When you go outside, you smell that earthy spring scent, of leaf mold, humus and new flowers. The stalks of new growth push up in the sun, petals spread, and there's all that stiffening and opening, and somehow thoughts of sex and love waft across your mind.

Sex is the arena where many of us experience our greatest joys and anguishes. In a deep animal way, all the key relationships in our lives are sexual: Our parents fucked to call us to them, our mates of whatever gender are our most intimate companions, and the children of our fuckings hold our hearts and hopes in their hands as no one else can.

We pagans celebrate and revere sexual energy as much as we can manage, but that sometimes turns out to be less than we might hope. Sex has a lot of fear attached to it for everyone. It's easy to blame our repressive patriarchal culture, which indoctrinated each of us with misinformation from early childhood, but we also carry a rich biological ground in which the seeds of fear sown by our culture easily take root and grow strong.

But the weather is so perfect for it (brilliant sunshine intermingled with freezing rain) that I thought perhaps you'd like to visualize a field trip out into the sexual wilderness. Yes, perhaps you and one other person.

So transport yourself to a comfortable place for a thinkabout, and begin by considering what you'll need for any expedition into the sexual outback.

All the guidebooks suggest sensible dress made from natural fibers such as generosity, kindness, patience and honesty. No matter how fierce the weather gets, these will keep you safe and warm — you don't need an arctic parka of diminished expectations or a fancy fur coat of amazing sexual prowess.

Haul out your tattered mental backpack. What are the bare essentials to bring? I find it's always good to have latex rain-gear handy, along with plenty of lube. But don't pack much gender preference if you can help it — that stuff is heavy, in my experience, and the significance of genital configuration is way overrated. You won't need much baggage from past relationships either; the only thing to take from them is what you've learned about learning.

No reason not to pack some fantasies as snack food, but bring your dreams too or you might get hungry. Resist the temptation to bring the dream cookbooks. They weigh a lot, and a typical recipe like the following doesn't work as well out of doors:

Prepare one ripe person of conventional gender, appropriate height and weight, good social standing, enticing looks and convenient wealth. Peel off annoying features. Add a can of long walks in the moonlight, and a packet of freeze-dried talks in front of the fire. Season with an inability to see flaws and inexhaustible sexuality that only expresses itself on demand. Bake with a desperate need for love until congealed.

In the wilderness, things generally taste better raw.

If your pack still seems heavy, you could consider leaving behind some of the preconceptions stuck down at the bottom. I always find more there than I remember packing, and they always turn out to be less useful than I expect.

Here comes the SUV with the other person in your party, so it's time to get moving. Quick, stash your stuff in the straw and make yourself comfortable against the sideboards before the donkey gets impatient. What, you were expecting a Land Rover?

The start of your journey takes you through hundreds of miles of nice suburbs. Passing the neat, well-tended lawns and the happy, prosperous couples sweeping sidewalks and washing status cars in front of their beautiful homes, you could believe these people have perfect marriages and perfect lives. But you glimpse vacant faces peering out of windows in the houses, marked with rage and despair, and behind in the alleys well-dressed figures mill like ants, darting furtively from back door to back door, climbing over one another in a frantic quest to find something they can no longer quite remember.

Ahead and to either side, these suburbs stretch endlessly, as far as the eye can see. Your heart sinks. Then the donkey looks back and winks, and you realize people do escape from here. Even in the cities and suburbs, there are secret paths. Your cart turns and clatters slowly down an alley, past plastic garbage cans, a twisted bicycle and piles of recycling, into a dark forest.

Huge trees rise around you, straight and tall and ancient — the smallest must be over 10 feet across at the base. The air is still, and a deep layer of pine needles muffles the sound of the cart wheels and the donkey's hooves. The background rumble of trucks on the freeway has faded completely, and the smell of earth is strong. The track you're on winds gently downward in deep shadow to a stream where the donkey stops to drink.

Your eyes scan the far bank and pick out a little path winding up the hillside, and your spirits rise as you see a shaft of sunlight on a fallen log in the distance. The donkey looks back at you, and you realize it's time to abandon the SUV.

You glance at the slumped figure of the other expedition member. You shudder.

This person has to be one of the most unattractive human beings you've ever met. Badly dressed, with a hideously misshapen, lumpen body, gray skin, and a face ugly with shame and insecurity. It took all your self-restraint not to show open disgust when this person first appeared, particularly since you'd been hoping for a possible sex partner. Over the course of the ride, your revulsion has only increased.

