Chapter 27: Mages Are Five-by-Five, Over
We woke the next day, showered, and found we were the first to get into the kitchen, beating even the farm’s early risers. Kaitlyn and I started work on breakfast and were joined shortly by Mary and Ramón.
“Morning, Mama Mary,” I greeted her while cracking an egg into a bowl. “Papa,” I added for Ramón.
“That’s thoughtful of you two,” said Mary, kissing us both on the cheeks.
“French toast okay?”
“Sounds great,” Mary replied. “So, you and I are going to have that talk soon, right?” she prodded me.
“Yes, but if I may suggest, let’s hold that off until Christmas Day or the day after. All will become clear,” I said in a woo-woo voice, waving my hands mysteriously.
The whole family broke its fast nude, including its most recent extension, Jess.
“Let’s stay naked the rest of the day!” suggested Allison.
“You inviting Joss over?” teased Kaitlyn.
“Maybe…” Allison replied, drawing the word out.
Before we could argue the merits of Allison’s boyfriend Joss walking in on our increasingly nudist family activities, the religious faction of our group scuttled the idea. Carmen, acting as their spokesperson, objected, “We’ve got midnight mass.”
“So stay naked until 11:45,” I said with a grin.
“We might have friends coming over before then,” Mary said.
“I’m content to hide away in the bedroom while they visit,” I replied. “I’ve got a bunch of backed-up reading I want to get to anyway.”
“Actually, you know what we could do, Davie?” interjected Kaitlyn. “We were talking about the range of magical rapport communication last night. What if we go back out to Fisher Towers, drop one of us off there while the other drives back toward town, stopping off occasionally to check back in?”
“Oooh, I can plot the points on GPS!” said Jess.
“That route takes the other person along the highway,” I cautioned. “You remember what happened the last time we were caught nude on the banks of the Colorado.”
That drew several interested gazes, but Kaitlyn batted them away with a new plan. “All right, so what if we take the road out through the La Sal Forest, looping up through the trails east of town? It’s about a two hour loop, going something like fifteen miles out from here. You can stay here and read out in the retreat area, and I can try checking back in with you occasionally.”
“Won’t he be freezing?” asked Mary.
We explained air blankets to her, then went back to firming up the plan there around the family dining table, the breakfast things cleared away.
In the end, Kaitlyn gathered a group of four others to go with her: she’d be in the back of the Nude-Mobile — as we’d taken to calling her Subaru while the back seat was converted for semi-privacy — with the other two women, Vin and Miguel up front taking turns driving.
Carmen begged off this trip, not being interested in what she called “off-roading,” even though the roughest part of the trip would be on dirt and gravel forestry road, not truly off-road. “That sort of thing has always made me nauseous, back to when I was a kid, and now being pregnant…” she explained.
Mary & Ramón had to stay behind to catch any Christmas Eve visitors, so they’d gone off to their bedroom after breakfast to dress and do a bit of lazy vacation reading while we planned this experiment.
“Come with me,” Vin said to Jess. “I need to show you something,” and he led her off down the hallway to the bedrooms.
“Haven’t you two had enough?” called out Carmen to their retreating backs. “You two were at it until almost midnight last night!”
Vin turned back to face his sister-in-law. “We’re not doing…” he waved vaguely, “…that. We’ll be out shortly. And before you say it, I’m not that short-fused!” As they turned to continue down the bedroom hallway, I heard him mutter, “…any more.”
“Don’t I know it,” Carmen said with an eye-roll.
“We were young like them once, too, mi corazón,” soothed Miguel. Then he added, “I suppose I’d best go get ready,” and he took his wife with him.
That left us alone with Allison, who stared across the table at her sister for a bit, listening to the retreating footsteps and looking conflicted for some reason. We waited her out.
