vOYAGE: O’SIDE
Francis X. Kroncke
Copyright 2015, Francis X. Kroncke
PART 1: DARLM
HOME!
Frak’s hands cup the world as he had once known it. Back then, all that he knew did fill his hands—the sun setting, the sky surrounding it, the fire seething as the sun extinguishes at land’s edge, the breeze, now cool, cooler as the darkling shadows grow. Back then, in his hands he did hold all that he feared and which he loved; he smiles wistfully.
Frak settles into this unhurried blanketing of night’s shadow—no longer sounded and felt as shad. He is acutely aware that it is no longer shad. For a moment, this is a triumphant awareness, his muscles tighten and feel good, yet, even as his mind addresses and hails the night’s darkening shadows so does the image of shad sound deeply within—ancient tremor and dread.
Shad: Night-shadow—it comes as a cloak. It covers his eyes. It consumes him. But Frak is no longer tremulous and afraid of this, this blackening of his sight. For now, upon his return, he knows well the stars—which are no longer harj. Not only the stars as faithful night lights, though dim as they may be at times, but as markers, guides on his wandering. For when he travelled, he learned about map and came to know that the stars changed over time, as did the trees and grass and flowers, and with these once baffling changes so has his mind grown, transformed—become what his kin call big. Back then, he had at first receded from shad. Had hid—drawn his thick forearm across his eyes to blot out the unknown and imminently dangerous stars—harj beasts of the shad. Now he not only knows them as guides—respects them, but welcomes them more so because they remain reliably constant, and it is a constancy which comforts him. Here, knowing that with this darkness descending right now—as with all daily darkness—a constant set of stars stand ready to guide him—Safely!—to horizon’s end. The stars above him are new guides yet old familiars, for he has been here before—back then, these were stars he had often waited for with uncertain anticipation, a touch of dread. Now he knows that the sky will always change, and that it is a sky changing as it is a land changing—knowing now, the land as ever-changing.
The ever-changing land and sky. Once grasped, this thought birthed a new point of reference. Frak now knowing differently what his people still call the no-no, because his eyes have seen what his kin have never seen—this ever-changing land and sky. But he doesn’t dwell on that, not at least at this point. This moment, taut with expectation, he is lifting up in his mind’s eye the familiar images evoked by the land under his feet. Fields of tall grain, thick and waving when the hot season cools; seas of lush grasses all about him. Wherever he walks, rolling fields and sweet-sipping lakes—lakes whose wet is so unlike the shad wet upon which he had one day set—big wet, now known as sea and ocean. Never like that. No, in his mind’s eye he surveys the familiar landscape, strokes with his hands the rolling hills, his arms caressing them. Ah, with his tongue he licks the lake's sweet-sipping wet, kneels down as he remembers himself having done a thousand times and laps at the cool water, sips and sucks into his mouth the feel of life. He is imagining how inside himself the coolness and the taste slither down his throat and into his belly and pools—Ah!
Within a breath all these sensations wondrously radiate such a sense of fullness that Frak rubs his stomach: one, twice, three times heartily round and round. Rubs and feels deeply content—happy and smiling.
"Home!"
Home is Darlm.
CHAPTER 1
The day Frak left the land—appearing in his mind as the shad of Brok thick upon his plate of food—he squatting and eating, observing the shad slowly creep up across his plate. Looking up as his food is covered by Brok’s shad and eyeing Brok—he blocking the sun at mid-day. Frak squinting to make out Brok’s full form—not taller than him, not as muscular, so not an imminent threat. He, Frak, not taller than most, not as muscular as many, but always an imminent threat. Brok is instantly sensed as no threat because Frak sees the kin markings: big harj big's fearsome tooth, drawn on the hides of Brok's shoulder cape. Frak continues to squat, fingering more food into his mouth, showing no fear. Brok stands five steps away, head haloed by the midday sun—beams of light glinting off his fiery-red hair, which appears sun-rimmed, thick curls which throb with sun-flare and a golden glint so brightly that it stops Frak in mid-bite. Left hand lifted halfway, mouth dropped to snag the food.
“Come!”
Brok invites and Frak follows—rises as the terse but booming sound fills him, reaches out from that inner part of Brok—his grok of courage, command...this which draws Frak’s respect, his instinctive obedience. Yet ever on guard, Frak keeps a safe distance as he follows.
