Priya was pumping her bow and whooping some sort of huntress’s paean. Several meters back and to my left was a smaller, very dead peccary with an arrow’s shaft barely visible behind one ear.
“How old were you when your people first taught you to ride?” she rode up and clapped me on the shoulder.
“When we were briefed on you, they made it sound as if the Magyar had been ‘civilized’.” If there was any doubt, ‘civilized’ was a bad thing in the Amazon dictionary.
“It was all Peppermint,” I evaded. “I was just along for the ride.” Peppermint shook her head – flies.
“I will endeavor to take her hunting more often,” Priya laughed. “Let’s butcher our kills. We will both be hailed in the camp tonight. White Stallion indeed.” She was trotting off to get her ‘guest of honor’ for tonight’s festivities. That left Rachel and Mona to approach me alone.
“What was that all about?” Rachel whispered to me.
“I let go,” I met her gaze. “I let go and everything worked out.”
“Are you scared?” Mona asked. ‘Fear’ wasn’t a dirty word to them. Cowardice was what mattered, not the fear behind it. Quite frankly, they found my fearlessness rather unsettling, along with sensual. No words came for a minute.
“That pig isn’t going to skin itself,” Mona noted.
“It is a peccary, not a pig. I’ve dissected a frog and a rat,” I volunteered. “How hard can this be?” Rachel gave a depressive sigh. Mona laughed.
“How fresh were those kills?”
“The frog had been pickled in formaldehyde and the rat had been freeze-dried, so eating them wasn’t really on my mind,” I grinned. We dismounted. Rachel led our horses away to a safe distance. Horses aren’t big fans of the smell of blood. Ours weren’t going to run off, but being considerate of them was the proper thing to do.
“Wait!” Rachel cried out. Priya had been kneeling at her kill, she crouched and spun around. Mona did a quick head-snap to Rachel, then began scanning for threats. Rachel was finishing laying our bridles over some oak twigs as an indicator for the horses to stay put.
“This is your first kill,” Rachel explained.
“Seriously?” Priya responded incredulously. Mona shook her head and chuckled.
“Do I get some kind of reward?” I asked the group.
“Yes,” Rachel was smiling as she hurried my way.
“Is it an orgy?” I brightened up noticeably. ‘Please, Dot Ishara. I haven’t been irreverent for twenty-four hours now. Cut me some slack. I’m dying over here.’
“No,” Rachel scolded me in the same way you scold a five year old who has attempted to mop the floor after spilling something. A negative layered in love and affection.
“Damn it!” I groused.
“Poor Cael,” Mona gave me some false sympathy. “How long has it been?” Priya rejoined us.
“How long has what been?” she inquired.
“Sex,” I grumbled.
“I last had sex yesterday morning with Miyako in that miserable excuse for a bathroom on board our plane.”
“Ah… our sister suffers,” Mona smirked. “How can you still stand in your deprived state?”
“Is that an invitation to do it laying down?” I hoped beyond hope.
“No Cael,” Rachel patted my head. “Forty-nine more days.” I fell on my back, thankful that the goggles and my eyelids dampened the light of the deadly Orb.
“Forty-nine more days?” I wept. “I’m not going to make it.”
“Huh… I thought the forty-nine days was for us?” Priya grappled with the injustice.
“It is,” Rachel snickered. “But, while he craves the sensual touch of our bodies, he’s around guardians all day long and Aya crawls onto his chest and sleeps there all night. He’s got five more days here with no hope of release.”
“What about the outsider women?” Priya was warming up to my torment.
“Why do you think I asked Caprica to separate them from him and wear them out with camp duties,” Rachel unveiled her Mistressful plan.
“Mother-fucker,” I sat back up. “Rachel, I thought you liked me.”
“I do,” she regarded me warmly.
“I would like to enjoy you all to myself. As I said, I believe we have a First Kill Initiation Rite to perform.”
I highly recommend participating in this rite of passage. I imagined the psychological effect on the minds of thirteen or fourteen year old girls was stunning. First, they had me strip naked. So far, so good.
