At The Lake House With Natalie

I had known Natalie for her entire life, and for most of mine, and even so what happened that weekend came as a shock. Her parents and my parents had been very close friends since long before either of us were born, and since we were both only children, she was the closest thing to a sibling I'd ever had. She was younger than me, and we very much had an older brother younger sister kind of relationship. Her family lived a couple hours away, but when I was growing up we'd see them a few times a year, and then our parents went in on a lake house together, and we started to see them more often. Some summer weekends my family would go up to the lake, some weekends hers would, and often we would all be there together.

Natalie was six years younger than me, which when we were kids felt like a generation, and I had always been somewhat protective of her. This dynamic was exacerbated and complicated by the fact that her parents were very, very traditional. I always found it a bit strange, because my parents aren't like that at all, but somehow it didn't impact their decades-long friendship.

To put it generously, Natalie was sheltered; less generously, I would probably say she was repressed. Her parents were militant about disallowing sex, drugs, and rock & roll. She hadn't been permitted to date, had child-lock on her internet access until she left for college, could only see boys in the context of a group in a public place, and even then often with one of her parents lurking not far off with a watchful eye. She had been homeschooled, and her parents unconditionally refused to cover anything related to sex-ed (along with much of the rest of the public-school curriculum that they didn't approve of). I was probably the only boy in the world her parents had accepted and liked, and only because they considered me family. When she became a teenager, I often had to remind myself how little she understood about the kinds of things most teenagers could be expected to know. I thought of her as incredibly innocent, but I also knew that she had a mischievous side that could rear its head unexpectedly. By the time of the events in question, she was a sophomore in college, and it was becoming apparent that her newfound freedom was rubbing off on her.

That weekend, for logistical reasons that weren't important enough for me to still remember, she and I both went up to the lake Friday morning, with our respective parents intending to come late Saturday afternoon or early evening. I pulled up at around 10am and saw that her car was already in the driveway. It was a gorgeous early-summer day, and as I stood around for a moment listening to the wind rustling through the leaves, appreciating how quiet it was out in the woods, I heard the front door open, and when I turned to look I saw Natalie in the doorway.

"Colin!" she called out, running to me and throwing her arms around my torso. She was almost a foot shorter than me, and I felt her head resting against my chest. At the time, I was twenty-five and she was nineteen.

"Hey Nat," I said, gingerly hugging her back. She stepped away and looked at me with a big smile on her face. She was wearing a tank-top and bikini bottoms, with a pair of oversized sunglasses resting atop her head-- dressed for the lake.

The fact of the matter was, Natalie had developed into a fairly stunning young woman, and it made me rather uncomfortable. For my whole life I had thought of her like a sister, and a much younger one at that. But now, standing in front of me with so much skin exposed, and her tank-top clinging tightly to her not insignificant chest-- her parents would never have let her dress like this when she lived at home-- it was impossible to ignore how attractive she was. I swallowed with some extra effort while looking at her, taking pains to not let my eyes wander over her lovely body-- although she was so naive when it came to that sort of thing that I wasn't even sure she'd register I was doing it.

We went inside and talked for awhile-- now that she was in college, we saw each other less often than we used to, and we had plenty of catching up to do. We slipped easily into our old familiar ways, teasing each other like siblings. But there was another dynamic between us that had become more pronounced as Natalie got older; her very traditional, patriarchal upbringing had taught her to revere the men in her life, and she treated me as some kind of authority, as if I was de facto in charge while we were here alone together. It was fairly bizarre to me, and compounded my discomfort with being around her.

After a while the conversation hit a lull, and there was a silence that I perceived as awkward, even though I know Natalie didn't, and that I never would have in the past.

"Well, uh, you want to go out to the lake?" I asked.

"Mmm, maybe later," she said with a thoughtful look on her face. Then suddenly her expression changed, and her eyes lit up. "Oh, I know what I want to do-- let's wrestle!"

The suggestion caught me very much off guard. It was something we used to do all the time when we were younger-- not actual wrestling, of course; more like play-acting, I in the role of the strong, dominant big brother, who would easily hold her at bay for a while but then always let her win at the last moment. It used to delight her like nothing else, and she always wanted to go again. But things were very different now-- the idea seemed absurd, rolling around on the floor, tussling with this girl who I was incredibly attracted to but was more off-limits than anyone else in my life. It struck me that she didn't even know enough to realize why the suggestion was inappropriate; she didn't understand that some things you did when you were kids weren't really okay anymore when you became adults. Somehow I felt like saying no would impinge on that innocence, which I wasn't sure it was my place to do, and so even though I felt extremely conflicted, I agreed.

