Daughters and Sons of Aphrodite

[Note: all characters in this work of fiction are at least eighteen years old.]

CHAPTER 2

"Sam, boob check!" Jonas elbowed Samantha. He kept his voice low, almost to a whisper.

"Where?"

"Marta, dude! Look, right there!" In the row below them, a tall, slender girl with heavy bosoms was bending over. Like the other graduating seniors in the outdoor amphitheater, her clothes were unrevealing. Nonetheless, one could see her breasts straining at her bra and blouse.

"Such a rack."

Before he could catch himself, Jonas glanced down at his best friend's tits.

"Eyes, bro!" Samantha punched Jonas in the arm.

"Sorry!" Jonas scratched the fuzz on the back of his head with his right hand.

"Do you have The Mother's first clue what's going on?" Samantha and Jonas watched a row of students, the same one where Marta's seat was, file over to the side of the amphitheater.

Heather, their senior high school principal, had just given a speech, wrapping up the tedious, five-hour graduation ceremony. She had informed the audience that they would be leaving immediately for a spiritual retreat. It would kick off lower college. They would not be returning home to get their belongings.

"Fuck if I know." Jonas shrugged. A stream of graduating seniors, who had made their way down to stage level, were now exiting between two massive doors, shaped, in wrought-iron, like entwined rose and orchid petals. Each was about twice as tall as Jonas himself. They were set off to the side of the stage, and led to a fenced-off part of campus that was otherwise inaccessible. Neither Jonas nor Samantha had ever seen them open before.

"Boys," the principal's amplified voice said, "stay to the left and board bus one, two or three. Girls, any other bus is fine." She had repeated this several times already.

"It's weird they're not giving us time to get our shit. I don't even have leaf."

Jonas' eyes went wide. "What do you mean you don't have leaf?"

"My moms were all, 'You won't need it for a while, honey,'" Samantha said, imitating the higher pitched voices of her five parents. She had, by contrast, inherited her carrier's voice, which was deeper than most women's. She continued, "Whatever the fuck that means. I can't tell you how strange it is not to have that taste in my mouth." Leaf had a mint-like flavor, overlaid with a peppery spice that made her tongue slightly numb.

"Never told you what it does?"

"I would tell you if they did," Samantha said. "Well, if it was heresy to tell you, I wouldn't. But nobody's told us shit, other than if you don't chew it daily, 'terrible' things would happen. And it's not like I haven't asked the moms. They just won't say."

"Maybe heresy to tell you?"

"Probably," Samantha said. "They've always been open with me, just not about shisa leaf. Or what to expect at this graduation thing."

Earlier that afternoon, the entire amphitheater had fallen silent when Principal Heather explained that, contrary to what they'd been led to believe, there would be no summer vacation between high school and lower college. Instead, they would attend a two-month religious retreat on the campus of Archemedia Lower College, which their high school fed into. The graduates of every other academic-track high school in on Orchid Island would do the same, either to Archemedia or one of the many other lower colleges that dotted the island.

Principal Heather also revealed that there was a third Book of Aphrodite, the very existence of which was a secret to anyone under eighteen. Now that every senior was at least that age, they would be spending the summer at the retreat, absorbing the additional Book's teachings. Gasps had gone up around the amphitheater. Every student had read, and memorized portions of, Aphrodite's Sacred Duology, the two holy books of the Orchid City State.

The first was The Book of Gaea, which opened with a description of how Aphrodite gave birth to the Earth, her daughter Gaea, after coupling with the titan Chronos. Following that, it chronicled the first several thousand years of the Earth's existence. Second was The Will of Aphrodite, which laid out the system of ethics and morality followed within their nation. According to their principal, the third book was titled Daughters and Sons of Aphrodite. "You will be steeped in this tome over the summer."

Now, at the far end of Jonas' and Samantha's row, students began to rise from their seats. At last the student to Jonas' left got up. She was a dark-haired girl named Alice. Her butt had a heart shape which tugged at the fabric of her black slacks. Jonas grinned at the sight. He looked at Samantha. Her eyes were glued to the same set of swaying hips. She had a leer on her face. He elbowed her in the arm. "Now who's staring?"

"Whatever! You know the rules."

The pair followed Alice down along the well-used concrete bench they'd all been sitting on. At the end, they turned right down a sloping, grassy aisle, and then through the heavy, double doors.

