THE MAN WHO REMEMBERED
By Tommyhawk1@AOL.COM
WWW.TOMMYHAWKSFANTASYWORLD.COM
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You may speak of miracles as you will, yet I say that it is truth of which I tell here, and a truth that you may well choose not to heed, yet tell it I will and you may make of it what you choose, and here is the way of it.
I was tilling my field for the planting in that year when I saw him walking up the road, and he was at first a shining silver light. I know not if that light was the first of him (and you will understand this wondering of mine as the tale goes on), but there was the silvery light and then there was him, standing on the road, and then walking towards me, his body covered in silver metal and I wondered that he did not clank as did most knights who wore such armor, so that every step was a clash of metal like hammer upon anvil.
He came up to me and I was quick to make my obiesance to him. "Welcome to my lands, my Lord." I said to him. "May I be of service?"
He looked at me and his look was one of wonder, as if I were a unicorn instead of a simple farmer. "Who are you?" he asked me.
"I am John, the son of Thomas." I answered.
"Where am I?" was his next question.
"You are upon my lands." I said to him again.
"What...what land is this?" he asked.
I marveled at that question, but thought mayhaps he had traveled long upon unmarked roads. "This is Essex." I said to him.
"Essex?" he asked. "Where is that?"
Now I was truly astounded. "In England, of course." I said.
"England." he said, seizing upon that word as upon a single friend discovered in a crowd of strangers. "What year is this?"
"The year is the twelfth of the reign of Henry III." I said as helpfully as I could.
The noble lord shook his head. "It matters not." he said. "I am lost, it seems."
"May I ask your name, noble sir?" I asked him.
"I am... I am..." He shook his head again. "I do not remember. It is...like I am seeing it all through a fog. Where...where am I?"
"You are fevered." I judged. "Come to my cottage and I shall make you as comfortable as I can, my Lord."
"I...I guess I should." he agreed and came with me. I had no more than gotten him into my bed when he collapsed, unconscious.
I attempted to remove his armor. I was puzzled to find that several of the pieces seemed to be actually a part of his own skin. They must have attached the armor pieces to his very bones, they were affixed so tightly. I asked him later about the parts, but he of course remembered nothing of them. Finally I cut the cloth underneath and left those parts on him, on his forearms and his legs below the knees. I had expected to find his body sweaty and discolored below the armor as a symptom of his illness, but his body was clean and unmarred. I felt his skin and it held no fever. His breathing seemed normal and I covered him with a blanket and left him to sleep.
He awoke about nightfall, I was boiling a bone in a pot to make him broth to drink, the aroma may have awakened him.
"Good evening, my Lord." I said to him.
He shook his head. "I am not a lord." He said. Then, "I remember that, at least."
"Then why are you wearing such armor?"
I pointed to his arms and he looked at it, puzzled. "I don't know." He admitted to me. "There is much that is still shrouded in mist."
"The broth will be ready soon." I told him. "And there is bread if you can eat it as well."
"I can eat it." he agreed. "And I thank you for the care you have given me."
"Where were you traveling?" I asked him as I gave him the bread.
He smiled. "You forget that I do not remember anything. My life is a blank for me before I saw you. I am going no place, and I came from no place." His smile evaporated. "I have nowhere to go."
"Then you shall stay here with me." I said. "Until you remember enough to travel more."
Over the days that followed, my new friend (to whom I gave the name "Stephen" at his request, the name of my long-dead brother). He recovered rapidly from whatever had caused his amnesia, and insisted upon helping me about my farm. He knew nothing whatever of farming, and I had to show him everything. That was enough to tell me he had never been a peasant such as I.
There were other clues as time went on. One evening, I found him staring at a a piece of dead branch intently. After a time, he picked it up and held it in his hand. "It ought to work." he said as if in a daze.
"What is it, Stephen?" I asked him.
He shook his head and put the wood back on the woodpile. "Sorry."
"No, don't be." I said to him. "You were remembering. You said it should work. Work how?"
"It is foolish." he said.
"No, if it helps." I persisted. "How should it work?"
"I should be able to use it to talk to other people." He said. "I looked at it and thought I would use it to talk to my mother."
"But it is only a piece of wood." I said.
"I know." He said.
"How could you use it to talk to your mother." I asked.
"I said it was foolish."
"Perhaps." I said, taking the piece of wood and setting it aside. "But we will keep it just the same. Look at it again, and see if you remember more."
He did, picked it up again. "It ought to open up like this." And he tried to pull it in half. "Of course it doesn't."
I took the wood and used my hatchet to cleave it down its middle the way he had tried. I put them back together, handed it to him. "Open it now."
He did. "It ought to hinge open."
"A hinge." I thought. The wood was somewhat box-shaped. "What's inside?"
He started to speak, frowned, shook his head. "I don't know. I just don't know."
Tears formed in his eyes and he threw the wood pieces onto the fire, and got up, went outside. I waited a brief moment, and then went out to look for him. There were wolves about, and other dangers, and his sophistication was weak in such things. Sometimes, I had learned, he expected everything to be ready and waiting for him, food ready to be eaten, clothes clean and waiting to be worn, the very dishes expected to clean themselves. He would pick up a dirty dish, look at it, frown. Once, he said, "I left this overnight, it ought to be clean by now."
