Believer
Shaman of Centraxis 10
“There’s no such thing as a free lunch.” The Cold Wanderer scans the menu in the small wood-lined Austrian style café at the heart of
“You end up paying in the end,” the bearded anarchist adds as he examines the menu for a second time. “Usually,” Wanderer is uncharacteristically happy, smiling with relaxed confidence in his amazingly clean army surplus uniform.
The Canadian’s on again-off again girlfriend is a fellow anarchistic activist and a vibrantly intelligent cynical feminist, and the usually dour and taciturn young man seems to have found his perfect match. He basks in the extended afterglow of the previous night as he leans back and downs the last of his coffee, his thick lenses hovering over the rim of the cup as he sees if his points have struck their target.
The Cold Wanderer’s young traveling companion places his fork on the plate and leans back in his chair. “So what you’re saying is that I have to endure this lecture because it’s your shout?”
The Canadian leans forward and pitches his voice to a level that can only be heard by the younger hippy. “Yer can’t just fuck around with a girl who’s in a relationship with someone else – not if they live in the same house, and not if yer expect to still be welcome to stay.”
“I told you,” the teenage shaman replies across the plate-strewn glass-topped round table, “We didn’t…”
“Never mind.” Wanderer waves an arm in his companion’s general direction in a gesture of airy dismissal. “It doesn’t matter to me – I can still stay there. It ain’t me who can’t keep my hands…”
“Life isn’t all leer and tickles,” Ram’yana interrupts in an attempt to parry the older Centraxian’s criticisms. “She’s a consenting adult…”
“Even if yer not, yer mean…” the bearded man says to the menu. Ram’yana continues as if he hasn’t heard the ageist comment. All of his friends, acquaintances and compatriots believe the young shaman has reached his legal majority, but Ram suspects that his good friend knows he’s actually seventeen. “Whatever people may think, Dot has a mind of her own,” he says while he stares at the remains of their repast, and his intestines gurgle in appreciation after their recent encounters with roadside fast food. “And she certainly knows her mind – and mine,” he says as a dreamy smile wafts across his slim features. “Thanks. That meal was definitely called for.”
Wanderer decides to drop the subject of his young companion’s indiscretion. “They know how to eat down here – and the desserts look pretty tempting. How about one more coffee? My shout again,” the Canadian announces with uncommon generosity. Their meal has been superlative; they’d dined on authentic Viennese cooking and the inner city restaurant provided a wide selection of meatless alternatives for the vegetarian magician.
It’s very unlike the fare Ram’yana is accustomed to sampling in the more monocultural surf-and-turf consuming, sun-loving
Bustling office workers buzz along the stone flagged laneway outside the wall-wide window of the restaurant, passing through the belly of the beast as they flit to and fro in the heart of the hive. “The trip’s been worth it for the coffee alone,” Wanderer announces appreciatively over his mug of steaming black Brazilian blend.
“You’d best hope Loren doesn’t hear you say that,” the younger man warns him with a short chortle. Ram’yana feels refreshed and relaxed, remarkably clean and well dressed after the last few eventful days. The city-born youth leans back in his padded hand-carved chair and draws succour from the burgeoning peak-hour hum and bustle of the urban centre while he watches the endless river of passers by.
A pair of chattering young lovers walks past arm in arm, both dressed in matching unisex ensembles of semi-transparent Indian cotton shirts and black flares. They avoid a bedraggled old man who stands in their path, glowing in a ray of bright sunlight that pours down between the tall ornate buildings to reach the gritty base of the deep artificial chasm beyond the café window.
The teenage shaman feels particularly well fed and thoroughly rested. The only ordinary luxury that had been absent at Loren’s place had been vegetarian food, and the Centraxian shaman has made up for that discrepancy with a hearty feast at his first opportunity. “And aye –
The nation’s current and true blue Capitol was originally built almost exactly half-way between the two cities, placed on a virtually uninhabited spot in the mountains of the stolen continent in order to settle the cities’ sibling struggle for supremacy. A new territorial area was declared around the new capital’s precincts so that neither rivalrous state could claim the status of host to the nation’s political hub. The new capital city is consequently a well-manicured circular series of concentric brick and concrete warrens, the carefully tended garden preserve of self-important career politicians and hordes of faceless, nameless beurocrats.
