The Body and the Mind

Quin’s footsteps slowed as she felt the warmth of the sun reach her left side. She savored this new sensation and squinted up through the leaves of the poplars at the sun. She had once been allowed on a trip to the village with her mother, a local woman talking about the sun as if it was a God. Quin wondered about that now. The only God she knew about was the Way of the One. She was an all knowing, all powerful God, the only true God. Quin had told her other once that she thought the Way of the One God was the boss of all the other Gods. Her father had been told and she had been caned for blasphemy. She dared not ask what blasphemy was. She might get locked in the closet.

As she remembered that day, a shadow seemed to fall over the small vale as Quin continued walking towards the creek where she had seen a big rock one time. For just a brief moment, she felt superstitious but then she looked at the sky and saw a big white fluffy cloud that looked like a giant chicken.

Quin spent an hour exploring the area around the rock, mostly playing in the creek. She watched small amphibious creatures dart and dash through the water with fascination. She stuck her hand in the water and felt a tadpole touch her as it swam by. Then a creature that had pinchers grabbed her finger. “Ouch!” She said to the tiny thing and shook her hand until it went flying back into the water. She laughed after it quit hurting. Quin felt better than she could ever remember. This was life.

She remembered the parchment and quill and climbed atop the rock that had ‘called to her.’  Quin lay on her back feeling the warmth of the dappled sun rays touching her now and then as leaves moved in the breeze. The leaves danced. The breeze whispered. The rock made no sound. Finally, she sat up and began writing on the parchment. She wrote, “There is movement all around us.”  She tried and tried to think of something that the rock would tell her. Then she saw it was time for her to go home.

Quin figured it would be her last foray outside of the prison of her house but she felt good anyway. She felt alive and energetic and wished she could climb a tree she passed whose low hanging branch seemed to invite her to climb on up. She sighed. But as she walked, she tried to see everything she could see. She was almost captivated by an inch worm. His movement was so fascinating. But she trudged on. A butterfly landed on her hand. It was the happiest moment of her life.

When she got home, it was almost lunch time. She walked into the house and struggled to see in the darkened foyer as her eyes adjusted from natural light outside. Her mother surprised her by almost squealing with anticipation. Her mother took her hand urging her forward into the kitchen. Her father was waiting there.

“Quin,” he smiled at her, “I hope your day has been successful and that you have learned something important for the Way of the One.”

He indicated she should take a seat. He was waiting for her to impart profound secrets. She had none. So she pulled the parchment out and handed it to him and then cast her eyes to the table.

Dolsa went to stand over Oravia’s shoulder to read what was on the parchment. “There is movement all around us.” Oravia said the words aloud and Quin noticed he said them in a whispering voice. She looked up then. Her parents were looking at each other.

“Quin, you have done well! I must take this to the elders and the Priestess immediately. Dolsa, you feed the child and I will be back and let you know what they think.”

Quin felt like she was dreaming. When her father left, her mother busily produced her favorite foods; cheeses, fruits, and cracked bread. Quin ate mechanically as she waited for her father to return.

When he came back, he was smiling widely. “Quin, the elders, the priestess, and all agree. This is very big. You have been given profound information. I am so proud of you.”

Quin stared at her parents. Her mother had her hands clasped together happily with her eyes wide and seemed to be breathing rapidly. Her father looked like he had just been told he was the most important man in the world. She couldn’t believe it.

In bed that night she thought a lot about what had happened. She knew she hadn’t been given some profound secret to aid the Way of the One. She had just written those words, “There is movement all around us,” because she had been watching the movement of leaves, the movement of water, the movement of sand ad soiled propelled by wind, the movement of small creatures. That the elders and everyone thought the statement profound and meaningful to the Way of the One made her examine her thoughts about the Way of the One more skeptically than she had ever done before.

She remembered being caned for voicing the thought that there might be other gods out there even though the Way of the One God was the ruler of them. What was a god? What was any god? Was there proof? The community studied the god but had any of them ever spoken to or seen this god? And she realized suddenly that the answer was no. But now the community seemed to think that she, Quin had. It was very plain to Quin that this Way of the One God didn’t even exist.

Quin was given more attention than ever. Even her brother and sisters looked at her like she was special. Her parents told her over and over that if she felt the calling again, to let them know. And she knew that this was her way to get out and explore the world around her. Quin’s world had so far existed of her home, the meeting place, a long ago trip to the edge of a village, the stream and wood she could see from the breakfast room window. To Quin, the view outside that window was enormous. She wanted to climb that tree. So she told her parents it had called to her.

