Family Sensation

He drew some pictures from its dark recesses and unfurled them on the ground. Pointing to the one of me lying on the stone in the lake he said, "Doesn't that water look cold? Doesn't the sun look warm? Doesn't your skin look soft?"

I examined the image, and realized first the first time that what made his art so good was the ability he had to capture sensation in the pieces. The water did look cold, the shade of blue he had selected, and the slow ripple of the waves, just spoke of a glacial pool. The sun did look warm, the sky glowing with a gentle yellow that had feeling. And me, I found myself doubting it was me. The woman captured on the paper looked beautiful. She was perfect, her head tossed back and her lithe body stretched out over the stone. Her skin did look soft, but she also looked warm and inviting, just like his sun.

Tentatively I reached out to the image and touched the girl who looked like she would warm my hand on contact. I felt a small chill run up my spine as I studied my brother's depiction of myself.

"All of the things that you rely on your nerves to tell you about, I can see! You could too, but you don't need to. No one else does. I see things and know how they feel. I smell things and know how they feel. I hear things and I know what its touch would be like."

He paused again, watching me as I pushed the first canvas to the side and examined the next one. It was a painting of me hiking up the hill, my calves straining and my skin glistening with sweat. I was certain that I could have felt the sweat amidst the paint. And the smile on "my" face as I glanced back over my shoulder seemed so full of genuine joy.

For the first time, I began to understand my brother's artwork and music and hobbies. They all relied on a different sense. It was a combination of all the other awareness he had, that blended together and recreated an accurate or perhaps enhanced version of what our sense of touch tells us. It was beautiful. Everything in the images seemed a little to perfect, because there was no negative connotation to the experience. For Aaron a hike in the mountains was beautiful and his eyes, and ears, and nose, and tongue told him that it was a wonderful thing. The cold did not matter, the heat did not matter, the rough terrain and steep slopes did not matter.

Each thing was a new and wondrous detail for him to experience in his artwork. I started to cry when I found the picture he had drawn of me sleeping the other morning. He had painted it now, and I saw how he idealized me.

The golden tones of my skin spoke of a life full of youth and joy. The lengths of my hair enchanted like the sun, and the smooth curves of my waist upwards hinted at the beauty of the mountains we had climbed in.

It was no wonder that I did not recognize me, or his version of me. Aaron only associated me with the good that he saw and the emotions that he had. I would stare at Aaron's version of me for a long time, until my vision started to blur and I had to blink back the tears that threatened the perfection he found in me.

I don't know how long I cried, or how long he cradled me, but I do know that I could not have had enough time to savor the feeling of being perfect in someone else's eyes. If I could share one thing about my life, one defining moment, this would be it. Everything else was an accessory to that grouping of time. It seems to me that people in love catch a glimmer of it on their wedding day. At some point, they forget what it feels like to be valued as a perfect individual, and then the "spark" is gone. Luckily for me, I have my brother's art and I will always know, always be reminded, what it feels like.

When I did snap out of the trance I had been in, I found my face buried in Aaron's shoulder, my forehead resting at the small recess between his firm jaw and neck. I gave him a little nuzzle and a kiss on the cheek.

"Thank you. Thank you for that. I think I feel now, what you feel. Do you really see me that way," I blurted. I had to ask the last question just as much as I had to thank him.

"Yes. You've been the most beautiful thing in the world to me always. When you look at me, when you're close to me, I feel all the things you think I've missed." He wiped a tear from my eye, and I fell silent once more. Aaron would move away after a while, as the sun disappeared. He would return to drape a blanket over me as I struggled to make out all the beauty of his pictures in the disappearing light. Eventually I could see no more.

I stored them carefully, but placed them beside my sleeping bag. I wanted to look at them all over again, when a new day started. I wanted to capture the feeling Aaron had given me, the moment I woke up.

It would be that way the next morning, and the morning after, and the morning after. Each day, I would wake to the light filling our tent, and would study the images my brother had created. I still struggled to believe in the beauty he saw in me, and that is why I refused to admit the images were captured feeling. Aaron had created this ideal world in artwork, and I was afraid that it was real. If it was, I had missed it for a long, long time.