It boasts few of the cosmopolitan everyday wonders and diverse entertainments of
The young magician is sometimes capable of righteous diatribes that border on being obstreperous; his tongue can be a tactless lash that he’s still learning to restrain and redirect with leavenings of compassion. “Well - the public gardens are certainly beautiful,” he amends.
The headstrong teenager regards dissembling diplomacy and tactful courtesies akin to dishonest hypocrisy, and finds it hard to curb the ready expression of his feelings. Always endeavouring to follow the chivalrous Centraxian code, he regards himself as scrupulously honest and honourable, and usually expects the same conduct from others; as a result he’s often disappointed– but he’s rarely disappointed with himself.
Ram’s acerbic tongue should make him less popular with his fellow tribe members than it does, and he chafes at the idea that simple charisma combined with good looks can so easily charm his fellow simians. The Lord Kha-Aan has consoled his erstwhile page with the comforting observation that a tribal Hierophant’s oft misunderstood and abstrusely aloof role can result in benisons of heightened perspective and deepening awareness, along with a burdensome sense of separation.
“Ah,” Wanderer leans forward, elbowing aside an empty porcelain saucer and well-cleaned plate in his enthusiasm. “But they actually read things here; they even think! Not like half yer so-called friends back home…”
Ram’yana isn’t the only Centraxian who argues with customary bluntness. “Very true,” he concurs with confident assurance, noticing his body is leaning forward in his chair to mirror the Cold Wanderer’s intent posture. “There’s actually an intelligentsia here, and a far more politically aware populace.”
The Canadian reaches into his pocket and takes out a flat screw-cap tin as he slowly nods. “What’s more,” he says as he unscrews the container, “they’re not all totally bourgeois suburbanites.” He laughs dryly. “The student movement here is so active it’s almost radioactive.” Wanderer wipes his moustache and beard with a serviette. “I’ll go order dessert – they’re taking forever.” He wades around the rapidly filling chairs of the café’s clustered tables and makes his way to the counter while his young traveling companion nibbles the last of his meal and sips his freshly ground coffee.
Ram’s roving eyes follow a platoon of sun-bared feminine midriffs and long mini-skirted legs striding down the laneway on tall platform shoes, as a bevy of high-heeled secretaries and shoppers patrols the shopping precinct. The women watch every careful step on the rough cobblestone surface and almost all are wearing sunglasses. Most of the late morning shopaholics exploring the city centre for treasures and bargains are female; their faces are all swathed in lashings of makeup and there isn’t a hippy princess or radical chick to be seen among the straight-looking multitude.
Ram’yana notices a pair of young women in beehive hairdos and plastic micro-miniskirts peering at him through the glass door, talking and giggling behind huge rounded sunglasses and caked layers of unsubtly applied makeup. Their skirts have reached the zenith of minimalism, revealing perfectly proportioned legs sheathed in tubes of translucent hose. The women’s lacy white blouses are unbuttoned half-way down their cleavages in the sultry heat, revealing their bulging brassiere-strapped breasts to the appreciative teenager.
The post-adolescent Centraxian feels his hormone-charged blood rushing through his veins, instantly enflamed by the sight of the young women’s exposed charms and by their sleek translucently sheathed legs as they teeter atop their crazy platform heels. His thoughts change course at the sight of the feminine smorgasbord staring through the door and passing beyond the window. Is my recent brush with thanatos arousing eros? Is my body telling me how good it is to stay alive? The inveterate thinker wonders at his autonomic reactions and marvels at the automated, ingrained, self-trained responses of his all too human mutant psyche while his eyes flicker through the pane of glass.
As he stares at the young women giggling outside the café door, time telescopes around their artifice-studded nubile forms and Ram’s perceptions go into overdrive while his suddenly crystal-clear thought-stream echoes through the intricate caverns of his cranium. The young shaman’s peripheral vision expands to take in the entire scene in which he’s embedded, and Ram’yana finds he can read the chortling strangers’ motivations as if they were the unraveling pages of a wind-blown manuscript.
He glances at his friend, and sees that Wanderer’s Cheshire cat expression belies a simmering impatience, clearly evidenced by his tense posture and the stilted manner of his speech as the Canadian talks to a stressed-out waitress wearing a white lace apron and matching frilly blouse. As Ram’yana stares into her dark brown eyes, he gains an impression of a deep sorrow that the hardworking woman perpetually guards with the surface shield of her windblown charm and a doggedly maintained perseverance.
