Chapter 5: A Family Way

The Family

Even on a holiday, ranch chores need to be done. Especially when nearly every boarder wants his horse out to go for a trail ride. Some of the boarders brought friends and rented horses from LK Stables riding stock. Ramie had purchased six gentle trail horses for just such a purpose. With the purchase of additional saddles and tack, feed, and liability insurance, she was happy to have all six rented for the day. It just meant that even with their late night previously, she and Kyle had to be in the barn at five to get horses ready.

“The trails are all in good shape,” she told Deke Clark, who had brought his girlfriend and a picnic carefully packed in his saddlebags. Ramie checked to make sure the couple had adequate water. “You might want to go up to the ridge. We drove the cattle up a few days ago and the guys at the camp don’t mind visitors if you want to stop there for lunch. If you want more privacy, there’s a thermal spring about a mile farther on. Don’t get up close to where they’re putting up fence for the drilling, though.”

“That stuff bugs the hell out of me,” Deke said. “They shouldn’t be prospecting in the National Forest.”

“They’ve got a right to prospect as long as they don’t interfere with other rights. It’s not a National Park like Yellowstone.” Ramie said resignedly.

“How about if we take the south trail down by the river?” Deke asked.

“You know that trail’s always good,” Ramie answered. “It will be hotter by about ten degrees than the mountain trail, but you’ll have easy water for the horses. You’ll see the herd of rescues down that direction, too.”

“I think we’ll go that way,” Deke said. He boosted his girlfriend into her saddle and checked the stirrups. He was a good horseman and had been with LK Stables for three years. Ramie was confident in his ability to guide the less experienced girl.

“Happy birthday, Pa,” Kyle said when they came into the kitchen for breakfast. After a quick hug, Kyle picked up his baby Katie from the high chair and hugged her. Ramie swung Theresa up into her arms and blew a raspberry into her neck. Theresa giggled.

“You are going to need a shower now with all that syrup she just smeared on your face,” Aubrey laughed at Ramie. “Now sit down and eat.”

“Gonna need a shower anyway as sweaty as we got already.”

“Stinky!” Theresa giggled, holding her nose.

“That’s the smell of money, honey,” Ramie said. “Unlike when you get stinky. Let’s finish up your pancakes. Did you save me some?”

“Mom Au cooked.”

“Well, I better kiss the cook, hadn’t I?” Ramie kissed her wife and sat with the rest of the family to eat.

“Anything special planned for your birthday, Pa?” Aubrey asked.

“Nothing special. Thinking I’ll take my beautiful wives for a trail ride, too. We’ll sit in the saddle and solve the problems of the world. When we get back it will all be better.”

“We all wish,” Ashley said. “And pray.”

Like all trail rides on Cole’s Independence Day birthday, the three seemed naturally to end at the family burial plot. The family tradition since long before Cole’s birth had been to place a plain white slab at the head of each grave. The stones were unmarked, but there was a row for each generation.

Note: If interested, see the Bell Family Tree at http://www.devonlayne.com/BellFamilyTree3.pdf

During Cole’s time travel days and after Miranda and Jason had shown up in his children, they had added several stones. Looking at the burial plots—some, like Katie Lynn’s, empty because the body was buried elsewhere or lost completely—was like looking at a genealogy chart without the names. Beside Theresa Ranae Bell and White Horse’s stones were markers for Miranda Lewis, Jason Wardlaw, and Kathryn Forster. Laramie Bell, Kyle Redtail Wardlaw, and Katherine Alexander were in the next row. Kyle, while possessed by Cole, had fathered Kaylene Redtail Bell while Kyle had fathered Arthur Alexander on Katherine just before he died. The Alexander line diverged from the Bells, though they homesteaded next door.

Cole’s father had married his distant cousin, Sarah Alexander, bringing the lines together again. Sarah’s brother’s daughter Mary Beth had become the wife of Cole and Ashley and was the mother of Ramie and Phile. Ashley was the mother of Kyle and Caitlin.

Cole could recite every generation, the names and dates of each one. He had expanded all the listings in the old Bell family Bible to include every member of the family he could trace. Even back to White Horse and Theresa, this land had been in his family. Maybe further back, though there was no evidence that in their before-time selves, Caitlin and Phile were ancestors. Still, this had been a sacred place for them as well.

