A Study in Fragrance Pt. 05

     The body politic is changing too, while its pace may not be as evident to our eyes, the world grows each day in ways that, while hard to perceive from our vantage point, marking time by the quickening or slowing of heartbeats, surely differs from the age of our mothers or grandmothers. So, too, our daughters and their daughters will live in a vastly different world, a world in which they will have much broader responsibilities than we do today.

     Such a world may be frightening to contemplate! Without the protection of our husbands, fathers and kin, such a world looks as if it is a step backward, to a feral existence in which each of us must fend for ourselves, red in tooth and claw. Perhaps, my gentle ladies. Perhaps such a fearsome prospect awaits our offspring, and if that is to be the case, then we must prepare our minds, bodies and souls for that eventuality.

     In this month's issue we explore ways to fortify ourselves through a proper regimen of nutrition and exercise so that we can participate fully in all that Nature has to offer.

Yikes! Emily wasn't sure she understood everything Abby was trying to say, her writing style was unfamiliar and old fashioned, but she got the gist: Abby was promoting an agenda of independence to a class of women who may not have seen the need.

Opening another, the dedication sounded much different. Darker.

     To Maribel—the blackness and dark are but temporary, a veil over our eyes. Even the heavens at night are punctured by the pin-pricks of light. The Orientals' symbol is our guide: in the dark swirl we see the hope of light and even in our most enlightened joyous light-filled days there are pockets of dark. No joy without sorrow.

As she leafed through the letter and into the recipes and guidance Abby was writing for her audience, Emily sat transfixed, knowing there was much deeper meaning behind the words than she could decipher.

     Ladies, darkness is not a reason for despair! Rimmed in red, we find deeper sustenance from the darkness within. Red is joy not rage! Our lips, red with life, the gateways to nutrition and life are to be celebrated! The darkness between only beckons us to explore, to engage, to enjoy! Come with me on this journey of discovery. Come with me to learn more about the power that we, as the fairer sex, contain in our darkest passages.

That looked pretty obvious: Abby was providing some kind of sex education. Emily sat there shocked and amused at Abby's convoluted writing. But the pages that followed were almost impenetrable. Not just all of the flower and garden references; Emily understood that to be codes and she didn't have a decoder ring. But names and places that must have been familiar to Abby's subscribers were completely foreign to Emily making the writing incomprehensible.

Maybe Ms. Formier could help me. She reached into the box until she got to the bottom of the stack of pamphlets, her fingertips hitting something hard and rough. It felt like another journal cover. She pulled the stack out and up, the top most pamphlet opening to a random page as she set the stack onto the carpet.

     Like the willow, bending and swaying with the wind, switching to and fro, we can resist or we can flow. Light sparkling on our leaves, leaves rustling on our stems, stems springing from our trunks. Like the willow we move as the wind, fluid and open to history and what love brings.

More advice for the lovelorn? She turned her attention to the book at the bottom of the box. Its cover, black again, rough again, stiff, its binding showing signs it had been used frequently. The book was squarish and thick. Carefully opening it, Emily gasped at the contents. Abby (she assumed it was Abby's) was an illustrator. The facing pages she had opened showed beautiful flowers on the left page, watercolored, an iris perhaps? At the stem's base, a group of broader petals, and trailing from that group, ivy, crossing the binding to the other page, where Abby had painted the figure of a nude woman. The ivy entwined around the woman's legs, spiraling up to cover her pubic triangle in green foliage and blossoms, but the rest of the reclining figure was bare. Her breasts were delicately rendered in a wash of pinkish color, the nipples just a hint of shadow. It was an amazing sketch. In the corner was a date, June 27, 1893 and a few words, painted in black ink: Maribel: Iris, impatiens, hedera helix. Latin, and obviously flower names.