Is this a flashback or just mundane insight? Ram’s thoughts reverberate in a finite regression of self-examination as the girls stop staring at him through the doorway and decide to walk on by. He hardly notices; vivid memories from the preceding drunken night parade past his inner eye and occlude the multifaceted lessons of an ever-changing reality.
When Dorothy’s soft angora-clad body had moved against him in the darkness of the communal loungeroom and the gorgeous blonde’s drunken fingers began fumbling with the drawstring of his cotton pants, the young shaman had dared to believe that his fervent teenage dreamings were coming true.
The young woman had hardly spoken a word to him since they’d met earlier that evening, in the flat she shared with the other female students and workers - yet Dot had refused to leave his side on the broad couch when her drunken friend Penny had failed to convince her to come to bed.
It seemed the golden-haired young woman had been feigning sleep all along; after Penny slammed their bedroom door the stranger wrapped herself around her teenage guest in the early morning dimness and began kissing and fondling him with a woozy but determined ardour. “Shh,” she whispered into his mouth, “We have to be quiet.” They could hear faint sounds of lovemaking emanating from Loren’s room, where the tall student activist had led Wanderer before briefly returning to the loungeroom and blowing out the candle.
Ram’s hands explored Dot’s curvaceous body through her tight angora sweater while she reared above him on the soft couch. The young woman was almost as tall as he was, and her knees pressed heavily on his thighs as she twisted around upon his legs while she quickly slipped her panties down past her fishnet stockings. She pulled the dangling drawstring of his bow-tied pants and Ram’s underutilised young manhood sprang into the warm softness of her hand. “Do you mind?” the blonde asked, her teeth and eyes glittering down at him in the semi-darkness.
She hadn’t waited for an answer; Dot slipped down onto her knees beside the couch and the teenager moaned softly when a waft of warm feminine breath washed over his supersensitive exposed flesh. A moment later he was lost amidst a ravishingly mind-blowing euphoria as the beautiful stranger’s hot moist lips stretched around his crown and his straining young shaft slipped into the irresistible suction of her mouth.
It wasn’t the first time a woman had blessed the teenager with wondrous oral ministrations, but Dot’s unique technique and amazing deep-throated abandon surpassed anything he’d hitherto experienced. The gifted young student literally fucked him with her beautiful face while she used her hands to pleasure herself.
At first the girl’s head moved up and down with a slow and easy grace while her long straight hair pooled on his lap. Dot’s limber tongue wrapped round his swollen summit each time her mouth slid all the way up his length, until she held him in place with only her pouting lips as she prepared to dive again.
Ram’yana watched Dot’s glossily painted lips stretch outward and bulge around his enflamed, blood-darkened crown each time she drew away; he saw their soft slick surfaces fold inward around her gleaming teeth, sucked into her widely stretching mouth along with his saliva-slicked thickness each time she swallowed him whole. The sensations she bestowed upon the younger male were almost unbearably arousing, and he clenched his teeth while he tried to make the incredible experience last forever.
The young uni student swallowed the precocious teen’s flamboyantly aroused desire right into the hot slurping well of her throat and suckled on his entire length as her strong neck muscles tightened around him. Wet heat encircled his youthful manhood with a tightly twisting clench and Dot’s teeth snagged at his pubic hair as she rotated her head around the rigid fulcrum of his shaft; she literally screwed him back and forth with her snorting up-tilted nose swiveling between his hairy sack and his slender belly, while her voicebox vibrated against him as she groaned and grunted around his engorged flesh.
The inebriated girl grasped her young houseguest’s swollen sex between her suddenly unsheathed teeth, softly biting down with a cautioning warning when he bucked inside her and jammed his lengthy erection too deeply into her throat, making her gag. After a moment she released him and began moving at her own pace.
The experienced young woman knew how to keep her equally stoned and drunken playmate from coming too quickly, slowing her movements when she felt the younger man’s jism about to boil up within the enfolding rings of her soft wet membranes and strong elastic muscles. It was a surprisingly long time before Ram’yana had to gasp out a hastily whispered warning; “If you don’t stop now I’m going to come.”
“Mmph… mmm…” Dorothy moaned around his mass while she snorted for air through widely flaring nostrils. The vibration passed all the way into Ram’s roots and resonated up the length of his spine; he was certain he was about to come when her tautly stretching lips slid back up his length and a warm hand grabbed his slippery shaft when it finally flopped from the surpassingly talented girl’s panting mouth.