She climbed into the highest branches of the tree and realized the world was even bigger than she had imagined. There was so much to see. There was so much to explore. She saw a rabbit for the first time and heard the hoot of an owl.  Quin noticed movement further down the stream and looked. She saw an older boy with paper and quill. He wasn’t writing. He was drawing.  That evening, she told her parents the tree had insisted she needed to make several treks there before it could impart its secrets.

On the second day in the tree, she pulled out the parchment and wrote, “One must climb higher to see more.” She had been sitting in one of the highest branches that could hold her when she saw the boy with his paper and quill stoop to pick up a pebble. He examined it and looked around. He seemed to spot something in the grass and he moved a few feet forward and sat in the grass. He began drawing something. She couldn’t quite make out what it was. So far, he was the most interesting thing she had seen.

Quin climbed down from the tree and walked closer to where the boy sat drawing. When she was close enough to see over his shoulder that he was drawing a colorful plant, she spoke. It surprised her that her voice startled him when she said, “You’re very good at drawing.” The boy jumped up and backed away from her. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know anybody was there.”

Quin looked at him strangely wondering why he apologized. “Why are you drawing a flower?”

The boy looked around him as if seeking escape or making sure nobody else was going to surprise him. “I’m sorry I startled you. I thought you would hear me as I walked up.”

The boy looked at the paper, then back at Quin. He was a good bit taller than her. She tried to gage his age. He wasn’t as old as Rogerick. He was probably 13 or 14 she guessed. She waited for him to answer. Like the rest of the community, he had pale hair and blue eyes but he had a tiny smattering of freckles across his nose. It made him seem nicer. It made him seem more like her. His thin arms were tanned so he must have been spending a lot of time outdoors.

Quin tried to get him to talk to her again. “Why are you out here drawing a flower?”

Finally the boy said, “I am good at drawing but my brain is slow. So my job is to draw things and describe them and where I find them. I’m not very good in school work.”

Quin answered him, grinning. “Neither am I.”  He didn’t ask her what she was doing out here. He wasn’t curious. He was just surprised.

“My name is Quin.” The boy didn’t say anything so she asked, “What’s your name?”

“Oh. My name is Barnabus. I have more drawings.” He held out a stack of papers to her shyly. Quin took them and looked. One by one, she looked at each drawing. They were beautiful. He was very talented. The drawings captured more than just what the object looked like. He had drawn a tadpole on one page. It seemed to move. She wondered how he had made the water look like water. Another drawing was of a group of small rocks that had moss growing on them. They were very realistic but they also seemed more than just rocks. They belonged there and the drawing seemed to say,  ‘Here is where we have been for years, and here is where we belong. We will be here for many more years. We are here.’

Quin complimented Barnabus on his artistry. She pulled a parchment out of her pack and wrote carefully, “Here is where we are. We have been here for years. And we belong here. We will be here many more years. We are here.”

Barnabus asked her what she was doing. She explained that one of his pictures had made her think of something and she wanted to write it down. He didn’t ask for further explanation.

Quin asked him if he had ever drawn a person. “A person?” He asked.

“Yes, you know, like me.”

Barnabus looked at her as she spoke and she could almost see the idea form in his mind as he realized the possibility of drawing a person.

“No, I never have.” He stared at her.

Quin thought he wanted to draw her but would be too shy to ask. “Would you like to draw me?”

He nodded vigorously.

She sat in the grass across from where he sat. He began rapidly drawing. Some thirty minutes passed while he looked at her with his head tilted one way and then another as he paused in his sketching. Finally he grinned. “I drew Quin.”

He showed her the picture. He had drawn a very unusual portrait of her. He had captured the way a wisp of her hair moved in the breeze. He made her face seem nicer than it really was. It was a sweet portrait. And with few strokes, he had managed to convey her neck, shoulders and the top of her blouse where one of her hands loosely held a flower. Quin loved the portrait. She told him how much she liked it. He told her she could keep it. It was hard for her to put it away in her pack because she kept seeing things in the portrait that didn’t leap to her eye at first. For example, she could see the vaguest reflection of him in her eyes. She wondered how he did that.

Barnabus seemed very happy that she liked the picture. He said, “I have to do some more work now. Maybe I will see you again sometime.” He started walking away toward the creek.

Quin realized it was time for her to go home. She gave her parents one of the parchments. She kept the one she had written about the rocks thinking she would give it to them tomorrow.

Her one line statement, “One must climb higher to see more,” was handed over to her father. It was such a dumb thing to write that she was ready to pull out the rock parchment if need be but then she saw her father’s look of wonder and knew she could save the other parchment. She wanted nothing more than to go back to the tree the next day and hope to see Barnabus again.