"Okay," I said, trying to get into the playful spirit, "but don't expect me to go easy on you."

"Don't expect *me* to go easy on *you*!" she retorted, and jumped on top of me, wrapping her legs around me and bringing me to the ground.

We grappled on the floor in the living room, I using only a fraction of my effort so as to not dominate, her laughing boisterously the whole time. I tried hard to not think about how much this felt like having sex. After a while I pinned her down and started tickling her, which had always been one of my go-to moves when we were younger. I knew from experience the spot that she was most ticklish: underneath her armpits on either side, right at the top of her ribcage. She started squirming and laughing even harder as soon as I began to wiggle my fingers, and I realized with a jolt that she wasn't wearing a bra or anything else underneath her tank-top.

"Colin!" she cried through her wheezing laughter. "This tickles! Coliiiiin!"

"I've got you right where I want you," I said, trying to stay in character and not think about how tantalizingly close my fingers were to her breasts, which I could see moving freely within her tank top as she squirmed underneath me.

"Please, have mercy!" she yipped, clearly still loving the game.

"Never!" I said, not letting up. Her squirming became more animated, and then suddenly as she tried to shift her weight from her left hip to her right, her knee flung upwards right into my crotch. It was obviously not intentional, but it got me pretty good, and I immediately groaned in pain, fell off her to the side, and hunched over on the floor.

Still on her back, Natalie raised herself up onto her elbows to look at me. "Why'd you stop?" she asked. with confusion

"Oooohh," I moaned, trying to steady my voice. Her knee hadn't landed with all that much force, in the scheme of things, and I knew I'd feel better in a few minutes, but it was still rather unpleasant. I hesitated with some embarrassment. "You, uh, you kneed me in the crotch."

She looked at me blankly. "Huh?" she asked.

"I mean, I know it wasn't on purpose," I said quickly. "But, still."

She clearly did not understand what I meant. "What are you talking about?" She asked.

I didn't know what to say. Was it possible she didn't know about this? I quickly reflected, with a start, that it was certainly possible. With enormous trepidation I tried to explain.

"Well, you know, guys are really sensitive there. When you hit a boy between his legs, it hurts him really badly."

She jutted her whole face towards me in disbelief. "It does?!" she asked with some mixture of shock, concern, and keen interest. "But why? I've been hit between the legs with like, a soccer ball before, and it didn't really hurt worse than getting hit anywhere else."

"Well, uh, yeah-- it's different for girls," I said, my nervousness growing. The pain down there had mostly dissipated, but I almost preferred it to how uncomfortable this conversation was making me.

"Why?" Natalie asked, not shying away from the subject at all.

"Oh; well, uh," I stammered, "because boys have external genitals, which can be easily hurt. Girls don't."

I couldn't believe I was in the position of giving this de facto anatomy lesson. Natalie looked at me like this was the most fascinating thing she'd ever heard. Then I saw a little spark of recognition in her face.

"Ohh, yeah, you mean your penis, right?" she said. "That makes sense. One of my friends at college once went up to a guy and flung the back of her hand right between his legs, and he doubled over clutching himself and making these funny noises, and she yelled 'Bam! Got you right in the penis!' I didn't really understand what had happened, but I felt too embarrassed to ask. But I get it now." She smiled confidently.

"Well, not exactly," I said reluctantly. I had raised myself to a sitting position and was rubbing the back of my neck sheepishly. "When you hit a guy there, it's not really his penis that you're hurting. Really what hurts is that you're hitting his testicles."

Her eyes widened in renewed shock. "There's *more* down there besides a penis?" She asked with wonder. I almost rolled my eyes in indignation; I couldn't believe she had gotten to nineteen without ever having learned about this.

"Yes," I said, figuring I would just get it over with. "The testicles are two roughly ball-shaped organs--

"Oh, yeah," she interjected. "People call them balls, right? That does sound familiar."

"Yes, balls, among many other things," I continued. "Two ball-shaped organs that hang in a sack underneath the penis--"

"*Hang* in a *sack*?!" Natalie interrupted again, incredulously.