Frak follows Brok to the land’s edge and the big harj wet. He has been here many times before, but only to wade into the big wet and feel the surge of its ebbing coolness. At times, to step cautiously but boldly out to where he could stand on tiptoe—farther than anyone else would venture...call to the others, “Naw harj!” But they did not follow. He waded a bit further out but not too far, for he sensed that the big wet was its own harj creature—one which liked him, which pleasured him, but one which was not to be tested too far. Like the feared big harj big, there was that safe distance in which to stand tall and bellow, rise up high and wave one’s arms, stand tall and shout and jump and have the beast stand tall, shake its head—snarl and bare its teeth and growl. Yes, there was the respectful distance—not to be violated, not to push beyond—where the beast would stop standing and charge. Frak knows this distance well. Knows it as few of his kin ever do, and he revels in the joy of confronting the big harj big. Joy because it always makes the youngest females delight in him, come to him at night and stroke his chest, touch him and then invite him to venture into their harj wet, to penetrate into the misty pleasure between their legs. These females—most yet feral of eye and desire—were like a cool breeze on a hot day. They would come unto him and wildly chase away the clatter of thoughts he had about the day. Harj thoughts laced with fear, worries about security, about gathering food, about finding a new camp. Giggling they would come—sit and kneel before him. He would stand and growl like the big harj big—curl his lips and bare his teeth, prowl about, roar. As he'd reenact the deathly encounter, they would cower, some scamper and run away, especially when he slipped on the fearsome big harj big mask—true gnashing teeth, slashing at them. Most would curl up, nestle together, and giggle some more. Then, as Frak craved, they would disconcert him with a shy smile, a coy wink—seductive with a guileless desire which teasingly licks him and invites him, hypnotizes him, enchants. In he would float, off to a realm of sweet delights, licking them and pawing them and hoisting himself upon their moons, sweet flesh of their pale asses, hoist himself and with strokes like hacking a tree he’d lose himself in inexpressible moments until he lost awareness of where he was, of who he was and fall, collapse, drop like a rock, crash like the speared hurx into a thorn bush...plump down beside them. Frak would be heaving breaths from his chest, feeling like he had burst and exploded all that was within him into them—finding himself simply exhausted, so weak and groggy, without images or words or anything—he sleeps.
Such happens after Frak dances with the big harj big.
“Come!"
Frak stands next to Brok at land’s edge. There, the most awesome of sights confronts him, scares him more than the big harj big. Yet Brok approaches it without fear, as if it were not shad or harj. Frak does not know what kind of beast it is—unlike any big harj big it sits there upon the big wet, letting Brok's kin crawl all over it! It’s a beast of such size that he has never met. A threat in such a form he has never confronted. A big big big creature—deeper and longer—deeper of belly than any beast he has ever slain, longer than any big
ssss! he has ever fled. So odd, so queer that no image rises in Frak’s mind. Brok's big big big—deeper and longer with a neck curved and a head at once so fearsome but fascinating, so flight-shuddering that Frak only holds himself still because Brok does not flee. Brok motions to Frak to follow him—to walk towards this harj big big big! One with a head with ears like the bat but a long flaring narx. Yet all this just nothing as distracting as its hypnotizing orx—huge yellow-orange eyes. Most fearsome because they do not move, appear to be dead as if stone—but like no rok Frak has ever seen, ever touched, ever thrown. All this and dreadfully more—strange sticks: big ars protrude from down its belly and from it head and sides.
Absolutely puzzled, Frak does not know what it is or what it might do.
Down its belly are hides wrapped around immense big ars, which are as tall as wods. Big ars wods wrapped a hand-thick with the huds of slain beasts—three in line, and staked dead center upon the wide belly. Frak has never seen huds so thick nor big ars wods so long. He can see that long ords bind them, yet also ords as he has never seen so thick, as if three ords worked as one—what he does not know as masts and hides and rope or braid. He can’t make sense of any of it at all. Not of these confounding tall wods and the purpose for the huds, nor the length of the whole thing—all these oddities, none of it makes sense. Frak has no images, no sounds.
Nothing also for the more than two hands of no-no hud wods rising from its head and sides. Some of these side wods are bare but flattened at their ends in a most strange way—with a slight bend, like the spo-ox Magx the Wiz uses at magical times.
