The Exchange 5: Trust
#5 of The Exchange
Flower dream, dancers, swirling for millennia.
She shook her head, stepping daintily but deliberately onto another branch. Her ears flicked, a small voice in a chorus of this place. Creaks, hisses and pops came subtly from everywhere. Beneath these flashes of sound, an ocean of leaves sighed in the balmy wind. And beneath that, the subtle sounds of a uniquely alive forest could be heard. A chorus of hissing gills rose and fell, the breaths of creatures that were more animate than plants, but not the kin of animals. Stoma-bound eyes opened and took in the world, then shut before they could dry out in the open air. The part of her living in the sensory world of that forest heard it from everywhere at once. But to her mortal ears, there was infinite depth in this seemingly unmoving, unsinging place.
Sky wind gods, green canopy sunlight.
These images nagged at her. A dream of her future, she was sure. Or, perhaps some association-triggered memory. This place she sought out stirred up legions of recollection from within Us. It was heavy with them like a massive iceberg in the middle of the open sea.
Her top hung loose, as had become her habit. The breeze on her sternum was a welcome break from the hot, humid sun rays that stung her skin. Her short, fallow white fur formed a heart shape below her shoulders, bowed outward by her teardrop curves. Khaki fabric rested on her chest, occasionally brushing her peaks. Somehow, her perkiness had conspired with the suddenness of her bodily changes so that her nipples were perched slightly upward on the curve of her breasts rather than downward as she might have expected with the weight behind them. Their pink and black marbled forms pointed proudly ahead of her, once more eager for the contact they'd been so exclusively and regularly given.
Her shoulders were relaxed under the burden of the satchel she'd improvised form her khaki shorts. The knotted fabric bulged with succulent fruits. Muscles flexed beneath the new curve of puppy fat across her stomach and hips. She imagined she looked an odd creature indeed - even to other chimeras like herself. Nimble and lithely built but gently fattened. Elegant and agile but oddly proportioned. It was likely a testament to her athletic skill and reflexes that she was so unaffected by the redistribution of some of her weight to her hips and awkward, proud breasts.
There was a flash of pink and black flesh as she leapt again and spread her thighs to better cut drag. In a back pocket of her improvised satchel, ivory white, silky fabric was carelessly rumpled and forgotten. What use were clothes when you were alone with so many of your selves?
No one could judge her, even as she walked a narrow branch, the puckering line of her sex writhing in and out of clear visibility beneath the V of white fur that formed her loins. The curve of her hips tapered down to her dainty, ever attentive hooves. They dug against bark, searching carefully for purchase as she walked.
With no clothes hindering her, her senses sharpened. The wind on her naked hips augmented the wind through the branches she could now feel outside of her dreams. Her jumps became superhumanly accurate. She was more likely to fall from a subtle failure of balance, a mistep while walking, than she was to miss a jump. So she began to wean herself from walking and retreat into the known, suddenly palpable quantities and variables of ballistics.
***
The jumps were getting easier now. She'd always had powerful legs, but the gravity on this planet was only four meters a second. Compared to the spin on a station, she was practically floating.
Perhaps flying.
The wind rushed across her as she sailed downward, arms cutting through the air. Her hooves caught the bough and skittered noisily. She spread out the shock of the impact, taking a knee, then landing on her hand. The blue sun sat, yellowing as it touched the horizon. Errant shafts of light penetrated the treeline, casting gold rays through the damp, cool air.
The gravity here was only two-thirds of standard, but she could still feel the ballast she'd gained across her frame. She twisted her foot against the tree, trying to work out an annoyingly persistent kink.
As she paused, her eyes caught a great shadow in the distance. It rose behind the trees like a smoking mountain. It was a great barrow of shadow, haloed in yellow-white by the setting sun. Finding the specific place where she was going wasn't so easy as searching through her manifold mind. Us didn't know itself well, so finding that place would be like catching an intact raindrop in a rainstorm.
But that.... Something had to be it, whatever it was. The image of the place brought flashes of alien memory.
Tinkling metal. Friends, adventurers. Acolytes, geneticists...
