Chapter 235: Home at Last

Sunday, June 12, 2005 (Continued)

Just as we were about to leave the Williams', I had the idea that I might be able to drive my car by using NP on the pedals, presuming I could push the seat back far enough for my rigid left leg to fit inside the car. Driving myself would be much more convenient than have Mom or Dad ferry me around or using taxis. I said, "Julia, where are my keys please? I'd like to see if I can drive my car."

"They're in my room. I'll get them."

Even before Julia could move Mom said, "You can't drive with your leg like that. It wouldn't be safe."

"Mom, please explain why you think you're a better judge of what I'm capable of than I am?" My point hit home, Mom looking embarrassed as she realized her mistake. I rubbed it in, "And while you're at it, please explain why you insultingly assumed I was too stupid to know what was safe or not safe?"

"Sorry Mark. I didn't stop to think again. That's a harder habit to break than I thought."

Mom looked chastised enough, so I said, "At least you didn't yell 'Are you insane!' at me, so that's an improvement. Any sentence of yours that contains 'Mark you can't', is a sentence you need to reconsider. Your advice is very welcome, and it would be perfectly fine for you to politely ask whether I've considered a factor you think I might have forgotten, but strident declarations of what I can't do are offensive and will often be wrong. In short, you need to start treating me with some respect."

"Yes. I'm sorry, Mark. I hadn't realized I was doing that so much."

"To be fair, it's only recently that your approach has become wrong. Before a few months ago your opinions were right far more often than they were wrong."

Julia got my keys. We went outside to my car and I found I was able to push the seat far enough back to get in. I easily had enough NP force to work the pedals now, which meant it was just a matter of coordination. I was superb at that, so I knew this would work. I practiced a few times with the car stationary, and it was easy. I pronounced myself capable of driving.

Carol and Julia immediately started getting in my car. Mom looked uncomfortable, but had been criticized too much recently to make an issue out of it, so she and Dad went to their car. Donna dithered over the choice of car, choosing to go with Mom and Dad, clearly indicating that she thought she had a better chance of finding out from them why everyone had looked so weird when they came downstairs, and why I'd gotten away with telling Mom off so strongly. Donna would learn nothing though, as there was NO WAY Mom and Dad were going to tell Donna what had happened upstairs!

I started the car and drove off, some of my minds concentrating on that process to make sure I didn't screw it up, as that'd very badly damage my credibility with Mom.

I had some spare minds to talk with the girls, which I used to interrupt the gushing they were already doing. I said, "Excuse me for interrupting your praising me, but I've a few things to say." They quieted down, like good soon-to-be-wives should. (I really do have miraculous abilities" I got two excited girls to quiet down immediately.) In the unnatural silence, I said, "I noticed that Julia automatically got in the front seat and Carol automatically in the back. From now on I'd like you two to share me equally please. Taking turns to sit in the front, for example."

"Really?" they both asked; Carol in disbelief, Julia with curiosity.

"Carol, as soon as your exams are over, your life is going to start changing hugely for the better. Julia, Carol's going to become the most important girl in both of our lives. We've been undervaluing her very badly, but not for any longer."

Julia asked, "Something VERY special must've happened to you?"

"Yes. I'll tell you BOTH all about it when we have time later. I hope you both caught my emphasis on 'both'. From now on the three of us do as much as we can together, including everything to do with all my special abilities. For example, some of what I said in the bedroom and study wasn't fully true. I simplified it to make it easier to deal with Mom and Dad. I'll tell BOTH of you the full truth the first chance the three of us get."

I wouldn't be telling either of them the full truth, of course. No word about déjà vu, multiple dimensions, or even multiple minds would ever cross my lips, but I'd tell them as much as I could.

Carol said, "I don't understand. Why would you want to waste your time with me? I'm just your little sister; I don't know anything. You and Julia are..."

I interrupted her running down of herself, "Carol, sweetie. I know what I'm doing. In case you haven't noticed, I'm quite smart these days. I have several very good and very strong reasons for valuing you as highly as I do. I know you don't understand yet, but you will in two or three months."

"Can you see the future now?" asked Julia.

"Haha. No. I wish I could, but unfortunately nothing like that at all. You asked me whether something special happened while I was a prisoner. I guess I can quickly summarize by saying that two special things happened. One was that I improved my special abilities, like studying eight subjects at once with my eyes shut. The second was simply that I got some insights into the present - that's the PRESENT, not the future. I realized some things I hadn't realized before. My most important insight was that when Carol gains self-confidence and blossoms, she's going to become a fantastically wonderful, loving, caring, happy, enjoyable friend. Carol thinks she has a low worth, but the truth is that she has so much worth that I want to spend as much time with her as I can. The 'Mark Wing' of whatever mansion we buy has to have a second bedroom for Carol, because I want her to live as close to us as we can get. You need to make sure of that when you're planning our new mansion, Julia."