In front of them were two queues, one for boys and one for girls, separated by a rope line. The girls' line snaked around, ending at the far side of a dusty parking lot where more than thirty buses were waiting. The boys' line was shorter and wound up at the opposite corner.

"Why are they separating us?"

"Beats me," Samantha said. She looked at Jonas' face. "You okay, bro?"

"Yeah."

"You're a big fat liar. What's up?"

"Dunno. Just bummed we don't get to hang out all summer, I guess." The principal had explained that the retreat would be segregated by gender most of the time. "When was the last time we didn't see each other for more than, shit, a day?"

Samantha looked up at the clear blue sky. "Been a while, that's for sure." Her voice was lower than usual. She gave Jonas a hug, pushing her soft boobs against his chest. Then she pulled back and punched him in the arm. "Dude, you pop a boner?"

Jonas' face flushed. "No!"

"Totally did! Gross!"

"Did not! How would you even know?"

"Could feel your wood on my you-know-what, Jones!"

"Come on, you two!" said Anne, an art teacher. As one of the many teachers and chaperones distributed around the theater, she was walking behind them.

"I guess this is goodbye, for now," Jonas said.

"It'll go quick," Samantha said. "The All-Mother's Grace be with you."

"Her Grace be with you," Jonas replied. They faced each other, and each made a circle with their hands in front of their hearts.

X X X X

As Samantha waited in the long line of girls, she thought about her best friend's erection. It wasn't the first time she'd felt his dick get hard. She hadn't been pressing her hips into Jonas at the time she felt his wood, so she wondered how big his dick had to be in order for her to have detected the telltale pressure.

She wasn't paying attention to where she was going and bumped into Alice, who had been walking ahead of her the whole time. As her midsection made contact with her classmate's rump, she felt a fluttery sensation near her stomach.

"Sorry!"

"It's okay, Samantha." Alice's voice was soft, and she was blushing. They kept talking as the line inched forward, dust blowing around their feet and getting their cuffs dirty. Alice periodically bit her lower lip and looked up up at the taller blonde girl. They had never talked much before, and discovered several shared interests that kept the conversation going for the thirty minutes it took them to wind their way through. Both loved the Jazz music that the Censorship Bureau allowed from the outside world, particularly Duke Ellington and Fats Domino.

Then the two girls came to the head of the queue. A woman, recognizable as a priestess of the Cult of Aphrodite by her white smock with gold borders, was standing behind a podium. She had a swelling belly, suggesting she was around six months into pregnancy. This was commonplace for priestesses, in the girls' experience, and they did not find it surprising to see that she was expecting a child. Many of their classmates, including Jonas, had been carried by a priestess. What they did find highly unusual was that she was showing a deep line of cleavage. 'First time I've seen a smock like that,' Samantha thought, as she leered at the canyon, noting a few blue veins snaking around the exposed flesh.

She waited, just out of earshot, behind a line of white gaffing tape on the ground, until the pregnant priestess finished conversing with a girl Samantha recognized, but couldn't recall the name of. The unnamed young woman made her way to one of several tall, canvas enclosures, and Samantha was waved over to approach.

"What might your name be, Daughter?" the priestess asked. Her voice was like honey, smoother than Alice's. The woman was not wearing a bra. Samantha's brow furrowed and her heart skipped a beat. She had always been told that is was heresy not to wear one, and here was a priestess of Aphrodite violating the will of the very goddess she served! "Are you okay?"

"Apologies, Your Holiness! Samantha Pantazis, Your Holiness."

The priestess flipped through several sheets of paper and made a mark with a black fountain pen. "Yes, here we are. Please find an empty changing booth," she said, motioning towards a row of tall canvas enclosures, "remove your bra and panties, and hand them to Priestess Charlotte." She indicated a woman with curly, dark hair, standing next to a oak barrel, scarred from years of use. Samantha gaped as she saw Stephanie and Marie, two girls from her class, both red as beets, hand their undergarment to the bored-looking cleric. "Hurry now, we've got a lot of girls to get through."

"Yes, Your Holiness," Samantha said. She stepped into a changing booth. It had no ceiling. The space was illuminated by warm afternoon sunlight. She took off her shoes, then stepped out of her black slacks.

