…or, Barley Breathing
“There’s a nymph in my room?” I asked. I wondered whether it was the hotter one or the chunky one.
“Chunky?” Violet said. “Really?”
“Chunkier, anyway,” I said.
“Well, it’s the first one, anyway,” Violet said. “I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t mind letting someone crash in my room,” I said. “I mind a little bit that you opened the door from the inside with your mind.”
“Eh, you should be looking on the bright side,” Violet said
“What’s that?”
“You always know who to come to when you lock yourself out,” she said. She reached up and gave me a peck on the cheek, then rocked back on her heels, grinning like a loon.
“I don’t really care,” I said. “What I want to do is have a cigarette and go to bed. In that order only because I can’t do them both at the same time, and tired as I am, I haven’t had a cigarette since yesterday morning.”
“Really? Wow,” she said. “I’m surprised you’re doing as well as you are.”
“People always tell me I must not feel it as bad as they do,” I said. “I don’t know where they get that from. I’ve got a hellacious headache.”
“Yeah, I know,” Violet said, rubbing her temples. She’d been squinting. I’d written it off, as she had just come out of a dark bedroom, but now that I looked closer, she looked pained. “It woke me up, actually. That’s not a bad thing since I needed to talk to you, but if you want to take care of it, no argument from me.”
“You want to throw on some clothes and head down with me?”
“Are you kidding? I just wanted make sure you didn’t flip out when you got into your room,” Violet said. “Now I’m getting my ass back in bed.”
“Okay. Hey, you should eat lunch with us later,” I said. “I mean, with Marlot and—well, you know who I mean, I guess.”
“I do,” Violet said. “I don’t trust fast food salads.”
“Those aren’t the only things they have,” I said.
“I don’t eat meat.”
Of course she didn’t.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I said. “Well, what do you normally do for lunch?”
“I’m hazy on the exact details,” she said. ” I think it involves a lot of chewing.”
“Seriously,” I said.
“I make my own.”
“You could bring something with you,” I said.
“I was going to eat lunch with Barley,” she said. “Since she’s a vegetarian, too.”
“Barley?”
“The nymph,” Violet said.
“That’s her name?”
“That’s what she calls herself,” Violet said. “Her name is—” and she hit me with a grassy smell and a touch of cool sunlight on my brow.
“How do you spell that?” I asked.
“Like it sounds,” Violet said. “Go meet her. Get your smoke on. Sleep. I’ll talk to you later.”
“Okay.”
She headed back into her room, and I started towards mine.
Hey! she thought as her door was closing. I felt a firm pull on my cock. I missed you, you pervert.
Zero boundaries. I shook my head, clearing away a phantom scent, and went in to meet my guest. She on the couch, with her head towards the door as I came in. Sitting up with her back against the arm, not fully reclining. With the way her gold hair spilled down her back, she might have just been skimpily dressed. She swung her legs around craning her neck to see, and that impression flew out the window.
“Wow, Violet wasn’t kidding about you being a cockhound,” she said, setting down my lore textbook. The dragon music box was playing on the dresser. Aside from the faint glow of morning coming through the shades, it and the crystal rose were the only light in the room. “Ass-to-mouth? Mother Khaele, you’d probably get along with Amaranth just fine.”
“Uh, nice to meet you,” I said, turning on the light.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, dropping her head. She looked bashful all of a sudden. It wasn’t what I expected from a nymph. It was attractive, though. It humanized her a little. “I guess I’m just in the mood to snap. In the last week, I’ve been bouncing from one floor to another trying to find a place to stay and still make classes. I’ve been used as a punching bag, a dart board, a toilet, and things you probably don’t want to know about. I haven’t been able to get any breathing room, until Violet set me up in here.”
“I thought you just had to have sex with people,” I said, trying not to look horrified. If “toilet” was before her cut-off, then I definitely didn’t want to know what was after it, but I didn’t want her to think she was the one I was judging.
“Yeah, well, some people have a skewed definition,” she said. “And thanks to the outreach efforts of my ‘friend’, they expect me to roll over and take whatever they’re dishing out.”
