Chapter the Thirty-fifth: Terra Nova.

Due to her husband's complete incomprehension that he would ever die, Jacqui suddenly found herself to be a rather rich widow. The excitement in Jacqueline's eyes when she discovered that the whole of the Shaw business empire was legally hers, was unbridled. We spent weeks with lawyers and other finacial advisors, poring over the details and discovered that much of the empire was built on solid business foundations. Shaw had undead executives still active in them but we would be able to recover them for our own benefit. At first, she baulked at moving back to the family house but we assisted her by 'renewing' her memories of the place. I took several hours, stripping the house of the malignancy of her husband's influence. The energy I needed coming from Jacqueline herself who writhed in ecstasy under me as I ploughed her sex.

Sara's farm prospered. She and Susan have a knack for organising and managing the process. Aiden's cousin managed to split his time and help them with the techniques they needed but all in all, their husbandry has proven to be excellent.

Real estate makes for a sure-fire return to normality. If the rules of the universe; space and time and magic and physics, could be doubted now, the one constant would be that estate agents and their ilk still gouge you for every spare bit of cash. After a short while, I even got fed up of trying to control their thoughts, and just let them take their pound of flesh. We settled into a life that we knew would continue to be as pleasant and fruitful as we could imagine.

In a slight break with tradition, we were invited to the Sidhe realm to celebrate our new fortunes. The Litha bacchanalia organised by Bran himself, no less.

The Queen's court was reconvened to welcome us all. Mab held centre stage in the meadow and was as gorgeous as I knew she would be. Sara and Maggie however, both managed to hold my devotion. I thanked her majesty for her trust in me and for being granted the chance to enjoy such victory. She for her part, spent the evening enticing us all with her various forms, I think she was a little drunk before we even arrived and kept giggling like a schoolgirl. I asked her, relatively forcefully, to refrain from doing the 'Danny's girlfiend, Maggie' thing again and she pouted a little saying that our pleasure would have been immense. Maggie was a little tight-lipped for a couple of seconds as she digested the image of me fucking a surrogate version of herself at such a young age, even if the actual figure was only vaguely like her (honestly). Mab, however, swiftly took that thought from her mind by some pretty powerful magic.

Tonight, she informed us, was a night to forget our past, eat, drink (she spilled most of her goblet on us as she gestured elaborately) and be merry. The lascivious grin she gave me at the word 'merry' left no doubt as to her libidinous intentions.

Both our daughters, as it happened, for their part were being entertained together with the three other teenagers, by some rather cute Sidhe amorphals who spent the evening being every imaginable person the girls wanted to meet; pop stars, boys from school, film stars, you name it. We lost sight of them when they decided to accept the offer of riding on the backs of the equine Sidhe 'Epon, ' across the grassy plains to the South of our forest clearing. I smiled and wondered to myself how much more they were going to enjoy themselves when they found themselves alone with a group of young satyrs like that. I hoped the older girls wouldn't exhaust the males too quickly!

One by one, or couple by couple, our group of humans, were taken into the care of the Sidhe. They gleefully identified our wishes and presented us with our desires. At one point, Mab herself appeared to Karen almost as some sort of stereotypical femme. Karen obviously had a deep-rooted desire to entertain a dominant role. Jennifer was similarly entranced by the offer of another playmate who looked and responded like Karen did. The three of them seemed to drift away to the Queen's quarters where they were afforded a little privacy in which to find their saphic pleasures. Karen's firm orders to Mab's new docile form were clear, to my ears at least, and she sounded very much the confident and committed woman I wanted her to be.

Wine, the like of which none of us humans had ever tasted, flowed from inexhaustible barrels and was either quaffed by the goblet or -- increasingly more likely -- lapped from the bare skin of one's partners. Susan, convinced by our Bran, of the lack of harm that could come to her baby, drank eagerly and Jon found himself drinking from the ruby rivulets that she dribbled from her chin, down onto her basketball-round belly. The two of them were intoxicated in minutes, their Sidhe hosts taking great pains to ensure they were treated with the care that 'life bringers' deserved. After only a few moments of their attentions, both of them were naked and glistening with anointing oils. Their bodies luxuriating in each of the other's touch.

