“If you are sure you are ready, would you like me to do so now?”

    I nodded into her chest.  “I mean it’s very warm and soft where I am right now, and the urge to just stay here and cease all thought just to exist in between your arms and pressed against your breasts is very strong… but yes we should probably try this rather than put it off.”

    Sylph giggled, but slowly extracted her arm from underneath me as I grumbled in regret.  She sat upright cross legged right beside me.  “Okay Marin, nod when you want me to begin.  First I will cast some spores on you and I’d like you to breathe them in through your nose.  I have modified my spores to only make contact to the colony within you, and to do nothing else.  Once they establish contact, I will make the modifications to the organism.  To reduce it to only one function, an internal awareness for yourself.  From there, I will watch and monitor you, but it will be your connection to guide and adapt.  I’ll be right here with you the whole time”

    I laid on my back and looked up at her expressive eyes.  There was concern there, but also hope.  I’m sure my face held similar emotions, but the one I was currently attempting to project at her was trust.  I placed my hand on her knee and closed my eyes.  “I’m ready, and I trust you.”

    With my eyes closed I couldn’t see her hand when it moved over my face.  I could sense the shift in light behind my eyelids.  I could feel the heat of her hand.  I could feel the slight flow of air across my lips and face as she most likely released  the spores.  I took in a breath through my nose.  That gentle electric warmth I felt the first time I entered her clearing filled my airways again.  Somewhere within my mind was a rising panic at the memories of being overwhelmed, but my trust in Sylph overpowered it.  I felt the barest moment of my senses coming alive, but then they didn’t, and the world went dark.

* * *

    I don’t know how long I remained there in this void, but it was all encompassing.  All but my own thoughts ceased to exist.  There was no light as I had no eyes.  No sounds as I had no ears.  No touch, or smell, or taste.  All was dark and empty and so was I.

    But then I wasn't, some part of my awareness turned within this void, shifted to perceive elsewhere.  There was my body, but I wasn't my body.  I was removed, yet within.  I turned my awareness and I perceived myself, from inside to out.  

    I was aware of the existence of my limbs, the way they rested and the pull of gravity upon them.  I was aware of my stomach, which was working away at the pasta I had prepared.  I was aware of the blood which pumped through my veins.  I was aware of the glittering spores that moved through it, spreading my awareness.  I was aware of my brain and the colony of this organism which resided there.

    I turned again, my awareness blinked.  Now I was aware of the organism’s thoughts?  I wasn’t sure if this constituted thinking.  Something more basic, its instincts.  I reached out to it, and the organism’s instincts became my own.  Its instincts… my instincts… our instincts told me that this was a sharing, and a welcoming.  A sharing; it had given me awareness of its operation.  The how, and why, and what the organism’s workings.  A welcoming; it had given me a connection and access to adapt.  To change the how, the why, and the what of the organism.  And a welcoming of my own, extended to the organism, that I could revoke at any time.  A welcoming into my body.

    I had been given the instruction manual, and access to the programing, in exchange for accepting it’s agreement.  This was way less hassle and more intuitive than installing any software on anything I’ve ever done but also very weird.  Thank you Sylph.

    I turned back to my body.  With new instincts, I could better perceive the functioning of my body.  A steady heartbeat, the rise and fall of my chest, the gentle waves of contraction in my digestive tract.  I could see irregularities as well.  That time I broke my thumb when I was eight.  It always popped annoyingly when I flexed it weird.  With new instincts, I could see how the nodule of oddly healed bone could be removed and recycled.  With a glance of my awareness to the colony, I adapted its instincts to do so.  I watched it be eroded away by a collection of glowing spores.  

    There was a sense of satisfaction in correcting that.  I looked again and I began to see the history of injuries, scars, and other lingering damage throughout my life.  There was a lot.  Too many to focus on right now.  I pulled back.  I did think of one thing to address.  I could see the injection site from last week where I gave myself hormones.  My awareness could perceive the small cyst of oil suspended goodness, and new instincts presented me with understanding of it’s composition.  I looked to our shared instincts and found the organism could easily replicate everything there.  I glanced to it and adapted its instincts again, telling it to maintain the same blood levels of those hormones that I had currently.  No more hormone injections for Marin.  I'd probably have to play around with levels, composition, and some form of lunar matched cycle later.  This was fun, but I was alone.  I couldn’t see Sylph.

