A Full Moon for Lammas by Jean Roberta

A Full Moon for Lammas

by Jean Roberta

Terra liked to drive with one arm around Faith’s shoulders. Faith had tried to talk her out of it, and Terra had responded with reassuring squeezes. One-handed driving in a solid truck on almost-deserted roads seemed safer to Faith than such bravado in a two-door in town. This pleasure-drive was Terra’s offer of a compromise.

“Look up, babe,” Terra told her. A huge, full silver moon was perfectly framed by the paired telephone poles that rose steadfastly from the ground at regular intervals.

“Ohh,” sighed Faith, feeling small. She felt as if she could hear the land breathing all around the road as the moon beamed down on a flat landscape that was both serene and unsettling. Unlike most environments, urban or rural, this one had no visible boundaries. At ten o-clock at night, the sky was still not dark enough to show stars. A flock of slate-grey clouds, tinged with lavender, hovered near the horizon.

“Where are we going?” asked Faith cautiously.

Terra grinned in the summer twilight that flowed into the truck from the big sky. It reminded Faith of the Atlantic Ocean that she had left behind when she had moved west in stages: first from the wave-battered quaintness of Nova Scotia to the city of Toronto to get an education, and then to a town on the prairie, in the Canadian heartland, to accept a job in advertising.

“A little further on, honey,” Terra assured her passenger. The asphalt under the wheels abruptly gave way to gravel and potholes. Terra’s breasts bounced heartily as Faith tried to hold herself still in the vain hope of adjusting to the rough ride. Not that it had been smooth before, she noted; even the major highways of Saskatchewan were torn and unevenly patched like farm overalls.

In the dim light, Terra’s tanned face, dark eyes and plump body looked sly, as though she embodied natural secrets. The smell of the lush weeds in the ditches beside the road seemed as seductive to Faith as the aromas of marijuana and sandalwood incense in a student apartment shared by four womyn-loving womyn.

Young Faith felt like a mermaid out of water. She had a slim, urban pallor which dramatized her tattoos, her nose-ring and her short indigo hair; she defined her taste in everything as “alternative.” She had a quick, defensive wit which made her sound hip to many in the local queer bar, but something about the open prairie made sarcasm seem childish.

Faith’s butt jiggled and grew clammy in her cotton pants. She felt as though the road were bucking her on its lap like an obscene playmate, subtly vibrating her clit and shaking her perky breasts to get a reaction from her. “Enjoying the ride, honey?” snickered the driver.

“Oh, sure,” groaned Faith, embarrassed by the truth of her answer. She wondered if little Terra, growing up on a farm in the area, had thought of a ride to town in the family truck as a treat, like a roller-coaster ride at the fair.

“We’re almost there, honey,” soothed Terra. “We might see the tornado that’s supposed to be headed for Folle Avoine. I want to show you an old farmhouse that’s been deserted since the Dirty Thirties.”

A pleasurable chill of fear ran down Faith’s spine as she wondered if she might be whisked away by a tornado like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. She also tried to imagine living on an isolated farm during the great drought and the Great Depression, when dust covered the land and money was scarce. She wondered what hungry, demanding spirits might still be lurking in the old shack. She had read about such things.

Terra also believed in ghosts; she had seen too much to be a skeptic. She thought of them as fellow-inhabitants of the generous earth, and she couldn’t blame them for lingering in the places where they had worked, hoped, rejoiced and cried. Terra honestly loved the land that had bred her.

She pulled onto a shoulder of the gravel road. The truck shuddered to a stop. “Here we are,” the driver told her date. She and Faith opened their doors and jumped to the ground. Little gusts of air brought the smell of plant life to them in waves as crickets and other night insects created background music. Faith looked up, and was dazzled by the clarity of the moon and stars in a darkened sky.

“No mosquitoes,” Terra pointed out. “We’re lucky this summer.” Still tingling from the ride, she took deep breaths of fragrant summer air. She wanted to tear off her tank top and cutoff shorts, and pull Faith down with her to roll on the ground at the edge of the wheat field. Faith was gazing at the acres of green plants that rippled like waves in the breeze. “That’s a lot of food,” explained Terra, feeling like a tour guide. “Number One Hard. Imagine all the flour that’s going to make.”