But the more we hiked, the more I started to see things his way. The sun was a bit warmer and a bit brighter. The leaves and rough path were more interesting. A few times I would stumble, being too caught up in the scenery and paying too little attention to the trail.

Aaron would laugh at me, not mockingly, but in surprise at my own distraction. I think he started seeing me in a different light, and maybe himself as well. He was painting me a lot more. Each new image seemed to be a brighter version of the previous. It became a ritual for each of those days that I sit for him, let him sketch me, and then fill in the colors that he perceived.

My previous boredom at being his muse faded, and I found that in examining the things I had once deemed typical or expected, I found new art. By the ninth day of our trip, we had reached the starting point. Aaron had just run out of his last bit of paper the night before, and had finished a sketch on a napkin.

When we reached the car it was a momentary break from the intensity of emotions and thoughts which we had been enraptured in during the hike. The car was some sort of reality- its gleaming metal representative of the fast pace and ignorance of our society to the things we had discovered. It was a symbol which we would quickly reject. Within five minutes we had changed out our packs (although I made sure to transfer the pictures to my second bag) and hit the trail again.

I remember looking at the car in the parking lot and wanting to reject everything that it and the road it stood by. I despised it and its oppression and callousness. So when Aaron and I started the journey up the opposite side of the trail, I clasped his hand tightly, grateful to be leaving behind the other world. I liked my new reality, much more then the old. But our journey was halfway through and I worried that I would lose what I had found.

My fears would be unfounded. Looking back now, I am capable of defining what happened over the next several days and how they have shaped where I am now.

But heading up that trail, I felt safer in the happy realm which Aaron had created for me. I desperately wanted to live up to its beauty and to his image of me. I was more conscientious of my movements, of my actions, of my words. The way I stood became infinitely important. Always I felt as if I had to be ready, to live up and to embody one of his images.

And it seemed to work. Each night a new image was finished and I found myself falling in love with the image that Aaron saw me representing. I couldn't wait to get to our ritual portraits each afternoon.

On the second day of the second half of our trip, those portraits would start to steer Aaron and I's lives irrevocably in a new direction.

Our designated stopping point was a small meadow that was accessed by a smaller trail that broke away from the primary path. It was small, secluded, and quiet. The trees grew tall around it and framed a near perfect circle in the sky. I had seated myself on a stump, cut down long ago by some park ranger who had deemed it dead. Now the aged bark was a deep brown, its rough woody surface smoothed and shaded by time.

I sat up straight, my back to Aaron and his easel, and my gaze focused down and to the left. Aaron had asked me repeatedly to adjust myself, small minutiae that I was beginning to deem irrelevant. Your shoulder this way, your neck that way, your arm lower, etc. But he never seemed satisfied with the image. Finally, with a mutter, he asked me something I had not yet prepared for.

"Sis."

"Yes?"

"I need you to do something. I know what's wrong with the image. Its not the pose."

"Well what is it," I impatiently asked. I sensed some nervousness in his voice, and was slightly put off by it.

"It's the clothes. They don't look right. It is too natural for you to be dressed in that stuff."

I didn't hesitate to remove my top and drop my shorts. If that was all it was, then there was no problem. He had seen me in my bathing suit numerous times and I wondered why he had been nervous.

I heard a few clicks of his camera, and some muttering as he started to draw. I couldn't see him from my position, so I had to go off the sounds of his working. It was a little too hurried, too fast paced to be good. He wasn't satisfied with what he was painting.

"What's wrong," I called back to him.

He was quiet. I couldn't read his mind so I asked again.

"What's wrong?"

"It's still wrong. I want to paint this naturally." The silence he left at the end of naturally said it all.

"Naked?" I couldn't believe I was considering it. I had come to trust so much in his depiction of things, that I was actually considering it. Five days before, I probably would not have ever considered it. But he had already seen me naked on this trip once. And the way he painted me gave me an infinite amount of self confidence.

