. 08

*********

Author's Note

This chapter concludes part one of the new Autumn, which kicks off a re-telling of the Homelands series. I'm proud of the original versions but don't feel that they lived up to their full potential. This time around, you can expect a slower pace, stronger characterization, and a less grandiose plot. This is no longer an epic fantasy, with a huge battle between good and evil waiting at the end. If you read the original versions, you should feel as though you're revisiting old friends, but you shouldn't assume that you know how their story ends. If you haven't, there is no need to do so. This re-telling is meant to stand on its own and is my preferred version of the tale.

*********

"That's what he said," Frank told Noreen, doing his best to maintain eye contact. It hadn't come as a

complete

surprise when she'd woken him in the middle of the night, but you didn't just pull a guy out of a dream that vivid, put a line of cleavage as deep as the Grand Canyon in front of his face, and expect him not to stare. Demanding the utmost attention to detail as he recalled a conversation from the week before was no more reasonable.

His mother had told him to expect a visit from his grandmother; she'd even instructed him to sleep alone in case her mother came to him at an odd hour. What she hadn't told him to expect was Noreen's breasts being even bigger than before.

Pregnancy worked differently for their kind. It only took three months to bring a baby to term, for one thing; and

that

took less than two weeks, Autumn time, if the mother spent the bulk of it in the simulation. Noreen had probably given birth before Frank had even gone to the Farrier Estate. Plenty of time for her to "get her body back" then, if that was a concern for their kind the way it was mortal women. Yet it seemed some of the pregnancy weight gain had lingered, and in the one area where she might have welcomed it.

Weight gain, hormones, milk production—Frank wasn't a doctor. All he knew was that her already impressive jugs had somehow gotten bigger. That sort of thing happened with normal pregnancies, from what he understood, but most new mothers saw an increase of one or two cup sizes. A change on that scale shouldn't have been noticeable on a woman who was as well-endowed as his grandmother to begin with. For Frank to be able to tell the difference, she must have gained nearly as much as Nat had.

Whatever the explanation, they'd gone from ginormous to supermassive. There were celestial bodies one could see without the aid of a telescope that were smaller in size. The robe she wore was nowhere up to the task of containing them, either. It was made of a sturdy if glossy fabric—Frank wasn't sure that he could tell the difference between silk and satin, nevermind sateen—but it was a few sizes too small. Even with the belt cinched tight about his grandmother's waist, the garment looked like it might spring open at any moment.

"Are you a little distracted?" she asked, grinning.

"It's your robe," he said. The embroidery was surprisingly detailed, forming gold leaves on a field of green. "I'm impressed by how consistently you wear your favorite color without it seeming forced." Was he bullshitting her? Only a little. That really did impress him, as did each individual item. Every single thing he saw her in immediately became his new favorite part of her wardrobe, though never for the same reason.

Had Frank not been under the covers, his grandmother would have known exactly where his mind was and how little her fashion sense had to do with his trouble focusing. She probably did anyway, but he was still glad that his raging hard-on was only sort of noticeable. He considered doing something about the size of it, but Noreen would probably sense the energy leave his Libido. Besides, what sort of guy wanted to be

smaller

?

"You're sure it wasn't the Eternal Garden of the Sun?"

How could he be sure about anything other than how urgently that robe needed to find its way onto the floor? "I think so," he said. "No, it was definitely the Glade of the Moon."

A thin smile formed upon her deliciously bowed lips, which were back to bright red. "It's the Shadowed Glade of the Moon. Or just the Glade."

"Yeah, that one."

Green nails stroked his beard. "You did good, kiddo."

"That's information you can use?" he asked, allowing himself to be so bold as to reach under his grandmother's robe and grab her hip. That slight form of contact was enough to make his dick throb. Her skin was soft and cool. "We don't know why she's there."

"Not yet, we don't," Noreen replied. "You're going to fix that for me."

"Am I?" he asked with a hearty chuckle. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice castigated him for speaking to her like that. She might be family, and he might have fucked her giddy the last time he'd seen her, but she was still one of the most powerful immortals around. A former president of their Court, to boot. The games she and Kaitlin played might not be lethal, at least not that he'd ever heard, but the stakes were still high. They determined who could procreate—whether those with the power to

give life

could exercise said power. And they themselves occasionally did so just to buy votes, because their Libidos were so vast that the ability to create new immortals did not awe them the way it did others.

