Chapter 29: Merry Christmas Indeed
Breakfast and the opening of gifts on Christmas morning were done in our bed-wear, which was now universally bare skin among those present. Clothing was for later in the day, if at all. Meanwhile, we had a warm fire in the living room, soft blankets, and as much hot wassail as we wanted.
For me, clothing was something I would not use again for another eighty-some hours by Mary’s decree, so I’d chosen to interpret that as meaning I didn’t get to use a blanket while the fire warmed the room. I snuggled up with Kaitlyn instead.
Kaitlyn and I gave everyone a set of our hand-made all-natural magewear, since they’d all responded so positively to our fashion show back on Thanksgiving Day.
I suppose Ann thought she was being left out of this, but Kaitlyn had sneakily wrapped a set of magewear she’d had in her travel bag, the two being roughly the same size. Kaitlyn chose one of the side-tie versions, so any size differences ended up being immaterial, so to speak.
Our recipients all tried their outfits on right there and then, but all of the outfits came back off shortly after, put away for use another day. We got a lot of compliments about how soft they were on the inside. We’d had to work that out for our own comfort, but it was doubly gratifying to have the trick noticed and appreciated.
Kaitlyn and I got several pieces of professional massage therapy gear: two collections of special oils and creams, a pair of kit bags to replace the reusable grocery bags we’d been using to carry our gear around in, and a pair of acrylic hand massaging tools.
Mary got a little something extra from Kaitlyn and her father, an envelope with a card inside which she read and then put away, not showing anyone else.
“What is it?” insisted Allison.
“I’m not tellin’. It’s special and private, between them and me,” Mary replied firmly.
And that was the end of that.
Kaitlyn got me a set of studded snow tires for my bike, including a home-printed certificate offering to do the work swapping mine out. “It’s getting icy on the roads,” she explained. Guessing what I was thinking, she added, “Don’t worry, I got myself a set, too!”
I kissed her and told her, “Thank you, Kaitlyn!” then handed her a small box in turn.
Opening it, she saw a reused jewelry box, so she paused there with a small smile. “So, I’m guessing not actually jewelry. A really nice set of tire levers?” she guessed.
I stayed mum, so she cracked the lid, revealing a rose gold and silver bracelet, dozens of tiny small diamonds and sapphires set in a band styled to match our wedding rings.
“You made this!” she gasped.
“Here, try it on,” I suggested.
She put it on her left wrist to invite comparison to her wedding ring. It was a perfect match, naturally, since it was executed by the same artisan team: me and Gaia.
Kaitlyn kissed me long and deep, to the point that we were pulled out of it by applause.
After all the gifts were opened, Allison noted wryly, “It doesn’t seem like as much clothing was given this year. I wonder why…”
All eyes landed on Kaitlyn and I.
Mary rode to our rescue, suggesting that, “What with global warming and all, we might not need as much of it as in years past. What do you think, Ann? Can we shift this desert community into dressing for the prevailing conditions?”
Ann shook her head slowly for a few seconds, answering, “I dunno, Mary. This feels like one of those generational sorts of things. Maybe by the time your kids are gray like me.”
I didn’t think that was right, so I said, “Just look at how much attitudes have shifted since the founding of this very farm. The first few decades overlapped the Victorian Era, where bloomers were considered racy because they showed off the shape of a woman’s calves, though they covered the woman’s legs completely. A respectable woman of the era might show hands and face, nothing else. By mid-century, we had the first bikinis, about as skimpy as the massage outfits we gave y’all, outfits we intend now to wear most days while working as therapists, weather cooperating. On any given day in tourist season, you can find people wearing about as much and a fair number less. The trend is clear.”
“You’re suggesting that public nudity might just be the next step?” asked Carmen.
“Why not?” I answered. “It’s practical for many situations. I want to live in a world where nudity is simply the most casual form of dress, the zero point on the spectrum of clothedness, not a state distinct from ‘clothed.’ Look around; is this not a completely casual atmosphere? Who here is feeling tense and uptight?”
“I’m a little horny,” offered Vin.
“Stow it, Captain,” Jess replied mildly. “You’re a 19 year old male, always horny by definition.”
“Check and mate,” Allison commented, chuckling.
“Nudity is distinct from being clothed, though,” opined Carmen.
“If you put on that bikini bottom we gave you — only the bottom, mind — are you clothed?” I asked her.
“No, I’d be topless.”