A sudden pressure at the base of his balls stilled his incipient explosion with surprisingly instantaneous effect. “Me too,” Dot gasped as her other hand rotated beneath her skirt, and he realised she was coming when her eyes clenched shut and an agonised ecstatic expression appeared on her pretty face.
With the sudden snap of a clicking switch the overhead light flashed on, and the blindingly revealed expression of glorious self-absorbed rapture on the golden girl’s face was gradually replaced by a resigned look of dread expectancy. The shaman watched Dot’s orgasm fade from her thrilled flesh, unwilling to tear his sight from the mind-blowing vision of her bared soul unfolding.
Ram’yana covered the feminine palm that was still tightly clenched around the base of his rearing shaft, cupping his long-fingered hands around Dot’s knuckles and his exposed tackle while his swimming gaze swept to the doorway - where Penny stood glaring at him with her nails clawing into her naked hips. The dark haired young woman’s cupid’s-bow lips curled with sardonic hatred and she swore at Dorothy’s fully clothed back while the kneeling girl panted before her unsated guest. “Fuckin’ bitch!” the wild-eyed brunette snarled as her eyes flashed toward Ram’yana.
Dot’s flushed expression shifted from fearful dismay to resigned defeat before her head dropped to her breast. “Shit, Pen.” Her dark-haired friend strode into the loungeroom, white bikini-lined breasts swaying as she marched toward the lounge. When she noticed Ram’s widening stare Penny stopped her advance and stood over the newly met lovers with her arms crossed over her erect dark brown nipples, while the woman’s blonde girlfriend cringed on her knees at her unshod feet. Penny’s darkly thatched crotch was level with Ram’s eyes and he sat up on the couch to meet her angry stare. “Fuckin’ two-timin’ whore!” The wiry woman’s voice rose in pitch and volume as she kicked the coffee table aside.
“Hey…” Ram began, but Penny was completely drunk and thoroughly enraged. “Shut the fuck UP!” she screeched. Dot’s hand slipped from his sex as she cowered on the carpeted floor. “Get the fuck OUT!” The older woman’s fierce gaze pinned the teenager to the spot as he covered his embarrassingly unfailing erection with the blanket Loren had thrown over the slumberous cuddling lovers. “Get OUT, you bastard!” Penny’s small hands clenched into fists as her eyes darted from the overawed long haired youth to her terrified lover.
“Hey, guys…” Wanderer’s tremulous voice penetrated the tense tableau through the door of Loren’s bedroom, as the tribal logician made a tentative appeal for peace. “Let’s all get some sleep…”
Penny swirled around and screamed at the closed wood-paneled door. “You get the fuck out too, ya flaming seppo!” Ram’yana pulled his pants around his cock and hastily tied his drawstring while the maddened woman spun back toward him. “Both o’ yez! NOW!” She reached down and grabbed Dot by the designer-labeled scruff of her angora jumper. “An’ as for YOU, ya bitch…” Ram leaned forward to intercept the wild woman’s arm as she yanked Dot upward and her expensive black jumper ripped slightly as it stretched tautly around the weeping student’s bountiful breasts.
“Penny!” Loren’s deeply-pitched roar managed to penetrate the naked brunette’s drunken rage, and the naked Fury paused just as she began to drag her unfaithful lover across the carpet backwards by her jumper. “Stop this now! Put her down and go to bed.” The volume of Loren’s commanding voice dropped to a bearable level by the time she’d finished her last sentence. She delivered her orders to her besotted flatmate with a fixedly reasonable expression on her equine tanned face, standing in the doorway with a silk robe wrapped around her statuesque barefoot skinniness. “We can deal with the mess in the morning,” she said, pointedly glancing at the smashed tequila bottle and broken Ned Kelly bong, lying amid the strewn remnants of the wooden coffee table. “Just go to sleep.”
When Penny released her grasp on her friend’s sweater Dot sprang to her feet, dodged the other woman’s flailing arm and ran out of the room. Ram’yana watched her fishnet-clad white legs spring over the crumpled purple beanbag before she dashed into the hallway and knocked a teetering pile of books down in her wake. A moment later the front door slammed shut with a resounding bang.
Penny ran after the tearful blonde and only slowed for a moment when Loren called after her down the hall with a long-suffering intonation; “Pen – you’re starkers.” Ram’yana leaned over until he could see all the way down the cluttered hallway; the naked woman flashed an evil-looking snarl at her flatmate and opened the front door, rushing out into the early morning suburban streetscape without a backward glance. The stunned houseguest watched the woman’s buttocks clench and relax with every step and belatedly realised his erection still hadn’t faded.
