Chapter 13

I didn’t feel almighty, bursting with innate magical powers from every pore, but the spark was there inside, like a tingling in the pit of my stomach. It needed time to grow ... and so did we all. Like Linda, we’d need years to develop and understand with any assurance and self-reliance that our new duties would be. Right now, I didn’t feel the need to loving tend some garden or pond, or find a neglect forest to loving foster. I wanted... needed to get back to Barry. I could feel, with more intensity than ever before, Dottie’s own desire to return to her own man, and as soon as possible.

Us five women, now the newest of the Fae, shared one last group hug before Linda stepped away from us. She needed once more to return to her tree, and to remain there for a very long time to come, but she had a few last loving words for us.

“Like Lydia said, when she changed, this isn’t goodbye. We’ll always be able to sense each other, maybe just tentatively at first, but our ties will stay bound, and hopefully grow. Soon, eventually anyway, we’ll be able to talk even, and someday we’ll be able to occasionally visit a bit more properly. When we both can. I think it will be years though, but for the Fae that’s really just the blink of an eye it will seem. We’re all going to be drawn apart, eventually further but yet closer together than you think. I’ll be able to feel your love, always, even if it merely a tiny wisp of breeze to me, and know, even if you can’t sense or when my mind is flooded by a million other thoughts and needs, that I will always love you too!”

I moved to embrace her and kiss her one last time, but she took another step back from me and turned to make her final departure and make that last final physical break with me, with us. She entered her tree and disappeared to us, but before she became lost within herself, to grow and assimilate the growing world around her, she spoke one last time in my mind, like a lover’s intimate bedroom whisper, laying in bliss among the pillows.

“We will always be of two souls, separate but yet connected, forever. Someday, Mother will need to become as just one, entirely of the Fae, immortal, and then the last of my mortal thoughts and memories will be lost. On that day, my love, if there is any way, we shall be rejoined ... perhaps forever or else to slumber ... but our souls shall remain connected until the very end!” With a ghostly fading whisper she was gone from me and I could feel our heart-link weaken, but ultimately never entirely fade. In spirit anyway, we would always be together.

“Well, that was entirely something new and different!” Dottie mumbled, taking test swings about with her new wand, swishing and flicking, but without engaging her growing Fae will to empower it. “Now here we are, alone for good this time, half-way across the fucking world from home and without a clue as to what to do next?”

“I think I know what to do!” Gerta said, “While waiting and meditating upon Linda’s tree for hours upon end she gave me a last few instructions, right before you returned and she manifested. She joked that your head would be pretty fucked up for a while with the newness of everything and your separation from her, so since my head was the best screwed on at the moment, for right now at least, I was to be in charge. That everything will ... hopefully, now work out.”

“Well, I’m glad someone has a clue.” I said, “Let’s get our ass moving then and get back home, but I don’t think that even together, our powers combined, that we can port ourselves back to the others. Maybe, if I squint my eyes hard, I could make a flower bloom, but that’s bloody it!”

“We won’t need them yet.” Gerta assured us, with quite calming sincerity, “Instead, I was told to use Lydia’s potion bag, and grab the silver one. It’s called the Mists of the Moon, and if the moon is shining on us, which it will be soon, we should stand together and break the bottle. The magic will then take us anywhere that the moon is shining, like the first crack of sunrise back at our camp, where the men are waiting for us. Once there, I’ll need to use two other potions, but she said we’ll be all ready to go by then. Goddess, I hope so!”

“No discussions then.” I decided. “Let’s get in a circle and wait for the moon, and go, once it hits us. I’ve got the growing urge to meet unfriendly people and do violently nasty things to their personages, in lingering and painful sorts of ways. Preferably with aid of pump shotgun gun!” I growled, and we did.

I wouldn’t have minded a last refreshing drink of water from that semi-magical island pond nearby, but there was little time for delays. The moon was already creeping up and climbing through the trees and it would shine upon our clearing soon enough. Besides, the lingering sweet pleasant taste of the fruit was still lingering upon my tongue, and I didn’t quite want that feeling to entirely ever fade away.

The moonlight fell upon us, five tired but anxious naked women standing in a circle of clenched hands near Linda’s ... Mother’s tree, just so that the mystical light could entirely shine upon us. Dorothy held the silvery small bottle aloft for a full five seconds so that we could all embrace and get ready for the change, the travel magic, and she smashed it to the ground. The glass broke, somehow against all logic upon the soft wonderful green grass and the fragments vanished at once, leaving just a growing silvery-grey fog that engulfed us.