    I turned back to the void, but it was no longer a void.  There was a sound… a ping against my awareness.  I turned towards it.  I could see a connection, a link.  One small link in a chain of something far larger.  I looked with my new awareness and saw an intricate ever branching web of connections stretching back across infinity.  I didn’t need new instincts to know this was Sylph’s people.  That was an unknown I didn’t feel comfortable addressing, but along that first link, there was something… something special.  The gentle pinging.  Some other consciousness, another awareness reaching out towards my own.  I reached out to it, the source somewhere outside myself, and I could feel them, feel her.  I could feel her caring, her concern, her desire for connection with me.  I could feel my desire for connection with her, and the compatibility between those desires.  Intuition told me that with a small nudge, the desire for connection could be fulfilled.  So I nudged.

    A second awareness opened up to me.  Her awareness.  I opened myself to her as she opened herself to me.  I could see her, see Sylph sitting on the bed next to me.  I wasn't seeing with my eyes.  I wasn't seeing her as an image of refracted light.  I could see her existence.  The form of her body as it buzzed with all the processes of life.  

    I turned my awareness again and I opened my eyes.  My vision overlaid itself on the beacon of living energy before me.  I could see the glowing smile on her beautiful face and I couldn’t help but mirror it.

    Then there was another sense.  A directed thought.  A request.  Sylph had used our connection to ask me how I was feeling, but there was more.  The directed thought carried along with it her feelings and her experience of what happened after I had closed my eyes.  I'd been unconscious for about ten minutes.  She had sat by my side the whole time, watching, gently caressing my hand which still rested on her knee.  I could feel how much she cared for me and my own feelings for her swelled.  I could feel the concern that she had for my well-being, along with the belief and the hope that I would be able to make the connection, find a mutual relationship with the colony.  Then I could feel the joy and relief that flooded her, and now flooded me, at the opening of my eyes.

    Instincts told me how I could compile a response, but I hadn't moved my body in ten minutes and I wanted to speak.  I squeezed her knee and cleared my throat.  "Wow that was weird, but I'm alright."

    Sylph giggled at me.  "I'm glad to have you back.  Took you long enough." 

    I scoffed at her in return.  "Well I'm sorry that completely restructuring my awareness to connect with an alien brain fungus wasn't something I could do at the snap of your very pretty fingers."  I stuck out my tongue at her

    Sylph snorted out a laugh and sighed at me.  “Marin, please stop calling it a brain fungus.”

    I grinned at her.  “It’s not like your people named it or anything, the whole lack of nouns and whatnot.”  

    Sylph pinched me.  Not hard, just a little bit of skin on my shoulder, but I was shocked… shocked I tell you!  My face broadcasted my shock as I stared at her.

    “I did ask nicely."  She smirked at me.

    I had a thought.  Sylph was probably aware by now how much that one look on her beautiful face meant to me, but I wanted her to know it more deeply.  My new instincts guided me through the process of compiling all the reactions that smirk brought out in me.  The feelings of attraction, endearment, desire.  That fluttering sensation in my chest.  The clenching and warmth in other regions.  I took them all and merged them into a single thought, and sent it to her along with a message.  I’ll call the brain fungus absolutely anything, as long as I can keep eliciting you to smirk at me.

   Sylph’s face shifted.  It was her turn to be shocked as she processed what I’d sent.  She looked through all the things that smirk did to me, all the feelings I had for that one expression.  A small taste of the feelings I had for her as a whole.  I propped myself up on an elbow, bringing my face closer to hers, and the corners of my mouth pulled up as I watched her with a knowing grin.

    She searched my face and her mouth dropped.  "You felt all that for me?"

    "Just that one smile in particular."  My grin grew wider as I winked.  "I contain multitudes of feelings for all your other facial expressions."

    With a sudden shift, Sylph was over me, her face much closer.  I was pushed down onto the bed by a hand pressed into my chest.  Her face followed me down.  Her lips just out of reach out my own.  "Marin, I believe it's time for those repercussions from you teasing me earlier."

    I lifted my head and brought our lips even closer together.  "Yes please."

    And then she kissed me.  She pressed my head back down onto the bed with her lips.  She swung a leg over me and straddled my hips.  Her hand moved from my sternum, fingers tracing my collarbone, to my shoulder, up my neck.  Goosebumps and electric tingles sent down my torso.

 I couldn't help but moan into our kiss, my lips parting to allow it to escape.  Her fingers wove through my hair as her tongue explored my newly opened mouth.

    A sharing pressed against my awareness across our connection, I quickly accepted as my hands grasped their way across her waist, to her back and hips to pull against me.  Contained within her sharing were all the feelings that my moan had sparked within her, and it was filled with the desire to make me moan again.  And moan I did.  The absolute knowledge of how much she wanted to hear it, combined with the way her other hand was tracing it's way down my side to firmly take hold of my waist.  She pulled that moan out of me so hard my back arched and my hips squirmed against her thighs.

