The Empath Cycle: 2010 Carpe Diem - Book 2

She was tall, athletic with a statuesque body, her dark hair, which fell below her shoulder blades, framed an expressive square jawed face that, for all its beauty, reflected a determined mind, but the feature that caught the attention was the arresting pale ice-blue eyes.

Karlie was the first to recognize her. She crawled over Jade and fell in her arms, her head on the large but firm breasts.

"Oh! Why didn't we think of this before? Can I play with you, Xena? Or will Gabrielle be jealous?"

""Of course I won't be jealous, sweet Karlie."

They all laughed as Karlie found herself holding a slightly shorter woman who was athletic too but leaner, her short blond hair framed a softer face with slightly darker blue eyes.

"Which one is you?" Sylvie asked, misty eyed as she watched Karlie cry with happiness as she held... The Woman.

"I am me. Since I have no history, I do not have an image of myself. This is the first time I have used a physical manifestation. Part of me chose this first one as a surprise and a gift to Karlie because I love her."

"I know Ann is a fan of Xena, but she didn't know about Karlie's recurring fantasy so you must be either Ryanna or Julia."

"You are trying too hard, Sylvie. I am me. Part of you loves Thai food, part of you prefers romantic movies while part of you is the essential pragmatist. Do they have different labels? I am me."

"I get it. I see you will take some getting used to. How do we call you?"

"I do not have a name. I am me. Maybe you could all christen me. In many ways, I am still an infant and you are my parents. You, Sylvie are like a mother to me. You started the chain of events that led to my 'birth' when you joined parts of me, which led to other parts linking and my becoming whole."

"This is getting too technical for me and... Ooooooh!"

A shorter thin woman was kneeling before Patricia, her brown hair so light as to verge on blonde pulled back in a loose bun, her strong face softened as she smiled tenderly, her arms opened in invitation.

"I love you!" Patricia wailed in happiness as she fell in the waiting arms. "Like Karlie said, why didn't we think of this before?"

"Because you are from the physical world with a whole lifetime of images you are tied to. For you, Marie Curie is a historical person. To me, she is only someone you have admired since you were a child. I wanted you to meet her in the flesh."

"This is a beautiful gift. Thank you. Thank you so very much."

"What about me?" Jade grinned. "I bet you can't surprise me like you did them."

"Can't I?"

Jade's jaw dropped as The Woman became a tall, lean woman with black hair also pulled up in a bun, her intense blue eyes fixed on her.

"How... How did you know? Can I...? May I...?" Jade stammered,

"You've fantasized often enough about me. Isn't it time you touched me for real?"

Jade approached the woman with a quivering smile. She hesitated for a moment, awed, before taking the woman in her arms and kissing her deeply. When she came up for air, she still held her and whispered in her ear.

"I love you. I can't want to play with you."

"Neither can I, sweatling, neither can I."

"This is too obscure for me. She's gorgeous and all, but who is she?" Sylvie asked.

Karlie laughed. "That's Corbie Smulders. Jade's latest fantasy woman from S.H.I.E.L.D.S."

"Not only from The Avengers. Wait until you see her in full Wonder Woman costume." Jade huffed. "Linda Carter was a wimp compared to her."

Finally the Woman turned to Sylvie.

"Which image from my imagination are you going to conjure? Which woman do I fantasize about?"

"You are the easiest of all."

A perfect copy of Patricia knelt before Sylvie with open arms and a familiar grin.

Sylvie collapsed in tears and four women were holding her, also in tears as they apologized for hurting her feelings. Patricia joined them.

"It's all right, dears. You did nothing wrong. She's perfectly all right."

"I am, I swear. You don't need to cry. I wasn't sad. Quite the opposite. I was just overwhelmed when you showed me my perfect woman."

"Are you sure?" Ryanna asked.

"We meant well. We promise." Julia said, Ann and Anne-Marie nodding vigorously beside her.

"Thank you all. You have given us great gifts. We love you all and one." Sylvie reassured them. "Think with your heart. Remember where you are."

They closed their eyes for a few seconds and they were beaming when they opened them again.