There’s no place like home! I joked in my head, as I thought of my lover Barry and wanted to be there, back by his side. I felt a small abrupt shifting of my world and a moment later I felt that we were all there, somewhere else. The fog dissipated quickly in just a few seconds and we could see the first hints of the rising sun beyond the hills and at once I could see the Goat ... and then Barry.

I couldn’t reach his arms fast enough!

I couldn’t then or ever, tell him about what had happened, of what we had done, or what we had endured and accomplished by our women’s Quest. To Barry and Jack and all of the others, we had only been gone overnight, just as we had originally predicted, but to each of us, especially Dottie and I, well ... it was as if years had somehow passed. Emotional years, if not quite physical ones. We had seen, done and ultimately become impossible things that just couldn’t quite be properly described. The mental pain and anguish of our ordeals and challenges was gone, mostly. Like a scar that had pretty much entirely healed, externally ... but would still itch for time to time.

There was no way I could ever put in words what we had experienced ... for good or for bad. Dottie felt much entirely the same way she told me later. Besides, if she’d ever confessed in her entirety what had happened, she was sure that Jack would find a way to travel to Lydia’s far distant mountain, climb it and then whack at her with a mining pick!

“You’ve got wings.” Barry gently commented, with far more calm understated casualness then anyone had a right to. There was just no surprising him.

“Lydia and Linda both needed to stay...” I managed to confess, the necessary words forced from my lips with halting reluctance, but there were some things that he did need to know. “There were some complications that I don’t want to talk about, and I felt an obligation to Linda that I don’t think can be ever repaid. She saved my life, at least once ... and my soul. This was the only way that I could make certain that you and I could still be together.” And I left it at that. Unsaid, but much on my mind, was that now we’d never be together for that last final forever; now that my mortality had ended.

I realized right there and then, at that moment that eventually I was going to watch my lover grow old on me and die, and then I’d be entirely and forever without him! The cost of having a ‘now’ and just maybe perhaps a few ‘tomorrows’ as well. Linda and Lydia had always said that there were awful costs involved in having magic.

This price, this first new realization of just the first of many costs I would eventually have to pay, now suddenly hit me like a brick dashed upon my head and I collapsed into Barry’s arms and cried for a very, very long time. I could feel now Dottie doing the same, our emotions connected and identical, our new grief shared.

We couldn’t find any words to say and I hushed him with a kiss anytime that he even attempted to speak, and I just let him hold me for a long, long time.

It was Gerta, who unlike us had no regrets whatsoever at the prices we had paid, who remained calm and had her thoughts collected. All too soon she started urging everyone to make ready, and she pushed and prodded everyone into getting our asses moving. She gave her prince a terse report that undoubtedly glossed over every single important detail and basically ordered her master to get the troops saddle up and ready to ride. Immediately, if not sooner. She could already hover, feet and toes floating just above the grass! Already she seemed to be at least half-bird and I’m not sure I ever again saw her feet touch the ground.

Barry and Jack started to break the camp and get the Goat’s trailer loaded up to depart. Dottie and I found that with a little concentration we could make our wings vanish, much like our wands, enough so that we could put on a minimum of clothing. I wasn’t in the mood for shorts and a tank top, which is what I had been wearing before we’d entered the temple, and I had to dig to find anything that I thought would feel more comfortable. Something breezy and light, and eventually I found it. A light blue short (very) and thin knit dress that hugged my every curve and not just showed off my tits, but flaunted them, the shapes of my nipples and their rings blatantly exhibited. It wasn’t much of an improvement over being naked ... it was far too erotic an outfit for me to wear about town in LA (except when I was feeling nasty and slutty) and I only usually wore it around the house on weekend evenings, to tease Barry. Now I just needed to be comfortable, and perhaps tease the entire world, later on. Even this tissue weight cotton knit fabric felt too confining. I wondered, when my powers started to grow, if I could transform this dress into the same virtually transparent gossamer-weight material that Lydia always wore? She was an exhibitionist slut of the old school and I had very large shoes to fill!