The last I saw of Maggie, she was teasing a small group who sat in a circle at her feet, a little way off in at the edge of the trees. They were all physicals, nothing shifting about their obvious virile shape and by the appearance of the males, her titillation was engorging some magnificent erections. The slender females, giggling with lust-filled glee at Maggie's worldliness were also pretty obvious in their attentions to her near-naked body. Moment by moment, they moved more and more towards a complete disregard for composure and decorum. At the point where four of them held her by the arms and legs; helplessly laughing, as a sweet young thing introduced the most awe-inspiring dildo to her wide spread cunt; I felt Sara fidgeting and we fell together in a clinch that took our breath away.

We decided to move away from the carnival and so I took Sara's hand to walk with her into the trees.

The dark trunks, tall and majestic, stood in splendour around us as we followed a well-trodden pathway to a riverbank some way in the forest. The gentle breeze on our scantily clad bodies was warm and fragrant and carried the impression of the trees' innate kindness.

"Feels like Disneyland doesn't it?" said Sara, resting her cheek on my shoulder as we walked.

We stood for a while and watched the coloured trails of light that followed some of the sprites that darted in and out of the leaves.

"Sure feels like I am in heaven, I know that." I replied, turning to face her.

Sara kissed me on the nose and we stood for a few minutes with our eyes closed and our foreheads together. I held her hips close to mine and we swayed to whatever music was in our heads.

Moving on, we eventually came to a resting place, on a moss-covered flat rock next to a pool. I leaned back and Sara laid her head in my lap.

"It's been quite the trip hasn't it?" she asked, her eyes closed and her fingers gently stroking my chest.

"How do you mean?" I bent in to gently kiss her forehead, brushing her skin with my lips. "Coming here? or the whole shooting match?"

Her eyes, sparkling and huge, caught mine in mid approach; "The whole thing, you enslaving me with your 'powers, ' finally falling in love with you, all that horrible stuff that Shaw did to us."

I drew back to look into her face, "I hope you aren't..."

"Oh I guess I would have been thoroughly pissed off if I had understood how you were making me feel all those lovely things right at the beginning." She reinforced the word 'lovely' by moving my palm to her full breast. "But you really were just what I have always been searching for. You've grown to show me that."

I hadn't thought about how much I must have changed, although I knew I must have done so.

"I remember blurting out that I loved you, right at the start -- remember that?

-- and being so unsure of myself. Now, after all that has happened, all the changes we've both made, I am sure I love you Danny."

She put her arms around my neck and we let our mouths work together. I knew every single inch of Sara's body and every synapse of her mind, knowing she had the same knowledge, I saw we were one.

"I love you very much."

"You don't mind all the sharing you're doing?" I asked, smiling cheekily.

"Not now, with all the new sensations and the new beliefs, jealousy is about as useful to me as saying that I don't like my nose. I love Maggie, and Amy and Valerie and everyone in our group."

"Coven." I corrected, and she almost seemed to flinch at the old understanding of the word.

"You know, you'd be considered a witch now don't you?"

"Well, I guess so, it just brings to mind green skin and warts and puritans and burning at the stake."

I stroked her unblemished face and pushed her dark hair up from her temple.

"That's not you though, is it?"

"No."

"Well, I love you, you witch."

She giggled and hugged me again.

"Your wife seems to have changed from how she used to be" observed Sara, with a smile of understatement. "She's not afraid to, how shall I say it? experiment?"

"No, she sure isn't" I chuckled, recognising the feelings that I had been holding about Maggie's new personality. All my married life, I had been badgering her to be exactly as she had now turned out. After all that time, I now realised that all I was asking for, was that she be herself. I loved her new incarnation. She was almost like a new teenager, experimenting with her sexuality with abandon.

I looked out across the smooth water of the pool, into which the crystal stream plunged. The fact that life moved on, was never so clear to me as at that point.

The darkness from which we had all been released into this new way of living, was as ancient to me as the depths of the pond. Back, beyond the veil that separated them from the Sidhe plane, the people of the Earthly realm were still going about their business as our lives were beginning to diverge from theirs.

I started to realise what my job was going to be in the future, finding those of us who were ready to move up to the land, out of the primordial seas in which they now swam.

"You know," said Sara, "it's going to be a lot of fun."

"What is?"

"Messing with all those people, so that we can free them." She knew my thoughts so well, I didn't need to speak.

Her hands moved in little circles in front of my face and a shining sphere appeared, like one of those Christmas snow scenes set in a Winter cabin, of the two of us engaged in energetically fucking a pink and writhing naked young couple on a carpet in front of a roaring fire.

"Nice rug," I observed, "isn't that a deep shag?" She gave me a tolerant look.