The family was tied to the land. The land was tied to the family.

Ashley took her husband’s hand and led him to their wife, Mary Beth. The three held each other and sank to the ground. In an act that would have appalled their children—what child wants to think of his or her parents having sex?—the three managed a birthday blow job and a promise of more to come.

“Why don’t you kids plan to stay in the big house tonight,” Mary Beth said. “Let’s put the babies down to sleep before we read. I can’t help but think this is stressful for Theresa and Katherine, even if they don’t understand the words.”

The family agreed and after the babies were asleep, they gathered together.

“I’ll read,” Ashley said. “I have to read. Please, let me read tonight.” Ramie handed the box to her and Ashley settled in the middle of the sofa with Cole and Mary Beth on either side. Cole motioned for Kyle to take the big chair with Ramie and Aubrey cuddled close to him.

Caitlin: Probing the Mind

The big difference between now-time and Oxėse was school. We had to be back in school for three more weeks after Ramie got attacked. And in school there was Mandy. By the end of the first week of December, she’d convinced her grandfather to move her horse, Wildfire, to LK Stables for boarding.

Nobody thought a thing about us spending time with her when she visited her horse. And the fact that we were sometimes out on the trail when she rode was never noticed. We often patrolled since there were wolves hunting in the hills. Phile and I had eaten the hearts of wolves in before-time. Ramie wore the teeth of the wolves who attacked her in this time. It seemed that wolves were binding us closer and closer together, both across time and within our family.

“Perhaps it is because you operate on a different wavelength than those animals who are strictly predators,” Mandy suggested. Even when we couldn’t get together, we talked online every night. We were all getting comfortable with seeing each other’s hard nipples. Mandy was thinning down some, too. That made her breasts even more impressive. We’d been talking about not being able to link with rattlesnakes and how we only got the surface thoughts of wolves when we tried. “I think I would call it an affinity,” she continued. “We’ll put all the animals you can communicate with readily on the left side of a T-chart and all the animals you know you cannot communicate with on the right side. Then we will list other animals that you have not had the opportunity to try. As you encounter each one we will move it to either the left or right side of the chart.”

Mandy expected that we would be able to look at the list of animals and simply check off the ones that would go on each side. It wasn’t that easy. She kept coming up with other tests. She wanted to know if the Chihuahuas have a different language than the German Shepherds? Did some animals carry on more intelligent conversations? Could we order insects around?

We couldn’t carry out all her tests in now-time, but we’d gotten pretty good at jumping into most creatures in before-time.

And we got to look at Mandy while she put together her experiments.

Phile: Wapiti

We left our tribe in the morning after we had blessed the tent of our dead chief. The tribe parted before us as we led our horses, dragging their travois, and headed toward the prairie.

We had no idea what we were doing, but Yelloweye was in complete agreement with Mandy that we needed to learn more about other animals and to listen to how they talk. It was a concept that was beyond us, but our lives slowed down. It seemed that with the beginning of Cait’s period, we were finally in sync with before-time. A day was a day and not two or five or whatever. We were still learning with double input but, with the synchronization, we were no longer feeling exhausted all the time. We progressed and learned at the same rate.

As we headed toward our fifteenth birthday, Mandy was changing. She’d thinned up some and her complexion was clearing. In fact, Mandy was turning out to be really pretty. She’d grown about six inches in the past eighteen months and it was like her body had caught up with her personality. I know Caitlin already mentioned this, but I was about to turn fifteen and Mandy was the only person other than Cait that I’d ever seen naked. Except Wolf Riding Woman.

That was the thing, though. Caitlin and Wolf Riding Woman were the same person inside, but they were very different outside. Cait and I went to bed with no shirt on and sometimes she slept partly on top of me or curled up in front of me or with me curled up in front of her. We were used to each other’s bodies. I could touch her breasts and she sometimes wiggled against my prick. Well, we touched. But I had all the sensory input of those same positions and feelings with Wolf Riding Woman.

And her responses were different.