By the time we bought the mansion, I was determined that the three of us would already be 'married', so we won't need the second bedroom for the reason I was implying now. We'll need it for other purposes though, so I wasn't causing any needless disruption. There'll be 'outsiders' visiting our home (such as Carol's Cuties), so we'll want to camouflage Carol's relationship with Julia and me by her appearing to have her own room. We'll also want another bed so we can easily have "Quality Times" in various combinations.

"But Mark," protested Carol, "I'm just a..."

"Carol!" I mock-sternly exclaimed. "You've already seen me tell Mom off for questioning my judgment, so I'm not going to hesitate to tell you off for the same thing. One more attempt by you to disagree with my highly intelligent and accurate understanding of your wonderful personality will cause me to pull the car over and to put you over my knee to spank your bare bottom until it's bright red. And I don't care if I have to do that on the side of the street with everybody who drives past seeing your glowing bottom. Do I make myself clear?"

My command was very clear, but Carol was confused. She hadn't expected me to talk like that, or for her to react in the way she did to my talking like that. Her sexual reaction wasn't a strong one, but it was noticeable to me because I was looking so intently for it. I smiled very happily to myself, as this was the first time I'd created a sexual response in Carol. She was now officially on the slippery slope leading straight to my bed.

As a small digression, proximity was continuing to pick up strong emotions in people. Unfortunately the emotions had to be VERY strong. Carol's small surge of sexual arousal, for example, had been well below the detection level. During my ability demonstrations I had detected emotions in proximity, but they'd been glaringly obvious visually. Detecting emotions in proximity was essentially useless so far, as it'd only told me what I could already see.

Julia also thought my comment to Carol was strange. She would've thought Carol's reaction was interesting, but she'd missed it because Carol was sitting directly behind Julia.

I said, "I've just thought of a good way of making the point about how important Carol is to me. Julia, you know how INCREDIBLY important you've been to my life: I was an unassertive wimp until you turned me around and started pushing me to achieve things. You've had a HUGELY positive effect on my life, and you'll continue to do so for many more years. I sincerely hope for the rest of our lives."

Julia interrupted to gush a sweet nothing back at me. I used the interruption to rearrange which minds were doing what, as my "rest of our lives" comment had caused all of 3B to choke up. That wasn't ideal when two of them were driving the car.

#1 resumed, "As much as I love you Julia, when you and Carol are sharing me in the future, and the two of you are unsure whether it's your or Carol's turn for something good with me, then I want you to err in Carol's favor. Does that make you appreciate how important she is to me?"

"Wow." said Julia. "That's VERY important!" I was very pleased to see that Julia was secure in our relationship and hadn't taken offense at my promoting Carol. I knew 3B's Julia had been cool with being in second place to Carol, and I'd tried hard to word my announcing that here in such a way that it was all about raising Carol, with no hint of lowering Julia, but it was still a relief to see that Julia seemed okay with it.

"I can't possibly be as important as Julia. I'm only your sister, and I can't..."

"Hang on a mo' please Carol. I need to find somewhere to park where the passing cars will get a good view."

"Umm. What do you mean?"

"I told you what would happen if you tried to put yourself down again, and I wouldn't want you to think I wasn't a man of my word."

Carol asked nervously, "You wouldn't really do that, would you?"

"I would enjoy doing it, Carol. Not as much as you'd enjoy it, but I'd still have a good time."

"What do you mean? I wouldn't enjoy being exposed in public like that."

"Carol, my love, I want to give you two very serious pieces of advice. The first is a repetition. I ask you again not to belittle yourself. I know you truly believe you're not worth much, but I know for a fact that you're wrong. You haven't had a chance to show it yet, or to see it in yourself, but you truly are a wonderful person. In two or three months you'll be starting to appreciate that. I know you far better than you think I do, and in some cases better than you know yourself. You know I am unbelievably intelligent, so you should not doubt it when I tell you that I am certain about something. I'm going to be making some major changes in my life so I can spend a great deal of time with you from now on, which I wouldn't be doing if I wasn't sure of myself. Inside your beautiful body is a beautiful person who is about to start showing herself.