“But also not naked,” I pressed.
“Well, no…”
“And if we’d cut it more skimpily when making it, creating a broad thong in the back and cutting the front panel to be about the size of your pubic bush, if you still wore one, Carmen, what then? Would you still be topless while wearing it?”
“I’d say so,” she answered.
“Are you sure you aren’t half-bottomless by that point?”
“I guess…”
“Now imagine we cut it so small that it’s just a string in the back and a broad strip up the front to cover only your lady lips. Still just topless, not bottomless?”
“Zeno’s paradox,” put in Vin, saving his sister-in-law from needing to answer.
“More accurately,” added Jess, our house mathematician, “it’s a limit problem. I believe the point Davie’s making is that the limit on the function of clothedness is zero clothes, also called complete nudity, but that there’s a continuous function from zero to…well, what, a burqa?”
“Or a death shroud, yeah,” I agreed, miming an appreciative golf clap in her direction. “Carmen, you see the zero point of the clothing function as a distinct condition from clothedness purely because of your socialization. It’s something you were taught, not something that is, in an objective sense.”
Kaitlyn took up the argument. “A few months back, we had cause to explore this idea in legal terms, looking into the law’s definition of ‘indecent exposure’ for reasons you can probably guess. The way the law is written, they just set aside certain parts of the body that are not to be seen in public.”
I added, “And those laws differ by state, by county, and even by city.”
“And by gender!” Kaitlyn continued. “I suspect if you drew a human outline as if it were a clothing map and then plotted the outlines of what was considered ‘indecent’ over time, you’d get a shrinking effect around those areas.”
“Reductio ad absurdum,” concluded Jess. “The law is reflecting the views of society, which since Victorian times has been increasingly faced with defining what can be seen and what can’t, the parts increasingly pared back to what we have now.”
“Right,” I agreed. “In recent times, the question was ‘Why can a guy show his nipples in public but a woman can’t?’ That debate is fading as nipple freedom continues to win court victories. The fight to keep buttocks hidden was lost decades ago. About all we have left to argue over are genitalia. I believe there are people in this world that think that boundary will never be crossed, but I think they’re overlooking one key fact: it’s not that long in terms of human history that it wasn’t an absolute boundary! Humanity has been across it before, in many times and places.”
“Well, maybe it shouldn’t be crossed,” opined Ann. “You know, except in special cases like this one here,” she added quickly.
“Why not?” I asked, wanting her to tell me, rather than guess.
“It’d lead to a lot more sex,” she suggested.
“I doubt it,” I answered. “In the same places where there’s all this increased acceptance of skin, birth rates are dropping, to the point that in a few countries the population’s actually shrinking. Japan’s been that way for decades. Part of that must be a result of birth control, but sociologists say that the main driver of this trend is simply affluence: when most people don’t need to be farmers and those farmers don’t need to have 12 children in order to avoid starving through lack of enough hands to run the place, people simply choose to have fewer children. Look at all the pioneer families around here: check any genealogical tree, and you’ll find lots of families with a dozen or so kids a hundred years back. Those people were getting busy, yet they lived in a time when women dared not show their ankles to any but those closest to them.”
“In any case,” added Kaitlyn, “I think we three showed last night that sex and nudity aren’t very tightly correlated.”
Ann colored at this, probably thinking about how she’d woken up this morning. It was actually a pretty good test case: yes, it’d been sexy in its way, but we’d also chosen not to pursue it, despite having the freedom to do so.
“Well, on that fine note, I think we can call this debate closed for now,” interjected Mary. “Let’s get into those stockings!”
Kaitlyn and I put a coupon for a 1-hour 4-handed massage into everyone’s stocking, stipulating that it expired on the 28th, the day we planned to return to Salt Lake.
Allison was first to redeem hers. “I want mine right here, right now! I want you to set up right in front of the fire, and I want spectators. Y’all can chat and stuff, but you can’t leave ’til I’m done!”
There wasn’t a straight face in the group after that. Several laughed outright at her boldness and attention-seeking.
“We just got a bunch of different oils, sis. How about you pick one, and we’ll get set up?” offered Kaitlyn.
Several minutes later, we had Allison on the table in her nubile glory: small up top, big down below, toned and athletic. I had to hold tight to my meditative calm to avoid putting on a show of my own.
Allison chose a coconut oil, the scent filling the living room once we got it heating on a side table.