She shook her head, her ears flitting in irritation. What was that?
She chuffed, focusing on her travels and adjusted her next jump so that she rocketed off toward that great, shadowy mesa.
***
She surfaced above the canopy. The sun was a yellow smear in the sky, its light dispersed by the water rich atmosphere from over the horizon.
It seemed that that massive mountain hadn't been one at all. Firstly; it was far too green and, secondly it was made of wood. Calling it a tree, though, would be missing the point. There were so many, twisting amongst each other like dancers. It rose above her, great gouts of leaves big enough to be tiny forests in their own right shadowed the treetrunks below.
Heart Tree.
That was the name that sprang to mind, though not entirely to hers. That was her best interpretation of the memories, the agelessness. This was the oldest growth still standing on the entire planet.
Of all things, birds flew between the great boughs, ducking under the water falling in foggy ribbons from great forests of bromiliads. They reminded her of the Yardbirds from her old home ship. Save that they were not black and did not caw at each other. Instead, they were a brilliant, ocean blue and they twittered like thinking computers.
A flock of white ones, perched like an audience in a theater, let out a soft chorus of mournful coos. There was so much color here, so much diversity. There was a real, moving ecosystem. Or, at least one that moved out of absolute necessity of survival. Like her, they were aliens on this terrestrial land.
Somewhere up the winding, inclined trunks, she saw a great boil of yellow. Flowers, very large, very bright ones. That had to be it for sure.
***
This high up, the breeze had become an insistent gust. Yet still she did not lose her grip.
The handholds were plentiful and the climb was safe, if not easy. She had made seemingly inhuman progress at first. It was a turn of luck that this place had such low gravity, but also that there could be trees as tall as skyscrapers. She supposed that balanced things out. Perhaps if she'd grown up here, she would have been taller like the trees.
Maybe if she'd been taller, she might have gotten to her destination by now. Maybe she wouldn't have been contemplating turning around somehow so that she could rest her shoulders. She felt exhausted, and her burden had only grown as she climbed. Now she had to hold back to avoid pressing herself against the tree. Given her sensitivity that could have very unpredictable consequences.
However, just as she was about to make her attempt, she felt something reach under her shoulders and lift her from the branch. Two powerful feelers flexed under her weight, turning her away from the tree. She imagined that panic would have thundered through her in a situation like this. But these two aliens weren't alien at all anymore. She felt the thoughts behind their actions; protect her.
Something shifted between her legs and pressed at her folds. She shivered with surprise as a narrow, snakelike tongue lapped up and down her entrance, grazing a nubbin of flesh that had just barely made itself known.
Her breathing grew hasty and her hips began to swing in the open air, exaggerating the tongue's movement. It worked earnestly, and she spread in response like an emerging spring flower. It slowly burrowed into her entrance, parting her shamelessly and without extra effort.
She felt herself gently lowered by the feelers under her arms and her hooves skittered for purchase. She huffed as she slid over a sudden widening at the base of the tongue writhing inside her. Her wet lips accommodated it easily, but she wasn't prepared for the pleasure it brought her. Her gasp was urgent and full of surprise. But then she felt it fattening within her, suddenly stopping her short of being deeply filled.
She moaned as it expanded against her. The weight of it pressing into her became a gentle outward force and, when she came to, the tentacles that had supported her were gone.
There was a wet, slurping pop as two succulent feelers burst from puckered knotholes in the old bark to either side of her stomach. She yelped as they nonchalantly curved upward and squeezed her nipples into their small, puckering mouths.
They sucked eagerly, fattening with her fluids and making a sharply audible, burbling squelch as they ground against her flesh. Her voice caught noisily at the back of her throat in a sound that might have, for a moment, been indignation. But the surprise of the moment had made her feel the pleasure at her bosom all the more sharply.
She relaxed into their rhythmic suckling. Her fluids hissed against their massaging mouths, eager to free her from her extra weight. As she relaxed, she fell deeper onto the length, now throbbing inside of her, but seemingly only there to keep her anchored.
