Pan's Lesson Ch. 01

An erotic short story by Golden_Princess

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Warning: Rated MA for very explicit M/F (Part 1) and F/F imagery (Part 2). For mature adults only (18+)

Summary: A slightly fantasy-ish tale of two ladies that, with the help of a pagan god, realize they have a tad more than friendship between them.

Tags: romance, fantasy, bisexual, heterosexual, lesbian, erotica, ravishment

Pairings: male/female (slight coercion, maledom), female/female (first-time for one character)

This story is a bit on the long-ish side and there's a fair bit of character/mood development before some action starts. Figure I'd let you know in case you're looking for more of a quickie, but I personally get more turned on by stories that don't delve too quickly into the shmexy. Sorry if that's not your thing!! The ladies are original characters not based off of any established body of fiction. Pan is of course based on, well, Pan (Faunus, Cernunnos, etc). The story was inspired by a couple of real events in my own life and an erotic lucid dream. It came together while listening to Faun's album, Eden, particularly the tracks, "Hymn to Pan" (that's where the poem in the story is from) and "Alba". It's an awesome band -- I highly recommend you check them out.

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PART 1 of 2

Jane could smell the woods as she walked through them. That earthy, mossy fragrance, full of moisture and slight, sweet decay, was both familiar and foreign. How sad, she thought, that such a smell should be so rare in day-to-day life, and Jane wondered why she didn't venture out here more often. Nevertheless, the rarity of her visits made the woods feel anew each time, and all the more enchanting. Tall conifer trees with thickly fissured, ochre-coloured bark stood still and silent on this particularly windless morning. Lush ferns and shrubs filled the spaces between the great trunks, content with the dregs of water and sunlight left unused by their imposing cousins. Bright summer rays penetrated the canopy, visible columns like reaching angels' fingers in the humid air. As far as Jane was concerned, temperate rainforest had no equal among earth's biomes, but as a native British Columbian she may have been a bit biased.

Aliyah was ahead of Jane, prancing along the trail jovially, ebony locks bouncing over the back and shoulders of her forest green t-shirt. The mystical atmosphere of the woods was getting to her it seemed. Though they had been friends for just over two years, Aliyah had only moved out west a few months ago from Montreal to start an astrophysics degree at the University of British Columbia. As such, most of their relationship had developed through digital correspondence and sporadic mutual visits across the country. They had met by chance while on a storm-watching tour up in the more mountainous regions of the province, and had bonded immediately over a discussion about Coast Salish mythology, which happened to be Jane's specialty. She chuckled at the memory of the two of them enraptured in their own geekiness while a few of the other tour guests politely backed out of the conversation to talk about more "interesting" things.

"Come on!" Aliyah playfully called to Jane, who couldn't help but smile and chase after her.

"Slow down!" she shouted, running out of breath. "You don't know the way!" Aliyah stopped at that and waited for Jane to catch up.

Jane didn't like running nearly as much as Aliyah did, but she had to admit, bounding through the forest like some wild animal was kind of fun. And anyways, Jane always thought Aliyah pranced more than ran. Yes, that was exactly the right word. Aliyah despised jogging or running for exercise or competition. No, she ran only when she felt like it, just for fun. A giddy kind of energy simply compelled her to at odd moments. Even now, as Jane approached, she was hopping about leisurely around the trees.

"What are you doing?" Jane laughed.

"Prancing!" Aliyah answered. She had taken to the word when she had first learned it from Jane, and loved finding excuses to say it (though fluent in both French and English, there were still odd bits of English vocabulary Aliyah hadn't come across before).

"It just kind of seems appropriate," she continued. "It's not often you come across places like this, that give you a kind of magical feeling, like a fairy-tale. The season, the weather, the light... they're all just right, aren't they?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Jane agreed, "but wait 'till you see the waterfall."

"Well then, on y va! All the prancing is getting me ready for a good swim..."

Indeed, Jane thought, and wished she'd pulled on a different colour tank-top that morning. The black one she had ended up choosing was starting to get uncomfortably damp.

Together they continued along a narrower side-trail, Jane in the lead. Finally, they heard the sound of running water, and shortly afterwards emerged through a break in the trees into a decently sized glade. A river spilled over a gentle waterfall into a wide pool before continuing on into the forest. The water, struck by unimpeded sunlight, bubbled and sparkled at the base of the falls. Grass had managed to gain a foothold on the open, treeless riverbanks, and grew bright green and dense, just begging to be lain upon.

