…or, Lonnie’s Lap
The hay ride was interesting.
Not pleasant, but memorable. The wagon could have held a good number of people comfortably. There were more than a good number in it, and it was bouncy as hell.
Being squeezed between two hot girls—one of them Iolana—and having other ones sliding into me and on and off my lap might have made it better.
In fact, it did. But it could easily have made it worse. I was ambivalent about being known for having images of my cock splashed around the ether. It had to be better than being known as the guy from the ethernet who threw up all over everybody.
The ride got worse once we got away from the campus and the Emperor’s Roads and onto the country roads.
“You look kind of green,” Iolana said.
I nodded. Seemed safer than opening my mouth.
“Everybody hold on!” the driver called out. “We’re about to take a shortcut. It’s going to get a little bumpy.”
He lied, of course. It was already more than a little bumpy. The cart turned off of the road and started cutting down a row between cornfields, where things got really bumpy. One of the wheels struck a rock or something, and the whole vehicle gave a sickening lurch to the side.
Everybody got thrown into each other. We all managed to stay inside, but Iolana ended up with another girl sitting in her lap.
“Whoa! This reminds me of the airship going over the mountains,” Iolana said.
“Oh wow, you’ve been on an airship?” the girl said.
“Um, yeah,” Iolana said.
“What was it like?”
“Little scary,” Iolana said. “But once we got up, exciting.”
“I would make love to you on an airship, then throw you from it like an empty container when I was done,” a voice, strongly elven-accented said from somewhere near the front of the cart.
“Oh, shut up, Semele,” another girl said.
“Quit hitting me!” someone else said.
“I was trying to hit her!”
“Where’d you come from?” the girl on Iolana’s lap asked. She looked short. It was hard to tell. She was freckled, and her hair was blonde. Dyed, from the look of it. The roots were icy blue.
“Far to the west of here,” Iolana said.
“You’re from the desert? The badlands?”
“No, farther than that… past the Wall of the World.”
“There’s something past the Wall of the World?”
“Uh, yeah,” Iolana said. “More desert, and then some forest, and then the ocean. That’s where I’m from. An island, Kaha Moai.”
“How did you get past the Wall of the World?” the girl asked her.
“In the airship.”
“Did you have to go through like a tunnel?”
“No, we went over,” Iolana said.
“Doesn’t it go all the way up? To the roof?”
“No, I don’t think so,” Iolana said. “It’s just a name.”
“Oh. I always thought it went all the way up.”
“Nope,” Iolana said, bemused. “Sorry?”
I could remember a storybook from first or second grade about the Wall of the World mountains being a literal wall, going straight up and joining with the sky. The first time I saw an actual picture of them, the reality had been made pretty clear.
“Why do they call it that, if it doesn’t go all the way up?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know,” Iolana said. “The ogres call it the Broken Spine. At least, that’s what the steward on the flight said. The flight lasted almost four days, so I learned a lot about the lands we passed over.”
“Was it exciting?” the girl asked.
“Not really. Harpies approached once, but the ship just went up higher and they gave up,” Iolana said. “I talked to some of the other passengers. There were four other girls who were going to MU on the ship, and I learned some more Yokano from them.”
“Yokano?”
“It’s what they speak in Yokan.”
“That’s not a real place, is it?”
“Yes, it is,” Iolana said.
“With funny animal people and all?” the girl asked.
“I don’t know how ‘funny’ they are,” Iolana said. “There are a lot of Yokai living on Kaha Moai, actually. I went to school with a rabbit boy.”
“Did he have long ears?”
“Hey,” I said to the girl, if only to break the chain of inanity. “Is that your real hair color?”
“No, I bleach it,” she said. She turned back to Iolana. “Hey, do you have a bony lap or do I have a bony butt?”
“Um,” Iolana said. “I’m not sure.”
“I think you have a bony lap,” she said. “I’m going to go sit somewhere else.”
She disappeared. It was so abrupt that I thought the wagon had just shifted again, but we were pretty steady.
“That was random,” Iolana said.
“Yeah,” I said.
“You saw the blue, too, right?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“And the disappearing act?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “I thought maybe my brains were rattled.”
There was a commotion from up near the front. A happy commotion. Maybe a relieved commotion. Over the clatter of the wheels, I heard music.
The celebration was premature, though. The worst was yet to come. The driver let out a whoop and the wagon careened down an embankment, then swerved wildly from side to side before spinning around and then skidding to a stop next to a big stonework house.
“Last stop, everybody out!” the driver called.
Some guys hurried over to pull down the tailgate and help all the ladies down. They had to catch the ones who were pressed up against it. Us dudes were pretty much on our own, though Iolana refused offers of help and gave me a hand.
“Wow, I think you’re the only guy getting out without a boner,” she said. “You are a gay, aren’t you?”
“I’m not ‘a gay’,” I said. “And I don’t think it makes that much difference, when you’ve got someone pressing up against you. I just had other things on my mind.”
“Yeah, you do still look green,” she said. “We should get you a drink.”
“That sounds like a winning plan,” I said.
“Looks like the party’s around here,” she said.
I let her take me by the hand and lead me around towards the corner of the house, where there was light and music. There was a good-sized deck that turned out to be a huge wraparound deck when we got around the side. The sky to the west was still a light purple and the place already had a crowd.
“Do you know whose house this is?” Iolana asked me.
“No, whose?” I said.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I was asking you, since you had the thing.”
“I don’t know anything that wasn’t on the sheet,” I said.
“It must be one of theirs,” she said, pointing towards the biggest group of people, which was centered in front of a sliding door. “We should go say hello to the hosts. That’s polite, right?”
In the middle of them was a couple. I barely registered the guy. My eyes were focused on the girl he had his arm around.
Marlot.
