Gone the Tides of Earth

Atop of the mattress, the nurse peered back at me over the shoulder while I stood in the threshold. An ethereal vision exuding sensuality having already brought me down to those primal instincts where, from tantalization the rest turns necessity.

She had practiced gazing back at me the entire time, skirt’s hem nipped up. Reaching behind she traced a finger, drew circles and tracing down, with the same finger pulled aside the delicate white lace. All four fingers compact teased the moist pinkness, pressed firm into, rubbing. She sketched along a leg with the same finger, poking the fingertip into a stocking and peeling it to the heel’s cusp - with opposite leg the same, though stripping it far as to let the nylon material dangle, sway off the heel until parted. She had to stretch farther back, pull it along quite low and, not daring break form of her parabola arch, forehead gentling onto duvet. Recovering she raised up, looked directly back at me as though not having turned away for an instant, ski-slope curve in the back deepened - reached past the hips caressing the lace panties, enveloped in marinade of minted labia, compressed her body inward to glide them towards her feet, eyes still upon mine. She lifted one leg out, like a lever the other far enough to drop them completely, although the silk landing on the soles of a feet, bobbing a moment before falling, trickling from curled white toes. Her moonlight deep sea eyes, exoticization faltered for smoldering.

Ambling ahead I kneeled down, coming face with the culprit, mucosa gelatinous, with both hands clasping the well-rounded borders - her fingers grasped back, a grip that softly grazed my hair - then buried my face in, greeting lips with lips to the tune of an involuntary affirmation.

Courtney Garswood was a born hybrid child of the Kingdom, English father a lower-house Tory and mother, whose familial wealth older than kilts caught more wind than bagpipes, weaned in the north near Inverness. Later she became a leading socialite in Edinburgh, that was how eventually met the father who, some years older, the temporal sort who saw reality in grey shades that conservatives often tried to inflect upon societal life, its subjects, all else. She was the only thing ever polarized the hue his political-tinted lenses. As a young woman out of university she rallied with a band of like-minded intellectuals, conservationists encamped for an extended duration in the Highlands. They were those souls the sole meaningful impediment to the exploits of fracking and proliferating puppeteers, several years previous they had already endured the unseen extinction of the wildcat, pine marten, mountain hare. Like everywhere else there was not anything special going on nor worse by any stretch, and in many cases the Kingdom considerably better off than the rest up to the aforementioned point.

Unto dark she straddles, no longer wearing the uniform, were now disengaged though still inside she often teased by squeezing her legs. After a while fell out, continued in the same manner without paying attention to it, speaking about everything that mattered and more which did not; reposed on the crest of chest, long oily locks, smell of skin sugary sweet, supply warm. Given lack of a headboard, I lain up against the wooded wall. Moonlight streamed in the windows, long laminated oak buttresses that adjoined the stained walls shining. Layout of the room was minimalist, three beds far separated, rucksacks underneath, a trio of wood-stock bolt-action rifles hung on medallion hangers off a mahogany wall-mount. Each bed had a nightstand, in the corner of the vacant wall a broad desk was scattered with candles, parchment and a rusty cylindrical gramophone, red velvet curtains draping each four-paned window arch. Also, a littering of a soldier’s uniform and faux nurse’s outfit strewning the floor, a bottle of rum and six cans of domestic ale taken from the yard adding colour to the bland decorum.

A few already drunk, I cracked the tin stud of another. It was light beer, overall easy to stomach. The rum was about half empty, she hardly drank at all except upon their arrival, and then for entirely different purposes as now. ‘If we are to keep on like this, I may need to stretch a limb,’ I said, grazed her neck. ‘I suppose I can let that,’ she answered, fingers through my hair, ‘seems these old bones have bent every direction to the gale.’

It was getting darker and the oil lamp shone from the nightstand, as well a couple candles flitted light from the writing table perpendicular. She sat back, slouched down a bit and I could tell she felt happy, the underside of her fingers imprinting my torso.

‘What is it you’re thinking of?’

‘Not much right now.’

‘I know what, that you loved other girls more than this.’

‘Never as much as right now.’ Her countenance paled, so I knew her mind - could tell she thought of it too. ‘What do you make of the changes?’

‘I feel like it’s all deadlier somehow - an actual threat.’

‘How broken we are.’

‘Let us not talk that way tonight.’

‘Alright.’

‘It’s been great these weeks.’