Was he crazy, talking to her like that?

Yeah, he kinda was.

Some days, Frank though that winning his mother's heart had freed up brain cells he hadn't realized he wasn't using. Others, he felt inebriated from the moment he woke up.

If it wasn't bad enough that his mom had chemicals polluting his bloodstream, like stupid amounts of serotonin, she was keeping his Libido in a perpetual state of about-to-burst. Liz helped with that too, of course, but her contributions were more modest. Frank still spent more time with his aunt, whose orgasms he was more reluctant to capitalize on, but his mother was going farther and farther out of her way to make sure they at least squeezed in a quickie each and every day. Between that and what he was willing to take from Liz, Frank was growing more powerful by the day. He'd rival his grandmother before too long.

Okay, that was nonsense. Her Libido was as vast as the oceans, whereas his had gone from a largish pond to a small lake. Not bad, considering he'd only been in Autumn for about a month, but he still had a long,

looong

way to go before he could match the mighty Noreen. Which, in a way, was even more arousing than her humongous tits.

Not that he was focusing on that, though. Or any of the other reasons he hoped that he'd get another chance to fuck his grandmother silly. He couldn't allow himself to. For a little longer, at least, he had pretend to care about serious stuff.

Such as the aunt whose very existence he'd been unaware of less than a week ago.

For unknown reasons, Iva Farrier had been sent by her mother to the Shadowed Glade of the Moon. Apparently, Noreen wanted Frank to go there, find Iva, and get her to tell him what she was up to. No way was he agreeing to that. Unless he let his dick do all the thinking, that was. The traitorous thing would squeal in an instant if it meant getting to shoot a load on her mountainous tits. Or down her throat, or anywhere she'd take it, really.

So Frank steeled his resolve, and not a moment too soon. He'd apparently been worrying at the knot on her belt without realizing it, using spectral hands he didn't remember summoning. At the last second, he stopped himself from freeing those natural wonders.

"Does this have anything to do with that palace?" Frank asked. That was something nice and unsexy that he could focus on. True, the fun had begun there. Phase two of it, anyway, which made their life back in the simulation seem boring and tame. Yet the place itself was shrouded in boner-softening mystery and menace.

"It might," his grandmother said. Her hand had made its way from his beard to his chest, where it turned over so that the palm lay flat against his skin. "That wasn't my first guess, but I can see why you'd draw the connection."

How could she

not

? The sun and moon theme hadn't exactly been subtle.

Jack hadn't known anything about the palace either, but the Farriers had been blown there too. On Harvest Day. That the two families hadn't run into each other was almost surprising, thought it wasn't at the same time. There were so many things about that place that didn't make sense. One thing seemed clear to Frank, though—the two couples who lived there were from the Garden and the Glade. The palace had to straddle the border between the two Courts, even if there was none in a strictly physical sense.

"My guess is she's looking for leverage," Noreen said as she started to grope his chest the way he might her ass, if she'd just move a little closer. Every time her fingers tried to sink into a swollen pec, they failed. She kept trying, though, throwing her Libido into ever greater turmoil. "A way to force them to let us back in."

"I thought it was the mortal world she wants to return to," Frank said. It didn't even take him long to get there. With a busty bombshell on top of him, showing her appreciation for his physique, and all but spilling out of her nightwear, that was no small feat. Frank gave himself a few brownie points, because no one else was likely to.

"The only paths there lead through the Garden or the Glade," his grandmother replied.

That explained why she was worried that Kaitlin would inadvertently start a war with them. Frank had nearly forgotten that she'd expressed that concern. Harvest Day might as well have been a lifetime ago for all that the guy lying in that bed had in common with the one who'd shared a train ride with the same woman back then.

"You and I are the product of crossbreeding," Noreen continued.

"Not inbreeding?" Curious how readily that word sprang to mind.

"Very much the opposite. I don't just mean outside the family, but the species."

"As in mortals?" Frank asked. "We're not talking bestiality."