"Yes. They're responsible for making sperm, and they need to be at a slightly lower temperature to do that, so they're located outside the body. But this makes them very vulnerable to being struck, because they're not protected by anything, unlike all the other organs in the body. So when you hit a guy's testicles, he feels it very strongly."

Natalie looked dumfounded, and I could see her processing all this new information. After a moment of silent contemplation, she asked "And you're sure it doesn't hurt to get hit in the penis?"

I stifled a chuckle. "Uh yeah, pretty sure," I said.

"But I don't understand," she went on. "Why did Melissa say 'got you in the penis' when she hit that guy between his legs? She's not like me-- she would definitely know about these things," Natalie said with confidence. "I'm pretty sure she would be right."

"It's just a figure of speech," I said. "I don't think she meant it literally."

She processed silently again-- I couldn't help but find the look of wonder on her face quite cute, despite myself-- and then after a bit I saw a new idea flash into her eyes.

"Wait, so let me get this straight--" she said, her eyes lighting up subtly. "You're saying that at any point, if I wanted to, I could hit a guy's testicles, and make him curl up into a ball and squeal in a high-pitched voice like that guy that Melissa hit?"

"Well, I mean, I guess technically that's true," I said, my voice betraying some annoyance. "But that's a really mean thing to do. You shouldn't do it... unless you have, like, a really good reason." I considered saying unless you need to defend yourself, but I decided not to, because I didn't want to scare her with the idea.

She was silent again, staring off into space. "Wow," she said after a beat. "I still can't believe that boys have something down there besides a penis. I had no idea. I can't even picture what that would look like."

"Uh huh," I mumbled awkwardly, not knowing what to say in response.

She looked at me with a strange expression on her face, and opened her pretty mouth to speak, but hesitated, before eventually saying:

"Will you... show me?"

I looked at her blankly. "What do you mean?" I asked.

She gave a nervous smile. "Will you, you know, show me-- what's in your pants?"

I felt myself blush hard. "Me?" I asked. "Me personally?"

She nodded. "Yeah."

I was almost at a loss for words. "I mean, Natalie, that really would not be appropriate at all," I said. "I mean--"

"Pleeeease, please please Colin?" She said with big eyes and a slight pout which was devilishly effective. "Where else am I going to have the chance to learn about this? I'm the only girl at school who's so clueless; I just want to be a normal girl, but everyone already knows all this stuff and I feel like I missed my opportunity."

I couldn't help but admit that this was a good point. As much as what she was asking for gave me the heebie jeebies, wouldn't I rather she learn it from me, who she could trust, than some random guy at a frat party?

I sighed reluctantly. "All right," I said.

Her eyes lit up. "Thank you thank you thank you!" she said, clapping her hands together excitedly.

"But you can't tell anyone about this," I said sternly, "Especially your parents."

She rolled her eyes. "Like I would tell them," she said. I was briefly reminded that even though I thought of her as so innocent, it was easy to underestimate her.

She quickly got up, clearly delighted, and sat on the couch. I stood in front of her, so that my crotch was roughly level with her face. She smiled up at me with pure innocent excitement. I couldn't believe this was happening, but there didn't seem to be any point in putting it off. I took a deep breath, closed my eyes for a moment, and then pulled my shorts and underwear down to my ankles.

It was uncanny to feel the the open air on my genitals while Natalie stared right at them from a couple feet away. She looked completely shocked. "Whoa," she sad quietly. "Oh my gosh."

I pulled my shirt up so that she could get a better look, and then took my dick in my hand. "This is my penis," I said, and then held it up against my stomach so that it would be out of the way. "And these are my testicles."

Her mouth was hanging slightly open, and she glanced up at me and then back down at my exposed lower half, as if she wasn't sure I was telling the truth.

"And this is what all boys look like underneath their clothes?" she asked.

"Well, everyone's body is different," I said. "But more or less, yes."

She continued to stare. It was hard to read the expression on her face; it was a combination of many different emotions: surprise, curiosity, disbelief, and a bit mischievous, like she was getting away with something by looking, which was probably true.

"Can I ask you something?" she said, glancing up at me again.

"Sure."