‘It has.’

‘You’ve given me more than one could expect times like now.’

In the way she looked at me and took both hands in her own, I sensed something amiss, ‘You are leaving soon, that the others have gone?’

‘The day after tomorrow,’ was the answer, glee dimmed a bit, ‘a truck is coming to take us back to the city.’

Taking up the musty rum bottle, I took a swig and so did she. Realizing how appropriate, this night, cause for celebration to glutton ourselves on the remaining stores of drink reserve in the outpost cellar.

Sat up reached wide back, behind taken in grasp and held firm, stroking until in palm bulged rocklike, staring deep into eyes tucking within self. That moment never desiring more, dexterity of hips thrust into torque, mobility on upwards trajectory, eyes transfixed together and self shuddering – the sopping viscosity, lathery soap in hot water porous, running past the base - throbbing sensitive and for self as if feeling cramped up, cheeks flushed and rosy, moving easy inside as a lubricated pipe in its connecting socket, waxed for synergy and slotted perfect in a deftly proper execution …

Breasts went rising, bouncing and self bounded up-down, fingertips caressed softer skin below hips, hand crept along rubbing into intergluteal canal, in circles on the dark brown impression of anus - we commenced a night recently so wouldn’t be able to again - and a finger finely fondling rim, small dips inside, prepped after all considerations despite and yearning sore despite egging on - taking over around front activating clitoris, teased little pink dots with tongue until self couldn’t stand that any longer, lobbing them into face so could only lick up and down, in a lapping manner, steadily and deep and loudened and it entirely suctioned, in instance could have her like this forever more and in that moment, incontrovertibly became each other’s.

Balance was no factor in Courtney’s familial life, this much she told me. Imbalances in her parent’s relationship, capriciousness of father’s political enaction and obstinance of mother’s will split their lives long before came what proclaimed them broken. He later died sickly, a feeble member of parliament in his early sixties - by then they were no more than parental colleagues. Throughout a great part of her childhood it was so, after his failure to follow through in veto on a series of important referenda, this dawned full fallout of estrangement: that terrible edict troubleshooting the bane of my own nation, supported by Kingdom, that rented apart very fabric upon which the land was bound. Indigenous for so long ignored, who we had silenced, and in the end, what happened inevitably what they warned of. We understood each other this much through the complexity of a certain shade, I believe even somewhat through respective silences. In a stubborn rage her mother, defying incompatible incongruence with all things modern, industrial, spent the last decade of life managing last-ditch cause from the abandoned crag and surrounds of an old Inverness village. For a time, Courtney lived with her there, before moving in with mother’s mother, then always came through that way for visits. Told me that much later she sometimes missed the view of the water, mountainous grasslands, smell of the nature and wrinkled lines of amusement in kindred mother’s laughing smile. Those others that were there, mother’s charges as well and northern sections of Highland landscape had been pseudo-magnanimously left alone, until elsewhere there remained not anything left to be taken. In a final push by the government a catalyst they eliminated the activists from the position, scattering them southwards lest into the sea. Any diplomatic sense of truth apropos the government’s push were never illuminated, nor declassified, a good number of the north rebellion never accounted for, mother among that latter grouping and all else, the survivors who went transparent in a public capacity, maddened, mere unheard martyrs alas who were silenced for good. Young Garswood said goodbye after flush, to the grandparents and burned a bodiless pyre in the wreckage of mother’s old cabin at the end, before she left Scotland, its memory behind.

Walls jitter castle wooden planks stripped pour oil burning fry men friars foray blasted dirt forage chestnuts smooth, blooms sweet bites soft crunches, breaching wall smashed in pink deep, panting primality paintbrush strokes damp cool canvas colourful pallet easel, collapse world’s eyes waking up blinking hundreds of times closing eternity of seconds . shucking oysters jelly edible pipes raw oiled innovative - storm brew cataclysms bolted moist emanates, oatmeal stirred with spoon groped slimed mashed - castle walls hooked, titillated - succulent fruit peached pushed into juiciest plucked laden, posh steamy beaded follicles pours, soak stick breaths mouths open

Came long hard spurt lasting seconds, then soothing - eyes meeting eyes, thus within lock, borne deep into depths watery chasms, spiritual impassioning arisen in nuanced, truest nature binding tale of two by spell, a melting grace become crucible to irrevocably changed, ensconcing mortality. There are no words.