovers in sin, lived near the high crossroads, and as Bowie made his way out of the village on the western road, the people were spreading the news. They expected some news about the state we were in. 

Old decrepit bachelor (ha! hardly) Denny Doyle is soon to pass on, to leave his decrepit land to the Connollys, and the tricky widow Aideen will have her land for another man whom she will surely marry, and the yarn spins longer and the truth spreads thinner and before teatime is over I'm already dead and the undertakers are preparing a casket and handing a local drunk some money and a shovel to disturb the soil atop my poor mother's grave. But all for naught as the doctor came and went and had nothing to report to the village but a farming accident.

"And Doctor, when will the coroner be coming for Denny, lordhavemercy?"

"And how is Aideen, poor child, Doctor? She must be in a terrible state."

"No coroner will be coming today, or for a long time I'd say," Replied Bowie. "Poor child Aideen is better than ever, and Denny is still fit as a fiddle, save for is crushed knee. He was cliffted counting cattle in the commonage."

"Will he walk again, Doctor?"

"He won't walk again, so to speak, but he'll be hobbling for years I'd say!" he chuckled.

When he had come to the house, he was typical Bowie. "Denny, how are you keeping old boy?" asked he, like we had just bumped into each other on the street.

"Better than yourself, Bowie. Looks can be deceiving!"

"Ha! You blackguard, you are strung up like longjohns with holes in the pants!"

"And you Aideen, how are ye keeping?" 

"Oh, don't you know, busy with your man here."

"He'll keep you busy, all right, he's a right slave driver in the fields. Up at five o'clock, break for supper, work until night time again.... and no teatime!" He joked, the codder, he saw the state of the farm out the back window of the kitchen, not a foot had treaded the lower fields for years, except for the poachers and fisherman and wild animals, and Aideen, when she was picking mushrooms or weeds. 

He may have glimpsed the bogshoes in the corner, and the muddy walking stick, the sling and the apothecary of herbs scattered in different places around the kitchen, but he chose to ignore them, I think. What he didn't see, he couldn't report. And he would be willing to ignore a lot for a lovely girl like Aideen and his old drinking mate Denny Doyle. Though I hadn't been to the village in years for a sip of stout or a gulp of whiskey, we were friends. We understood eachother. We knew the other was too busy or too wrapped up and we didn't think it selfish. Good on Bowie for his prosper and business. Good on me for my young passion. Bowie and I were almost happy that my knee shattered to prompt this visit.

Bowie examined and tampered with my knee. Where does it hurt he asks? Fecking bloody well everywhere! 

His honesty was bolstered by his friendliness and he told me the God's honest truth.

"The knee... for a man of our age... Well, when it's fucked it's fucked."

"Thank you doctor," my suspicions professionally verified.

"Thank you doctor," said Aideen, holding back a tear, knowing that no magic could reverse the damage. It was itself a magical sacrifice.

"Elevation you have, ice if you can manage. The leg will stay if it's taken care of. If you are lucky, there may be twenty degrees of movement. It will never straighten completely, it will never bend far. You'll need a crutch... maybe an old gollogue will fix ye! Haha."

I chuckled with him. What else could I do? "So, the visit?"

"Pro Bono, my friend. I suppose you remember what that means from our sessions in the pub? You've had a few pro bono pints in your day!"

"And ye lost more than a few bets to me, don't forget."

"Ah, how can I ever." There was a sigh and a long pause. "Let's not get sentimental, Denny. Best of luck to you and Aideen. The two ye are chasing a dream. I know you don't listen to the echoes that reverberate around these hills from the village-- don't start listening now."

A gas man, doctor Bowie. The craic we shared was unmatched. A friend I would love forever.

**************

"Crawl over me." I said one night as Aideen came to bed. Aideen had stayed up playing pennywhistle for a while, and I enjoyed the lively hornpipes and solemn ballads from upstairs as I rested my eyes. 

"Come on then, crawl over me, my love." I couldn't move very well for my a leg, and though the pain was subsiding steadily over the weeks, I didn't want to upset my comfortable position in the bed. The smell of a freshly quenched fire filled the air. Standing by the bed she folded the bedclothes down to my knees.

I felt Aideen get in the bed with me. I felt one knee weigh down the edge of the bed, then the other on the other side of me, but she did not lie down.

