The Tenth Performance

Nicole had peered into the crystal ball, watching as the sphere showed her a shadow play of someone's fantasy. She'd seen a vision of something that made at least one person in this room feel very excited to consider doing. And now the rest of us had seen it, too.

"Okay ..." Nicole said, tentatively moving to step toward us once again. "So, I guess you all know what I'm supposed to do."

For a moment, the beautiful rosy hue of the sunset light bathing the room began to shift back toward the harsher, bluer tint of the usual overhead bulbs, as though the entire spell might be ending. Nicole looked up, a little startled, and then she smiled.

"I mean, let me rephrase," Nicole said. "I guess you all know what I'm about to do. What I want to do. For you."

And with those words, the sunset glow spread throughout the room again, as though the spell was happy to let us all continue.

Nicole moved forward. One step closer. Then another. She laughed at herself a little as she crossed one foot in front of the other, accentuating her hips like a model walking a runway. Her calf-length skirt hugged her generous curves. A flush bloomed over her cheeks.

Nicole unclasped her cape and let it fall to the ground behind her. She looked down at the floor, then back up at us. Nicole's dark hair framed her face; her cat-eye glasses magnified her dilating eyes. In addition to that dark umber skirt, Nicole was wearing a green cardigan, a loose-fitting cream-colored shirt, and fuzzy socks. Actually, I think I'd only ever seen Nicole wearing earth tones - on our first day, she'd even chosen a chestnut-colored cape, its hue and cut much less dramatic than the rest of ours. (Although that cape did bring out her eyes.)

Nicole shrugged out of her cardigan and tossed it aside.

Her brown eyes glittered behind her glasses.

So, Nicole had always seemed fairly reserved, but in all fairness to her, we hadn't met under the most flattering of circumstances ("Welcome to the Divinorium! Quick, learn all these spells or else you'll die!"). But I was about to learn that Nicole also had a fun streak - a sly sense of humor, and far more joie de vivre than I'd noticed. She just also happened to be, you know, the erudite, introverted librarian type.

Another moment passed. Nicole stood there, at the front of the stage, looking at us. She breathed. (As she breathed, I watched her ample chest rise and fall beneath her shirt. And, okay, yes, I suppose this means I was staring). Then, finally, she moved her hands down, crossing her arms over her belly, and took hold of the hem of her garment.

"Oh, wait," she said, and turned around.

Someone - Noah? - groaned. Which I could definitely understand - even I felt teased.

With her back to us, Nicole reached up inside her shirt, squirming around a bit, and, with her hands groping behind her back, her shoulders rolling, she set about extracting her bra. She was shifting her weight from side to side, the curves of her rump subtly flexing. Nicole wasn't wearing a slip: I found my gaze tracing the faint outline of her underwear, there beneath the fabric of her skirt. I imagined myself touching her, my fingertips tracing that outline while she cooed words like ... oh, I don't know ... I suppose I must have been fantasizing about what it would be like to hear Nicole say something raunchy about, like, sordid love affairs in ancient monasteries, or the orgiastic excesses of Dionysian divination ...

And then Nicole turned around again and tossed her pistachio-green bra toward the pillow where she'd been sitting. The fabric was filmy and didn't fly so well; it fell short of her spot. Quinn passed it along the rest of the way, setting it on Nicole's empty pillow.

Onstage, Nicole blushed again.

"I mean," Nicole said, "the figure wasn't wearing one, in the shadow play of our classmate's fantasy, and I wasn't sure if I needed to re-create the fantasy exactly, or ..."

And then, without giving herself any more time to overthink, she flashed us. In a somewhat silly way: Nicole actually pulled her shirt all the way up over her forehead, using the fabric to cover her own eyes as though she couldn't quite bear to see us watching her. And for a moment she just stood there, effectively blindfolded, turning her torso slowly from side to side.

Around the room, all twelve of us must have caught our breath. We sat there, ogling Nicole. Silently.

Nicole's breasts were nice. Larger than mine. Their gentle curves angled toward us. And the swell of Nicole's belly looked so soft and smooth. Her pale skin dimpled at the hem of her skirt. As though her whole body was built for snuggling: warm and yielding like a cozy fire, tea, and cookies.