The words finally broke free from her lips. Ali leaned across the table and in a near whisper said, “I got so hot listening to those two going at it last night! I started fingering myself, alone in my bed like that, then thought to call Joss. We have this thing where we put on some high-quality Bluetooth headsets and one of us starts a music playlist and shares it through the Internet chat app we use, then we mutually masturbate over the soundtrack. We’ve each collected some really sexy playlists for this, I’ll tell you that! Last night, the two of us came in the middle of Take Off Your Clothes by Morningwood!”
We didn’t hear her, but then, we’d been making some noise of our own. There was a good chance that Carmen was laying more blame on Vin and Jess than they deserved!
This confession seemed to demand a return confidence, so we told her about the Halloween solarium surprise.
“Holy shit!” she exclaimed at the end. “Wish I could have seen that!”
Seconds after Ali retreated to get dressed herself, Jess and Vin emerged from the bedroom where they’d made all that noise last night and rejoined us in the kitchen. She was wearing only a modest black full-coverage panty and bra set that would pass as a bikini, easy to get out of in the back of the Nude-Mobile. He was in generic teenaged geek garb: sci-fi tee shirt, jeans, white socks, and hiking style sneakers.
They had their hands full. Jess was carrying a full-color printout of the proposed route and a few more sheets folded in half underneath it, and Vin had the hacked Chinese FRS radios, one in each hand.
He handed me one, saying, “We’ll use these for backup communications and for signaling each test. I know you can’t keep it with you while you work the magic, Davie, but just turn up the speaker and set it off to one edge of the retreat area. Maybe clip it onto the fencing or something.”
Jess said, “We’ll be using these in short bursts only; we won’t be jawing on them while we drive.”
“Good. I’m serious about doing some reading,” I told them.
Jess then handed me one of the two folded sheets she had under the map, keeping the other to herself. “Don’t peek until we’re gone,” she told me, still hanging onto my copy until I nodded my acceptance of her terms. “They’re the random numbers for the tests divided into numbered groups, sufficient for one group per mile along the route, though we probably won’t stop that often; better to have too many groups than too few, right?”
I nodded, and she went on, “Vin and I saw the numbers briefly, so we’ll have Allison or Miguel take the numbers down on our side so as to properly blind the test. I know these printouts are tech items, but we printed the numbers large so you can prop them up on a rock far enough away to not cause a problem while you read them through to Kaitlyn.”
“Sounds like a plan,” I agreed.
Allison and Miguel had returned by this point.
Allison now wore a summer college-girl outfit, halter top, exercise shorts, pink ankle socks, and running shoes. I saw her look Jess up and down, then get a pensive look on her face. I guessed she was considering going back to her room to get something skimpier on, but then she shook her head decisively, apparently not quite willing to get caught in her underwear so close to home.
Miguel was in stereotypical Western wear: checkered snap-front long-sleeved shirt, Lee jeans, cowboy boots. I decided he wasn’t getting naked out there at all. He confirmed it by walking up to his still-naked sister and asking her, “Keys, mi hermana?” He’d apparently elected himself first driver.
“In my purse on the kitchen counter,” she told him.
Allison asked her, “Aren’t you getting anything on for the trip?”
“Why?” Kaitlyn replied to her younger sister. “I’m just going to be running back and forth to the car for this series of experiments, and I’ve got to be nude for each test. Why bother getting dressed between?”
“Yeah, I get that, sis, but maybe you’d rather not streak the front yard again? You got caught last time,” Allison pointed out.
“Watch and learn,” was all she said.
The others trooped out to the car, but Kaitlyn remained behind. Allison stayed with her to find out what her sister had in mind, but Kaitlyn motioned her out the door before her. Just as Allison turned back, hand still on the door, Kaitlyn disappeared!
“Do get moving, sis, I can’t hold this spell forever,” sounded Kaitlyn’s chiding voice from mid-air, halfway between Allison and I. Even invisible, I could hear the satisfied smile in my wife’s voice.
“Extra points for style!” I congratulated her as the house door apparently closed itself, a satisfied “Heh, heh,” sound emerging from mid-air before the door cut it off.
