It was the day after exploring the tunnels. The entire group had shrieked with glee to find another tunnel leading off into the darkness beyond the hospital but had been even more excited to find four more rooms, each about the same size, and with the same furnishings, as the holding rooms, minus the dead bodies and blood stains.

With the ability to close the door from this part of the tunnel into the hospital, the whole issue of moisture getting in had been rendered obsolete. The girls quickly made the decision that each of our groups would have one room, and the fourth would be used as a nursery when that became a necessity. The first room wefound, holding one, being closer to the central room - which, in turn, would function as the main living area - would be the hospital. Everyone was happy, and the exploration continued.

For about another fifty feet.

Then the tunnel split into a T junction, and we decided that was a good place to stop for the day. The rest of the afternoon was spent shifting bed frames to whichever room they were needed, taking inventory of the new medical supplies, and then moving them - along with the storage units and lockers to keep them organized - to the new hospital. I lost Ray at some point during the effort to move everyone.

The exploration, slow and tedious as it may have been, had taken up most of the day. The girls decided that we hadn't really rested at all and announced the following day would be a rest day as well. I wasn't there for that discussion; Amy had dragged me into the new hospital, closed the door, dropped to her knees, and vigorously thanked me for my hard work. I thanked her for her's by pumping her mouth full of cum.

A few hours later, Robyn grabbed my hand, dragged me outside, and demanded that I fuck the ever-loving shit out of her. Yes, she used those words. I fucked her hard enough to leave marks on the insides of her thighs, the whole time listening to her screaming about how she was determined to fit me up her ass, but only after I had pumped a baby into her. She did, however, scream herself hoarse and cum like a freight train when I flipped her onto her knees, slammed my cock back into her, and pushed two fingers into her ass. She was so out of it by the time I filled her that a giggling Liz and Hannah had to come to help me move her back inside.

By that point in the late afternoon, I was exhausted. Exploring the caves had not exactly been strenuous labor, but it had been slow going and required an obscene amount of concentration. That was pretty draining on its own. Add in the heavy lifting of steel framed beds, lockers, and medical equipment, then shifting the rescued luggage from the gun emplacement to the rooms they were needed, plus the vigorous fucking of Robyn, and I was spent. Any notion of sneaking off to see Freja, or even waiting until dark to find out what was in those desks - now that I had found the key - simply vanished.

The sun had barely set beyond the western horizon when Hayley, seeing my exhaustion, helped me to my feet, led me to our room, laid me on the ground, mounted me, and rode me softly and gently late into the night. She wouldn't let me do anything more than lay there. It was soft, it was tender, and it was the first time since the early years of my marriage that I made love to someone I was so captivated by. It was wonderfully beautiful. We reached our climax together, she collapsed onto my chest, and we fell asleep without moving another inch, wrapped in each other's loving arms and listening to each other's heartbeats.

********

In terms of age, the population of the Island was split into three distinct groups. Tom was the youngest at only nineteen. Whereas most people his age were living the high life in the early years of college, his intelligence had catapulted him through his degree at speeds reserved for the most brilliant of prodigies. He had been working as an analyst for the International Oceanic Authority before most people his age had paid their first taxes from their temp bar jobs.

Hayley, Hannah, and Robyn, ranging between twenty-one and twenty-five, made up the rest of what I called "the younger generation." All of them had finished college. Hayley and Hannah met and became friends during the stewardess training for the airline, and Robyn had only just qualified as a veterinarian.

The next group was all, roughly speaking, the same age as me. Aged between thirty and forty, Katie was only just old enough to fit into that demographic but already had a career as a high school teacher under her belt. I could only imagine the kind of effect her looks would have had on the male population of her classes, not to mention the curious female students. Zoe and Caroline were not much older than Katie, both of them being thirty-one. I had no idea what they did before the crash. Hell, I still couldn't tell them apart when they were standing right next to each other. Liz, at thirty-six, was only a few months older than me, and Amy, at forty, was the oldest of our group.

Despite this, her maturity, at least compared to the rest of us, and her position as the de facto "mom" of the group often had me thinking of her in the same terms as the older demographic. Louisa, at forty-five, had spent her life as a wife and mother, and, having started young at both, her children were only a year or two younger than Tom. But it was Ray, at fifty-four, who was the grandfather of our expedition, a reality that he groaned loudly to me as he sat on the log next to me after another vigorous session with his apparently insatiable girls.