While setting up, I realized that we’d shared a touch only in fleeting moments. I’d actually had more conscious physical contact with Mrs. Johannsen this morning alone than with Allison in all the time I’d been in the family. I’d seen her naked a bunch of times now, but the longest we’d touched so far was in the few group hugs we’d had over the past several months.
Perhaps sensing this, Kaitlyn smiled slightly and made an “after you” gesture to me once we had Allison up and on the table, face down, ready to go.
Trepidatiously, I dribbled a bit of oil over the small of Allison’s back, using the toned recesses there as working reservoirs. I took a deep breath, then began working the oil over and into her skin, holding tight to my control.
Allison was exceptional. Not merely young, but also in shape and the recipient of a pretty good mix of genes. I forbore asking if she’d done any modeling in case the answer was “Yes,” and the rest of the family didn’t know. As much as she enjoyed attention, I thought that might well have been the answer. She certainly had the looks for it.
I sublimated those thoughts into a medical checkup. Kaitlyn had already done this once, but we knew more now from our schooling and from practice on others. Once again, we found nothing wrong with her. She was not only the picture of health, she was its essence.
Over the next hour, we reduced her to a gooey puddle on the table, so that by the end, she just lay there half asleep, a slack smile on her face.
Referring to an earlier massage when Kaitlyn had done her solo, Allison slurred out, “I don’t know if Davie’s better’n you, or if you’ve gotten better, Kate, or if four hands’re better’n two, but…just wow. That’s all. Wow.”
Deciding to leave her first speculation unanswered, I told her, “You’re right, Kaitlyn and I have both gotten better with some actual training, and yes, four is better than two for this.”
“Five out of five, would strip again,” she slurred in conclusion.
I chuckled at that.
The whole group had stayed to watch, some of them splitting their time with other tasks, but none of them wholly ignoring her. Allison was a great subject. It’s too bad we couldn’t have filmed our work and used it in advertising material. We have truth in advertising laws and the FTC to enforce them, but if an ad for a massage therapist were to show a naked client, that would somehow be deemed pornography in some quarters. People are so very strange.
At Miguel’s suggestion, Carmen was next up after we poured Allison off the table. I’m sure his interest in this was simply that he wanted to watch, but I guessed that Carmen had come to enjoy being on display as much as Allison, at least within this safe circle of friends and family.
She confirmed this with her quietly demure suggestion to the group, “You can stay and watch. If you want.”
Carmen selected a different oil based on scent rather than its label, sniffing each in turn. The one she chose was unhelpfully called ‘Sunlight Shower,’ but I could see why she’d selected it: the bottle’s contents did smell nice.
Where Allison was small on top, Carmen was voluptuous, a full D cup, maybe even double-D now that she was coming up on the end of her first trimester of pregnancy. They remained as perky as you could imagine such heavy breasts being, short of the fakery available to cosmetic surgeons. She wasn’t yet showing a baby bump, but there was still a lot we could do for her.
While we had her on her front, we gave her as thorough a magico-medical inspection as we could given our limited understanding. We didn’t intend to replace the proven Western medicine she’d been making use of in her neonatal OB/GYN office visits, just backstop it. We saw several definite effects of the pregnancy, but every change relative to her barren condition had a clear and direct tie to her pregnancy: nothing was out of the expected ranges.
One effect was initially surprising to me: Carmen had been experiencing morning sickness for several weeks now, and the stomach acid had eroded the enamel on her rear teeth noticeably to our magical senses. Kaitlyn and I took that damage up in tandem, magically rebuilding the enamel.
That sparked a thought. «Kaitlyn?» I sent to her through our mage bond with Carmen.
«Yes, O Davie the Dentist?» she replied snarkily.
«You’ve got a few fillings,» I noted. «You could choose to push them out, rebuilding your teeth from the inside out. You cannot then go back to the dentist without raising uncomfortable questions, but then, why would you need to? Tempted?»
She didn’t reply immediately, just kept working on Carmen’s stomach acid damaged teeth. «Yeah, maybe. I could whiten them, too.»
I opined, «A story of having had your teeth bleached would be easier to sell than a sudden loss of fillings, but could you please avoid that unnatural gaudy bright white tooth veneer look? For myself, I think I’ll stop at pushing back the tea stains.»
«Yeah, best to keep a low profile, I suppose,» she conceded. «I won’t miss going to the dentist, Davie. Damn I love being a mage!»
