vOYAGE:O'Side

by Francis Kroncke

CHAPTER 3

  Sounds. It was the sounds that mirrored Frak’s personal and emotional shifts. He had followed Brok because he was like his kin. When he spoke he looked into Frak’s eyes and Frak looked into his. This was the kin’s way. The way Frak communicated. He did not understand this but it was how he was feeling as he looked up at the one thing they sounded in common, moon—Frak learning not to moan the word.

  Back then, only Lon had been moon. She who was this sound. Frak and all knew that she was the moon, up there in the sky and here in her person. Magx had made them understand this. That they all had come from the moon. That he, Magx, had come from her. That he, the sun, was the moon as child of the moon.

  Yet, as child also lover. For Magx and Lon coupled at the time of becoming big—the time of initiation for youth into adulthood and for the settling into the hum-hum of marriage. Through this sharing of their personal grok—as the males and females coupled, so all the female moons and all the male suns became one—this ensured that the kin's walking would never end .

  Frak is remembering big. Lon is the moon; chalk being. Darlm and all females are also whitened as daughters of the moon—faces, hands, legs, toes, toenails, fingers, eyelids—with large moon-plates...beast-tusk plates, artfully smoothed, almost translucent...precious, skillfully carved and hand-smoothed from the huge tusks of a great beast, which had to be “Harj big!” for this ceremony. It is also Magx as fire—sunrise, the sunset; flesh on fire...red in every aspect: hair, fingernails, toes, especially tongue ...fire-breathing, like the fierce harj sssssh! snake the size of Oolo, their tallest—almost two medium-sized kin high.

  Magx is fire which worships the moon—hopping, skipping, jumping, yelling, chanting fearsome words, frightening belly grunts, fierce hunting shouts...dancing, cavorting, whirling, spinning, wilding all around her—Her—Lon...statuesque, iconic, totemic, pillar which becomes the log, the fuel, the pyre for his—His—Magx’s dancing...fire consuming itself, so Magx—Was his fleshless leg magically healed? Fully muscled?—exhausts himself...his flesh unfolding and his bones revealed, totally and completely naked—having fed her with all his being, all his desire, he kneels before her and strikes her with his tongue, being fire—licks all over her, every aspect of her body: feet, thighs, cunny, ass, neck, face, forehead, eyes...as he worships and adores her so is he whitened—given moonskin, first as dapples...freckles on his skin, her skin...fire and moon: white and red: blood and desire…she is so cold, so cool, so aloof that she melts him: cold-fire...a conflagration at a distance…he becomes loony, crazy, moon-struck, falls to the ground and she sets herself down upon him—the moon falling into the dawn, this a plunging which is the mountain-top receiving the first strike of the sun, a strike of moon-shaft, her shaft, not his...and the women in the big emulate her actions, replicate in their hearts her desires, create with her and through her the Shad which mingles with his Sol—Brightness and Darkness, Shadow and Light....a time of the mixing of all he’s and she’s—themselves becoming beings of fire, hot and cold...of moon and sun, such are they as gen, so they know, such they are taught in the ceremony of the big.

  He and she—bodies painted with pigments of the earth... red, black, deep browns...bodies painted and festooned with flowers...luridly and seductively with ever so much enticing skill moving hips and winged fingers, calling him to come to her, black raven who he was and dive into her nest, there to flutter with her in rutting dance—wings flapping...all became creatures of the air—flying away and about and up, tricking each other, slipping into coy retreat, into come-hither glances...feathers all about his body, a flush of the meadow crowning her dawn-brown hair...like the animals they so loved and feared, they spoke in breaths of grunt and gasp and over-heated huffing, tearing into each other...ripping off feathers, violently casting away flowers, becoming what only gen can become each to the other—divers inside, plunging into each other...from eye-fall plummeting into cave dark, plunging into rib-cage shattering clutch and cling and thunder of bones on the dusty ground…so had Frak become big as Darlm become big. Back then, at the close and start of every day, m-o-o-o-n and sol appeared, together...Frak and Darlm were big, together...all was hum-hum...as such he knew his world, as such he knew his kin.

  But when Brok spoke of moon, no Lon appeared.

