Most traders from the Gamma continent bypassed Alpha after the “Great Burn.” Canon, captain of the Gamma Wave, preferred adventure over profit and sought just enough to pay his crew and finance his next voyage. He sailed for adventure again and discovered that there was in fact something of real value here. 

~~~ 

Two hundred or so years ago, the crew and pioneers aboard the interstellar ark Renewed Grounds became more excited as they made their final approach. Of course, they knew their new planet, ‘Juvens,’ would be habitable but what they found was beyond anything that they could have hoped for. 

There were three continents, unimaginatively called ‘Alpha,’ ‘Beta,’ and ‘Gamma,’ which all straddled a temperate equator and were spread equidistant around the globe. They were lush with Terran-compatible life, and the three moons and the neighboring gas giant presented ever-spectacular skies, day or night. 

However, the colonists confirmed two major setbacks once they landed. Air travel was impracticable due to perpetually turbulent skies which were peppered with crosswinds and unpredictable storms. Travel by sea was almost as treacherous, with ocean current velocities that far exceeded any on Earth, compounded by counter-currents, undertows, and unmapped ridges and canyons. But those were problems to be solved another day. 

They chose the Alpha continent for their first settlement. The eastern end of the eye-shaped landmass was well-protected by mountains toward the west. Remarkable fungus-like flora had the capability to quickly mutate and take on the characteristics of other biological materials, and so any number of foods, herbs, or spices brought from Earth were cultivated into Juvensian mushrooms. 

It wasn’t long before the colonists discarded clothing as unnecessary and eventually unwanted. Under the merciful Juvensian sun, the colonists were wondrously kissed with color. 

The colony flourished for over a hundred years, until the Great Burn. Uncommon earthquakes mostly occurred under the oceans, but they were monitored. The scientists had barely enough time to realize that their continent, their colony, was going to be hit by a quake of unprecedented magnitude. They hastily built vessels that were hardly seaworthy and let the relentless currents sweep them eastward to Beta, where they re-established their colony. 

Not everyone made it to Beta. Some missed landing there and the currents carried them past Beta and toward Gamma, where a third smaller colony took root, albeit with more difficulty. Many people were lost at sea, as was much of their equipment. 

The abandoned Alpha continent broke apart like a dinner plate dropped onto the kitchen floor. Volcanoes were rare, fortunately, but lava flows started fires everywhere and deep fissures opened, releasing deadly radiation from far below the surface. 

Some people had chosen to stay behind and others were too far inland to evacuate. Most of the ones that lived found protection immersed in the flooded mycelial fields. Once the disaster abated, the survivors found shelter and continued their lives wherever they could in the remains of the larger coastal villages. 

Food was fished from the sea. New springs and redirected rivers were found. Houses were replaced and families rebuilt. The people of Alpha lived on. 

Whether the humans of Alpha lived on was another matter. About three out of every four born afterward were not quite human. Eventually called the ‘Amiss,’ the female mutants grew to six and a half feet or more, had broad shoulders and hips and gangly limbs. The males were small, five feet tall at best, yet proportionately similar to human males. 

Vestigial sex organs meant that the Amiss could not reproduce – not with each other nor with humans. Females had no uteruses or even vaginal openings, and any breast tissue they might have lay flat against their chests. The males had cowled, inlaid penises which looked more like a second belly button than a human phallus. Without the instinct or even an inclination to mate, the Amiss, Freud’s heretofore unavailable control group, took their place in Alpha society as overseers and protectors of the salacious yet necessary humans. 

~~~ 

Canon strolled with Marta, the Mayor of the village’s council, discussing the upcoming ‘First Spring’ festival. He had become more comfortable with the Amiss than he had been during his previous visits – they were still people, despite how they looked. At a little shy of six-foot-two, his only discomfort was having to look up whenever speaking with Marta or any other Amiss woman. He became accustomed to their asexuality, and height, and they got used to his insistence on wearing clothes. Canon noticed that many of the Amiss wore ornate home-crafted sandals and considered them to be a possible trade opportunity with the rich inhabitants of the Beta continent. 

Suddenly, Dar, a young human woman, ran up to them, crying for help. “We stayed on the path – we did! But a malep was there anyway and it spit on Jala! I tried to pull her away but she gave in so fast!” 

Marta doubted whether this was really an accident, as young human women often encroached upon the maleps for a taste of their nectar, despite the risk of getting taken. She quietly cursed while assembling a medical team and followed Dar to the site.  Once they were close, Marta could follow the smell of musky coal tar to where Jala was writhing on the ground, partially covered with red-orange filaments. She made the humans keep back, promising Canon that she would explain later. 