Then I smelled something mingling with the wet, sooty, smoke. Her womanly musk blended sweetly with the scorched birch and oak and beech and filled my nostrils with a heavy odor. I opened my eyes but couldn't see a thing in the pitch of night. 

I felt her ruby fuzz on my chin as my lips and jaw were surrounded by her soft vulva.

"Aauuunnhhh..." she moaned as she lowered herself onto my face.

"...uuunnhhh..." as I parted her lips with my tongue.

"...hhhnnna..." as my tongue reached inside her.

"...huhhh..." as I flicked her clit.

Straddling my face backward, she lowered herself further, so that her hole was against my nose. Her vulva pushed down and like vortex, it sucked me in. Equally did her tight hole draw me in with its scent.

Aideen rubbed her sex all over my face, first directing her hard clit between my lips for me to suck and lick, then allowing me to explore her briny pink inside. Then her plump arse covered my face fully, and I tempted her hole to pucker and give way. All the while she rose and fell, and when she wasn't stiffened by an intense convulsion of bliss, she would orbit around my tongue to make sure she felt all sides. All the while, she kept her hands in her wild curls, away from my painfully stiffening cock. I could only imagine her supple breasts trying to reach the stars from her swollen chest, her back arching as if to lift them to the constellations. And all the while she was grounded by me, held firm to Earth as if by the gravity of my mouth, and not by the world itself.

She lost herself in the battle between Earth and sky and rose and fell on me with all her weight, pushing her flesh into my teeth, pulling my tongue into her depths, nuzzling her hole onto my nose. My tongue was Aideen, my lips were Aideen, and my breath was Aideen. Our love was the channel by which she was reaching new heights of understanding in the universe. I was her tuning fork and she felt me resonate in her. 

She rode harder and harder, panting and heaving, moaning and yipping and whining like a wolf in a clearing. Each fall and rise shook out a new vocalization of her pleasure. Her hands and arms stretched and cramped, releasing ancient tensions, clearing her view of a pristine and free future.

I never stopped giving my tongue to her. A smile replaced the twisted frowns of uncontrollable passion as she felt a new level of pleasure rising inside her. She felt the buzz of a distinct vibration rising through her spine from her tail to her brain. Incidental vibrations radiated outward from her core to her fingertips, her toes, her nipples and nose. She felt it coming, and she smiled wide with her lips, wanting the unknown. Her eyes were closed but, she saw more with them shut. 

She bent over and deflated herself to allow a new breath in, a new breath that would release all her restlessness. Hands feverishly gripping her breasts. White knuckles tensed her arms all the way to her chest as she ground on me hard and rhythmically, her hair draped over my stomach. I could feel her fuzz was stiff and her body was covered in goosebumps. In silence, she began her slow to ascent. She arched her back and lifted her hair off of me as she continued to erect. Her tongue crept out of her smiling mouth to stretch to its limits and lick her lips. Ever so slowly she licked her lips from chin to nose to chin again, biting it the thickness that protruded, farther than it had ever protruded before. As her mouth and body moved slowly and firmly, her grinding hips continued their fervent tempo allegretto.

My cock dripped a constant stream of clear precome into a small pool on my abdomen. Her sex dripped into my mouth, down my face and neck like a trickling fall.

As she reached her full erect posture, her gyrations turned into thrusts and bounces. Her hands stretched to the heavens above her, letting her breasts gasp for blood. Locking fingers, showing her palms to the sky, she stretched as much as she could. She was ready.

"Hnfh," she sounded when her body shuddered, a small muffled cry that one would miss under the sound of a leaf falling on the windowsill. Her chin jerked up so that her head touched between her shoulder blades. She spasmed over and over, each with its own resonating vibrations. I came without stimulation, I gasped for breath but received only flesh and fluid. Come erupted into the air and fell like beads of white amber onto Aideen's eyelid and lips, her neck and her breasts, her belly and fur. 

I lay in wait for her body to rest, feeling it as it rattled through my head. I relished the exhibit of pleasure on her young body. The girl could not stop exceeding the probable, defining the possible.

