At dusk he came down from the mountain. The mountain moon followed close behind him; like an excited puppy, the planet's satellite played hide-and-seek with the ridgetops. As the last rays of the already-sunken sun spread themselves flat against the bottoms of the western clouds, the bearded man passed from upland pine into the riparian domain of hemlock and rhododendron. The blue twilight of evening, passing nimbly between densely-interwoven treelimbs, intermingled itself with the perpetual green twilight of the hemlock grove.
The man breathed in, then slowly out. Hemlock trees were named for their scent's remarkable resemblance to the odor of the Conium herb, the poison hemlock that killed Socrates. The grove stank of man's inhumanity to man; it stank of our race's engrained aversion to truth; it stank of the utterly unjust but thoroughly unsurprising murder of one of history's very few truly good men. As always, our hero found the smell to be piney and immensely refreshing.
The ancient stately trees were rightly named for death: they were themselves already as good as dead. At sporadic intervals, the darkly-silhouetted conifers emitted a light shimmering haze which ascended into an electric-blue sky. It was late spring, and large swarms of minute Asian adelgids were flying out of the hemlocks. For months, larvae had gnawed the trees' tender cambium, killing the plant that nurtured them. A species of aphid, the adelgids were asexual, exclusively female, and were born already pregnant with hundreds of clones of themselves. Throughout the insects' brief childhood, only a small portion of their feeding would nourish the adelgids themselves: the majority of their consumption nurtured the multitudinous lives within them. As spring turned into summer, the race divided itself into two equal parts: half, stolid and wingless, would lay their eggs on the hemlock that they had been born on and were killing; after laying, they would die. The second half sprouted wings, and flew in swarms in search of a particular species of spruce, which alone can nourish the young born of winged adelgids. The insects could not know that the nearest specimen of such a tree was halfway around the globe, in their native China. In some few days, the members of the futilely-seeking swarm would, one by one, begin to perish from starvation, and each aphid's hundred daughters would die their mother.
In the dark grove, the doomed murderous insects flew in desperate futile searching between doomed murdered trees named for death. And in the same dark grove, amorous night-birds chirpingly advertised their availability; loud katydids blared their ardor; and crickets sang of sex ninety-six times per minute.
The man paused, counted again: one hippopotamus, two hippopotamus, three. Yep. The crickets did indeed sing of sex ninety-six times per minute. That meant it was sixty-three degrees: still plenty warm for a bath. A creek gurgled in the center of the grove; in the gathering darkness, he let the noise guide him to its source. "The subject," he thought idly, "exhibits sonolocatory hydrotaxis."
Closing his eyes, he recalled the image of the pool he was approaching. Above a small ledge, two thick rockslabs met in a V, the nadir of which emitted a rushing cascade of cool water into a chest-deep basin below. The bathing hole was perfectly proportioned to the human body; it corresponded precisely with the setting of a hundred different insipid Impressionist paintings, all invariably entitled
La Baigneuse,
The Bather. The pool was so extraordinarily similar to his dim recollections from art history classes that, when he first stumbled upon it some months ago, he was positively astounded that it did not contain at least one bathing wood-nymph Naiad.
Ah, that was an image! Keeping his eyes closed, moving by sound towards the pool, he explored the theme. ("Why not?" he thought to himself as he rubbed the day's worth of dirt caked to his arm. "I am, after all, certifiably a dirty old man.") He would have to crawl on his belly through thick rhododendron for the last dozen yards before reaching the pool. As he Marined beneath the broad-leafed shrubs, he would come to hear the plashing splish of water applied to human limbs. Still lying prone, he would project his head beyond the ledge and see, indeed (A specimen! A specimen far more beautiful than the caddisflies he once proudly displayed to colleagues), his wood-nymph. Naked, she would stand thigh-deep in the stream. Water would run in rivulets from full wet hair past superb temples and down exquisite cheeks. Would the cheeks be pale? Tan? Iridescent green? Irrelevant. No: tan. Water would kiss and tickle her elfin ears. It would thwock wetly against crevices both in rock and in flesh. It would curl and purl around her pudendum, caress (of course) her clitoris, move swiftly and supply around equally supple limbs. As she proceeded into deeper water, her mammaries would demonstrate their buoyancy; her nipples would stand alert in the coolth.