    My skin was burning with need, my hands were grasping for all of Sylph I could get, my lips following whatever skin of hers they could reach, my heartbeat was racing, and my breathing was erratic.  A distant part of my new awareness felt chemicals flooding into my brain as overwhelming emotion and sensation flowed all around me and over my body.  I didn't want it to be, but this was becoming too much.  The world went dark again. 

* * *

    I was back in the void.  I tried to work out what had happened, and my new instincts had replied.  Sylph had placed a failsafe.  In the event certain measurements of the functioning of my brain passed beyond some threshold, it would pull my consciousness back and notify her.  I chuckled to myself in the void.  Sylph had broken me, but planned ahead in case she did.  My brain has a game over screen?  I made a mental note to see if I could work out a way to slow an overload that didn’t involve me blacking out.  I yearned to be back with her.  This sucked.

    I turned my awareness back to my body and looked to my brain.  Instincts told me things were stable now.  I turned again to come back to myself and opened my eyes.  

    Sylph had backed away from me and was seated beside me in almost the same place she was the last time I returned from the void within myself.  She looked concerned, ashamed, and guilty.  I smiled at her and sat up cross legged in front of her.  "I think you kinda broke me there, but in the best of possible ways."  Sylph was still in some state of shock.  

    I turned myself around and placed my butt directly in her lap and wrapped her arms around me as I leaned back into her shoulder.  I prepared a sharing to send to Sylph containing the feeling of trust and safety I felt at that moment wrapped up in her arms.  I turned and kissed her softly on the cheek as I sent it.  I waited a second before speaking.  "I really am okay."

    "That didn't hurt you?"  She spoke very tentatively, gently as if she might break me again.

    "Not at all.  You overloaded me with how hot you are… and all the amazing ways you were making me feel."  My insides fluttered and I shivered a bit in her arms just thinking about it.  "I adored everything you are and everything you were doing so much I got booted back to the loading screen you designed for me."

    She still looked a bit dubious, but gave me a squeeze and nuzzled into my neck.  "I think I did get a bit carried away."  She took a deep breath.  "I'm something of a virgin when it comes to this body, operating entirely on what I've learned through my research and all the instinctual desires you bring out of me.  I must confess I don't really know what I am doing."

    I was surprised.  It made perfect sense, me being the first human she'd ever met, but wow!  The ways she could make me feel when there was no experience to back it up.  Or maybe I'm just really easy,  touch starved, and emotionally crushing on her extremely hard.  Probably all the above…  "Sylph.  You made me black out from just kissing me with the obvious intent of something more.  If this is you having no clue what you are doing I’d be seriously afraid for my sanity if you did.”

    Sylph giggled at me, still nervous.

    I rotated slightly in her lap.  “I’ve got some ideas for ways to take this gift you’ve given me to hopefully make me more resilient against how fucking hot you are, and you make me.  But also…” I reached and twisted my head so that I could kiss her neck, right under her jaw bone.  I whispered into her ear  “I’m happy to take the lead, or take things slow.”  I watched her shiver as the goosebumps formed on her neck.  I kissed the skin where they looked the most populous.  Sylph’s arms clenched me a little tighter as her head leaned to the side exposing more neck.  

    I ventured a slight nibble on the flesh there, it was too irresistible not to.  In reply Sylph let out a moan of her own.

    I continued whispering in her ear.  “If you are still feeling interested, that game over my brain hit me with, has not at all dissuaded me from continuing.  And I’d be delighted to show you some things to add to your collection of human experience.”  I freed an arm to wrap around behind her and rotated in her lap more.  I was now straddling one of her legs, my weight on my knees.

    Sylph nodded into my shoulder and breathed out a “Yes.”

* * *

 

    One hand around her back to support her, I gently lowered her down to the bed.  I kissed her neck again, a hint of teeth as I pulled away to find her lips.  Her face was flushed with that wonderful shade of violet and blue I’d come to know as a blush.  I collected the image of her face, merged it with the delight I felt at being responsible for it and shared it with her through our link.  I was rewarded with even more blushing before I closed my eyes and my lips found hers.

    I had a thought then.  This was her first time, and I wanted to make sure she was interested in whatever decisions I was making.  I could do that now in a way that felt interesting to me.  I imagined my hand pulling up her top and finding the skin of her waist, my hand slowly drifting upwards.  I placed that imagining, made it into a question, and shared it with her.  Sylph shivered in response and let out another “yes” into my lips.  So I did.  My hand following the path from what I pictured as we continued kissing.  I could feel her abdominals quivering as my fingertips worked their way higher.  