'Seriously, what the fuck is going on?' she thought, as she let her rough white cotton panties fall to the floor. They exposed her bushy blonde public hair to the air. Samantha's chest was too big and she could not see it unless she bent awkwardly, or lifted her boobs and held them to the side. She had never shaven the area around her vulva, although she did shave her legs and armpits. As she pulled her pants back on, the rough black material rubbed against her exposed bush, causing a small frisson of excitement to course up her body. Next she wriggled out of her blouse and bra. Looking down at her cleavage, she felt a warmth spread across her chest, as she ran her hands across the fleshy upper side of her rack, briefly brushing her own nipples. She put her blouse back on, left the booth, and handed her undergarments to the bored woman. She tossed them into the barrel. Samantha felt another twinge of excitement at seeing so many bras and panties collected in one place.

"Do we get those back?" she asked.

"Nope," the woman said, a faint smile creeping onto her face.

Alice was right behind her, handing over her wider panties and smaller bra. Samantha's eyes drifted to the shorter girl's chest. The top buttons of her blouse were undone, and she could perceive the outline of hard nipples. Glancing up, she saw Alice's eyes glued to her chest.

"Want to sit together?" Samantha nodded towards a bus, far off to one side of the parking log. It did not yet have any girls lined up outside its front door.

"Sure!" Alice twirled a long black lock with one finger.

They walked to the farthest bus from the rope line. It was a large vehicle, painted a dull tan, and was the same style as the ones that took heathen tourists around Europe. There was a smiling, broad-faced, middle-aged woman in the driver's seat. She gave a cursory wave down the aisle extending towards the back. "You two are the first, so sit anywhere you please, Daughters."

Samantha let Alice take the lead. She took them to a pair of seats in the third row from the back. Samantha took the window seat, and Alice the aisle. Both girls' hearts were pounding. With the high-backed chairs in front of and behind them, they were invisible to the bus driver. The windows were tinted, as well. Neither could remember being without supervision before. They turned to each other with secretive smiles on their faces.

"Did you list any boys?" Alice asked, referring to the ranked list of attractive classmates all girls had had to fill out weeks earlier. They were huddled together, and her breath was warm on Samantha's cheek.

"Boys? What?"

"Come on! The list!"

"Oh, the one in class! No boys. Boys are gross."

"Even Troy?"

Samantha made a barfing noise. "Still ugh."

"You're the first girl I've talked to who doesn't salivate over Troy, except for the les-- Oh!" Alice's face turned red.

Samantha pointed to her short haircut, a medium-length blonde flat-top with a buzz in the back. "Just figured it out?"

"Okay!" Alice laughed. "In my defense, you hang out with Jonas all the time, so I just figured you liked guys a least a little."

"You mean Dumbass? He's more like my brother. And trust me, I'm not hanging out with him for his looks. Anyway, now you get why I couldn't answer you? It'd be like if I asked you which girls you liked."

"But I like girls too!" Alice said. "More than boys, really." Then she blushed.

"Oh?" Samantha said. "So who do you think's the cutest girl?"

"Goddess!" Alice blushed deep red. "Do I have to answer?" She looked down at her feet.

"Is it, oh, say," she said, drawing it out, "me?"

"You're in my top three! I have some other bi and lesbian friends who put you up there, too."

Samantha's heart lurched, and goose-bumps broke out across her arms and chest. "Well, of course I'd be up there." Samantha grinned. As she said this, the fingers of her left hand casually brushed against the back of Alice's right. The other girl didn't pull back, and Samantha slipped them between Alice's, receiving a faint squeeze. Both girls felt a wave of heat shoot through their torsos. "So what do you think about Dumbass?"

"Dumbass? You mean Jonas?"

"Yeah. Where'd you rank him?"

Alice looked uncomfortable. "Why do you call him dumb? Isn't he valedictorian?"

"Janette beat him out. Though I guess he is the top math student. Given how that one teacher fawns all over him."

"So he's not actually dumb."

"If you mean school stuff, then yeah, he's pretty smart. And he's got a big dick. But I can beat him at any game -- and I mean any -- that doesn't involve brute strength. Dude's gotta be the strongest boy in class. But he sucks at poker, chess, check--"

Alice did not take in most of what Samantha said. Her jaw hung slack. She interrupted. "You've seen Jonas' dick?"

"No!" Samantha said, "I'm no heretic! I just... have some reasons to think my boy's packing some meat down there, if you know what I mean."

"If you say so. But there's no way he's stronger than Troy."

"Can Troy bench 295?"

"I don't know."

"Pretty sure he can't. Plus I remember when he was picking his nose when he was six, so, eww!"

Alice laughed out loud. "So, Miss Lesbian, who do you think are the hottest girls in our grade?" Her mouth twisted up into a shallow smile.