Another feeler emerged from below. It slid past her swollen folds and over her soft stomach, then pressed between her breasts and peeked out from between her valley. Now falling into a familiar ritual, she hunched her muzzle downward and kissed its soft tip. It was thoughtlessly allowed into her lips' embrace and there began its gentle work.
As she ran her tongue tenderly up and down its base, it poured sweet nectar into the back of her mouth. It was warm on her inner surfaces, tingling as she swallowed. Almost immediately, comforting heat bloomed outward from her core. Her shoulders loosened to the point of almost feeling lighter than air. She floated in her own world and felt herself shimmey deeper onto the length anchoring her.
Pinned against the tree by the feelers milking her, her mind fell into the arms of the forest.
The throbbing of the lengths inside her grew intense as she began to dream. They moved in lockstep with her heartbeat, pressing against her insides precisely when she was most sensitive. She felt everything as her senses of sight and hearing fell into the background. All the while, she was drained through her throbbing nipples, happy to be relieved and to be kissed so tenderly.
The world outside moved quickly compared to her dream world. Snatches of understanding caressed her. The sun had gone down. She knew this because the forest eyes saw no light. The mouths sucked and drew out nothing, then gave a final, squelching pull, squeezing her gently for her last drop.
She dropped into a sudden, twitching and silent climax. She knew this because she'd seen her body twist in its bonds and her hooves scratch against the tree, driven by her blind ecstacy. Now she was tenderly massaged.
Memories trickled inward from the forest. A story congealed, forming like snowfall on a hill. Bit by bit, the pieces came together. Flatmorphs that looked distorted. They teemed everywhere. Inside crude, glass towers, driving primitive, rolling metal cages. Ages and ages, slowly boiling over. Complex rockets, then simpler ones, then legions of them. Robots everywhere, crisscrossing space...
She was pressed deep into the mouths, who had begun to draw from her again. Their cadence started off softly, but grew slowly with each draw. Her fingers dug into the bark as the noise of their labor rose. It seemed like she'd been teased for scarcely an hour before she let down again. She was milked and preened, teased to ever greater heights as the night went on and she slept in their embrace.
The sun touched her eyes and she found herself in a familiar place. She whimpered as she felt the sucking, gentle tug of the feelers on top of her. Sensing her wakefulness, they began to twist their textured insides over her. She hardened in their grasp, pressing deeper into them before...
They sucked and writhed against her. Her eyes shot open and she flattened against the tree. They gripped down and slid slowly down her length, revealing her blushing skin as they carefully wrung her. She lost track of herself in the pleasure, just as she expected a peak, they pulled further and feeling grew in her like a ball of snow rolling down a hill. It was as if her body were being induced into this behavior, that it was somehow unnatural, that-
The feelers popped from her and the growing tension sprang. She went limp, even her throat formed bestial noises that were her only outlet for what she felt in that instant. She quivered, her tunnel loosening its grip on the length holding her upright.
The feelers that had so occupied her breasts wrapped over her arms and lifted. The length shimmered with her juices, sliding from her as if she were a silken gown.
She hung, robbed of stimuli, and breathed. It was enough just trying to relax. She expected her body to be worn out and overstrung after such a sudden wake up call, but her muscles were relaxed and responsive. So much so that she was able to swing free on one hand and set herself in another handhold without a second thought.
The feelers recoiled from her retreating shoulders, startled by her sudden exit.
She mouthed a kiss at them and continued her ascent in earnest. She felt powerful and alive. The rainstorm had tested her, this was all proof she'd passed.
***
She leaned against the tree, her front hunched over the bark. There was an audible lapping and the guzzling of sucking lips beneath her. She hunched forward, driving her breasts against the tree and into the soft mouths easing her burden. It had become an itch, a prime urge. It seemed like every hour she had to release.
She would climb until she grew exhausted and her bosom ached. Somewhere, she would find a pair of the tree's myriad, multipurpose stomas. They were a saving grace, her only lifeline, even though they endeavored to suck her dry every time the two of them met.