Maribel! The same Maribel from the pamphlet's inscription? It had to be, Emily was certain. Did Abby and Maribel have a relationship? She turned the pages, carefully but with increasing impatience. More flowers, with their names, and in many cases, more nudes, but not all Maribel! Emily looked at the dates. Maribel was dated June, Pearl in September and Ruby the following January. How many women did Abby paint? Were they her lovers? Was she just sketching portraits? And the flowers, they were all different. Sometimes just one Zengiber, sometimes as many as four or five, Gladiolus, Solidago, Poaceae, Hyacinthus orientalis. In the last case, the nude was unfinished, her head lightly penciled in, her features blank. Were these sketches to practice for a finished painting? There was no way to tell, but Emily imagined sending these as love letters. Even in this form they were beautiful.

She couldn't tear herself away from the sketchbook, but she needed to get a move on and there was much more to look at. She set the book aside, feeling her own arousal building at the thought of Abby painting these women, of her possible relationships with them, that The Study had been Abby's studio!

There were two more boxes and it was getting close to noon. Her stomach clenched when she thought about doing her sex ed research, the image of women taking cocks into their mouths sending jolts to her insides. It was almost enough to make her leave this for another time, but she was almost done, and each box was sure to revealmore interesting treasures than the one before.

She turned to the wooden one next, either an elaborate jewelry or tool box, its dark wood top engraved with another cross like the one she'd seen earlier, a black wood handle inset within. Lifting it, Emily heard the slight tinkling she'd heard before and moved the box very gently to a clear spot on the carpet. There were two doors on the face, latched with a tiny lock. She carefully pulled on the latch expecting it to be locked, relieved to discover it hadn't been. Slowly opening the doors, she gasped at the complexity of the case: Three rows of five small square drawers sat on top of three drawers that stretched the entire width.

She pulled on the first of the wide drawers and was surprised when it pulled out, carrying the other two with it. They weren't drawers at all, but an intricate jewelry-box-like set of shelves that extended out and down. The top-most shelf contained 16 small vials, capped with eyedroppers, sealed with wax. Emily could see liquid still sloshing in the small bottles, although the glass was dark brown and difficult to look through. Each bottle had a small label and sat in satin indentations. The next shelf held a set of 16 trays, dull metal and wood, fitting together to fill the space completely. The final shelf held a set of 16 sealed wooden boxes. So many boxes! It felt like a Russian doll, with boxes inside boxes inside boxes. Each of those had a symbol engraved on the top. Some of the symbols looked like flowers, others like signs of the zodiac...she wasn't sure.

Lining the very bottom of the case was a sheet of paper, which she discovered was a much larger sheet, folded up. The paper was unlike any she'd seen: it was off-white and felt more like fabric than paper, soft and silky against her fingers. When she unfolded it, it was still flexible, although the creases didn't look like they would ever come out. Inside was a legend, identifying the box's contents, each shelf labeled, each element described. On the back side was a map of the top rows of drawers, each of their contents labeled in detail.

"Potions! Seeds!" She just stared at the descriptions and kept looking back to the box, sliding open a random drawer to see what it contained. It was a potion making kit or a medicinal kit or something. There wasn't any title on the paper or any other markings on the box.

She gently folded the paper, returned it to the box and carefully closed it up, shaking her head. How did all of this stuff get here? Did Mom know? She reached for the last box and it too was filled with small journals. Emily opened one and saw a recipe covering multiple pages. And then another. And another. It was Abby's formulas! She was certain of it.

The room was covered with Abby's stuff—her history, her belongings, her work. It looked like the attic had exploded out from the hatch, all of the black boxes, their tops, the contents strewn. Emily had assumed she could put it all back the way she'd found it, but looking at it now, she wasn't so sure. It was getting late. Her stomach growled and she could feel the tendril uncoiling: researching blow jobs, and, more intensely, a sense of shame at how she would be using her new-found knowledge later in the day. She wanted to run her hands through Cos's hair, strip his shirt off, inhale his smell, make him hard...make him cum. She felt herself getting wet and didn't know what to do: clean up? Lunch? Learn about giving head?

Lunch won out. The stuff wasn't going anywhere. Cos didn't need to do the electrical today. She could straighten this up any time. But she was hungry. And she needed to do her homework.

