Castle in the Clouds (Ch. 02)

Patsu's day began at dawn, waking up in the thatched hut with Gia curled in the crook of his arm--both of them naked, lying on a bed of downy hay. Outside, he could hear no sounds of movement from the rest of the village. Soon, the place would be a hive of activity as the villagers made the final preparations for the celebration that was to be held the next day, honoring the one year anniversary since Patsu and Gia were wedded. Olik, the village chief--and Gia's father--had insisted on throwing them a party despite Patsu's protests. It wasn't that he didn't want to celebrate--he did--he only wished they could perhaps postpone to a later date. The anniversary happened to fall on the same week as the anniversary of another event, one which Patsu wished he could forget. A year with Gia would mark two years since the attack on Patsu's home of Elsinor, which had forced him to flee in his fighter jet, whereupon he crash landed outside the village and was rescued, but not before suffering burns over much of his body, in addition to a few broken bones. Patsu had recovered in the physical sense, but the experience had left him with mental wounds that felt as fresh as ever.

It was Gia who pulled him from the burning wreckage, and--as the town apothecary--it was she who nursed him back to health. The first few months after the crash were a blur as Patsu drifted in and out of consciousness. He remembered having visions of an angel caring for him, dabbing at his wounds with all sorts of ointments and salves, chewing his food for him, spitting it into his mouth, using a hand to work the pulp down his gullet, for he was too weak to manage even that. Slowly, surely, he regained his strength, emerging from the haze one day after a few months to realize his caretaker was not an angel, but a woman, and a beautiful one at that.

Back in the hut, Patsu watched Gia as she slept, tracing the outline of her naked figure, sturdy and sinewy from the hardships of life in the forest, but slight, too, and curvy at the hips and butt. Her skin was pale white, soft from the lotions and soaps she applied daily, and perfumed always with the scent of lilac, juniper, or some like flower. Her breasts were small and round, but with a bit of heft to them, punctuated by puffy pink nipples that would harden at the hint of a breeze, or the brush of a tongue. However, it was her hair that he admired most: blonde with red streaks that were only visible when it caught the light, just like Nasuko's hair had been.

The thought sent a pang into Patsu's heart. Nasuko's hair--it was the last thing he could remember before his memory failed, the glint of it as she turned away, having been ordered by their father to hide herself somewhere in the castle for the duration of the battle that was to come. After that, nothingness. If he concentrated hard enough, he found he could just barely conjure up sensations from that day: the smell of blood, a killing blow, the screams of the dying--the image of his father, slain, slumped over on the floor, his eyes wide, surprised at the suddenness with which death had set upon him.

Patsu shook off the thought. Maybe Chief Olik was right, maybe they should be thankful, celebrate what they have, not lament what was lost. After all, Gia had been the best thing to come out of what had otherwise been a total catastrophe.

The first time they made love, more than anything else, Patsu felt afraid. He'd never been with a woman before, and didn't think he'd know what to do if he ever got his hands on one. In Elsinor where the people were men and women of science, sex was viewed in a very detached way, as little more than an anatomical impulse. It had crossed his mind once or twice to try to find a willing mate, but he never pursued it with any real fervor. Luckily, Gia knew what to do. Her village viewed sex in a very different light, seeing it as a spiritual act, a sacred pact entered into by two entities intertwining in one small moment--a single drop of pleasure in the vast ocean of human experience. It was honorable, something to be done as often as possible, and with many.

It happened one pre-dawn morning some six months into his recovery period in the bathhouse when no one else was around. Not many villagers chose to soak so early, but it was imperative to the healing process that Patsu should bathe when the waters were cleanest, before the others. Recently, he had regained his strength to the point where he could wash himself, relegating Gia to the corner of the room, where she sat on the grassy floor, meditating. She had on the customary grey tunic worn by all the women of the village, knee length, with a hood, and cinched at the waist with a cord of rope. Patsu watched her from the bath.

It was not strange for them to be naked around each other. Gia had bathed him a hundred times over by that point, and she would not ask Patsu to look away when she stripped each night before getting into bed. For that reason, it took a moment for Patsu to register what was happening when Gia stood, uncinched her tunic, and lifted it over her head, letting it fall to the ground behind her. As soon as it clicked in his mind that Gia was standing in the nude, looking at him from across the room with a blank but unwavering expression painted on her face, he felt his cock immediately swell beneath the surface of the water--his first erection in quite a long time. Reaching down with a hand, he touched it gingerly, feeling the head, stroking it a little.

He stopped when she stepped toward him, coming up to the very edge of the tub, hoisting herself up and over it, into the water, where she planted a foot down on either side of Patsu's pelvis, straddling him, hovering just above him in the water.