At some point, he would make a sound, and with animal alertness she would orient towards him. Her pulse would beat tensely and prominently in her throat; every hair in her body would stand quivering and erect in its pore like a delicate flower grown tumid on morning dew. Water droplets balanced on tense hairs would reflect and refract the moonlight, transforming her into a glimmering spirit before him. She would eye him appraisingly, then smile. Fully clothed, he would leap from the ledge into the water; she (of course, of course) would rush to his embrace. Their limbs would entwine like creeping vines and, like vines, their clasping bodies would press and strangle the (tall, yes; strong, yes) tree that grew between them. She would pull briefly away, examining the pulsing member that throbbed in his sodden trousers, twitching like a live fish. She would doggypaddle back to him through shallow water, then rise to her two feet in order to enclose his mouth in her own. As her tongue explored his mouth, her right arm would twine itself around his shoulders; her left would swiftly pop his pantsbutton and pull his jeans to his knees. Her legs would loop around his and—quickly now—they would twitch, tripping him. He would fall back into the water and, stunned, lie there floating. She would climb on top of his prone form, rendering him into a ship with which she could sail around the bathing hole. As she clenched him tightly, he would feel warmth radiating from her body, contrasting with the cold water. Moving slowly so as not to capsize himself, he would reach his hands up, run them slowly up and down the goosebumps on her back. She would raise herself slightly in order to reach the buttons on his flannel shirt, and begin undoing them. He would seize the opportunity, slip his hands beneath her, and begin oh so gently to run his fingertips across her breasts. She would appear to approve of this development, and in order to make his task easier she would rise further from his breast, sitting halfway upright. Unfortunately, this higher center of gravity would cause him to sink beneath the surface, and his thick and ragged gasps were suddenly filled with water rather than air. Choking, he would move to stand, slip on slick rocks, and find himself kneeling in the pool, the water coursing just below his heaving chin. As he coughed, he would cling to his Naiad; as his eyes cleared, he would discover that she, too, was kneeling in the water. Without breaking his embrace, he would move his arms lower, so that they encircled her belly beneath the rippling waves. He would gently nuzzle her neck; she would whimper. Raising his head, he would kiss her forehead, then her nose, then her mouth, passionately. His hands would move upwards, grabbing her bosom; he would caress her breasts, still tenderly, but with vigor and insistence.
She would rise to her feet, placing her navel level with his mouth. He would ecstatically drink the sweet streamwater that had collected in this cavity; then, inspired, he would move lower, to a surer source of fluids. As his tongue parted her labia, her sudden moan would echo in the reverberant hills. Her legs would move up from the streambed, and her thighs would find new purchase as they twined themselves above his shoulders. He would drink. An idea would occur to him, and he would wrack his brain for half-forgotten Chinese love poetry. In his fevered state, only one poem occurred to him in full; not particularly romantic but justly famous. Extending his tongue, he would use the organ to write ornate classical characters on her vulva and clitoris:
Chuang qian ming yue guan, yi shi di shang xuan, ju tou wang ming yue, di tou si gu xian.
He recalled that his calligraphy teachers had always criticized him for drawing his strokes too heavily and placing his dots with too much pressure. His present companion would not appear to see these as defects. Calling out again as he finished the poem, she would buck her hips and, losing her balance on his shoulders, fall backward into the water. She would swim back to him like a wet lithe otter, although her strokes would be a bit too eager to be entirely graceful. They would both rise to their feet. He would gaze steadily into her passion-filled eyes, embrace her yet again, raise her somewhat upwards so as to ensure proper alignment, and oh so slowly begin to move his lower region. And then, and then, he would—walk blindly into a tree, causing a searing pain to course through his rigid cockbeam. In pain, he hopped about like a deranged gibbon, cursing shitdamnfuckingmothershit-assmotherfuckingdamnfuckshitfuckDamn. He panted. His beautiful erection was unlikely to reappear in the immediate future. "When the hell," he thought to himself, "will you learn to look where you're going?"
