Earth, Sun, and Moon Saga Ch. 01

The house, if it was a house and not an illusion, stood in the clearing well below an outcropping of rocky cliffs and sandwiched between dense woods on either side and the coast. It was a natural, protective, box and James Faraday was having trouble believing he was seeing it at all.

The house itself didn't seem overly impressive and looked from the outside as the kind of tacky mansion the rich types built trying to impersonate classic European-style estates. It vaguely reminded James of a castle, but more in the vein of Downton Abbey than anything medieval.

Thing was, it shouldn't have been there. This side of Sunstone Island was uninhabited and near impossible to reach. There were no roads here, no way in or out that didn't include a boat to navigate choppy waters to the mainland. But this wasn't a mere double-wide with a dock like other isolated island homesteads. It was a mansion.

How the hell was it even built?

The midday sky was overcast and rather gloomy, as was typical in the Pacific Northwest and James took a moment to drink water and dab away some sweat from his face. This was only the second day of his backpacking trip and he was surprisingly tired despite what his athletic frame would suggest. His legs burned from the last incline that brought him to this view.

Slowly, steadily, he approached the house, moving into the woods to get a closer look.

There was no fence line he could ascertain and he roughly realized he was approaching the rear of this house. A pair of round, two-story towers jutted from the back corners, connected to the house by a second-story walkway and top with conical roofs. James, however, was focused on the windows on the main floor. Not just windows. It was a glass box attached to the rear of the house reminiscent of a greenhouse.

He approached cautiously now, trying to keep concealed in the edge of the woods. The treeline ended a mere fifty feet before the floor-to-ceiling glass of the greenhouse and James realized that inside the greenhouse was a giant swimming pool. It took up almost the whole footprint of the room except for a small area that held bedroom furniture, including a bed whose frame looked vaguely like it had once been the bow of a boat.

There was a splash in the pool and James ducked instinctively behind a tree. There was a woman in the pool and James noticed two things about her at the same time: She was naked and she was beautiful. There was another thing about the swimming woman; she appeared to be wearing some sort of blue-green skirt as she swam. But that wasn't quite right, not a skirt. He found himself taking more steps, squinting to see better.

It was mermaid fins, he realized. She was wearing mermaid fins. He remembered seeing performers at the city aquarium in the half-body suit, holding their breath and twirling around the artificial coral reefs much to the delight of every little girl in the audience.

"What are you doing?" A voice from behind him said.

He turned, or rather jumped around, startled at the woman's voice.

"Sorry," he stammered. "I didn't mean to snoop," he said, putting his hands up. "I didn't realize anyone lived out here. My curiosity got the better of me."

The woman standing before him was also beautiful, despite the scowl of suspicion. She had long, chestnut hair, loosely braided with silver rings. She wore a vintage-looking green and black dress, adorned with a leather apron, and rugged leather boots. It was a decidedly practical outfit to be picking berries in, which James guessed she'd been doing, given the basket hanging off her elbow. James thought she looked something like a cross between a hippie and a gypsy.

"Did you think that maybe those that took the trouble to live all the way out here, did so to avoid the prying eyes of strangers?"

"You're absolutely right. Again, I'm sorry. I'll just be on my way." James turned to walk away.

The woman sighed. "Hold on."

James looked behind him.

"I'm sorry for being rude," The woman shifted her basket to her other arm. "It's clear you meant no harm. Would you like to come in for a spell? Fill up your water? There are fresh apples and bread."

"That's very generous of you but I'm okay. I was just traveling through. Again, sorry for bothering you."

She pointed to his backpack, "Just traveling through? An island?"

James shrugged. "I was planning on making camp on the north shore. Has the best views. Or so I'm told."

"If that's the case then we'll be neighbors." She hooked her arm through his and smiled demurely up at him, "I insist on meeting my neighbors. And it has been a long time since we've had guests. Please, allow me to apologize for being so standoffish."

The last time a woman had held his arm like that was shortly before the fight that led to their eventual breakup. The woman before him was nothing like his ex. She was curvy and kind-looking and smelled like lavender and sage.

"Okay," he relented. "I guess I could use a rest."

"Glad to hear it." She smiled again. "I'm Gwendolen. My friends call me Gwen."

"Good to meet you. I'm James. My friends don't call me Jim."

