My men spent that day either watching for any sign of the search party from the City of Tents, or making sure I made a speedy recovery by keeping me entertained for the duration of my convalescence. It was mid-afternoon by their reckoning when the sullen group of pursuers plodded by our cave hoping to overtake a group of overconfident thieves.
The male nurses released me shortly after the search party passed and helped my try out my legs. I'll admit I was plenty wobbly at first, but I don't think it took two of them to make sure I didn't fall again. Jason took my soaked robe and bedding to a nearby stream and rinsed the product of our collective sexual emissions from them; then hung them up to dry.
Jack took over cooking duty for the evening, while Lance, Joe, and Terry hovered over me as if I were completely helpless. I snickered a bit at that little pun, thinking of my actual helpless situation. Mostly though I was amused at the way these men used and abused me on the one hand, then pampered me on the other!
"I suppose," I thought, as we slowly walked around inside the cave, going through the motions of walking, getting the blood circulation, and trying to get the nerves in my legs to function again, "that I should count my blessings, "I was thinking to myself, while my body was exercising smoothly. "and just accept that under the current situation these men of mine, are a miracle!" I glance at the men who I'd come to share my existence with. "The fact that these men were, and are, willing to let me live is a stroke of providence."
"I could have ended up in a lot worse hands than these, as far as my personal safety or survival are concerned." I was beginning to cover ground that I'd already reasoned out days before. I shook myself from my inward thoughts, and began to think about the chore at hand; re-learning to walk, and kept my re-occurring thoughts about my lot in life to myself.
We made several more rounds of our cave, then I asked to sit for a while, saying, "My legs are tired, and I think I'd better sit."
After my attendants helped me to sit on the fresh bed which had been laid for me, my thoughts once again wondered to my lot in life, as the only female in a world of males. "Why do I keep coming back to this same topic?" I became lost in my thoughts, and for the first time since I'd been picked up by these five unusually compassionate men really tried to understand myself. "On the one hand I resent these men for actually taking advantage of the situation, and using me for their convenience like a possession, or piece of furniture."
"On the other hand, I enjoy serving them, and I know I could never go back to living a life without sexual release." That particular thought startled me to the core. It was the first time I'd admitted to myself the one big change that had taken place in my life. "It must be that I'm having trouble dealing with the basic sexual desire I've come to know, while at the same time I still think like the old Sandy in some ways. The old me would have rather have died a thousand deaths, than ever let a man touch me!"
"That was before I faced the reality of two very powerful, and until recently, unfelt forces in my life. The desire to live, survive at all costs, and the other was the sexual release!" I watched Jack tending our dinner, and admitted he was an excellent cook. "I'd never have admitted a man had any worth at all up until a few short weeks ago, and here I am finding something good in every man I'd come to know!"
"No wonder I'm having trouble with my emotions over this! Almost everything I say and do now are totally contrary to how I thought I'd react to being in the presence of men." My next thought escaped my lips, "No wonder I'm an emotional wreck and can't keep it straight! My whole value system has been turned completely over, in the space of the last few months!"
Jack responded to my spoken words with, "What, did you say something?"
I was a bit embarrassed that I'd allowed my inner confusion to vocalize itself, and replied, "No, it was just a stray thought, not related to anything."
Jack looked at me for moment, then shrugged and returned to the food he was cooking.
As I watched him work, I realized what the basic problem was, and why I kept coming back to the same place in my reasoning. My value system, and concept of right and wrong were still in place as if I were still a member of the ruling class, but I was acting, speaking, and in fact living as a member of the ruled class. My will to survive by itself may have been enough to make me act as if I were accepting the pecking order, in fact that was how I'd been looking at what I'd done, and said. In my mind I was simply making the best of the situation until I could find a way to change it. That, at least, was my line of reasoning as I was aware of how I'd thought it out.
Now when I add the emotional attachment I've formed for these men, not to mention the explosive new emotions that come with sexual activity, and my total, single minded attraction to the wonderfully physical and emotional sensations I get from having sex with men. I'm helpless to even turn my mind away from the men. That same helplessness also extends to my inability to turn away from the feelings I'm apparently driven to pursue. Their pursuit means I must ignore every law of social order I've ever lived under, or heard of.
My poor mind was at it's end of reasoning, and yet all I'd done was to come full circle again. "If I'd been right in the old way of thinking, then why was I so willing to abandon that set of morals, for this new set?" I pondered that question for a time, then moved on. "Is it solely because of my desire to keep on living, or is it because I had no real faith in the moral teachings of the women's world I'm a product of?"
I'd been staring into space for a while when it occurred to me that I was limiting myself too closely. "Maybe it's because I like the touch of a man!" I thought about that possibility for a time, letting the thoughts sort of float. "For lack of a better, more honest reason; I do like to have my men touch me." that was one of the first conclusions I came to that felt right. Honestly right.
"But I've been taught for all my life, that the touch of a man is evil, unclean, a fate worse than death!" Now I was really puzzled. "How can it be both ways?" The answer to my question came to me in a flash moments later. "It's only wrong if I don't like it. Since I like it, it's not wrong!" The key to the whole problem was in the next thought. "It's only for me that I can ever really know if laying with a man is right, or wrong."
"Of course! My problem was that I was living by what was right or wrong for someone else, not me at all! I'd been operating on the premise that whoever had made the decision of what was good, or bad, right, or wrong, was somehow privy to information that I could not understand."
"In other words." I told myself, "I have been led like a sheep because I believed in the idea of the laws ability to decide what was moral, just, and right! What this leads to is the idea that I have the right to decide for myself what I like or dislike. If I make that decision honestly, I have to say I like to have men pay attention to me. In particular, I like to have men touch me the same way some other woman decided was wrong for her!"
Now I was starting to get angry with the world of women for deceiving me, and not letting me control myself. "Of course," I went on, "If I am forced to live in a world where the absence of men precluded my ever gaining any direct contact with them......." I groaned as the roots of my emotional quandary became apparent. I'd been taught to live the only way I'd ever known, in a world without men. It therefore makes sense that what I can't obtain, must be bad and wrong. "Now your making some sort of progress." I told myself, and walked away as if there had never been anything wrong with my legs.
The men were surprised at my sudden recovery, but not nearly as surprised as I was; that the emotional problem of right an wrong had compounded my nervous problems with controlling my legs. I stopped, and looked back at the bed I'd just left, then thought, "I wonder if it was my body's way of forcing me to deal with me emotions?" I didn't waste much time puzzling over the idea, laying it aside without a second thought, walked up to Jack at the fire, slipped my hands along the outline of his broad, strong, shoulders, and asked him, "Is it soup yet? I'm starving!"