Faith couldn’t really imagine it, but the wheat looked like a promise to her. She could imagine each little wheat stalk bursting with ripeness, waiting for the blades of a combine harvester, and this image seemed bizarrely sexy to her. She felt a laugh tickling her stomach.

Terra pulled Faith into her arms and pressed a long hot kiss on her mouth. Faith reached up to run a hand through Terra’s honey-brown hair, and felt the heat of her scalp. Terra wore her hair shoulder-length in all seasons, and it reminded Faith of country weeds not intended for cutting. Terra’s tongue in Faith’s mouth made the younger woman weak in the knees, but Terra was determined not to satisfy her yet.

“Mm, babe,” laughed the seducer. Faith could feel Terra’s breasts and hips shaking. “You have to see the house. Look.” Terra had been sufficiently influenced by First Nations culture never to point with her fingers. Faith followed the direction of Terra’s eyes and the twitch of her mouth toward an old, wooden, two-story house.

The steepness of the caved-in roof and the unmistakable tilt of the whole structure made the house look like a sinister drunk, but the moonlight mellowed the grey wood with silver highlights. Faith wondered how far the boards had been transported before they were hammered into a human dwelling-place in a treeless landscape.

“Come on,” urged Terra, pulling Faith by the hand. The visitor had dreaded those words, but she didn’t resist. This visit to the farmland beyond the town was turning into an adventure.

The house was about a block away from where they were standing, as distance was measured in town. Terra kept a warm hand on Faith’s lower back as they walked through the tall weeds and a patch of bare ground that showed recent tire tracks. Faith wondered about these, but Terra’s hand was distracting. It had slipped down to rest on Faith’s girlish behind.

The house still had a front door which led to an enclosed verandah. Faith hesitated, as though there were still people inside who would be offended if she walked in without knocking.

Terra gave her a light slap on the bum. “Go on, honey,” she ordered. “You’re doomed anyway. There’s no one to hear you scream. Except me.” She faked a demented laugh.

The door stood ajar because it hung unevenly, like everything else between the shifting foundation and the ruined roof. Faith pushed the door, and it creaked open. The verandah was dark, but another door that had once been painted a cheerful robin’s-egg blue led to a spacious ground floor which was sprinkled with moonlight from the
holes in the roof. Most of the walls between rooms were half-destroyed, so everything could be seen at a glance. A cast-iron stove still stood in the kitchen. Miraculously, a splintered wooden table stood near it. The house whispered and creaked in a way that made Faith nervous, but nothing she heard could be identified as the sound of a ghostly voice or footsteps.

“I wonder how many kids there were in the family,” speculated Terra, trying to keep Faith’s courage up. “They must have had chores to do and if they didn’t do them, or they lipped off to their parents, they got a taste of the strap, or dad’s belt. On the bum.” She pushed Faith into the kitchen and gently bent her forward against the edge of the table. Terra stood behind the smaller woman, and squeezed both her protruding cheeks as though they were fruit in a market. “What do you have to say for yourself, young lady?” she demanded.

“I haven’t done anything!” laughed Faith. “I’m a good girl.”

“Really?” sneered the suspicious adult. “That’s hard to believe. I know you too well for that, honey. If you haven’t done anything bad this time, I’ll just give you a few licks to keep you in line.”

Terra swatted Faith’s butt a little harder than before, and the tremors rushed into Faith’s cunt. Terra noted that her victim wasn’t fighting her off, although she shimmied slightly in a way that looked provoking. Terra followed up with two harder swats. Faith gasped quietly, but didn’t try to change her vulnerable position.

“Good girl,” Terra commented. She was tickled by her new girlfriend's co-operation. She remembered that every soul is a mystery, and that she and Faith still had a lot to learn about each other. Terra pressed herself against Faith's back, holding her in place.