That elicited a small chuckle from Gwen and he let her lead him to one of the backdoors of the house. He put his backpack down in the mudroom and followed Gwen's example when she kicked off her boots.

The house's interior was just as strange as the outside.

The house seemed a contradiction in terms: it was large, a mansion really, but it was also intimate. From the mudroom, there was a short hallway, then a sort of main room dominated by a grand piano, then he was in the kitchen. It was large, and expansive, but also cozy. Dry herbs hung over the window by the sink. A mortar and pestle sat on one counter.

Gwen put her basket on the kitchen counter and began unpacking it.

"You have a lovely home here," James said, hoping he sounded polite.

"Thank you," Gwen replied. "Please, have a seat. Tell me about your travels." She motioned to a large oak table that looked like it ought to be in a Viking's hall. He sat in one of the equally out-of-place chairs and watched Gwen busy herself in the kitchen.

"Oh, it's nothing too exciting," he said. "This was just supposed to be a school thing that I extended a bit. I'm doing graduate work on environmental impact markers, so I've been taking soil samples, measurements of the area, that sort of thing. I figured these islands could give me some decent findings as they're more isolated and, hopefully, less impacted."

Gwen nodded. "We are that. Isolated, I mean." She set a plate of food in front of him and a glass of water and then sat next to him turning to face her guest. Sure enough, there was fresh bread, sliced apples, and some of the blackberries she'd just brought in. "So you're a scientist? I'd say it's rare to see your type so far away from books and labs."

James laughed and nodded, "Believe it or not, I hate lab work." He took a plump blackberry and popped it into his mouth. The juice was dense and sweet; much more flavorful than anything he could find in a grocery store. He practically moaned. "These are. Wow. Just wow." He tried the bread and apples and was equally blown away.

"Glad you like them." Gwen smiled warmly. "I wish I could say I had a hand in them but that's all nature's bounty."

There was something strange about this beautiful woman, James realized. Her speech and mannerisms were peculiar, even odd. The phrase 'old world' came to mind. She looked to be in her thirties, and she moved with a steady grace that women his age just didn't seem to possess. That and he hadn't once seen the glimpse of a cell phone. Her attention was all on him. It made him feel exposed and more than a little awkward. Her eyes, a deep green, seemed to look into him.

"So," he stammered, "is it just you out here?"

Gwen smiled again, "No. My sisters are here too. We tend to like our solitude, our . . . privacy."

James felt his face flush. "Again, I'm really sorry about that. I guess I thought I saw a mermaid in your pool?"

Gwen raised an eyebrow. "A mermaid?"

"Yes?" The new voice said, coming from behind him. He turned and saw the same woman from the pool. She was wrapped in a colorful towel. Her blonde hair, streaked pink and teal, was damp and pulled back. She was even more gorgeous up close. "I thought I heard voices!" she said in happy excitement. "You didn't tell me you were having guests!"

Gwen looked at her sister with a bemused expression. "James, this is Asari or just Ash. Ash, this is James. James says he thought he saw a mermaid."

"Really?" The blonde girl asked, surprised. "Where?"

"In our pool."

"Oh, I was just swimming around."

Honestly, James couldn't see the resemblance at all. Gwen was dark-haired and voluptuous while Ash was tall, athletic, and toned. Her long firm legs highlighted someone who was very active.

"Sorry," James said. "I sort of stumbled into this place. She invited me in for a break from hiking."

Ash nodded, knowingly. "She gave you bread, didn't she? She's always giving people bread."

Gwen rolled her eyes. "Oh, just a little bit."

"I don't know what you put in that but it was amazing," James said.

"If she gives you bread that means she likes you," Ash said.

Now it was Gwen's turn to blush. "Hush now, Ash. I was just being neighborly. Why don't you show our guest around?"

"We don't get a lot of guests," Ash said, instantly enthusiastic. "Would you like a tour? Can I give him a tour?"

Gwen sighed as if indulging a child. "Sure. But don't scare the poor boy."

"Yay, tour!" Ash actually clapped in her excitement. "Come. Come!" She practically pulled James to his feet, who looked back at Gwen in confusion.

It was a jarring and absolutely bizarre turn of events from being in the wilderness just twenty minutes ago, his thoughts on where he'd collect his next soil sample to being led through a mansion by a hottie wearing nothing but a towel.

