Note: This story was dynamically reformatted for online reading convenience.
 
 Love solid as an oak..

   " There is unrest in the forest, there is trouble with the trees..."
(Getty Lee, The Trees, RUSH Hemispheres)

   She was coming home ..  It could feel her drawing nearer, her unique
self shining out towards home, drawing nearer and soon to be in the house
again, her own special voice calling out to her parents, but luck of all
luck, they had had to leave unexpectedly, and it had her all to itself for
the time she spent here, even if just one night..  It could not fail now,
it had to be tonight, and it had worked for this moent for 7 long years,
years it had put to good use, ..  It would not fail in its goal, and
perhaps even it would be so blessed as to earn the goal it had worked
towards all this time..



   It would be good to be home.  She had been working so hard these past
few months, and sophomore year was so different than freshman courses.  But
now she was heading home for fall break and would be able to rest her head,
with just light reading and a few notes to review her only requred
studying, tho if her Mom got too tense and stressful, then she could always
read ahead.  Slowing down, she could see her Father's car gone from the
driveway, and imagining him off to his club for a "meeting"--his euphemism
for needing time away from her Mother.Her smile faded slightly when she
entered the house and felt the silence.

   Leaving the neighbors' house minutes later, walking the path leading
from their proerty to hers, she felt disappointed and strangely elated. 
With her parents gone she would have the house to herself the whole
weekend, but she would not be treated to her Mom's cooking either, so there
was a little disappointnent that she would have to wait til Wednesday, when
they were expected back from her Grandmother's after her hospital stay. 
She would use the time to her advantage tho, with a freedom she did not
have at her prudish roommate's stuck-up and judgmental place, she was not
supposed to be open and free with her body, and she understood the
sentiment, even tho she was a girl, too and therefore her body should not
offend her religious friend's sensibilities , but it did.  Maybe her
roommate was a closet lesbian and didn't want to be tempted, she wondered
sometimes when the restriction got to her and she just wanted to be free
and walk from the bathroom to her bedroom without wearing a long robe.

   Now with the house to herself, Julie did the unthinkable, what would get
her asked to leave at her roommate's apartment, or a swift swat on the
fanny from her mother, 19 or no--she walked from her bathroom thru her
bedrooom and down to the linen closet completely nude, gathering towels and
some of her father's old shirts from the shelves, and walking back to the
bathroom to take a shower and slip off to bed.  She would go swing in the
backyard later, beneath her old favorite oak tree, and dream of her younger
days while she enjoyed the calm of her own backyard, with the added bonus
of her mother's absence, meaning no admonitions about keeping warm or never
leaving her be for more than a few moments.

   Before she knew it, she was outside, walking thru the backyard amd
slipping one of her father's shirts over her head, her body still moist
with her shower and her skin so hot she needed the chill of the outside
wind on her skin.  When she came to her senses, she was halfway up the
trunk of the tree, her feet finding the knots on the trunk she had used to
climb up as a child, and her leg was sliding over her favorite limb, the
bark still worn smooth from her jean-covered rump, all those many years
ago. She could not believe what she was doing, but she felt so at ease
withherself, and this was one of the nicest things about her childhood she
could recall, sitting in this tree and rocking her legs back and forth. 
She still remembered the way she had felt that last day, kicking her legs
vigorously, faster and faster, enjoying sitting here so much more til her
Mother passed by the back window and saw her, just in a swimsuit from lying
out getting a tan, and had come to drag her off the tree limb, telling her
it was not appropriate for a girl her age to be in a tree, especially not
this tree, where the neighbors could see her.  She never had understood
that comment, but she had missed climbing her old companion, and often
wondered why it was so nice to sit there that day, or why she had been up
there in the first place.  Just like today, she had been drawn to climb it,
and here she was with her naked bottom and all, straddling her favorite
limb.

   When she recognized the warmth in her belly, the peculiar sensation that
only her fingers could calm down, she blushed heavily, knowing that she was
truly making a spectacle of herself, straddling this limb and probly giving
the neighbors a good peek at her pretty little privates.  Just the thot of
someone spying on her here somehow made it seem as if she were caght with a
lover, instead of just outside half naked and wanton.  As she snuck back
inside, she remembered something odd.  Hadn't her oak seemed to have quite
a few leaves on it for this time of year, green leaves?  Stranger still,
she had seen no acorns, nor birds' nests or insects.  She never remembered
her tree looking so lonely and deserted.