"We forgot. We are still so young as One. You were right. We did get those images from all of your subconsciouses. We didn't look further because we wanted to respect your privacy and we didn't know you were happy because you are not projecting here."

"That's all right, girls. No harm done. It's nice to know you can split up, though. I have so many questions and the language was getting stilted."

"We can separate, but only in a way. We are never completely apart." Ryanna pointed out. "Especially here. In fact, neither are you really when you visit this place."

"That's what you meant to show us when you had us stop 'half-way'."

"Exactly. We got the idea when you first brought us all here together. This is a construct, a communal convention to make things easier for you to relate to each other. As much an image from your collective mind as your individual 'bodies'. Essentially we are still in a meld within your mind."

"That opens whole new avenues of research. So we could have stayed in the place you showed us and interacted on a purely... metaphysical, I suppose, level."

"We could have, but it would soon have become confusing for you. We were 'born' there, so it is natural for us as a 'me'. Your minds need a physical referent."

Sylvie turned to Patricia with a pleading look.

"No, dear. We've been through this before. You have your own life to live. This is theirs. Be content in helping them as they need you."

"Ah well, it was worth a try." Sylvie sighed. "But I expect to be kept abreast of all -- and I mean all -- the developments."

"Of course you will be, boss." Ann grinned. "I'm sure you will be a great help to us."

They all smiled fondly as Sylvie and Ann fell in each other's arms, laughing.

"What did you mean when you said I was like a mother to you?" Sylvie asked as they reclined in the dimming light after an afternoon of play where they had explored the possibilities suggested by The Woman's gifts when they had arrived.

"You know, as much as you need the transition between 'day' and 'night', why limit ourselves to a gradual darkening." Ann said.

The four parts of the Woman joined hands and grinned. All of a sudden, there was a setting sun lighting the sky with colors from one end of the horizon to the other.

"Oooooh! That's so beautiful!" Patricia exclaimed. "What great imagination you have."

"If you want, we can recreate a different memory of a setting sun from each of you every evening." Ryanna told them.

"That would be wonderful." Karlie said. "Jade and I saw some incredible ones on a trip to the west coast of Mexico many years ago."

"It's a deal then. We'll do one tomorrow." Ann told her. "In answer to your question, Sylvie, when you went 'through' Anne-Marie to reach me the first time we came to St-Jovite, you inadvertently created a link between us. We think it was already there if on a different level. We first became aware of it when we woke up in what became our room. It seemed like minutes to you, but we later realized that it had been a much lengthier period of time for us which explains how we acted when we opened the door."

Ryanna took up the thread of the story. "You've noticed the hypnotic effect Anne-Marie's voice has. Before I barged in, Julia had fallen completely under her spell as Ann and Anne-Marie masturbated together. I almost did too. I tried to shock her out of it, but I couldn't. That's when Anne-Marie guided me to reach to Julia differently. Under her influence, I did something I would previously have sworn was impossible. We later discovered that I was in fact only a bringing to a conscious level a bond, a link that had been there all of our lives."

"What none of us realized at the time." Ann continued. "Was that we had been forging a link with Julia when Ryanna came in and that by sharing the whole experience, we all became linked together. We gradually discovered how strong a bond it was as we continued to interact together."

"Like I told Sylvie, for a long time, we were operating on instinct alone. We have only recently become self-aware. It may not seem like it to you, but as One, we are still in our infancy." Ryanna said.

"Dear Mother!" Patricia exclaimed. "What will you be when you grow up? You are so far in advance of us already."

Anne-Marie rushed to sit in her lap. "No, dear Patricia. We are only different and then only when we join. You will always be the mother of my heart. I owe you so very much. I will never be able to express how much I love you."

The others joined them to share their love too. As they touched, Patricia could feel the intensity of their individual sentiments and how they were magnified as an entity. When her other wives reached for her, she had an inkling of what the One had meant when she said the island and these physical manifestations were mere conventions, images. For a moment, she was back in the formless space, the energy that was her melding with those of her loved ones forming a nova of love.

Ryanna, Ann and Sylvie were walking toward the area where they would experiment with designs for the laboratory.

"Is there a reason why you glossed over Anne-Marie's role in your 'birth'?" Sylvie asked. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I'm just curious."

