Laurentine’s pendulous breasts smacked Jacque’s back and shot milk onto the Parisian street.  Stream after stream of milk burst from the bouncing breast, arcing over the asphalt and  casting a thousand shadows before it all splattered on the sun warmed street.  Laurentine could just barely see through her long blond curls the piecemeal trail her spilt milk was leaving to the pastry shop.  Her neck ached from the strain as did her eyes.  Light was pouring through the dispersing grey clouds.  

Jacque bore Laurentine on his shoulder like an ancient conqueror bearing his ransacked treasure from the crumbled remains of a devastated city.  The growing brightness in the sky signaled the oncoming judgment of a vengeful god.  Jacque adjusted the sweaty hand he had planted on her ass.  His other hand, lost in the milk soaked folds of Laurentine’s frock, pushed past the cloth to hold onto something solid like the fat of Laurentine’s waist.  

Laurentine let her head slump in defeat.  She shut her eyes because the asphalt moving under Jacque’s feet made her sick, but the darkness in her head moved just the same.  Perhaps if she could picture how she had gotten here, she could forget she was moving.  

***

Three hours ago, Laurentine had been lying in the vomit green bed of her Parisian dorm as a dream played before her eyes.  Balance beams rose from the padded floors of a school gymnasium.  They covered the entire floor it seemed in the oddest types of configurations.  Some zigzagged, some had inclines, others had hairpin turns, but they all appeared to connect to one another, even the corners which spiraled up into the air until they nearly reached the ceiling and then cut a series of jagged steps back down to the congregation of balance beams in the center.  

Aureole was pacing this configuration that had no end.  Everything from Aureole’s leotard to the fuzzy beams was colored a royal purple.  Her crisp purple hair that stopped at her ears shook with every step she took.  But she tread with silent confidence and concentration.  She seamlessly transitioned from walking on her feet to walking on her hands to cartwheeling to front-flipping.  But Laurentine couldn’t help her lungs seizing every time Aureole made these transitions.  

Aureole was flying through the air in the middle of a chain of back-flips when everything went black.  Laurentine’s entire body jolted.  The light returned and the beams were gone.  Aureole was climbing a thick purple rope so long that even though it hung from the ceiling it still had coils draped on the gymnasium’s wooden floor.  Laurentine stood underneath it, an incapable spotter.  Aureole climbed with only her hands.  Although her purple hair was now knotted to her skull, it looked much longer.  The swaying of her purple gym shorts and T-shirt revealed her pale thighs, belly, and breasts intermittently to Laurentine’s eyes.  Since when did Aureole flirt with her clothes?  Since when did Aureole flirt at all?

After Aureole reached the top, she took one of her hands off the rope and swung it out to the side.  She took the leg closest to the rope, locked its toes around the rope, took her leg farthest from the rope, and stretched it as far as she could from the rope.  Aureole dangled like the skull and crossbones on a pirate ship’s flag.  The gym shorts rode high on her split legs, marking the presence of the pale buried treasure only centimeters from revelation.  

Then Aureole swung her free leg to the rope and let go of the rope with her hand.  And Laurentine, needing to hold onto something, clutched her breast and held her breath.  Aureole fell, fast at first but slower as her two legs found each other and tightened the thighs to the rope.  The soundtrack to the first segment of her fall: exploring hands tinkling burlesque piano keys for the ears of cigar smoking bulldogs.  The soundtrack to the second segment: tanned calluses on tribal drums banging for any and all ears, especially those of the jungle.  

Laurentine heard the friction tearing apart Aureole’s leotard before she saw the leotard’s pieces peeling away in scraps like the stubborn skin of a clementine under fingertips with nails clipped too short.  She also heard the pleasurable then pained moans coming from Aureole’s throat as the rope rubbed itself against Aureole’s most precious parts.  What remained of the leotard fell in scorched flakes.  If all that weren’t enough, wavering tendrils of flame erupted from Aureole’s form.  Aureole hit the floor a foot from Laurentine, with an impact comparable to that of a comet, the ripples of which divested the gym of its lacquered wooden floor.  Before Laurentine could run, the roof and walls had collapsed.  