So I went after him because I feared for his safety. He could not have gone far, and since I didn't see him, I went to look for him in the barn. It was still well light out, for the day was near to Midsummer's Day and the sun lingered long in the skies.
He had discarded his clothing, the tunic and trousers which I had lent him, and he was sitting, nude except for his metal coverings and the rags of cloth above them. All he had left of what he was wearing at the time I first found him.
He was looking hard at the metal arm bands. His tears had stopped. His face bore the look of a man concentrating hard upon a puzzle.
I sat down beside him as quietly as I could. "Remembering anything more?" I asked him.
"I am close now, so close." he said. "I can feel it, like if I can open this one window, a breeze will blow all the fog away. It's all there, inside me, I can feel it. I just...can't...quite...see it."
"What do you see?" I asked him.
"These are the key." he said to me. "The key to going home. If I can figure out how these work...I can go home."
These words filled me with an odd sense of sadness. "You could go home?" I asked him, though it wasn't truly a question, more like a forlorn recapitulation.
"Yes, my home. I dream about it." Stephen said to me. "I don't remember much about it when I wake up, but I do remember it."
"What's it like?" I asked him. "The parts you do remember."
"Everything is so clean and orderly." he said. "Things are moving, so fast, yet it's not at all fearful. It's...exhilarating! Exciting! Everything I could ever want! Not like here, where it's so...."
"Not like home?" I gave him when he stopped.
"I don't belong here." he said fervently. "I feel it in everything around me. Nothing looks like it ought to look, nothing feels like it ought to feel, nothing works the way it ought to work. If I just had one thing that was like it was for me back there...it would let me remember."
"So what can I do to help you remember?" I asked him.
"Be with me this night." He said. And I didn't have to ask him what he meant.
He drew me towards him, myself unprotesting. My cheek touched his chest, my beard brushed his nipple and he gave a small giggle as it tickled him there. From that vantage, I looked up at him, and he looked down upon me, and I reached up for his lips and he reached down to meet me with his. As the warmth of his flesh pressed against mine, and I felt the heat of his mouth between vent into me, my lips parted of their own accord, to give entrance to the fat snake of his tongue to reach over my teeth and joust with my own.
His tongue tasted the imperfections of my teeth, and he tasted them in some experimentation. I wondered at that, until he withdrew and I sent my own tongue into his mouth, there to find my tongue running upon all teeth whole and perfectly shapen, no least cavity, or broken or missing tooth met my probing question mark of flesh. This surprised me, not even the King had perfect teeth! Life broke teeth, wore them out, corroded them, why did this man, Stephen, have an unblemished set for his own?
A minor mystery within the bigger mystery of Stephen's existence, but to me, it felt a central part of the question. I pulled my tongue back, repressing a shudder of superstitious fear (it must be magic!) and we resorted for our own reasons to more discreet kissing.
His body, at least, was familiar to me, he had all of the body of a normal man, I felt his arms and the reassuring bulge of his muscle flexed there as arms do in all ways. I worked my hand up over his shoulder, and there were no hairs there, not even the few occasional hairs. I felt over his collarbone and still only smooth, clean flesh greeted my fingers. I felt his skin, and it was perfect, warm, supple, svelte and marvelous.
I hit the line of his chest hair like a wall. No phalanx of pikemen could have marshaled themselves so neatly in ranks as this was. I looked at his chest, truly looked at it, bare to me for the first time since I had undressed him when ill (and who examines such a man with lust?) and I saw that the hair on his chest was in a perfect triangle centered over his heart.
This, too, was part of his mystery, I felt...but then my thoughts were guillotined as his hand reached into my pants and clutched my manhood. It surged in his palm from flaccid flesh to turburlent turgidity, I was gripped by this man, my friend and my companion these many days, he wanted and needed me and I...yes, I wanted and needed him as well. I had lived alone so many years without protest, but having had him with me, now, I would miss him greatly if he left.
I thought no further, then, but let myself be taken by the beast rising from within. There are those who call it the urgings of the Devil, but how can this be, this intimate passion and need to hold another, it can only be the Divine that calls out to us to build this bridge between our bodies so, and what is orgasm but the way in which we mortals can kiss God's cheek?
I slid my hand over that triangle of hair and down the hairless abdomen. I hit the briefest second wall of hair about his crotch, but by then, I cared nothing for that, I was after the column of his virility, and I found it, an alabaster tower that was warmer than the summer sun in my hand.
Moving my hand as he moved his upon me, we pleasured each other as our kisses wandered, I tasted the nectar of his neck and he nibbled at my ear, his teeth tugging my earlobe with just enough force to please me without any more to harm me, it pulled my head to his and my skin and his touched again and again, my temple to his lips and nose, while our hands plied their unceasing labor upon our tools of ecstasy.
His hand left my organ and he tugged at my waist-tie. "Take them off." he murmured to me. "Help me take them off."
