"There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble with the trees..."

Getty Lee, The Trees, RUSH Hemispheres

She was coming home... It could feel her drawing nearer, her unique self shining out towards home, drawing nearer and soon to be in the house again, her own special voice calling out to her parents, but luck of all luck, they had had to leave unexpectedly, and it had her all to itself for the time she spent here, even if just one night... It could not fail now, it had to be tonight, and it had worked for this moent for 7 long years, years it had put to good use,... It would not fail in its goal, and perhaps even it would be so blessed as to earn the goal it had worked towards all this time...

It would be good to be home. She had been working so hard these past few months, and sophomore year was so different than freshman courses. But now she was heading home for fall break and would be able to rest her head, with just light reading and a few notes to review her only requred studying, tho if her Mom got too tense and stressful, then she could always read ahead. Slowing down, she could see her Father's car gone from the driveway, and imagining him off to his club for a "meeting"--his euphemism for needing time away from her Mother.Her smile faded slightly when she entered the house and felt the silence.

Leaving the neighbors' house minutes later, walking the path leading from their proerty to hers, she felt disappointed and strangely elated. With her parents gone she would have the house to herself the whole weekend, but she would not be treated to her Mom's cooking either, so there was a little disappointnent that she would have to wait til Wednesday, when they were expected back from her Grandmother's after her hospital stay. She would use the time to her advantage tho, with a freedom she did not have at her prudish roommate's stuck-up and judgmental place, she was not supposed to be open and free with her body, and she understood the sentiment, even tho she was a girl, too and therefore her body should not offend her religious friend's sensibilities , but it did. Maybe her roommate was a closet lesbian and didn't want to be tempted, she wondered sometimes when the restriction got to her and she just wanted to be free and walk from the bathroom to her bedroom without wearing a long robe.

Now with the house to herself, Julie did the unthinkable, what would get her asked to leave at her roommate's apartment, or a swift swat on the fanny from her mother, 19 or no--she walked from her bathroom thru her bedrooom and down to the linen closet completely nude, gathering towels and some of her father's old shirts from the shelves, and walking back to the bathroom to take a shower and slip off to bed. She would go swing in the backyard later, beneath her old favorite oak tree, and dream of her younger days while she enjoyed the calm of her own backyard, with the added bonus of her mother's absence, meaning no admonitions about keeping warm or never leaving her be for more than a few moments.

Before she knew it, she was outside, walking thru the backyard amd slipping one of her father's shirts over her head, her body still moist with her shower and her skin so hot she needed the chill of the outside wind on her skin. When she came to her senses, she was halfway up the trunk of the tree, her feet finding the knots on the trunk she had used to climb up as a child, and her leg was sliding over her favorite limb, the bark still worn smooth from her jean-covered rump, all those many years ago. She could not believe what she was doing, but she felt so at ease withherself, and this was one of the nicest things about her childhood she could recall, sitting in this tree and rocking her legs back and forth. She still remembered the way she had felt that last day, kicking her legs vigorously, faster and faster, enjoying sitting here so much more til her Mother passed by the back window and saw her, just in a swimsuit from lying out getting a tan, and had come to drag her off the tree limb, telling her it was not appropriate for a girl her age to be in a tree, especially not this tree, where the neighbors could see her. She never had understood that comment, but she had missed climbing her old companion, and often wondered why it was so nice to sit there that day, or why she had been up there in the first place. Just like today, she had been drawn to climb it, and here she was with her naked bottom and all, straddling her favorite limb.

When she recognized the warmth in her belly, the peculiar sensation that only her fingers could calm down, she blushed heavily, knowing that she was truly making a spectacle of herself, straddling this limb and probly giving the neighbors a good peek at her pretty little privates. Just the thot of someone spying on her here somehow made it seem as if she were caght with a lover, instead of just outside half naked and wanton. As she snuck back inside, she remembered something odd. Hadn't her oak seemed to have quite a few leaves on it for this time of year, green leaves? Stranger still, she had seen no acorns, nor birds' nests or insects. She never remembered her tree looking so lonely and deserted.

It had been so amazing, to see her responding to its call as she had so many years ago, as the other creatures of the forest had as well. It had learned much of touching in its years, much since her mother had first awakened it to the emotions coursing thru itsince then. It had missed her mother, but now it wanted her, as she offered an unknowing response to its power and empathy that her mother never could have. It still remembered the near catastrophe that had happened after its dalliance with her mother, how the man had come raging from the house intent on hacking at it with an axe. All it remembered of the man was terror, and it would never ever mistakenly risk that sort of discovery again. When it fulfilled its wishes with her, with its very own Julie, it would never worry about anything but the pleasure it stirred in her and the resulting pleasure she sent back thru her connection to it.