"So you're really saying that if I kicked you right here--" she confidently placed her bare foot against the exposed underside of my penis, giving me a jolt of surprise; I don't think she realized there was anything inappropriate about doing so-- "it wouldn't hurt?"

I tried hard to remain collected, her foot surprisingly soft against the most sensitive part of my cock. "Um, no, not really," I said nervously.

"I don't believe you!" she blurted out, a big smile spreading across her face.

"Uh, I'm not sure what to tell you." I shrugged.

She looked up at me with an impish smirk, as if she were about to pull a hilarious prank on me, and then kicked her foot hard into my penis, which I was still holding against my stomach.

I shrugged again, unaffected.

She looked shocked. "That didn't hurt?" She asked in disbelief.

"No, not really," I said.

She looked thoughtful for a moment, furrowing her brow in a manner that was very becoming on her. Then she raised her foot again and boldly held it against my bare scrotum. "This is where it hurts?" she asked.

I shivered with the surreal sensation of Natalie's foot touching such a personal spot. "Yes," I said, swallowing with some extra effort. "Don't kick there."

"Have you ever been kicked in the testicles before?" she asked. The word sounded strange coming out of her mouth; she pronounced it very deliberately.

"Uh, I'm not sure," I stammered confusedly. "Sort of, I guess."

Suddenly the expression on her face changed, and she looked over my shoulder in surprise. "What's that?" she said.

I turned my head, the front of my body still facing her, to look behind me out the window where she was indicating. I felt a jolt of fear that someone was out there seeing us in this infinitely awkward position, even though the house was very isolated in the woods. I didn't see anything, and started to turn my head back in confusion, and as I did I was just in time to see, out of the corner of my eye, that Natalie was biting her tongue in a big devious smile, with her foot cocked back like a compressed spring. In the split second before I had the chance to process what was happening, she shot her foot forward, with startling speed, and kicked it very hard into my fully exposed testicles, and then looked up at me grinning expectantly, like a child who had just done something very clever.

"Oooohhhh," I cried out miserably, in a voice somehow both low-pitched and high-pitched at once, bending at the waist. *God* did I feel that in my balls. Her kick had connected so solidly, all of the force of her foot transferring straight into my unfortunate testes. I couldn't believe how hard she had kicked me, and how deadly accurate it was; I guess with my pants around my ankles, she didn't have to make any guesses about her aim. Her face was scrunched up in an agonized grimace, and I realized that she was mimicking the expression I was making. Then she laughed, her eyes shining with satisfaction, clearly delighted by this outcome.

My legs trembled with the pain, and I started to fall forward onto the couch where Natalie was sitting, but she grabbed my wrists and forced me to stay standing, awkwardly hunched over, my legs splayed open with the effort it took to remain on my feet. Then, holding my wrists firmly, she matter-of-factly smashed her foot into my balls again, connecting just as solidly as the first time, like she was hitting the bulls-eye at a carnival game and causing a bell to ring.

"Ooouughh," I groaned, my voice hoarse with the effort of getting a sound out of my throat. Before I could begin to reconcile what new waves of devastating agony she had wrought, she kicked again, and again, repeatedly and methodically depositing her foot into my vulnerable jewels with ruthless precision.

"Does this hurt?" She asked tauntingly in between giggles, slamming her foot in between my legs again and hitting her target with sickening accuracy. I could never have still been standing by my own power, but I felt so weak that while she held my wrists, I couldn't escape her grasp. Perversely, since I was unable to fall over and curl up into a ball, my body's natural reaction to her kicks was to open my legs wider, trying to gain a more solid footing; and as I futilely tried to pull away from her grip on my arms, I ended up thrusting my lower half forward, inadvertently presenting the spot I needed most desperately to protect for her to access all the more easily. She laughed again when she saw the position I had gotten myself into, and then landed a particularly hard kick that resonated deep within my fragile babymakers.

After more kicks than I could count, she finally let go of my wrists, and I collapsed to the floor, bent over my knees, my face against the rug, my whole body trembling in agony. She got off the couch and stood over me, her smooth crotch hovering above my face, confined only by the sheer silky fabric of her bikini bottoms; her soft, unrestrained breasts shifting easily within her loose-fitting tank-top; her body quite sensibly lacking any mechanism by which anyone could exert minimal effort and cause her unthinkable anguish.

