Two Baskets Pt. 01

I tensed my knees and calves and pushed off from the hard stone along the shoreline, letting the country stream's swift, cold current pull me towards Isabelle's husky giggle. Kicking with smooth, strong, practiced strokes, trained over long cold afternoons in the Thames, I pulled myself downstream. The sky was blue and laced with clouds, which fractured and swirled with each stroke.

"Hazel," she called in a low singsong, equal parts lust and playfulness. As I reached Isabelle, I gracefully swung my feet out under myself, catching the sandbar en pointe, bringing myself up to a standing posture, reaching out to playfully stroke Isabelle's nipple, erect from the cold.

Before I can elicit another giggle, Isabelle and the spring day dissolve, cold water replaced by cool silk sheets. As I lay on my back, I savor the fresh spring breeze blowing in from the window next to my bed. The clean air carries the smell of fresh grass and lilacs, mingling with the familiar scent of Isabelle's skin, which itself carried faint undertones of vanilla and soap. The lingering thought of Isabelle's ample breasts bouncing as she laughed brings a warm dampness between my legs.

Curiously, the spring morning seems devoid of songbirds and the sound of rustling leaves. The breeze tickles my face and I open my eyes, but my eyelids don't yield, the muscles oddly tight. Groggy and perplexed, I reach behind myself, and simultaneously tense my leg muscles to draw myself into a sitting position. Instead, I feel four stumps sliding impotently, finding no purchase on Isabelle's silk bedspread.

Wakefulness and memory coalesce on a 1948 morning, gradually pulling me back to the surface. The lithe swimmer of 1939 slips into the depths, leaving me to my present life as a deaf-blind woman, all four of my limbs amputated, reduced to uselessly short stumps. In the coarse but succinct parlance of the Great War medics I'd once read about: a basket case.

This morning's rediscovery of the truth I first learned six years ago leaves me vertiginous with the enormity of its implications. The sudden shudder in my chest and tightness in my throat threaten to overwhelm me, and I turn my head to the side, the tip of my nose touching the pillow and I breathe deep. Isabelle's smell, the subtly earthy, human liveliness of the scent stills me with its warmth and familiarity. Tucking my stumps in, I roll onto my side, and realize the familiar tension in the left side of the bedspread is missing. Remembering our conversation last evening, I realize she's probably either at the bakery or preparing today's picnic lunch. As my mind stills, I fall back onto my back and smile gently, imagining Isabelle's touch.

---

Unbeknownst to Hazel, the front door had closed with a decisive thud five minutes ago, as Isabelle returned from the store with a sizeable picnic basket full of fresh baguettes, fruit, and cheese. Isabelle placed the day's bounty on the cottage's small kitchen counter and stepped back outside to pull a rain cover over her motorcar, a sparkling Mercedes-Benz coupe, red and chrome over whitewall tires. She paused to look at her face in the side mirror, her dark brown eyes and olive skin surrounded by black curls tied jauntily under a red checkered scarf, driving goggles pressed up against her forehead.

She turned back to the small cottage, and bounced back to the house with an anticipatory grin. As she closed the door behind her, this time gently, her hands now free, she heard a shaky gasp from the bedroom. Her grin fading, she took her shoes off, placing them on the bench by the door, and turned left to the cottage's single hallway and strode over to the bedroom and opened the door. She saw Hazel on her side facing away from the door, a head of bright red hair poking out from under the clean white sheet. Hazel rolled back into a supine position, looking more content than Isabelle had feared.

Hazel's face was framed by a French bob with short bangs; Isabelle felt the Continental elegance suited Hazel's profound and unique intelligence, which she'd been smitten with since their Oxford days in the 1930s. Under the bangs, Hazel's skin was a creamy white, pale, but healthy, surprisingly unscarred from her cheekbones down. Her face was oval with delicate features, her nose small with a graceful upturn at the tip. Above her cheekbones, her skin was a whiter, slightly reddish pale, several scars crossing from her brow to the tops of her cheekbones. Where her eyes should have been there instead were two horizontal lines denoting the location of the sutures that had once sealed off the sockets; the work of an overtaxed North African field hospital in the heat of battle. Midway down her neck was a scar where the same surgeons managed to repair her obstructed airway in a procedure Hazel described as 'nearly miraculous,' saving her life, at the expense of her voice.