The next day, Quin climbed the same tree. She didn’t see Barnabus around. She was disappointed. She still hoped he might come around before she had to leave. She scraped her initials into the tree branch with the small paring knife her mother had sent with her snack.

Suddenly she heard a loud splash nearby and turned to look. It was Barnabus. He had been so intent on looking at something on the ground that he had fallen into the stream. She started to laugh until she realized he was frightened.

Quin quickly climbed down the tree and ran to where Barnabus was splashing around. He was yelling, nearly crying, but the whole time, he held his papers above the water. Quin ran to him and grabbed the paper and walked it to the bank and set the paper down and put a rock atop the pile so none would blow away in the breeze. She looked back at Barnabus now and saw he was just sitting down in the water looking confused or embarrassed. “Barnabus! Are you okay?”

He looked at her with miserable eyes. “I fell in the water. I’m all wet.”

Quin reached down and took his hands to pull him to his feet. “Well, now, we’re both wet. But we will be okay.” She pulled him toward the bank with her and they climbed to the bank. He was happy to see his paper was dry.

Quin looked around for a place where she could take off her wet clothing. There were two slabs of rock that leaned together with just enough room for her to fit into. “Barnabus, we need to take our wet clothes off and let them dry or we will never get dry.”

She took her pants and underpants off. It was hard getting the wet clothes off. She came out holding her dripping clothing and said, “You’re turn.”

Barnabus stared at her for some time. Quin felt excited by the way he stared at her body. She wrung as much water from her clothing as she could and then hung each piece carefully over a tree branch. Her blouse was only wet halfway up but while Barnabus hid in the rocks and removed his clothing, she took her blouse off as well. She laid it across the thin branch and hoped the sun would dry her clothing quickly. Her boots were impossible but she could carry them home if she needed to and walk barefoot. She carefully set them under the tree and then turned around to see that Barnabus was right behind her. He held his dripping wet clothing in his hands. She took the from him and squeezed as much water as she could from them before hanging the to dry next to hers. He came up behind her and set his own shoes down next to her boots.

Quin had never been fully undressed before another person in her life other than her mother when she was little. And it was clear from the way Barnabus stared at her that he had never seen a naked girl before. She had never seen a fully naked boy before either. Quin told Barnabus they should find a place where they could get dry that wasn’t right in the middle of the path.

This time, it was Barnabus who took her hand. He led her to a small grassy shallow in the meadow on the other side of the path from the creek. He stopped and said, “Here.”

Barnabus couldn’t quit staring at the small buds of breast that adolescent Quin had only acquired in recent months.  They lowered themselves  into the shallow grass. Quin looked at him. She saw his male part. She didn’t have a name for it. She touched her naked nipples lightly and said, “These are my breasts, Barnabus. They will get bigger when I get older. Yours won’t. They are made to feed babies.” Then she drew his direction to his lower half and pointed at the sausagey looking thing between his legs and said, “What’s that?”

Barnabus looked at himself and said, “That’s my penis. Don’t you have one?” He bent his head down to where he thought her penis should be. “Oh no. Did you lose it in an accident?”

Quin seemed to know at least a bit more than he did. She said, “Girls’ don’t have what you have. Girls don’t have that....” She touched the fleshy looking appendage, “penis.”  Quin was startled when after she touched his penis, it seemed to change. It grew bigger and stiffer. “Oh, I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”

Barnabus groaned and closed his eyes. “Oh my gosh, Barnabus, are you okay?”

He opened his eyes and looked at her. “No. It felt good.”

Barnabus was still unsure why she didn’t have a penis. He kept looking. Finally he rose to his knees and looked closer.  Quin’s legs were bent so her knees were up and she spread her feet apart so he could see better. He moved on his knees and placed himself between her spread legs and put his face very close to her private parts. “Can I draw that?”

Quin hadn’t expected that! She had just thought that she would show him what she looked like, a girl, without a penis. She had no hair around her pubic area yet. She barely had breasts. On her elbows, she herself peered down between her legs. She couldn’t see much. But if he drew her, she would be able to see more. With his face so close to her, she felt a very strong sensation of excitement and didn’t know what it meant. “Sure, you can draw me.”

Barnabus quickly returned with his paper and quill as well as a thin piece of charcoal. Quin could see his penis had gone back to looking like a squishy sausage that hadn’t been cooked long enough. There was hair around it close to his body. He saw her staring. “Do you want to touch it? I’m sorry you don’t have one too.”

He came and knelt close to her. “Go ahead. You can touch it. It doesn’t hurt. It feels good. I like it.”