  There were no drawings of her roundness. Of her power. No big drawings—no moon grok.

  No Lon? An image of absence which raised another profoundly troubling image: Brok, a Wiz? Yes, but was he big? Was there a she, a Darlm in his life?

  As these questions rose, Frak took note that there were no females around. Never on the ship. Yes, there had been short landings, bartering for food, and laying with females—they all laid belly to belly!—but no coupling of moon and sun...no ceremony like the big. Just women playing but not sleeping with Brok’s men. Frak had done this, too, without much hesitation because this was his kin's way and his grok...to be with young females, ones not yet big. Now, it is all that the crew does...sleeps alone. Nowhere is there a hum-hum, a private shelter or space. At times Frak sees two crew males embracing but it raises no image, no sounds come...sol was never and could not be one-is-one with sol!

  In time, another two full cycles of the moon, the impact of not disembarking and establishing a permanent settlement on any of the lands they discover, coupled with the absence of the presence of Lon in any aspect, brain-jolts and transforms Frank as he now will forever only speak as Brok does. Poof! The sounds of Frak’s kin are no more...not even in his dreams! From thence forward, he easily converses with other mates, using long sentences and even paragraphs when storytelling. Like Brok, Frak has—to the shared amazement of the crew—become quite eloquent.

  All this unleashed a fierce but not self-aware visceral change. One so profound that Frak could not image it...more telling, he had not even a twinge of interest in imagining it. The pivoting shift came upon him like the quick sunshine rains that arise during the long season before the snows begins to fall in the north lands.

  Along with Frak’s newly acquired skill in using long-breathing sentences and amusing storytelling came a fundamental upheaval in his sleeping, his dreaming patterns.

  Frak’s people had never laid down to sleep until they had received the moon and walked about in her wonders. For they always found things under moonlight which they had never seen before. It was an endless wonderment that what was present in the moonlight was not there under sunlight. This was why females were so powerful—they allowed males to see what is not seen...to see under moonlight.

  Magx shared what Lon as Moon revealed...that which could not be seen...which could only be dreamed.

  It was the abrupt shifts in his dreaming which proved to effect the most profound and deepest changes in Frak’s mind and soul....dreaming and the sounds.

  Dreaming—Back then, Frak’s people gathered to dream as the moon rose and the sunlight disappeared. They talked about what they saw under moonlight. About what was strange and fearsome. For them, the daylight was good and clear. It was bright and brought a clarity to what was and was not. During the softness of early morning light and of twilight's playfulness with first shadows, they felt safe. Yet, Magx realized that daylight was a clarity which was empty, one without mystery. He knew that it was solely moonlight that brought shad and the eerie harj creatures—deep shadows and unknown presences that scared his people. He knew that his people were only safe when dreaming at night, not staying awake.

  Magx knew that in the moonlight they could begin to sense the presence of those who were no-no in the land. Those ancestors who often came to be with them by being through them as under moonlight they all make present the fullness of the kin and the gen—of the clan and the People.

  Frak also knew the moonlight as love-making...snarling passion in all its sensuality and tricky, lusty play. It was then that the big women came to him. Then when he and Darlm would spend long times together, embracing. During the day, under the sun...clear of eye, clean of skin, careful o
f eye, they had their tasks, their cooking...their hunting and gathering. At night, under the moon, they dreamt together—moon-fire! and sun-desire!

  It was only with Darlm that Frak dreamt big...this the importance of becoming one-is-one, of forever mating, because it unleashed the deep dreaming within Frak. Lon knew, Magx knew, Darlm knew, and Frak came to learn that she-Her...was what m-o-o-o-n dreaming was all about...wherein all in the kin became Her.

  Frank remembers a special deep dreaming that he shared with Darlm. She comes to him with the shawl Lon had given her upon her initiation into the deep feminine, her big. It was a hide beaten to a special thinness such that the berry dyes and flower stains placed upon it lasted to the grave. Darlm's shawl teemed with whirling balls of fire...rolling sky-bursts.

