A Fork in the Road

"Girl Human, wait."

The centaurs gathered around Ertron, and asked if he'd seen any galumps around. These were the monopod, furry beasts that tried to hop away on one leg. They were perfectly round, had one eye and a pig nose. They tried to cuddle with anything warm they met in the woods. They tried so hard, but always fell over. The centaurs laughed when they killed the poor galumps, who did not stand a chance. No one mentioned the girl, but they saw the yoloan and demanded he sing them a war ballad about their victorious hunt.

They tamed the one-footed, fearsome beast

They spilled its blood, its breathing ceased.

Ten skewered on spears ten times as tall

Kabobs for their cook pits or trophies for their wall?

"We said, an ode! Not this belittling limerick that questions our manhood! You'll not get off that easy, you little ponce." They pranced around him brandishing their weapons until one of them snatched his yoloan and used it to club the head of a baby galump that was still breathing. He threw the smashed instrument back at Ertron. "There, now your music serves a real purpose."

"Piss off then, mighty warriors! Mighty wankers is more like it! Fucking gits, the lot of you! Bugger your spoils of war, slayers of the single-footed scourge! Sodding public school leftenents..."

Ertron left his broken instrument behind, but soon after his angry ranting abated and his smarting pride began to heal, he thought only of the strange girl human he'd met. He wondered if they were all like that, and although he was too proud to think it, he hoped they would meet again.

As the weeks passed, Ertron became the target of conquest of all the centauresses, who all wanted to bed him despite the general loathing of him because of his love of inappropriate, non-centaur squishy things. Just as the male centaurs jockeyed for the highest rank amongst each other, the centauresses did so as well. Eventually, one lass by the name of Gyros stood at the head of the pack. She flattered and patronized Ertron, but only regarding the thing between his legs rather than the thing betwixt his ears. Through her aggressive courtship, she finally managed to secure a date with Ertron. He has misgivings, but she was beautiful by centaur standards. Her overtures were a potent narcotic to a lad who had only known scorn from his peers.

"I find your tool to be the apex of form," she told him as they sat together in the coliseum watching the centaur blood sports games. Most centaurs adored the games, and watched them for hours. All Gyros wanted to do was talk about sports with him, that and her designs on his cock. Ertron found them dull, and understood their rules as much as he understood the bottom of the sea.

"Thank you, "he said. "It's the biggest, but I have other qualities as well. You've never asked me to sing you an ode. May I share one with you?"

"Yes, but please hurry. The next match will begin soon."

As he sang, her eyes were transfixed on his man stalk. She'd never been so close to it before. She saw every vein, every subtle movement. It twitched as he sang, another involuntary means of self-expression. "Do you ever sing about it, your beautiful fifth leg? You know, you could stick it in and play me better than you play the yoloan."

"I cannot. I can't use it until five and twenty years of my life have passed. I know not why, but I've been told something terrible will happen if I don't."

"That's the voice of your conservative, puritanical parents. All centaurs have got their nut by now, all but you."

"It's hard for me," he said. "But I'm trying to avoid any curse that might befall me."

"The only curse is the reality that you will gain no entry from any others but me, because of their tight holes. Only I am wide enough to receive you. Only I am woman enough for you."

"Is it only for the love of holes that a man wants a woman?

"It doesn't matter," she said.

All this time, Ertron had been meeting in the glen with the strange, girl human, who had not revealed her name. Their conversations took him out of himself and his worried thoughts. He felt safe around her. He also felt stirrings of his heart, and stirrings from beneath himself. Their meetings were never arranged, yet she always found him. She seemed to come to him from another world where a person could look down on all happenings and people from on high, and see everything with the acuity and perspicacity of a hawk.

Finally, one day Gyros and Ertron began making out. He'd been bored with their conversation up to that point, and when she kissed him, it took his mind off of her one-dimensional prattle, and excited his physical passions to heights he'd not heretofore experienced. Soon, she grabbed him from below and began to pull on his stiffened spear. He sighed and moved in closer. "No," he said. "Please stop. I can't."

"You can. You will."

"Stop," he said. "I don't want to do this." She tightened her grip and pulled faster. Ertron grabbed her hands to pull them off of him, she was stronger.

"Don't resist me, freak. This is what you need."

"You care nothing for me. Take your hands away."

Just at that moment, the Girl Human appeared. She saw them, right at the moment Ertron broke free. Her face contorted into a mask of anger and sadness. She turned and ran. Ertron chased her, but after a few steps she was gone.

"Human lover, freak!" seethed Gyros. "You are nothing to me, you and your pathetic odes." She turned and walked away, leaving Ertron alone and despondent in the clearing of the glade where he'd only known happiness and peace. "They say it's my only gift," he thought. "But really, it's my only curse."