"You were right Colin," she said brightly. "Kicking your testicles had a lot more effect than kicking your penis. I shouldn't have doubted you!

"Ohhhh God, holy fuck," I whispered shakily under my breath, my voice still too weak to make sound.

Natalie laughed. "Your voice sounds so funny now-- it's like your deep voice was located in your balls and I kicked it right out of there!"

It was clear that she thought this was funny, and felt no remorse about hurting me in a place where I was so vulnerable. I could tell that she considered it just another one of the sibling-like pranks we had a history of pulling on each other.

"Ohhh, my God," I said weakly after enough time had passed that I could form words. "Natalie, I told you not to do that," I could hear the irritation in my own voice, a tone I rarely took with her.

"Actually, you said I could do it if I had a good reason," she replied pedantically.

"Yeah-- not for no reason at all."

"I did have a reason-- I wanted to see if it hurt as much as you said."

"Ughhhh," I groaned miserably. "You could have just taken my word for it."

"That would have been no fun!" she said in a very cute voice. "Besides, you looked so silly, standing in front of me with this ultra-vulnerable sack between your legs. I was thinking 'Could I really get such an enormous reaction out of Colin just by kicking right there?' I couldn't help myself! You're just mad that I got you so good, don't be a grouch about it."

There was no use arguing with her. I told myself that it wasn't her fault; she just didn't understand that you couldn't casually kick a guy in the balls because you thought it was funny. That was something most girls were taught in the course of growing up, but not Natalie. I couldn't be angry at her-- I told myself that I'd have to be the one to sit her down and make her understand that hitting a guy's testicles was off limits. I didn't envy the task, but it could wait a while least. The rest of that day passed uneventfully, with me walking a little gingerly, and Natalie laughing at me about it.

\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_

That night I slept like a rock. I woke in the morning to the sound of a car starting and leaving the driveway. Natalie must have gone out, I thought to myself. I slowly got out of bed, still half asleep, and thought I could use a shower. I always slept naked, and I figured that since Natalie had left and I was in the house alone, there was no harm in walking to the bathroom without getting dressed. There was even something mildly exciting about the idea, to my sleepy half-fogged brain.

There were two bathrooms in the house, but one was much bigger and nicer, and everyone always used it unless there was someone in there. I walked down the hallway, groggily rubbing my half-open eyes, feeling the slight nip of the cool morning air on my naked body, and opened the bathroom door.

I was still processing things slowly, and the first thought that seeped into my awareness was that it was very strange that the bathroom was filled with steam, as if the shower had just been shut off a moment ago. Then I saw, to my total shock, that Natalie was in the bathroom, still dripping from the shower, wearing her wet hair wrapped up in a towel-- and nothing else.

I froze in place. What in the world? Had I just imagined hearing her car leave? Natalie heard the door open and gasped, turning towards me, and her face blushed a deep crimson.

"Colin! What are you doing?! Get out!" she yelled.

I was too stunned to move. Though I'm ashamed to admit it, I would be lying if I said I'd never pictured Natalie naked-- especially after she had spent the whole previous day traipsing about in such scant clothing. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I would ever in my life see her without clothes on, and-- God, she looked absolutely amazing. She looked even better than I had imagined, which I hadn't thought would be possible. Her body was perfect-- smooth and supple and slender, curving and yielding in all the right places. I wanted to touch her in so many places, to press my body against hers, to run my hands over all of her. I had never been more attracted to someone in my life, as much as I wish it weren't the case.

"Colin!" she yelled again, still blushing hard, her mixed expression of flustered anger, embarrassment, and nervous innocence only making her so much cuter. "You have to leave! You're not allowed to see me naked!"

I realized that I couldn't keep standing there staring. Considering the values that Natalie had been taught growing up, this would have been just about the most mortifying, unacceptable thing possible. But my mind was working impossibly slowly, and in the time it was taking me to figure out how to muster the will power to look away, the expression on Natalie's face changed subtly, and she took matters into her own hands. She took one big step forward with her left foot-- her breasts jiggling enticingly as she did so, further arresting my attention and distracting me from the hopeless task of looking away-- brought her right foot back behind her, holding it there for a moment to gather the maximum amount of force, and then kicked me in the balls.