I then pulled the front window curtains aside to watch the loading of the car, observing Allison get into the Nude-Mobile and slide to the middle of the passenger seat. Then I saw the car’s suspension dip again on that side and the passenger door slam itself shut. Shortly, the remote group was on its way.
I would be working alone today, without the scribe I’d had last night. I went out to the Gutierrez farm’s retreat area and closed its privacy gate behind me. I removed the only garment I’d worn out of the house on the gatepost, a bathrobe borrowed from Ramón. I had a thick book with me, more than enough for the two hours they’d planned on being away.
I gently set the folded sheet of random numbers down into the crook between one of the large sandstone seating rocks I’d raised up back in August so that the paper slumped down in a sort of broken arc, folding a bit along the crease Jess put into it. I set a baseball-sized chunk of sandstone on the bottom edge to keep it in place.
Then, realizing that would let me see only the top half from where I planned to sit, I pushed some power into the larger rock to reshape it a bit, creating a few overhangs about eight and a half inches apart. I slid the upper corners of the paper into those capture points, then pushed a pair of small rocks up against the page’s bottom corners. I pushed the small rocks back a bit, putting a bit of tension on the assembly to maximize the capture friction and minimize the air gap behind the paper.
Good! Barring strong breezes, the paper would remain upright and visible from far enough away that it wouldn’t interfere with my magic. The privacy fence would break most breezes into a chaos of eddies, so it’d more likely take a strong gust to move the paper.
I couldn’t use a chaise longue from the patio and still do magic, so I pushed some power down into the land across the empty stone pool from my improvised sandstone lectern, raising up a ramp shape with a bowl at the bottom for my butt, aiming it across the pool. I sat down into my creation and made a few more adjustments, just like fiddling with the buttons on the driver’s seat in a car: tilt, seat depth, lumbar… Voilà! Mage-chair!
Across the pool, I saw that the page of random numbers was just within the limit of my visual acuity, so that I could either squint a bit or lean forward to see them sharply.
Satisfied, I pulled an air blanket over myself, warmed the mage-chair supporting my recumbent bare body, picked up my book, and started reading.
About five minutes after I got settled in, I heard a squawk on the radio in Allison’s voice, “Group one, please.” Kaitlyn must be working a spell already, thus unable to use the radio herself.
I hadn’t expected to hear from them this soon. They must be somewhere off of US 191, not yet out onto the forest roads at all. I guessed they’d found a quiet pull-off spot for Kaitlyn to jump out and slip into a Gaia trance with little risk of being seen. I hoped that was the case, anyway.
I set the book aside, slipped into a Gaia trance, then dove deep into the earth, questing out vaguely in the direction that I expected to find Kaitlyn. She had clearly spread her awareness broadly out into the earth, because I found her readily enough. “Hello, my love,” I told her through the bond.
Somehow, she managed to kiss me through the bond. I’d have to ask her how she managed it. It was very, very nice. A kiss to the soul. Wow!
“Numbers, please,” she thought at me, not giving me the time to work out the trick of it myself.
I leaned a bit forward and read off the number sequence to her. Then she read the same number sequence back, one at a time, clearly getting them from her scribe, and I confirmed a successful transfer.
“Until the next stop,” she said, then disappeared from my ken.
I stayed in trance, pushing my presence out toward where I guessed they’d pop up next, then sat there thinking about how I could return the favor.
Five minutes later, Kaitlyn popped back up again, and I surprised her with a magical kiss this time.
“Clever boy!” she sent through the bond, then began kissing back!
Take the best kiss anyone has ever given you. Subtract everything about it that was just the slightest bit unpleasant: the jarring collision of your front teeth, the tweaking of noses when you don’t disengage enough when changing angles, beard burn… Now multiply by ten, add a spritz of summer, shake, stir, and serve. That’s what a mage-kiss is like.
Kaitlyn broke it first. “They’re bugging me for the numbers,” she grumped.
I sighed, then read off Group 2, had her confirm it, and we broke contact again.