"I think we go on foot from here," you say, trying to affect a neutral tone as you shoulder into your backpack.

"I think I'll stay here, actually." The person's voice has a whiny undertone that grates on your nerves. Part of you longs to be rid of this fellow-traveler, but somehow the donkey's reproachful eyes suggest that you need to keep the expedition intact.

"This is just the trailhead," you say. "There's sunlight up there, on the other side of the stream. At least walk that far."

"It's safer to go back now."

"Safer in what way?" you ask, your irritation rising. You catch a rank whiff of body odor or bad breath.

"Anything could happen out there. We might get lost. It's dangerous."

"Well," you point out through clenched teeth, concealing your contempt as best you can, "It's safer to stay flat on your back because if you sit or stand, you might fall down."

Your companion nods grotesquely.

Your patience cracks. "Listen, if you don't get out of the cart, I'll find a stick and beat you till you're bloody. That's quite a bit more dangerous than coming on the hike."

You can't believe you said it — you're not usually so mean-spirited — but it does make this repulsive person scuttle off the back of the cart in a hurry. With a nod to the donkey, you jump down too.

It takes some threats and persuasion, but eventually you both get across the stream on a series of large flat rocks and set off up the little path on the other side. In spite of everything, a feeling of freedom and infinite possibility is flowing into you.

The path climbs steadily, gently at first and then more steeply, up out of the big trees into a sparser, more open wood. Towering conifers give way to spreading oak and beech, with stretches of sunlit meadow around every turn and twist of the path.

Although you're sweaty and your legs ache, a sense of exhilaration is growing in you. As the path traverses the hillside, you've been catching glimpses through gaps in the trees of distant, snow-covered mountains and vast stretches of forest broken only by lakes of a blueness that almost hurts. Even the labored panting of your unwelcome companion doesn't spoil your growing elation.

The path emerges from the trees and turns up again, straight up a steep, rocky meadow beside a little streambed towards towering cliffs. You struggle upward, almost alarmed at the euphoric compulsion you feel to reach the top. You slip several times on the steep slope but hardly notice the resulting scrapes and bruises.

At last, panting, you arrive at the base of the cliffs and realize that the path follows the course of the little stream into a narrow gorge, not more than 20 feet wide. You are dizzied looking up the rough stone walls that rise impossibly high to a tiny ribbon of dark blue sky far above. As you peer into the deep shadow of the gorge, you see sunlight and realize that it must widen out ahead. You walk slowly forward, feeling heat rising in you.

As you make your way through the narrow passage, the air ahead shimmers and writhes. After about a hundred yards or so, the walls open out and the gorge ends abruptly in a space perhaps 30 yards across. On the far side of this grotto, a thin cascade of water falls from impossibly far above, turning mostly to mist by the time it settles onto the surface of a deep, quiet pool. The rock behind descends in sinuous curves, smooth, jet black and shiny as a mirror.

You take a few more steps forward in wonder at this place, before you see the woman standing in front of the pool. She is slender as a snake, bald-headed, naked. Her nipples glow like red-hot iron, and her prominent labia pull at your gaze, but you cannot help meeting her burning eyes.

"Greetings," she seems to say.

"Hi," you say like a fool.

"Where is your companion?"

You look back. There's no one in sight. You feel so light-headed you can hardly find any words to explain that your fellow traveler must be further behind. You turn and look back into those eyes. You notice a snake's tongue flick outward from her lips, which she parts in a slow smile. There are fangs at the corners of her mouth.

Suddenly, you want her to bite you; you want urgently to surrender to her. She is standing right in front of you now, and you are staring into her eyes. You feel her breath on your neck, hot as an oven. You want her sexually; you want her to consume you.

She hands you something, and you take it without thinking. You glance down finally as her gaze moves to it. It is a mirror. You tear your attention from her unspeakably beautiful, impassive face to look into it.

For a moment, you cannot make sense of what you see, then you scream and drop the mirror. A sense of recognition comes over you. What you saw was the companion you thought you had left behind. You realize you have known it all along — that loathsome creature is you.

Your mood bursts like a ruptured wineskin, spilling desire and exaltation like blood onto the dust, leaving you empty and afraid. Now you look at the snake goddess with terror, dreading her. Trembling, you try to step backward, but she is closer, almost touching you.