Finally, her arms fell to her sides. Gently she ran her fingers up through the come in her pubic hair, dragging the seed in streaks on her body until it thinned like paint off a brush onto canvas, then wetted again as her finger dragged through the next clinging collection on her belly, up to her chest where she rubbed the rest in like a salve for her reddened breasts. She licked the come from her lips and opened her eyes. She felt the clumped lashes of one eye bat against her brow. Last, she used all the might that might be returning to her knees to lift herself from me.

I breathed in the fresh air, tinged with the love in the air, tinged with the residue that covered me. Aideen weakly got under the bedclothes and wrapped herself around me. I felt burning heat from between her legs on my thigh. I felt her sticky soft skin against my side, and we both fell fast asleep.

**************

Summer was leaving us quickly. A question presented itself which hadn't in quite some time. Aideen and I had to wed. There was a spiritual, legal, and familial commitment. 

The final judgment of the church of Bonnakeen was that our marriage could not be. We were widely supposed to be an abomination in the village, the church the bastion of this belief. Between suspicion of fornication and Aideen's satanic reputation, we never thought it wise even to approach our father of the cloth. We went west to a small village in the mountains of county Cork, where a sister of Eoin lived. 

As witness, on Aideen's side of the aisle were Eoin and his sister, her husband and two children, Cait, Fry and Úna. Úna was a solemn young woman, changed by the death of Owen when she was a child. Fry looked very at home in the church, were it not for Owen's death he would be a brother by now instead of a farmer. Eoin and Cait, to be sure would have never aged a day but the death in the family has that wearying effect. The occasion today was, for the Connollys, a bittersweet moment. Eoin, I know, saw Aideen as another casualty of the war, one wins in battle, dies fighting, or disappears, and Aideen it seemed had done the latter.

On my side of the isle was only Doctor Bowie in a grey suit. A young strawberry heifer of mine stood tied outside the chapel.

And that was the entire party to our wedding. It was as much a formality as a celebration, but everyone will look back on it fondly. Weddings were too few these days, new life was too seldom these days, and the funerals of young men were many.

The kiss was as natural, the applause joyous as expected. We went for drinks at an old spot in the locale. It would be my last pint out, and it was good to share it with the obliging Connolly's ands, and my good old friend Doctor Bowie.

"To Denny and Aideen," they toasted.

We all returned to the house of Eoin's sister, Peg, and slaughtered the bullock and ate hardily. Spuds and carrots, parsnip and turnip, all cuts of meat, and we drank from a half tierce of porter. The remainder of the meat from the cow was for Peg and the family to keep.

We had the children's room while they slept with their parents. We made fast and quiet love in the small bed.

**************

The river flooded and the pond froze before the grass stopped growing that fall. We cut the ice and slaughtered the cattle with Fry. And things from there, they kept getting better. All errands were sorted, and I was happily hobbling around the house with my waking stick. The winter was hard, it came early and it lasted late. It tested me with its chill. We ate our stocked meat. Warm stew, crackling fires, putine and tea were our sustenance. Aideen and I kept eachother warm with our caress, our mouths and our bodies. We had a white Christmas, a white new year, and a white February. The most snow that ever fell on the road in my lifetime.

I had no reason to wander around the farm. Still, I would say from time to time that I should go down to the river, that I should throw a net in and catch me a salmon, but I rarely did. Fishing was two full days of work and walking for a cripple like me. These are the sacrifices of the life from the sacrifice of the body.

Aideen and I loved looking out back window of the kitchen at the snow on the fields. The brilliant greens of Ireland were gone with the transformation of winter. Scraggly trees and a great white blanket. Winter was washing the canvas for spring to paint.




Love You Forever Pt. 04



We sat and looked out the window. She knitted and I smoked. She played pennywhistle and I played spoons. She sang and I listened. She kissed me and I kissed her. Another winter passed outside our warm kitchen.

**************

I felt a great shock in my body; I heard a great buzzing and then nothing. Pain shot down my arm; I felt the weight of being buried alive. Everything glowed and blurred in an alarming fashion. Aideen came down and discovered me, still watching the phenomenon of death around me, listening to the banshee of death. To her it looked like I was in great pain, with my face contorted, my already glassy eyes becoming glassier. I saw the panic on my love's face. She ran to the door. I hoped she was not going next door to her family. But her glowing figure hesitated in the light. She returned to keep me company in my last moments. I gasped and rasped but she would never hear me say the magic words. "I love you forever."

