Innocence Lost

VII

In Which we learn about the pains of Humility; and Innocence leaves Religious devotion and we rediscover the virtues of Chastity.

When Sister Innocence had returned from Brook to her own Convent she was to find that Sister Charity's bed in her room had been taken by a new nun, Sister Humility, who seemed to take the literal meaning of her Christian name very seriously indeed. In fact, the first time Innocence met Sister Humility she was knelt down on the floor with her robe pulled forward over her shoulders and crouched on her feet, showing her bare back and her buttocks. She was looking at Sisters Faith and Hope who were, unusually, making love to each other without the cover of their bedsheets. This was odd, Innocence thought. Perhaps Sister Humility had a similar desire to masturbate as Sister Charity and a need for voyeurism to intensify her feelings. However, her innocent interpretation was soon disproved when with a sudden crack she saw Sister Humility's hand pop up followed by a length of cord which slapped against her back leaving a small trail of blood. Sister Humility was beating herself.

When Sister Humility and the other two nuns noticed Sister Innocence they greeted her, and politely finished what they were doing. Sister Humility sat down on her bed, with her robe still gathered up to her neck at the back but covering the whole of her body at the front. For a woman who seemed to enjoy self-abuse she had a curiously child-like face with open blue eyes and a tiny nose. Sister Faith sat behind Sister Humility and tended to the fresh wounds that she had which were lost on a back full of scars from previous beatings which stretched from her neck to the top of her thighs. The scars were at their deepest and most frequent between the shoulders and on her buttocks.

Sister Innocence learnt that her new room-mate believed passionately in mortification of the flesh as being the means towards salvation. As a result of daily punishing her sinful lusts, she would purify her soul such that at the Rapture the Lord's semen would arrive in her uncontaminated by other lusts. She had persuaded Sisters Faith and Hope, who cheerfully admitted an initial reluctance, to help her in her self-mortification by emulating the lust that she wished to ban from herself and which she believed she would beat out of her. "You can see," she admitted pointing to the many scars on her back, "that my thoughts have been less than pure and have required a great deal of humbling."

Innocence resisted pleas by her room-mates that she either help Sister Humility in purging herself of her sinful carnal desires by emulating masturbation or sex or purge herself of such sins by similar self-mortification to that of Sister Humility. In fact, now that Sister Charity had gone she felt curiously lonely in the Convent. She realised now how much she'd needed Sister Charity's friendship.

So, when she heard she had a visitor she at first thought and hoped that it might be Sister Charity returning from Brook. This, she admitted to herself, was unlikely as Sister Charity had seemed almost deliriously happy in her new home when they parted with a chaste kiss on the lips. She had made many new friends - many of whom shared her belief in the rightness of masturbating to thoughts of Christ's ultimate entry into their body and soul. In Brook, Sister Charity's views were not at all eccentric.

Her visitor was in fact Kedi who Innocence hadn't seen since she'd left Alice's home. She was dressed more demurely than Innocence had ever seen her before - no doubt as a mark of respect for being in a Convent. However, the white cloth over her breasts and around her crotch didn't detract at all from the beauty of her otherwise naked body. She sat waiting on a chair in the reception room with her legs crossed and swinging her bare feet nonchalantly back and forth. She grinned widely as Innocence came in and sat nervously opposite her.

Kedi explained that she had come to visit Innocence partly on the bidding of Chastity who was wondering how her sister was doing. She and Chastity were living together at a house they were renting in Wonderground near where Mouse and her parents lived, but she had been visiting some friends in Brook and had stopped at the Convent as it was en route.

"I thought you'd still be living with Alice and Dinah," commented Innocence.

"Well, Alice was very jealous and possessive, was she not?" remarked Kedi. "And it was very difficult when you and Chastity have left because Alice started to get upset when Mouse began to sleep with me. I thought I ought not to cause any more problems and when Chastity has come to visit me and said we can live together I didn't refuse."

"How is Chastity?"

"Your sister seems very happy. Much happier than when we have been together at Alice's. She says she is very much in love with me. In fact she says she has never loved anyone as much as she loves me now. But she says she loves you very much. And she is very much thinking of you now. Are you happy?"

Innocence nodded, but she felt that perhaps she didn't express quite as much conviction as she might have done. Kedi gazed sympathetically into Innocence's eyes and her grin took on a slightly sadder tinge.

"Do you think you like to be a nun? I have been very surprised when I had been told you become a nun. It must be strange for you."

"Why strange?"