  Sky-bursts. This seen only on the most awesome of nights. Dry nights before the rains. Nights when the sunlight settled but seemed to refuse to sleep...shooting arrows of a mix of dreamy and fierce love towards the moon. Like sky-blazing-eagles-on-fire but which thundered and cracked the sky apart, whose sounds were “karoom” and “blam” and other bursts of noisy sizzling and roarings—a night of shooting stars. Frak and his fellows knew it as rumbling fire in their loins...the harj desire they had, big male for big female—the delirious desire for new life. How the tiny gen came.

  Darlm stands before him...Frak cannot breathe...does not want to breathe...does not want to disturb the slightest moment of her presence. Drenched in blue, like the day’s sky through which the cloud creatures glide; eyes cobalt blue disks. As she moves to lie down with him, he drinks her in. Opens himself like a sliced gourd to receive her presence. Sees her heart gushing forth blood, and her blood falls upon him, drenches him and as he is so saturated he rises and they sip each other, lips to lips, slightly licking and soft pantings in and out…they dream deeply as Lon has shown them—as Magx has shown them. Dream as coupled...as Lon and Magx do at the ceremony of big.

  It is a mere touch of her breasts and Frak is swimming in the sky-burst moonlight. Her breasts so soft and accepting of his tongue, his kisses...his image is of himself floating down a river, being lifted up by the limbs and branches of a great tree, hefted up and wrapped in its leaves, all touching him and as they touch each is a sound, a melodious sound, an enchanting sound: he is engorged...it is this tree which Darlm becomes...for as they dream ever deeper, the images they weave are woven by a common imagining...she is this tree and her roots are deep within the land, so penetrating that her thoughts are rock but yet even deeper such that her feelings are sodden with soil-belly desire...the mulching cravings of the land. Oh, she desires that the kin, the gen—the clan and the People—Live!

  As Darlm so immerses into and becomes these desires—she manifests as Darlm-the-Tree-of-Life.

  From this vitalizing life-source tree Frak is unfurled. He flies through the sky. It breathes him with as a gentle wind, a cool breeze...he: flying and floating, then falling, plunging in a hard and heavy drop, a sweaty-fear-numbing drop, a screeching shrill sounding drop, as all about him is a falsetto trilling cry, a blade-shredding of the wind...he plummets down and down and down and is suddenly without breath: in or out. Frak knows that he cannot breathe, not breathe but that he can swim, and as he swims so is he still alive through her wetness, he now down upon her wet hum, at her moist delta sucking mouth, there licking her and kissing her and softly sounding into her the darkly deep desire of his bones...for all his sound is now but a steady harmonious moan, a disciplined wailing which is at once a basso longing and a screeching release of terrible pleasures and pains, for his body is twisted and contorted as he slithers and sways: swims up her river and into her cave, there her shad comes upon him and his eyes see no more—so blinded, he is but guided by his third-hand-of-one-finger, it now a stick of light, as one set on fire, as one he has taken through the night before, he now glowing and guided by his third-hand-of-one-finger, this to lay prostrate before her...she now the throne upon the land there at cave’s edge, so he rises, emerges from the water, slowly, with awe-tinged respect. Frak sighting her as throne, the living throne—throbbing white spider-web rok...there in all the majesty, the bedazzlement of moonlight. Frak kneels before Darlm as throne...she beckons to sit upon her as throne: Ah! so they coupled-dream and as coupled dreaming so they are, through these shared instances of ecstatic delight, wedded as one...singular in mind and heart as they are in the flesh. This, a special time because their first gen-kin, an um, their first son was born as the next full moon cycle ended.

  Dreaming—Upon Brok's boat the dreaming is different. The shift came to Frak in jerks and shocks. At first Brok woke him much earlier than he had ever risen. The moon was still out. This Frak had done before only on rare occasions. Here, it became every day. The other shock was watching the crew go to sleep right as the moon appeared. Only one of the crew stood watch throughout the night. At first, Frak could not sleep. During the day he found himself tired in a way he had never felt before...hunger had deserted him; he grew thinner. Most oddly, this shock of sleeping differently was accompanied by the strangest of images...or the lack thereof since the moon was no longer present in his dreams! Not as Darlm. Not as Lon. Not even as Magx sitting with him adoring moon. All this crashed in upon him in the middle of a full moon cycle.