In the darkness, Laurentine stood.  And it was out of this darkness that Aureole emerged.  If Laurentine had to guess, Aureole was emerging from the same hole she had fallen into, but orientation was so difficult in the darkness.  After Aureole had pulled herself out, it took her awhile still to extricate her long trail of purple hair.  With the hair out of the hole, Aureole walked with halting step towards Laurentine.  She was nude and scorched black from the chest down.  Laurentine had never realized how visible Aureole’s ribcage was.  Even with the layers of char, she could trace where bone poked at flesh.  The blackness appeared to creep up Aureole’s body the closer she got to Laurentine.  She smelled like an overworked charcoal grill.  With this realization, panic welled up inside Laurentine.  She debated running, fighting, or...then the blackness consumed Aureole and she was gone.    

Except Laurentine stood there and knew she was not alone.  Soft darkness with a hard tip at its middle pressed against her chest.  She looked down and spotted only her own nude neck and squished breasts.  She could feel everything below but she couldn’t see it.  So she held up her arm. And she could see that.  A hand fell on her upraised arm, or something that she could have sworn felt like a hand, and stroked her arm to her fingertips.  Wherever the hand went, the darkness went as well.  She screamed and a pair of lips met hers and a wet hot roving thing entered her mouth.  Her tongue and this other tongue sparred.  

Nails probed her clitoris.  They spread her vaginal lips and Laurentine took hurried breaths against this rapist’s breasts, imagining the worst.  Before her eyes, the darkness rolled itself back to reveal Aureole’s face.  She had puffier lips but it was Aureole alright.  Laurentine could tell by the prominent nose.  

You have witnessed my creation, prophetess.  The weaving of my doughy folds and afterwards my introduction to the oven.  I am the Chocolate Creme Puff and I am not the one for you.  You are destined to eat another and to lead the big nosed one to me.

The words sounded like a gurgling and churning.  Aureole continued to stroke and suck Laurentine’s tongue with her own.  The words could not be coming from Aureole’s lips.  

Two hours from now, you will meet a hairy man selling sausages under the Eiffel Tower.  He will offer to show you around town.  Go with him for he does not know what he does.  As belligerent as he may be, he is acting for the good of us all.  

Rolande’s entrance to Laurentine’s dorm room ended the dream.  Laurentine pretended to be asleep as Rolande shook her.  Laurentine thought if she just held her eyes closed with a fragment of what she had dreamed in her mind’s eye, she could make the rest of it come back.  But Rolande persisted.  Laurentine and she had promised to show Aureole around town and Laurentine knew so much more about the city than she did.  Finally Laurentine was forced to open her eyes when Rolande began to tug at the sheets.  Laurentine clutched them to her, sat up, pointed a finger at the door, and commanded Rolande to wait outside while she dressed.  

Flopping her legs out from under the sheets and over the side of the bed, Laurentine waited until she heard the door close to get up.  Her thighs moistened as they rubbed against her black panties.  She stood beside the bed and looked down at her toenails painted green.  She lowered a hand, brought the front of her panties together in a bunch, and yanked the fabric aside.  Sure enough she was moist.  Every prophecy should be delivered with a kiss.  She wasn’t sure yet how she felt about Aureole delivering said kiss, though.  She stepped out of the panties and flung them in the wastebasket.  

Working a fresh white pair up her shaved legs, she admired the sole prize of her body, her  sinuous hips.  She had modeled nude a couple of times for an art class and she had only returned as many times as she did because of the complements the students lavished on these hips of hers.

“When I get to your hips, I feel like I am seeing one of Ruben’s models come to life.  I could spend a lifetime mediating on your hips.”

“I’m training to be a midwife and I have to say I don’t think you’ll have any trouble bearing a child with those magnificent hips of yours.”

“Do you think I can set my paintbrush on them?  Ah, it wobbles but I think it will stay.” 

“Are you a waitress?  Because I would make the tips rain on you.”

She flipped through the T shirts in her closet.  She hadn’t heard of formal attire.  Any shirt in her possession had to communicate a witticism.  The shirt on the hanger she pulled off the line said dead center, “Got milk, dudes?”  Double entendres cracked her quicker than an eggshell on a hard surface.  She slung her hands through the sleeves and shut her eyes as she jerked her head through the neck of the shirt.  The shirt’s line synced with her chest, her pair of orange sized breasts.  