The mushroom-tipped vines of the maleps floated above Jala as if suspended by invisible threads and drizzled thick, translucent liquid all over her flushed, goosebump-riddled body.  Impossibly stiff nipples punched through the curing glaze of intertwined silk, and she gasped when shivers ran up and down her spine, and waves of arousal coalesced into the first of many intense orgasms. The malep gave her its spunk and in exchange, it took everything from her that was human except for her need to cum. 

Lifting her hips, her unblinking eyes followed the elusive vines as she fought to capture one. When she did, she squeezed its honey onto her tongue before sliding it down her gullet and wrapping her lips around it, moaning at the taste and sensation as she suckled, paused, and suckled again. 

A new tendril erupted from the cluster of viny stalks and swiftly grew to take the place of the one in Jala’s mouth. She blindly flung her arms to ensnare one, then another and lazily stuffed them between her legs. 

Marta waited patiently while Canon watched dumbfounded from a distance. 

Moaning and sighing, Jala caressed herself until the many layers of filaments trapped her arms inside the hardening chrysalis. Her lips were still wrapped around a vine, and her all-white wide-open eyes stared blindly as she shook within her cocoon with yet another climax. The quivers and quavers eventually subsided, and the dried-up stalks crumbled away. Marta gave a signal to Dar, who tore away the remaining brittle filaments from her friend. 

“How could you be so stupid! Jala, wake up, it’s me!” Jala’s deep-brown eyes rolled down into place and smiled at her friend. As Dar pulled the vine out of her friend’s throat, she leaned in to whisper, “What was it like, really? Was it like they say?” 

Jala answered by passionately kissing her friend. Dar pulled away in surprise: “Jala!” 

The Amiss medics prepared to take the woman home, however, Jala struggled against them to get at Canon. “Hey! You! You can’t hide your cock from me. Give it here. Put it right, in, here!” 

Marta stated as a matter of fact that Canon was allowed to have intercourse with this woman if he’d like. “I have been told that it is especially entertaining so soon after being taken.” 

“Maybe later,” he said, lying, watching Jala’s juices trickle down her legs. The medics and Dar took Jala (who was demanding that she needed sex right now) back to the village. 

Marta and Canon walked slowly while Jala and the others hurried into the distance. “What did I just see?” 

“That human girl was taken by a malep. You and I were on our way to a field of them where our First Spring ceremonies will be.” 

She explained that maleps were a new species of fungus that emerged after the Great Burn and at about the same time that the first Amisses were born. The maleps sense when a person approaches and ejects a fluid that has varying effects on whomever it contacts. 

“It’s an aphrodisiac?” 

Marta smiled and nodded. “On human females, obviously. Its effect lasts for days after they are cocooned, a process we do not interrupt. If we interfere, then the woman becomes quite irritated, even violent.” She sighed. “However, a single taste of the fluid, which I believe she was foolishly trying to get, causes great arousal but lasts for a much shorter time.” 

Canon reflected on whether it could be bottled. “What about the men, or the Amisses?” 

“We Amiss cannot be aroused. The maleps’ fluids are soporific for us, though, and at times we use them to meditate. Human males stay clear of the maleps altogether. They become psychologically aroused yet unable to obtain an erection. They also experience great discomfort when their penis is touched and,” she shook her head with disgust, “they leak constantly. They seem quite embarrassed about it all when it happens.” 

When they arrived back at the village Canon learned that both of his male crew had already taken a turn with Jala. Marta invited Canon to dine with her, where they discussed their society in general and the importance of the next day’s festivities in particular. 

Maleps were an undeniable part of the culture on Alpha – in Marta’s village and throughout the colony. Younger women sought them for adventure and mature women used them for rejuvenation. Like it or not, women were needed to increase and maintain the colony’s dwindling population. By giving themselves to the maleps now and then, or at least tasting a bit of their fluid, they stayed interested. 

~~~ 

The Amiss population used the maleps in a more measured, spiritual way. Sometimes friends would cocoon together to bring them closer. It is said that the origin of the First Spring celebrations began years ago when two Amiss hiked early in the morning to watch the rare dawn blossoming of the maleps. Their names changed depending on where the story was told, but many called them Alum and Avar. They engaged a malep to meditate together, as they had done in the past. The experience at that time was dramatically unlike the others. 

The scared and excited couple didn’t return to their village until the sun was low in the sky. None of the villagers, human or Amiss, recognized the approaching human woman who was as tall and lanky as an Amiss but with prominent, enviable breasts. Walking next to her was a short, bearded human man with a penis that hung far down his thigh. A village elder asked if they were lost or if they needed food and water. 

“Elderman, don’t you recognize us?” asked the woman. “I am Avar, and this man is Alum. We left early this morning as Amiss and return now as human.” They told everyone who would listen, over and over, about the passions that arose in them when the malep took and transformed them. 

“Every minute brought a new sensation,” Alum added. “We felt our bodies change and before long we fornicated like humans. Now we understand why they do it and do it so often.” 

Over the years, Avar and Alum had seven children together – five of them were human. Avar bore five others, as was the proper thing to do. 

The next First Spring, more Amisses became human and the word spread. The holiday rapidly grew across the colony as a time of celebration and revival. 