"So over here we have the clock made by Ferdinand Berthoud. Lenore, that's our other sister, said he was a big deal. And here we have a print by Albrecht Durer. He's german. He sketched Gwendolyn. They were a thing, you know."

The etching print depicted a naked woman riding some sort of lion-dragon hybrid. It looked like something you could have done at a Renaissance fair, where a local artist draws a quick picture of your face on a knight's body or something. This was much more detailed, however.

"Over here is Gwen's side of the house," She motioned vaguely to a set of double doors on the west side of the house. The doors were inlaid with a carved knot-work tree, the winding roots of it curving upward to intertwine with the branches, forming a great circle.

"That side is all Lenore's." She pointed to the east side of the house. They were the twin tower-like protrusions he'd seen from the outside, he realized.

"And this is my side."

She pulled him through a set of doors more central. And James found himself inside the same indoor pool as he'd seen before. It was humid and warm, with none of the fall chill outside. The large, floor-to-ceiling windows had made him think of a greenhouse rather than a pool. The ceiling was glass too, a lattice-work of metal inlaid with panes of glass. It reminded James of something you might see in a zoo, topping the monkey house to provide natural light.

The pool dominated the center of the room but off to one side was arranged like a normal bedroom: bed, end tables, and dresser. Except the bedframe appeared to be the repurposed hull of an old boat, with the foot of the bed sweeping up into the bow, complete with a carved bare-breasted woman at the end.

"This is your room?"

"Yep! Isn't it neat?" Ash did a twirl, letting the towel fall when she did. "I have so much room here. Not like other places we've lived."

It took James a moment to realize she was now naked and he drank in the sight before his sense of politeness caught up and he averted his gaze from this strange woman's sudden nudity. His body reacted without his say and he stiffened in his pants.

"Miss, uh, your towel."

Ash looked down. "Oh! Sorry!" She snatched up the towel and walked it to a hamper near her bed. "Gwen's always getting on my case about being messy. Thanks for reminding me. Say, do you like whales?"

With his eyes still averted and thrown by the sudden odd question, James muttered, "Yeah, I guess. But I'll leave you to get dressed, then. Thanks for the tour."

Ash looked at him confused, blinking. "Oh, you don't like that I'm naked."

"Well, no, it's just—"

"I always forget that people care when I'm naked. We don't have a lot of guests. I forgot my manners. Gwen says it's important to have manners with humans—I mean, guests."

Humans? What the hell was she talking about? James had had enough. He had clearly stumbled on some weird compound belonging to people who didn't fit in the modern world. These women were cultists or lunatics or some weird Pacific Northwest hybrid of hippies. Isolation can make anyone a little batty and James suspected that these women might have gotten a double dose.

"Look, I'm gonna go. You all are really nice and I've obviously intruded on whatever it is you do out here, so I'm going to go. I have some ground to make up before nightfall—"

"Oh, please don't go!" Ash said. "I know I'm strange. I just don't get to talk to a lot of people."

Clearly, he thought. "Are you like trapped here? A prisoner?"

"Well, no." Ash shook her head. "I leave all the time. I swim in the ocean, mostly. I go fishing. I explore underwater caves. But that's all stuff I do by myself."

"You go caving alone?" James had heard of the sport, if it could be called that, whereby scuba divers would subject themselves to traveling in underwater cave systems. He understood it to be unbelievably dangerous.

"Of course, I do." Ash said, the 'duh' implied.

She was completely nonplussed about standing before him naked. He felt himself stiffen further, unable to help as her perfect breasts, her tight, flat tummy, and the soft golden hairs of her neatly trimmed pubis demanded his attention and elicited a biological response.

He felt warm. He was sweating. And it wasn't just from this room, although it was warm here. It was something else. He felt his skin flush and, my god, why was he so hard?

"I'm . . ." James put a hand to his face, feeling the sweat there. "Sorry. I need to sit down. Why is it so hot all of a sudden?"

"Oh, that's Gwen's hot bread," Ash said nonchalantly. "You probably should take your clothes off."

"What?" Why was everything this woman said so strange? She was an absolute smoke show, but she had to be one of the weirdest people he'd ever met. "What's hot bread?"