But then I found my attention drawn to the crisp divot at her clavicle. I noticed that her skin there was darkening. As were the tops of her breasts. And her neck.

Oh, god: Nicole was getting flushed.

She lowered her shirt a little. At first just down to her cheeks, so that she could see again, and then lower still, to her shoulders, uncovering her face. And, dear reader, let me tell you: Nicole was beaming. She must have really enjoyed all the positive attention that she was getting. Her nipples looked so hard.

Nicole clumped the fabric of her shirt in one hand and then reached across her body, caressing her own left breast, then squeezed.

Somebody gasped. I don't think that somebody was me, but, honestly? It could've been.

I hadn't thought so before, but maybe Nicole was actually my type?

I was definitely having fun watching her.

Then Nicole let go of her shirt, letting it drape over her body again, and, after a moment spent glancing down at the floor, then around the room - at the time, I thought she must've felt momentarily disoriented from the rush of that experience - she picked up her cardigan and pulled it back on over her shoulders. She buttoned the top button but let the cardigan hang open; her nipples were still clearly visible beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. All our eyes followed her as she walked over, hopped down from the stage, and made her way demurely to her seat. We were all ... I don't know. Still caught up in Nicole's performance? Wishing that she'd kept going? Wondering what would happen next?

Nicole picked up her discarded bra before sitting upon her pillow. And she looked down, contemplating for a moment ... then just set the bra in her lap. Her face still had a deep blush.

Finally, Nicole looked up with a little smile and spoke.

"I think I did it," Nicole said. "I hope that felt like a nice gift for our mystery fantasizer. Will the spell keep going?"

#

THE SECOND PERFORMANCE

#

Indeed, the spell continued. We could still feel the spell's magic swirling through the air as the halo of moonlight began to fade from Nicole's body.

And, honestly ... although at first I'd thought that "flashing somebody" was a pretty tame fantasy, I realized then that even just pulling my shirt up might feel pretty intense if I was doing it in front of all twelve of my classmates. When I glanced at Nicole again, I would've sworn that her cheeks were still very pink. And not just from our room's lovely sunset light.

Also, it was just about then - while I was sneaking another glance at Nicole - that Ravi began to glow.

"Well then," Ravi said, with his usual matter-of-factness. "I guess this means I'm next?"

"Yup," said Nicole, smiling broadly now and stretching her arms above her head. "Head to the front, dear Ravi!"

So Ravi rose, then walked up and stepped onto the stage. He looked toward Nicole, who nodded, before he positioned himself behind the crystal ball and placed both hands upon its surface. The crystal ball shifted from a steady glow into something brighter and more flickering; just like with Nicole, the play of light entrancingly illuminated Ravi's face.

Ravi, too, was much prettier than I'd realized.

He stood there, watching, for somewhat longer than Nicole had. Then looked up. He glanced around. Ravi was probably waiting for a shadow puppet, like the figure that had coalesced to flash us earlier.

"Try taking your hands off the crystal ball," Nicole called out.

"Oh, right," Ravi said, and he stepped back from the pedestal. After he did, the light in the room shifted, as though a whole evening's collected shadows were gathering at a single place and time, and again the shadows formed a human figure. This figure stood still for a moment, but then, suddenly, the figure began to dance: first stepping lightly from side to side, tucking its gray knees together and dipping toward the floor, then bobbing back up again, before beginning to spin and twirl, gyrating more sensuously now, and, yes, also pulling layers of what were clearly meant to be gray clothing away from its monochrome form.

The figure twirled a long strand of shadow - presumably a belt? - above its head before flinging the accessory out toward us in the audience. The gray strand vanished midway through the air. An ethereal shirt, similarly tossed, also vanished as it sailed our way. Then the shadowy figure turned its back to us, dropped to its haunches, and - I kid you not - jounced its rump in our direction.

And I'm sorry, dear reader, but I have no clue what the figure did next because that's when I devolved into a fit of laughter. By the time I'd caught my breath, the shadow had disappeared, leaving just Ravi standing there glowing faintly on the stage.

How had Ravi kept a straight face when he'd watched that happening inside the crystal ball?

"So," Ravi said, "now I will be channeling my inner ecdysiast." Which was exactly the sort of thing that Ravi would say: if there's an obscure faux-Grecian word for "stripper," Ravi would know it, and he'd probably been waiting patiently for years for the perfect moment to drop that word in conversation.