She seems to whisper something.

"What?" But you know what she said.

"No, no —" You try to deny her, but in her burning eyes you read a choice: Continue to live a lie, or abandon yourself to her. You want to give in, but you have no idea how to overcome your fear. You stand there shaking for what seems like hours.

"All right," you gasp at last, and instantly she strikes, faster than a hummingbird. You feel her fangs sink into you like shafts of flame, one into each eye, and the whole world turns red. You stagger, dizzy, and begin to fall, but you feel her arms catch you effortlessly. This tiny, slender woman is holding you like a baby now, and you blink at the blood and poison pouring out of your blind eyes and running down your cheeks.

Then your vision clears, and you look up into her face, and desire fills you, unthinking passion. You seize the bright red nipple by your mouth and suckle desperately with burning lips, She smiles as magma courses down your throat, exploding your consciousness.

You come to your senses standing before her again. She seems different, but you can't say how. Once again, she hands you the mirror. Once again you take it, and now look into it with apprehension.

"What do you see?" she asks.

And in your mind she tells the story that the mirror shows: "A human child, perfect in imperfection, delicate, fragile and mortal like every human child, suffers. A clever child protects against the attacks of inadequacy, disappointment and fear. You push them into the other and send yourself to carry them into exile."

You feel tears running down your cheeks and look up at her.

"Look again."

And you look into the mirror again, and this time see such a beautiful being; it could no longer be you, so sweet and vulnerable and raw, so sexy.

"That," you hear in your mind, "is what you are when you are whole." She takes the mirror from your hand, and is gone.

You look around. You're still standing by the pool, with the sun hot on your neck and shoulders. You are naked. Your skin feels different, clean, new, and you're a little light-headed. Across the pool, the mirror- like surface of black rock that rises in voluptuous curves seems to undulate behind mist and rainbows of the falling water.

Suddenly you feel utterly alone. You even miss that ugly companion you've had for so long. But as you remember with familiar scorn all those disgusting failings, then the image of that other beautiful creature in the mirror rises in your mind.

You sink to your knees and begin to cry.

After a time, you rummage in your pack for a change of clothes, since the ones you were wearing are gone. You hand encounters the cookbooks you've been carrying, and you pull the huge volumes out. You run your fingers over the gold tooling on their leather bindings with feelings of gratitude and love. The spells they contain, concealed as recipes, have protected your childhood dreams for many years as you grew up. To your surprise, you realize your dreams will no longer need that protection if you can become whole. After thinking for a bit, you pile the books by the edge of the pool as both a gift and a sacrifice.

Shouldering your pack, you make your way back out of the gorge, feeling even more strongly the gradual movements of the polished black walls behind you.

Once out of the gorge, you find that the path turns and follows the base of the cliff and then leads upwards once more.

Facing another steep ascent, you feel weary and discouraged. Nonetheless, you force yourself into motion, up and up from rock to rock, like climbing stairs, breathing raggedly, your thighs burning. Finally, the path tops the ridge and brings you out into a great meadow above the cliffs, where knee-high grass and wildflowers wave between huge lichen-covered boulders.

Your heart sinks. Ahead, towering like a god over the meadow and intervening valleys, is the largest mountain you've ever seen. Your eyes follow knife-edged ridges, deep ravines and sheer rock faces up to the base of the vast glaciers that cover the upper two-thirds of the mountain, rising through crest after jagged crest to a distant point high against the sky.

Never, you realize, never in a million years could you attain that pinnacle of sexual ecstasy. You don't have the equipment or the skill, and you couldn't develop the strength to make that climb. The air would be too thin to breathe even half-way up.

Disappointment courses through you, bringing a great sense of failure. Whatever you have in your life, now you will always know it's second-best. As you are turning to go back down the path to the suburbs, someone calls your name.

A slender young man is leaning against one of the nearer boulders in the sun. He is naked and quite good-looking. He has a beautiful black tail and cute little horns. He probably lives on the mountain. He's probably been to the top. He'll undoubtedly let you know it, too.

But his expression is friendly, open, playful.

"Look," he says, gesturing. You turn and look at the view across the meadow over the cliffs, where the body of the earth stretches languorously into the distance, out to the sea in one direction and jagged mountains in another. Valley succeeds valley, some forested, some meadows and grasslands, some sere desert, all beautiful. The longer you look, the more you see, the more you are filled with a sense of wonder and possibility.