These were no different. They sucked at her hungrily, and she knew that this pattern of drinking her dry, then allowing her burden to return had a purpose. She was being prepared for a final encounter. Her body was being attuned, producing as it hadn't ever done during her travels. And, she liked it that way because she knew something at the top of this tree wanted that part of her. And the part of her that wanted to grow closer to this mysterious being and experience its aliveness wanted earnestly to give. She would give as much as she could, because she realized she was the first woman in a long time that had given over her bounty to it. Us was unique among sentients, and she felt she was doing her part in somehow preserving it.
So she let the mouths drain her dry, as had already happened three times that day. She was thankful for the kneading massage they offered her as some acknowledgment of her effort.
***
At one point on the great tree of trees, two of its member's trunks crossed, one over and perpendicular to the other. It was up the lower that she placed her last handhold and pulled herself up onto the comparably level, contorted trunk. It was a tree of ages, clefts full of soil and small, weedy plantlife that formed its own tiny forest.
At the center of that forest, a gigantic, green bud was partway open and slowly expanding. At its center, two rings of bowl-shaped petals were unfurling. They were a vivid yellow, like the dandelions she loved as a child and played at eating. Her face lit up at the thought. It was her favorite color!
She approached shamelessly, hopping on her lithe hooves. The petals were as thick as they were large, and slipping through them without damaging their structure was easy. They hid at their center a ruddy, leathery surface that was yielding but firm under her fingers like a fat aloe leaf.
She lowered herself onto it, settling her posterior there and splaying her legs over the small, inner ring of petals. As she let her head fall back on the silky surface, she saw above a similarly yellow flower coming from the other tree. It was shaped like a gigantic snapdragon, opening toward the great forest ahead and below.
The forest in the distance was laid out before her gaze as if in miniature. All around, the tops of smaller trees were awash with the gentle streamers of rainwater escaping their massive boughs. Stormclouds made small by distance sheeted water across the treescape.
And beneath her, something stirred.
Two lonely feelers rose from the flower. They were narrow and succulent green. They ended in a bell of fragile yellow petals that opened before her eyes. They advanced cautiously, and the sight of them hovering over her nipples, suddenly standing atop her bosom like fat, pointing fingers, brought memories that weren't her own.
Race memories from the great tree's past hosts flooded her mind. Many other flowers, generations worth of blooms. Great seasons between lovers, each loved as much as the last. A gently rounded woman with developed curves sat in the lotus position at the center of a white flower. Tiny glowing orbs encircled her in the darkness of night, hovering, automated drones keeping her way in the sacred rite. Her piebald black and white belly rose and fell in hurried gasps.
The flower feelers kissed the tips of her teats and, across time, the two women shared a moment of surprise. Such gentle, fragile flowers hid in their midst such firm mouths . And they drank, drawing the flesh they'd encompassed deeper into their tender grasp.
In the present, she arched backward, reclining onto the flower's petals. The contact was welcome now - no, needed. She'd been drained so often now that her body was used to replenishing her. Her breasts were larger than they'd ever been, blushing and almost agitated with their own need to be taken care of.
She groaned in the grasp of the mouths, relieved to be unburdened but caught up and squirming within the intense stimulation and ache rippling through her breasts. She saw countless others in a troubled fever dream of intersecting memories. This mammalian feeling had been experienced so much here. Countless other blooms, countless other women. And further still, she also felt an end to her temporary discomfort.
Her mind drifted as she slowly let down into the plant, leaving her body to its own devices. She was propelled by the forest's mind, away from her fatigue and unsettling fullness. New feelers emerged as her eyes looked placidly skyward. Their embrace was like the arms of a dozen careful lovers as they wrapped over her gently rounded form.
Her eyes took in the misty, water-fat clouds above, wreathing the bountiful leaves of the ancient trees. And, dominating her view, the snapdragon-looking flower above watched over her, unmoving.
And the last signal of the outside world that captured her attention was the insistent gurgle of the mouths as they slowly drained her.