"With your special gift," Kedi said without embarrassment. "And the life you and Chastity have led together: it has not been life like many nuns. Are you not supposed to be a virgin?"

"I am a virgin!"

"Perhaps," said Kedi diplomatically. "But Chastity thinks that you must find it more difficult as one who has known what it is like not to be a virgin or not very like one and to be a nun. Are you sure you are happy?"

Innocence nodded ferociously. "As long as I serve my Lord I am happy," she said fervently.

"Why?"

"Because I know that when I die I shall be raised to Rapture and he will enter me and possess me and cover me with his Holy Semen and push his Holy Member deep inside me!"

"Won't that be painful for you!" laughed Kedi. "And anyway I thought you have preferred the love of a woman."

"Jesus Christ the Lord is different," insisted Innocence.

"It is the first time I have heard that He is a woman," smiled Kedi.

Kedi and Innocence continued talking in the reception room and then, with the Mother Superior's permission the two went for a walk in the woods around the Convent. As soon as Kedi felt that they were out of sight, she took off her clothes which she complained were uncomfortable and she walked along naked with Innocence holding her clothes in one hand and her free arm around Innocence's waist. Then, without warning, she let her clothes drop, wrapped her arms around Innocence more passionately and pushed her tongue deep inside Innocence's mouth. Taken aback Innocence reciprocated, but then she struggled free.

"I can't!" she struggled. "I'm saving myself for the Lord!"

"And just what have you got left to save?" asked Kedi, not put off at all, putting her hands inside Innocence's gown and grabbing her suddenly erect penis.

And so it was that Innocence found herself making love with incredible passion with her sister's lover and as the sweat poured down her breasts and the salt was licked off by Kedi's tongue, reflecting on the commitment she still felt towards the Order.

"Perhaps you should ask your Mother Superior to visit Chastity and me," suggested Kedi afterwards as they sat naked in the corner of a field by a small pond. "If you still wish to stay in the Order after you have stayed with us, then you will know for sure the extent of your commitment to your faith."

"But I'll be misled!"

Kedi laughed and licked Innocence's ear with her tongue. "We can only hope so!"

Sister Innocence's Mother Superior was very saddened when Innocence confessed to her doubts that serving the order was best for her and accepted Kedi's advice that Innocence visit her sister and her. "We will of course pray for your soul and the hope that whatever decision you make that you will be ready to receive the Lord in Body and Soul at the Final Coming." Innocence nodded meekly, and said that she hoped that the Lord would come over all the members of the Convent at the Final Reckoning. Innocence left Sisters Faith, Hope and Humility feeling uncertain as to whether she'd ever see them again. She then rushed out and off to the railway station as fast as she could to hold back her thoughts and her tears.

Her train journey to Wonderground took her by train, but she knew when she'd entered the district as the dress of the people there were just as Kedi had described. The men wore double-breasted suits and the women nothing but stockings, suspenders and stilettos, except for thick scarves which covered most of their breasts and large floppy hats which covered most of their faces. The quite disturbing effect Innocence found was that attention was diverted to the vaginas of all the women. None of these were shaved, as had been an earlier fashion, but she could see that many women had jewellery attached to them. Innocence felt as inappropriately dressed as when she was visiting Brook, but then she was a nun and in her order it would have been ostentatious to wear such clothes.

Innocence used a street map supplied by Kedi to find her way through the suburban tree-lined streets - each identical to the last - to find her way to the house where her sister and her lover were staying. As she walked her flat sandals assisted her stride substantially better than the teetering heels of most other women. When she found the house, it was just one of many in a suburban terrace distinguishable most by the poorer state of the paint on the front door and a poster sellotaped to the inside of a window demanding equal rights for blacks. "Is this it?" wondered Innocence checking the number of the house against the address Kedi had supplied her and then ringing the door-bell. A muffled farting noise signalled some rustling inside and the pushing aside of a few locks. Then as the door opened she saw her sister dressed herself in the stilettos, suspenders and stockings of the district, but otherwise typically naked. Her hair was tied back into a ponytail and flopped over her shoulder down to her breasts.

"Come in! Come in!" Her sister said hurriedly and then fussed her into the living room. Innocence sat down in a slightly worn armchair just by the gas fire and just opposite a large but battered television. "Make yourself at home, and take off some of your clothes." Innocence took off her wymple to reveal her shaved head which alarmed Chastity. "What have they done to you?" She shrieked. "You look terrible! Why don't you put on some other clothes?"

"I don't have any other clothes," replied Innocence honestly.

"They haven't been mistreating you, have they?"

"Of course not."

"But your hair..."