She just knelt and cried and held my hand until it was all over. I was dreaming and seeing the things of my childhood. The things in my life I hadn't thought about since they happened. They are all there. Everything is always there even if you never ever see it again. I saw all of humanity and the great celebrations and gatherings and communions of the soul. I saw all the doors I ever walked through. I saw the banshee beckoning.

Aideen wanted to help, I know she did. She wanted to send for a doctor or a coroner, but there was no point right now. I was fading into the spiraling next. I was no longer distinguishing one thought from the next, no longer making out one piece from another, no longer deconstructing anything I saw or thought, the wailing was growing louder, even my love Aideen's figure was fading, blurring, getting buried in the noise and light. Even my memories of her were blending into everything else in the past. The past was blending into now and the future, but before anything else, I awoke.

I awoke like when the sunlight hits your eye in the morning, at the same time as the kettle boiled, at the same time as the cock crowed, at the same time as there was a knock at the door, at the same time the clock chimed five, at the same time some neighbor or other hollered at their cattle, and the cattle themselves mooed and bellowed, and them eating the grass sounded like somebody tearing apart the newspaper right in your ear. The countryside can be a loud place, and indeed, being born is loud too.

I awoke with Aideen's hand on my chest, warm blood trickling down my side onto my unbuttoned shirt, which lay around me. She straddled me, leaned in and kissed my face all over, never removing her hand. She removed her hand. Slowly, she removed a long hawthorn. Perhaps an inch of blood covered poison wood emerged from her palm as she did so.

Her grimace subsided and she looked down at my chest. I followed her eye to see the black thorn that protruded from my chest. Slowly too did she remove this thorn. She smeared my chest with a bloody palm. 

She stood up and left me to recover from the ordeal. I just lie on my back on the kitchen floor by the front porch. Aideen had stopped shaking and panicking and crying. Carefully she took an empty matchbox from the cubbyhole above the seat next to the fire. She placed the blood covered blackthorn and hawthorn side by side in the matchbox and replaced it next to my clay pipe.

Exhausted, she sat down right there and looked over at me, calmly smoothing out her long green skirt.

I just stared at the rafters and floorboards above me. I imagined the woodworms slowly turning the fine timber into crumbs and brittle biscuits. Wood and varnish alike the worms found their way through. Someday, these floors would fall and I hoped that I would not be underneath. I grabbed my cane by the butt and with the help of the banister, lifted myself up on my own. I leaned on the banister, covered in dry blood and faced my Aideen.

"Now so, it worked after all," said I.

"Indeed it did ye chancer," codded Aideen, but with her laughter her tears returned. "I don't know what I would've done if it didn't, Denny."

"Aye."

"How was it?"

"The banshee still calls Aideen, but I don't think she'll be getting any kind of answer... 'Twasn't too bad now I'll say."

"Were ye ready to go?"

"Aye. But not without you, my loving child. 'Least not without having you a dozen times more."

Aideen laughed aloud and came over to me by the stairs. She pinned me to the slats. By now Aideen stood a little taller than me. A daughter of Eoin and Cait Connolly, she was stronger than me too. We tested my new body and spirit before we made it up the stairs to the bed.

**************

On that first night, Aideen and I celebrated. Reenan had delivered us everything that we wanted.

We each drank full glasses of whiskey, sang songs and played music, burned fires in the fireplace like it was still the dead of winter. We fucked fiendishly.

To say that new life had been breathed into our relationship could literally and honestly be the greatest underestimation in history. The elation for Aideen to know that her life's accomplishment and dedication was not only within reach but in the midst of full realization. Aideen was on fire. 

My love truly reached the next step of her fantastic destiny. Soon my love, the child of the earth, the pupil of Fifka and Reenan, the daughter of Eoin and Cait, the love of my life, would be the most powerful enchantress that ever lived. She did so by deriving all of her magic from, and delivering onto our humble love. 

We stayed out in the field at night, lying on a blanket in the grass, watching the black blanket of night over head, watching the bright stars twinkle as fog rolled past, watching the half-moon creep across the sky, smelling the cool fresh sea breathing all over our bodies. We counted the stars that shot and bounced and trailed across the sky. We drank until they spun in circles above us and like we were young lovers again, we talked. 