"I feel like I'm dead," he moaned as he stretched and then curled his legs. "They've killed me. I'm dead, aren't I? Do I look dead?"

"Yup. What a way to go, though." I shrugged as I laid back and watched the clouds drifting by.

"Fucked to death by two stunners about half my age," he said with a smiling huff and flopped back next to me. "I think I'm winning at life."

"Well, not anymore. You're dead, remember?"

"Oh. Yeah, never mind, then. How are things going with your girls?"

"I, too, am dead, or at least aching in places I didn't know I had."

"Ah. The trials of island life."

Tom took that moment to wander over to us, rubbing the side of his hip as he leaned against one of the walls of the bunker. "Hey, Tom," I called over to him. "How are you doing?"

"Mmmm, am doing good," he half-smiled while not really making eye contact. "How are you?"

"Dead," Ray answered.

Tom looked confused, "Ignore him; he's in a mood." I chuckled. "I'm not too bad, Tom, thank you, just a bit tired and aching. What's wrong with your leg?"

"Louisa bounced too hard."

Ray and I looked at each other and snorted into laughter. Tom looked offended. "I'm sorry, Tom. We aren't laughing at you, buddy, I promise. But here we are, three guys who would never have anything close to this amount of luck with girls this hot at home, and we are all complaining about it."

Tom thought about it for a moment, his eyes locked onto the ground close to me, then he smiled. His smile turned into a chuckle, and before long, we were all laughing at the absurdity of our complaints.

"Tom," I wiped away the tears of laughter from my eyes. "If your leg is hurting that much, you might want to see Amy. She might have something in the new medical supplies to help you out."

"Mmm, can't," he said calmly. "She is checking the others."

"The others?" Ray sat himself up. "Who?"

"All of them," Tom shrugged. "They want to know if they are pregnant yet. They told me to tell you to leave them alone for a few hours. Doctor's orders."

"Oh, thank God," Ray huffed jokingly, "then I am going to sleep. Maybe I will be less dead when I wake up."

Tom smiled. "I want to unpack the luggage. More organized," He said, almost to himself, and was already turning back toward the bunker before I could answer.

"Okay, well, good luck. I am going to... do stuff, too," I chuckled. I pulled myself to my feet, tucked them into my sandals, grabbed a fresh bottle of water from the pile, and immediately started walking.

The bunker - or at least the only entrance we had discovered so far - was on the outer side of the eastern rim of the volcanic crater. The western rim, where I explored with Liz a few days earlier, had dropped away into the sea, the southern side overlooked our landing beach, and the northern side loomed over the expanse of the island. But this side overlooked a small strip of land before a set of high cliffs fell into the ocean. If we walked in a straight line, as opposed to following the river when we climbed up the path next to the waterfall, our path would have led us to these wide, mostly empty grasslands.

A few clumps of trees, invariably filled with birds, were the only things that broke up this perfectly flat and wide open landscape as it swept around the crater and north to the rest of the island. If given a choice, I would rather have avoided the whole area, primarily because, even from this distance, the plains were tinted an almost pinkish-red color from the sea of those red flowers that could easily be seen, even against the almost endless green of the tall grass.

If Dr. Walker was correct, the pollen from those flowers was the source of Mother's control. Looking out over the field of green and red, I momentarily wondered if there was a way to kill off all those flowers or a way to immunize oneself against the effects of its pollen. Perhaps the answers lay in the locked desk drawers, but that, like so many other things, would have to wait until I was able to spend time alone in the comms room. This opportunity to visit Freja alone might not come around again for weeks.

My legs, thankfully, started propelling me up the mountain and back toward the caldera.

There was something refreshing about being away from the group. I would never have called myself anti-social, even before the crash, but I was a man who enjoyed having the odd moment of time to myself. Whereas some people avoided the solitude that came with being on your own, I liked it. Time to think, time to process, time with your own thoughts, time to de-stress, time with no obligations, no conversation, and no commitments. None of those were anything I resented having in such abundance now, but it was nice to have an hour where I didn't have to think about them. There was only me, the grass beneath my feet, the endless sky above my head, the soft wind at my back, and the path that lay ahead. For a brief part of my day, nothing else needed to matter.