And a familiar presence guided her down the branches of association. She saw through the forest's eyes the gentle breathing of the sleeping, equimorph maiden. Four feelers suckled from her soft bosom, latched onto her peculiar, dual duets of vertically arranged nipples, two to a breast. The gold and jadeware she wore clinked with the subtle movement of the feelers pistoning against her breasts, drawing her deeper into their embrace. What she wore might have been called clothes in another time, but it seemed to specifically leave bare the areas most people tended to cover up. Her stomach was covered in ornate gold and jade, carefully crafted with arcane patterns and inlaid with the telltale bubble lenses of camera sensors. Her breasts were bare above the almost clothing, covered in very thin fur and blushing pink in the moonlight.
Her breath was easy, but an occasional stutter served as a reminder that she was in the quiet throes of something wonderful. But, as if the feeler's had recognized the third presence within the memory, watching the woman as she bonded with the forest, they slid from her. Four livid, engorged points of flesh stood upward atop the woman's soft bosom. Their pink and grey piebald skin began to upwell with droplets of pearly fluid, like dew in the night.
And the memory fled like a dream in the morning.
And her awareness merged into another forest from centuries past, but something demanded her attention in the real world.
She flexed forward, her muscles suddenly pulling her upright as gentle, hollow tongues swept back and forth inside her tunnel. An orgasm sparked inside her, bringing reality cracking back into focus.
And she realized her eyes were closed. It felt like an eternity had passed, but the sun was still high in the sky as if it had been a scarce dozen minutes. The feelers that embraced her coaxed her forward and the firm mouths released her breasts from their grasp.
She was like the woman in the dream. Two long, pink and gray piebald teats swayed beneath her breasts, hanging below her as she was brought to her hands and knees. She was sluggish, partly because she'd been suddenly roused from a deep stupor, but also because of the barely-abated load swinging beneath her. The discomfort of it pressed even harder at her sensitive teats, fattening as they began to dribble milk.
Two nimble tongues swiped over her, caressing her engorged peaks, drawing away the collection of pearly droplets flowing down their surface. The miniscule fluid fell down the slithering, dayglow red tongue toward its source. The puckering, sucker-lipped mouth wrapped over itself and swept the droplets into its maw. Yellow suckers covered its tubular inner walls. Around it, succulent red feelers were lined on the inside with a forest of tiny rings, each forming tiny fingers that twitched in the daylight. The mouths at the center of each ring puckered inward, tasting the air as the feeler rose.
It's starfish like feelers opened wide as it moved in lockstep with its twin. Each bloomed beneath her and slowly reached its arms upward. They moved like single-minded beings, each finding ample space on which to latch their legions of tiny mouths like the arms of an octopus hanging form her. One wrapped over the tip of her peak, another unfurled down its length like an overfat grub on a leaf. Five limbs to each curled inward and pressed their surfaces to taste her.
The tiny hands covering each feeler gathered her up, each massaging her and sucking hard at her blushing skin. She cried out, arching forward and pressing her chest lower into their orgy of feeding . Their ends fattened with her milk. They slithered for purchase over her, the struggle of their many lips audible on her flesh.
The effort of feeding hundreds of mouths robbed her of her senses and thoughts. She shuddered as they slackened their grip. Their rippling, muscular yet fragile surfaces bulged with her bounty. Each wrestled for a moment as if they'd forgotten their purpose after so many dormant eons. They resolved themselves and, with a resounding, audible gulp, swallowed. Her outflow gurgled down their lengths, tracing its travel with a telltale fattening that pulsated downward. When the movement reached the mouth at their center, it puckered almost orgasmically, curling inward and spasming as it swallowed.
Their lips sucked like a host of revelers come to feast. She hosted them willingly and filled them with an earnest mewl. The mouths were legion upon her, grinding into her flesh and slurping noisily. The next came soon after the first, until each feeler tending to her breast was a wave of rippling motion, taking her milk in great swallows.
She retreated further into the contact, sighing and shameless like an animal as she flowed earnestly into her lover. She lost track of reality again as the memories began to flood in.