We had something to talk about. We were newlyweds. We had told and retold our vows many times and yet tonight we could tell them again. We had something to celebrate. We had a future. We had adventures to plan. People to meet, a wealth of knowledge to share, a wealth of secrets to guard. It seemed that Aideen, as Reenan had feared would one day become restless, but now we had an eternity to satisfy that urge, we had many lifetimes to explore the world, experiment, and attune the many magics of the world to Aideen's own brilliant magic.

"The banshee may be calling you Denny, but something else is calling me. Some force of magic, a person, or a place. We'll find it together."

We held eachother close, side by side. We kissed and bit and sucked eachother's mouths. Aideen had that look in her glowing green eyes. She put her four fingers in her mouth and, staring me straight in the eyes, reached to the back of her throat to gag herself. With her other hand she skillfully opened my fly. She reached as far as she could and I watched her face stiffen around her fingers as she coughed. 

When drool poured down the side of her face she reached down to grab my stiff cock. She rubbed the very tip of me with her slippery thumb. Her hand formed a little tight tunnel and she forced it down on my girth. The slick soft ridges of her hand squeezed and slid over my sensitive head. As she did so, she choked and coughed on her free hand, and massaged squeezed my plump testes with it. I felt them compress painfully and then release pleasurably as they popped between her gripping fingers.

I reached under her dress and felt her warm wet panties. I tickled her clit through the thin cotton and pinched it when it hardened, jiggling it with fierce vibration.

"Unh," she cried as she bit her lip. We still stared into eachother's eyes.

I moved my thick index finger to the center of the growing wet spot and pushed. The slick thick cotton pushed into her hole slowly. Aideen's hands returned to her throat now and then. Every time she gagged or coughed, she winced and I felt her tight pussy contract around my panty-clothed finger. Every time she gagged more saliva dripped down the side of her face, more sweet come drenched her panties so that more cloth could slide in.

She worked my cock with a slippery tight hand. Each pump of her arm and shoulder sent pleasure through her as if it was her pussy working around me. Every thrust and stroke of my finger in her panties brought me closer to climax as if it was my cock. Our eyes were fixed on each other, and we were going to bring each other the apex with them fixed so. All I needed were her glinting green eyes. All she needed were my soft blues.

I took my penknife from my pocket and flicked it open. Aideen shivered as she felt the cool steel slide up her thigh. The flat of the blade slid between her flesh and cloth, and tore the thin cotton waistband from hilt to point. I slid the blade past the other side of her swollen mound. The curved clip-point scrunched the panties and sliced through them.

"Ah," Aideen sighed with relief as I skillfully cut away her panties. Her eyes bulged and relaxed and she dripped a few more drops of her juice. The panties absorbed them and I pushed in still further. Aideen wriggled on my finger. She spit on her hand and lathered it onto my cockhead. I took a large bunch of panties in my fingers and stuffed it into her pussy. 

"Oohhnn," Aideen moaned as she felt damp fullness. 

"Oooo," she gripped my cock with all her force as she felt me push the last of her panties inside of her. Deeper, and deeper I pressed until they were compressed against the back wall. Deeper into her pussy my fingers dove. Deeper into her eyes my stare penetrated.

We were getting closer to a kinky finish so I kicked off my pants and ripped off my shirt. I sat over Aideen and cut her dress up the middle so that it lay like a sheet under her. She tugged my cock and out it in her pussy. I pounded away at the cloth inside her, wringing out the juice it absorbed. I fucked her sopping panties deep into her, and we gazed into eachother's eyes knowing the climax on its way. I pounded Aideen harder and faster.

"Oh God, come for me Denny." Aideen shook with her first orgasm and gripped my wrists. She stared desperately into my eyes as I grew thicker and harder.

My testes got high and tight, slapping on Aideen's arse. 

"Come on Denny, come in me deep." Aideen rattled with pleasure. She was coming a flood that leaked from her well stuffed pussy each time I pulled away.

I drove into her, watching her face contort.

"Please, Denny," She whispered. "Please."

I pushed all the way in with a clashing of bodies. Aideen's clit took the blow from my body that sent jolts of electricity through her. I came hard, pushed against her panties, pushed against her cervix. My spasms shot white lust into her wet panties, and when they subsided, I withdrew. Aideen still lay twitching, coming and contracting around that filthy ball of cotton that once covered her sacred sex. Clear fluid trickled out and down her crack. Finally, we both lay still, gasping and panting, and we broke our enduring stare to look up once more at the stars.