Oranges had been her go to measurement ever since the art teacher had handed her an ornate bowl of oranges one day and told her to lie on her side on the modeling platform.  In this position the painters and their canvases towered over her.  Perhaps, emboldened by a change in perspective, one of the men snuck up to her stand, took two oranges from the bowl, and held them underneath her chest.  She shivered at the cold caress of orange flesh.  

“Look, it’s like she has four breasts,” he shouted to the class. 

Before the class left, they showed her what they had done.  Every canvas told the same story.  Half woman, half cow Laurentine lounged upon a field of grass.  They had tacked cow ear’s on her head and four breasts on her chest.  A strategically placed orange bush concealed her waist whether it be udders or vagine she would never know.  A cow tail curled out from under the bush and flapped at the breeze.

She asked them, “So you have broken your fascination with my hips?”

“Not at all.  I like subtlety in my art.”

“Nothing’s wrong with a little tit inspiration.”

“Sometimes you get a new perspective and you just run with it.”

“What is this about broken hips?”

Laurentine grabbed a scrunchie.  Holding it, her hand quickly communicated her blond hair into a ponytail.  A hasty application of eye liner and rouge followed.   As an after thought, Laurentine snagged a pair jean shorts.  She fought to get them zipped as she headed for the door.  

Aureole and Rolande were standing outside when Laurentine entered the hallway.  Neither were making conversation.  So Laurentine struck up small talk with Rolande and they made their way to the Eiffel Tower.  Once they got there, Laurentine took Aureole’s failure to listen to her tour guide stories as an opportunity to slip away with Rolande and find the hairy man.  If what the dream said was true, Laurentine would be meeting Aureole soon anyway.  Laurentine was eager to follow the Puff’s commands.  She wanted to see if it could put its creme where her mouth was.  

Under a black and yellow banner saying, Extreme Mess Team, Laurentine spotted her man grilling bratwurst.  He had a midnight shadow, a mass of stubble enveloping his lips.  He was sneering at his grill while his men busied themselves to and fro.    

“Have you had breakfast?” Laurentine asked Rolande.  

“No.  Do you have the same idea I do?”

“Those bratwurst sure look good.”

“If only they were wrapped in bacon,” Rolande sighed.  

“It must be the workings of the Fates,” Laurentine pointed at the bearded man wrapping bacon strips around the sizzling bratwurst.  Rolande ran to the stand and Laurentine followed.  The man jerked his head up from the cooking to crookedly smile.    

“You look like girls who enjoy a good meat log,” he pitched his words deviously, “We have a special meal deal going on.  You can get one of these bratwurst tucked snug in a bacon blanket for three euros.”

“I’ll take two,” Rolande flashed him the money.  He took it and in exchange he passed her two bacon bratwurst in a paper boat.  The grease dripped from its bottom.  “I’m going to take you to the park bench,” Rolande whispered to her food.  Rolande pointed to where Laurentine could find her before she walked to the spot.  

“It doesn’t take much to please a big girl.  You, on the other hand, need a total makeover to suit your shirt,” the man indicated Laurentine’s physique. 

“What is wrong with me?”

“You know how when you put an unthawed stick of butter on a bagel and try to spread that shit,” a pigeon’s trill covered the preceding curse,  “with a butter knife?  That shit,” the bird censored him here too, “gets me tired out trying to spread it.  You got to drizzle some hot sticky Jacky Danielle’s syrup over it.  Jacky Danielle's.  I get a boner just thinking about a bottle of that.  Tendons, get me a fucking,” another strategic bird call, “Jacky Danielle’s and the fat counter!”

A muscular man, curling weights in the back corner of the tent, set his forty five pound barbell on the grass.  He rose from his bench, popped open a cooler from which a cloud of vapor poured forth, pulled out a fork skewer and a bottle of Jacky Danielle’s, and lumbered to the bearded man’s side.  

“You must be very confident to not run when you see this tool.  Either that or you’re used to getting skewered,” the bearded man said as he raised the device from Tendon’s palm.  “Lean forward please.”  The bearded man stabbed Laurentine’s breast with the tool.  “Mark this down, Tendon.  One fifty six over six.”  The skewer was out before Laurentine could feel it enter.  “You are neither under nor overweight for your height.  We here at Extreme Mess Team, however, prefer the women we serve to be a mess.  Tendons, the Jacky Danielle’s please.”

Tendons thrust the bottle into the bearded man’s hand.  