Downstairs, a plate of rice and beans with a side salad, she fired up her browser on her phone. She entered How to give a blow job into her search bar and laughed at the number of articles. The top ones were from Cosmo of course but there were plenty of others accompanied by instructional videos. She giggled as she ate her beans, watching women swallow dildos and bananas, and of course there was always the real thing on the porn sites.

But she wanted to learn more than just technique; that she knew would have to come from practice if any of her athletic experience was a guide. The Cosmo articles talked a lot about other stuff than simply globbing onto his dick, like using it as foreplay, combining it with other stimulation, not trying to be a porn queen and staying safe. Lots of stuff about safety. And how to make sure her mouth was wet and gooey. And deep throating. And why deep throating wasn't all that necessary.

That was something she'd been worrying about. Could you give head and still not deep throat or was it only giving head if you deep throated? She was relieved to know that she could just take him into her mouth, like she'd already done, and not have to take him down her throat. But she thought about taking him into her throat. What that might feel like for him. From what she read, it sounded like it would be awful for her, but the sheer challenge of doing it lit up her competitive nature. Still, if it meant gagging and vomiting, what could possibly be the fun in that?

And then there was the stuff about swallowing. She had heard her friends talk about swallowing and whether they were going to or had or hadn't. She'd already tasted him. Twice. But she hadn't gotten a full mouthful. Would she want to spit it out? It seemed easier to just take it in. She read about whether that was safe, what was in semen and a whole bunch of other topics she'd had no idea she should have cared about, and really didn't in the end. But the idea of swallowing his cum kept popping up. She tripped across one article that showed the woman presenting her man's cum back to him, opening her mouth, the white goop all over and around her tongue. It was so gross, but something struck a chord, it felt so degrading and she worried why her insides gripped at the thought. The tendril leapt up to her throat. She could feel herself getting wet.

"Well," she said under her breath, "I guess I know what you're going to try and do."

She looked up as she heard the guys coming up the drive from their own lunch and quickly shifted to Facebook, checking out what her friends had been up to. It looked like their weekend plans were shaping up, but she was conflicted. She had figured she was going to be helping Cos at the house. Images of her "helping" him kept shimmering into mind: taking his penis into her mouth or her hand, and eventually into her vag. She stopped her daydreaming at the sound of footsteps.

"Hey," Cos greeted her as he walked in the back entrance. "You get to that drilling yet?"

She had been about to respond with a snarky answer when she thought better of it; the crew was right behind him. "Was going to get to it next."

"Well, if you're not busy now, I can show you the sanding and if you can get to both before we start a little later, that would be great." He raised his eyebrows, which she thought might have had a double-meaning, but when she raised hers back he shrugged.

"Give me five minutes to wash up. I'll be right upstairs." She closed down her phone and did the dishes, thinking about what she'd learned.

By the time she got upstairs, Cos had grabbed another power tool and was waiting for her.

"So, there's not much to this," he said holding up the thing. "You probably've never sanded before, am I right?"

She smiled and nodded. "Nope. Still a virgin there too."

He sighed. "We're going to paint this stuff, so really, it's just to get whatever dirt and oils might have accumulated in storage. It's already pretty finished." He brushed his hand across the piece of lumber. "I'll show you on the top piece. Don't," he looked at her, "sand the long sides until after you drilled them. Right?"

Why? Oh shit. The markings. That would be stupid. "Hah! As if!" But she definitely would have.

"Here," he handed her a mask and pointed to her safety goggles. "Every time you use a power tool, I expect to see these goggles on you. No exceptions. Deal breaker."

She imagined what might be in store for her if she broke the rules and snapped her attention back to the room. Fuck you've got it bad!

He waited til she got herself settled then nodded, demonstrating how to move the sander from one edge to the other, keeping a smooth and steady motion. "You don't need to put a lot of pressure on, but you do want to feel the paper catching the surface. Here," he shut it off and handed it to her.

God it makes a horrible noise, Emily reached for the tool, grateful at the silence.

