Love for a day - (Closed for lakegirlxvi)

[Dirtydave1974]

Story idea riffed off the wonderful Neil Gaiman's Death - The High Cost of living

My name is Tobias O’Connell. Some people try and call me Toby, but I’ve grown used to Tobias. That doesn’t really matter anymore because this is the last thing I’m planning on writing.
I know what your thinking. What would a good looking white boy like Tobias O’Connell want to take his life for? For a start I don’t have anyone I’m in love with. Also I’ve never had sex, which at 20 is just embarrassing. Especially where I live.
Lake Gaiman is in Navada, not far from Lake Tahoe. We’re not as big, but we are still a favourite destination for all the college kids during spring break. During the year it’s beautiful and quiet and still. But when spring break the parties start and they get pretty crazy. We call it the fuck fortnight, and just about everyone loses their cherry about that time.
Not me though. Don’t get me wrong, I’m OK looking. Five foot ten, brown hair, blue eyes, and I keep pretty fit because I’m always hiking. I guess I’ve never been laid is because I just don’t like large groups of people, so I don’t go to the right parties. Instead I walk through the forest, trying to outrun my ever growing sexual frustration.
I could pay for a hooker, but I don’t know; losing my virginity with a protitute just doesn’t feel right. So I have come here, to this forest that I love so much and I’m leaving this note, before I take the boat row out to the middle of the lake and go for a swim. I doubt I’ll be coming back.
Sorry Mum, you did an OK job. But I’ve just had enough.
Tobias.

Tobias closed the laptop and wandered down to the shore, where a white wooden rowboat lies waiting. Tobias stops. Lying in the row boat is a woman, asleep. Her hands are classed together on her stomach and she is robed in a long white dress.

 

[lakegirlxvi]

The first breath is always the hardest. Air feels so terribly strange, pouring into her lungs. She appears often in dreams and visions. Sometimes she even takes solid shape, but she only truly exists in the flesh once every century. It always takes some getting used to. She sits up and look around. A lake, surrounded by tall mountains and tall trees. Cool breeze, warm sun. She starts to stand and nearly falls into the lake as the boat tips, but she drops down quickly, only getting a little splash of cold water on her. She shivers. When she appears in dreams, she doesn't have to worry about keeping her balance. Or getting cold.

Or clothes. The white dress is beautiful, but it tangles her legs and makes it terribly awkward to move. If she could stand straight, it would be different, she guessed, but she had to get out onto the dock first. She gets a knee up, and then has to rearrange the long skirts so she can get her other knee up. Finally she stands, letting the gathered skirts fall down gracefully. She looks at herself.

Of course, it's a wedding dress. Suitable enough for a goddess of love. She looks around her for a wedding, but there's no party. Just the dock and the boat, the lake and the mountains, the trees and a path and ... on the path, just in the shadows of the trees, a young man standing and looking at her with the strangest expression on his face.

As the personification of love, she's accustomed to being awe, desire, longing, worship, even tenderness. This young man is looking at her with something else. She waves, a curious smile turning up the corners of her mouth.

 

[Dirtydave1974]

She stood up, and for a very long moment Tobias thought she was going to fall in. The boat rocked first this way and then that as she struggled with her dress. He leapt forward a step, but she managed to get out before he was needed. So much for playing hero.

She was an eye-opening sight, there was no denying that. A dirty blonde with a body that had more curves than San-Francisco. She had a pretty face, but wasn't wearing any make up, or shoes for that matter. Her dress was spotless. How did she get out here? This was his private spot.

The lack of shoes was what really confused him. The forest floor was not kind to the bare footed, and this particular jetty was easily forgotten by most passer by's. If the boat hadn't already belonged to him he would have thought that she rowed here. Maybe she threw her shoes in the water. Dropped. Dropped shoes would make more sense.

Then she was waving. Tobias looked behind him to make sure that there was no one else there. A few trees, but no one waves at trees. He turned back around and stood there looking at her for a moment. Bobbing up and down like someone who was full of electricity that wasn't quite sure where to go. In the end he did what was sensible. He waved back.

"Hi."

 

[lakegirlxvi]

"Hi," she replied, smiling at him.

He was a strange man. He looked young, but there was something terribly old about him. He seemed confused. Like he didn't know she was waving at him, even when there was nobody else there for her to wave at. She looked around again. Well, a woman in a wedding dress turning up in a rowboat might make anyone a little confused, she supposed.

She wondered if this was him. Every century she came to earth, to feel what it was like to love for one day. It was always strange. She was love, and to her it was as natural as breathing. More natural, really. It was different for mortal men and women. They had so much else to think about, and she was always surprised by just how complicated it was. It was the lesson she had to learn each century.

This young man, for example. All alone with a beautiful, strange woman, and he seemed to have no idea what to do. She started to walk towards him, but when she reached the end of the dock, the ground bit her. She winced, and hopped and it bit her again. She hopped back onto the dock. Thorny seed pods were everywhere. She hoisted the dress up to the tops of her thighs and balanced on one foot so she could look at the sole of the other. The skin was soft, delicate as an infants.

She looked back down at the boat, but there were no shoes. She looked up at the young man, wondering why he wasn't gallantly coming to her aid. Maybe men simply didn't come to the aid of strange, beautiful women in the new century.