Faith was quivering, but not with rebellion. Ignoring her common sense, Terra held the girl with one hand and backed off enough to give her a satisfying whack, then another. The temptation was irresistible, and Terra gave in to it. Whack! For being young, talented and confident. Whack! For being so ignorant about the hard times before the birth of Lesbian Chic. Whack! For having so much time and experience ahead of her. Terra pulled sweet country air deep into her lungs and tried not to notice the orgasm that seemed to be building all through her lower belly.

A sniff tinged with fear came out of Faith, despite her efforts to contain it. Hot shame rushed through the older woman like a brush fire. "Aww, honey," she crooned to Faith, pulling her upright with an arm around her waist. When Faith turned to face her, Terra was startled by the tearful gleam of her eyes. "I didn't mean to hurt you," the bigger woman mumbled. "You could stop me when I'm too rough." At such moments, Terra felt hopelessly uncouth.

Faith held Terra with a strength born of resolve. Not really wanting to be heard, Faith muttered something that sounded like "Sallright.”

Terra slid her hand down to rest on Faith's lower cheeks, which radiated heat through her pants. Something about Faith's innocent young bottom moved Terra beyond words. For an instant, the older woman indulged in an image of Faith as a patient or a suspect, naked and spread face-down over the lap of someone in a uniform who was sinking a gloved finger steadily deeper between her butt-cheeks, which seemed to be blushing.

"Want me?" Terra asked cautiously, not really expecting her date to accept ass-fucking -- not yet, anyway. First things first.

"No," joked Faith in a bratty mode. "Not a bit. If I'd known you were a lez-bi-an, I wouldn't have come out here with you."

Terra reminded herself that Faith couldn't possibly know how painfully those words could remind a prairie woman of her high school years, when being even slightly unfeminine or indifferent to boys was the fast track to being cast into the wilderness.

Faith was taken aback by the look on Terra's face, so she ran her hands down the bigger woman's firm, comforting back to her generous buttocks packed into tight denim. "You didn't bring me out here to seduce me, did you?" she joked.

Terra growled, and her eyes held a dangerous glow. "Watch out," she warned, "little tease." She unzipped Faith's pants, which prompted a giggle. "What do you think?" asked Terra rhetorically. She slid a hand down her date's panting abdomen and entered her with two fingers.

Faith squealed and squirmed. "Not here, standing up!" she protested.

Terra stroked the younger woman’s clit, making her jump. Faith forgot everything she had ever believed about her inability to respond to such an abrupt, inconsiderate move. “Why?" asked the seducer. "Can’t you come standing up?” She pressed on, feeling for Faith’s G-spot.

"Oh!" answered Faith, squirming almost enough to dislodge Terra's fingers. She was very wet. Terra used her other hand to hold Faith in place.

"Can't come this way? You sure?" persisted Terra, wiggling her fingers in Faith's welcoming cunt. Just when Faith thought she couldn’t stand any more stimulation, Terra bent down to suck and nibble her nipples through her halter-top. For a moment, Faith lot her footing and was impaled on Terra’s fingers. Her breathing sounded like a wild prairie wind.

"If you can't come," Terra threatened slyly, "I'll stop."

"No!" wailed the excited young woman. Her pants were now bunched around her knees. Terra stroked her with a steady beckoning motion. "The wall," gasped Faith.

Terra pushed Faith against the nearest wall, and felt the first convulsion of Faith's muscles around her fingers as the friction increased. Terra inserted a third finger, and twitched the first two almost hard enough to be heard through the sound of wet swishing. Faith gripped Terra by the shoulders and let out the full shriek of a starlet performing in her first horror film. It was a shriek to wake the dead.

The living, sweating women didn’t care. "Ahh," they sighed together, coming down from their peak.

"A-hahh," affirmed Terra, unwilling to pull her fingers out of their warm, slippery home. "So you can come that way. You can scream too. Are you practicing for the opera, honey?"

"No one can hear us," muttered the younger woman.

"Is that something you always wanted to do?" Terra felt tickled to her core.