She smiled. "No, we're not."

"Which would make us...?"

"Immortal," his grandmother said matter-of-factly. "Somewhere along the line, we lost our indigo complexion. Or maybe it was metallic gold. This would have been so many generations back that there's no telling whether we were originally moonlit or sunlit."

That was interesting, Frank supposed, but all he wanted to do at the moment was play with his grandmother's funbags. He'd have loved to talk about their people's history

afterwards

, but until he heard her moan her way through a few orgasms, and shot a huge load all over her tits, he was going to have a hard time giving a shit about anything else.

"Oh, did that excite you?" Noreen asked in amusement as she advanced a little farther up the bed and let her weight settle atop him. "I didn't take you for a goetiaphile."

"A what now?" Frank asked. The hand on her hip slid around back then down over the spaghetti strap of her thong. She flexed her glutes, making her poor grandson feel as though he was trying to squeeze water from stone. "A lover of...?"

"The occult. Magic. Maybe even angels and demons, depending on the translation."

"You think that's what turned me on?" He tightened his grip on her ass. It still didn't yield, but his grandmother let out a sensual moan that sent shivers down his spine and made his cock twitch against her thigh. "I'm trying to pay attention but all I can think about is how nice your ass is. That, and whether you're lactating."

He'd mostly said that as a joke. As soon as the words left his mouth, though, Frank found himself wondering about precisely that. The last time he'd drunk milk from the nipple, he'd been an infant. No memory thereof had survived to adulthood. He could imagine it being gross, or at least awkward, yet suddenly couldn't wait to satisfy his curiosity.

That said, she wasn't wrong. The sheer size of her Libido excited him, and picturing silver-lipped women mating with mortal men, amethyst eyes glowing, while gold-haired immortals did the same with their rivals, did a little something for him as well. Were they really descended from the likes of whomever owned that palace? In a way, that almost seemed obvious, yet it made his head spin at the same time. And hardened his cock.

Noreen laughed. "You certainly are an Orwin."

They kissed, and sensation washed over Frank. It was more than he could bear yet he was only distantly aware of it. His lips tingled and a sweet yet spicy taste greeted his tongue. Warm euphoria spread across his body like a morning fog. The tiniest bolts of ecstasy crackled into his mouth. Even the part of his brain that was devoted to higher order cognitive function felt overwhelmed. His grandmother's body was an incomprehensible mix of soft and hard. Her taste and smell made no sense, fusing elements that really didn't go together. Noreen was unlike any other woman. Whether that made her more desirable was open to interpretation, but there was no denying that she was unique.

"No fair," he said after his consciousness returned to his body. "That orgasm hit me so fast that I didn't even get to enjoy it." That wasn't really true, though. He hadn't remained at the peak for long, or enjoyed the process of coming down, but the infinite calm that could only be experienced while detached from corporeality was a pleasure all its own.

Favoring him with a smile so beguiling and complex that he could have spent hours trying to unpack its meaning, his grandmother said, "Aren't those the best kind?"

All Frank could do was sputter.

"As you seem to have noticed, they've gotten a bit bigger," Noreen said, easing the panels of her robe farther apart—though only by the slightest amount. Her hands couldn't have moved more slowly, either. Minutes seemed to tick past, stretching into eternity, as no more than another inch of creamy white flesh came into view. "Sometimes they ache rather fiercely. The only thing that helps is letting some of the milk out."

"Fuuuck," he said aloud.

"If you agree to go to the Glade for me, I'll let you play with them."

Frank snorted. "And what if I don't? You gonna make me?"

A fleeting kiss graced his lips. Then another, slightly longer one. "I could if I wanted to. But I won't." Her lips touched his once more, just long enough to stop his heart temporarily. "You're going to agree, but of your own free will." A smile formed and she grabbed at the front of his pants. "Any attempt to influence your decision will be strictly physical."

"I don't know," he said. "Sounds dangerous."

"I wouldn't let her send you if I wasn't sure you could handle it," his mother said from the shadows near the walk-in closet. As soon as she spoke, the outline of her voluptuous figure appeared and a soft glow seemed to emanate from her alabaster complexion. Frank couldn't quite tell what color her chemise was, but he was willing to guess that it was red. Her stockings, It covered a little more than her usual bedroom attire, which she made up for by wearing knee-high stockings, opaque, rather than her usual sheer thigh highs.