I did, our hands were an uneasy team but between us, we wormed the pants down to below my knees, and from there I could kick them off. He reached next for my shirt, but before he could do that, I made bold to send my finger questing over his thighs, to cross the high mound of one buttock and plunge into the crevice between, seeking there the single entrance that would...ah! There it was! Exactly there!
He groaned as my finger touched his sphincter and I felt it twitch as I caressed the ring's rim, stroking over the so-tender flesh-flaps and making them quiver.
His groans rose in volume to become a sort of low rumble, like that of a cow just before she lets loose with her full voice, that same M-m-m-m-m-m! sound was rumbling through his throat and I braved the resistance of his flesh and sent my finger inside of him.
There was only the first convulsion of the flesh, and then it suddenly released and permitted me completely within him, I buried my single finger to the very base, and the heat of his body roasted it from all sides, hot and wet and soft. I quested about within him with my single digit, and he could only spread his cheeks the wider to make my task easier, his anus clutched and spasmed, tried to draw me deeper still into him.
I added a second finger and that made him groan the more, and then a third, to which he finally gave voice. "Uuuuuhhh! Oh! Ah! Ah! Now, yes, now, let me take it now!" And his hand reached for my cock again, but only to urge and guide it towards himself.
I nestled up against him and his eager body welcomed my prod into himself with the same ease he had shown my fingers, I was wrapped in his body and nothing prevented me from moving within it as I chose.
What I chose was a gentle motion, to let my cock caress his bowels as it slid in and out of him, and I relished the slow generation of my desire as my prick was milked each time I pulled out of him, for he clutched and held onto me as if he would deny me the least bit of retreat, but wanted me to stay buried within him to the hilt forever. And would that I could have done so, I might have chosen that path. As it was...the moment was by its nature fleeting, better to relish the time than to try to change it.
So I let my body increase its motions as my lust built within me, I could feel how the delight surged and collected itself into a single, oval whole centered upon my groin, there it built itself more and more, until it strained the confines of my body's limits and was forced to spread down into the hips, up into the stomach, which fluttered from the pressure of passion that permeated every pore of my body now, I was no longer a man but a sexual entity, composed entirely of that ecstasy that reaches for the heavens and as I did, I felt Stephen begin to hunch back against me, and I knew that he, too was gaining in his glory of passion's touch.
And as I reached the point of no return, when my climax would take me now no matter what I did, I held Stephen the tighter and I no longer made broader strokes with my body into his, instead I stayed close and made short, rapid hunches into his ass, my cock never pulling more than a third-way out, but that was enough to make my glans glow with the encroaching rapture that filled my very soul to bursting point.
And I hit that peak, my body convulsed and I gave out a long, keening cry as I drove my dong deep and I sprayed my sperm into him, the glory of the cosmos of mankind enveloped me, I was a man and I was triumphant, I was fulfilling my destiny, I was exceeding my goals, I was truly alive!
And as my orgasm ended, I still did not come down from that point of ineluctable victory in a hurry, my descent was slow, my brain reveling in the sensations that still bounced around my body, so that I was jerking every few seconds, holding on tightly and letting my body be racked again and again in a hundred small aftershocks of my ecstasy.
Stephen was grunting hard as well, and I reached for his prod and felt it, to feel the hot remnant of jism there, yes, he had joined me, I felt that if he had not, it would have been a sort of betrayal, but he had stayed with me throughout, all the way to the top and beyond, and I lifted off the small blob of his come that had remained attached and brought it up to my tongue to taste the essence of his manhood in its purest form.
I stroked the sweat-stained brow of Stephen's forehead, lifting back the damp black locks so I could see his face the better, and he looked up at me with an expression I couldn't quite fathom. Love was there, yes, and gratitude...and more.
And I knew then what it was. "You remember now?" I asked him.
"Yes." he said to me, a soft sound that sundered my world. "I remember it all now. I thank you for helping me all these many days. It means more than I can ever explain to you, more than just one man helping another."
"So you will return home now?" I asked him.
"I shall." He said, inexorable logic cutting at my heart. "I shall need the rest of my suit."
With a doleful heart, I arose, dressed, and led him still unclad save for the metal at arms and legs, back into my hut. From their place of rest, I pulled out the pieces which had come loose, and one by one, he refastened them to his body, using the pieces of cloth I had cut from him to cushion them from his body once more.
When he was done, a vision of silvery beauty, he smiled at me. "John, I must leave now. I wish I could explain more than that. I can never return, but I shall remember our days here with fondness."
"As shall I." I said. I turned and went to open the door for him. I knew that he would be leaving me at once and....
There was a bright flash of light behind me. When I turned around, only a thin wisp of gray smoke remained where Stephen had once stood.
You may cringe from me now that my story is done, and say that I had the knowledge of a demon out to ravage the world. Yet never did Stephen harm me in any way, and his was the manner of a man who had forgotten his way, and needed shelter until he could remember who he was.
And now that he is gone, I shall remember him without guilt or fear. I shall tell my story again and again. Make of it what you will, for I tell only the truth and this was the way of it.
THE END
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