    I imagined my mouth drifting back to her neck as my hand found her breast, a small nibble as my fingers traced over top of her nipple, and I shared that.  She moaned with anticipation and told me “yes” again.  My hand, my lips, my teeth, all followed what I’d outlined in my sharing, and I was rewarded with another moan escaping from her lips.

    I shared the idea of my lips slowly working their way down her sternum, a hand lifting her top and uncovering both of her breasts, one nipple being the eventual destination for my mouth.  Her hand became the one pulling up her top in response, and I kissed my way down to gently circling my tongue around the quickly hardening nub.  Sylph whimpered and squirmed her hips.  I moved my knee further between her legs to give her something to squirm against.

    I felt a request for sharing from her now and I gladly accepted.  The imagining of my free hand trailing down the side of her torso, and then venturing under the waist of her pants to the space between her legs.  It was a request filled with desire.  I did as she asked, but stopped at the button.

    I paused there, and waited for a second as she squirmed and whimpered in frustration.  My mouth lifted from her nipple to ask, “Should we just take these off?”

    She responded by lifting her hips and hurriedly moving to take them off herself.  I was forced to flop off to my side to make way.  She kicked them off to the floor and pointed to my dress, “That comes off too… please?”  

    I giggled at her afterthought to make it a question as I undid the bow of the halter behind my neck.  The top of the dress flopped forwards as the cool air hit my chest.   My nipples already stiff but stiffening further as I undid the zipper at my low back and pulled the whole thing off over my head.  I sat up on my knees as I eased my leggings down over my hips, revealing some black bikini underwear with bright red lips printed all over them.  The fabric between my legs was strained against me, but I wasn’t planning on using anything there.  At least not now, for her first time.  

    Sylph had turned onto her side to watch me undress.  She looked amazing.  I took in the rolling landscape of her body.  The curve of her calf, the slope of her thigh up to the rounded swell of her hips.  The creased valley of her waist drew my hand to it.  I traced my fingers up along her ribs, over the cliff of her shoulder, down to her face filled with desire and gently cupped her cheek.  “You are so very beautiful, and now I would like you to lay back and just feel as I focus on you for a bit.”  I guided her onto her back, my face hovering over hers.  She nodded and I kissed her.

    I trailed a hand down her neck, over her breast with a slight flick of a nipple, over her soft belly with a small squeeze, down one side of the V where her thighs met her hips, to lightly tickle my fingers over the tuft of hair they found.  Sylph was softly moaning into our kiss, her body squirming.  My fingers caressed the inside of her thigh, grabbing hold midway down.  I hooked a leg around her other thigh and guided them open.  I pulled back from our kiss to look at her face as my fingers danced their way back up to her core.  I watched her eyes flutter closed as I traced the fuzzy outline of her lips.  I let out my own pleased moan as her mouth opened when I found the wetness I had brought out of her.  I slid a finger up, bringing that wetness up to the sensitive nub at the apex of her folds.  

     Sylph moaned and arched her back as I began to gently stroke there.  I slid my other hand under her back and I brought my lips to her breast which had been raised to me with her arching.  She shuddered with the combined sensation on her clit and her nipple.  I gathered all the desire and lust and caring I had within me for the amazing creature I was tending to, and shared them with her.  Sylph let out a long low moan and wrapped me in her arms, pulling as much of me in contact with her as she could.  

    I shared the thought of a finger entering her slowly, she moaned out a needy “yes” and thrust her hips upward.  My finger slid down, my thumb maintaining contact with the heat I was building on her clit.  She whimpered and her legs quivered as I entered her, curling gently upwards.  As I worked, I watched her abs ripple, her thighs flex, her hips writhe, and I kept steadily building.  She was close as I slipped another finger inside, pressing up and exploring the sensitive tissues I found.  I pulled her to me with both of my hands in different ways, teeth gently holding her nipple, as her climax came.  Her breathing was fast, an almost pained moan with each exhale.  I felt the erratic clenching on my fingers, the straining of her thigh against my leg that held it.  I slowed slightly to help ease her through the sensations flooding through her 

    I raised my head from her chest and laid beside her, watching with awe at the sweaty twitching form I held tightly against me.  I was still, a steady place against her as she came down from the heights I had brought her to.  I felt a bit of wetness leak from me, fuck that was hot!  I eased my fingers from inside her and another jolt of spasms shot through her body.  I wiped my fingers on my undies and adjusted myself from the formerly tucked position as things were very cramped.  I laid my arm across her waist pulling her closer.  When her breathing was steady again I kissed her cheek.  “How ya feeling?”  A big cheesy grin on my face.

    She let out a very long contented sigh.  “Very good…  Just... wow!”