  Not dreaming made him tired. He did not know why. The crew seemed vigorous and ready at dawn to meet the day...but—and this was one of his last insights of his back then mind—as they slept, none dreamed. How did he know? He knew because he watched and none danced before they slept. None took out amulets like Darlm had given him. Frak knew that they were gen but strange gen, for they lived most of their days without women. In his new mind, Frak quickly grasped that the Sun had swallowed the Moon, that it was the Sun that gave light to the Moon, not as he once thought with his back then mind. More, all of a sudden his thinking became reflective...he, all of a sudden—Awake!...started to interpret things in such a way that he began to have a storyline form in his newborn mind. It began with seeing Brok as soul-feaster on women...as eating the souls of women!

  At first Frak thought that the crew lived without women simply because they could not see the land...land was where the women were, safe in their huts. Now he sees how the land has changed...why Brok—and Frak, himself!—no longer need land.

  Land. They had seen many places and peoples...but in odd ways which Frak had never encountered. No, he had seen, so he remembers, images to himself the small islands, but always land inside water with other land nearby. A few times they came upon a land which was so small that they could not walk upon it. Other times, they beached their landing boats and walked along the sands but did not foray into the forest...did not stay very long. Then still other times, there were so few trees about or no bushes with berries or no water to drink...something which made them quickly leave the land.

  But no land meant no women.

  Awake! Frak begins to sleep as all in the crew slumber...to not dream as they do not dream.

  In this way, what Brok intended, happens. Frak becomes one of them.

  Brok commands the crew to make ready the "Soul-Feasting Ceremony."

  During the night—like a horrible dream revisited!—Frak is roughly wakened with several hard grasps and even more violent shakes.

  He startles to awareness, still bleary-eyed and sluggish...zooming out of a deep, dead-muscle sleep.

  “Hor!” It is a ribald sound shouted by many. Numerous hands grapple and pull him out of bed and up onto the deck.

  He fights back without thinking about whom he is fighting—but he is easily overwhelmed.

  “Hor!” they keep screaming and shouting and whooping.

  “Hor!” and there are great boom-booms of laughter.

  Frak is righted, and as he stood he saw the crew once again robed and painted in the strangest and most frightful ways. Animal heads: heads of ocean animals, heads of land animals Frak scans, sees...cats and pigs and dogs, these and one of the crew holding a shr
iveled, blackened gen’s head—such Frak has once seen but then only upon the ancient dead, back then upon a day when a great ocean storm washed away an ancient burial site once no-no...the facial skin was so wrinkled and blackened that he had wondered if it were actually a gen.

  All these heads and the blackest of faces and the whitest of hands: chalk white. Frak could not stop to figure out where all this has come from, for they roughly drag him and also Petra, the one who had been wrapped in the great white fur and tattooed with the moon...haul them both and stand shoulder to shoulder before Brok, sitting upon his ledge. Brok, all blackened and white of hands.

  Brok booms, “Hor!”

  As Brok bellows the word he lifts out his cock (Way back in Frak's mind flashes, third-hand-of-one-finger!) which is greatly engorged and painted black with a white tip...lifts it out and wags it in front of Frak and Petra.

  For a moment no one seems to move...or know what to do.

  Then….

  It is a memory which is everlasting and long dreamt. Possibly the only dream Frak will ever have from this day forward. Endlessly repeating...but not a bad dream; not no-no. Not in the sense of a nightmare or hallucination. Rather, a dream of validation, of final acceptance—this Frak senses...however, it is not a time for such clear thoughts or precise words.

