Chapter 12

My world was nothing but the most utter blackness. I’d gone mad with grief; in a fugue so deep and dark that I’d shut myself off from the entire world around me, bolted up all the doors and windows and loudly proclaimed myself to be not at all home.

I couldn’t sleep ... I couldn’t even cry anymore, my despair was so complete. It had all been for nothing ... all of it. The Quest, the challenges and punishments to both body and soul had all been for naught. First, losing Lydia to her age-long penance on top of that mountain and then watching Linda’s last bodily store of strength evaporate and diminish with each hour, until her last final measure of will had been given.

We had arrived too late. The dead delivered unto the dead. Now Mother had passed as well and our lengthy journey had all been for naught. We were half-way around the world from the Magic Kingdom, where we had needed to be, and now there was no one left to help us. I was no longer even capable of helping myself, let alone seeing us returned to our husbands and friends who needed us.

The sad part was that I just no longer cared anymore ... about anything. The prices we’d paid to reach this place had been more than any mortal person could bear.

I was adrift, lost in darkness when I thought I heard Barry’s voice calling. That I could somehow feel his presence, somewhere in the dark fogs of my mind, and I realized that I did have something left to care about ... my husband. Even if I had to swim and walk across every ocean, desert and mountain on this world, I needed to return to him! Undoubtedly, far too late to matter, but perhaps just in time to face the end of the world together, in each other’s arms, at the very end of all things.

As the fugue began to lift I could hear Dottie’s voice, gently talking to me, soothing me, beckoning ... pleading for me to return to her, but I was lost and couldn’t find my way back to her.

Then I felt a pair of kisses, a series of burning savage kisses on my lips that jolted me like lightning from my mouth all the way down to my very toes. The world, the real living world, rushed back to my senses with the speed of an impending automobile crash and with a loud anguished cry I jerked myself conscious and my eyes, reluctantly at first, pried themselves open to a brightly sunlight world. Two pairs of arms gently assisted my feeble attempt to sit up and the first sight that I could clearly distinguish when my eyes could focus once more was Dot’s worried but now beaming face, as bent forward to kiss me again and again, delirious with relief. Now smiling myself, I then turned to see just who was kissing my opposite cheek, and I turned my head to kiss her and our lips met.

Again, it was like electricity flowing through my entire body, but like the mid-morning sunshine surrounding us, it was soothing yet invigorating and not in the least unpleasant; a kiss of life. My lips couldn’t break away and I wanted our kiss to never again end, but it eventually did.

“I love you,” Linda whispered, as our lips parted and we hugged tightly for several long minutes.

“And I love you!” I cried out, but I could no longer shed any tears, even ones of joy. “But you were dead ... you died in my arms minutes before I could bring you to Mother ... and now she’s dead too.”

“She is ... but really she isn’t. I can feel her even now, resting. She was so very old and tired! She lives on in me now, and as a part of this very hill, as does her own Mother before her as well. She’ll never really ever completely pass but forever become a small part of this hill and island, her memories passed on downwards to her daughter, the next Mother.”

“Which is you ... you’re now ... Mother?” Dottie exclaimed, giving the pair of us a hug so tight that I gasped for air.

“Many, many years too late,” Linda admitted, “I didn’t want the job when she asked, hundreds of years ago and I fled from this obligation. She waited for me, patiently, for all of those long years, holding on to her life, extending it until nothing was left but a small slender thread ... much like my own life, when you at last brought me to her. At the end, neither of us had much left within us but a spark, but it was enough ... and now, slowly, we can begin to start putting things right. Back home in the Magic Kingdom, and in a thousand other places here with ten thousand or a million old lingering problems that Mother did not have the strength to deal with any more. Now, if we have the time, we ... all of us, can now put the world back together right!”

“But we’ve lost so much time!” I stammered haltingly, my voice feeling a thousand different emotions. “I feel like we’ve been here, lost between worlds, for days. Barry and Jack will have left the temple without us now, for certain. Our enemies, the ones that have seized Amelia and the other two princesses, will be so far ahead of us that even the Goat won’t be able to catch up to them in time!”