^-- "My second serious piece of advice, is that you shouldn't even think about trying to mislead me. Like I just said, I know you very, very well, and there's almost no chance of your being able to trick me. I'm going to catch you out nearly every time, and I'd much rather not have any dishonesty or deceit in our relationship. I know for a fact that you would very much enjoy having me spank your bare bottom in public. If you try to deny it I'll pull you out of bed very early one morning, take you to one of your classrooms at school, push all the desks together, and tie you on your back and naked on the top of them, so all your classmates will see you when..."

"OH GOD! You know!" I knew, and had gotten a little carried away. Donna's impatience might be a family trait I share.

NOW I could definitely detect Carol's emotion in proximity. I didn't have enough samples to know what her 'color' meant, but I memorized it, and tentatively ascribed it to embarrassment possibly including sexual arousal. I doubted there was much sexual arousal involved though, especially not enough to register in proximity, because what I'd just done to Carol was pretty much pure embarrassment. I'd simply blurted out an important secret of hers, rather than used it to create a fantasy image for her. I couldn't be sure that the 'color' didn't include arousal though, as I hadn't been near anyone experiencing strong sexual arousal since my rescue three weeks ago. That was something I was planning to correct with Julia later this evening; not purely out of scientific inquiry either.

Carol was having trouble recovering from my exposing what she considered her shameful secret. Some of the emotions flitting across her face weren't good ones to see, so I quickly spoke up to start making her feel better, "Carol, I love you very much, and when the wonderful personality that is inside you starts blossoming shortly, Julia is going to love you too. Not only is your secret safe with us, but in a few weeks I promise that you'll be happy that we know it.

^-- "I know you find that hard to believe now, but it's true. Between three people who love each other - which is what is going to happen with the three of us - there shouldn't be any fears about us hurting each other. I'll never hurt Julia, and I'll never hurt you. Julia will never hurt you either. You know Julia well enough already to know she's a very bossy girl. Oops - I meant to say she's a very KIND girl. Somehow that "bossy" just slipped out. I've got no idea why." That helped a little, as did neither Julia nor I teasing Carol about her secret.

^-- I tried another approach. "Julia has taught me many things about love over the last few months. There's one lesson she keeps teaching me over and over again. Sometimes I REALLY wish she'd stop teaching it to me, but she never seems to stop. It seems like she teaches it to me several times a week. I don't know whether you've noticed, but Julia has been making me wear absolutely ridiculous clothes to school for the last several weeks. Clothes I wouldn't want to be seen dead in, let alone have to walk around school wearing. Mind you, when I say 'wearing', half the time they're failing to cover me in very embarrassing ways - which I SINCERELY hope you haven't noticed!" (okay, so Carol's and my relationship wasn't starting with perfect honesty, since I SINCERELY hoped she HAD noticed).

^-- "Those silly clothes are just one example of the many, many times that Julia has asked me to do something that was very embarrassing for me. The lesson that I keep getting taught by her is that it's okay to trust someone who loves you. Julia too often asks me to do something that embarrasses the hell out of me, and I far too often agree. Her motivation isn't to embarrass or hurt me in any way; she's doing it because she knows it's a good thing for me. Unfortunately she's always right, so she keeps doing it. I wish she'd find ways to do things that were good for me that I'd enjoy doing, but for some reason embarrassment seems to be involved more often than not. I'm rambling too much, but I want you to understand that one of the aspects of being in love is the willingness to put yourself into the other person's hands, because you can trust them to act out of generous love, not out of malice.

^-- "I apologize for embarrassing you, Carol, but I did it out of love. I want you to understand how well I know you, and why you shouldn't try to be dishonest to me. You did try to insist that you wouldn't like to be spanked in public, and I easily know you well enough to be certain that you would actually find that very arousing and pleasurable. You were lying, and I proved that I knew you were lying. We're nearly home now. Should I stop here so you can recover more, or are you okay to get home?"

"I'm okay. I don't understand how you knew that about me? I've never told anybody anything about those feelings, not even Mom or Donna."

3B's Carol had told me, of course. She'd admitted early in our marriage that being "tied naked over the school desks" was one of her sillier, but most arousing fantasies. I answered this Carol, "I have spent many years living with you, so I've noticed many things about you. A lot of those things I didn't understand at the time, but I remembered them, and they helped me understand you during all the thinking I've been doing recently about my life and the key people in it. It'd take me too long to explain all the things I noticed that led to me working out that fantasy of yours, but I can quickly tell you that one of the major clues was Peter Pan."

"Oh."

"I don't understand?" asked Julia.

I said, "I could easily explain, but I think it'd be better if Carol gets the practice at opening herself to you, Julia. The two of you are going to be spending a lot of time together for many years, so learning to be open and honest with each other would be very good."