“What the (chirp) is this (chirp)?”  The bearded man snagged the bottle and broke it over Tendon’s head.  “We make messes.  I hope you get that in your (chirp)ing head.” The bearded man slurped wherever his tongue could taste the fluid: Tendon’s face, the bottle of broken glass, the aluminum table between him and Laurentine, Laurentine’s face, Laurentine’s chest, and the grass.  Tendon stopped standing at attention and slunk to his bench to work at his weights.  The bearded man rose from the grass, the fluid smeared in his beard, and swiped his hand across his face.  No amount of rubbing, however, could remove his perpetual scowl.  

“I don’t mind getting messy.  Do you have a place in mind?” Laurentine dared.   

The leader of the Extreme Mess team extended a hairy hand, “I am Jacque and today I will be making you a mess.”

Laurentine stayed a foot behind Jacque.  The Creme Puff had warned her of his belligerence and she did not want to take any chances.  He stopped in front of a pastry shop.  Laurentine muttered to herself, “Where else would a creme puff come from?”  Jacque held the door open for her.  The two of them approached the countertop, keeping the same distance between them.  

The mousy attendant asked, “How can I help you, monsieur?”  

“Forty five steaks and four hundred eggs.”

“Excuse moi, are you sure that you are in the right place?”

Jacque threw back his shoulders.  “You must be in the (chirp, from a bird fluttering on the other side of the glass)ing wrong place.  This is my (chirp)ing store.”

“So you are the owner of the sausage shop?  What the people in Canada call Extreme Mess Team?”

“In the flesh.  Where is your master?”

“Mistress has lost herself in the baking.  You know how time consuming that process is.”

“No,” he scoffed, “I don’t.  I thought it was just cut and pastry, cut and pastry.  Tell me has your admenstruator dared to utilize the secret ingredient yet?”      

“You have caught her in the midst of it.  She was just up at the front counter saying 

‘Marléne, I think I’m going to go back in the kitchen and crack open the mystery case.  You watch the counter while I’m gone.’  Marléne gestured at Laurentine. “Were you hoping to give this woman the surprise?”

“What am I as transparent as the plastic casing on a hot dog?  I came to plump up this woman not to impregnate her with the chocolate spirit.”

“Ah, I see you want the Double Stuffed Eclair.  That order will be no problem to fulfill.”

“How much will it be?”

“Six euros.”  

Jacque pulled out the euros he got from Rolande and handed them to the attendant.  Marléne stared at Jacque.  “I don’t understand.  You don’t expect the woman to pay for herself?”

“What country are you from?  In North America, we take care of our women.”

“In Europe, we trust that they can take care of themselves.”

“Get off your high horse.  I’ll bet you wish men would pay for you.”

“No, I do not.” Marléne yanked the bills from Jacque’s outstretched hand and stormed over to the glass display case.  Laurentine walked around Jacque and up to the glass.  She set her elbows on it and watched Marléne extract the eclair from the line up of miniature cakes and cookies.  Laurentine looked up to follow the eclair from Marléne’s hands to Jacque’s.  Marléne delivered the plate with a shove, turned around, and stomped off to the kitchen. 

“Who stuck a pretzel up her butt?  She and her admenstruator must be on the same period,” Jacque muttered.  He turned to Laurentine, “pick a seat, any seat you want in this empty  (chirp, from the bird who still has not left)ing shop.  I can’t believe I couldn’t snag this property.  I’m their only customer, the only (chirp)ing customer and the help still can’t remember my face.  Mother(chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp),” he stomped his boot on the floor in frustration.  

Fuming, he finished, “The only reason that they make ends meet is because of my mercy and their steep prices.”

Laurentine sat without a word in a table tucked in the corner of the shop.  She sat facing the counter up and to her left and the window up and to her right.  Jacque placed the plate at the center of the table and sat across from her.  A painting of a hook nosed man in a black cloak hung above Laurentine.  Although he was not the same sex as Aureole, the hook nosed man’s tremendous nose promised Aureole’s eventual arrival.  Aureole would never appreciate the sacrifice Laurentine was making for her.  