"Mhm." Faith was trying to sound nonchalant.

Terra withdrew from Faith’s eager wetness, holding her up with one arm. Like a mother, she pulled up her girl’s pants and zipped them closed. “It's time to go upstairs to the bedrooms,” she remarked.

“Uh,” Faith gasped. “I don’t trust the stairs. How do you know they can hold our weight?”

“They can,” insisted Terra. “You scared to go up there?”

“Yeah,” admitted Faith. “This place is creepy.”

“But it excites you,” gloated the seducer. Faith realized that this house had been occupied by a family that had gambled on the land and lost. She wondered if being with Terra was just as reckless. “Come on, baby,” urged her guide to the spirit world. “You can’t come all this way and not see the whole house.”

Faith went first, and Terra encouraged her with a hand on her butt. Moonlight flooded the upper floor through broken windows and the broken roof. Terra followed the light into a large, square room and looked out the window at the horizon. The sky was much darker in the west, and the woman thought she could make out a familiar funnel shape. “Look,” she urged Faith, “there’s the tornado.”

Faith squinted out the window. “I don’t see anything,” she complained. “Just dark clouds.”

Terra grinned, seeing her chance. “It’s coming. I might get you all naked and then the tornado will come tearing through here like a train, and carry you up in the sky, then drop you down in some all-night party. With bikers. Or guys playing poker, and you can be the prize.”

Faith groaned.

Terra changed mode. “We’ll probably get the storm, honey,” she explained. “Rain and maybe some hail, that’s all.” Terra turned Faith’s attention to the room they were in. “Look at this. Big rooms but no closets. They used wardrobes in those days.” Something scurried behind the wall, and Faith looked uneasy.

The guide pulled her visitor into an even bigger room with a fireplace. “I bet this was the master bedroom.” She paused for effect. “Where the master got the mistress pregnant. After all that farm work, I bet they both needed some recreation. Can you imagine how the bedsprings must have squeaked?” Terra imitated the squeak of dry metal coils. She wrapped her arms around Faith, who was still trembling from a mixture of feelings. Like a couple on the cover of a paperback lesbian romance, the two women kissed in the moonlight. “Do you want to make a baby up here?” one demanded, eyes glowing.

Faith didn’t point out the obvious flaw in this proposal. “Not on the dirty floor, Terra,” she complained. “There’s nothing else to lie on.” She mentally surveyed her surroundings. “It’s still nice outside. Can we go out there?”

“Okay,” agreed the genial hostess. “If you do something for me first. You have to take off all your clothes up here.”

Faith realized that she still felt like a trespasser, and that she was afraid to strip to her skin in the presence of - what? “Why?” she pleaded. She shrank away from a large spider that was strolling across the floor.

“Why not, eh? It’s bright enough up here for me to see you all over.” Terra grinned lecherously. “And the atmosphere kicks you up a little. You know it, honey. Do it for me. And anyone else who might be watching.”

Faith had heard, read and watched enough scary stories to know that the dead were supposed to want living flesh more than anything else - any flesh in any shape, as long as human energy ran through it like electricity. She couldn’t help wondering if being dead was an endless tease, a state of unrelieved desire with no limits or conclusion. Even if it is, she thought, that would be better than an endless sleep. It came to her that she was afraid of ghosts because she wanted them to exist.

Terra reached around Faith’s neck to untie the knot that held up her top. In an instant, her small breasts were revealed. The tattoo of a red heart in the general area of Faith’s actual heart looked purplish in the watery light.

Gaining confidence, the exhibitionist wiggled as Terra pulled her pants down, bringing a damp little scrap of fabric along. Faith concentrated on her balance as she kicked off her sandals and stood on one foot, then the other, to pull her clothing completely off. Terra took it all for safekeeping.

“Oh, girlfriend,” sighed Terra at the sight of the pale sapling of a body that glowed before her in the moonlight. “You have to give me something here.” The bigger woman pulled off her shorts in one smooth motion.

