Chapter 43: Flight

There were logistics that needed to be handled at the airport. Warning signs were posted indicating that the wing we were working in may include nude models working on the new mural. There was a red rope pulled across the entrance to our hall and down the left side so people were guided into the performance area but couldn’t come into the area where we were painting or modeling. Char had the primary responsibility of monitoring the entrance so she could warn parents with their children in tow about what was happening. Jas monitored the other end of the hall. Both girls had buckets for donations.

Rania ran errands, spelled other workers, and brought us food and drink. She was also the number one escort of our nude model when she took breaks, though she was often accompanied by one or more of the other girls. Ariel played music whenever anyone was painting and it filled the hall. Her mother, father, and little brother all came out to see the project on Saturday. I’d only met her father a few times. He was devoted to his family from a financial and support perspective but I found him rather aloof unless he was talking to people he considered his peers. The children weren’t. The Dragon Lady, on the other hand, managed to get under the rope and investigate what we were painting as closely as she had investigated the various art I’d painted on Ariel.

“When will you paint my daughter again?” she demanded.

“Um ... not sure. I think I’ll do a painting of her with her girlfriend this summer.” Having just been introduced to Rania, Dragon Lady glanced over to the two of them. Eva stepped down off the platform and Rania rushed over to give her a robe and escort her to the restroom.

“Paint them as a fierce Chinese dragon. I can see it in them and want to see it in person.”

Sarah Lynn and Kelly were operating cameras. We were collecting a terabyte per day of images. Kelly was going to edit the whole thing into a PG-13 acceptable DVD and offer it for sale at the airport counter.

On day one, Mary worked on more background detail while I sprayed the outline of Eva in the positions she would take as I painted her. The shadow painting on the wall would show her rising from a rendition of her Earthbound drawing at the right, running toward the left, and leaping into the sky. In some ways, it would look like those pictures that show multiple frames of a person in motion by using stop action photography. I think it’s called a Marey-wheel. We had a series of steps we could move in to give her height in the various stages.

The worst part on Friday was the fact that Eva really looked a mess. I was using colors that were tones of the background as it changed. So, in the first outline, she was nearly all green. In the last one she was all sky blue. We had to pause for fifteen minutes between each pair of poses to let the paint dry, both on the wall and on Eva. As I had done with Rania when I sprayed Liberty and Death, Eva wore goggles and a breathing mask for all the spray work.

“I’m such a mess!” she said when she finally got a look in the mirror. We knocked off at dinner time and went home after picking up food at a Taco Delight I was glad that with Eva, Rania, and me we had three cars since there were now nine of us to be transported.

“Jett, is all this necessary to keep?” Char asked. She held Eva and stroked the line where her wig had shielded her hair from the spray.

“No. I will probably have to blank her all out tomorrow with a fresh coat of white and start painting from that,” I sighed. The splotchy, multicolored spray job was an unintended side-effect. I should have used water paint for this.

“That’s not fair,” Mary said. “You don’t really want her all sprayed white. Her natural flesh should show through. Let’s remove all this from her tonight. Do you mind, Eva?”

“Mind? Oh, hell, no. But it sounds like so much work. I volunteered to wear the paint all weekend.”

“But this isn’t really part of the paint I want you wearing,” I said. I liked Mary’s idea. “Let us take care of it, if you’re okay with all of us touching you.”

Before long, we had Eva stretched out on the floor and were working through the process of oiling and wiping her body and then using alcohol to clean up the remnants. With eight pair of hands on her—even Rania participated in this—the work went more quickly and there was a little touching that wasn’t strictly necessary to get something clean. Eva was writhing on the towels we’d spread out by the time we were finished.

“Come with me, my little substrate,” I whispered in her ear. “Now I want to bathe your beautiful body and enjoy it in the shower.” Eva shuddered and followed me to the shower.

I scrubbed the oil from her body with Dawn dish detergent and then a gentle cleanser in my tiny shower. It kept us pressed together as I worked. When Eva started to wash me, I pushed her hands away.

“Don’t get in the way. I need to fully prepare my canvas for tomorrow’s painting. People just don’t realize how much work it is to prepare a surface like this. It’s not enough for it to be clean. It needs to be stimulated so it is receptive. And I need to be completely familiar with what I am going to paint. I need to touch it—all of it. I need to see how it responds.” As I continued to whisper all about how she was simply my canvas and I needed to prepare her, I touched her all over. I rubbed and lightly pinched her nipples until they were solid peaks on her breasts. I kissed her. I probed her depths. And finally... , “I need to see now if she is truly as receptive as I want her to be,” I said as I bent her forward and slid my cock into her wet pussy. For the past two hours, Eva’s body had been handled and stimulated to the point of climax repeatedly. When I pushed my cock into her, she went off like a skyrocket. The screaming went on so long as I plundered her pussy that Sarah Lynn opened the bathroom door to make sure we were all right. I just kept fucking and Eva kept coming.