More so does Frak’s mind blank as he watches the other males, Brok’s kin, walk about without being eaten by this harj beast. Frak’s head hurts more and more. He rubs his orx—his eyes ache. Down and around his forearms and hands shoots a strange weak feeling all the way to his toes. Hot stabbing pains clench the back of his legs. Such power! Such terror! All from the harj big big big whose orx are cold upon him as dead-eyes but which he knows as harj-orx—as snaring eyes, eyes that he knows are always watching him. All this pain yet no way to defend or attack because there is no scent of the creature—no yum. Frak sniffs, then snorts deeply, but no telltale yums. Nothing to image, only the hairs on his nape bristling, only a dull coldness upon his neck.
Frak is breathing heavily and rapidly. He terribly fears the beast, there as it moves slowly, sideways and up and down, pitching and yawing with the big wet’s roll and heave. A harj big unlike Harj Ek! Harj Bar! Harj Kat! This big big big is content to have Brok's kin crawl upon it but, Frak was sure, absolutely sure, it will in time eat, consume, flip up into the air and swallow all—like he has seen the Harj Bar eat the creatures of the flowing sweet-sipping wet, slap at them and flip them into the air, catch them and bite and chew and gulp them.
Frak is frightened unto heedless flight.
“Water-House!” So Brok points and states to Frak. Says this time and again, more than ten times each hour. Coming up to him and saying this strange thing, and Frak trying to grasp what the strange sounds meant. What was Water-House? There were simply too many sounds in one breath. Frak’s world was one of short soundings, most of one spat breaths, so Brok’s long sounds confuse him, make his eyes close as he listens. Only with Magx the Wiz has Frak ever heard so many strange and many breaths sounds.
Then Brok said, sounding as he grasps how Frak sounds, slowly, pausing between words—“Wet...Hum.” Ah! Frak knows hum; knows wet. Keenly and cautiously, Frak listens to every sound and watches every movement of the others.
Brok's kin work and sit and walk and spit and do things which Frak knows and doesn’t know—all without fear.
Is Frak afraid? A question that seeps through his mind not as words but as a feeling. He is feeling alert and wary as he closely observes the others. They do some things he knows how to do, but do many which he doesn’t. However, about which—always quick to learn, to adapt, so had he secured the leadership of his kin—he knows he can; will. His grok made him the one in the kin to do what no one else could or would do while yet also doing better what everyone else could. Whatever was harj or shad or big big or no-no...anything strange or frightening, so Frak confronted and killed or learned to use. When Sork first threw the spear, so Frak quickly threw the spear better. When Aard alone danced so as to entrance the ssss! snakes, so did Frak quickly imitate and best Aard. Nothing of fright and awe escaped him. This he understands as his power—his harj grok—that which makes him always an imminent threat. If it was hideous or scary, a fire roared in his belly, drove him to master it. This was why the women, especially the younger ones, would come to him.
“Water-House.” So Frak tries to convey to his kin. That it is a hum. Like their rok and wod and mut lodges. Just another hum—a safe place. A safe place to be upon the mighty sol swallowing wet. But no one understands him. Frak has seen this before—how they do not understand him. It has happened so many times. With the spear, only he and Sork still throw the spear. As with the hugx—the laying upon women, upon their bellies...looking into their eyes, having them look into his eyes, so has he failed to convey the pleasure, the excitement, the thrilling plunge into the unknown of such a hugx. In this, only Ratl has followed him, so only with him could Frak exchange looks and new sounds and laugh as only hunt brothers could laugh, so does he now often laugh with Ratl.
Now, this Water-House of Brok’s is even more than all that, because no one can hear the strange words and smile. No, they hear them and frown, eyebrows pressed and side-temples scrunched. Frak knows that it is he alone who will follow Brok—if he is to follow at all.
Frak does follow because of Darlm. It is she who has whispered the frightening sounds to him—“Water-House”—until they lose their strangeness, became a twice breathed word they both share. She first whispered hugx as she slid under him, gently pulling him upon her, rolled him on her belly and gazed hypnotically into his as he did into her hum orx. He she fastened face up using her alluring hum orx, eyes darkly green but then bursting brightly, as at times blinkingly black but in a flash blinkingly lustrous. Ah! Ones of heart-thumping mystery to Frak. He peers at them and as he does they widen and grow and fire-flash at him like the lick of the big big wet when it is angry. Lightning green licks, spars like brilliantly green sun rays—sparkling roks...such seductive roks which he has seen only once before when venturing forth on a harj big Bar hunt. He had stopped to rest under a cliff's ledge, there eyeing upward and being shocked, entranced, gripped by pulsating spars of vaporous green lights, teensy blips—blinking, bouncing in and outside of his head. He had been amazed, stunned, as right now with Darlm he is stunned—her hum orx are glittering beams of the most entrancing hue: fiery emerald...yet soft as the first sod of spring. He follows Brok because it is Darlm who first groked Frak so big big that he could change the strange harj and shad into the known. Here, legs locked around his stout waist, she is chanting, working her breathing around the soundings of “Water-House.” As she rhythmically sounds so Frak tames his fear and speaks the twice breathed sounding. Darlm makes all hum.
