As Above So Below

As Above So Below
Chapter 5

Though both of the trio’s children were very precocious and highly intelligent, Narue didn’t understand one tenth of what she’d overheard. All she knew was that there was danger outside that could possibly take Mommy away, or, worse yet, take them all away from Papa and Daddy. One of the pictures was resting on her bare pink toe, and she bent down to pick it up.

It was a picture of Mommy, as a girl apparently, for she looked so young. She was smiling one of her bright and brilliant smiles, an arm flung over the shoulders of what looked like either Sasuke a few years from now, or her father a long time ago. It was taken in front of a building the likes of which she’d never seen before. She’d lived almost all her life in this cozy but spacious home, but she’d been all over with one or all of her parents, even abroad for vacations. She’d never, ever seen anything like the strange city in the background of this picture. And from what her fathers were saying, it was of a boy that was neither father nor brother.

Instinctively knowing her fathers would not be happy with her overhearing what was obviously a tender and sensitive topic, and that they’d want her to see these pictures even less, she almost crushed it in her little hand, turned around, and scampered back the way she came, fear darkening her heart.

Neither man heard her, or was aware of how a little girl’s world was beginning to crash down around her ears.

Lips parted moistly, and Nathan found that as usual, his older, darker husband had eased his fears and torment. He looked into obsidian eyes and smiled tremulously.

“I love you so much, Stefan. I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“You wont ever have to find out, koi,” Stefan responded softly, with another intimate kiss. “None of us will ever have to.”

There was a scrambling in the hallway, and Sasuke hurled himself into the bedroom, after a quick check to make sure he would not interrupt things. Both men squawked when a damp bundle of boyhood tumbled them onto the great bed in the center of the room.

Laughing softly, Naruto followed her oldest child in, and looked around.

“Hey, where’s Narue? She’s not in her bedroom.” She asked, frowning gently. The little girl always came to the bedroom after her bath, to beg stories from her fathers.

It took a moment for the squealing to die down, from Sasuke being double teamed by his tickling fathers.

Stefan smiled affectionately down at Sasuke, who was panting with tears of laughter in his dark liquid eyes, planted a moist kiss in the center of the boy’s forehead, and heaved himself off the bed. “I’ll get her. Probably in the kitchen scouring about for sponge cake. You know how she loves it.”

Sasuke grabbed his Papa’s neck and hugged him fiercely. “Okay, Papa. I want to hear how the pirate got away from the hanging judge, you know. Daddy never finished the story last night.”

Nathan laughed indulgently, as did the other two adults. “That’s because you fell asleep in the middle of it, Sauce.”

“Hey! Don’t call me that! One day I’ll be like that pirate, and who ever heard of a pirate named Sauce?”

Chuckling placatingly, Nathan heaved his son up and planted the boy on his shoulders. “Ahoy there, Captain Picante Sauce! Land ho! Batten down the hatches, ye scurvy dogs! Once evil judge Papa captures Roo, and makes her walk the plank, we’ll be there to save fair sister!”

Nathan kept up his scandalously piratical lingo up until the pair vanished into Sasuke’s room.

Stefan paused long enough to thoroughly kiss Naruto before beginning the hunt for his erring daughter. “Ours!” He said in a sibilant whisper before disappearing from the bedroom himself.

Naruto watched him go with a soft look in her eyes. She still didn’t understand why Nathan was so amorous today, more so than usual. And Stefan, instead of teasing the other man for his insatiable appetite as normal, had aided and abetted the blonde man in waylaying her. Even though a couple of hours had passed since the interlude here earlier, she still felt the wonderful lassitude that always came when both her husbands ganged up on her sexually. It had been so deliciously quick and rough and tumble. Chuckling, she went into the bathroom and began to clean up herself from the family’s energetic play.

Stefan did not find his daughter in the kitchen, nor in the dining room. He didn’t find her in the bathroom, or in the now moon washed back yard. Finally, passing by the frilly little bedroom she slept in, that he’d already checked, he heard a soft sniffle.

Slipping into the darkened room, he was startled to find Narue sitting on the wide seat in the window, tears streaking her face. Silently, he perched himself on the sill that was so ample for tiny downy limbs, but so narrow for his bigger body.