Eventually, so did I.

Sarah Lynn, Jas, and Mary rode with me in the morning. Eva had succumbed to the attention of all my girlfriends after our shower last night and it was a miracle any of us were out of bed in time to get to the airport in the morning. But Eva rose this morning simply glowing. We were all excited about the work we’d be doing today.

“Can I ask ... Well, I guess I am asking,” Mary said. “With Ariel moving in with Rania, does that mean there might be room for one more in your house?”

I looked over at Mary, riding shotgun, and grinned. In the mirror, I could see Sarah Lynn and Jasmine with smiles splitting their pretty faces.

“So many things to consider,” Jas sighed.

“Yes. I suppose we should try to fill the empty space in our nest,” Sarah Lynn added. “But where would we ever find someone compatible with our mostly naked, free-loving community?”

“Someone who’s beautiful and fun and loving...” Jas said.

“And willing,” I concluded. “Willing to be loved and to love. Willing to contribute. Willing to cook on occasion.”

“Willing to be fucked by four horny girls and our boyfriend on a regular basis.”

“Willing to sit on my face while Jett pounds me.”

“Willing to paint pictures of us.”

“Where will we ever find a roommate that meets all those requirements? We’re so hard to live with.”

I glanced over at Mary and she was trying to keep from grinning as she raised a hand and wiggled her fingers.

“Yes, Mary?”

“Me?”

“We love you, Mary. Will you come live with us this year?”

“How soon can I move in?”

One of the things about taking two semesters of Literature and the Arts with Merck, Foundations of Contemporary Art, and Current Directions in Art, was that I looked at a lot of art. From the earliest times, art has shown mythical creatures. When we studied the Egyptians of Akhenaten, we saw various paintings of part human, part animal gods. The Greeks were constantly turning men or women into animals. Like Artemis changing Actaeon into a deer. And their own combined beasts like the sphinx and centaurs. I’d painted a monster emerging from Char. Char had a little shrine to elephant-headed Ganesha. Michelangelo painted angels on the Sistine Chapel. And angels continued to populate both religious and secular art well into the 1700s. And even then, we took an eagle as our national symbol. Harry Potter’s house was symbolized by a Griffin. Hagrid had all manner of mythical beasts in his menagerie.

With Eva, I was creating my own mythical creature. She wasn’t a bird, but a colorful and fully feathered angel.

In preparing for this, I’d studied birds and how their feathers laid on different parts of their bodies. I learned which feathers were for protection and which were for flight. I’d looked at every rendition of an angel with wings to see how the artists portrayed the feathers on the wings of cherubs and seraphim. It would take me the better part of two days to feather Eva.

And both for the performance and my own entertainment, I wanted Eva naked all the time. As an excuse, I started by painting her tail feathers.

I’d gotten pretty good with my airbrush over the past few months of experimenting on my girlfriends and models. I laid in a mottled brown from her mid-back down, even spreading her cheeks a bit so I could spray into her crack and right around her little hole. She moaned when I sort of accidentally pressed against it with my knuckle to hold my hand steady while I sprayed. Then I switched nozzles on the airbrush for finer detail of the shadow and highlights of the individual feathers. Finally, I used a fine brush to define edges and make the feathers pop into three dimensions.

As I worked, we also took frequent breaks so we could walk around and keep our blood circulating. I was using a small platform for Eva to stand on while I painted her lower body and would eventually stand on it myself when I needed to be a little higher than her for the shoulders and face. When we were on break, she always put a robe on, but when she was posing, she was naked whether the part I was painting required it or not.

I noticed a guy who flew in early in the afternoon hanging around with a cup of coffee. Eva noticed, too, and ran to meet him as soon as I’d draped her robe over her shoulders for a break.

“Steve! You flew in for the festival!” she shouted as she hugged him across the rope barrier. I couldn’t help but notice that she hadn’t belted her robe together.

“No, I flew in to see the artwork taking shape. God! You’re even more beautiful than last summer, girl.”

“Being a model and a ... uh ... substrate has given me motivation to stay in shape.”

“A great shape from what I can see. And I see most of it.”

“Steve, I want you to meet Jett,” she said calling me over to her. “Jett is my ma ... artist. He tells me what I need to do to make beautiful art. Jett, this is my dear friend, Steve. He was my first flying instructor. You know what they say. You never forget your first.”