Back inside once more, she rushed thru the house to her bedroom, slipping beneath the covers and swiftly bringing her legs open and up, sliding her fingers inside the moistened lips of her soft private place. She could not even say those vulgar or clinical eputhets in her own minds. It was her own private place, and these were her private emotions, or so she had gathered fom that messy attmpt at frankness from her mother before. The passion she was stirring in herself with her fingers touches was not all that private, and it was the one thing she worried nothing about showing, as she had caught even her prudish roommate in the shower once, her hand free and clear of any soap or body wash busily rubbing betweeen her thighs.

When she finally stoked her body to a violent quick orgasm, she could have sworn it felt so very different, as if something innsde her was still in that tree outside, rocking back and forth against that limb, like she had so many times as a kid, but enjoying the secret tingles she had felt in the months before her Mother had banished her from climbing the tree. Remembering the discovery that evening inthe bath of her own pleasures in that private place, the warm rush of her orgasm filling her with peaceful sweet feelings, she ached suddenly and came again, this time violently, picturing herself astride the treee limb again, this time with her bathing suit on and 12 as well, but her suit bottom pulled to the side and her immature little privates rubbing fast against the smooth bark. Another orgasm threatening to overwhelm her, she stopped rubbing inside herself, stopped pressing against her hymen, which always threatened to send her fastest into orgasm, and which she enjoyed still having, not sure if losing it was worth the risks of some man thinking he had a claim to her, like her Father always acted with her Mother.

Curling up in her bed, cozy and warm, she drifted off to sleep, her rest punctuated by visions of a younger version of her Mother, as free and sweet as she herself was as a youngster. She smiled in her dreams, watching her own Mother as a girl climbing the tree out back, the limbs lower to the ground and the top not quite as tall. When she saw her Mother doing in her dream what she had fantasized about in her orgasms, or beginning to, pulling her own old style swimsuit off to reveal her lower belly tufted with hair and her own private place glistening with wetness, straddling the tree limb and throwing her head back in glee, Julie jerked awake, her hand going to her mouth. Where that dream came from she did not know, but she knew her Mother never felt such things, as she had spied on her parents making love one time, beneath the covers and very unromantic it seemed, and her Mother simply lay still beneath him til he grunted hard and low. Then turned to her side and curled up away from him, just as he did the same thing. Minutes later she heard her mother running a bath and crooning an old song, broken up by what she could only guess was crying every once in awhile.

Slipping back in to sleep, Julie stirred restlessly, sensing that evening had come and too tired to go get an evening meal. Her hands stole beneath the covers, but every time they did, she flashed on her mother in such reckless abandon riding that tree, older than she was now, and not really riding that limb as much as hunching against it, and with a knot of the wood pressing deeply between her legs. Sighing in frustration at not being able to repress that image from her mind as she grew more and mroe aroused, she gave up and, slipping her hand beneath her shirt to caress her nipple absently, slipped gently off to sleep.

It felt her response to its images, mostly confusion, and knew then what it had only hoped. She was still untouched by man, unlike the countless generations that had lain beneath it in loveplay, including her own mother, who had played in its branches, but still come back to its touches after she had accepted her soon-to-be-husband inside hr, where it had never felt its own touches wander. It quickly suppressed that thot, as it led only to the memory of that small pitiful woman and her daughter, preventing the daughter's fiance from chopping down the family tree.

It remembered the years since that day, when the jealous husband of it soon to be lover's mother would come outside to stand beneath its branches, eyeing its fallen dry leaves as he lit his pipe, cigar or cigarette, holding the match until the last second and droppig the offending fire into the tinderbox of its leafy blanket. It was a wonder that it was able to send its then fiends to snuff the embers away, but its experiments in emotions, training itself to become Julie's lover, had run off its former animal kindred. It had waited this long, but with the taste of her pleasures, and the scents and flavors she had left on its branches in her responses to its first call, it could wait no longer, and quickly bent its thots and energies away from the past, and towards its sleeping lover.

Julie roused slowly, feeeling the chill on her belly first, and then the soft rasp of something hard and brittle against her underarms, her legs pressed against something hard and rough surfaced, spread wide and pinched at the knees, as if by a clamp. When she opened her eyes it was to see hereslef lined in moonlight, her shirt sliding down her arms and falling to a branch below her, many feet below her. She was in the oak tree, halfway up it it seemed, dozens of feet off the ground and she was straddling two branches of the triple fork of a large limb, close to the trunk of the venereable old tree itself, planted by her thrice great-grandmother. She wondered how she had ever climbed so high in her sleep, and how she hadn;t sucffed her body more than the odd burning abrasion she felt on her inner calves. What stunned her most was the rustling of the trees branches, whispering together an seeming to call her name soft and low. What confused her tho was the absence of wind in the air, not a single breeze and the pleasant warmth in the middle of the treee, her skin tingling and moist with sweat from the close air, humid with dew and the smell of strong sap.