Aideen stirred again.

"Uhn... hnnn," she struggled and tightened her belly up.

"Hnnnn," she pushed.

"Fffhnnnf," and she reached inside of herself to pull out the destroyed panties. 

In her hand she balled it up and leaned over me. Squeezing it she let some droplets of our come drip into my mouth. Then she lay back down and holding the stringy rag above her, licked away the thick white trails of my come. She sucked on a corner of it until it dried out, then picked another little spot that smelled tasty. When she was done suckling every parcel she stuffed it into her mouth, back into her throat, then pulled it out, gagging slightly as she did, sucking the saliva back into her mouth as she did. She pushed it back into her throat with child-like amusement, gulped a few times, and swallowed the whole thing.

I looked at her with bewilderment.

"I didn't want to waste anything," Aideen explained. "Not one drop will go to waste now. It belongs inside me. Oh, love is the best nourishment, Denny." And as she felt that knot sink to her stomach a devilish smile crept across her hot face, and she leaned in to kiss me. 

**************

The joy faded quickly in the morning. Aideen lay next to my booze-stinking body and put her head on my chest. But she didn't feel the warm radiance of my skin, or the forceful heartbeat in my chest. Instead my skin was cool and thin, my heartbeat weak and slow. She shook me. She shook me over and over but I would not wake. Aideen was losing me again. She shook me and hit me and slapped my face.

"Wake up, Denny. Please, please wake up!" she slapped me across the face. "Tell me you're still in there, tell me I haven't lost ye again."

Aideen slapped me and shook me and pounded her fist on my chest, trying to jumpstart my heart. And, eventually, I groaned awake.

"Oh..." she collapsed, sobbing on my body. "I thought ye were gone Denny."

"I'm here girl, I'm here." I said, confused, with no breath to spare."

"Well what's wrong with ye?" she prodded.

"I don't know. What do you mean?"

"What's wrong with ye getting cold and slow and stupid?"

"Aideen! What are you talking about?"

"Ah fuck Denny. Fuckit. The fecking spell, it's all wrong."

"I'm still here, I'm still keeping your bed warm. What do you mean it's all wrong?"

"Lookit yerself in the mirror Denny Doyle."

I sat up slowly as my muscles seemed to be failing me and I looked over at the mirror on the wardrobe. I was horrified, I was melting. My face sagged so that you could see the red of my eyes and my lower teeth. The skin of my arm hung like moss on a branch. I looked at Aideen. 

"Whatf wron wif me?"

"Denny shut up! You're scaring me. I'll take care of this." Aideen went down to the kitchen.

I sat in the bed, trying not to look at the mirror. I didn't want to see the hideous white drooping mass I had become, but sometimes I felt it turning and bumbling at me like I had been to Aideen. How could I? How could I be such a disgusting creature? I was uglier than any creature from any ghost or faerie tale I had ever heard.

I heard Aideen clanging around in the kitchen and pantry. I closed my eyelids, which seemed to double over as they drooped down, but I could only see myself. I opened them up and mustered the strength to look at myself in the mirror. The hideous thing I saw was mocking me, copying my every move, or was it predicting it? I sat on the side of the bed and stood. My nakedness disgusted me anymore. I wished myself dead again, but knew it was not to be. As we approached eachother I reached to the sides of the mirror, where the ugly beast could not reach. I grabbed the frame and shook as hard as I could. The entire wardrobe shook and wobbled. It teetered and nearly fell onto me, but each time it leaned forward I pushed it back. I twisted the mirror so that the ugly thing warped. Soon, it would be no more I thought. 

Finally, my rage inspired me to tear the thing from the wardrobe. I stared at the hate in its eyes as I lifted it above my head and shattered it on the ground, at the feet of Aideen. With a grunt and deep pants I looked at my love, who stood stunned on the twelfth step.

I looked at her and I saw the look in her eye and knew that those shards on the ground were just that. I knew that that silver spectre in the mirror was gone, leaving me the ugliest thing on Earth. But the look in my love's eye also told me that she would not fear. She was as brave and patient as ever. She sat my ugly body down on the bed, and placed her tray of remedies on the banister. She retrieved a hand mirror from a now naked shelf on the wardrobe where the large mirror used to be tacked in, and hung it on a latch by the handle. Once again, my reflection joined me across the glass.