Isabelle gently placed a hand on the bed so as not to startle Hazel. Hazel turned her face towards the hand in acknowledgement, and Isabelle sat down on the bed next to her. She gently touched Hazel's cheek, and Hazel turned her face into the hand, nuzzling it and pressing it down into to her shoulder, her lips gently kissing the open palm. Reaching her other hand across, she began stroking Hazel's red hair, which practically shimmered in the morning light. They sat like that for several minutes, before Hazel turned her head away from Isabelle's hand, and mouthed silently "Bath?"

Isabelle placed a closed fist on Hazel's chest, their 'touch-language' for no.

"Swimming?"

This time an open palm on her chest for yes.

Hazel smiled, lips forming out "About time."

After a pause, "Take the sheets off, Isabelle, I want to feel the breeze."

She pulled the sheets down, revealing Hazel's naked body. Hazel rocked gently to the left and right, repeatedly spreading out her stumps, like a curiously incomplete Vitruvian Woman. Isabelle contemplated the profoundly helpless figure before her, almost entirely devoid of residual limbs. Both her arm and leg stumps were barely longer than the length of Isabelle's hands, palm to middle fingertip. Hazel was slightly chubby, just enough for her hips, buttocks and belly to have a gratifying softness over still-surprisingly-firm muscles. Her breasts were small and perky, and her hips tapered gently into her still-narrow waist.

Looking at the space between Hazel's legs, Isabelle spotted a fresh wet spot in the sheets, below her glistening pubic hair, and smiled. She placed her index finger on Hazel's shoulder and began marking out quick strokes; tracing out straight lines and curves of varying angles, raising her finger at the end of each stroke. The lines occasionally curved back or crossed over themselves before the final finger-lift. As she did so, Hazel's chest began to heave with silent laughter, while she mouthed "obviously."

---

After spending a few minutes savoring the presence of Isabelle's touch, I ask her to pull the sheets down. This morning breeze is too lovely to hide from, and I want to feel it all, to luxuriate in its freshness and beauty. I feel the sheets slide off, and the sudden coolness makes my neck prickle. I rub my back against the cool silk, and wave my stumps up and down, like when I'd last made snow angels twenty years ago. The fresh air, mingling with the sensation of the silk brushing my stumps is the most glorious thing I've felt in hours.

Suddenly, I feel a fingertip on my shoulder, and I stop, focusing my attention on the touch-sensation of her fingertip. She begins stroking out a message; it's shorthand, like she and I had used to take notes at Oxford. She'd shown me her notebook, and I'd been immediately intrigued. Her mother was a secretary, and had imparted young Isabelle with the skills at an early age. I was never as adroit with a pen as her (not that it mattered now), but I quickly became proficient at reading it.

The strokes come out, nearly as fast as speech, the fingertip carrying a sprightly, teasing lightness: "Have you been thinking of me? I'm going to have to clean the sheets if you keep that up."

I laugh, replying, "Obviously."

Though it had never been this obvious, Isabelle immediately knew my opinion of her the moment I'd sat next to her on a bench outside the Bodelian Library. I had seen her striding across campus many times, skirt and jacket bouncing, joy barely contained. From the first time I saw her, despite what all sanity and caution suggested, I knew I wanted her. I wanted to see her naked, and I wanted her to touch me, to stroke me until I was an absolute, breathless wreck. The merest thought of it made my knees quiver.

Finally, one December day during Christmas holiday, I saw her alone on that bench. The campus was desolate, save a few lost souls like us. She was wearing a heavy, black woolen coat and skirt, a bright scarf thrown around her neck with a practiced carelessness. Her black hair was tied just behind her shoulders. The dark curls were flecked with a few of the white snowflakes that were tumbling sparsely in the wind. I sat down beside her, stiffly, as though I were some sort of rusting automaton. Turning to look at her, my mouth opened and closed, and my face flushed. She gazed at me, expression hard and unreadable.

Quickly, I looked down at my boots, and said "ah, I," the rest an incoherent stammer, glancing back up at her. Deciding to spare me near-mortal embarrassment, she took control of the conversation. Her expression softened, the corner of her mouth lifting upwards, brows lifting sympathetically.

"Jesus. You are, emphatically, not subtle, and moreover, you are a damned fool."

Despite the sudden kindness in her face and the gentle concern in her voice, I turned a brighter shade of crimson, and to this day, I contend that the snow on my collar melted from the heat of my face. Her eyes now full of barely restrained mirth, she said, "Fortunately," her mouth widening to a full grin, "I have a soft spot for foolish women."

Still speechless, I stared at her, my mouth agape. Continuing to draw on her deep well of mercy, she went on, "Why are you still here? Shouldn't a nice, shy girl like you be at home with your family?"