“You’re crying, Narue. Want to tell me why?” He asked softly, reaching out and tipping up her chin in the same gentle manner that he had his blonde husband earlier. Stefan might be rather cold and reserved, but with his family he was warm and tender and very loving.

Narue simply stared at her dark father, blue eyes darkened by night and worry, and filmed with pools of tears. Her chin quivered in that way that all three blondes had that tore the raven’s heart apart. Then she gave a soft gasp, and swarmed into his lap and embrace.

“Papa, I love you. I love Daddy and Mommy too. I want us to stay like this forever. I don’t want anything to change. Papa, please, please, promise me we’ll always be together. Please, Papa!”

Stefan was silent, foreboding in his heart. Then he took a deep breath. “You were listening by our door earlier, and heard things not meant for your ears, weren’t you, little one?” He said, stroking long blonde hair.

“I’m sorry, Papa! I only came to beg a story, truly. But I heard you and Daddy talking, and then Daddy cried, and I know someone terrible is coming to hurt us all!” Narue began to cry stormily.

Stefan straightened the little body that trembled so fiercely in his arms, and made his daughter look into his eyes. “First of all, Narue, you worry for nothing. I will never allow anyone to hurt any of us. You, Sasuke, Daddy, Mommy and I will always be a family, no matter what changes life brings us. Things never remain the absolute same. Change is a part of life. But I promise you this. Mommy, Daddy, and I will always live together while we are alive, and we will let nothing, and no one tear us apart. Do you understand?”

But Narue refused to uncurl, instead clutching her father’s shirtfront, which was dampening at an alarming rate, harder.

“Precious Roo,” Stefan went on relentlessly, “look at me. That’s my girl. You know how I am. I won’t let anything endanger this family. I never have and I never will. I will always find a way to defeat those that would seek to tear us apart. There is always a way.”

“And if there’s not a way?” Narue whimpered, still fearful.

Stefan smirked in a way that greatly comforted the little girl’s riled spirit. “Well, in that case, I’ll have to be like all the knights in Daddy’s stories. I will kill the bad guy. I will kill to keep this family safe.”

One would think such a bloodthirsty statement, especially delivered in such a cold menacing way, would unnerve the child more, but Narue, like her mother, was not like other little girls. Knowing her quiet and reserved father would kill to keep them together, and knowing he meant every word, calmed her down considerably.

Calmed her so much, in fact, that she gave a watery giggle. “That is if Daddy lets you, and doesn’t kill them first.” Narue had already seen how ready to throw down her blonde father was, when it came to the family’s wellbeing.

“Oh, in this case, I’m sure Daddy will let me have a piece as well.” Stefan gave his daughter a tender kiss on the brow, followed by one on her perfect nose, so identical to Nathan’s and Naruto’s. Indeed. Stefan would bloody his immaculate hands to keep his family safe and together with him.

“But we wont have to, pumpkin, and do you know why?” Stefan went on, easing Narue off his lap and into her snug little bed.

“Why, Papa?” She asked innocently, wide eyed and filled with so much trust and love that Stefan’s heart smote him and strengthened his resolve to keep them all safe.

“Because, first of all, it’s not completely sure that this boy is a threat. He may be a piece of Mommy’s past. Time will tell. But if he really does turn out to be a villain, then I’ll simply scare the very socks off him. I will. You know I can do it too.”

Narue giggled sleepily, worn out from her frantic musings and fears, and now so warm and snug with the Papa that would do whatever he must to protect them.

“And if he’s still moronic enough to keep bothering us, well, I’ll drag him behind the woodshed and paddle his bottom until it glows pink, and he’s crying like a baby.”

Narue’s eyes got round at this. Sasuke once had to be paddled, when Stefan found him skipping school one day with a friend, and smoking cigarettes behind the theater. Sasuke could attest to paddled pink bottoms and how awful they were.

“And then…” Stefan went on, gentling his voice, and proceed to tell her all the twists and turns the boy would suffer if he continued on his path to destruction; ie. Threatening the MAU family, as she had dubbed them all, finding the words Madara/Arashi/Uzumaki too big a mouthful.

And slowly but surely, her lids drooped, and her bedtime story eased her fears and she slipped away into slumber. He gave her sleeping head one last gentle kiss and tucked her in, slipping out and partially closing the door behind him.

When he arrived in the bedroom, Nathan had just arrived from his tucking duty and delight.