The front door had swung shut and closed of its own accord. Loren had merely shaken her head at the young magician, her eyes flashing to his tenting trousers just before she flicked off the light. “See you in the morning,” she growled with gravel-laden import before he heard the sound of her bedroom door closing, and the young magician was left in sudden silence and empty darkness.
The Cold Wanderer sits down across the small round glass-topped table, blocking Ram’s view of his own reminiscing mind. The shaman notices his right hand has been automatically doodling a series of vortices on an unfolded napkin, enscrolling an interlocking series of spirals across its roughly textured surface.
“Coffee and cake’ll be here soon,” Wanderer says as he rolls a ciggie. “I called Loren, and uh…” His eyes stay on the open tin of tobacco that sits on the smooth tabletop. “And she said there won’t be a spare bed there tonight. There’ll be plenty of room tomorrow, but tonight there’s only room for one of us – in her bed.” He says it with a broad grin that’s only slightly mitigated by a genuine tone of apology which underscores his enthusiasm. Then he smiles so widely his mercury-filled molars shine in the attenuated daylight of the restaurant’s interior.
“No worries,” Ram’yana smiles. “I’ve got Loren’s number and address - and there are some old friends I have to catch up with that may still want to see me after all this time.” A slightly hunchbacked gnome of a grey-haired waiter clears their table. The wizened gent notices Wanderer’s cigarette and returns a few seconds later with a clean crystal ashtray. “I thought it would be worse,” Ram’yana confides. He sighs with relief as the waiter brings dessert and a pair of cream-topped white porcelain cups filled with richly aromatic steaming coffee.
“Hmm,” Wanderer observes with noncommittal incoherence while he lights up his rollie. “It didn’t seem likely yer’d be welcome there again – but Loren reckons it happens all the time. She said not to worry - Penny’s a fireball roughneck and Dolly’s a frilly girly. You just got caught in the middle; they’re a classic pair.”
“What do you mean?” the inexperienced teenager asks as he sips his Viennese coffee. “Never mind.” Wanderer says. “The grass ain’t always greener on the other side, s’all.” The Centraxians tuck into fresh cheese pockets, dark almond chocolates and creamy coffee while they make tentative plans for their coming week of urban exploration.
Half an hour later - when Wanderer has left the young shaman alone in the café and the waiter clears the table with ill-concealed disapproving glances at the long haired barefoot hippy, who’s taking up expensive space - the young shaman decides to consider his options over the most inexpensive items on the menu; a fortuitously fresh orange juice and a slice of cinnamon toast. When the waiter shuffles off he closes his eyes and divines the vibes and portents, poring through threads of human relationships that spread from his aura to the hundred compass directions. The Centraxian shaman feels out the subtle linkages of his interwoven contacts in the social web of the oikoumene - the macrocosm of Humanity’s interlinked being on the inhabited Earth.
Tendrils of varicoloured light spread between human beings and other people that the tribal shaman knows, contemplates or desires, or in some other manner resonates with; the illuminated cords emanate from a triplet series of rotating braided rings that girdle his aura with blending shades of distinctive colours. Most of the threads extend to the northern distance or far beyond, but other strong links terminate locally, close by this southern
Some of the threads are bright and strong, and he decides to tune out the puzzling tendrils which reach far to the south of the continent, disappearing in the direction of the southern pole; he focuses on a handful of close and vibrantly bright links whose familiar warmth beckons his attention.
Ram’yana’s eyes open after he drains the last of the juice. He drops some change into the tray that holds the miniscule bill and shoulders his heavy canvas backpack, working his way past the clustered furnishings to the door. He holds interleaving images of the strongest close connexions superimposed over the closed-in material clutter of the inner city’s bowels; most of the more vibrant links angle off to the south and east, emanating from
The backpacker makes his way out beneath the clustered rows of awnings and strikes a path through the centre of the clamouring lunchtime throng. His steel-famed pack is a heavy burden in the summery heat, fully bloated with musical instruments, clothes, divining tools, minimal bedding and camping equipment, and a miscellany of minor shamanic accoutrements. Ram’yana focuses upon a particularly strong line of ethereal light and follows it through the masonry maze.