"I don't have anybody to go home to."

Her eyes softening further still, "I'm sorry. I don't either. I do, but I don't."

Perplexed, my mouth opened, and closed, then I asked, "How's that?"

She tilted her head, looked at me up and down, before starting.

"While I seem to posses a boundless reserve of the subtlety you need to learn, I have none of your luck. My parents caught me with a dear friend, and that just wouldn't do for a family of our stature. Under no uncertain terms am I to return home; as long as I hold to those terms, though, I get a monthly check. A little money to spare Pa profound, crushing embarrassment, you see."

I nodded, and she brightened again, and in a lighter tone, she said, "How would you like to come back to my room? I have a tin of biscuits, and we can put on tea."

"I would be delighted."

"Wonderful! Maybe I can teach you a few things you missed."

Though she was wrong about the luck, which ran out quicker than I had ever expected, she was right about the teaching.

---

Isabelle gazed softly at Hazel with a curious expression, eyes brimming not with sadness, but some other, stranger, unnameable emotion, known only to her in that moment. Hazel's lips were squeezed pensively, her stumps still. Isabelle placed her finger on Hazel's shoulder, "How are you?"

Hazel turned her face in Isabelle's direction, an ability Isabelle found profoundly uncanny. "Today is a bit much. I'm here, I'm in 1938. I'm adrift. Lust, memory. I don't know."

"December?" Isabelle traced.

A nod.

"What can I do?"

"Hold me"

Isabelle laid down on the side of the bed, drawing Hazel to her. Hazel's skin was cool under Isabelle's fingers, patches of gooseflesh forming against the slight chill of the late spring wind. Shifting gently, Hazel worked her way deeper into the embrace, rubbing her stumps up and down the front of Isabelle's blouse. Hazel's hard nipples poked against the top of Isabelle's breasts, and she pushed her face into Isabelle's hair, breathing deeply. As the minutes stretched on, Hazel's breathing slowed to a contented rhythm, her stumps tucked up in front of herself, inside Isabelle's embrace.

Isabelle traced on the top of Hazel's back, "Anything else?"

Hazel nodded and rubbed her crotch on Isabelle's hip in a suggestive, sweeping circle. Isabelle briefly placed an open palm on Hazel's shoulder, then laid her on her back. She leaned in and put her mouth over Hazel's right nipple and slipped her left hand onto Hazel's crotch. She began flicking her tongue over Hazel's nipple in rhythmic circles and taps as she gently sucked. Hazel's breath sped up degree by degree. Meanwhile, Isabelle inserted her index and middle fingers into Hazel's very wet slit, and began circling her thumb over Hazel's engorged clitoris. Hazel began pumping and grinding her crotch into Isabelle's hand.

---

With Isabelle's hand inside me, I grind in rhythm, hips circling opposite the direction of her thumb. I shove my arm stumps down into the mattress, to try and get more leverage, to no avail. They skitter and thump uselessly. Sensing my frustration, she puts her free hand behind my head, letting my stumps brace against her firm hold. I stick my leg stumps out in front of me, and she pulls her arm back, and I follow, my arse now off the bed with each pump. My abs burn with the effort, but I continue with increasing vigor, gasping for air. Somehow, I have enough presence of mind to be surprised that my melancholic nostalgia has so quickly been supplanted by raw animal lust.

Noting my gratitude for the distraction, I turn my mind back to the tooth-gnashingly electric sensation of her sucking and tonguing my tit. My mouth opens and closes, an incoherent flailing response to the sensation in my crotch, which is almost incomprehensibly full, hot and wet, my thoughts dissolving into a phantasmagoria of sensation, my throat quivering with silent moans.

Finally, I break. An electric tingle tears loose, up the small of my back and into my shoulders. My face is practically numb as a silent scream tears from my quaking, violently pulsing throat. If my vocal cords actually worked, I firmly believe the windows would be rattling. My stumps thrash and flop against the bed, my crotch continuing to pump, each stroke reaching its peak and holding there longer, the amplitude decreasing. I pull my stumps up against my stomach and chest, and I tremble, mouth open, the orgasm far too intense for me to do anything else. I feel a subtle vibration in the bed under my back, and with a vague flash of intuition, I realize she's wiping her fingers clean. She wraps her arms around me, and begins stroking my hair. I bury my face in her shoulder, still shaking. This is good. This I understand. This I know. Here, my life is safe, and warm, and comprehensible, and human. Here, I am loved.