"Oh! This is perfect!" Aliyah exclaimed, and Jane smiled. She knew this little day trip would be exactly Aliyah's kind of thing, but beamed at her friend's approval nonetheless.

"Yep, and it's all for us," Jane added. "No one else really comes here, especially not on weekdays."

The two women made their way to the base of a large tree on the glade's perimeter and sat with their backs against it, simply enjoying the scene for a time in comfortable silence.

"You can almost hear Pan's flute off in the distance," Aliyah said wistfully.

"Sorry?" asked Jane, confused.

"You know, the pagan god from Greek and Roman myth," she elaborated.

"Oh!" Jane exclaimed in understanding. "Yes, I suppose this would be his kind of place. Deep forest, lots of life and nature, two beautiful women all alone..."

"Hmm..." Aliyah giggled. "He's also supposed to like music... Maybe he would like to listen to mine," and she took a small flute out of her pack, a worn-looking Irish tin whistle.

Softly she began a bright, fanciful tune, and Jane leaned back and closed her eyes, sighing contentedly. This really is a perfect day, she thought, and in her mind she pictured the faun himself becoming drawn by the music and curiously watching them from some vantage point in the trees unseen. So vivid was her imagination that Jane spooked herself into feeling like she was actually being watched, and she shot up, eyes snapping open quickly. Aliyah stopped her playing and looked over at her.

"Ça va bien?" she asked.

"Yeah, silly of me... for a moment I imagined some creature was really watching us and freaked myself out."

Aliyah laughed affectionately, "Oh, you."

Jane blushed and looked away briefly. In that moment, the affection on Aliyah's face seemed especially raw and Jane was struck by how beautiful her friend actually was. Her black hair hung loose and soft, shining with a hazy lustre in the sun. Her pupils were tightly constricted in the light, showing off hazel irises that shimmered through amber and green with the slight movements of her eyes. Just as Jane was about to become lost in them she noticed the direction of their gaze, towards the top of her head. Jane looked up, arching her brows.

"What, is there something on my head?" she asked worriedly.

"No," Aliyah answered quietly, "Your hair... It's become all strawberry in the sunlight," and she gently reached up with her hand and caressed the locks hanging down over Jane's temple.

"Yes, it does that," Jane stammered, blushing again. "It looks blonde most of the time, but it does have a reddish highlight." She bashfully recalled an earlier conversation where Aliyah had admitted that she had a weakness for redheads, but Jane had been too shy to bring up this particular quirk with her own hair at the time.

There was something electric in the air as their gazes shifted onto each other again. When Aliyah had reached out to touch her hair she had leaned in a bit closer, and now Jane caught a whiff of something sweet, almost candy-like... Or rather, if the fragrance of jasmine was ever incorporated into a candy flavour, that's what Jane thought it might smell like... sort of. She couldn't really put her finger on it. The unique fragrance blended with the light sweat Aliyah had worked up earlier on the trail and the woodsy smell all around them. The combination was rather intoxicating. Yep, this is certainly a Pan sort of place, she thought.

"Are you wearing some kind of perfume?" Jane asked dazedly.

"Not a perfume, a body oil."

"Well... you smell really good," Jane blurted, and then it was Aliyah's turn to blush.

"Why, thank you," she said charmingly before deflecting, "So, how about that swim? Shall we frolic like nymphs under the waterfall?" 'Frolic' was another English word that Aliyah had become fascinated by, and it was made all the more endearing by her light Quebecois accent.

"Frolicking sounds like an excellent idea," Jane agreed, "though in keeping with the enchanted, fairy-tale-like spirit of our morning, it seems almost wrong not to go nude." Jane had no idea what made her suggest such a thing, and looked away embarrassed from the amused expression on Aliyah's face.

"You're perfectly welcome to," she smirked. "There will be no complaints from me."

"What, you mean you'd let me do it alone?"

"Ah, so you're trying to get *me* naked. I see how it is," Aliyah teased, "but to be serious, I'm totally fine with it. I actually like being naked when it's allowed. You know, on certain kinds of beaches... or spas. I think I could like living in a nudist colony," she boasted.