The shaman’s crocodilian sight simultaneously focuses on the mundane city streetscape and the overlain image of a bright blue tendril which extends from his brow and undulates across the true landscape. The wandering thread meanders across the real, actual, living world which lies sleeping ’neath the built-up capstones of the temporary manmade surrounds; the visage of an intense and intelligent dark haired young man wavers in his sight for a moment amid the hustle of the bustling crowd. Leo. That’s one call I must make.
A laughing group of schoolboys wearing straw boaters and gilt-edged maroon blazers mobs and jostles the daydreaming backpacker as they overtake his slowly pacing barefoot gait. Hovering in a time-slowed fugue, he disentangles a boyish hand from his pack’s open side pouch and slots his wooden Chinese flute back into its allotted place. He catches the well-heeled urchin’s terrified eye as the lad turns to sprint into the roving pack’s bright camouflage; Ram’yana smiles and turns away.
He refocuses most of his attention upon the etheric plane and concentrates on a strand of light that’s coloured with a swirl of pink and lime green hues - a particularly strong link which connects to the ring encircling his aura at the level of his heart; a penetrative pair of clear hazel-green eyes manifests at the edge of material reality, blotting out the slow motion cityscape that unfolds around him while his body glides along the concrete footpath.
Natasha! Of course? And… how can I find her phone number? The shifting image of the living tapestry of interwoven threads fades amid the onslaught of the girl’s well-remembered face - and the upwelling of raw distracting mind that surrounds the teenage psychic as he passes through the city’s concentrated maelstrom of daydreaming Humanity.
He catches a glimpse of a curling full-lipped smile and a slightly upturned nose. A fey light glimmers between a pair of quirking dark eyebrows; the geometrically perfect curves and planes of the freckle-faced girl’s patrician features all lead Ram’s inner focus back to the twin glittering magnets of her eyes. He becomes fixated on the vision of the fixedly staring green flames which burn beneath Natasha’s glowing brow. Ram’yana knows what that glow portends, and wonders why he never noticed her glimmering psychic awareness when he last saw the girl of his daydreams in the flesh - Years ago, he realises. What’s her surname?
He follows the colourful thread as it twists and weaves through the material realm, drawing him onward like a hooked fish being reeled in through a myriad of nearly identical schooling lifeforms. The multi-mirrored clones of a single suited briefcase-carrying businessman and a single handbag-wielding matron draw the shaman back to the raw surface of bricks, mortar, concrete and tar that comprise the hand-hewn human hive, whilst he riffles through disordered files in long-neglected drawers of his internal filing cabinets.
He follows the lambent thread to a blood-red phone booth and stops in his tracks outside the Tardis-like little edifice as he waits for his mind to catch up with his body. After a few heartbeats he swings the glass paneled wooden door open until its restraining chain bounces it back against his shoulder, and he squeezes inside with his bulky pack. The stream of humanity continues its endless flow beyond the small cubicle as Ram’yana thumbs through his slowly disintegrating address book, growing despondent as he fails to find the name he seeks.
He stares at the vomit-camouflaged interior for an interminable half minute and manages to empty his mind amid the chaotic turbulence of traffic and the deeply throbbing thrum of a passing prop-driven plane. When the shaman visualises the long-haired elfin girl as last he saw her - smiling and waving and blowing him a kiss - Natasha’s full name soon returns to him, ringing in his mind as clearly as a bell. He doesn’t find her number or address in the timeworn tattered booklet when he flips through its ungluing pages a second time, but knows he can probably find her number in the thick metropolitan phone book in the booth, or by calling a directory assistance operator.
He contemplates calling his old friend Leon, but is too smitten with the idea of seeing the lovely girl to ring his intellectually inclined contemporary just yet - not without trying to contact Natasha first. He opens the thick phone book on the bench in the booth to search out her family name. I’ll call
To Ram’s crestfallen chagrin he discovers that the page with Natasha’s surname is missing, along with a thin but essential surrounding slab of the large phone book. He decides to call directory assistance, but when he lifts the handset the public phone is utterly silent. Dead as a doornail… There isn’t even a click as he wiggles the cradle and turns the rotating dial.
The disappointed teenager turns to exit the booth and sees a mini-skirted girl standing with her back to him outside, blocking the glass paneled door. A radiance of glittering auburn hair cascades halfway down her back, and he watches the girl with increasing interest while she rummages in a tiny purse and stands before the wooden obstruction that parts the living sea of the passing parade.