Ash moved to him and began unbuttoning his shirt. He thought about stopping her but decided he didn't care. "It's one of Gwen's specialties. Puts you in heat. She loves giving it to guests she likes. I told you she likes you."

"In heat?" The question sounded stupid even to him. Of course, that's what he was feeling. Heat. James realized it translated to being ravenously horny. "Wait," he blurted. "She, like, poisoned me?"

"I mean, sure, if you want to be all lawyery about it. But it'll pass. You just need release. Probably more than one. That's why I brought you here. Gwen's gonna want to help too, mind you. But she knows I get ants in my pants. She's really great like that . . . I don't know where that expression comes from. Like who puts ants in their pants?"

Ash pulled off his shirt. And then his undershirt.

"I don't understand," James said. As soon as he said that, he realized he didn't care. A beautiful, naked woman was trying to get him out of his clothes and he was arguing about it. Sure, the whole thing was strange. She was strange, the house was strange, and he'd probably wind up chopped up into little pieces after they sacrificed him to whatever deity strange women living alone in the Pacific Northwest worship. But he didn't care.

He embraced Ash and pulled her to him, kissing her with barely restrained passion. She kissed him back, just as enthusiastically.

"Ooo, you like kissing!" She said when they parted. "I love kissing. I'm so glad it's back in style."

James ignored her once again weird comment, "Look, I know we just met but you're probably the strangest, hot person I've ever met."

She opened his pants and pulled them down to his ankles. His erect dick sprung free and almost hit her in the face. "You're so sweet," she said, standing again. He kicked his legs free and yanked off his socks. It felt so good to be naked. His skin felt electric like he could feel every follicle standing on end. "But I'm not," she continued, "you know, a person."

"Whatever you say, strange sexy lady."

She grabbed him by his cock, causing a jolt of pleasure to ripple up his body. "I like this too!"

"Gah!" he gasped.

"I ought to just show you. Goes faster. Also, you're overheating. So jump in." She pointed at the pool with his dick.

Blind with pleasure, he complied, practically falling in.

The rush of cool water washed over him, shocking and surprisingly refreshing. Suddenly, he could think clearer. There was no bottom that he could feel and the water was ocean-level salty, so he lunged for the side to hang on, sputtering and choking. He'd never heard of a salt-water swimming pool and tasting the water was jarring.

Ash was already next to him, an amused expression lighting up her face. She turned him to face her and held him in an embrace. She kissed him again and this time his hands found her firm, pert tits. She moaned into his mouth gently.

He broke off the kiss and leaned down, sucking one nipple between his lips and pulling gently eliciting a giggle and a moan from Ash.

He worked his way down with his hands, feeling her belly and then her back and finally reaching for her ass.

That was strange, he thought.

He wasn't sure what he was feeling.

He broke off from sucking her tit to look down. She'd put her mermaid fins on. Why he didn't know. They were good quality too, skin tight, and worked well because Ash had no problem staying buoyant with them on.

"Okay. You cosplay as a mermaid," he said. "Because, of course, you do."

"What's cosplay?" Ash asked, confused.

"You know, dress up. I bet that thing's a bitch to wear at Comic-Con."

"You are a strange man." She kissed him again, wrapping her hands around his still erect member, and pulled him closer. She broke the kiss and said, "I know another thing that's back in style. Want to try?"

James just nodded.

"Yay!"

With a small splash, Ash went under the water. He felt her almost immediately.

Her mouth replaced her hands and he felt his rigid member sucked into it like a vacuum hose.

He cried out from the sudden, unexpected ecstasy. He couldn't form words. His vision went blurry.

He leaned backward, relaxing and letting his climax build. She was deepthroating him underwater. He didn't know how long she could keep that up before coming up for air, but she gave no hint of slowing down.

He continued leaning backward, sinking into the water. As he did he felt something push against his back. It was her tail. Somehow, she'd wrapped it around and was supporting him with it. It was warm and slick and practically wrapped around him like a snake.

The weirdness of this wasn't enough to break his state of lust. All he could think about was the sensation of his dick being enveloped by Ash's throat.

His orgasm rose from the pit of his stomach and traveled into his balls where it built like a pressure cooker.

Finally, it released. He orgasmed so hard that his whole body contracted in a water-borne crunch. Her mouth never left him, she didn't come up for air. Instead, he felt her throat contract around his cock as she swallowed his cum immediately.