She could clearly 'hear' Anne-Marie's distinctive laugh before Ryanna answered.

"However it may look to others, she is the brightest mind of us all. Julia and I are powerful empathic talents and Ann has a brilliant mind of a different order from anyone we have ever heard of except maybe you if in a different way, but, as I knew you were from the moment we came together, she is the catalyst that makes us all better in the physical world and drives our growth in the metaphysical. When you interact with the One, you are communicating with her in a large part."

"I thought as much." Sylvie grinned, her reasoning proven true once again. "She may act the meek one, but she's the one who is always taking charge in tough situations. Plus, from what you said, she played a pivotal role in your emergence."

"Oh, she is meek all right." Ann affirmed. "She's too nice and too trusting for her own good and I will forever be her guardian, against the whole world if I have to. What she also has is a strong personality which rises to the occasion when needed. She says that I help people because I can't help myself, but neither can she. Also, if I was always a quick study, this talent has grown to a whole different level under her influence, as I found when you were hurt helping me. I didn't show it, but it scared the bejesus out of me when I came up for air. That's the reason I need her near me when I work full out."

"Have no fear, you have my full support. I may not look like it, but I usually get what I want, one way or another." Sylvie said with a self-satisfied grin.

Ann and Ryanna looked at each other behind her back and grinned too.

The cold and dampness woke Karlie, her body aching and stiff from sleeping on the hard ground. She pulled the thin blanket to her neck in an effort to go back to sleep for just a few more minutes before she had to get up and feed the fire she had banked for the night and prepare the mistress' breakfast.

'What the hell?'

She started, sitting up without thinking. The cool morning air hit her naked torso unexpectedly. She quickly grabbed the blanket and covered herself. That was definitely not the way she liked to have her nipples harden in the morning. Where was Jade? And where was she for that matter. The last thing she remembered, she was in the huge comfortable bed in the beach house on Sylvie's island snuggled between two warm bodies. How then did she wake up on the ground in a temperate forest, in a rudimentary camp, no less?

She jumped when she heard a horse whinnying near her. She saw two horses and a mule with some sort of strap hobbling front legs. She also noticed a loud snore and a softer one coming from near the fire pit.

Two forms were obviously sleeping comfortably under thick furs. Who were they and how come they rated warm furs and she only got a thin scratchy wool blanket?

She was about to give those two a piece of her mind when she heard a branch crack in the forest near the camp. She had seen a Nature documentary on the wildlife in this type of forest and there were dangerous beasts living in it. She froze and listened for more sounds as she scanned around to see what may have caused that noise. Her hands flew to her mouth to stifle a cry when she saw an enormous grey wolf enter the clearing. It had a rabbit in its jaw. Was she in its way to its den?

She nearly fainted when the wolf trotted into the camp and went to the biggest of the two sleeping forms. It dropped the rabbit on the ground beside the sleeper and snuffled. When it didn't get a reaction, it did it again, only louder. Still no reaction. It put its huge paw on the person and... barked. Karlie almost laughed at the incongruity.

A thickly muscled arm reached out of the sleeping fur and a callused hand batted at the wolf, hitting it on the snout. Karlie cringed. She expected the beast to attack immediately and savage them all. She did laugh out loud when it pranced around the offender, barking in what was obviously a playful mood.

"You mangy bitch, how many time do I have to tell you to give the breakfast to the slave and leave me alone until it's cooked."

The gravelly voice combined with the muscled arm and callused hand could only mean a warrior of some sort. And not a friendly one judging by his growl. Karlie hoped he just wasn't a morning person.

"Leave the puppy alone. He's just a baby. We're lucky he adopted us since you killed its mother last year. Are you going to hunt for food like you did before he caught on and started doing it for us? I didn't think so."

"Are you going to nag all day again, you harpy? Why don't you get up and see why the slave hasn't stoked the fire and dressed the rabbit to cook? She's your responsibility after all since you wouldn't let me sell her at market. I told you a pleasure slave is useless to us."

"You grumpy sourpuss. If you can teach a dog to do tricks, I can teach a pleasure slave to be useful on the road."

At least, the second voice was female and seemed to be on her side. Maybe she could explain her situation and find a way out of this predicament.