Dottie also found herself uncomfortable wearing anything from her prior wardrobe and after dumping an entire suitcase of various shorts, jeans and dresses unto the ground she loudly despaired for finding anything that would fit her with any comfort. Like me, her skin felt overstimulated now by the world around us and as Fae, we needed to breathe, to feel it all upon our skin! Glancing at my second, last discarded choice, a low-cut high-hemmed mini-dress with micro-shoulder straps and a soft plunging cleavage that went right down to my navel, she selected it and shrugged it on. It covered her tits and ass, but only barely. It was slutwear, a micro-dress only suitable for wearing out to a wild Hollywood party or swing club. I have skimpy nighties that cover more flesh than that! We weren’t close to the same dress size, but somehow either she shrank, or the garment expanded to fit her. Some of both I think, actually! It fit her like a very nasty glove and I blew her a kiss of approval!

Yes, there is absolutely no doubt. Sometimes, a woman in just the right clothing can look sexier than if she were naked. I’ve proved that a hundred or more times in my life but this was a pleasant new experience for Dottie, as every eye now looked upon her with erotic desire. The faint Fae magic upon her didn’t hurt either. I wanted to devour her right then and there, but we had other more important things to do.

The caravan was packed and ready to roll out and now Gertie, with a certain amount of pride at her temporary leadership authority, quickly gathered us into position and explained about the last two potions she would need to use. She took them from the bag and then, with visible reluctance, handed it to me to pack away with my things. The Blue Tears bottle was still there, but it barely had but a few drops left in it. One other bottle was left, a bright atomic red bottle, still full, with a friendly label printed in Day-Glo colors saying helpful something like ‘break only in the event of an apocalypse’. How cheerful ... so I left it there in the sack. I assumed (always dangerous) that I’d find out more about its contents when I needed to, and not a moment before.

“Ok, first ... Lydia had prepared for us a potion that will energize that massive mechanical vehicle of yours, that thing you call the Goat, and power it up ... probably for bloody close to forever! Linda said it’s called the Roaring of the Earth, and poured into your fuel tank, it will empower it and give it the energy and force to go! Here, Barry ... take this and use it!” Barry swiftly took the bright orange flask and poured its contents into the fuel tank. I thought that the Goat, which was painted a forest green color, glowed a bright cherry red for a moment, but then everything seemed to resume to normalcy about it. Barry fired up its engine and then grinned.

“The fuel tank reads full and we were at about a half-tank, last night when we checked it. We’re all ready to roll!”

“Yes,” Gerta added, “but these poor nights and centaurs need to be able to keep up with you and ride, day or night without pause until we stop. This last potion will do just that. This is the Gusts of the Wind, and just a drop on every centaur or horse’s tongue will give them all speed and endurance, to ride like the wind itself day and night, until we reach our goal, or the potion wears off. Whichever comes first. That’s exactly what Linda told me!

I can’t say that everyone was happy to become magically enhanced, especially a few of the centaurs, but they all lined up and Gerta gave each of them one drop of the magical potion on their tongues. Barry and Jack climbed up front into the Goat and I was left alone in the back seat. The twins, still naked and with their wings fully outspread, mounted upon the backs of a pair of centaurs, and Gerta herself, with reluctance, mounted her own warhorse. I think already that she was wishing she could fly and not just hover!

The Goat roared off, slowly at first and then with growing speed as our mounted guards kept up with our pace, which was soon even faster than centaurs could normally gallop. Our pace quickened and once again the centaurs took the front scouting position and choice paths for us through the fields, meadows, streams and forests that the Goat could pass through. The vehicle, Barry discovered, much to our wonder, seemed to almost drive itself and it chose seemingly of its own accord the smoothest and safest path to take, even at moments when the alleged driver had other notions.

We seemed to travel along at freeway speeds and after a while, Barry even gave up on trying to manipulate and force the steering wheel, except with a gentle guiding featherweight touch of the hand. Day turned to night and the headlights of the Goat shined brightly forth like floodlights, guiding and showing our pathway clearly head. There was no pause, no respite, not for meals or rest, or even thoughts of bladder relief. We could endure and we all did, long past down and until the following midday, when the troop of centaurs in front of us began to at first lag and then falter. The potion had given everyone a full day of superhuman (and centaur) effort, and I could just feel that during our magical transit that we’d caught-up several days, maybe even a week on our enemies, that now they were not far ahead of us on our trail.