"I'm going to put you inside me now. Is that alright?" Gia asked, rather matter-of-factly, as if she were the doctor and he the patient.

"Yes. That's alright," was all Patsu could manage before Gia reached into the water and slipped him inside her, taking the full length of his cock all at once. Patsu gasped, gripping her thighs, feeling her muscles flex and contract to the motion of her body as it rocked back and forth. She had her arms wrapped around his neck, with her face buried in his chest, whimpering quietly in pleasure, sliding his cock in and out, in and out.

She did well to avoid touching too much of Patsu's still delicate skin, mostly floating in the water, only contacting him at the deepest point of her downward thrust, where her lips would brush up against the base of his pelvis. They kissed, and she bit his lip, turning him on even more. Patsu didn't know pain could be sexy like that. He added an especially hard thrust after she did it, making her squeal in delight. She had to cup her mouth with a hand to keep going. Her whimpers were becoming more like moans by the minute.

Patsu could feel the sensation growing with each thrust. It started at his crotch, before working its way up to his belly, where it pooled, increasing in size until it threatened to explode if they didn't cease.

Patsu placed a hand on Gia's hip, staying her, but keeping his dick inside her. She looked at him with wide doe eyes.

"Is something wrong?" she asked.

"No. Sorry. I'm going to finish," he said.

"Okay."

"What should I do?"

"Finish, if you must." she said, resuming her rocking motion.

Although Patsu had made himself orgasm before, none compared to the one he had there in that wooden tub. It was like an explosion of sensation, one that shrouded all other senses, and clouded his mind, so that all Patsu could do was squint his eyes from the pleasure of it and shoot his warm load deep into Gia's wetness. She still rode him, only more gently, coaxing out every drop, until Patsu felt he was thoroughly used up. He could feel his cock shrinking back to its limp state inside Gia.

Slipping him out of her, Gia extricated herself from the tub, toweled herself off, replaced her tunic, and went back to her meditation like nothing had happened. Patsu sank deeper into the warm water, wondering what it all meant.

Of course, at that time he didn't know about the casualness with which the village approached sex. Nor did he know that Gia had a vested interest in semen as a cure-all for indigestion, and other internal problems that plagued the vital organs. Perhaps it was because of his ignorance that he proceeded to pursue Gia, winning her over eventually, so that when Chief Olik offered her hand to him he readily agreed, knowing it was a well made match.

Rising from their bed of grass, Patsu pulled on his grey pants and gabardine and stepped out into the misty morning. His footsteps quieted by the mildewed grass, Patsu worked his way through the encampment--little more than a circle of huts with a more permanent longhouse at one end, which was boxier and raised on stilts--toward a clearing in the trees where his plane sat idly.

The bullet holes had proved easy enough to patch up, but sourcing the proper materials to fix some of the more technical elements had proved difficult. A year in recovery, then another six months spent trying to convince the chief to provide him with helpers. The chief did not understand what the hurry was, since Patsu's kingdom had surely been destroyed. Where did he wish to fly off to? Patsu had to explain to him how his plane was like an extension of himself, that if it were to remain destroyed he could not bear it. Besides, Patsu was itching to get up there again, to see the extent of the damage done to his father's kingdom. The chief granted his wish, providing him with two of the younger warriors from the village, and they'd been able to make progress, even establishing a small mining operation in the foothills east from which they extracted precious metals that had proved useful both for his airship and for the people of the village. Still, he had not succeeded in making his plane flight worthy.

After running through his daily inspection, Patsu set out for the mine. Both of the assistants were there already by the time he showed. He greeted them warmly and they went to work. At midday, Gia appeared with a basket of food and a leather pouch filled with sweet wine. She and Patsu sat out in the overgrown grass, eating and drinking, kissing the purple droplets that hung on one another's lips. His two assistants called out they would be going back down, and Patsu said he would join them in a moment.

When they were gone, Gia removed her hood, her red hair glowing like flames in the afternoon sun. She took Patsu into her mouth right there in the open field--her head stroking back and forth as his swelling cock tickled the back of her throat. He came into her mouth and she swallowed. Patsu was all too happy to supply Gia with her daily medicine.

The final mold was cast that evening, and was cool enough by nightfall to snap into place--the last piece of the puzzle. Patsu climbed into the cockpit, shaking with anticipation, his disappointment palpable when he turned the ignition to find nothing happened. Something was still very wrong. He sighed, feeling defeated.

Trudging back to his hut, Patsu looked up at a shooting star, marveling at its glow, and the fact that it seemed to streak across the sky in perpetuity, before he realized it was not a star, but a plane drawing ever nearer.

It was about time, Patsu thought.