"I chose to sacrifice my hair for the Lord."

"Well, while you're here you can't dress like a nun."

"Why not! I can't go round naked, can I?"

The two sisters chatted together, and Innocence became further aware of the extent of her sister's incomprehension at her choice of vocation. However, she came round to agree that it would be inappropriate for her to dress like a nun while she was in a state of indecision as to whether to remain one. When Kedi arrived, dressed as always in nothing and making no concessions to the fashion of the district, she suggested that Innocence stay naked at home, but wear her gown when going out. Chastity tried to persuade Innocence to dress more fashionably - at least to wear stilettos and stockings - but Kedi sided with Innocence. "If she do not want to dress like that and if she wants to hide her gift of the gods from curious strangers then she has every right to do that."

As the days went by, Innocence began to feel her adherence to her Holy Order was slipping past her. Perhaps, she considered, her attachment needed the constant reinforcement of being with other nuns and regular prayer. However if her faith could slip so rapidly after such a brief respite it may be that Kedi and her sister were right in saying that a religious vocation was not for her. (Chastity seemed to think that those who practised prostitution for Christ might be on to a good number, although she didn't like the idea of not being able to veto who you made love to.) At first, Innocence tried to resist the inevitable relaxation of her behaviour, but it wasn't too long until she decided to abandon wearing her gown altogether even though she continued shaving her head as a mark of spiritual respects. She decided to wear stockings and stilettos, but also opted to wear a dress and knickers to cover her penis. This made her seem quite eccentric, but not as eccentric as she might have seemed otherwise. She felt a bit uncomfortable in the district, and felt that she wasn't quite ready to be so immediately immersed in the world outside the Convent.

She'd already succumbed to Kedi's advances, so she was unable to resist making love to her each night which Chastity initially seemed not to mind. "What matters is that my darling sister is happy!" she professed. After a while, Chastity seemed to get restless about her lover dividing her time so diplomatically between the two sisters. "I love you both," she complained, "but I get less than half of your attention."

She gradually tried enticing Innocence into making love to her, but her sister resisted her attentions quite firmly. In fact Innocence became quite forceful in physically pushing her sister off her as she transferred her tongue from Kedi's vagina to the penis that was energetically thrusting into it. "When I make love to you," Innocence declared, "is the time I will definitely have left the Order."

This time inevitably came, and when Chastity's mouth met her sister's and she wasn't pushed aside she knew that Innocence had left her religious vocation behind her. She hid her thoughts from her sister as Innocence's penis entered her for the first time that a penis had entered her at all since she'd left Une's lovers behind. She trembled as Innocence thrust away at her remembering their love sessions in the past and Chastity's little preferences. She orgasmed with a frightening intensity as Kedi and Innocence brought her to one, then two, then three and finally four climaxes. She shrivelled away with postcoital exhaustion and predicted to herself that the following day her sister wouldn't be shaving her head.

And this indeed was what happened, but Innocence had made another decision. She brushed her hand over the stubble on her head sitting on a chair with no clothes on and staring over at Kedi and Chastity who were sitting close together naked but for Chastity's stockings. "I'm returning to Brook!" she announced.

"Returning?" wondered Chastity.

"I don't want to stay here," Innocence announced. "I need to go somewhere somehow more pure. Somewhere with simple principles."

"And you think you'll find them in Brook!" Scoffed Chastity. "You're just as unlikely to find salvation or whatever you want in Brook as in a Convent. Brook is nothing more nor less than a naturist's paradise. You surely don't believe that nudity solves anything or makes things better?"

Kedi sniffed. Her own attitude towards clothes was culturally determined but no less firmly felt for that. "If Innocence thinks Brook is the district where she is to be happiest, then she must go!" she opined. "It is a more good place than here. The people are more honest and more open."

Innocence knew very little about such things as her only real experiences of Brook were the Convent there and her reunion with Purity - but these had impressed her. Perhaps she could find herself in Brook like her schoolfriend lover had. "I'm sure it will be good for me. And I must get away from everyone I know and think for myself."

Chastity smiled indulgently. "I'll lend you some money to start off with," she agreed. "But you'll have to get a job while you're there." Chastity was earning good money in her job in a shop selling computers, video and audio equipment, and this together with Kedi's earnings as a street sex entertainer and some office cleaning made just enough for them to have saved enough money to be relatively generous. "When are you leaving?"

"As soon as I can!" Innocence announced, stroking the unshaven hairs of her legs. She sipped slowly from her cup of coffee. "I just feel I've got to get moving!"

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