Faith knelt on the floor and held Terra’s solid hips. Steadying herself, the kneeling woman used both hands to separate Terra’s lower lips, revealing her slick folds and her swollen clit. Faith stretched out her tongue and gave Terra a few shy, catlike licks. An encouraging moan floated down to her.

Faith shivered at the gossamer touch of something that ran down her back. The phantom fingers rushed down one arm and tingled her scalp. She remembered her grandmother’s terms for these feelings: “fairy kisses.”

Terra spread her legs and greedily pushed her cunt in Faith’s face. Terra felt her date breathing against her wetness as an eager tongue teased and probed the clit that throbbed like a heartbeat or the ticking of a bomb. “Wanta get fucked?” taunted the brat. This was her version of whistling past a graveyard.

“Yess,” responded the older woman as she climbed surely toward a long, shuddering climax. Faith slid two fingers easily into a wet cave as she sucked Terra’s clit into her mouth.

Terra felt herself grazed by careful teeth as she erupted, clutching her tormentor with her thighs and her hands. The discomfort at Faith’s anus rippled inside her and ended with a pinprick in her bowels. Her anal muscles squeezed closed.

“Uh!” gasped both women.

Faith was so tense with fear that she didn’t notice how wet her face was. “Terra, something touched me,” she whispered, afraid of being ridiculed.

The older woman laughed with pleasure. “It was me, honey,” she bragged.

“No,” Faith insisted, “it was in my – bum. You weren’t doing it.”

“But I will, baby,” Terra promised. “You felt my dirty mind.”

Faith noticed a frayed length of dirty rope on the floor in a shaft of moonlight. She wondered why she had not seen it before, or if it had appeared suddenly. Her teeth chattered. “Terra, we have to leave here now.”

“Okay, honey.” Terra pulled her shorts off her legs without letting go of Faith, who was covered in cold sweat.

The two women ran down the warped, noisy stairs. Terra’s hands on Faith’s waist helped to relieve her fear of falling, but Faith couldn’t wait to get out of the house. The possibility of being exposed to passing drivers and an approaching storm troubled her less than the thought of being trapped indoors all night.

Faith burst out of the front door to meet the night air, which was still warm enough but breezier than it had been. It felt like a subtle warning. “Let’s fertilize the field,” Terra suggested, wrestling her top over her head.

“I want something underneath me,” the naked woman pointed out. She liked Terra’s ideas, but she wanted her to know that imposing a little human comfort on rough nature was essential. “We need the blanket from the truck.”

“Sure,” replied Terra in her role as tour guide. “I’ve brought a few other things too, so we can honor the Goddess. This is the full moon closest to Lammas on August 1, festival of the first harvest. I thought we could offer our energy to the land, you know, instead of just fucking for the hell of it.” She showed her teeth in the moonlight. “Come on.” Terra led Faith by the hand, pulling her toward the truck.

“Good idea,” responded Faith primly, wondering why she hadn’t foreseen that Terra would want to perform some variation of a fertility ritual that had probably comforted her ancient ancestors in various Old Countries. “I feel closer to the Goddess out here than in town,” the young woman assured her guide. She’s a moody bitch too, thought Faith.

Terra’s supplies included a bottle of merlot, a corkscrew, two fresh buns, a little ceramic Venus of Willendorf, and a fat candle in a bowl-shaped holder which would not stay lit in the rising wind. After invoking the spirits of the four directions, North, East, South and West, Terra addressed the Goddess directly. “We give thanks for your bounty,” she intoned, opening the bottle and passing it to Faith.

Guzzling directly from a bottle of liquid that looked like blood in the dim light made Faith feel like some kind of redneck vampire, but the uncouth simplicity of it satisfied her. The buns were a tasty complement to the wine.

“We honor those who have gone before us,” Terra continued, “as well as those yet to come.” Both women were aware of the need for haste.

As the wind moaned louder, they wanted to devour each other while they could still do this in some degree of comfort. “As we honor the Goddess,” continued Terra, “so too do we honor the God.” She grinned as she strapped on the harness that held her prized silicone dildo from the sex shop in town. Faith had never seen it before, and her little gasp of surprise delighted its owner.