I closed my eyes, then looked up into the sky and took in a deep breath, letting my legs carry me to wherever we were heading.

I promptly tripped over a rock and landed flat on my face.

A soft giggle echoed through my mind. "Oh, hah hah," I smirked to myself. "I hope you enjoyed that one."

"Very much so, my love. I am leading you to me, but the walking part is down to you."

"Good to know. Thanks. If I am injured, I'm telling Amy it was your fault."

Another giggle filtered through the wind of the leaves as I crossed the peak of the ridge and started my descent into the crater.

It took me a little while to realize that I wasn't being led back to the pillbox, as I had been on my first visit to see the Goddess of lust and sexual desire, but was, instead, being taken toward the river. Close to the area our group had first used as a base when we traveled up from the beach. The tall, waist-high grasses tickled the sides of my shorts and abdomen; I hadn't bothered to put on a shirt in my quick exodus from the bunker.

"Well, that is quite a sight," the stunning, ephemeral voice drifted from the water as it came into view.

I looked down at my bare chest and blushed a little. I couldn't help it; I was literally being praised by a deity, and it was going to have an effect. I hadn't even laid eyes on her yet.

But when I did, my jaw fell off the bottom of my skull.

Lounging in the shallow waters was possibly the most exquisite vision of beauty ever to have graced the surface of this or any other planet. Her flawless skin seemed to flirt with the very light itself and caress the water droplets that rolled over it. Her breasts, perfectly sized and proportioned to the rest of her body, bounced slightly as another heavenly giggle rippled from her plump, rose-colored lips. Her golden hair looked a little darker when wet, but it clung possessively to her shoulders before flowing down her back. There was not a single thing about her that I could pinpoint as more beautiful than the normal human. Her eyes were no more vibrant than Hayley's, her breasts no more perfect than Liz's, and her hip flare no more enticing than Hannahs's, but the combination of all of them, the entire vision in front of me, the sum of the many parts came together to form something far too perfect to be human. "That's... umm..." I cleared my throat and adjusted the instant tent in my shorts, "...something, something, wow."

I had run out of words. Sue me.

"Something, something, wow," Freja laughed again. "I have had men and women writing poetry to me, fawning over me, carving sculptures of me, and praising me for eons. But that has to be the most flattering first impression of my nakedness that I have ever heard. To truly take a man's breath away...your ladies are very lucky to have been washed ashore with you."

I felt myself beaming at the compliment, my mind swimming in the presence of such beauty. I found myself feeling very small and insignificant next to a creature of such enormous and indescribable beauty, yet she looked at me as if I was an equal.

"I... Umm..." I frowned at myself. "... I have the ability to talk, honest. I have been doing it for years. It's just... wow."

She giggled again, rising from the shallows and sashaying seductively toward me. She took my hand and, with a wave of her hand, my shorts puddled at my feet. I stepped out of them and let myself be led into the water. She sat me down, the water barely deep enough to reach my navel, with my back against a smooth rock warmed by the pleasant afternoon sun and my legs stretched out before me. Without letting her eyes leave mine, she hooked a leg over my waist to straddle me and slowly, gently, lovingly lowered herself onto me. "Oh gods, that feels good. It has been too long," she moaned out softly.

I, once again, became mute.

Freja didn't move, she just sat there looking deeply into my barely focused eyes, yet it felt like a thousand tongues and fingers were caressing my shaft. Not working to bring me to climax, just gently loving and caressing my granite-hard pole.

"You have questions," she finally said after a few minutes of blissful sensation. My mind suddenly snapped back to perfect focus.

"I know about Mother," I said after pausing to consider my words carefully. "And about the people who were here before us."

I could see the impact of that knowledge on her face. The glow that had been so bright before dimmed a little. A sadness washed over her features. "Would you mind if I ask how you know?"

Dr. Walker was right; either she didn't have access to my memories, or she was a fantastic actress. "Simon Walker," I finally replied. "He found a way to leave information for people to find when they were lucid."

