What have we

[Cortisol]

I sat alone on the terrace overlooking the lake. I had nowhere else to be and no one else to be with.

All of the young people around me were wandering here and there, talking to one another and making some sort of plan for the future.

They all seemed to be so fervent and trusting, like a colony of ants, one that I would join if I could.

I finished my beer and put the glass to my side, and it became clear to me as I glanced to my right that I deserved to be alone, for there it was that I saw the giggling girls that I would look at.

On the right, a tall, pale, avian creature perused the dock in front of her, coming to realize that it was perfectly satisfactory.

On her right, I must notice another young girl’s breasts naturally and expectably jostling, as if she had meant for it all along.

But then I notice someone more important.

She is to their left, simply walking forward. She is tanned so healthfully, and her core shifts with her steps. Her veined arm clutches her towel as she looks down at herself. She knows what she is.

Her neck is leaned forward, braced by small triangles of trapezius, as if she is somewhat ashamed, but maybe it is just liveliness and the virtue of fitness that I am misconstruing. Her thick knees bring forward the hanging muscles above them, and the tendons in her calves press to the skin.

And she has a small face, happy and simple, as if it is only an accident that she has decided to look as she does.

It can only be the case that she loves how she looks, that she is so enthralled by how her she has become that she has furthered it all forward. Youth has such energy, and her small, pert breasts show that time restarts in every body. Her giggle had a small song to it, and her core tensed forward.

In her laughter she looked up, her neck a moment of artery and crevice, and then she looked back forward.

I thought that it might be at me. She moved her hands to in front of her, as if somehow a difference was happening. A bicep bunched and shifted.

I looked away, and looked back, accidentally glancing towards her waist and her crotch. I looked back up to see her eyes, and could only turn back to the lake.

If only I could have told her something, but that might have ruined it, or maybe I already had.

I thought about how I could be something for her. I thought about how I could bring her close to my body. I thought about how she could lean up to me and kiss me, and how I could feel her warm and tensed body along me.

I thought about how I would fill her, and how she would grip me, and how we might even become friends.

She was now lain down, and I could only see her delicate feet facing me from down the pier.

I had hopes about what she could think about me, but the lake wind came too cold.

And only fantasy remained.

[Gear]

Very cool to see you back!  Have you thought about continuing "Without my Spellbook"?  Your work is still some of the best on the site.

[jumpy999]

Cortisol lives! A welcome return to this site. "Distracted" remains on of my all-time favorite stories (even though it was never finished  ). I hope this is just a little taste of longer works from you to come.

[Cortisol]

It was a good day, a day when my mind was not on myself.

I had come here to meet a friend, but he said he was running late. It was my second time being in a bar since COVID. The first time made me feel so guilty, the worry of killing my mother and father, the two people that actually matter to me. Everybody else should remain appropriately distanced.

I sipped my drink quickly. My tolerance had gone up in more ways than one. It tasted like unhealthiness, and it brought on the fresh guilt that I can only feel in a public place.

I continued to wait, and my phone brightened. My friend was in an accident. He was ‘fine,’ he said, but it ‘wouldn’t work out tonight.’ So be it. I have videogames I can play.

I shifted my body to the side of the booth, my legs draped over its edge like a child on his bed, when my eyes stopped myself.

Who I saw was a young woman just moving to sit down at a nearby booth. Her friend had sat down before her, and she sat down next. My mind paused for my senses to gather it all. I knew that this was important but I could not yet know the reason. We are more than our mind.

She landed heavily in on the bench. Her somewhat flat face and nose reminded me of a friend from high school, but her smile was broader, and a vein in forehead was not of someone I had seen before.

Her shoulders were wide, and as she attempted to take her fall fleece jacket off while sitting, she bumped into her friend. Her smile shifted to become more diplomatic than happy as she looked to her friend beside her for a response to this apology. Her friend provided a tender return, a gentle shifting of her head downward to show graciousness and timidness.

Removing her jacket revealed wide, pale shoulders. The twisting of her arms backwards into the sleeves produced dancing striations and divots where tendons, bone, and muscle dove into one another. As her left arm reached across her body to put the jacket to her right, her thick neck turned, tendons forced to the surface of her skin. Her tricep pushed against her body, making her arm seem to double in size.

Her friend, her friend beside her looked at the scene, and I could see that friend's tenderness, her graciousness shift so perfectly, a movement in her chest as if her breath got stuck for but a moment. She looked confused and happy as she shifted her focus to the menu.

The waiter came to me, and I looked up to him similarly confused. A pause.

I thought that I should probably stay. I could, of course, give my parents their final breaths by staying. I prepared my remorse and ordered a sandwich and a beer.

Their menus were up to their face now, but I could still see the woman’s right arm. Her forearm was thick with veins dancing up it.

A comment, a laughter, the menu came down so that they could look at each other in the face as they relished whatever it was, and my eyes darted back to the nobody in front of me to avoid suspicion. I would only give them a moment for themselves before I will look again.

And then I looked back. Lines of veins had come laughing to life in her neck, and a few more in her forehead. She leaned forward with delight. I breathed in.

Her friend, her friend was smiling too, but it was a strangely, beautifully muted version. It was not muted out of sadness, but rather it was the smile of a person out of their depth.

After a moment with the emotion, the friend seemed to want to confront something and turned to her right.

In a few enthralled moments, she moved her eyes towards the woman, up her face, down her face, down to her neck, down her brown hair, to her shoulders, to the blooded arm. She blinked a long blink, and after another interrupted breath in, she leaned her head down in repose at the menu.

[will attempt to continue]