~~~ 

The ground was spongier nearer the malep field where triplets of stalks waved in the warm breezes. Some stood perpendicular, some collapsed like ropes, and others coiled and twisted in mid-air, all of them dancing while blindly searching for release. 

The celebrants patiently waited. If they were taken too soon before the moons were properly aligned, then the metamorphosis would not happen and they would have to wait for the next First Spring. 

Canon mixed in with the onlookers as much as he could. He was not comfortable with being nude in public, even when everyone else was, but as a nod to his hosts he stripped down as much as he dared. Canon was fit, as a mariner and trader must be and many sought him for pre-dawn celebrations of their own. He finally accepted an offer from a particularly round and buxom woman. who didn’t understand why he insisted on hiding behind a bush, but they enjoyed each other nonetheless. 

Marta smiled knowingly as Canon came near, carrying his shorts. They looked out as the human celebrants lay in any spots not occupied by a malep. 

“That’s a lot of fucking going on out there.” 

“Indeed,” agreed Marta, “a lot of fucking indeed.” 

~~~ 

As soon as the curve of the final moon pierced the horizon, an Amiss couple, Jenna and Lax, rushed to present themselves to the first malep that unfurled its Spring flower to face the sun and capture its rays. They held hands and stood before three undulating stalks until one sensed them and spat out its first ropes of rust-colored ejaculate. They spun and danced in delight as each subsequent jet splashed onto their bodies, stirring up unrecognizable cravings that had lain locked behind their dormant human genes. 

They ran their hands over their bodies, across each other’s bodies, and rubbed body against body as the slippery, syrupy goo enveloped them. A human woman dared to dash past, slowing just enough to swipe away a single fingerful to taste, stumbling over the instantaneous hyperarousal. 

Jenna grasped the spewing stalk and wrapped her lips around its mushroom tip, licking it and slurping its nectar into her mouth. After she swallowed a mouthful, the rubbery malep stalk slithered down her lubricated throat to feed her gut. Her muffled moans vibrated the serpentine stalk, which sang in return as she suckled. 

An oozing malep stalk wrapped itself around and around the one already embedded in Jenna’s face before Lax likewise swallowed it. Replacement stalks erupted from the cluster, hovering and squirting, coiling and caressing their limbs and abdomens. He mindlessly found one and instinctively guided it between his legs. The stalks in their mouths melded into one, drawing their faces close. The ones flexing between their legs fused together, and emerging tendrils wove themselves into a tube, binding their inhuman, barren groins. 

The Amiss prided themselves on their sophistication of thought and often bragged about how their minds were free of the primitive carnal needs of their human progenitors. But as these Amisses were taken, their blanketed psyches gave way to resurrected instincts in search of physical validation. Egos were closeted as their ids became conscious, dominant, willingly exchanging pride and dignity for common pleasures that they couldn’t possibly have imagined moments before. 

Canon scanned the wide field as maleps took one Amiss couple after another. Their flowering cascaded across the fields and gave off a sweeter-than-usual odor. Humans fucked, as humans do, as part of the ritual, while the Amiss elders stood witness. 

More stalks sprouted and twisted into a sturdy spiral trunk, as thicker vines wrapped around the two Amisses, lifting the embracing pair up off the ground. With a waver and a wobble, the vines and slick goo coalesced into a great translucent, rubbery teardrop-shaped pod, encasing them knee-deep in mutated mycelial liquors. The outside world to them was reduced to a dynamic collage of rusty bright and dark patches. 

The exhausted Amiss pair coughed up and sloughed off what remained of the malep They collapsed then, waist-deep in the musky soup with Lax nestled into the crook of Jenna’s knee, and they slept. 

Dozens of dangling, elastic placenta all across the field lay still. People soundlessly approached to peer as best as they could at the intertwined silhouettes created by the light of the warming sun. 