Quin didn’t know why it excited her. It was kind of gross and ugly. But she reached her hand out and touched it. It moved. But she could tell he liked how it felt so she wasn’t worried she would hurt him anymore.  She moved her fingers around it, feeling and trying to understand its shape but it kept changing. It was soft and spongy at first. Then it was very firm like a squash. And it grew bigger. Quin was fascinated and she felt that giddy excitement between her own legs as she explored his penis. It had grown so big that she wrapped her hand around it and gently squeezed. When Barnabus moaned, she looked up at his face thinking she had hurt him but his eyes were closed and his lips parted and he whispered, “Do that, it feels so good.”

Quin squeezed it again and suddenly liquid shot out of it and landed on her chest. Barnabus still had his eyes closed and he was breathing very rapidly. But he managed to say, “Thank you. That was so yum.....good.”

Quin felt the warm liquid on her chest cooling and looked down at it. It was milky white so he hadn’t accidentally peed on her. Barnabus opened his eyes and saw his milky cum on her chest. He saw she was staring at it, confused.

“That happens sometimes. It’s okay. It won’t hurt you. I just have to hide it from my mother.”

Quin looked at him confusedly. He put his hand to her chest and began to wipe the liquid up and when he touched her breasts, Quin’s breath hitched. Barnabus started rubbing the cum on her tiny breasts. He could see that it made her feel good. The sticky cum was drying so he used a cloth from his pack to try to clean it up so Quin’s mother wouldn’t see it. He didn’t want her to be in trouble.

He noticed that Quin had moved her hand down between her legs. He thought maybe she was looking for a penis or maybe wishing she had one. He finished cleaning his cum from her chest and moved down to where he could see where her penis should be better. “You don’t have hair there. I do. Maybe when you get hair you will get a penis. You will like it.”

Quin was breathless with an unbearable excitement that she felt required something. Like an itch that needed to be scratched. Barnabus sat between her legs with his paper in his lap. He matter of factly spread her legs further apart to see better. He began drawing. Quin felt she needed something but she didn’t know what. Barnabus showed her the picture he had drawn. Quin couldn’t make heads or tails of it. It looked kind of like a weird flower but then her skin was smooth above it with a slit in it. She told him he could keep the picture.

“I’m not through yet. Is it okay if I touch you?” He hadn’t finished asking before he had used his fingers to spread the slitted skin apart to look. Quin moaned with pleasure and anticipation of something. “Oh, are you okay? Does that hurt?”

“No, it doesn’t hurt,” Quin whispered. “It feels kind of good.”

Barnabus fumbled around with one hand, tryng to spread the skin apart. It looked almost like lips to him. He wanted to draw what was revealed when he spread her apart. But she was wet and slippery and he had trouble holding the lips apart. Finally he used more force and held her that way while she moaned and panted. He drew. He peered closer and drew some more. “I think you have a baby penis. I’m sorry. Maybe it will grow someday.” When he touched her clitoris, she cried out in pleasure and pushed herself against his hand. Barnabus didn’t know what to do but he just pushed his hand against her lips and baby penis until she quit panting. He noticed liquid came out from somewhere. He looked closer but couldn’t figure it out. Her private parts were the most unusual thing he had ever seen. He drew several sketches and showed them to her. She kept one but he kept the rest.

Quin’s excitement passed but she felt an indefinable desire for something. It was deep and insistent. She noticed that they had been there for a long while and told him their clothes ought to be dry now.

Barnabus volunteered, “I like you Quin. I will get our clothes and we can get dressed.

Good to his word, Barnabus came back carrying his and Quin’s clothing, her boots, and his shoes. Quin was glad to discover her clothes were mostly dry. There was still slight dampness here and there but she put her clothing on quickly. Barnabus was finished dressing before her and pulled her to her feet grinning.

Walking home, Quin thought over everything that had happened in the grass shallow. She wished she could ask someone about it but she knew boys and girls weren’t supposed to see each other naked, much less touching each other’s private parts. She had been caned thoroughly months ago when she and a boy her own age had barely explored each other with their clothes on.

Dolsa noticed right away that something was wrong. “Quin! Your clothes are muddy. What happened?” Quin explained that she had fallen in the creek and had had to walk home barefooted. She held up her wet boots to show her mother.

“Oh you poor thing. You could get sick. We must get you a bath right away and get you to bed!”

Her father’s voice said loudly, “But first, do you have another parchment?”

Quin handed her boots to her other and pulled out the parchment she had written the day before. “Here is where we are. We have been here for years. And we belong here. We will be here many more years. We are here.”

Oravia read the document. Quin watched his face for reaction. She was startled to see a tear come into his eye. “Oh my darling girl. You really are a prophet, aren’t you? Look, Dolsa, see what Quin has gifted us with this day.”

Dolsa read and put her hand over her breast and shivered. “Oh Quin, you truly are an oracle.”