Never, you realize, never in a million years could you explore all of this landscape, never could you encompass even a fraction of its diverse and glorious beauty. Your heart fills with excitement and a hunger to start wandering.

You feel his eyes on you, and you turn. His expression is vulnerable, full of sympathy and desire. You are a little shocked to see that he is masturbating sensuously. You are glad, suddenly, that he's 20 yards away. Even at that distance, his gaze is stripping away your clothes. In spite of yourself, you start rubbing your body too. Your hands seem to know just what to do, and warmth spreads through you.

"Come watch," he says, and goes around behind the boulder.

Part of you protests, but you really want to see, and another part of you feels safe, so you follow him.

On the other side of the boulder is a little bower of grass and ferns, and what you see there is like a slap in the face. The young man is making love to your horrible companion.

His fingers are running all over that grotesque body while his mouth is busy sucking, licking, nibbling in strategic places. He licks a gray, pointed ear. The unbearably ugly little face is contorted in pleasure, and that fixed expression of fear and resignation has been replaced by one of pitiful desire.

The emotions that crash over you are among the worst you've ever felt. Disgust, yes, to see the obscene pleasure of that shameful other, but also the most acute jealousy, like a hard knot in your stomach, jealousy like a haze in front of your eyes, waves of rage, hurt and fury.

What on earth is there to be jealous of? You had no intention of letting the young man touch you, and besides, it's perfectly clear he would if that's what you wanted. And you'd certainly never want to touch that other. So why do you feel so left out? Why do you feel so disrespected, so violated?

Always before in your life, jealousy has gone along with broken promises and shattered trust, so you've always assumed that's what it was about. Now, though, there's none of that.

Worst of all, you see that bit by bit, the attentions of the young man are transforming the other into the beautiful creature that you saw in the mirror. It's as if you yourself are becoming ugly by comparison, changing places with everything you so scorned and despised.

You want to run away screaming, or kill them both, or die yourself. The young man, looking up from the crotch of that creature, is watching you. You meet his gaze, which does not, after all, seem so young. You find yourself lost in those dark eyes, and a different emotion begins to rise in you.

You find yourself balanced on an edge between anger on the one side and surrender on the other. Anger seems so much safer, but the eyes are looking at you from the other side.

As if stepping off a cliff, you give yourself to surrender and fall into a sea of lust.

The young man grins and licks a long lick all up and down the other's crotch. Watching his tongue, you groan, because you feel it on your genitals. You use your hands, but it is his mouth and fingers that you are feeling, stroking and licking and kissing that beautiful creature. You are shaking with need, hardly able to stand.

You cannot stand; you sink to your knees watching them, lost in the steady, wild gaze of the young man. They are 10 feet away from you, but you are utterly joined with them. Gradually, as you build to orgasm, your sense of boundaries erodes, and in the end, it is just you whose body feels the god's touch, who is torn out of any body, place or time.

When you come to your senses again, you are lying in the little bower feeling utterly contented. The first thing you see when you open your eyes is that distant peak, so unattainable before. Now it has a familiar look, as if you'd just been standing on it, incandescent in the freezing wind.

You look down at your naked body luxuriating in the warm sun and feel a moment of panic at seeing all the ugliness of the other. But the smell of the flowers around you and lingering remnants of that transcendence cause you to run your fingers lightly over your crotch. Electric sensations run up your abdomen and down your legs, and before your eyes, you see yourself transformed into that beautiful creature.

You stop and feel the ugliness threaten to return. You realize with annoyance that this is going to take some work, some attention. Then you think about the feelings you just had, and pleasure washes over you.

You jump up, suddenly exhilarated again. You are naked. You are an animal. You don't need clothes any more; your integrity can now be a part of you, not something you have to wear. Yes, it will be a challenge; that's half the fun.

You look out over the fantastic panoramic landscape before you and realize with a thrill that the sun is setting. Soon it will be dark. You find to your surprise that there is a hunter in you, who welcomes night. There is prey in you, who longs to be caught.

You feel more alive than you've ever felt in your life. Down there, there is no beginning and no end, no road, no destination, only a mysterious, uncharted, ever-changing landscape of beauty and challenge.

You decide to start by wandering toward the sea.

(originally published in 2003 in Widdershins volume 9, issue 1).

This story may be copied freely and re-used provided that its authorship is clearly attributed to Bestia Mortale.

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(last updated 24 June 2007)