“That’d be Amaranth?” I said.
I thought I’d seen amaranth flour in the health food section, shopping with my mom when she’d been on a health food kick. Amaranth and Barley. It fit. Barley had got shafted a little in the name department, though. “Amaranth” sounded almost elven. “Barley” sounded rural and hickish.
But then, a lot of people thought “Jamie” sounded like a girl.
“Yeah, her,” she said. “I’m Barley, by the way. You’re Jamie?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry for crashing in your acreage,” she said. “But Violet said you were a sweetheart.”
“It’s cool. You know, when I heard there were nymphs on campus, I couldn’t believe it,” I said. “No offense, but my understanding was you were tied to a piece of geography.”
“I am, spiritually,” she said. “And for most nymphs, you’re right. I live in a valley with dozens of nymphs and most of them never leave their fields unless there’s a parade or a fair. It never occurred to Amaranth to leave hers except to come visiting, but when I told her I was leaving she decided she just had to come, too.”
“So, do you read minds, too?” I asked. The subject of the other nymph clearly upset her. Probably best to avoid her.
“What?”
“Your reaction when I came in,” I said. “Total cockhound, ass-to-mouth.”
“Oh, that,” Barley said. “No, that’s not mind-reading. That’s just something that happens. I think of it as ‘the kiss’, because it’s like something in you is kissing up against something in me. Part of your aura or something. Amaranth actually thinks it’s the soul.” She made a face. “Can you believe that? I mean, sex is important, but somehow I doubt it’s the central concern of the soul.”
“You sure talk about Amaranth a lot,” I said.
“I hate her,” Barley said. “If I never see her again, it’ll be too soon.”
“Look, I need to get a cigarette, and then I’m going to bed,” I said. “Do you want to join me?”
“Okay,” she said.
“Awesome,” I said. I got a fresh pack out of the carton and we headed for the stairs.
I was glad it was early. I couldn’t imagine going all the way downstairs in the company of a naked nymph and not getting stopped by somebody if the halls were full.
“Uh, do we have to go out that way?” Barley asked when I started heading for the nexus. “I’m kind of trying to lay low.”
“That’s where the smoking areas are,” I said. “And there aren’t a lot of people out and about yet, anyway.”
“But there are some,” she said. She put her finger on my chest and traced a line up my sternum. “I’m just trying to avoid trouble.”
I looked around the ground floor lounge. There was nobody around. The desk was deserted.
“We can go out the side door, I guess,” I said. “It’s technically no smoking, but since nobody is around I guess it doesn’t matter.”
We stepped out into the sheltered concrete staircase. There was even more cigarette debris on the ground than there had been on the first day. Somebody had scribbled “FAGS” over the word “smoking” in the “no smoking” sign.
“I guess I’ve been taken worse places,” Barley said, looking at it while I lit my cigarette.
The first pull wasn’t the same kind of rush as transforming into a stag and launching myself through the woods, but all the same, it was something.
“So what are you doing in Pelinor, anyway?” I asked.
She shrugged.
“Just trying to keep to myself,” she said. “As far as I can, being a nymph. I came here to learn, but I think I must be the only one in Harlowe. It’s all sex and dorm politics over there.”
“You have a problem with the sex?”
“I have a problem with the politics, and the way they intersect,” she said. “There’s this clique that controls it all. If you’re in with them, it’s like your shit doesn’t stink or something. Cross them once, though, stand up for yourself or for anybody else, and you’re an instant pariah.” She looked at me, with big doe eyes. “I don’t even shit, Jamie, and I sure as hell don’t stink, but I tried standing up for a girl and she threw me over just to get ‘in’ with the crowd.”
“What happened?” I asked. I thought she could probably use a shower, but I didn’t say anything. She smelled pretty damn good considering the week she’d said she had.
“They were going to rape her,” she said. “Violently. Like a, you know, a hazing. An initiation. They were going to ‘jump her in’, I think. And I liked this girl, I mean, I genuinely liked her. She’s kind of stupid and way too eager to be loved, but you just look at her and there’s this kind of dopey vulnerability and it’s like, how can you not like somebody like that? So, against my judgment, I agreed to go to this party so she’d have, you know, a friend there, and I tried to warn her beforehand, but all she cared about was that I was ruining her chance to hang with the cool crowd. She was just so excited about being invited to a party, you know?”