He searched far and wide for the human female, but she was as fey as vapor. His despair was bottomless. His chest pained him. He now knew that she was the only kindred spirit he'd ever met. He went back to the glade every day, the only place where the other centaurs ceased harassing him. He waited, but she never came. His voice was as mute as his broken yoloan. He hadn't penned a new song in weeks.

Heartache was new to him, because being with her was the only time he'd known joy and peace in greater portion than misery. Now his heart plumbed the depths of that black place further than ever before. At last moved by what he'd lost, he was now inspired enough to write and sing again, a song of mourning.

My inner chamber she penetrated, breached

Closed to all but by her reached

Her saucy tongue, acerbic wit

Derailed me, but I'm too large to fit

Girl human, nameless, incorporeal

Yet more substantive than the finest meal

She was a stone bridge across the void

Soft earth, and air, and stream, and wind alloyed.

Upon finishing his song, he watered the glen with bitter man tears. All the iron in his bones ground to dust. Without warning, he heard a familiar rustling. A fair face appeared, and entered the clearing. It was her.

"I knew you would sing again, one day," she said. "I waited. I wanted to hear your feelings about me, directly from inside you, unfiltered." He stared at her, speechless. "We are kindred spirts. I always felt that. But when I found you here with her, I knew that I was only a human, and I could never offer you what another centaur can."

"I never wanted what she had," he said.

"The contents of her mind were repulsive to you. I knew it even when I saw you together, but I took you for a superficial rake, whose greater mind was between his legs, and his lesser mind on his shoulders. Slowly, I realized what a hypocrite I'd been, because I knew that I wanted what she wanted. Yet it was just a fraction of what I saw in you, felt for you. You thought you lost me, but I was always yours, even before I saw you. Your songs drew me toward you. They do so even still."

"I am cursed," he said. "I could never fit you, and the world will never approve."

"I know, darling," she said, moving toward him. "I am cursed as well. I too, am the laughingstock of my race."

"Because you pursued me."

"And for other reasons...but I don't care." Without meaning to, they both moved closer together with each word they spoke.

"It can never work. I can never fit. I'll never satisfy you."

"But you do already. We fit. I fear it. I feel it. We have come to a fork in the road. We must choose a path. Let our streams run together."

He put his arms around her. Their kiss filled every space. Their hands moved everywhere, even to the forbidden zones. Soon, her hands entwined his leafless tree trunk. He couldn't will himself to tell her to stop. He leaned in for more. He moved a trembling hand over hers and pulled it up and down to signal her to go faster. His other hand searched for her swollen flower petals. She twisted away, but he gently pulled her back. He was so lost in ecstasy that he thought he felt not one, but two well springs within her, each bubbling over with sweet nectar. "So this is how it feels," he thought, his only thought. She was lost too. Their breathing came in gasps. His heart pounded in his chest.

"My name is Darlonomie," she whispered.

"Darlonomie, I love you."

His eyelids fluttered, his frame shook, and only the whites of his eyes could be seen. His flesh canon exploded in an agonized, convulsive burst, like the lone, wild cry of a timber wolf. His seed scattered, fireflies on the wind, pelting her neck, her breasts, her arms, running down her in tiny rivulets and waterfalls. It sent her reeling backwards. A light shone from underneath him, so bright that Darlonomie dropped to her knees and shielded her eyes. They both watched in awe as his penis detached from his body and grew in size until it was as large as the oak that spawned it. A pair of titanic, sparkling, multi-hued wings appeared from either side as the beast stood erect and held its proud head skyward to the gods. Somewhere far away, atop Mount Mii, a wizened old man held out his hand and beckoned to the empty void. "It is time," he said. "Come home." The mystic penis beat its wings so hard that they stretched and strained. The earth trembled. Ertron patted it reverently. "I understand now. You were never mine. Goodbye, my friend. You are free now. Go in peace." Then, it uttered a shrill cry like the fabled honey hamhawk. It lifted off into the sky, and disappeared over the horizon, the strangest and most horrifying penis ever known.

When it was gone, Ertron prepared himself for the reality that he no longer had genitalia. He knew he must become a monk. Darlonomie's mouth was open wide, and she pointed to where his junk had been with a shaking finger. Ertron touched himself and found something alien. It was a human-sized, bifurcated penis. He shook his head sadly. He at least had something but he was even more a freak than ever before. Darlonomie sobbed and covered her face.

"You see," he said. "I can never fulfill you. I will always be estranged from the world of normal genetalia. Goodbye, my love. Your name will always be dear to me."

"Wait!"

She stood up and took a step forward, beaming. Her tears were tears of joy. She lifted the folds of her skirt. "It's true," he thought. "I felt it." What she revealed when she spread her creamy thighs was not two flower petals, but two sets of flower petals. Twins!

"Oh, my darling Darlonomie," he sighed, lifting her up in a tight embrace.

"Yes, my love, I know, I know. WE FIT."