Darlm's alluring eyes and sweet soothing soundings stimulate and heighten Frak craving desire for her. He has come to know her soft wondrous and most pleasuring self as he opens her wet hum—that of her most like the sweet-sipping wet. His grok wod rises thick and hard between his legs—hungering for her. He is thrilled by the yum of her musky wet hum. He is lured, drawn, weakened, and wetted as he slides into her suckling sweet-sipping wet hum. Ever fearless and ever fearful! he is one with her, rocking, laughing , shuddering...as they grok hugx!
Frak throws his complete weight behind the plunge of his grok wod, pushes himself into her with the desire of never coming back...heaves again. He is floating, adrift upon the wave of her belly, of their lusty desires. They rise and ebb like waves clashing in and out of her moist wet hum, her shad hum. As their panting storm calms, as they lay together in soft embrace, she places his hand upon her wet hum—which she now names and soun
ds as “Darlm Water-House.”
Darlm has always been like a cloud covering the sol—the sun. Such is she to his moods, his courage, his adventuring. She first appeared at the ceremony of Frak's big grok big as a gift from a distant kin—appearing as he knelt upright in deep meditation, there his grok exploring the harj, shad no-no—the dream world, as Magx had trained him...not asleep but aware of both worlds. Darlm arose to greet him in both worlds, at once his dream-mate and soon his hum-hum. She who was led to him by Lon, m-o-o-o-n grok consort of Magx. Darlm—haloed like moon-rays which surprise the shad darkness with their baffling light...soft, different, eye-boggling and heart-thumping. It was Frak’s big grok big heart which was born the instant her dancing orx fell upon him—eyes closed, yet he could see her as he knew she was seeing him. His swelling big grok big heart was her big big gift to him. Magx had taught him but also grasped that Frak would not grok this truth until he had become big grok big with his hum-hum...their hearts fluttering like little bird's wing until he and she, Frak and Darlm, embraced in big grok big hugx...it would only be then that the magic of big grok big would and could be manifested...as she received him with her m-o-o-o-n grok.
Darlm knew herself as like unto a kup—she was a receptacle, for she was of the m-o-o-o-n...the Grok Orx. As Lon taught her, it is the m-o-o-o-n that holds sol during the shad and from whom rises the sol to brighten the day. M-o-o-o-n, whose light never fades, is always present, even as the sun sets and dies into the no-no darkness. She learned how to offer herself as m-o-o-o-n even during daylight when, to most, the Grok Orx was unseen, unfelt. As Lon taught, Darlm was to be the constant in Frak's life—hold him like the m-o-o-o-n kup does the sol during the shad. She was to be his stake in the ground around which he could build his hum-hum. For it was hum-hum grasped as a receiving place, a magical place where both sol and m-o-o-o-n embraced, became one...so steadying and making secure the big heart of the kin.
Lon taught her that Magx and all males were babies—ums—born from women but also reborn through women as grok ums. It was only when he was reborn as a grok um that a male fully realized his harj grok power—what made him feared, respected. When Frak would become a grok um, it was then that he would truly be an imminent threat in every situation. In this way, like the flower blooming and the bee sipping nectar, so Lon taught Darlm and Frak that they were to be—she the kup receptacle and he emptying himself into her, his grok wod penetrating, all imaged through building a domed hum-hum like half a beehive. This hum-hum was where he and she embraced in big grok big hugx...big like the sun at twilight welcoming the moon as nightlight....as the moon at dawn welcoming the sun as daylight. It was Darlm's gift to receive Frak’s harj grok wod, his shad yums, his big grok big and through such receiving, such cherishing—allowing him to spew his harj shad urges within her, so to big grok big him and through this big hugx big, bud forth with baby ums—grok kin.
Their hearts were hum-hum upon their first big hugx big embrace—joined as one heart, that thundering heart which creates the kin, which is the common heart for their grok dreaming. As grok dreamers they knew—as they had been instructed and disciplined during preparation for the big big initiation—as grok dreamers so were they creators of the world...da-da and ma-ma of the kin.