“You’ve lost less time than you think,” Linda laughed, “because not only was Mother helping us to reach here in the very nick of time, but Father was too! He almost never directly interferes with anything and he’s so incorporeal, being the very essence of Time itself, that even I can’t directly sense him. My Mother told me though, before she went to sleep to take her rest, that he knew what needed to be done ... and did it. Time always passes very strangely here on this island ... it’s his home too and tends to subtly react to his moods, even flowing backwards when necessary. When you leave, tomorrow, you’ll all be right on time at the crack of dawn, on the morning after entering the temple... precisely on schedule, so that’s a good start!”

“When we leave,” Dottie said, with some bewilderment, “but not you? You can’t ever leave here again? How can we hope to do this all without you?”

“You, we, all of us ... will just keep buggering on!” She sadly stated. “Yes ... and no. For now, until I’m much stronger and my grasp up the entirety of the earth is complete, my grasp upon my world, I’m fixed to my young growing tree and my island. I’m here, sort of ... right now, but not really. I’m more of a strong mental projection than a true physical presence and even that is costing me more strength of will than I can really spare. Later, when I’ve taken the full mantle of my powers, then I could ... and shall, assume a physical form again when needed ... like visits to very old dear friends, but for now if something needs physical doing, and much does, then you will have to manage it.”

“But how? You and Lydia were our only two fairies, and our goal, our plan was for one of you to regain your powers so that things could be set right!” Dottie wondered.

“And both of us did, regain different sorts of powers anyway. I can just feel Lydia, if I focus my senses through the earth ... and now she can sense me as well. Oh ... that was fucking rude, but very, very Lydia as she is wishing me good luck! As for you and Amanda ... and maybe the girls too, I think you’re all going to have to make rather different sorts of plans, but not quite just yet. I need to get back into my tree ... I don’t have the strength for this sort of thing yet, but I’ll talk to you again tomorrow morning. Just go watch my tree grow and think happy thoughts. Remember, I love you both!”

Linda’s semi-material projection faded a little and drifted across the grass back towards the Old Mother’s now dead tree husk and disappeared into a small young tree-ling, barely knee height in size. She disappeared inside of it and the small leaf branches seemed to suddenly shudder, as if in a stiff wind, but there was no breeze on the hill at that moment on the hill. Almost before our eyes, the tree seemed to grow, millimeters at a time but steadily. By noon, it was a man’s height and by sunset her tree was at least ten full feet height and was festooned with bright green leaves.

Touching the smooth bark of her tree, I could feel just a wee tingle of the electricity that our earlier contact had given me and for just a fraction of a second I thought I could feel Linda’s heart-link with me. Even now, our souls were still connected together! She was lost within herself and couldn’t spare a thought for me, as she continued to grow roots deep down into the earth, assimilating the Old Mother’s memories and gathering up her magical grasp upon her new wondrous world. I didn’t want to distract her, so I gave her trunk a soft kiss and I rejoined Dottie on the soft grass to enjoy a dinner of the finest and most delicious fruit I’d ever eaten.

The girls had found watching a tree growing to be eventually boring, so they’d spent the afternoon exploring the island, picking fruit and talking with all of friendly and fearless wild animals that lived in peace on Mother’s Island. It was an interesting tale that they related over dinner and I admitted being curious myself to taking a look around myself tomorrow morning.

Gerta was still much in daze from the events of the last few days and wanted to keep her own company. She remained sitting on the grass and endlessly examined her large eagle feather, gently stroking it while gazing upon the wonder of Linda’s tree in the growing gloom. We made her eat something, a handful of delicious wild berries at least, but she showed little enthusiasm.

Dinner was leisurely but happily fulfilling, and as the sun began to set the twins, once again bored and still full of endless teenaged vigor and enthusiasm, disappeared off into the trees once more to make their acquaintance with the more nocturnal creatures here and they didn’t return to Linda’s tree for the duration of the night. This was fine, for it appeared that Dottie had other intimate plans for our evening, the two of us alone together.