   It had been so amazing, to see her responding to its call as she had so
many years ago, as the other creatures of the forest had as well.  It had
learned much of touching in its years, much since her mother had first
awakened it to the emotions coursing thru itsince then.  It had missed her
mother, but now it wanted her, as she offered an unknowing response to its
power and empathy that her mother never could have.  It still remembered
the near catastrophe that had happened after its dalliance with her mother,
how the man had come raging from the house intent on hacking at it with an
axe.  All it remembered of the man was terror, and it would never ever
mistakenly risk that sort of discovery again.  When it fulfilled its wishes
with her, with its very own Julie, it would never worry about anything but
the pleasure it stirred in her and the resulting pleasure she sent back
thru her connection to it.

   Back inside once more, she rushed thru the house to her bedroom,
slipping beneath the covers and swiftly bringing her legs open and up,
sliding her fingers inside the moistened lips of her soft private place. 
She could not even say those vulgar or clinical eputhets in her own minds.
It was her own private place, and these were her private emotions, or so
she had gathered fom that messy attmpt at frankness from her mother before.
The passion she was stirring in herself with her fingers touches was not
all that private, and it was the one thing she worried nothing about
showing, as she had caught even her prudish roommate in the shower once,
her hand free and clear of any soap or body wash busily rubbing betweeen
her thighs.

   When she finally stoked her body to a violent quick orgasm, she could
have sworn it felt so very different, as if something innsde her was still
in that tree outside, rocking back and forth against that limb, like she
had so many times as a kid, but enjoying the secret tingles she had felt in
the months before her Mother had banished her from climbing the tree. 
Remembering the discovery that evening inthe bath of her own pleasures in
that private place, the warm rush of her orgasm filling her with peaceful
sweet feelings, she ached suddenly and came again, this time violently,
picturing herself astride the treee limb again, this time with her bathing
suit on and 12 as well, but her suit bottom pulled to the side and her
immature little privates rubbing fast against the smooth bark.  Another
orgasm threatening to overwhelm her, she stopped rubbing inside herself,
stopped pressing against her hymen, which always threatened to send her
fastest into orgasm, and which she enjoyed still having, not sure if losing
it was worth the risks of some man thinking he had a claim to her, like her
Father always acted with her Mother.

   Curling up in her bed, cozy and warm, she drifted off to sleep, her rest
punctuated by visions of a younger version of her Mother, as free and sweet
as she herself was as a youngster.  She smiled in her dreams, watching her
own Mother as a girl climbing the tree out back, the limbs lower to the
ground and the top not quite as tall.  When she saw her Mother doing in her
dream what she had fantasized about in her orgasms, or beginning to,
pulling her own old style swimsuit off to reveal her lower belly tufted
with hair and her own private place glistening with wetness, straddling the
tree limb and throwing her head back in glee, Julie jerked awake, her hand
going to her mouth.  Where that dream came from she did not know, but she
knew her Mother never felt such things, as she had spied on her parents
making love one time, beneath the covers and very unromantic it seemed, and
her Mother simply lay still beneath him til he grunted hard and low.  Then
turned to her side and curled up away from him, just as he did the same
thing.  Minutes later she heard her mother running a bath and crooning an
old song, broken up by what she could only guess was crying every once in
awhile.

   Slipping back in to sleep, Julie stirred restlessly, sensing that
evening had come and too tired to go get an evening meal.  Her hands stole
beneath the covers, but every time they did, she flashed on her mother in
such reckless abandon riding that tree, older than she was now, and not
really riding that limb as much as hunching against it, and with a knot of
the wood pressing deeply between her legs.  Sighing in frustration at not
being able to repress that image from her mind as she grew more and mroe
aroused, she gave up and, slipping her hand beneath her shirt to caress her
nipple absently, slipped gently off to sleep.

   It felt her response to its images, mostly confusion, and knew then what
it had only hoped.  She was still untouched by man, unlike the countless
generations that had lain beneath it in loveplay, including her own mother,
who had played in its branches, but still come back to its touches after
she had accepted her soon-to-be-husband inside hr, where it had never felt
its own touches wander.  It quickly suppressed that thot, as it led only to
the memory of that small pitiful woman and her daughter, preventing the
daughter's fiance from chopping down the family tree.

   It remembered the years since that day, when the jealous husband of it
soon to be lover's mother would come outside to stand beneath its branches,
eyeing its fallen dry leaves as he lit his pipe, cigar or cigarette,
holding the match until the last second and droppig the offending fire into
the tinderbox of its leafy blanket.  It was a wonder that it was able to
send its then fiends to snuff the embers away, but its experiments in
emotions, training itself to become Julie's lover, had run off its former
animal kindred.  It had waited this long, but with the taste of her
pleasures, and the scents and flavors she had left on its branches in her
responses to its first call, it could wait no longer, and quickly bent its
thots and energies away from the past, and towards its sleeping lover.