When with Darlm, Frak came to know the deeper mysteries of his kin, of what he must do as kin leader—as harj big grok. She taught him strange new sounds, as with Water-House, but theirs was more a world of action than speech. Frak's grok could not be fully expressed through sounds, although, especially on the hunt, he made the most sounds—grunts and yells and whoops of victory. Her m-o-o-o-n task was to mold his heart, which she did as she laid before him as kup, as receptacle. She drew the power of the sun and the moon, of their rising and dying together, of their giving and taking of light and darkness, gathered these and taught him as her body became magical. M-o-o-o-n magic, its big grok, she brought to their hugx embraces and love-making as she had watched Magx and Lon magically enact. When deeply hugging, in big hugx, the flesh of Magx and Lon glowed like the full moon. With Frak, as they were moon glow, she taught him through her eyes, magically showing him how others saw him, how the harj beasts cowered when he was on the hunt. Her eyes were storytellers of things past and future, but more so were her kisses and her legs wrapped around him as he laid upon her and dreamed. For the survival of the kin, so Magx and Lon taught, it was through this intimate embrace that they would enter grok dreaming and so discover and understand how to protect the kin. It was this dreaming which gave insight into new ways to solve problems upon waking. Among the male kin, only Magx understood this as Frak did, and sharing their grok hugx dreams was their personal bond. Only they grok dreamed what Lon and Darlm knew, and came to know dreaming as the special grok of kin females. Truly, it was Darlm whose m-o-o-o-n grok created the harj big grok Frak as she rebirthed him during grok dreaming so that he could lead and protect the kin.
All day, every day, Frak eagerly anticipated sharing m-o-o-o-n time with Darlm. She opened to him his grok big role with the younger women—his obligation to teach them about the hugx heart of the male. As they played within the waves of their desires, she whispered magic words into his ears. Frak soon desired to never be out of her sight, her embrace...Darlm delighted in this but knew that Frak was not to be hers alone. He was harj big grok, and she has learned from her earliest years that her task, her joy was to be found in spreading his big big grok. She sprinkled Frak’s fiery grok throughout the kin by opening ways for him to share his inner healing and bonding powers—his harj shad big grok. As pleasurable and exciting as she found his attentions and ardor to be, she knew it was hers to offer the big hugx embracing power striking forth from his body, his heart, his manly imagination for the good of the kin. She offered him as a warming to the lonely older women. She offered his heart-fire to cure the bodies of green girls. She offered him to those in grief over a loss of their own Fraks.
Darlm's m-o-o-o-n power fed and sustained his sol grok—as his did for her. She knowing all that he was and had discovered and would accomplish as they lay embraced in deep hugx. Darlm could read his life's journey, his heart's yearnings, his fear of the no-no...reveal all things—through walking her fingers upon his skin. She grokked him as she snuggled him to her breasts, lost him within her hum wet hum, frolicked with him inside her Water-House, so knowing that he was hers no longer. She sensed clearly that for the sake of the kin he must go, not she. Go out upon the no-no big big big wet...follow Brok.
It is the morning after the deepest of their hugx dreamings when Frak places his first foot upon Brok’s Water-House.
Just as Frak's two feet leave the land and seek to secure their first wobbling hold on the boat’s deck, to his complete and dazed amazement, the tree tall big wods down the creature’s belly are unwrapped. All the ord ropes are untied. All hud hides loosed and unbound—rushing out to catch the fearsome wet ocean's breath...as the harj big big big ship begins to move forward.
Frak grips a hold, steadying himself against the Water-House's hard flank—all this and at the same time others lift the big arms wod sticks shaped like Magx’s spo-ox off from the rim of the boat and with a motion Frak has never seen, but will come to quickly master, stick the oars through small holes in the ship's side, drop them into the rolling sea and begin to pull in a disciplined motion of the many, an act of kin effort which hard-struck Frak with the awe of a flowering field as the warm season fades and the hot winds blow.
Rowing and hide-sails filling with that breath which flows so strongly upon the mighty seas—a breath which Frak has felt at times but only while standing at ocean's edge. Now, his heart beats faster each and every time the crew dips and pulls, each and every time another windy breath gusts and blows into the bulging sails, each and every time the long-boat lurches and jolts and picks up speed moving this way and that and that way and this.
One breath, two breaths, now three...Frak’s voyage is begun.
Around Frak’s neck han
gs a thumb-thick rock which glistens like Darlm’s eyes. She had called upon all the magical moon words she knew so that her eyes—ever open, ever glistening—would always be twined with his.