Terra reached out to find and tease Faith’s clit, which was still swollen. “Do we accept the God?” she asked softly.

“Oh yes,” answered Faith, spreading her legs. Terra guided her instrument into its home, and the two women moved together like a bucking horse and a stubborn rider. At some point, they discovered that they could roll over in unison without missing a beat. They both wanted to tickle each other’s souls while showing some smart new tricks to the moon. They filled the air with shrieks and wails as though they wanted to be heard in the nearest gas station or inhabited farmhouse.

When they finally lay quietly in each other’s arms, listening to their breathing under the song of the wind, they knew they would really have to leave soon. There was a chill in the air, and the shadow of the house looked longer and darker than before. “We thank all those who have blessed us here,” concluded Terra, and opened the circle. Faith shuddered.

“Do you think we left a crop circle?” Terra asked her date to cheer her up.

“We’ll have to look,” answered Faith without conviction.

“You be the scout,” taunted Terra. “Maybe the aliens have landed. They’re probably waiting for you with their long anal probes.”

Faith didn’t answer, and she looked uncomfortable. She really wanted the thrilling invasion that Terra had hinted at, but she wanted it from the prairie woman she was coming to know. Terra tackled her, pinning her to the ground and tickling her without mercy.

“Stop, stop. I can’t breathe,” gasped the younger woman, shaking all over with laughter.

Terra relented. “Breathe,” she ordered. “Then we have to go.”

Terra wrapped Faith in the blanket and held it close, as though to persuade her that the Goddess provides, while they walked back to the truck together. Both women dressed quickly, and climbed into the truck with regret wrapped in relief. The wind had strengthened until it sounded like a grieving woman. Terra started the truck as though to drown out the eerie wailing. Like a trusty farm animal, the truck headed forth on the gravel road to the highway.

Terra waited until the house was out of sight before she launched into its history. “I wanted to show you the Lupichuk house before the new owners tear it down,” she explained. Faith felt reassured by this rational explanation for the tire tracks she had seen. Terra passed the wine bottle to her, and this was comforting too. “The barn was torn down right after - about the time the Lupichuks moved away.”

Terra took the bottle from Faith and took a swig before passing it back. Faith caressed the cool glass, waiting for the rest of the story.

“Do you want to know why it was torn down?”

“Tell me,” responded her patient listener.

“Mr. Lupichuk was found hanging from the loft. It was in the fall, after he’d brought in a bad crop. It wasn’t enough to support his family and I guess he couldn’t see any other way out. The wife and kids moved away after that. I think they moved back east to live with relatives.” Terra took her eyes off the road to glance at Faith. “I didn’t want to tell you that story before.”

Faith touched Terra’s shoulder. “I’m glad.”

Both women felt pleasantly tired as the truck reached the end of the gravel and turned onto smoother asphalt. Terra speeded up as the lights of town appeared in the distance. A warm silence filled the truck as the driver and her passenger passed the wine bottle back and forth. They considered the immense pleasure to be found in simple things and the awful, unpredictable nature of loss.

Rain was pelting the truck when Terra pulled into the parking lot behind Faith’s apartment building. The sting of cold water on the women’s skin felt like the excitement of a new relationship. They kissed and ran to the front door, squealing like schoolgirls. They each smelled like growing plants, and the smell gave them hope that something might ripen between them. They were already treasuring their shared memory of sex in the wheat, and they resolved never to forget the taste of life at this moment, the flavor of a prairie summer.

_______________

Jean Roberta is a woman of a certain age who teaches English at a Canadian prairie university and embarrasses her friends, relatives and students with her erotic writing and opinionated editorials. Her erotic stories have been widely published in anthologies such as "Wicked Words 3" (Black Lace, UK), the "Best Lesbian Erotica" series (Cleis Press, USA) and "Shameless" (Seal Press, USA) as well as websites and print journals. Her lesbian novel, "Prairie Gothic" is available from Amatory Ink (www.amatory-ink.co.uk).