We invoked a prayer to Inara in the Amazon tongue, thanking her for teaching our ancestors our hunting skills. Then Rachel, as the senior huntress, cut out the big pig’s heart. But it gets better. I knelt with Mona standing on my left, Rachel before me and Priya to my right.
[OKH] “Welcome Sister,” Rachel smiled down at me. “Receive your first blessing of blood.”
I didn’t know what to do.
[OKH] “Tilt your head up and open your mouth… wide,” Mona said in a hushed voice. I trusted these women with my life. I also trusted them to freak me out whenever they could, which showed I was learning from my multitude of mistakes.
With both hands, Rachel extend forth the already dripping peccary heart over my upturned mouth and squeezed. Blood gushed forth. Half of it went down my throat. That left plenty of sanguinary aqua vitae to splash everything from my forehead, down my chest and onto my Johnson… hard as always. I absolutely needed serious psychiatric counseling.
Not vomiting from the taste of raw blood in my mouth – a minor victory. Not choking on said blood and spitting it back up because it was flowing straight down my throat – barely notable. Having Mona take my shirt and clean off my face so I could at least open my eyes… that had its upside. All the chicks around me looked terribly aroused.
“You stay,” Rachel nodded my way. “The rest of us are going to search the shrubs for the rest of the javelina – no exceptions,” she commanded, somewhat hoarse with sexual need. “Clean off your body with sand. Call us back once you are dressed.”
“My shirt?” I asked as I held up the ensanguined shirt.
For some reason, I felt the desert camouflage pattern was ruined.
“He can go shirtless,” Priya suggested quickly. Mona and Rachel nodded. ‘Showered in pig’s blood’… I didn’t recall seeing that on a Cosmo sex quiz. I shuddered to think whose sexual survey would… oh, right, it was on the Satan’s Sluts’ To-do List.
Man, she was one freaky weirdo – Library Science major; you know the type. Considering my vast sexual experience, labeling someone ‘freaky’ and a ‘weirdo’ was saying something. Drying off with sand… when I got to my cock it dawned on me I had three women nearby and I hadn’t tricked one of them to do that for me. I was slipping.
The group was rather quiet after they came back and the butchering began. The meat went into our ponchos. That was why we brought them!! Duh. I had yet to see a single cloud with even the delusion it would become a raindrop one day. We had gathered the bundle when I made this ‘cha-chick’ noise… Peppermint shook her reins free and walked over to me.
I was still working on ‘what did I just say to a horse?’ as I took my canteen out and kept letting her lick water out of my palm. Then I gave her the three peaches I had brought along as part of my lunch. Priya was visibly impressed. Mona and Rachel’s silent exchange was getting downright gloomy.
Ya know, when an avalanche begins and you have a snowboard, you should still seek some kind of shelter. Avalanches have buried thousands of morons who thought they could outrun one and were shown how painfully wrong they were. Having been trained to snowboard – I went to school in New Hampshire, if you recall – I knew better.
That being said, I would jump on my snowboard and still try to outrun Mother Nature, that cranky primordial witch. I am that kind of mentally deficient individual. I was shooting the chaotic rapids of the turbulence that replaced rational thought in my noggin. I swung into the saddle like a man taught to ride before I could run. More Priya happiness. More dour looks from the SD.
If my ‘me’ me resented kayaking blindfolded in this recollected grey-matter white-water, it failed to file a protest. We returned to the road about a mile from camp, vigilant, but in high spirits. My ballistic vest was starting to chafe as Rachel pulled close to me.
“Would you use the damn reins,” she hissed. Oh… those things.
Peppermint and I had reached an understanding. A soft cough, or knee action, and she’d telepathically knew where and how fast I wanted her to go. In hindsight, I could truly appreciate the anxiety I was heaping on my gun buddies. I behaved after that. It didn’t help. The second we made it to the stables, Priya began blabbing away.
The scope of her titanic exaggerations made me out to be… supernatural. The essence of her retelling had me smiting an entelodont (aka the very extinct Hell Pig) with a lightning bolt from the cloudless sky, pre-cooking the beast. I then caused rich, buttery Tasso to rain down like Manna from above. Did that make me the Cajun Santa Claus? I wanted to find a hole to hide in.