Julia looked at me with a puzzled look on her face. "You've changed a great deal, Mark. Before you were kidnapped you hardly ever planned a few days ahead, but now you tell us what's going to be happening years from now. I'm looking forward to having some long discussions with you."

"That'd be great, right after we've caught up on all the sex we've been missing out on. I'm REALLY horny!"

"Good, because so am I! An early night tonight?"

"Early, vigorous, and often."

Julia corrected me, "We'd better not be too vigorous. We'll need to be careful of your broken bones."

I corrected her correction, "That won't be difficult, because I don't have any. I'm pretty sure my leg and hand are fully healed already. I'm only keeping my casts on because the hospital would get all excited if they knew. I heal several times faster than ordinary people. Remember the hand cutting experiment."

#2: <What hand cutting experiment?>

#7: <Oops, wrong dimension.>

I added, "Sorry, I just remembered that I never got around to telling you about that. A week or so before the kidnapping I deliberately gave myself a little cut and kept track of how fast it healed. It wasn't exactly a rigorous scientific experiment, but I estimated that my body heals between three and six times faster than other people's. Probably closer to six times I think. I'll have had the casts on three weeks by tomorrow, so that's the equivalent of between nine and eighteen weeks, and probably on the high end. Three or four months is more time than breaks need to heal, so I should be fully healed by now, which means vigorous sex is strongly encouraged."

Both girls didn't know what to say for a couple of seconds (with my marathon run, that gives me two world records). Then Julia said, "You heal five times faster TOO! Is there anything you CAN'T do?" Carol made a sort of groan, that sounded like she agreed with Julia.

"Haha. There's plenty I can't do. Leap tall buildings in a single bound, running faster than a bullet or seeing what color panties girls are wearing..."

#4: <We could if they were wearing a skirt and we put a sight blob between their knees looking up.>

#3: <Somehow that doesn't really appeal. It's too invasive, I think. Not like eyeballing the girls' locker room in the gym. That's much more acceptable.>

#5: <Yeah. What a pity we'll have to wait three months for school to restart.>

#8: <You can wait three months if you like. Personally I'm eager to get down to the Aquatic Center as soon as possible.>

#5: <VERY good point! You don't mind if I tag along do you?>

#8: <Seeing as how it's you, okay.>

" ... There are an infinite number of things that could be doable, of which I can do maybe a dozen, so I'm falling somewhat short. Maybe I need to practice harder?"

We were pulling up outside home, so I said, "Carol, do you want to explain the Peter Pan thing before we go in? I'm not forcing you, but I think your being open with Julia is a very good idea."

"I'll tell her," said Carol, not particularly enthusiastically. "There's no reason not to tell, now you've described my fantasy. It's just that I like pirate movies, Julia, and Peter Pan is the one that's on TV the most often. I get excited thinking about them tying me to the mast where everyone can see me. There are parts of that movie which are close to what I like to imagine..."

"I know what you mean," agreed Julia. "I'm so small it's very easy for me to imagine any forceful man doing whatever he wanted with me. That's a great sex fantasy sometimes."

Carol excitedly exclaimed, "You have fantasies like that too?"

"Sure. Every woman does sometimes. It's perfectly natural, and very enjoyable too. I love having sexy fantasies. I've got one where a gorgeous, bare-chested guy gallops up on a huge white horse. He swings down and grabs hold of me as he gallops past, pulling me onto the horse so I'm lying helplessly face down across the horse in front of him. He holds me down with a hand on my back and there's nothing I can do. I'm completely helpless as he gallops away with me..."

Julia went on with her make-Carol-feel-good, invented twaddle. I knew Julia didn't have fantasies like that. Not even as a Pirate Queen, which would've been much more Julia's style. Julia had LOTS of romantic fantasies. I'd made the mistake of laughing during a particularly silly description, which stopped her telling me about any more of them, but I knew she used to have dozens of them, inspired by all the romance books she used to read. According to Julia, all her fantasies revolve around me now. I believe her too. I am truly the center of her world.

Julia's tactic worked to perfection, Carol was relieved and as happy as a clam (which are apparently very happy shellfish). Julia finished her sexed up version of what I guessed was one of her old fantasies, then said, "You never have to be ashamed of your fantasies, Carol; you're allowed to think whatever you like that makes you happy. You don't have to be worried about me knowing them either. I don't understand how or why Mark's so definite about our future, but he's so amazing that I'm not going to doubt it. He says we're going to be very close friends, so that's the way I'll treat everything that happens between us. I don't make fun of close friends, so I won't make fun of you. Not that I would in any event, you're too nice to be treated that way."