You’d think that if kissing Caitlin behind the ear would make her shiver and reach for me, it would do the same for Wolf Riding Woman. But it didn’t. She had different physical responses to different stimuli. As Wolf Rising, I had to learn a whole different set of ways to turn my twin on. I guess that’s why I wanted to know if it would be different to touch Wolf Riding Woman with my now-time body. And I thought, if I touched Mandy, I’d know if my senses were different. Than Wolf Rising. You know?

Oh well.

“No way! I can watch?” Mandy said. I wasn’t saying too much because I was looking at Mandy in front of me and Cait beside me. My mouth was kind of dry.

“Haven’t you ever seen it before?” Caitlin asked.

“No! How could I? It’s all old stuff to you, but I live in the city and have never had an opportunity.”

We were sitting out at the old cabin ruins having a conference. Everyone had been warned to travel in groups and Moms were threatening Caitlin and me with being separated again if we went wandering out into the mountains by ourselves. I was really surprised, though, when we got out to where it was private and tied the horses. Mandy turned toward us like she was expecting something and then just popped all the snaps on her shirt open and took it off. She stripped off her bra and sat on the ground Indian-style.

I caught my breath. I saw her like this on Skype, but this was ... real.

“Don’t you always meet like this?” she asked. Rather than argue with her, Caitlin popped her snaps open and gave me a nudge. I took off my shirt, too, and we sat in a little circle. “You don’t, like, go completely naked, do you?” she asked a little uncertainly.

“Not outside,” Caitlin reassured her. “When you talk to us on Skype, we don’t usually have anything on. But we’re on a nice comfy bed then.”

I found it a little distracting. I was becoming more and more aware of both Caitlin and Mandy as women and had discovered how to relieve myself before we went to bed at night. It wasn’t that unusual, though to wake up with my hand caressing Caitlin’s breasts or even with her hand on my hard-on. We’d both had orgasms by this time and knew what they were like. We’d even helped each other out, but something kept us from just having sex.

Mom Ash had taken Caitlin to the doctor soon after her first period and the doctor gave her a shot that she said had to be renewed every three months. When she told Mandy about it, our friend decided she needed to be protected as well. Since, you never know. Right?

I think Moms and Pa just assumed that we were having sex. They knew we’d been sleeping together since forever. I guess that’s part of why we didn’t feel any pressure one way or another. Yelloweye explained it as knowing when our season came.

Part of our education was learning the cycle of life from the animals. Yelloweye had told us that we needed to connect with our horses when their time came to deliver the foals this spring. We finally told Mandy she could watch, too.

Our meeting in the woods came to an end and we stood to get dressed again. Mandy almost knocked me off my feet when she slammed into me and kissed me. Her bare chest against mine felt different than Cait’s. I didn’t have time to say anything before Mandy left me and slammed into Cait with just as much force and a kiss every bit as intense. Seeing those four tits smashed together made me a little dizzy and a lot hard. Mandy pushed Caitlin into my arms and to humor her we kissed as well. I figured just a little light kiss. But it was so exciting, neither of us wanted to let go. Feeling Cait against my chest as our tongues played with each other for the first time was something I knew I wanted to have happen again, real soon.

“Now we all know. We’re like blood brothers and sisters,” Mandy said. “Only with saliva instead of blood. I’ll do anything for you two.”

“Mandy, we’ll do anything in our power for you as well. We’re all kids, but we feel strongly about each other,” Caitlin said. “Thank you for this.”

“I’m a kid,” Mandy smiled as she snapped up her shirt. “You two are aliens.”

It was funny. Somehow in that kiss, I felt like we’d created an anchor in now-time that we didn’t have in before-time or Oxėse. We could always get back here.

Participating in the birth of the two foals was more than I could stand. Men aren’t supposed to feel their whole insides opening up to let a humongous big beast out into the world. I was sure not going to ever put Caitlin or Mandy through that! I don’t know exactly what Cait felt, but she was panting and sweating as much as me. It felt like I passed a bowling ball out my penis.

And we went through it twice. Bells foaled in the middle of the night, so Mandy wasn’t there to watch. She was out first thing in the morning though and held Cait and me together as Bows pushed her big boy out. There was one thing for damned sure and that was that we weren’t going to get any use out of our genitals for a month. Even peeing reminded me of giving birth.