“That boy is voracious!” The blonde man exclaimed, drawing a hand across his brow as if sweaty.

“Hmmm…” Naruto chuckled, brushing her short blonde hair, tendrils still damp. “And I wonder how he came by that particular trait?”

Though she knew her husband’s didn’t believe in her origins, she was well aware that Nathan and Stefan were this world’s equivalent of herself and Sasuke. And in a rather odd way, though Nathan did not provide the seed that created the life of the boy in her womb, he was as biologically related to Sasuke as she was. They were two of the same, differing only by gender, however wrong it was in her case, and different universal origins.

Nathan watched her, dismissing her statement as he became hypnotized by the glittering gold of her hair winking in the lamplight, and opened his mouth to make some sort of saucy comment, when the door abruptly yet softly closing with a snick, brought both blondes attention to Stefan.

The dark haired man leaned against the door, looking rather fierce and not a little dangerous. He stared into the mirror into the reflection of Naruto’s blue eyes.

“You,” he suddenly said, his voice rather chilly and determined, one hand lifting with the quickness of a striking snake to point at Naruto, “are mine. And you,” the finger jabbed in Nathan’s direction. “You’re mine too. You have been all along. And those two children out there, they’re mine too. You are all mine, and I will never let you go. Do you understand?”

Nathan nodded, swallowing audibly. Stefan was rather alarming, even to him, when he became like this.

But Naruto, who in her youth was used to such cold possessiveness, was undaunted. Stefan, as fierce as he could be, couldn’t hold a candle to a boy that would sooner kill than argue. Sasuke Uchiha would laugh scornfully at the notion of courtrooms and lawyers. And Naruto likewise knew that in his own way, Stefan loved her almost as much as he did Nathan. He would never hurt her, not deliberately anyway. And she was no fragile doll, no matter how her husbands tended to think of her.

She set her hairbrush down on the vanity with a thump. “That’s it. What the hell is wrong with you two?”

She turned and rose from the stool, her sheer robe hinting at the glories within. “Not that I’m complaining, because I love making love with you both, but really, what happened today? Did someone slip you both viagra or something? You’ve been jumping me and each other all afternoon, and you’ve both been unusually aggressive. What gives?”

Stefan merely smirked, and prowled over to her by way of Nathan. “Just staking my territory, love, that’s all.” He caught Nathan by the collar and drug him forward for a hot hard kiss. “You’re wearing too many clothes, koi. Remedy that.”

He released a dazed and smitten blonde man, who really, really liked it when Stefan got all medieval on him, and very quickly divested himself of his clothes.

“And you, my beautiful vixen,” how Stefan loved to refer to Naruto as a female fox, something the woman found not only ironic, but very erotic, “come here. I want you.”

And like Nathan, she grew weak in the knees, and hastened to submit. There was nothing like a raven getting all dominant to make her all hot and bothered, whether in Konoha or in America.

But Naruto was not one to submit without protest, without some sort of victory for herself. She’d never let Sasuke Uchiha get away with it; there was no way in hell she would lay down like a doormat for Stefan Madara, now matter how identical he was to her long lost lover.

She gave a siren like smile, and did obey, walking towards him very slowly, one set of delicate fingers tugging gently on the tie to her robe. “Is that so, Stefan? You want me? Oh, I see…”

The robe slipped from her bare shoulders, the sleeveless night gown, even more transparent than the robe, clinging to her magnificent breasts, with the shadowy hint of other golden treasures below.

Knowing he was being teased, becoming excited by it even as she challenged his ultimate authority over his two blonde mates, Stefan gave Nathan, already fully erect, a nod.

“Oh yes, my little tease. And I’m going to have you too. Right now. Nathan, hold her, like you did the first time. Hold her for me.”

Nathan’s hard, warm body was suddenly pressing against her back, making her tingle. The blonde man’s arms were around her, one hand resting on her satin covered belly, the other slowly pulling one shoulder of the nightgown down, as he moistly kissed the side of her neck.

Naruto gave a groan. Though she’d been a woman now longer than she’d been a boy, the lack of an erection still struck her as strange. However, she wasn’t able to dwell on it for long at all. Trapped against Nathan’s aroused body, there was no where for her to go when Stefan was suddenly before her, hands seizing the front of her nightgown, and ripping it, from low collar to the hem that danced over her upper thighs, in a single wrenching pull. With bared breasts, she quivered, and then moaned when firm lips caught one nipple, just one nipple, and nibbled it teasingly.