"Simon," she said wistfully with a smile, her eyes wandering a little in memory. "He was so clever. I knew he would figure it out. I wish he had let me in, but by the time he realized I was trying to help, it was too late. He was such a wonderful man; he never stopped trying to save the others, not until the very end. You remind me of him in a lot of ways." She finished, her eyes raising back to mine.

"What can you tell me about her?" I asked.

"She is my mirror," Freja answered simply, albeit sadly. "For anything to exist in the realm of Gods, it needs an opposite. The God of life, the God of Death, the God of the Day, the God of the night... Light and dark, right and wrong, evil and justice. For me, it is her. We both feed on lust. I use my power to turn that lust into something more, into fellowship and cooperation, sex, procreation, relationships, and even love. She uses her power to foster the hunger for more. Jealousy and conflict, factionalization and divisiveness. A thirst, an unending craving for evermore power. She uses lust as a means to drive people apart, to cling to what they have, and strive for more. She festers envy in those who want it, that envy leads to anger, the anger to conflict, and the conflict breaks apart what I try to build.."

"But... why?"

"Because it is her nature; that is who she is." Freja shrugged. "That is her entire reason for existence. She is part of the human condition, so as long as humanity exists, so will she. I cannot hate her any more than the darkness hates the light. We need each other to exist."

"Freja, she kills people. It's not the same thing."

"No, she doesn't. Not really. She just incites those urges in people. The people make those choices themselves."

I scrunched up my eyes. "Err, no... she literally kills people. She killed Dr. Walker. Not someone else, not an influence... Her!"

It was Freja's turn to squint; the caressing touches around my shaft stopped. "What do you mean?" she asked carefully. "How could she have killed Simon?"

I took a deep breath and started to explain. I told her all about the comms room and the recordings. I had wanted to keep those a secret, but under the circumstances, I had no other real option. I did manage to keep the existence of the contents of the desk drawers to myself, though. Most importantly, I told her about Simon Walker's defiant last moments, what Mother had said to him, that haunting, layered voice of a thousand whispers. I told her of the gunshots and then the blood stains on the wall. Finally, I told her about the voice after Mother's, the sobbing voice of the woman who had pulled the trigger, being made to watch her kill a man she loved through her own eyes.

And then, I put a fine point on it by telling her about the shadowed figure in the tunnels, being given orders by that same whispered voice.

Freja's face grew darker and more drawn the longer I spoke. Her eyes widened at the description of the voice, then closed with tears at hearing about Dr. Walker's end. "I don't mean to sound disrespectful, but how could you not know any of this?" I asked after the end of my story.

"I... I don't know. I should have known all of this." There was a pause as she thought for a moment. Both of us had completely forgotten about the fact that I was still inside her. "By Zeus, Grace, she must have killed Grace first to keep her quiet," she finally exclaimed, her eyes widening and looking down at me in a mixture of shock and anger. She noticed my confused-looking expression - partially because I remembered that it was Doug who had been killed first - and sighed. "As I explained to you before, like fairies in Peter Pan, Gods can only gain power from the people who worship them. As you may have noticed, there aren't many people left who still pray to the old gods, which means my power is very weak. At least compared to what it used to be."

I nodded, letting her continue.

"I only have enough power to directly communicate with one person at a time. I have to be very careful with who I choose. I need to pick a person who is able to carry out the tasks I need but whose mind is open enough to be able to communicate with me. In this case, it was you. The last time, it was Grace. She was wonderful, beautiful, so free-spirited, and seductive. She had the rest of that group enthralled in less than a week. They loved her completely, and she loved them. Even Simon, despite his resistance, knew that she was only trying to make his life better. She loved him most of all. He was to her what Hayley is to you."

I smiled a little at hearing her name.

"But communication, as you may have noticed, has to be initiated by you. I only have the power to get you to the first vision. After that, the choice must be yours. One day, she simply stopped. I didn't know what had happened to her. I have no eyes here aside from the ones I can see through while I am within you."

"Wait... so... erm... possessing me, or controlling me, or whatever we are calling it, is easier for you than just talking to me?"

"Oh yes, much easier. Communicating involves all sorts of effort. Extending my power over range, for one thing. I am here; you are there. I have to expend energy on getting that power to you. When I am with you, I am literally inside you. The energy I spend getting to you is almost instantly rejuvenated by your lust. And don't get me started on the intricacies of translation."

"But, you are talking to me now."