"Ohh!" I gasped. The first thing I registered, in the initial split second, was the sound: the wet skin of her bare foot slapping into my ballsack in the super-humid air caused an incredibly loud clap that echoed loudly off the tiled bathroom walls. All in that initial fraction of a second, I had the confused thought, 'Boy, I wouldn't want to be the guy whose balls getting kicked made that sound.'

And then a micro-instant later, with her foot still buried in my naked genitals, I felt it. It felt like she had kicked the direct epicenter of my being, her merciless foot instantly shattering the illusion that it was bearable to have a body. I quickly realized, with enormous distress, that the way she had kicked me yesterday, though quite hard, was, at least from her perspective, playful: kicking Colin in the balls, just a good prank, having fun at my expense. But this-- I was very sorry to be learning that this was how she kicked when she was not playing around, when she truly meant to make a point. In the couple seconds before I fell to the ground, hunched over my buckled knees and looking up at her in horror, I couldn't help but notice that a hint of satisfaction emerged out of the cocktail of other emotions on her face.

I collapsed into a fetal position, moaning in misery, while Natalie stood over me with her hands on her hips. In retrospect, I find it a little interesting that she didn't bother to wrap a towel around herself at that point, which she easily could have done with me so effectively dispatched; it almost seemed like a point of defiance, that I was wholly in the wrong here and she wasn't going to compromise her own convenience one bit because of me.

"Come on Colin; out!" she said dismissively, her voice newly confident now that she had so decidedly taken control of the conversation.

"Ughhhh, it hurts so much," I whimpered, not moving from the fetal position.

"I don't care-- you've got to leave," she said.

I groaned noncommittally in response.

"Colin, go!" she sad angrily, clearly growing frustrated with my refusal to follow her order.

"I can't get up," I said weakly. "It hurts too much."

She sighed with annoyance. "If you don't leave right now, I'll kick you in the private parts again."

The threat hardly even seemed real to me, but the fact that she went there was enough for motivation. I shakily got onto my hands and knees, and started crawling towards the bathroom door with effort, moving very slowly.

Evidently it was not fast enough for Natalie's liking, because after I had made it about a foot towards the door, she quickly brought her foot back-- she had such easy and immediate use of the faculties of her body, which I certainly did not in the state I was in-- and slammed it into my testicles from behind, the force behind it showing no mercy for how deeply she had already wrecked me.

"Ooouuughhhh," I cried, collapsing back to the floor-- it seemed like I had reached the ultimate end-point of agony. In addition to the all-encompassing pain, I felt immensely betrayed.

"Ughhh, Natalie, why did you do that?" I asked meekly, using all my remaining strength to form the words.

"I gave you fair warning," she said primly. "I said that if you didn't leave right that second, I would kick you in the private parts again; it must have been pretty clear that I didn't mean your penis." I could tell that her mood had shifted as she laughed at her own joke, cruelly alluding to yesterday.

"Ohhh, God," I moaned, a puddle on the floor. "But I was trying to leave-- you didn't have to kick me again. I would have kept protecting my balls if I thought I needed to."

"Well, I'm glad you didn't-- it made it way easier for me to kick them," she said, laughing. It seemed like her anger had dissipated and she was back to her normal playful, innocent manner, now that she had made such quick work of me. "It's so funny how exposed they are from behind when you're on your hands and knees," she continued. "I never would have known about that! Honestly, it turned out to be a good thing that it *isn't* your penis that's sensitive. It would have been really hard to get your penis from that angle. But it was super easy to kick your testicles!" She laughed again at her own astute observation.

Eventually it was Natalie who left the bathroom, leaving me there to suffer on the cold tile floor until I was able to stand up. When I eventually was, I walked slowly and gingerly back to my room, and Natalie-- now fully clothed, in jeans and a long-sleeve t-shirt, conspicuously more modestly dressed than yesterday, although even so she still looked fine as hell-- made it a point to be in the hallway when she heard me coming, taking an unapologetic eyeful of my still naked body and whistling like a construction worker, then laughing gleefully. We spent the rest of that day together, and I couldn't believe how normal she was-- the events of the last twenty-four hours hadn't seemed to have phased her at all, like she thought there was nothing weird or awkward about anything that had happened. It was extremely perplexing to me; I felt like I could never look at her the same way again, for ten reasons at once. I felt emotionally exhausted by everything that had happened; looking back, it is humbling to realize that was only the beginning.