Naruto was quivering madly, head thrown back onto Nathan’s shoulder. The blonde man slid the hand from her belly, over her hip, and snaked around to the back of her thigh. Catching it firmly in his large, strong hand, he lifted that leg until her knee slid over his hand, and she was caught, pinned with one leg spread up and to the side. It raised her up on her toes, and she gasped and whimpered to be so wonderfully vulnerable and exposed to her dark, unusually savage husband.

Stefan continued to tease and torment her with his lips and teeth and tongue, his hands moving quickly to make his own clothes fall into a heap at his feet. A quick flick of one foot tossed the clothing to the side, and he was as naked as they were. He reached between Naruto’s spread legs, and caught the blonde man’s swollen member, squeezing firmly.

Nathan yelped, breaking the long kiss that would leave such a dark hickey on the side of her neck. Pleasure coursed though the smaller man, and his legs began to tremble. Nathan turned slightly, and pressed his back to one of the large fluted wooden columns at each corner of the massive bed, lest he fall to the floor and take Naruto with him.

Stefan laughed huskily, dipped his head licked the leaking tip wedged between Naruto’s buttocks.

Nathan’s breathy moan past her ear made Naruto shake harder. Oh, god, she knew what was going to happen now. And she loved it. To be taken at the same time, by both the men she loved so much, made her head spin with sheer unadulterated lust. Even if the positioning was new.

While Stefan alternated between digging his tongue through the short coarse yellow curls between Naruto’s thighs, and the hard shaft pressing so insistently against the split in her rear, the woman cried out when cold and slippery fingers eased past Nathan’s erection and began to probe her backside thoroughly, piercing and spreading her tender anus.

Like the candy that Stefan made, he likewise had dabbled in tasty and safe lubricants, since the three of them used it so much. The taste of oil or KY was distasteful to them all, and Stefan would be damned if their intimate relations would be anything but as perfect as they could possibly be. And the oldest man would produce his homemade sexual jellies with the éclat of a magician. As if from the very air.

Nathan pressed himself harder to the wide pole, breathing harshly in Naruto’s ear as his other hand left her shoulder, tweaked a still damp nipple and making her shiver, to the last leg still holding her up. Like the other, it was lifted up and away, so that she now hung completely at her two husbands’ mercy, spread as wide as possible, and unable to shield her most vulnerable points of entry. The blonde man was quivering as hard as his captured wife, feeling Stefan’s hot breath on his twitching cock, slippery fingers preparing Naruto for his entrance into her body, smearing the same all over his length. Oh yes, Nathan knew what was coming as well, and it took all his considerable fortitude to keep from puddling into a pool of goo at Stefan’s feet as well.

Feelings the hard trembling in both his lovers, Stefan gave a husky laugh into the warm and musky scented curls hiding Naruto’s womanhood from sight. God, Naruto was soaking wet, front and back. Perfect. He gave a hard prod to her swollen clit with a rigid tongue, smirked at her cry of shocked pleasure, and moved up to suckle another hard nipple. His hands gripped her spread buttocks firmly, lifting her slightly. His large fingers, curving downwards, lightly brushed the sides of Nathan’s quivering penis, and coaxed the blonde man into shifting slightly, until that plum taut tip wedged snugly in the tightly furled and lightly flexing entrance to Naruto’s rear. Stefan gave her hips a quick shimmy, a sharp lift up, and then sank her down, impaling her slowly on Nathan’s unforgiving spike.

Stefan lifted his head, the motion sharp and wolf like, as both blondes cried out harshly in pleasure. The sight of the two most precious blonde mates, Naruto’s head bent back over Nathan’s shoulder, while the blond man sank his teeth into that side of Naruto’s neck, blue eyes veiled with passion and darkened with pleasure as he stared down the creamy expanse of Naruto’s body to stare into the pitch black eyes smirking up into his from her breast. Black eyes splintered with hints of red.

He was too tall for his partners for what he had in mind next, so Stefan abandoned Naruto’s reddened nipple, and pressed himself hard to her body, smirking to feel the deep internal tremors that wracked both blondes. He caught up both of their bodies, husband and wife, and with a quick, strong move, deposited them on their backs in the middle of the bed, laying sideways across it.