I nodded.
“And apparently she got her wish,” Barley said. “From what I hear, she’s real popular. The bitch of every bulldyke on the fifth floor.” She shook her head. “Can you believe somebody would want friends so badly she’d let herself be turned into a plaything?”
“You’re talking about Mack, the demon girl, right?” I asked. I remembered her being paraded around the student union in her underwear, and the early-morning grope sessions.
“Yeah, her,” Barley said. She looked pained. Physically stricken, even. Like the name was a slap across her face.
“Hey, she made her choice,” I said. “You tried your best to help her, but you can’t save somebody who doesn’t want it, so there’s no point in beating yourself up.”
“Yeah, I suppose you’re right,” she said. “Violet was right.”
“Yeah, I am pretty much a cockhound,” I said. “Though I like girls, too.”
“I know you do,” she said. “But I meant about being a sweetheart.”
I was making an effort to look at her face, too. I’d always thought nymphs were like a twenty-four hour sex store with one hell of a generous take-a-copper policy, but Violet’s little preamble about decency had reminded me that Barley was a person, too, with needs beyond sex. She wasn’t just tired, she was weary, and she clearly needed some “me” time.
“Do you mind if I try that?” she asked, pointing at the cigarette.
“My friend Marlot beats me with her cane if I let people start smoking from my cigarettes,” I said.
She’d threatened to as a joke, but the sentiment behind it was genuine. It was also one I agreed with. I’d always share if I could with somebody who was out, unless they never reciprocated, but I didn’t encourage anybody to start.
“Oh, I’m not going to start,” she said. “I’m semi-divine, and I’m pretty sure I could heal an addiction if I had to. I just want to see what it’s like. I came here for new experiences, Jamie, and so far they’ve all been pretty sucky.”
“Your first drag off a cigarette isn’t likely to be any better,” I said.
“Well, let me find that out for myself, then,” she said. I looked at her, thinking. She squared up her shoulders. “You aren’t going to catch any diseases off me,” she said.
What the hell. She was an adult being. I flipped the cigarette around in my fingers and offered it to her. She took it, and looked down at it like it was a fireball wand and she was afraid it would go off. Then slowly she raised it to her lips—full, and a color of red found only in lipstick and sunsets—and wrapped them around the end.
She held it in her mouth like that. I’ve never gotten the comparison of cigarette-to-phallus before. Having sucked on more than a few of both in my time, I didn’t see the similarity. Watching Barley with the cigarette in her mouth, her eyes going almost cross-wise looking at it, I started to get an inkling.
It wasn’t that it was a sexy image. She looked ridiculous, actually. Awkward. I think that’s what did it. She was, probably for the first time since five minutes after she was born, a total virgin.
She took it out of her mouth and handed it back without inhaling. She let out a huge breath that she’d probably not realized she’d been holding. Against my will—though not entirely against it—I watched her chest fall. Not to put too fine a point on it, she had a nice rack. I don’t know if any guy’s ever used the phrase “just the right size” and actually meant it, but hers were.
Most of the girls I’d known that were as skinny as Barley were pretty flat. A lot of women I didn’t know personally had skinny bodies and great big boobs that were so obviously transformed or glamoured that you couldn’t take them seriously. Or maybe that was just my elven side.
Whatever.
Barley was full-breasted, and they looked gloriously natural.
“Maybe later,” she said apologetically. “I’m not ready.”
“Sure,” I said. I took a puff. There was a faint sticky-sweet taste on the end of the filter. “It’s cool, whatever. So, if you’re still tired, you can take bed. I slept on that couch lots of times at home.”
“All things considered, I’d prefer your first offer.”
“What was that?” I asked, wondering what Violet had said while I was away.
“The one you made upstairs,” Barley said. “When you said you were going to bed and asked me if I wanted to join you.”