Aideen applied a salve she had prepared to the skin of my face, rubbing it into every crack and crevice. Every two wrinkles left ridges in betweens, other crosshatches like railroad ties held it all together. But Aideen filled the gaps and cracks. She rubbed the grey salve all over my cold sagging body. Now I was covered in ugly clay that buried the monster underneath. 

Then Aideen took some metal fencing staples, tied to twine, and hooked and tied them around my jowls, inside my cheeks and around my head. She fixed them to my many layers of sagging skin on my body, arms and legs and tied them around my back. When she showed me the mirror again, I looked a hospital disaster.

"The cream will help, don't you worry Denny." Aideen assured.

I just sat in wonder. What had we done? This wasn't what we wanted when we made me immortal. We were holding death at bay, but not far away. We were keeping it at arms' reach with our bare hands, and whoever was wilier would win. I had never heard of a story of a jealous banshee but by God, I knew her now. How long could we last with her screaming in our ears?

"You must drink this too Denny," Aideen said.

She held a dark purple sludge to my lips and tipped the mug so that I could not stop her. It was bitter and sweet. It coated my tongue and throat with slimy goo, then dried them out like flour and hay. There was an aftertaste of bogwater.

"It tastes like sloes and bogwater," I said in a dry voice. "What is that?"

"Sloes and bogwater mostly. Sundews too, and other things. One more thing."

Aideen produced some small parcel wrapped in wet fish skin. She turned me around, coated it in the salve, and spread my cheeks.

I felt it enter my hole with slippery ease.

"Mff."

"Sorry Denny, but we have to do our best, and that means we must do everything. And don't even think about asking what it is, it will be good for you."

"Science or magic?"

"A little of both, like everything." she said, and then she lay down next to me on the bed, and I felt the coldness inside me grow, and I felt the salve on my skin absorb, and I felt the twine around me tighten. 

When we awoke from a troubled slumber, Aideen held the hand mirror to my face as she undid the twine. She got a towel and removed the salve. I looked better, a little less pale, much less gaunt and saggy. If nothing else could be said, I looked human. But I was weak. I was weak in body and spirit. I was a defeated man, if a man at all. Aideen dressed me, clipped my suspenders on and fitted my cap.

"Let's go for a walk," I told Aideen.

**************

We walked the overgrown farm. Only the front garden and the field of the house remained well grazed and green pasture. The rest of the farm had gone wild. We walked down the lane. I showed Aideen every place that the train crossed over or under the lane. I showed her where I stowed old thorny wire and staples, sledgehammers and crowbars, various other supplies for maintenance that wouldn't have to be lugged back to the shed after every job.

We walked through the tall grass, the spiders and the frogs. The once well-manicured ground was quickly turning into marsh and reeds. Every tree had a birdsnest, every hole had an animal inside. There were lonesome cows that had escaped my neighbors' farms. They could have been living on my property for years. They had the look in their eye of a wild animal. They had been gone from home so long.

"This field has gone all wet and flooded. There along the thick line of reeds is a drain built out of slate and flagstones and gravel."

We got down to the wood by the river and I showed her the community net. I showed her the best pools to fish in. I told her how to train a dog to tow a line across, where toss the stepping stones, how to peg the water with rocks to scare the poor fisheens into the net.




Love You Forever Pt. 04



"You have to look under old rotten stumps and dig for rocks. Too many fishermen have thrown them all into the river this spring."

Aideen showed me the herbs that Fifka had taught her about. There was a use for every single plant and fungus.

"The berries of Bonnakeen can poison the fish. You crush them and throw them in the pool and it makes them slow."

"Aye, Aideen."

I wished I had known that little trick all my life, but now it was useless trivia. Mostly I wasn't listening to Aideen, though. I was in a dumb stupor. This walk was for her benefit more than mine. I wasn't long for this world, someone had to know the secrets of the farm. 

It took near two hours to return to the house, me hobbling with my cane, Aideen gathering herbs and mushrooms in her dress. And when we got there the fire was roaring. Strange. We always put the fire out when we leave the house.

Both the porch door and the house door were open. Surrounded by a blazing aura of flame, naked Reenan squatted, tending the fire.

"Lovers, lovers. Life being kind to ye?"