Deeper into association, downward to the tree. She felt the pulsing flow of the prime genome, the ancient sequences that led to sentience and synchronicity within the many singular units of Us. Here, life grew symbiotically from the unique compounds given by the willing hosts. Countless women embraced and tenderly suckled as had been for so long now. A dependency that inflated the numbers of Us, increased the depth of his thoughts. His raw computational power grew. And the humans communed inside their shared noosphere, full of Us, connected in the flower dream.
Humans.
They were like ortho-morphs, but their skin wasn't obsidian black, nor could it shift and suddenly become pearly white to reflect heat. They were colors like river sand. Dark brown, almost purple, orange-frocked white, mocha. Their subtle diversity was astounding. They were so unlike the hyper-adapted, cosmetic differences of the creature-morphs or the pure perfection of the transcends.
Their innovations bloomed before her. A city full of water rose from the desert. A lone rocket cut through the midnight clouds, riding atop a brilliant sunburst of light...
And then she remembered the intense pleasure as she flowed into the feelers and her eyes found the tree below, lit by the fiery red light of dusk cutting through a water-rich atmosphere. She was floating... no, she was suspended.
New feelers were wrapped around her limbs. They were fat, spongey and featureless until the drooling bloom partway to their ends, where rosy red flesh rippled and pulsed. One nestled its blunt, arrowlike tip into her open, dainty hand. Its surface was peppered with tiny nubbins.
She gently closed her fingers over it. It shivered eagerly in her grasp as she planted her thumb against the hole at its very tip. The shivers grew to a frenzy, then lengthened out into pulses of movement. Amber-orange liquid rushed against her finger and fell downward in great gouts.
Even though her eyes had closed in the darkness, she wasn't surprised when one of the lengths slithered against her tongue and spread her mouth wide. She accepted its gift and swallowed the sweet liquid. Her throat worked in earnest to quench its flow.
She yelped through her mouthful as the mouths detached. Her flesh throbbed in the open air deprived of contact, but only for a few scarce moments. Dozens of honeylike streams sprayed her bare flesh from all directions, coming from as many rosy heads, writhing as they sprayed over her flesh.
She cried out from the intensity of her sudden, throbbing sensitivity. Then the feelers reached forward and encircled her peaks.
Above the writhing, grinding orgy of movement, she watched a wreath of smoky precipitation grow in the global weather of that long dead planet stranded in time. It shifted. Drought expanded the deserts, hurricanes ripped across the coasts, then the ice came.
Brave souls in engineered bodies ventured forth. Their silky pelts saved them from the end of the short interglacial period. They wandered snowscapes trapping water decades old and there was no yearly thaw. And the archivists measured the marigolds and preserved the lines.
She throbbed beneath the lengths massaging her flesh, no longer aching with their fullness, but hungering for more contact. Her stomach was full with the sweet evenness of nectar, subtly bulging outward into a fuller curve. Rosy feelers rubbed over her belly. They swept through her fur, leaving a golden orange patina in their wake. They lavished her entire body, massaging away the soreness of her ascent and replacing it with tingling, sparking ease.
For the second time since she undertook her long ascent, sleep enfolded her.
It had been a century after the ice and Homo Sapiens was extinct. Their children clung sentimentally to earth for a very long time. They sifted the wreckage of their cities. Old, skeletal shadows groaning under the weight of so much ice and snow.
She became a dashing, tomboyish looter, raiding the old territories of the dead nations protected by vestigial armies. There was nothing to defend but memories. Her gold fur was hidden behind black, plastic diving goggles and a flowing, beige parka. She was a leomorph, but it felt primal, inhuman, unstable. She was an ur-line -- a prototype. Her animal nature fought her intelligence, and she tried to keep her own history and intellect as her instincts told her how to survive.
And she walked endlessly through the snowblind. Her problems were direct. Survival, combat, hunting. Many a morning began with her prone, stalking a spidery strider hare - a simple animal that had adapted in time to save itself from the ice - with the scope of her salvaged, Russian Federation Army surplus pulse rifle.
Bang. The hare rolled over, a spray of crimson on the otherwise pristine snow. She apologized to the winter giants for her affront to their domain.