She smiled and raised an eyebrow.

"I am sitting on my own in the river, talking to myself, aren't I? You're not really here."

"I told you I picked you for a reason," she smiled again.

I took a deep breath. "Okay, Dr. Walker said you seem to be more powerful around water?"

"That's not entirely accurate," she pondered slowly. "Water is like a natural conduit for energy. It's not that I'm more powerful, it's that the transfer of energy is easier."

"Ah, okay, that makes sense. So you transfer your energy through water; mother uses the pollen in the flowers."

"Flowers?" she squinted again. "What flowers?"

"The red flowers covering almost all of the island?" We both stared at each other for a few moments, seemingly trying to outdo each other in our squinting abilities.

"Dan, there are no flowers on this Island for the same reason there are no animals," Freja finally said. "The energy that drives them to reproduce kills them. Only humans are capable of the complex thinking required to maintain the high drive to procreate. The animals here before you mated themselves to death. The flowers put more energy into the production of seeds than they did into growth. They all died."

"Errr, well, that answers one question, but those red flowers are everywhere!"

Freja stood up, both of us forgetting about my softening cock that flopped uselessly into the water. She started pacing back and forth in front of me, her lips moving but only the faintest of sound coming out. What little I could hear was like no other language I had ever heard.

"Show me one of these flowers," She suddenly blurted out.

"Sorry?" I asked in surprise. "I don't want to offend you, but knowing what those things are capable of, I don't want to go anywhere near them."

"No, no, no, in your mind. Just think of one of the flowers and then sort of... push it at me."

I opened my mouth to speak, frowned, realized I was probably not going to get a better description than that, and closed it again. I pictured one of the flowers, specifically the one that had been staring me in the face when I had woken up with the others next to the lake almost a week earlier. I took a deep breath, then having nothing else to go on, I looked at Freja and... pushed.

Freja frowned a little deeper, her eyes aiming off to some point in the distance. Yet the change in her expression suggested that she had got it.

"Well, shit, I didn't expect that to work on the first attempt."

"Dan," she finally said. "That is not a flower."

"Isn't it? They sure as hell look like flowers."

"No, it's a...." She frowned again, seemingly growing more and more frustrated with every passing moment. "... Urgh... damned translation." Her eyes suddenly bore into mine. I could feel that scratch at the back of my head again. It was different from the times she had been taking control, but it was still there. It was like she was rummaging around through my knowledge base to find a way to explain it. As it turned out, that was exactly what she was doing. "Ah, perfect... okay... Think of the flowers like a PA system. There can be as many speakers attached to it as you like, but there is only one microphone," she said breathlessly. "The flowers act like speakers; they extend her... her message, her influence, her will, but they are not her!"

"Okay... so where is she? How do we stop Her?"

Freja didn't answer for a few moments, instead reverting back to pacing. "I think," she finally said, stopping in her tracks but still looking off toward the hazy eastern sky. "I think she may have brought a mind flower."

"A what?"

"It's ancient," she replied, finally turning to look at me. "Imagine a flower with intelligence, not much intelligence, about as much as your average frog but still able to think. They went extinct with the dinosaurs, but if she managed to save one, she could have brought it here and bound herself to it."

"Alright, you need to slow down," I held my hands up. "I'm getting lost here."

"Okay, millennia ago," she said, suddenly turning and sitting back into the water in front of me... "Gods realized that the number of worshipers was dwindling to the point that we could no longer sustain ourselves. A few of the more devious gods decided to possess people instead, feeding off their life force, then passing to someone else when they died. Obviously, the higher-ups put a stop to that quite quickly, but it showed us that we could possess smaller, lesser creatures and basically become immortal, we wouldn't have our powers, but we would live. So we started transferring our essences into other beings. I think that she transferred hers into a mind flower."

"Um, okay, where is yours?"

"The volcano," she answered as if the answer were obvious.

"Volcanoes are alive?"

"You humans have a very narrow definition of what is alive or not. But yes, it's alive. My essence is several miles below your feet."

"Ah... good to know."

"You need to find her mind flower and destroy it."

My tongue seemed to take a page out of Ray's book and promptly choked on itself. "How the fuck am I supposed to do that?"

"You are setting up home in a bunker full of artillery shells. How do you think?"

