delaquoi assignment 1

Description of a train journey

When I got on the train to Mirror City it was morning and there was still salt in the air, gulls crying like laughter. It would be a long journey and I hadn’t slept the night. As the train lifted into the hills I was drifting. I shut my eyes, warm and red, sun through the window. There was no one else in the compartment.

I wasn’t asleep, or I was, but half dreaming, thinking about things that B had said the night before. I remember she’d said – “this country where you’re going – you know, it is a place where anything can happen. You can get in any type of situation – any kind of thing.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. Just, this is what everyone says. Suddenly you can find yourself in any situation, like you thought – this would never happen to me.”

Later the train had stopped and I opened my eyes. It had stopped a long time, I think, like trains on long journeys stop for no apparent reason. Maybe just to keep in time with the timetable. Or in the old days of steam, to take water, hiss and breathe and cool the engine boiling up under the sun.

Now there were two people, a couple, on the seat opposite me. The man had a thick black moustache, a serious moustache like a villain in a melodrama. But other than that he didn’t look villainous – big, yes, and handsome, with calm dark eyes and longish black hair brushed back. But I wouldn’t cast him as the villain, more like the sheriff or a ranchero held in local esteem. He smiled at me and I said ‘good day’, and straightened myself a bit in the seat. Maybe everyone in Mirror City grew such moustaches – any type of situation can happen there.

I confess I noticed the man more than the woman. On her own she would have been striking too. Thin, elongated, with plucked eyebrows and a mouth like a violet scar. Like the spines of a cactus, prickly and striking. Remarkable eyes, a bit too big for her skull, like a bug.

The train climbed up through the sierra and onto the altiplano - a thousand miles of bare country now. Yellow scrub. Gashes of red earth and uncovered rock where water ran in the rainy season, and gatherings of cacti – not just the chollas and tunas I recognised from the coast, but strange living towers, twisted humanoids. The train was a little worm crawling over the belly of it. The sky endless blue. The heat and light shimmering in through the compartment window, sweating out the night before.

Later we stopped at a town - barely a town – of squat white buildings in a line under a dark mound of a hill. Scraps of earth with wire fences, maize and goats and horses plagued by flies. Here the compartment door opened and – I was awake at this point – another woman entered. She didn’t look like she should have come from such a place. The first thing about her was the perfume, cool city streets and night. Elegance of her black dress, glossy silk pulling tight on her full hips and breasts. And the whiteness of her skin against black hair pinned up with a silver comb. And green eyes. Her eyes were vivid, powerful. But at the same time she looked – distracted, somehow lost.

I helped her lift her suitcase into the rack above the seats. She said thank you, in an absent voice, and sat down along the seat from me. The moustachioed man and the angular woman said good afternoon. I smiled and wanted to think of something else to say – but could only think of something stupid about the goats and the flies – so I just smiled again. No one else was talking. She took something out of her handbag – a letter – and started to read it. I took the guidebook out of my bag under the seat.

Before I began reading I noticed the couple across. Both of them had their eyes on our new companion, an almost predatory look.

The guidebook told me – millions of years ago, the altiplano was one vast inland sea bordered on one side by the volcanic mountain ranges of the coast, on the other by the high sierra, the spine where the continental plates rub and collapse together. Since then it had risen, centimetres each year, and continued to press up on both sides. The water drained away leaving the burnt red soil and the skeletons of forgotten marine species. Now there was only the lake of mirror city, an enormous ancient crater which contained 108 recorded species of unique wildlife. And in its depths, countless more unknown bug-eyed and phosphorescent anomalies.

I slept again. When I woke it was evening, a golden yellow light tinting everything. Beauty before it kills, and all the light is sucked out into night. The vast sky pale, dark shapes of hills.

The girl with the green eyes was sleeping. The letter on her lap, clasped loosely in one hand. Her face yellow in the light, her mouth slightly open breathing, head back against the seat, black hair coming loose from the silver comb catching light like a mirror, reflections of the sky moving.

Then I looked across at the other couple. They were kissing. Devouring each other like insects mating – silently and remorselessly. She was bent back against the middle of the seat, the man big on her with his mouth on her mouth, her eyes, her neck.

They stopped and he was whispering something in her ear. Had they seen me watching? She could have done easily if she had looked across. But then he leant back against the window, she sat up and started undoing the buttons on her top.