Nicole guffawed, although this might've been leftover mirth from having just watched the booty-quaking shadow puppet. Right then almost anything would have made me giggle.

"But," Ravi went on, rocking from his heels to the balls of his feet, "could I convince someone to conjure music? Something with good beats to accompany my denuding?"

"We've got you, Ravi," Trevor said, sweeping his hands into the air as though he was conducting an orchestra, "music is all just compression and rarefaction of the air. I know a spell that ..."

And then Trevor closed his eyes, working through the spell.

But the thing about this being our very first semester at the Divinorium is that our magical skills were pretty scattershot. For instance, I could already do some amazing things - I could control a good measure of electricity, which also means magnetism, which means light, and so, yeah, lasers - and a few of my classmates could do simple conjurations, like summoning certain types of tools or creatures, and the group of us had just collectively cast a spell that was suffusing the room with an intense blend of telepathy, shadow-play, and arcane communication. And yet, if you'd asked me "Do you have a spell that can melt this piece of cheese?" and set it ten feet away on a paper plate, I probably couldn't do it without also setting the plate on fire.

Which is all just my convoluted way of saying that although Trevor probably tried his best, the music that he conjured up was a mix of drum and bass and flute. Apparently flute sounds are mostly simple sine waves, which makes them significantly easier for a fledgling wizard to create than the timbres of other instruments (or, god forbid, the sound of a human voice!).

For a moment, Ravi looked nonplussed.

But the flute played on and Trevor shrugged, and, well, there was a beat, so Ravi went with it. In front of us, he danced.

Actually, Ravi danced quite well. Before that night, we hadn't had much opportunity (as in, any opportunity) to see each other doing things like dancing, and from Ravi's generally nerdy affect, I wouldn't have guessed. But the man had moves. He dipped, he bobbed, he swayed. Several times, Ravi's hand drifted to his waist and he began tugging up his shirt ... but each time, he then quickly unclasped his hand and let the fabric fall. We only caught brief glimpses of his (again, surprisingly!) well-defined abs and the narrow thicket of dark hair that trailed from his belly button down into his pants.

After perhaps half a dozen times coyly teasing us, Ravi finally pulled his t-shirt up and over his head, leaving his (toned!) torso bare. He twirled the shirt over his head - "This will have to do," he said, speaking in time with the music, "because I did not wear a belt" - then tossed the shirt toward us.

Eddie caught the shirt, laughing, then balled it up and tossed it over to me. I'm not sure why. But I held on to it. Actually, the shirt smelled nice. It smelled like Ravi. I hadn't realized that Ravi smelled so nice to me.

I looked up again and Ravi's pants were gone - he was working his hips, hands on his thighs, with the room's flattering light dancing sensuously across his (ridiculously over-the-top!) flame-patterned boxer briefs. The fabric was stretched over the bulge of his growing erection ... which, in my opinion, was probably begging to be set free. But Ravi went on dancing a little longer - bending forward to plant his palms flat on the floor, dropping into a pushup, then leaping back to his feet - before finally hooking his thumbs into the elastic and pulling his briefs down to the floor.

Then Ravi lifted his chest again - his erect penis bobbing with the motion - before spreading his feet slightly, placing his hands on his hips, and gazing toward the sky like Superman. He was clearly trying to keep his jawline regal and rigid while he posed ... and also, equally clearly, he was about to crack a smile.

All twelve of us broke into applause. Clapping, laughing, and shouting whoops of congratulation.

And then, yes, Ravi broke. He grinned and started laughing, too. He bent forward to retrieve his underwear and pants, and then - in a moment of charming, if misplaced, modesty - he turned his back as he attempted to pull his clothes back on. Which wasn't entirely a success. Because although the boxer briefs presumably fit him well enough before, he struggled trying to get his full erection back inside. When he turned back toward us, I saw that Ravi had left his pants unzipped - the tip of his penis seemed to be peeking out above the waistband of his boxers. With a hand on the hem of his pants, he walked a little awkwardly off the stage and back to his seat.

#

THE THIRD PERFORMANCE

#

Once Ravi's glow had faded, Noah began to shine. So Noah shrugged and hefted himself up, saying, "I guess it's my time to find out what else y'all are fantasizing about."