Aureole had never appreciated anything.  She expected Laurentine and Rolande to just make friends with her and trot her around the city indicating all the landmarks.  Not once had Aureole taken the time to ask about Laurentine or Rolande’s life.  Rolande and Laurentine were cardboard cutouts on popsicle sticks that Aureole wielded for her own amusement.  To discover that Aureole was even designing a pop up book Laurentine had to piece together the overheard exclamations of “the stalactites of this cathedral’s ceiling would be a pain to cut out” and “imagine the spiral of this staircase coming out at you” and “pure wind is so difficult to illustrate”.  Once Laurentine learned of this desire, she could excuse much of Aureole’s behavior.  Aureole would internalize what she was told and offer nothing in exchange.  So Laurentine would stuff Aureole’s face with the Paris everyone sees in the brochures and the useless facts everyone finds there.  

Today’s tour will be of the landmarks that have decayed before their time.  They have crumbled like cookies in the milk of a billion eyes.  Yet people still visit the Eiffel Tower and expect the fact of their actually being there to add something to their appreciation of it.  Laurentine had seen the boredom in Aureole’s eyes three hours ago.  That look paled in comparison to the hunger in the eyes of Aureole’s striking dream figure.  The dreamt Aureole’s mouth and tongue could have sucked Laurentine’s mouth off to boot.       

“Are you going to eat this sugar coated excuse for a hot dog or what?” Jacque prodded the ivory plate.  It clattered on the wooden table.  

Throwing out her hand, Laurentine plucked the eclair from the plate and drew it back to her lips.  She swallowed it whole and stuck her fingers one after another into her mouth to lick them clean.  

“You have no idea how to (chirp)ing eat do you?  Etiquette is not gorgeous and if etiquette is being polite then we are opposed to it.  I’m going to walk back up to the counter with this chair, smash it against the glass, cut my arm on the glass as I grab a pie, turn, catch my arm on the glass some more, deepen the gash, let the blood flow as I raise my pie in judgment, and throw that pile of whipped cream at your made up face.  I mean I showed you earlier how we operate.  I would need a lion’s roar to censor the curses clawing at my throat.”

“Why the censorship in the first place?”

“We have a TV show.  We used to use a machine to disguise the dirty words.  But when we went global and moved to Paris just across the street from this store, Mistress visited us and offered a petit four as a store warming gift.  I swiped it off the plate, smooshed it in my fist, and smeared it all over my face.  I went to utter my trademark vulgarity through my frosted lips.  The birds chirped over my words.  I knew two things then.  First, the birds had me covered.  Second, this Mistress was magic.  

He pointed to Laurentine’s shirt, “Looks like her eclair has begun its work.” 

She looked down.  White lines were running over the letters on her shirt.  It was as if someone had tipped a glass of milk over the neck of her shirt and it was washing away the words.  The neck of her shirt liquified, spreading wider and rolling past her collar bones.  Her pink nipples dented the fabric.  

“This is going straight to my chest, isn’t it?”

Jacque licked his lips.  Through a layer of phlegm, he managed one word, “Yep.”

Still looking down, Laurentine watched the whiteness of her shirt inflate.  Where Aureole’s dark breasts had pressed on Laurentine’s, Laurentine’s were now pressing back.  A mass of cleavage built in between the shirt and her skin.  Her shirt ripped in the middle, but some rogue white threads turned brown and ropelike and threaded their way across the chasm and tied themselves off at the bottom of Laurentine’s breasts, giving her the support she needed to hoist these fattening orbs.  The fabric over her chest wrinkled itself into fanlike folds.  She did not know what size her oranges stopped at.  Grapefruits?   

“Does your mouth always hang agape at the sight of these?” Laurentine grasped each breast with a hand and shook them.        

Closing his jaws with a pop, Jacque played it off.  “It’s not over yet.”

The jean shorts, pressing to Laurentine’s panties, loosened and lengthened.  The part of the jeans that went between her legs simply disappeared.  Laurentine’s nether regions were experiencing free fall or, at least, a sudden rush of air as the twin openings at either thigh went to her knees.  Where she had once been wearing shorts, she was now wearing a black skirt with white lines across it.  

With all this growing going on, she could not tell whether her ass was too.  She crammed a hand in between the lining of her skirt and her waist and cupped a cheek with a hand.  As usual the warmth of the cheek pressed against her hand.  But while her hand was there, she felt a pulse beat against it and then a consistent swelling.  Jacque’s jaw meanwhile had returned itself to the shocked position.  She saw the childish awe that he hid under a veneer of toughness.  Would she be able to sate his fantasy?  She found herself lounging in front of the artists again.  Sensing movement out of the corner of her eye, she aborted her memory and looked at the window where Aureole was eyeing the desserts.  Jacque followed Laurentine’s eyes.  