   Julie roused slowly, feeeling the chill on her belly first, and then the
soft rasp of something hard and brittle against her underarms, her legs
pressed against something hard and rough surfaced, spread wide and pinched
at the knees, as if by a clamp.  When she opened her eyes it was to see
hereslef lined in moonlight, her shirt sliding down her arms and falling to
a branch below her, many feet below her.  She was in the oak tree, halfway
up it it seemed, dozens of feet off the ground and she was straddling two
branches of the triple fork of a large limb, close to the trunk of the
venereable old tree itself, planted by her thrice great-grandmother.  She
wondered how she had ever climbed so high in her sleep, and how she hadn;t
sucffed her body more than the odd burning abrasion she felt on her inner
calves.  What stunned her most was the rustling of the trees branches,
whispering together an seeming to call her name soft and low.  What
confused her tho was the absence of wind in the air, not a single breeze
and the pleasant warmth in the middle of the treee, her skin tingling and
moist with sweat from the close air, humid with dew and the smell of strong
sap.

   When she tried to move her legs, tho, she felt the dtrees forks shift
enuff to prevent her lifting her limbs free, the branch at her back
trapping her forward and another crashing from the nearby limbs, as if it
was held in tension, leaving a thin welt beneath her breasts as it struck
her.  Now the branches seemed caught in a gale as they thrashed about,
stretching her limbs, her hands tangled in trailing ivy in the trees
branches above her head and the leaves of the branches around her rustling
against her skin, rubbing over her super sensitive nipples as she felt the
needs she was unable to satiate before she dozed off coming to the fore
again, stilrred by an insistent tickling of her body by a particularly
leafy grouping of twigs.

   She did not know how she would explain this to her mMother, nor how she
would survive til Wednesday, trapped so hi in this tree and thenearest
neighbors well out of shouting or screaming ditance.  However she had
gotten here, she was not getting down anytime soon, and she wondered how
she had been fool enuff to climb this far in just a shirt, a shirt that was
not her Father's after all, but much older, perhaps one of her mother's
father's or uncles, as the house had been passed from daughter to daughter,
the men of her mother's family going off to make their fortunes and never
staying home after they reached maturity.  Now here she was, only daughter
of the only daughter of the only daughter, no brothers to her name and her
body needing completion and intimate attention even with the predicament
she was in.

   When she felt the warm smooth branch against her knee, she jerked awake
fully now, having nearly dozed as she surrendered to the possibility of
being trapped here with no water or food for days.  she looked down her
body, past the branches now above AND below her breasts, wondering ho wthey
got there, then saww it, a long branch that curved upwards form the trunk
of the tree five to six feet below the branches she was trapped on.  It
forked upt into two ends, both stripped of bark and worn smooth, the ends
rounded as if someone had climbed this tree and sanded them.  What rang
wrong and alarming in her mind, tho, was the way these limbs moved, not
swaying with an invisble wind like the other, but rising towards her, both
limbs rubbing against her legs, shocking her as they moved along her skin
with their warmth.  Again she heard her name in the rustles of the brnches
around her.  But this time she heard another worrd as well..  She heard
distinctly over and over again, "Still..  Still..  Still, Julie..  Still",
and then her shock was complete, the bark on the treetrunk in front of her
was splitting, splitting to reveal the outline of features, very old
features, not of a man or of a woman but of something inhumanly human.  As
the features moved, the eyes shifting impossibly over her body and then
moving to, as best shecould describe it, look into her own shocked and
amazed eyes, she felt the two limbs, pushing thru her soft flesh, one
moving in the place where even Julie had never ventured to touch outside of
neceissity, and then with a rag or tissue between her skin and it, and the
other moving inside her woman's parts, the privat place that even she only
delved just inside.

   These two limbs moving inside her body had no such reticence or modesty
regarding her, but were rather pushing on up inside her outraged body, her
brow tense as she realized this must be a dream, even tho the sundering of
her maide flesh seemed real enuff in its pain.  When that violation was
complete, the limb buried in her as deepy as her foot was long, she felt
her bottom stretching around the other intruder, slipping deeper stil
inside her, farther by half than the other limb.  Then she felt it--the
warm pulsing of the tree inside her body, almost as if she was being
massaged inside , the living wood of the tree flexing and rippling in her
body as the limbs holding her legs fast began to flitin her up and back
down, forward along the curve of the limbs, then back and upwards, moving
her on the implaing branches til she felt the betraying spasms of her body,
the pain ebbing with each movement, tho she still felt she would split open
fom the pressure.