Noah sauntered to the front.

And I noticed that Ravi was still looking around. Because, oh, right! I still had his shirt.

I whispered, "Hey, hey Ravi," and when he looked my way, I tossed the shirt to him.

"Oh," he whispered back, "thank you. I thought I'd thrown it over there."

I shrugged. Like, maybe you weren't quite sure where you were aiming? But also, Ravi definitely grinned at me before turning to see what Noah was doing. And I realized that Ravi's back and shoulders were also really muscular. (I might've let myself stare at him a bit before he pulled his shirt back on.)

At the front of the room, Noah had his hands on the crystal ball, watching, and his eyes narrowed a little quizzically as he gazed at somebody's fantasy. I wondered whether he was trying to guess at whose fantasy it was. What had each of the twelve of us been thinking about just then?

And then I thought "ohhhh noooo!" when I realized that the crystal ball might suggest that Noah should walk over and massage Ravi's muscular back. Given where each of us was sitting, that fantasy would obviously have come from me.

Onstage, Noah shook his head a little and stepped away from the crystal ball, almost as though he were surfacing from a dream. When he did, the shadows again coalesced in front of us.

I held my breath.

But I was in the clear. This was somebody else's fantasy. After glancing from side to side, the figure reached a hand up to briefly clutch at its own neck, then trailed its fingertips down the shaded contours of its own body, detouring to dance across a nipple, coursing over its belly, and then farther down, its hand sneaking beneath the gray expanse where its pants would be. And the figure's arm was rising, falling. The outline of the figure's hand was moving beneath those shadowy pants. And ... okay ... yes, it was abundantly clear what was happening onstage.

Someone in the room had been thinking that it would be hot to masturbate in front of us.

Probably that would be hot. To do that with a whole group of people watching.

But also, it would probably be pretty hot to get to do the watching, too.

By then, the shadow had stepped out from a pile of its discarded clothing, giving itself better access to its own body. The rumpled pile looked almost like mist upon the stage. And the motion of the figure's hand was intriguing: sometimes it looked as though the figure might be strumming a clit, sometimes it looked as though the figure must have its hand wrapped around an erection. Perhaps that's what had sparked Noah's curiosity, that the spell seemed to be making it intentionally difficult for us to guess at the origin of the fantasy. Someone was turned on by the thought of this ... or, perhaps ... yes, perhaps several someones. Maybe this fantasy was shared, a few people all contributing their desires to inspire this performance. There'd be no way for us to know. Unless, I supposed, I were to glance around the room, just to see whether anybody in the audience appeared exceptionally flushed, watching ...

But before I had a chance to look around, the figure tossed back its head. Its shoulders were shuddering; its legs trembled. Which was surprisingly intense, considering that the figure was faceless, diagrammatic, gray. But also, the figure was clearly coming. And in that orgasmic moment, perhaps because the figure was so featureless, it appeared as though it could represent any of us. As though any of us might take its place.

The figure appeared to be panting for breath by the time it faded from the stage.

And then Noah stepped forward and took its place.

Noah was wearing nice slacks, a button-down shirt, and an argyle sweater under his royal blue cape. All told, he was dressed quite handsomely. And for a moment he tucked his big hands into his pockets, cocked his hips forward a little, and feigned a casual glance around the room. Then he winked at us, as though about to let us in on a little secret, and spoke with his voice big and rich as it emerged from his broad chest, "So, when you're arguing cases, it's a little bit like theater. I'm not saying I'd hold a candle to Trevor or Rick with their joint music numbers, but I've done some, was in the school plays and such when I was little. I used to get so nervous! But my father, he gave me some advice ..."

You know how sometimes a joke is both so obvious and also clearly so bad that you expect people to groan before they've even heard the punchline? In that moment, I wasn't sure if I should smile or to wince.

"... when you're up there, my dad said, you just have to imagine your whole audience is naked."

Noah grinned at us as he pulled his hands out of his pockets and began to stroke himself through the fabric of his pants. And, okay, fine. I mean, good for Noah, for being able to make light of all this even while he was doing it. Actually, I found myself chuckling: Noah had a subtle grin, as though he understood that his performance was a little silly but also that it was sexy. Which ... well, yeah. It was. Noah was built like a mountain, and he knew that he looked great.