Samantha turned beet red. "Tops, of course, is me. Duh!"

"Uh-huh. Who are the next three?"

"Let's see." Samantha brought a fingertip to her chin.

"Come on, I know you're faking. Spill, girl!"

"Alright! So first was Tara," Samantha said. Alice nodded. "Next, Sophia." Alice nodded again. "Then, uh, well, kinda you?"

"Kind of me, or actually me?" Alice tilted her head to the side and stared up at Samantha with liquid dark eyes.

"Actually you." Samantha's face flushed. A grin broke out on Alice's face and she squeezed the other girl's hand.

"Third place isn't bad given how many zillions of girls are in our class," Alice said. Then a thought dawn on her. "So you think I'm cuter than Marta and Rhea?"

"Easily. What's the big deal about those two?"

"They look like models for one thing."

"Their faces look like models' faces," Samantha corrected, emphasizing the word faces.

Alice thought for a moment, silently mouthing the names of the other top three cutest girls in Samantha's estimation. Then she glanced down at her own chest. "You like big breasts!"

"Maybe," Samantha said.

"Can't you just stare at yourself naked? Yours look bigger than mine."

"I do, from time to time."

"Do you wan--" Alice started to say, in a shy voice.

She was cut off by Samantha, who kissed her full on the lips. Alice pulled back. "You don't want to kiss?"

"No, I do, I was just surprise--"

Samantha interrupted Alice with another kiss. This time, Alice responded in kind. She opened her mouth and let Samantha probe with her tongue. The girls wrapped their hands around the back of each other's heads. Samantha felt butterflies in her stomach, and wondered if her vagina was dampening her dark black pants. She clumsily undid two buttons on Alice's blouse, and slid a hand inside, meeting no resistance from the other young woman as she cupped the smooth flesh of her large tit. Both girls felt a rushing sensation sweep up their bodies.

"Seriously?" came a familiar voice from the front of the bus. "You just ate it?" It was Clara Dimitrios, several rows ahead of them, talking to an unseen girl.

A jolt went thru Alice's and Samantha's bodies, and they disentangled from each other. Alice did up the buttons of her blouse, now that there wasn't a hand feeling around.

"Your lights are on," Alice whispered. She was red in the face and could barely container her laughter.

Samantha looked down at her chest. Indeed, her white blouse did nothing to hide her erect nipples. She looked over at her seatmate, whose own had been hard ever since she'd gotten out of the changing booth. "Yours too!"

The two girls, somewhat reluctantly, switched topics. That way they wouldn't be overheard talking about subjects that had been considered taboo their entire lives. "Satin Doll or Mood Indigo?" Alice asked, returning an earlier discussion about Duke Ellington.

"Mood Indigo," Samantha said. Alice gave her hand a squeeze, indicating they were of the same mind.

Clara and her companion, a black-haired girl named Phoebe, walked by. They were holding hands. Two pairs of eyebrows raised as they took in Samantha's and Alice's disheveled looks.

"Where'd they sit?" Alice whispered, a few seconds later. No other girls had entered the bus yet.

"Two rows back, I think."

"Want to kiss me again?"

"Yes." Samantha's heart was pounding so hard that she heard a rushing sound, as if a conch shell were being held up to one of her ears. The girls' lips met briefly, then Alice pulled back as she heard someone new coming in the front door.

"Who's that?" Samantha asked.

Alice peered around the seat in front of her. "Teacher Kristiana Kazan."

"I had her for Chem."

"Me too. Different section though."

"We should stop, she's so strict!"

"I know, right? I got yelled at for not putting the date on my lab one time. And I was getting a 92 in the class."

The girls contented themselves with holding hands and talking. "Were any dudes on your list?" Samantha asked, at length.

"Well, Troy." Alice said, looking down.

"Everybody loves frickin Troy. What about Jonas? You never answered before, don't think I didn't notice!"

"Oh Goddess, this is embarrassing," Alice said. "I put him ninth."

"Not bad for a dude with an ugly mug, especially if you had girls on the same list."

"He's not ugly!" Alice protested. "His face is plain, but he's got a hot body. At least I think. Not like school clothes give you much clue."

"Tell me about it! Leaves a bunch to the imagination."

Alice twirled a finger through her long hair. "You ever imagine me? I mean, without clothes on?"

"Yes."

"What specifically?" Alice's eyes were shining with mirth.