   When the pleasant rippling began anew in her belly, the feelings dubling
as she felt the warmth of the tree, suddenly knowing that her mother was
not riding some knot on the tree in her vision of her, but rather a smaller
part of the tree like what she had inside her now.  She wondered what
indeed made her Mother surrender these pleasures; even if they were being
forced on her at the moment she could not deny them.  Then she saw in her
mind's eye more visions, her Father leaving for business, as this small
town could not provide him with the fast-paced excitement he needed to
thrive in business, her Mother stealing upstairs to check on her asleep in
her bed, small and vulnerable in her magical childhood bed.  With
disbelieving comments in her own mind, the vision continued even as she
writhed in another climax, her legs sore from the movements, unusual as
they were.  She saw her Mother stealing back downstairs and out, to climb
the first limbs of the tree and lift her gown to reveal her belly bare and
she finding her bald bare knot, writhing on it as she expired in orgasm,
and then the perspective of the vision shifted to find her Father watching
from the base of the tree.  She saw then the events of her Father's
unspeakable reaction, his threatening looks at the trees over the
intervening years, and her mother's words to the tree apologizing for
taking Julie away from it when she was old enuff to respond to the tree's
touches.

   Long moments later, she felt something strange, and then saw it,
channels in the top of the brancehs filling with dew that was gathering at
the base of the branches, pooling along the top of the limbs.  As she
writhed in climax once more, she felt the dew, warmed by the tree's pulsing
flesh, pouring into her body, a slippery stream that lasted for long
seconds while she moaned in her intense contracting release.  She collapsed
in exhaustion in the tree's embrace, limbs moving thru her hair, long and
tagled by her exertions in the tree's grasp.  Her senses registered the
limbs insde her, as she lay prone and more comfortably embraced by living
branches moving around her.  She felt the slow ancient movements of the
limbs massaging her ravaged insides, treated as kindly as possible by the
tree's hard appendages, but still bruised by their first encounter with
amorous physical activity.  She drifted in dozing slumber as she felt the
tremors of smaller climazes being coaxed from her, then finally slept
deply.

   When she woke the next morning, it was to find her Mother standing over
her bed, a grave expression on her face, her hands on her hips and worrry
in her eyes.  Asking thrice to her Mother what the matter was, she saw her
mother looking at her lying nude in her bed, shaking her head in
disapporval.  Finally rousing enough to tel her that her Father was in the
hospital, a serious heart attack while chopping firewood at his own
Mother's home, enuff so his sister--who was staying on with their Mother
after the hospital scare--would not have to cut any.  When he had not come
in soon after they heard the chopping stop outside, Julie's mother said
they had found him slumped over the chopping block, his hand over his chest
and a length of oak still in his hands.  Julie's Mother informed her that
she had come to collect Julie to take her to the hospital when she had
called her roomate's, only to find out Julie hadcome home for fall break
instead of staying on campus til just before Thanksgiving, as she had
threatened to do when she left for the fall term after a particularly
vicious argument with her Father.

   She could not understand< though why her Mother was frowning at heruntil
she saw her Mother's left hand come from behind her back, clutching Julie's
shirt, or the shirt she had worn to bed yesterday.  It was covered in dark
marks from the branches, and she suddenly felt the ache in her lower body
when she moved to stop her mother from yanking back the covers, too late to
prevent her Mother seeing the sap dried ontheinside of her thighs, and the
dried blood streaking the tops of her inner thighs.  What stunned her more,
what stopped her breath and made her look panicked out her window at the
thrashing branches of the tree, which had only just started as she could
clearly hear the clashing and crashing, was the one single word her Mother
had to tell her when she had seen the evidence of her being intimate with a
tree:

   "Congratulations!"

   It stopped its thashing as it sensed its first lover's acceptance of its
liaison with Julie, even the longing in its orignal love's heart, its very
own Kay's soul sadly envious and jealous, but not angry.  It wondered what
to make of that, wondered if the man really would survive the anger of one
of it's brethren, who had obviously struck out with its own dying soul.  It
knew only that it could not surrender its own ties to the women of this
bloodline, and wondered as well who would father its next lover, as it
seemed from now on it would have two lovers to sustain it, and had it not
perhaps created its two loving appendages for just that reason.  Its
teasing bald knob had been enuff to tantalize Kay with, but the emotions it
and Julie had shared were so much more than Kay had felt from just its
pressure between her legs, that it wondered if there was any redeeming Kay
if the man failed to return.  It would sleep on it, in the next risings of
the sun as it drank in energy and prepared for another night with its
Julie, perhaps even its own Kay sometimes soon as well.  She had
surrendered years of pleasure to protect it, and it hoped Julie would acept
her Mother's needs as well.  Time would tell, but time had always been its
ally, in all the years of its stillness and acceptance.  Now time was onits
side for it knew it had many many years to experience thes e wonderful
emotions it had been igfted with by its women, and it fully hoped for more
emotions and more lovers to come.