  Frak is served a large goblet to drink. He knows it is gom, the potent drink that had set his mind adrift during the moon tattoo ceremony. Accepting with grace, after a long gulp, Frak’s sleeping cloak is thrown over his head and he is blinded. Many hands push him and prod him...then he is nakedly stripped but still head-cloaked...several feet swiftly knock out his feet from under him...kneeling upon the deck...great pressure is placed upon his neck and his face and shoulders are ground into the boat’s planks—Darlm’s amulet is ripped off, tossed, kicked aside…there, for a moment, Frak finds himself oddly laughing, a weird delirious kind of giddy, giggling laughter...gom’s high-pitched, snorted laughter…then, a hard but not too rigid stick prods his ass, a rod not as firm as a tree branch but something sturdy enough to press, slowly drill into him—he wiggles and tries to stand up but two hard slaps whack his head bowed...the pressure is not relieved…the grinding comes again and again, each time hurting a bit more than before, from slow to constant—for a dumbfounded moment the image arises within him of Magx’s magical third-hand-of-one-finger, of seeing it in the sacred ceremony of adult male initiation where the young are shown what a male must do and not do…not be pierced! Frak screams but his anguished yells are met with more slamming slaps and more frenzied wild, shrill shouts and more drilling prods...repeated and repeated...more pain and deeper pain but the gom deadens it almost totally...his mind once again drifting off yet the prodding drilling grinding piercing seems never to stop—it never does stop, not even after Frak croaks hoarse, swallows his tongue...blacks-out.

  Upon waking Frak finds himself covered toe to crown in hides. Clean hides. Special hides. They are all the darkest of black with a thick musky scent; fleshy. He and Petra...as both once thrown over-board together, here both waking in tandem in this other involuntarily shared moment...both simultaneously struck with wonder by the hides and at the same instant moment filled, sweating, gorged with fear and foreboding.

  Stilled. For there are no others about. Not walking about. Snores can be heard. Up on the prow is a sole helmsman. Another solitary crew is high in the lookout. The ship is moving easily, gliding under a strong but steady breeze.

  As Frak slides and tosses the hides away, rising, he feels a savage pain grinding in and up his ass: truly harj no-no pain...like no pain he has felt in this part of his body...ever so carefully, ever so slowly he half-bends, reaches under to massage his anus but even the daintiest touch is like rousing slumbering embers that flare up in a frenzied fiery Ssssss!

  Fran’s balls ache and his penis throbs...worse! Aaaarrrgggghhhh! His fingertips are bloodied! He steps back and away as he notices drops of blood pooling at his feet. As trained by Magx he rips part of his robe and forms a pad that he sticks into his ass crack...it is near unberable for him to stand upright but he fears more a sitting down, so he stoically rights himself...momentarily all his pain is forgotten as he notices Petra—who seems in like anguish but Frak cares not about that, is not solicitous, no, never...he sights Petra's moon tattoo which is now crying a tear of red! That crying tear of red which all the others have...discovers!—as he himself now has...the bloody tear dripping down from his smoky white moon tattoo...he is deeply, instantly, consumed by both sadness and joy. He is moved at a level of emotion for which he has no words, hardly an image. He just knows that something has entered him at a level of possession which he is struggling to discern as to its grok, its power, its intent. He senses that something has been taken out of him, from deep within him...he harbors not a single doubt that it came out his asshole...but what comes out of the ass but dung?

  This tear of red blood has both Frank and Petra fixated, hovering there almost immobile, slightly hypnotized. The tear—gom’s power!—speaks to them...in strange images that flit across his mind as he gazes upon them. He hears a story...in which this tear of blood is a tear of birth and a tear of dying, one shed by females in their moon cycle, one shed by a mother at the birthing moment...one shed by males in battles with great beasts, one shed at the burial of a friend or a fellow crewman—as a sign of oneness. Awake! In a moment which will last forever, Frak grasps that this crying tear of blood is shed only by males. No longer in his mind is there even the slightest residue of power images of females, of Darlm, of Lon. No, he sees what has happened..that Brok feasted upon Petra's and Frak's grok, their souls, by penetrating deeply within and drawing it out—birthing it! Frak knows, just knows, clearly, that this is the greatest grok ever...that which empowers males to roam the world, master the seas...live without women!

  Frak rises as one now eternally bonded and in full comradery with his crew...to dream as they not-dream, now and forever.

  Frak, face flushed, gleefully smiles at Petra, a lewd ogle...snickers a tad as Petra’s smile carnally arouses his rising cock—he is ready to soul-feast upon Petra!

  Only much later in this stunning, revelatory day does Frak come upon Darlm’s amulet...thong broken but stone intact. He, at first starts to toss it overboard but somehow—an action not grounded in any clear reasoning or understood impulse—pauses, slips it into his tunic's pocket...later stows it away under a plank near his bedding.