Dendran Valley

"Fuck me harder!" was all the little demon said. I howled and squirted more fuck into her slippery crevice.

Then everything changed again. I was in the desert at night, high on a rocky mesa looking out over miles and miles of space towards distant mountains. The air was warm and dry. It was night and stars crowded together in the sky overhead. The peacefulness that had filled me earlier had returned. This was a moment and a place that could endure forever. I needed nothing else. I was perfect, whole, and the ocean of space before my eyes connected with something infinite and cosmic. I was part of the infinity. Everything was filled with love and I felt that love. I was transcendent. Then I knew that the dream was going to end. I was filled with a tender misery. I knew when I awoke, Selene would be gone and I would be alone, and I wanted to see her again. I wanted to touch her face.

I returned to consciousness abruptly, on my back, naked, in the sunny meadow with the clouds passing slowly overhead. Selene was not there with me, and I could not feel her nearby. She had gone. When I tried to rise and put on my clothes I got a big dose of pain. Every muscle in my body was sore as though I had fallen from a wall or been in a car accident. Wincing and swearing I struggled to my feet. This was not sexual afterglow. I hurt. In places my skin seemed to have been painfully scrapped with sandpaper. I wasn't bleeding but that

fact wasn't much satisfaction. I had been mugged and raped. I could not have put on my clothes. That would have been too painful. I slid my feet into my boots and, without lacing them, shlumped haltingly off down the meadow towards my distant tent. My clothes could stay where they were and I could come back for them later. I reached my tent several hours later, treated my injuries with aspirin, crawled into bed and slept.

In two days I had recovered enough to think about returning for my clothes. In another day I decided it was time to leave Dendran Valley and return to the world below. On Saturday I stood in my shower in my place in the city and enjoyed the civilized comfort of hot water. I was soaking myself and thinking about Selene and how I would deal with what had happened to me when I noticed a mark on the top of my left foot. I knelt in the shower so I could see it better. Was it a tattoo? There had been no tattoo yesterday. This was new. It looked a tattoo, but unlike any I had ever seen because it seemed to be glowing. The mark was like some letter from an alien alphabet, composed of a group of bends, swirls and dots linked together with a violet bar. It had to be Selene's. The mark glowed more strongly as I watched and then flickered and disappeared. I was astonished. For an instant I sensed Selene would appear, but the feeling passed. Perhaps she had been close. Perhaps she was thinking of me as I was thinking of her.

Next year I vowed to return again to Dendran.