If she had been a goddess, she could have made the soles of her feet tougher, or had shoes, or lined the path with rose petals so deep and soft she'd never know she wasn't walking on clouds. Today, though, she couldn't do any of that.

"I'm sorry," she said to the young man. "I seem to be stuck."

 

[Dirtydave1974]

She was hopping from one foot to the other, like a cat on a hot tin roof. Tobias skidded down the dirt joining her on the dock.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I seem to be stuck."

"Here let me have a look." He helped her sit, and took her leg in his hands. There were a few thorns and rocks on the balls of her feet. Her skin was soft and the colour of milk. This was not a girl who spent a lot of time out doors. He rubbed her feet pulling some thorns out.

"A bit silly coming down here without any shoes on." He smiled up at her. "I suppose you will be wanting to get back to the village." He ran his hand over his chin and face, feeling the stubble tickle his palm.

That was going to be a problem. It was 3 1/2 miles back to the village and the only way there was by foot. They could take the boat to a dock a little closer, but that was a 2 mile row followed by a meandering two mile run down to rapids. Then he would have to drag the boat back here later. There was a way to hike there that would protect her feet, but it was going to hard work.

Then he stopped. His hand was still around her leg. He laughed, a little embarrassed. Letting her leg drop to the ground. "Who are you, how did you get here?"

 

[lakegirlxvi]

She stood on the dock and let him examine her feet. He pretty much had to crawl under her dress to do it, but she held it up for him and didn't feel a twinge of modesty. It wasn't really a feeling she was capable of, though she recognized it in others.

"Yes," she said. "I suppose it was a bit silly." It wasn't exactly her fault, but once in the 8th century she had tried explaining that she was the embodiment of a goddess and had wound up being tied to a huge log and set on fire. It had hurt terribly, but she had learned an important lesson.

"The village?" she said. She frowned. She wasn't sure she wanted to go to the village. It was very nice here, on the dock, with the sun shining down. Villages tended to be full of puritanical people and horseshit. "I'm not in a big rush, to tell you the truth. I think I rowed here. I don't really remember, but I don't think I walked here, so...."

She gestured towards the boat by way of explanation.

 

[Dirtydave1974]

She wasn't wearing any panties. She was holding her dress up and showing him that she wasn't wearing any panties. Petty much every thought that Tobias had ever had was replaced by that one thought. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

After a moment he realised she was talking.

"Ok. Yes. Good. No excellent. Fancy a swim? Since we're here."

 

[lakegirlxvi]

For a moment, she couldn't understand why the boy wasn't saying anything. Then she looked over the curtain of her skirts and saw him staring at her pussy, and she giggled. She had no underwear on, and the breeze (as well as his eyes) floated over the smooth skin of her pussy. Apparently he wasn't used to seeing things like that. She let her skirts fall down as he finished examining her feet and stammered a little.

He wasn't making too much sense, but she wasn't Athena to be bothered about sense. All she wanted was desire.

"A swim sounds nice," she said. The water looked cold, but the sun would warm them up soon enough. She frowned as she realized that she was tied into her dress pretty tightly, and that she couldn't reach the laces. She turned her back on him and then looked over her shoulder. "Would you?"

 

[Dirtydave1974]

His eyes widened and his blood started to flood towards his penis. He had suggested going for a swim as something to say. He hadn't expected her to agree to it.

With slow movements and shaking hands he took the thin cloth strap from her dress and pulled, undoing it. He could smell her natural perfume and lingered behind her taking it in. The dress billowed out, no longer constrained by the straps.

His hands moved to her hips and his fingers scrunched the cloth up. He lifted her dress up and over her head.

His eyes fixated as inch by inch her pale white flesh from her legs, then her round buttock, then the small of her back revealed itself. Then the dress was off and she was standing naked with her back to him.

 

[lakegirlxvi]

She looked over her shoulder at him and smiled. He was staring at her as if he had never seen a woman before. While she was used to having that effect on men, it was usually because of her divine beauty. Today, though, she was a mortal in a mortal's body. A nice body, she thought, looking down at herself. More voluptuous than she would have chosen, but obviously a bit of a free spirit. There were no tan lines to be seen.

She laughed and took two steps at a relaxed jog, feeling the muscles working, the flesh jiggling. When she reached the end of the dock she dove out, cutting smoothly into the water with barely a splash. She kicked her feet, swimming through the clear water, the chill shocking her skin, cooling her. There was a terrible pressure building inside her, and once again, she remembered that she needed to breathe.

She'd been underwater nearly half a minute before she broke the surface and took a deep breath. That felt better. She looked back and saw the boy standing on the dock, still dressed. She grinned and waved.

 

[Dirtydave1974]

Tobias could stop staring at her. She was divine. All curves and promises, but then just as he was losing himself in her vision she took off. Running and laughing down the pierre and then leaping into the clear blue water.

Tobias grabbed at his shoe and hopped up and down getting first the left off on and then the right. She seemed to be under the water forever, and he was starting to get worried. What if she didn't come back up. But finally she surfaced far out into the water.

Tobias took off his shirt, exposing his chest. He could feel the sun caress it, and he smiled. Come what may today was a good day, even if it was his last. He slipped out of his pants. He was semi hard from looking at her. Then he ran forward took a huge jump and did a bomb, landing slightly on his back.

He resurfaced with a laugh and swam in long confident breast strokes out to her. "You are a little bit crazy," he said, with a smile.