Aaron wisely let me weigh the decision on my own. As could be expected at that point, I said yes.

"You have to turn around though until I am seated again. Alright?"

"Sure, right."

"So, turn around already!"

He whirled a little quickly and I could tell he was a bit uncomfortable with the situation. I actually found that comforting.

I watched him as I slowly reached up behind my neck and undid the strings which held my top up. Once it was loose, it slowly tumbled down, the cups hanging just below my breasts. The final string dropped the material to the ground in front of the stump. Standing topless, there in the woods, with my brother about to paint me, study me, represent me, I felt a strange sensation.

Butterflies. I was nervous. I wanted him to like me as much naked as he had when I was clothed. But also excitement. I wanted to show myself to him. Perhaps this new revelation would help him reach some new level of understanding of me and my essence. The two feelings combined in a rush of adrenaline that caused my muscles to tense.

With a deep breath I slipped my bottoms down over my legs. The thin bikini thong was slightly trapped between my lips and that was the last piece to be released by my body. When it finally hit the ground, I drew up to my full height, took another deep breath and tried to acclimate myself to being naked before Aaron. I found that I was just as excited now that I risked exposing myself to him. I turned and found my seat once more. Once my pose was rearranged, I took another breath.

"Okay, I'm ready."

I heard Aaron's feet shuffle in the grass and I heard a long pause, before the click of the camera. I tried to grow accustomed to the idea that I was naked beneath his gaze, but the butterflies and the excitement were too intense.

I examined my own body, without moving my head, wondering how it measured up to the me in the paintings. My skin was smooth and blemish free. I had a tan line from the several days in the sun in my swimming suit. I was certain that Aaron would pick up on that detail and in the image the paleness of the line on my upper back and the one that raced around my waist and dipped over my backside would be clear and vibrant.

The last days of hiking and my regular exercise routine had kept my legs and stomach trim and fit. I knew that my waist was feminine and offered a gentle outward curve to my bust. And the lower portion of my body balanced athleticism and female sexuality. I was always complemented on my ass, and knew that it would be featured in the depiction.

Sitting as still as possible, I waited, and waited, and waited. Never did my nervousness or excitement fade, I was too eager to discover what my brother opined of me in the nude.

When he finally did call out to me two hours later, I darted off the stump, forgetting my lack of clothing and ran to him. Aaron tried to pretend like he was comfortable with the close proximity of my nudity and I wasn't entirely sure why I decided to stay naked rather then redressing.

He glanced at me as I settled in beside him, keeping a slight distance from his naked twin. I had forgotten my discomfort and nervousness the moment I saw the image. It was perfect!

It was the greatest depiction of all the beauty and promise of the female body that had been made to that point. My skin glowed off the page and the little details of my body were perfectly laid out on his canvas. The slight shade of my spine, the variation in skin tone over my waist and the cleft of my buttocks, the slight strain on my neck, the gentle tilt of my shoulders, the small evident outcropping of the sides of my breasts, and the cascade of my hair. If I could be anyone, I wanted to be her! And I felt like maybe that was me. Maybe that wasn't just an image, maybe Aaron's depiction of me was my reality.

I embraced him, ignoring his nervousness at the press of my naked flesh. I didn't care, I just wanted to thank him.

"It's perfect! Aaron, it is just perfect! Do I really look that beautiful?"

"Yeah. It's good," he mustered. I planted a big kiss on his lips that caused him to stumble. I was just too much energy and too naked for him to handle. As I studied the picture, I would notice him shifting from one foot to the other. I glanced to him and realized that he was excited. I had to keep from giggling, knowing that if he caught on, that these sessions would likely end. The image was truly fabulous, and despite the long period sitting on the stump, I wanted another one.

"Do another one brother. Please. Just tell me where you want me. I'll sit still. This will be the last one tonight, promise."

He grumbled a little bit, obviously half-joking, before directing me to lay in the grass beneath our feet. Once again we went through the ritual of positioning, of instruction, and of obedience. By the time his last instruction was given, his voice had faded to a whisper, and I could hear him swallow as he sought to renew some moisture to his tongue.