"Wait, what??" I jumped up onto my feet. "Where? We spent all day yesterday exploring the tunnels. We didn't find so much as a single bullet! We are living in a munitions dump??"

Freja smiled, more of a grin of a plan than a smile. But her face made the same shape. "Grace sealed the rooms; she told me about it. She was worried about the sanity of the original engineering team when she first got here. She didn't want them to be able to access the munitions."

"I mean, that's something, but what the hell am I going to do with them?"

"Dan, you are a brilliant man, you are so intelligent, and you are an engineer. Are you saying you can't work with explosives?"

"I work with blasting caps and a few sticks of dynamite, very rarely. Can I work with eighty-year-old munitions designed and built by a foreign army? No!" In a rare flash of inspiration, an idea jumped unexpectedly into my head. "But... Ray might be able to."

Freja's smile grew wider. "I knew you would be able to come up with something."

"But how am I going to get him to do anything when I have to wait for him to be lucid? That could take weeks, months even."

"Have you wondered why you are lucid almost all of the time unless you are with one of your girls?" Freja asked.

"Yes, of course," I admitted. "Aside from meeting you, I have no idea why."

"It wasn't because you met me. It was because I blessed you." she smiled. I arched my eyebrow at her, perfectly conveying in that one expression that she was going to have to do better. "Essentially, I put a tiny part of my essence into you."

"Umm, okay. Also good to know, but we can circle back to that later. How is that relevant?"

"Because if I give you more of me, if you carry me with you permanently, you may be able to use my powers to pull them out of the influence. Snap them out of it, so to speak."

"Them? You mean all of them?"

"No, I'm afraid not. If we were to do this, you would only be able to use it on one or two people at a time. And even then, it wouldn't last more than a day or two. Not without inhuman amounts of lust being absorbed to compensate for the effort."

"But does that mean you will be in control all the time?"

"Not at all, my love. You would still be in control except when absorbing lust. The same as now."

"Hmmm, okay. Well, having Ray would certainly be a help. Amy, too. The munitions and the medical experts being onside would be a huge head start. But then Tom has proven himself a god damned genius as well."

"Tom is already lucid," Freja said simply.

"Come again?"

Freja smiled proudly and almost maternally. "Tom is autistic; his mind is literally built differently than yours. There may be a few times where we can absorb lust from him, but he is completely immune to our influence."

"Wait, so he has been lucid all this time? Why the hell didn't he say anything?"

"Because he has spent his entire life struggling against adversities that you could never hope to understand. One of those is a complete lack of understanding when it comes to social interactions and norms. He has been told since he was a child that what everyone else does is normal, and he needs to accept it without losing his ability to cope. Of course, he has noticed a change in everyone, but he has assumed that it is him who is the problem because he has been told that it always has been."

"Holy shit!"

"All Tom has only ever wanted is to be accepted for who he is and for the world around him to make sense," Freja went on. "To achieve that, he has poured himself into his work, into being someone who could be a benefit or provide a service to society; that is how he thinks he will be accepted by...."

"Stop!" I froze. Freja blinked at me, her face darkening for a moment before she noticed the expression on mine. Something else, something far more sinister, had just popped into my head. "His devotion to service and the way he thinks makes his mind difficult to infiltrate," I said slowly.

"Yes, I just said that," Freja said with a frown.

"No, you didn't," I said slowly, looking up at her with wide eyes and feeling the color draining from my face. "That is what Mother said to the Shadow in the tunnel the other night." Freja took less than a heartbeat to understand what I was saying. Her eyes widened to match mine. "Mother is going after Tom!"

"Gods, of course, he would have been the most obvious target because he is the one she cannot control. And anyone she can't control...."

"Is a threat," I finished. "That means the shadow must have been Louisa!"

"Dan, please, you need to take my essence. You need to get back there. You need to protect Tom!"

I was already running back to the bunker before I felt the surge of energy. I suddenly had an almost overwhelming urge to fuck somebody. I wasn't even particularly fussy about who it was. As long as she was female, I would have mounted her then and there. But that raging desire was tempered by the fear in me. Tom was in danger, all of us were in danger. I was going to find those artillery shells, find mother, and fucking end her. If Louisa stood in my way, then she would meet the same fate.