The Turning Day Before The Ritual
The beginning of a long story that may never be completed. This was the beginning necessary before the plan I had to write something more chilling, extreme, and meaningful. Having written this beginning, I am absent the need to write more. The ritual may be written, it may not. The punishment may be written, and it may not. The aftermath may be written, and it may not. This is a story of a coming of age right in an unknown, unseen tribe of otters. A young boy learns how to masturbate.
As he reached an age approaching that of a man, determined by the elders, the young otter began to receive private lessons to prepare him for his ritual. The ritual takes place behind walls of plants tended to be impenetrable. Tall, thick grasses, thorns and brambles, and woody vines form a wall. Before the wall, long, tall, imposing leaves droop down. They can scarcely be touched without rustling. They can scarcely be touched without their great weight tearing at their stems. The morning dew, even on dry days, drips in a steady beat into puddles below them. The plants are never seen to be tended by gardeners, but they fill a social role like stern guards. They say nothing, they do nothing, but none can look at them for more than a moment without knowing there are consequences.
Noise comes from within the ceremony grounds. The young and old are shushed or scolded to speak of anything that happens there, but it is allowed to playfully call them gods. Myths and fables are encouraged. Now and then, groups of laughing old men play the wrinkles on their faces in remembrance. Great tragedy is soothed with soft stories. Great joy is tempered with stories of consequence.
The otters live alone in a dense jungle. They have no knowledge of where they are relative to any other people. The entire world is centered on their jungle, and all outsiders are monsters painted on the edges of sailor's maps. It is not uncommon for stories of wolves, dogs, jaguars and such to be told as stories of leviathan, mermaids, or terrible golems.
In each lesson, the young otter was set before a low table with cups of tea and meager offerings of food. Sometimes spoiled biscuits. Sometimes fresh fruit. Sometimes the meal appears to be scraps from some other person's dinner. On one occasion there was a bowl filled with mess - like slop for feral hogs or the result of bedridden illness. The otter is paired with people he knows, but within the long hut and while eating and drinking, they seem like strangers. Each of them enjoys the food and tea as though it were cakes and ale. They consume it gladly, eagerly, with rapt hunger but polite restraint. They appear to show no regard for the young otter's concern or revulsion.
In the village, none wear clothes. The young otter had played as young folk do. He knew a little of the coy and the mature - a little of the profane and the holy. Coming of age, as he had been told he was doing, had filled him with curiosity and unrest he was not familiar with. In these private moments, the rules of discourse seemed bent. His company seemed unreal, drinking sick like soup, and slurping tea like sweet fermented liquor. Their eyes swam and their words flowed like poetry. The whole room had a sickly sweet smell like lavender and honey. Nothing seemed to be disallowed.
His curiosity was a bed of coals, and here the village paraded the very young, very old, the men, women, and his peers before him. There was no signal to look away. There was no regard for his arousal. He couldn't tell why they dropped leaves over his coals and blew like bellows to inflame him. At first, he was polite. After some visits, he was open as they. He smiled as he grew erect. He looked down at his member and across at the supple breasts of young mothers. He walked the valleys and hills of strong chests - the men who climbed trees for honey and fruit. He grew faint seeing the subtle shift of the young women - their bodies like flowers on the edge of bloom. To them he felt a madness. It was to them, first, that he found the use of his hand in this strange ritual.
He prodded at his manhood in curious depression among the old men and women. Their bodies were no less wise or beautiful. He had seen all of these things out in the open. It was to study the bodies compared to his which brought him to a void of confusion. All brought him to different passion and curiosity but the very old. To them he found bravery to ask what to do and what was real. After months of strange food and stranger company, with the absence of any law or order, he asked the oldest woman he had ever met - a woman he was not sure he had ever seen - what to do with the fire that burned in him when he looked too carefully at a body that made his pecker stiff and his heart skip many beats. She cackled without any fear of being overheard in the more sacred spaces outside this hut - this heaven and hell - purgatory and vortex. She laughed as though she spoke another language - as though she were an animal or monster like the outsiders.
"You touch it, young man. Play with yourself. You'll love it, trust me. It is life's joy."
"Can I do it now? Will you show me?"
She laughed again. Her breasts hung to her belly button. She had tattoos and paint covering her body from a time before the current age. They told stories he couldn't interpret. Her crotch was fully covered in long, slightly discolored fur. Her face was the warmest and most beautiful tapestry of bitter joy he had ever seen. She must have ate a diet only of sweet lemon bars dipped in honey and shaman's breath - the most refined of all the tribe's liquor.
The old woman thought for a moment. She swallowed all the tea she had left and took a huge bite of stale biscuit. She leapt up and fell upon the table with one paw to support herself. It was at the same time terrifying and graceful. Her breasts swung like a parody of youth and vigor, but her action was so strange and perfected that the young boy was arrested - his mind shut down entirely like she had cast a spell.
With her free paw she snatched at the boy's paw and immediately let it go. She then grabbed his sheath firmly. She jerked off his unerect member through the soft fur, gripping tightly at the base and drawing it out. The child was still frozen. He was still confused. He had no thought at all, but in her form he found no arousal. She was, though, very wise and practiced. She brought him harder than he had ever been. Before he even became so, though, his hips shook like the earth was falling apart. He came hard all over her paw and she cackled again, now caught up in the joy of the moment rather than the rush of the broken laws to show him what to do. He produced but a tiny dab of pearly white. It spread itself in a cute little line along her forearm. She continued just a little longer, having expected even the demonstration to take longer, but then as unexpectedly as she sprang into action she popped back to a seated position. With one quick lap of her tongue she cleaned up his mess.
The young man looked down in awe. His cock was hard. His passion was not abated. Immediately he thought only of the young and the adults. He dreamed of the forms of their bodies and the movements of their faces. He wanted nothing but to feel this in their company. He slowly placed his paw around his aching shaft. He wanted more. He wanted that again and he wanted it now. His fist, wrapped around that pole, felt as natural as the sun rising and the moon peaking down through clear blue skies. This was nature, he thought. He is now a man, and the world has unfolded. The soft and delicate flowers have bloomed. The mighty oak now told him stories. The tall trees were his to climb, and the strong climbers were his to hold, to bury his face in their carved chests - to drape himself over their broad shoulders.
He idly stroked himself for a time he couldn't be pressed to reveal. Time had no meaning. When he looked up, the old woman was drinking more tea. He had no idea the tea could be refilled. He had no idea how she was able to drink more. In the past, when the tea was gone, the meeting was over. Here she extended her stay. Who was this woman? Was she a god?
The old woman was smiling softly as she watched him masturbate slowly and with profound ignorance. Who was this child, so blank, so bereft of real wisdom of the body and the soul.
The young man stopped, unable to move his paw for very long or with much skill. He didn't know why he ached for more, why his hand didn't feel like hers, or what to do. He felt amazing, but he knew it was tacky to walk in public so eager for either the profane or the holy. He would elicit giggles and sharp glances. He waited in his ignorance and drank tea. His cup was refilled as well. They didn't speak, but they drank together.