Karlie saw the woman sit up. She had her back to her and Karlie watched the dirty blond hair flow down to mid-back as she stretched. She gasped when the woman got to her feet. Muscles rippled from shoulders to calf as she did some limbering exercises. When she bent down slowly to touch the ground with the flat of her hands, the flexing ass she had been admiring parted and she clearly saw the pouting lips of her sex lightly framed by short blond hair. She moaned softly as she brought her hands to her own tingling pussy.

The woman looked over her shoulder at the sound and grinned.

"Do you like what you see, Red?"

She went on with her stretching for a few minutes and switched to some kind of exercise that seemed strange yet familiar to Karlie. The build-up was gradual, but soon Karlie recognized what were clearly fighting moves. The woman's body was in great condition with lean yet powerful muscles and perfect coordination. Her smallish perky breasts fit the rest of her body to make the whole a work of art. By the time she slowed, and stopped, she was covered in a sheen of sweat. The woman was facing Karlie by then. It seemed to her as if she was posing for her to admire her perfect body. Karlie gasped and shook when she saw drops of wetness at the edge of her lower lips below a large, clearly erect clit peeking out of its hood.

Looking up, she saw the woman's grin as she watched her intently. Her dark blue eyes seemed to bore into her as they locked gazes. The perfect lips parted and the tip of her tongue slowly wet them so they shone in the morning light.

It was too much for Karlie and she moaned loudly as her busy fingers brought her over the edge.

When she regained her senses, she shivered as the cool air dried the sweat off her body. Both hands, still between her legs, were covered in cream. She shook as she pulled the fingers from her still pulsating vagina. When she opened her eyes, she saw a pair of low boots near her face. She followed the tanned skin coming out of them up, admiring the perfect knees, the toned thighs she imagined squeezing her head as she lapped greedily at the divine lips revealed by the parted legs. The muscles of the tight, flat stomach rippled as she heard a soft laugh which sent shivers down her back. The firm breasts, topped by hard pebbly nipples held her gaze for only a moment before she moved on to the beautiful face looking down at her. The laughter coming out of those sensual lips reached the eyes that rove over her prone body.

She knew that face. She knew every line, the dimples in its cheeks as it smiled, the laugh lines at the corner of the eyes. It wakened a dim memory of watching it softened in repose, as it laughed, as it cried, in the throes of passion, in anger, in love.

Karlie whimpered as the memory faded. Of course she knew it. The woman was her mistress. She had been taken as booty after the slave caravan she was in was attacked by a band of marauders only to be rescued by these two women... Two women?

She didn't have time to pursue the thought before the boots straddled her head and the sex she had coveted was lowered within her reach.

"I'm always wet after training and the show you gave me didn't help. Now, show me how good your training is."

On those words, the woman kneeled to the ground and brought their lips together. Karlie was only too happy to kiss them, slipping her tongue between them. She moaned as she found the flavor even better than she had imagined. It was like nectar to her, an explosion of savor as it mixed with her saliva. She swallowed avidly. She brought her hands to the firm buttocks, she felt them flex under her fingers as she fondled them.

"That's it! Stick that tongue in me, cunt! Now such my clit! I need a good come! Yeah!"

It was all she could do to hold on as the woman jerked her hips roughly, bruising her full lips as she ground her pussy on them, grinding her clit on Karlie's nose when her tongue was between her folds, reaching, curling upwards to a particular area of her vagina as she had been taught.

Her own hips were bucking off the ground in a sympathetic reaction to the woman's passion. She moaned loudly when the woman reached behind her back to tweak her overly large and sensitive nipples and maul her large breasts, adding sound vibrations to the stimulation she was providing to the profusely leaking vagina.

Karlie was in a second state, wholly immersed in her role as a sexual object. Her flesh brought to life for the pleasure of others.

It was only natural when her legs were grabbed by rough hands and spread as her thighs were pushed to flatten on her body. The hard member penetrated her easily, gliding on her ample lubrication. It stopped for a moment when she felt a pubis bone hit hers and grind on her blood engorged clit. She wasn't surprised as she felt it enlarge and thicken until it filled her vagina perfectly.