The sander was surprisingly heavy. The way he had held it, it didn't look like it weighed very much, but when she took it from him, she almost dropped it, compensating with her triceps and deltoids. Holding it above the board, she flipped the switch and squealed when it almost jerked out of her hand. Recovering before he could make a comment, she focused on moving the surface of the paper evenly across the board. It almost took off, skittering to one side, before she figured out how to keep it under control. In a few moments she got it going one way and then the next, moving across the board, noticing the fine layer of dust it left behind. Her goggles started to fog a little obscuring her work. She stood up and opened them to let in the air.

"That's perfect. You can tell by the sound too. Just put a little pressure to make it behave, but not too much." Just like I'm doing with you, kitten. "Just keep going all the way down. When you finished that side, flip it and do the other. Here," he reached over and turned it off, his arm brushing against her breast. Even though she was dressed, she inhaled at the touch. "Let me show you how to change the paper."

She was standing next to him, her bare mid-riff brushing up against his belt and t-shirt. The images from the day before washed over her as she tried to pay attention to what he was doing.

"Slip the new one in like this." His elbow brushed against her naked skin, and she gasped quietly. She tried to concentrate on his fingers plying the sandpaper into the sander's clamps. "Make sure it's all lined up and it's pretty simple." He looked over at her to make sure she understood. She looked at him, nodding, wanting nothing more than to slip off her mask, reach her arms around his neck and pull him into a kiss. She focused on her breathing.

Shit she's lit up. "Oh," he added, seemingly oblivious to the fight going on inside her, "one more thing -- we're using 400 grit." He pointed to the package of paper on the floor. "Make sure you don't use anything coarser." He looked at her face. "You don't have a fucking clue what I'm talking about, right?" He laughed. "The higher the number, the finer the paper -- more grit per inch. So, you can go finer if you make a mistake, but it won't be as effective and you'll use more effort. Don't go coarser, cuz it will scratch the wood and we'll have to do it all over again. Yeah?"

She nodded. Stop being an idiot! Focus on the job. "Got it, my captain!" She saluted. "Hey? Is there any way to keep the goggles from fogging up?"

He looked up at her face. "Here...try this." He reached up and took the mask, pinching the nose metal a little and then moved his hand behind her head, gently molding the mask to her nose. Her arousal clicked up a notch and she breathed harder, the goggles fogging a little. He grunted. "You can try spitting in the googles. That usually works for a little bit."

"Gross!" But she remembered the trick from her snorkeling the prior summer.

"I'll be back up around 3:30 as usual..." He left. The comment dangled in the air.

"As usual," she said after him, wondering what that actually might mean.

Now that she was here, she was excited to do the drilling. Her thoughts drifted to the boxes upstairs, to his boxers downstairs, but they began to drift into the background, her focus on the drill and jig.

She moved to the other saw horses where they'd left the stuff from the night before and lifted up the drill assembly. This is what I was hoping for, feeling her traps kicking in as she leaned over to look at the purplish intersections. Carefully, she rested the jig, aligned the bit, drew it back, and pulled the trigger, anticipating the slight jump from the drill. Moving the bit down slowly, she kept pushing until it bottomed out, watching the flakes of wood spiral up and out of the fresh hole. She brushed the bits away and smiled at how easy it was before moving to the next. And the next. And the one after that.

Emily got lost in the process, the repetitive action moved her into the zone, a little like what she felt when she ran, but not as intense. She focused on the task; after a few handfuls it became automatic, her mind drifting. Drilling. Hole. Her hole. He would drill her hole. The tendril had wrapped itself firmly around her belly, and as she walked down the wood, she couldn't shake the image of him drilling her hole. You're disgusting! She laughed at herself. Wicked. Naughty. She saw herself spreading her legs, watching his penis moving toward her vagina, remembering how close she had come the day before to just letting him in and drilling her. She wondered why she wanted to be treated like that, to let him use her.

She stopped abruptly when she realized the bit wasn't properly aligned with the intersection. She stood up, taking a breather. Her goggles fogged a little; she pulled them up and looked at her work. Almost a third of the way done, a nice array of cute little holes with spirals of wood and dust. Would he think my hole is cute? She couldn't stop the thoughts no matter how much she chastised herself. She walked out and downstairs to grab some water and clear her head.