***     

A carton of milk shaking in Jacque’s arms, Laurentine’s sloshing came to a stop as Jacque did.  

“We’re home, honey.  Make yourself comfortable,” Jacque shouted.  Laurentine opened her eyes to watch the glass door close behind her.  It took them a moment afterwards to adjust to her surroundings.  She had passed from a realm of heat and light to one of cold and darkness.  “Tell the (chirp)ing chefs I have a special treat for them.”

“Who are you talking to?  Let me down.  I don’t want to flash my ass to a stranger.  Definitely not one of your drunk teammates.”

Jacque lowered her.  Her bare feet slapped the linoleum and she almost lost her balance.    The bunched up bottom of her dress, soaked in milk, slid down her waist and her thighs.  Who knew how much sperm remained on her.  The pill would take of that.  Laurentine lifted what she could of her soaked top to cover her breasts.  It clung to her uncomfortably but it clung.  So what is the next phase of the Chocolate Creme Puff’s plan?  Laurentine looked up from her tidying and noticed the hostess behind her stand.  The hostess blinked her fake glittering eyelashes at Laurentine.  

“If you would please follow me this way.”

“What about Jacque?”

Laurentine would have looked back but the hostess was already taking a menu and walking the other way.  The hostess’ heels clacked as the brown business garb, hugging her ass, creaked with the strain.  Laurentine swore if the hostess made one of her strides an inch longer the skirt would split.   

“He’s just a runner, popped in long enough to fuck you, drop you off, and leave,” the hostess said.  The word, fuck, was delivered with an especial slap.  

“Bitter much?”

“We have walked the same paths, you and I.  Jacque paid for me at the pastry shop.   Look at me now, working in the sausage shop.  And you are soon to follow.”

“It doesn’t appear as if you need any help around here.”

There was not a customer to be seen.  

“What matters is not the exterior but the interior,” the hostess mouthed and pushed open the kitchen doors.  Laurentine followed.  She was unprepared for what she saw on the other side.  A banquet table lay in front of them.  Seated at it, seven women were stuffing their faces in chocolate tacos.  Cookies, twinkies, donuts, and ho-ho’s were tumbling out of the large soft shells as the mouths worked away at them.  White powder decorated the women’s faces.  Their breasts swayed above the table.  The swaying quickly became sweeping as the breasts swelled within the shirts.  If the women noticed, they hid their awareness, directing their eyes in Laurentine’s direction.  The eye contact aroused Laurentine.  

She walked past the hostess, took hold of the other end of a chocolate taco, and sunk her teeth into the oozing sweetness.  Her nipples stiffened and resumed their production of milk.  Three of the women, scenting the fluid, climbed up on the table.  They walked on their hands and knees toward Laurentine, their tits swinging from their chests and their hips swinging behind them.  Before they could reach Laurentine and wrench her top away, however, Laurentine’s growing breasts did the miniscule job of pushing down her top.  Two of the women took a nipple and the third settled on eating out and finger fucking the suckers.  The suckers tossed their asses into and out of the supplied mouth and fingers.  

Meantime, Laurentine wrenched the chocolate taco out of the hands of the woman she was sharing it with, maneuvered it past the women sucking on her nipples, and crammed the whole thing down her throat.  Her milk ceased to flow.  The suckers rose to their knees and pawed the air, but the mouth and fingers of the third continued to do their work.  Laurentine, all of a sudden, found many sets of hands encircling her waist.  They hoisted her up on the table.  Head up, Laurentine blinked at the studio lights glaring at her from the ceiling.  Underneath her single pair of breasts, another sprouted.  And the remaining women, gorging themselves on tacos, cast them aside, to suck at Laurentine’s new pair of breasts.  One women even worked her way to the fishy taco between Laurentine’s legs.  With each orgasm, her body shook.  So much breast flesh was growing in this orgy.  It was a mess.  Laurentine mouthed to herself in the middle of her pleasure trip, “Aureole if you are going to come you should do so soon.”  She turned her head to the side and came face to face with her reflection in a camera lens.