“Love, you really gave us all a bad scare earlier.” Dottie whispered, after holding me close and kissing me first gently on the cheek and then more tenderly on my lips. “You were really gone, lost somewhere and fading, without any desire to even live. I kept holding you, talking to you, shaking you and I kissed and screamed at you to come back, but you were gone ... until sudden Linda emerged next to me and took you in her arms and kissed you. I thought I had lost you ... and then I would have been lost myself! It’s as so strange, so unreal, the magic that connects us all. Your soul has been linked to Linda and also my soul has been linked to yours, so that we all can feel and almost live each other’s anguish. Sometimes, like last night and this morning, it can all be just too much to endure. I was sure that I had lost you ... I don’t ever want to have that feeling again!”

We kissed for a while longer, first with the lips and then with open mouths, our tongues frantic to devour each other. Then, with certainty, we both knew what we needed.

“The girl’s said that just down the hill that way, maybe about ten minutes or so, there is a very nice little lake. I fancy a bath ... a very, very long one, to wash away these last few days. To be all clean again and maybe fresh ... and with you, once more. What do you think?” Dottie purred, gently rising up to her feet.

“Best idea I’ve heard in days!” I exclaimed, gathering myself to my feet I then grabbed her hand and pulled her me hard and fast. Our bare breasts pressed together as I kissed her hard. Pulling back, I let my nipple piercings sensuously rub up against her, but I playfully pulled away just out of kissing range. “Bath first, lover ... other things afterwards, and for the entire rest of the night, if you’re up for it?”

She was.

The small lake was quite large and deep enough for a long bath and the water was just tepid from the warmth of the day and felt sensuous against our bruised and much battered flesh. The waters were delicious too, the taste enveloping the nature of what perfect natural waters should be. Also, after the nightmarish transit of the tentacles during our Quest challenge, we also felt unclean inside, as well as outside, both our skin and internal regions. For hours we washed, scrubbed our skins tender with each other’s bare hands and drank down enough of the fresh pure water to probably float a dry-docked battleship. It would come in handy for later.

Feeling clean at long last, with pink well-scrubbed skin, we left the lake hand in hand, basking in each other’s love and the soft glow of the moon overhead. I think we had intended to return up to the top, to make love together underneath Linda’s tree, but our urges wouldn’t wait that long. A soft lingering kiss turned immediately in ferocity of hunger that could be no longer delayed. We fell to the soft grass by the lake and commenced devouring each other.

For a preamble we kissed long and hard for a while, our hands roaming everywhere on each other and the last of the anxiety and tension from our long ordeal shed away from us as we sweated in passion. Then Dottie started to play with my piercings with both hands and any last ability to concentrate that I’d had, vanished. The effect of savaging biting my nipples, hard, while twisting each of my barbell piercings while also rubbing, tugging and twisting my clit piercing, sent me off into fireworks land in less than a minute.

She’s always been fascinated by my piercings, and I have a lot of them; both nipples, four on each outer cunt lip, a clit hood ring with a bead that rubs and bumps against my clit-head, and another barbell right through the center of my clitoris that makes me instantly horny if touched or rubbed, especially with a tongue. It’s so sensitive that I can cum just by wearing blue jeans or even wearing silk thong panties under a skirt tingles me constantly. For the nipples, I was wearing my normal ‘weekday’ silver barbells. I have several other nice sets of gold and silver rings that I wear weekends or for special playtimes. The nipple piercings look prominent and divine under silk dresses or blouses, braless of course, so that everyone can tell at a glance that I’m a pierced slut who loves to show off! Sunning together half naked (or nude) by the pool getting deliciously squiffy with many drinks, Dottie couldn’t hardly ever take her eyes off of my intimate jewelry. But, being a pain-weenie, she had never quite gathered up the erotic ambition to go with me to a piercing studio and giving her loving man a surprise. She didn’t even have the obligatory naval piercing, like her daughters wore.

Now ... it was probably too late, unless she’ll let me break out a big sewing needle. Somewhere in the Goat, in my travel makeup bag, I’ve got a jewelry box full of extra bars and rings for intimate piercings, and even a few fancy nipple and clit-shields. Maybe when this whole thing is over I’ll just sit on her and pierce her nips for her anyway ... I know that she wants them! Like it or not, she’s now a slut like me and needs to look the proper part! Erotic piercings are perhaps the one thing important thing that the mundane world had that the Magic Kingdom lacked!