Ram’yana pauses with his hand on the door handle, glancing down at the girl’s slim calves and thighs. Her legs go all the way up. The teenager traveler smiles, as much in amusement at the foibles of his own mind as at the sight of the frilly lace panties stretched revealingly around a perfectly pert derriere, exposed by the mini’s wonderful inadequacy as the girl bends to adjust a wayward sandal strap. The Centraxian noble feels a vaguely disquieting sense of guilt at his opportunistic voyeurism, but chooses to take the diminutive girl’s appearance before him at this particular moment as a beneficent omen while his eyes caress her long bare limbs and thoroughly exposed behind through murky panes of greenish glass.
The stranger stands upright and resumes rummaging through her purse while her admirer watches her luxuriant hair wave in the freshening wind. The girl seems to suddenly sense his scrutiny and abruptly turns to stare directly at the long haired hippy.
And then I saw her face – the old Monkeys song pours through Ram’s enraptured mind, a fully developed auditory hallucination in vivid quadraphonic splendour. The old pop song enters his inner ear in full four-part harmony, with accompanying auroras of psychedelic spirals which coruscate and flare around the teenage girl’s slender form – Now I’m a believer!
The wide-eyed girl freezes at the sight of the strangely staring hippy, and Ram’yana watches a gamut of responses race across her beautiful elfin features before shocked surprise wins out over her suspicion; she smiles as he opens the door.
“It’s you!” she squeals, startled into dropping her tiny handbag, which lands on her sandaled feet. She stares into Ram’s eyes and fairly beams at him as she bends to retrieve it, keeping her eyes on his as she kneels in an unintended simulacrum of a curtsey. “Man, what are you doing here?”
The last time he’d been this close to her, the well-met girl had been thirteen years old and she was kissing him goodbye at the door of an immanently departing Greyhound coach; he’d just turned fifteen. He has an instant in which to wonder – Natasha? - and her nubile body is rearing against him, toppling him backward into the telephone booth. She wraps her hands around his neck and raises herself to kiss him tenderly, a vibrant burning echo of his memory of their parting.
Her lips taste of raspberries mingled with cinnamon and the teenage magician is glad he showered, shaved and brushed before setting out from Loren’s in the morning. He’s almost a head taller than the girl and her sandaled feet leave the ground for the duration of the thoroughly lurid sensation which electrifies them both, as their lips and limbs unite securely within the glass booth and amidst the teeming crowd. She releases his lips and her eyes snap open as she grins and grabs his arms.
“Natasha!” he cries before she slides back to earth. “It’s you!” Ram’s mouth can’t even begin keep up with the racing rush of untidy thoughts that interlace through the continuing bars and lines of hallucinatory music; Not a trace of doubt in my mind… His long-lost first lover’s hands caress his shoulders as her bright hazel eyes remain locked with his. Natasha’s pink-painted lips shine as she smiles and a flush spreads across her pale freckled face. Ram’s words sound like a trite line to the uncertain young man when they emerge from his wide smile; “I was just thinking of you…”
“You were?” He sees self-conscious doubt rise within the girl’s entrancing features as her eyes flicker at him. “Long time no see,” she says with a suddenly shyer smile.
“I wondered what happened to you,” Ram’yana tells her with hands poised lightly on her naked midriff. Natasha’s smile returns and the bright radiance of her glamour instantly fills him with an emboldening joy. “Me?” she protests. “You’re the one that disappeared. None of us have seen or heard of you for years. A lot of things have changed – you may have noticed my braces are gone…”
“So I see.” Ram’s gaze slips from her hazel eyes, past her perfect white metal-free smile to her blossoming bosom, barely concealed by the tautly stretched material of her thin tube top. “And you’ve grown.” His eyes wander down and up as he surveys the new contours of his grown up ex-girlfriend’s slender freckly form with a deliberately obvious smile of appreciation.
“I’m sorry I haven’t written…” Natasha looks down at the unpainted nails protruding from her gold sandals and a look of genuine remorse inverts her smile. “I’ve been so busy with school.” Ram’yana takes both her thin freckly biceps in his hands and her eyes meet his once again. “But I’m on holidays now,” she grins. The younger girl seems uplifted and gratified by Ram’s obviously continued attraction to her, and fond mutual memories of secretive adolescent euphoria unite them in a simultaneous embrace. “Darling”… “Natasha…”
A bold confidence rises in the long haired traveler when the teenage girl’s trembling appearance of shy frailty suddenly transforms to an ultra-feminine entranced coquettishness as she stretches to kiss him with an unbridled display of uninhibited passion. “Mmm…” Ram resumes speaking when the tip of her tongue leaves his lips. “I was afraid I might never see you again…” Does she have a boyfriend?