Shortly after that exchange we flipped Carmen over and spent a lot of time massaging her mammoth mammaries, at her request. “They are getting so very sore,” she told us, trying to keep the note of complaint out of her voice, but failing. We soon had her purring with the tension release. “Ayai, you two are good!” Unsolicited, several seconds later she added, “Yes, much better than the two times before!”
It was good to have that confirmation. Jess hadn’t said much about our changing skill level, partly because she’s an insular sort but also because she’d been seeing our skill grow by tiny increments, continuously. This being only Carmen’s third massage with us, she’d seen our skills jump twice over the span of a month or two each time, so she was a more objective judge of those skills.
“Thank you kindly,” I said while continuing my work.
When we were finished, Miguel stood, came over, picked her up in his arms and carried her off to the bedroom they were sharing. I decided that she was going to get a different kind of massage. They kept it quiet, so I will write nothing more about it here.
Next up were Jess and Vin requesting a couples massage there in the living room while they re-watched Return of the Jedi together, reasoning that two one-hour massages meant two hours together. I thought that logic was a bit dodgy, but we didn’t argue with them about it; if that’s what they wanted, that’s the gift we’d give them.
Their choice sent a bunch of the group off to do other activities, the floor show now over.
As we got started, we heard a card game start up in the dining room, occasional shouts of mock anger over hard-fought plays or bad draws, plenty of fun-sounding banter exchanged, but I’ll not set any of that down, since we were all focused on the movie and our massage work.
We ended up extending their massage to cover Jedi’s two-hours-and-change length, swapping clients halfway through during the lull just after the speeder chase. (“Yub-yub!”) They were so relaxed by the end that we just walked off and let them lay there recovering muscle control after the movie ended.
Kaitlyn was the least interested in the movie of the three of us, but I caught her looking to the side at the TV more often than down at her work. Jedi’s got a bunch of detractors, but I still say it’s one of the best movies ever made.
Go on, tell me I’m wrong. I can take it.
Everyone else either took a dry powder massage in their bedrooms privately or had us shoo the onlookers out of the living room so they could have semi-privacy. They all agreed that we’d gotten much better since the last time we’d massaged them. Education is a very fine thing.
Taking care of our massage obligations kept Kaitlyn and I busy for most of Christmas Day, giving us a taste of what it might be like if we ever got to do this thing full-time. We ended up sneaking outside to the family retreat area a few times to recharge and do minor healings, especially to our wrists, shoulders, and backs. How did the normals do it?
Naturally, we gave everyone a magical checkup, not just Allison and Carmen. We were happy to see that the only new medical condition in the group since August was Carmen’s developing pregnancy, and we’d eased the effects of that as much as we could.
The last massage that day was Ann, Mrs. Johannsen, who dressed and left shortly after, saying, “Y’all’re right: one night’s a gift, twice’s an intrusion.” We didn’t disagree, just hugged her, kissed her chastely, and sent her off.
I was mulling all of this over as bedtime approached that night, deeming the day to have gone quite well indeed. Productive, fun, companionable, loving… No regrets.
When Kaitlyn came to me that night in the bedroom we shared, I said, “There’s a story behind that bracelet, one I didn’t want to tell in front of the group.” She just looked at me attentively, so I continued, “For a start, I didn’t make it.” As I saw her begin to react to that revelation, I corrected her assumption: “We made it, the two of us together.”
That returned her to quiescence, so I continued, “You remember that third JRE mine we visited? The coal mine, the one where we found out that mage-masturbation doesn’t carry nearly as much magical power as we can wield together with couples’ sex?”
“How can I forget? It was one of the most durable, memorable lessons we’ve experienced together, my guru.”
“Then you’ll remember when we did the comparison test, us together on the same site, how good the sex was then? So good we lost control and let our invisibility bubbles slip, almost getting caught by the nearby miners?”
“I think I’ll go to my grave remembering that one!” she replied with a quiver in her voice.
“Well, for myself, I can blame that loss of control on being distracted. You see, these diamonds, we made them from coal that day. I directed the power of our simultaneous orgasm into the ground in a focused beam, directing it to compress as tightly as I could manage. These diamonds, Kaitlyn, they’re literally our crystallized love.”
Her luminous green eyes filled with tears, and though she remained wordless, she was most definitely not silent as she gave me one more special Christmas gift that night: herself, a gift I hoped would never get old.
A very merry Christmas all around indeed.