"Ha! Well, you know what they say, 'actions speak louder than words do!'"

Aliyah stared at Jane, wordlessly accepting the challenge, and promptly stood up. She walked a ways towards the water and then nonchalantly began to undress. In a couple of minutes, her boots, socks, jeans, t-shirt and underwear lay in a scruffy pile on the grass, and the petite canadienne was buck naked, climbing onto a large rock that jutted slightly out over the pool.

Somehow, Jane hadn't really thought Aliyah would actually do it, but in retrospect she should have known better. The woman oozed body confidence, and certainly not without reason, Jane thought as she watched her friend's curvy, but svelte form glide on hands and feet over the rocks. Bare feet forced her movements to be particularly gracile, and the sun's play of light and shadow highlighted her Mediterranean skin and petite muscles. The curving spine, the faint relief of ribs, limbs alternately stretching and bending.... Yes, the artistic obsession with the human form that the ancient Greek and Renaissance sculptors were so famous for was completely understandable. In fact, she thought many of those classical pieces were infinitely more erotic than any of the shallow performances and ridiculous, plastic-like bodies that seemed to be a staple in modern porn. She'd take Canova's Psyche and Cupid over Jenna Jameson any day. What is wrong with the world? Jane thought as she admired her friend, now perched on the rock's edge.

"Well, are you coming or not?" Aliyah called as she stood up and turned to face Jane.

"You're so... shamelessly human!" Jane called back incredulously, taking in Aliyah's body in its full frontal glory.

"So are you! Now come on!" and she canon-balled into the water.

Jane steeled herself with courage and followed suite, leaving her clothes in a pile next to Aliyah's on the grass, her swimsuit lying forgotten in her backpack. She preferred not to jump however, and timidly approached the river bank.

"Is it cold?" she asked.

"Come and find out!" Aliyah's head bobbed a ways off.

Gingerly, Jane inched her way in. It was chilly, but not uncomfortably so once her skin got used to it. She was almost waist deep. The worst part is your belly button, she thought and grimaced.

"Too slow!" Aliyah shouted and heaved a violent splash of water onto her.

"You!" Jane squealed, and futilely splashed back at the already acclimatized Aliyah. Nevertheless, it was the start of a water battle that took them all over the pool. In the midst of their fun, Jane quickly lost all remnants of apprehension about being nude.

Frolicking nymphs indeed, Jane thought as they brought their splash assaults to a truce and swam leisurely towards the falls. They enjoyed the feel of the water, made pleasantly heavy by gravity, as it tumbled over them, massaging their necks and shoulders.

"Ah, no one should die without experiencing something like this," Aliyah sighed.

"Word," agreed Jane, "but I'm starting to get a tad chilly, so I think I'll go lounge on the grass for a bit." Aliyah nodded, obviously content to stay for a space longer.

Jane flopped belly-up onto the grass (it really was quite soft) a short distance from the tree they had rested against earlier and covered her eyes with her tank-top. The black colour turned out to be useful after all.

Meanwhile, Aliyah moved back out of the falls and did a few leisurely lengths around the pool. Silently, she pondered her friend's unexpected suggestion that they swim naked. Aliyah had made it no secret when they first got to know each other that she was interested in both men and women sexually, and often playfully flirted with Jane just as she did with her other close friends. Jane, on the other hand, had made it clear that she was straight; stating she had never personally felt sexually attracted to other women, but had no prejudice or repulsion towards homosexuality in general. It had come up naturally in conversation, and so Aliyah had never bothered or even thought of trying to ask Jane out or pursue her romantically. She certainly thought Jane was attractive and made no effort to hide it, but was content to let the friendship grow naturally. In that sense Aliyah was perhaps a bit unique. For her, sexual intimacy was much decoupled from romance. She often felt compelled to express her affection towards her closest friends in physically intimate ways even though she wasn't romantically interested in them.

Lately, however, Jane had been responding more to Aliyah's flirting, returning with flirts of her own or making suggestive jokes. She was also finding excuses to ask Aliyah questions about intimacy with other women; how it felt to be attracted to other women and how it was different from being attracted to men. Aliyah always answered honestly and as objectively as possible, but wondered at her friend's seemingly sudden curiosity. And then there was today: the way she had responded to Aliyah's touch, the look of desire she had seen in her eyes afterwards, and of course, wanting to bathe nude.