~~~ 

Lax awoke first into the dim rusty light. He felt hungry but not for food. He wanted something, needed it, but couldn’t recognize what it could be. He wiped the sleep and goo from his eyes and stared at his partner. At first, she looked bigger to him but she wasn’t really – fleshier, he determined. More discovery than seduction, he caressed her legs, her buttocks, and her budding breasts, but retreated when she sighed in her sleep. 

Lax fixed upon Jenna’s hand as he held it, then licked it. He licked the back, her palm and took her fingers into his mouth, and sucked them. Swirling his tongue on them, nibbling them, and sucking them addressed his hunger somehow. He kissed her knee and opened his mouth to take in the flesh of her inner thigh. 

He brushed at something that bumped his own thigh and lightning jumped through his new, dangling, swelling penis. Lax rested against the far side of their pod and compared his growing, hardening cock with the sexlessness between Jenna’s legs. Touching it felt good, rubbing it felt better and he eagerly pumped it through his fist, faster and faster until a breathless thrill ran throughout his body. He was shocked and shaken as his cock throbbed with a life of its own and ejaculated like a malep taking its prey. There was cum on his chest, cum on his belly, and cum dribbling down his dying dick and into the curly hairs cloaking his balls. He tasted some, rolling the sticky, musky mess around his mouth. 

Out of breath and able to think again, he knew he had to share all of this with Jenna. She was even rounder than before, as were her breasts, and softer. Lax gently shook her, calling out her name. She stirred and he waited, staring at the stiff nipple that was staring back at him. He whispered her name again before his lips parted to take in as much of a tit as he could. She stirred and moaned, holding his head with her inhumanly long fingers. 

“Lax?” 

“Jenna. Wake up. I had sex and it was amazing! Here,” he said, touching his fingers to her lips before taking hers between his. Their faces moved closer until their mouths met and they tasted each other tasting each other. She explored Lax’s skin and her own new flesh, kneading a breast as Lax suckled its sister. 

Jenna spread her knees and massaged the unbroken smoothness between her legs, firing off promised yet unpredictable new pleasures. Lax climbed on top and they humped until he came again between their bellies. Jenna pushed him off and rubbed and rubbed, peeling away and pulling off the wrinkly patches of old skin to reveal raw, glistening labia and a swollen clitoris poking out of its hood. The resulting burning was quickly extinguished by the soothing malep liquors as she teased her new vagina open for the first time. 

Jenna met Lax’s gaze. “We’re human.” Sitting across from each other, they played with themselves as one foot caressed another and she gripped his little toes with her long ones. Jenna explored her newly exposed sex gingerly at first and then more aggressively.  Each touch gave its own unique sensation and before long her whole body tightened in on itself before exploding with her first wondrous orgasm. Lax became anxious that his penis might be broken because no matter what he did, and despite how good it felt, he couldn’t make it hard again. 

“Our mouths – we kiss,” Jenna said as she sloshed across the sac to Lax, sliding under him and lifting him onto her lap. They kissed and she ground herself against his limp phallus. Lax’s worries melted as his cock responded, once again getting as hard as ice. Jenna touched it to her parted labia with shaking hands. “We need to make sex now.” 

Slowly, carefully, gradually they guided Lax into Jenna, savoring every tentative push. They stared at each other, unsure, as he filled her. She gripped him by reflex and he thrust by instinct. Jenna winced and made him stop but only for a second as they transformed their dissonant meetings of the mounds into a rhythmic, missionary give and take. Neither knew any words to share with the other as they moaned and grunted like animals – as humans do. 

Jenna trapped Lax with her long arms and legs when she climaxed, forcing him to trade his deep penetrations for rapid shallow stabs until he too came. She cried, “I feel that! I feel you giving me your semen!” 

Outside, the Spring day was nearing its end. Malep flowers drooped and dropped to be swept up and away by the warm, gentle breeze. Each pod burst upon the ground as their withering vines gave them up. Cheer after human cheer rang across the field with each rebirth.  

Canon watched the denouement, spellbound. He had no reason to doubt the stories, yet until now he never really believed them. But then, who would have ever believed in spitting mushrooms that make women horny in the first place? 

Small campfires dotted the field as the sunlight dimmed and the muffled sounds of sex filled the air. Marta finished conferring with another Amiss and placed her hand on Canon’s shoulder. “The festival is not nearly over. It’s only right that you share your DNA. You are human, and that’s what humans do.” 

Canon nodded without looking at his friend. “I should. I will. 

“Marta, may I ask you a question?” 

“You would like to know why I do not participate, do not transform. Many of us believe that we have a higher calling to protect your species – our mothers and fathers. Someday we will follow you all around our world, and from here to whatever star you might fling your DNA next.” 

He accepted her answer and jogged off with his cock waggling like a divining rod.