It continued like that around the loop, Kaitlyn popping up again every few minutes, so that I never did get much reading done, but ooooh the kissing we did!
When the remote group got as far out as their path would take them, out at the base of the La Sal Mountain range, deep in the juniper forest East of Moab, Kaitlyn and I were straining to contact each other each time. I didn’t think we had reached our limit, but we were pushing our abilities now.
Kaitlyn didn’t disconnect immediately after reading off Group 19.
“My love?” I asked her.
“Ssssh. I’m trying something,” she responded.
Nothing happened for a while, but then I felt a suffusion of warm physical love over my body, the sort you get deep in the middle of sexual intercourse, the point where the physical act itself disappears and the experience takes over.
“Ritchie preserve me!” I sent through the bond.
“Work on that one,” Kaitlyn challenged, then disappeared for another few minutes. I obviously could not see her face, but I could tell she was smirking smugly. The feel of it radiated from 14 miles away as Shai-Hulud tunnels.
By the time she came back, I figured out what she had done: she’d magically stimulated my penile nerves, mind to mind to body. I was sure she could not do this to a non-mage over this kind of distance, but she could with me. Once I’d made that conceptual breakthrough, another occurred in short order: this was just the male version of the mage-egg technique!
I spun it back around on her, sending a strong three-second pulse through the bond into her clitoral nerves. “How was that?” I asked after giving her time to recover rational awareness.
“I’m lubricating, Davie,” was all she said.
Good enough. Then I laughed aloud and sent, “Here we are halfway through a serious scientific experiment and you’ve gone and invented the best-ever version of phone sex!”
“You like?” she replied.
“Me gusto muchisimo,” I replied.
She sent a warm smile through the bond, then requested, “Numbers, please.”
“Spoilsport,” I sent back, then read off Group 20 to her. She confirmed it and broke contact once again.
When she reappeared for Group 21, I tackled her magically, giving her no time to react. We made love across miles of ground. I have no idea how long we went at it like that, but I do know I had to wipe off the cover of my book and my calves when we were done.
“The team is getting worried,” Kaitlyn informed me through the bond. “I think they think it’s hurting me to communicate this far. I’ve, ah, been a bit noisy. Gimme a sec to wave them off.” After a brief pause, she said, “Numbers, please.”
“What numbers? I can’t focus on small print just now!” I shot back.
“Well, when you get your eyes uncrossed, read the next group. Please.”
We did that, confirmed the reading, and reluctantly broke contact once again.
When Kaitlyn came back for Group 22, we began making mage-love again, slowly and lovingly this time, getting only a little bit into it before she said, “Numbers, please.”
I reluctantly read the group to her, got the confirmation, and she disappeared from my world once again, the tease.
In that way, we edged for the rest of her trip back, building the erotic feelings up slowly over the course of about an hour.
I could tell the remote group was coming near to the end of the route by the direction I had to send my awareness out to reach Kaitlyn, now nearly due north. They had to be just outside of town by now. I was soooo, soooo close to release by this point, so when she reappeared, I just said, “Now! Please!”
I felt her give me a deep, long mage-kiss in response, then a resumption of our mage-loving. Once again I lost complete track of time, and once again I had to do a bit of clean-up when we’d finished. Somehow, I ended up with a string of semen over my shoulder and up my left cheek this time!
After some thought, I realized what had happened: mage-sex doesn’t constrain the male’s erection. It can flop all about from the orgasmic clenching, so that the direction of the semen’s travel is nearly completely random. I made a mental note to check my surroundings before we did this again.
Because we absolutely would be doing this again, many, many more times, if I had anything to say about it.
“Of course we will,” Kaitlyn said through the bond before disappearing once again.
What is mage-sex like? I told you about mage-kissing, but now imagine that combined with the best wet dream you’ve ever had, then make it all under conscious control with someone you genuinely love, rather than a random unconscious fantasy.
And that’s not even close.
I was so, so glad to be a mage: I got my Christmas present a day early.