Nathan still had a deathgrip on both thighs, keeping her spread wide, and dared not thrust, lest he climax far to early for his tastes. And in a moment it wouldn’t matter. He gasped and panted harshly as his husband took a moment to admire the sight of his straining cock buried to the hilt in Naruto’s rear, balls tight and twitching against that creamy silken perineum. God, he was going to come! Stefan’s sexual assault on their wife would push and pull her deliciously against him, giving him mind bending friction where he needed it most. Right now he had to hold on, keep a tight rein on his pleasure, because he would need all his self control in a second and…

Oh my fucking god!

Nathan never realized he’d shouted the last out, when Stefan finally lunged forward, and buried himself to the hilt inside Naruto’s pulsing sheath, his own balls pressing tenderly against the blondes, as they both jockeyed for position between Naruto’s speared orifices. The younger man had felt every inch of Stefan’s cock sliding up against his own, separated by only a thin membrane of tissue.

Naruto herself was writhing between their bodies, pinned relentlessly onto and between them, crying out in breathless little moans, unable to catch her breath from the intense pleasure and pressure inside her body.

Looking over her shoulder, Stefan stared deep into the blue eyes of the man he loved more than anyone else in the world. As dear and beloved as Naruto was, Nathan was Stefan’s reason for living. Naruto’s loss would be a grievous blow, one he would never really recover from. He would mourn her for the rest of his days, heart stricken. But Nathan… god, if he lost Nathan, he didn’t know if he would be able to survive. There would be no more will to live. Oh, he would do so, for the children’s sake, but life would be endlessly black and white, sharp with stark endless pain, yet dull and drab, and as soon as the kids were old enough to make it on their own, he would follow his blonde lover into whatever awaited on the other side.

“I love you… so much…” he choked out, staring relentlessly into endless pools of summer blue skies.

Nathan’s eyes regarded him steadfastly, lashes flickering but not closing from not only the intense pleasure of their lovemaking, but from the soul deep love and devotion in the eyes of the man above them both. And Nathan understood. For as much as he too loved and cherished Naruto, this man, the dark and often cold man hovering above them both, gave him reason to draw breath every day.

Then both sets of cerulean blue closed helplessly, when Stefan began to move in slow, sinuous strokes, caressing them both intimately. But Stefan himself was too moved, by the pleasure, the passion, the love all three of them were radiating. His thrusts quickened, deepened, rubbing relentlessly against the hard ridge of Nathan buried in Naruto’s ass, and the pulsing, flexing sheath of Naruto’s femininity.

“Stop… koi…” Nathan rasped, shuddering. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna… Fuck… Slow down…”

“No,” Stefan almost snarled. “Come for me, both of you, now!”

Even before the harsh words came from the dark man’s mouth, Naruto began to keen helplessly, her whole body shuddering in orgasm. It was too much, to be so pinned, so speared, so impaled on two rock hard cocks, one moving harshly inside her, the other still yet pulsing frantically. She spasmed hard, clenching down on both men inside her.

And it was too much for Nathan; those red shot black eyes watching him unblinkingly, the feel of his lover’s cock thrusting relentlessly against his own from inside Naruto, and the hard flexing of the woman between them, and Nathan was lost. He gave a hoarse triumphant shout as he emptied himself deep in Naruto’s bowels, arching up despite the weight on his body, to dig himself deeper, spill himself more hotly.

Stefan’s eyes flickered, and he bit Naruto’s shoulder harshly to hold back his own orgasm, but he wasn’t done yet, oh no. There was still a blonde male that had to be claimed, to be marked as owned by him. It took every ounce of his considerable willpower to not come just then.

Before the echoes had even begun to fade in his two lovers, he pulled up, taking Naruto with him, and Nathan slipped quickly from her body with a wet sound, making both blondes cry out again. Keeping Naruto hung off his body, long pale fingers invaded the woman’s loosened body, scooping up as much of Nathan’s come as he could. Then the hand slid between the blonde man’s still spread legs, and delved deep into his body where the fingers had been in hers.

Oversensitized from the orgasm that still resonated through his body, Nathan flinched from the sensation of being probed, spread, feeling his own seed lubricating those long and wicked fingers. And it didn’t hurt that Naruto’s excited flows had slid over his scrotum and trickled between his own thighs, aiding the wetness now being forced into his throbbing body. His cock, filmed with semen, twitched and never had a chance to soften. Those knowing fingers had already found his prostate, pressing softly and rhythmically against it.