Aaron had an eye for positioning and I knew this one was intensely erotic and very artistic. It was bordering on being distasteful (if you weren't already opposed to nudity), but managed to keep a thin line of decency in it. I was stretched out in the grass, its tall strands standing over me, their wispy heads brushing against my skin. I was facing the sky, my breasts thrust upward and my nipples rock hard. I was arching my back, my eyes closed, and my lips pursed. I knew the position displayed the smooth lines of my stomach as it dived between my raised legs. I was hairless down there, and glad for it. With my knees bent as they were, the grass was playing subtle music across my crotch.

I heard the camera shutter click shut several times as Aaron captured the moment. Then once more the brush flew to action and I tried to stay still. It was more difficult then before, a new sensation of excitement overwhelming me and the nerves which had governed the previous nude sitting. Instead of being slightly fearful of the event, I was anticipating the beauty that Aaron would discover. And with the tall pieces of grass brushing back and forth on my lips, there was the unique sensation of arousal.

For the first fifteen minutes it was bearable. But as I struggled to control the pace of my breathing and fight back the gradual build of desire, my stillness came at a terrible price. It took every ounce of strength that I could find within me to not succumb to the suddenly overwhelming desire to fulfill what the blades of grass had begun. I knew my breathing was going to fast now, I could smell my own arousal, and I was certain that with each breeze I was trembling. I would only hope that Aaron would somehow remain delightfully ignorant of my plight. At least a while longer.

But as time progressed I realized that I was fighting a losing battled. I desperately needed to grind myself onto something. My fingers were trapped in their position at my body's side, lacing between the shoots of green plant and clenched tightly. I was visibly quivering now, and I was certain that my inner panting was audible to my brother. I wanted to cry out, to let off some of the steam which was threatening me, but found it impossible to surrender my pose.

Why, oh, why couldn't I make up some decent excuse. I should just tell him I had to go to the bathroom! But no, I would not, for reasons still unknown to me, surrender the sensuous torture my body underwent. It was a strange thing for me to experience- the startling contrast of desire and discipline. The one was wild and free and the other harsh and cold.

When the breeze would still itself and the grass would halt is swaying momentum, I would beg for it to begin again. The worst was the absence of touch then. So close to the edge of undeniable sexual desire, it is a vicious cruelty to be denied stimulation. For another forty minutes I would display remarkable control, fighting back the momentary urges to release my cries and body to their own machinations. But before I would surrender, I would black out.

Looking back on it, it was quite silly of me. I had gotten so focused on control and on delay, that I had forgotten to breath. Or not had the energy to allow it of myself. When I came to, Aaron was kneeling over me, one hand on my left cheek and the other gently shaking my shoulder.

The blurred image of his concerned gaze gradually would come into focus, and he started laughing the moment he saw my silly grin.

"What happened," I asked demurely.

"I'm not sure. I was so intent on painting that I didn't realize that you had fainted. But all of a sudden you just slumped over and when you didn't move again, I thought I had maybe killed you."

"I'm not dead. I think I was just so focused on not moving that I didn't breathe at all."

"Ha. Breathing is a rather vital part of living, sis." He was all smiles now, but his hands had not moved from their position. "I should have known. I thought you were trembling because of the cold or an itch or something."

He should have left the last statement off. There was slightly more sharp tone to his voice when he said it, that made me doubt it. And the lingering questions about his sincerity would haunt me. Later, when I was alone, I would wonder what he really thought of his perverted little sister and her grass fetish. I had to consciously dismiss that thought from my head. My pussy was still aching for touch and I could still smell its distinctive secretions hovering over me like a rain cloud.

"Help me up," I quickly said. "I want to see the picture."

Aaron gave me the requested hand and helped boost me to my feet. I watched his eyes, trying to lock them in place, but I could seem them possessed by the same quivering desire that I had been. He wanted to look at me, to look at my body, to examine me without a brush in hand. I walked in front of him, partially to hide my inflamed pussy lips and partially to allow him the chance to release his own pent up desire.