A sharp rapping on the sanctuary of their enclosure intrudes into the young lovers’ tender reunion; an old babushka loaded down with straining shopping bags stares at the teenagers, and her incipient frowning glare swiftly turns into a smile when she spies the unmistakable untrammeled joy on their innocent young faces. Ram’yana opens the door and Natasha precedes him onto the busy footpath before he squeezes his overloaded backpack past the old woman. Traffic squeals and blares, loudly racing toward the next green light or red stop sign as metal motes jerk and stream between the rectilinear arterial canyons of
“I didn’t really need to make a call after all,” Natasha declares with a friendly squeeze as she holds onto Ram’s slim forearm. The small fingers of her other hand interlock with his as they stroll aimlessly along the sidewalk. “So what are you doing here? You don’t live here, by the look of that pack. How long are you visiting?” She gleams and beams at him as they walk along inside a mutually absorbed bubble that renders everything beyond the intensity of their rapt concentration as a vaguely entertaining backdrop to the delicate bright interplay of their suddenly resurrected love.
She’s just a gorgeous as Klara said she’d be…Ram’yana marvels. “We arrived here last night and…”
“‘We’?’ Natasha’s brilliant smile becomes slightly brittle and he quickly elucidates. “A Canadian guy - a good friend of mine.” The auburn-haired nymph relaxes and Ram’yana watches her jealous suspicion evaporate as he continues. “He’s staying with his girlfriend near
“And you’re staying with them?” The girl leads her rediscovered ex-boyfriend into a less overpopulated passageway. “No,” he tells her as their fingers weave together in the narrow pedestrian arcade. “They have no urgent need for a third wheel over there; no plans as yet…”
“A vagabond prince, eh?” Her presumably unintended use of Ram’s soon to be official Centraxian honourific stops the young magician in his tracks. “Your voice is a lot deeper,” Natasha tells the teenage shaman as she fingers the slow-growing soft stubble on his chin. They stand outside a small music shop that displays an ornately carved concert harp, glowing softly in a velvet-lined window amidst an assortment of diamante-encrusted piano accordions. Natasha entwines her slim arms around his waist and her fingers tickle his ribs beneath his coat while they contemplate the surreal miniature stage. “Come stay with me, then. We have plenty of room.”
“‘We’?” They both laugh, filling their private bubble-world with paeans of glee as couriers and shoppers step around the long-haired giggling obstruction of their cuddling bodies. Natasha slips her hands beneath his shirt and the high-voltage contact of her fingertips moving against his naked skin makes Ram’yana gasp. “My family,” she smiles. “You almost met them once.”
“Won’t they mind?” The thought of staying under the same roof with the precociously brazen Natasha he’d known two years earlier, while subject to the likely watchful vigilance of her parents unnerves the teenager a little - but not enough to make him back away from the possibility of really making love with this beautiful young girl. He’s oft dreamed about her lithe freckly nakedness pressed against his, in the last couple of years since they’d done everything they could imagine with each other’s barely post-pubescent virgin bodies - short of actually fucking.
Natasha had been very inventive, deliciously imaginative and incredibly, wickedly willing; until they met at the isolated youth camp in the
Now Natasha smiles at his incredulity. “My parents are going away for the week; my brother is, too. He’s going with them…” All impediments and obstacles to love dissolve, becoming stepping stones for the couple’s buoyant pace as they resume their hand-holding stroll through the glitzy human warren. Ram’yana feels his heart pounding in his ribcage as he looks down into Natasha’s eyes and beyond.
“You’ve grown, too. You’re so tall, now,” she smiles. “Two whole years!” It’s hard to keep his eyes off the tempting pink peaches of her breasts, almost fully revealed and barely contained by the straining tube-top. But the openly inviting sweet-souled girl glowing behind and within the lustrous depths of her hazel-rimmed jade-green eyes draws him back to the steady locus of her being. “Come on, let’s catch the tram. It’ll take us all the way home.”
A true story
- R.A.
Lyrics – I’m A Believer by The Monkeys
Images - Author's
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Please add your perspective to the collective mind NOW! - Prince Ram'yana