When Nathan shoved back against his fingers, Stefan knew he’d instantly rekindled the blonde male’s passion once more, and he withdrew his fingers, and gently laid Naruto on her back beside their fair husband.

Still shuddering from her own climax, Naruto was slick with their combined sweat, and lay there, legs spread wide, blue eyes still dazed and shaken from first Nathan’s retreat, then Stefan’s from her body.

The sight of his two almost identical blonde lovers, spread wide for him, wet with their labors, blue eyes glazed, pink mouths open and panting desperately, was almost too much for Stefan. He gripped the sticky base of his cock harshly.

“Naruto, my sweet, it’s not over yet,” he ground out. “Not by a long shot. Nathan… koi… Take her. Because now I want you.”

A long fingered hand tugged insistently on Nathan’s hip, and still trembling, the blonde male obeyed him implicitly. Indeed, when Stefan was like this, he reduced his blonde partner to eager compliance. Not that Nathan was ever anything but eager with him.

Shivering, Nathan groaned softly as he rolled over, sliding himself between Naruto’s quivering thighs, and then into her drenched body. Both blondes cried out at the contact once more, and Stefan hissed, watching Nathan sink deep.

He couldn’t wait anymore. Grabbing the huge pillow at the head of the bed, he shoved it under Naruto’s hips, lifting both her, and Nathan, higher. Perfect. Long fingers trembled with unsatisfied lust as he caressed Nathan’s round, perfect and taut buttocks. God, how he loved this part of his blonde lover. This hard, high, tight ass that teased him every day of his life. He spread the pert globes, and then slid slowly inside, hissing all the while like a snake.

Fuck, no matter how many times he fucked Nathan, the blonde stayed as tight as a virgin. He sank slowly, deeply, relentlessly to the hilt. Nathan cried out in pleasure, echoed by Naruto, who was penetrated deeper because of it.

Stefan relaxed a moment against Nathan’s back, nose buried in soft blond locks, breathing deeply of the scent of his lovers. And despite his promises, he knew he wouldn’t last long. Nathan was too tight, he was too excited by watching his blonde lover deep in Naruto’s ass, from feeling his hard cock against his own, each deep in different but perfectly aligned chambers of the blonde woman’s body. Fuck….

And Stefan began to move, deep, hard, almost punishing strokes. “Mine!” He ground out fiercely, digging deep, forcing Nathan deeper as well. “Both… mine!”

Naruto and Nathan’s cries were now muffled as the two blondes began to kiss frantically. Nathan was sawed back and forth between the hot sheath of Naruto, and the burning sword of Stefan, both pierced and penetrating. And through it all, Stefan kept crying out words of fierce possession.

The dark haired man claimed his own, all over again. Both Nathan, with deep insistent thrusts, right against the blonde’s prostate, and Naruto, even though he’d already claimed her moments before, by the proxy of Nathan’s body.

Nathan was lost again. He tore his mouth from Naruto’s, buried his face in her sweaty hair, and screamed his pleasure against the flesh of her neck, his body almost convulsing from the intensity of it all. Naruto, feeling the blonde shove frantically deep and explode in a torrent of liquid fire deep inside, followed quickly, keening shrilly as she climaxed abruptly, hard and viciously like a rabid dog. And Stefan, he choked, as Nathan’s body crushed his throbbing cock in a velvet vise, gasped, and threw back his head, shouting out his last claim.

“All mine!”

The words, barely understood, degenerated into a growl, as he froze deep inside Nathan’s clenching body, and strained against the man, jerking and twitching with the force of his orgasm. There was an endless moment, their bodies locked together in excruciating pleasure, intense pressure, and hearts pounded frantically in unison.

Then all three relaxed at the same moment, falling into one tangled, damp heap. The two men rested there a moment, drawing in deep shuddering breaths, then each rolled to opposite sides, knowing their combined weight would surely crush their more delicate lover. Bodies disconnected with wet slides and almost panicked cries, and then all three of them were at rest, bodies quivering, hands gripping each other indiscriminately, and they slowly relaxed and felt the world at large return around them.

But the world didn’t stay long. Moments later, one after the other, they slid into exhausted slumber.