Hum, maybe Pan really is making mischief in these woods today, she thought.

Eventually, the cold got to Aliyah as well and she made her way out of the pool and up the river bank. Jane was sprawled on the grass and Aliyah paused to admire her body. Her friend was curvier and suppler than she was, and for an instant Aliyah was self-conscious of her skinny limbs and leaner build. Still, she did have generous hips, a decent ass, and her breasts, while not overly small were in proportion with her torso, round and perky. Jane was generous in these areas as well, and Aliyah licked her lips unconsciously as she watched her friend's breasts rise and fall with each breath, her gaze moving over creamy abs to the strawberry patch between her legs. Those curls were most definitely of a reddish hue, and Aliyah flushed in spite of herself.

Jane, having heard Aliyah approach or just sensitive to being watched, lifted the tank-top off her face and gave a light gasp. Her blue eyes went wide as they looked Aliyah up and down, pausing when they reached the glistening black curls below her waist. Aliyah blushed and realized she must be rather a site, dripping wet in the sun as she was.

"Like what you see?" she teased, grinning.

"I could ask you the same thing," Jane smirked, raising an eyebrow. Spock-face, Aliyah called it, and she thought it was the most adorable thing in the world.

"You know I do," Aliyah answered coyly, and lay down a few metres away, her head cradled in a crook at the base of the tree they had rested against earlier.

Yes, there's definitely something going on with Jane, Aliyah thought. As she settled into the soft grass she wondered whether or not to bring it up with her later. How would she raise the subject? Was it worth it, or would it just make their rapidly growing friendship awkward? She looked over at Jane, and saw that she had returned to sleep, the dark tank-top back over her eyes. Aliyah too began to feel drowsy, and realized her thoughts were too heavy for her currently addled brain to handle, so she let them go for now and closed her eyes. As sleep gradually claimed her she played a quiet tune in her head...

Listen now Great Pan he calls us

From the green wood in his grove

'neath the waxing moon above us

Hear his clear flute sweet and low

Follow in the dance he's leading

Circle 'round the fire's glow

Come and drink the wine he pours us

From the tangled vines that grow

Listen now and I shall follow

Listen now and I may follow...

She could hear the flute's melody in her head clearly, so clear, in fact, it almost sounded as if...

Aliyah's eyes opened abruptly though she didn't move, her body still lethargic from sleep. Sometimes in that weird limbo between dreams and wakefulness, sensations and sounds had a peculiar quality, as if they came from outside the mind. Aliyah strained her ears and heard the very faintest of tunes from a flute, but she still couldn't be sure if they were in her head or off in the distance somewhere. Slowly, as she returned to complete wakefulness the music faded away completely.

Must have been in my head, she thought, but just as she was about to nod off again, Aliyah caught a flash of movement out towards the falls on the rocks near their peak... a glimpse of horns... some kind of animal?

More alert now, Aliyah raised herself up onto her elbows to look out over the pool, and then suddenly he was there! Inching towards her, almost timidly, was a man, naked as herself! Stepping silently and approaching from below the rise of the riverbank she hadn't seen him until he was almost upon her.

Aliyah gasped and sat up fully, calling out to Jane in warning. The man winced, almost as if spooked by the noise, and pointed towards Jane. Aliyah looked over and saw that her friend was somehow still asleep. She turned back to the man and he brought the index finger of his other hand to his lips, a concerned expression on his face.

Aliyah watched him, stiff with apprehension, and yet she somehow couldn't bring herself to be afraid. There was something non-threatening in his demeanour... not benevolence so much as childlike playfulness. His clear face was youthful but angled, framed by chocolate brown curls. Wide, deep brown eyes stared into hers, twinkling mischievously. His skin was very pale, but tinged a healthy peach. He was bare-chested but for a small tuft at his sternum that tapered to a thin trail along his toned abdomen. Aliyah couldn't help but follow its path downward with her eyes where it splayed out generously below his hip bones, thick and coarse. Her heart beat faster at the sight of his cock, which was rather large even in its currently flaccid state, nestled atop a pair of equally impressive balls. While the man's torso and arms were only lightly furred, his legs were generously coated in fine wisps of hair, the same chocolate brown as on his head.