There was only one explanation for why Frank hadn't noticed her earlier—Noreen hadn't let him. Even if his mother had just teleported in, he should have seen her the moment she appeared rather than not until after she'd spoken up. He hadn't felt anything, but the inescapable conclusion was that his grandmother had used mind magic on him. True, she wasn't compelling him to go to the Glade for her, yet, but he still felt violated.

Should he, though? Mind magic had a variety of applications. All of them were at least semi-intrusive, but there was still a pretty big difference between blocking someone's ability to process certain visual stimuli, effectively rending the subject invisible, and all the rest.

When he realized that there was another explanation for why he hadn't seen seen his mother, though, Frank went back to feeling betrayed. He'd assumed that his grandmother was responsible because she was the one with an agenda, not to mention the difference in power. Yet his mom had some talent for mind magic herself. She hadn't used it on Frank for years, so far as he knew, but she'd issued commands that her children had no choice but to obey all the time when they were younger. She sometimes still did that to Dom to spice things up in the bedroom. Granted, his older brother did the same to her, and a lot more often, but that didn't concern Frank at the moment. He wasn't sure whether his mother's command of mind magic went beyond mere cantrips, as it would have to for her to conceal herself like that, but it might. And his inability to convince himself that she wouldn't do that hurt more than he cared to admit, even if it wasn't the most manipulative mind magic.

Of the five arcane paths, there was but one that Frank had no command over. Granted, none of them chose their talents, but he couldn't help noticing that there was a certain correspondence between their personalities and their abilities—just as their appearances were technically beyond their control, unless they used body magic, yet curiously reflected their deeply held views all the same. Liz was no arcane master, but the two paths she could work proper spells in were insight and wards. That seemed only fitting. If the same could be said of his mother and mind magic, if her talent went beyond mere cantrips, well, that said something about her—even if she hadn't used it just then. Which she probably had.

No, he wasn't going to hold that against her. He couldn't. If she'd hidden herself from him, it was only to allow for a more dramatic entrance. There was nothing wrong with that.

The look she was giving him was nothing like a cat who'd caught a mouse by the tail. Nor was she ashamed of what she'd done. As his mother made her way towards the bed, all Frank found in her beautiful, dark eyes was love and lust.

His brain started working overtime, and Frank could almost hear the little fan trying to cool his processor. The most desirable woman alive and a strong contender for second place were about to use sex as a weapon against him, yet the very last thing he wanted to do was resist. Was he frightened by the prospect of journeying to the inspiration for beliefs in hell? Sure, on some level. He couldn't wait for them to try and persuade him, though.

"Nor would Kaitlin have sent Iva," Noreen said, before kissing him on the cheek.

That made sense. Potentially, anyway. Depending on how Machiavellian she was, Kaitlin's willingness to send her daughter to the Glade might only prove that she thought the odds of achieving her objective, whatever it might be, were greater than zero. On the other hand, she'd supposedly allowed House Orwin to double in size just so that Cindy could have more than one kid. Frank wasn't convinced that was the whole story, but it might be.

It had occurred to him while a the Farrier Estate that Kaitlin might know more about Noreen than he ever would. The same might hold in the other direction.

"Why'd she let Gus marry my mom?" Frank asked his grandmother, staring intently into her brown eyes. "More importantly, why did she let House Orwin add four members?"

Noreen slid to the side, making room for his mother to join them and form a little triangle on top of Frank. Two very large pairs of breasts pushed against his ribs and chest, soft lips met his bearded cheeks, and hands roamed all over his body. A soft thigh was draped over his right leg, a firm one his left. His hands made their way, unbidden, to two lovely rumps. One was plush and springy, the other carved from stone. Each was a work of art.

Best of all, their Libidos were humming, vibrating even, as the slowly expanded and contracted—in unison. That made Frank think of menstrual synchrony, or how mortal women who spent a lot of time together allegedly saw their cycles line up. Only their Libidos had harmonized immediately, and there was no bleeding involved.