After she had taken off her shirt and bra she was sitting up straight in the light, to be admired. Her back slightly arched, shoulderblades back, the narrow arc of her belly and her small round tits pushed out. Nipples little sharp points. She lifted her hand and, shaking her neck, brushed her hair away over her back. Pursed and settled her thin lips. Then put her arms back down with her hands clasped behind her on the seat. She sat like that still for a few minutes, looking into his eyes, him staring back.

So this was one of those strange situations B had told me to expect, and before I even got to Mirror city. When he moved again she stayed in her position, with her hands behind her, only arching her back against his weight. His hands explored her back, fingers encircled her arms. He stroked her stomach with the backs of his fingers. Delicate at first, then more emphatic, possessive. He leant over her and sucked on the bones of her shoulders, then on her tits. She only made a sound when he bit on her nipple. A sharp breath then she bit on her lip to keep it in.

By now they had to know I was watching. Or they simply didn’t care.

When I took my eyes off them I looked across and could see, in shadow now – the light had nearly faded altogether, leaving a dying golden glow, and there was the beginning of a chill in the air as the high thin night of the altiplano took hold – the other woman was awake too. She still sat in the same position with the letter on her lap, but I could see her right hand moving, slowly brushing up and down on the outer part of her leg just above her knee. Stroking the indentation of her leg by the joint, then up towards the hem of her dress, and back again. A gentle motion in time with the rocking of the train.

Then her hand was pushing up further, against the edge of her dress. That movement, too, was repeated for a while, until the dress was bunched up high on her thighs, and her hand had moved across the front of her leg and inside, stroking her inner thigh.

At this point, despite the dreamlike activity on all sides and the onset of night, I was truly awake for the first time since I had got on the train. Awake, alert with arousal. The night scintillated around me, I could feel my blood rushing. A moment had arrived where I could no longer drift, observe. I had to do something.

The desire was impossibly strong. Her lips parted, and though I couldn’t hear her breathing over the sound of the train, I could imagine it like a wind in the bellows of her chest, her breasts shaking. Her silk dress bunched up around her thighs, and her hand moving between her legs, directed all my attention. She didn’t look back at me, she was fixed on the couple opposite. But I moved – I moved my hand across the seat and placed it on top of her hand, between her legs. There was an electric contact, a jolt under my hand. Then her fingers moved and clenched themselves between mine, and I gripped her back. Our two hands moved together, mirrors, up and down on her thigh. Then, me following her, our hands pressed against the hotness of her cunt breathing under the material that covered her crotch.

She left my hand there as she moved hers away, lifted her bottom up from the seat, and used both hands to pull her dress up fully around her waist, then pull down her panties. Now she was naked against the seat, our hands met again between her legs. Hers was guiding mine, rubbing the base of my palm against the top of her cunt, the pelvic bone. The heat off it like a furnace. And then my fingers being pressed down onto the flesh and hair between her legs, rubbing, not forcing or attempting an opening, until from the repeated motion the lips opened around my finger. Like the toothless soft mouth of a baby sucking, clasping on my finger.

We stayed like that for a long time, our hands together exploring, guiding, teasing. My fingers entering her and withdrawing. Sometimes the edge of a nail as soft as a breath on her clit. Sometimes the base of a palm pressing the flesh raw against the bone. Sometimes the hands moving away, resting, clasped together against her thigh. I was content just to let the game go on, very slow, very still. I only had one strong desire – to put my mouth to her cunt and devour her from the inside. Taste and eat and know this stranger inside out. Feel her bucking against my mouth, her legs seize and relax and her body collapse around me.

But there was no hurry, everything would come in its due time. The train wouldn't get in to Mirror city before morning.

Very good Delaquoi, especially given that you've never been across that kind of land before. It did jump around a bit for my taste, but that is a style thing, and you may want to keep it. I'll be sending you your next assignment soon. If you do as well with the next one as with this one I'll see you in level two very soon.

Thanks Aesop. I found the assignment hard, but very interesting and rewarding. At first I had no clue what I was going to do with it, but then images, ideas etc. started coming and I just let them run, however off topic. Then it turned out I'd written far too much to fit in the box, and had to trim a lot out, which was the most difficult part. It may be that cutting that made it jumpy, or maybe there were just too many ideas going on in any case. Anyway, it was fun, and I look forward to the next one.

Next time don't worry about cutting it down to fit in the box. Go ahead and split it into two posts, or three. Doesn't matter. :)