Prelude to a Story

Frosty eyed me discerningly, took a deep drink, and then, as if talking to himself, announced his decision. "Yes, I think you are ready."

And then he took off his clothes. I thought this amusing, but before I could deliver a wry comment, Frosty pursed his lips in a hushing gesture. He switched off the lantern, leaving us in leaf-lights of fireglow. He undid one of our nearly bursting bags of glass, and then began placing them, as precisely as chess pieces, around the fire. Once that was done, he laid out a blanket, sat upon it, and asked me to get naked.

This being early October, I should have been freezing, but the fire, the memory of the afternoon sun and Frosty's wolf-gaze lifted my blood to the surface. I stood before him as he rose to his knees, cupping my pubis in his hand like a goblet. With this kind of mysterious, ritualized foreplay, I didn't need much of the real thing, and soon I was crouched over Frosty's erection, feeling him part my lips and make his way inside.

I began to realize that this coitus was a means to an end - foreplay to mythology. Neither of us was bound to last for long. The branches of the trees flashed through my vision as I trembled into orgasm, the plates of my spine lining up like rivets on a beam. A minute later I recovered my muscles and began to work on Frosty, matching the motions of my hips with the expressions on his face until he, too, was overtaken, his semen painting streaks of heat across my womb.

We stayed that way for a few minutes, panting in counterpoint until our breaths lined up on level ground. Then he pulled out of me, placed me beside him, picked up an old Navajo blanket and would it around our bodies. He took a glance in the direction of Cassiopeia (the imprisoned queen) and began his story.