A Wood Elf ranger slept on beside her. The ranger was lithe, taller and more slender than the huntress. Long-limbed, with swept, alert features and a cool, androgynous beauty, she seemed haughty. Her emerald-green eyes and high cheekbones had been the first thing the huntress had admired when they had met by chance at the foot of a dormant volcano. The huntress remembered soft, black soil under her bare feet, warm and full of latent fire. The ranger was a traveller from colder lands to the North and had never seen the snow-rimmed calderas and steaming lakes that capped the Dragonreach Mountains. They had seen eye to eye from the first moment. That had been a moment of Eahyyn – what the Wood Elves called a ‘realization of kinship’ – a bond formed between two whose life-paths the Moon Goddess meant to cross.
Now the ranger lay silent, half-alseep but vigilant, her long, satin-soft, verdant-green hair free flowing down her back, ending just a little above the athletic curve of her bottom. She was paler than the Sylvan Elf, but hard. Hard like a wilderness hunter ought to be. Strong arms to draw a bow wield a scimitar and make love. The huntress was fortunate. The ranger was quite a find.
The dusky huntress rose and slipped on a corded loincloth. Around it was her fang-dagger, adorned with an intricately twisted lock of ember-red hair. It was shameful for a huntress to be awake unarmed. She knelt and took the offering of scented water. Dipping her fingers in the cool liquid, she brought some to the ranger’s pale, berry-pink lips. The ranger stirred. She tapped the huntress’ thigh with her foot. The huntress drew closer. Rich, musky aromas hung densely in the air. Sweat, nectar, fresh hathal-nut oil. The ranger moaned softly and turned on her back. Her belly was still covered in the residue of the huntress’ creamy nectar – the earthy, powerful elixir of the dusky Sylvan Elf’s passion. The ranger’s eyes fluttered open – sharp, alert, observant. She rose to her knees. The huntress took a great draught of water in her mouth and kissed the ranger. Sweet water poured between their lips. The ranger swallowed gratefully and lay back against the abode’s pliant, wooden walls, her thirst quenched. Hunting trophies and painted tapestries adorned the simple one room habitation.
The huntress drank a little and scrutinized the ranger’s equipment. Soft, exquisitely fashioned leather leggings and jerkin, a sturdy cloak made from a giant leaf that had been hardened by druidic magic, and a fine longbow and wickedly curved sword. The huntress had been skeptical at first. No metal should enter the village in the Forest Mother’s presence. But the ranger’s scimitar, inlaid with strange, complex calligraphy, was adamantine. Forged, not refined, from the depths of the earth. The ranger’s grandfather was a High Elf, who had insisted she take the family’s heirloom with her. The huntress watched the ranger. The Wood Elf woman’s breathing was soft, her taut, sculpted belly rising and falling almost complete silence. The huntress’ gaze worshipped the fat, smooth mound of the ranger’s sex. Deep pink nether lips, ever so slightly parted, still slick and inviting with their irresistible scent of female and musk. That same pussy had sheathed the huntress’ hand many times the previous night. That morning, it had been the ranger’s turn. So the huntress had let the ranger mount her, spread her; fuck her until her throat was raw from crying out. The ranger had been well pleased.
They waited, taking turns drinking from the bowl of water. Only after hunting would they eat. Finally, the huntress spoke. “Do you wish to bathe?” Her voice was rich, rhythmic.
The Wood Elf nodded. The huntress went to her armour stand and retrieved a white cotton loincloth and handed it to the ranger. The ranger slipped it on and the huntress felt a pang of regret. Now the ranger’s fertile sex was obscured. The ranger knew the huntress’ longing. The ranger knew the ways of the forest. In the wild, there was no time or need for long discussions on the aesthetics or propriety of intimacy. A huntress, like a ranger, was expected to always be available for her partner’s desire or comfort.
The ranger rose and the Sylvan Elf huntress led her out. She took her ancestral scimitar with her. If she left a huntress’ abode unarmed, some might mistake her for the huntress’ girl. A platform had been built around the huntress’ tree. A flock of rainbow-coloured birds streamed in front of them. In the distance, the other Sylvan Elf abodes beckoned with their tremulous, wispy, spirit-lights. A great circle of trees ringed the Mother Tree - a gnarled, immense matriarch that hung over the forest, at least five hundred feet high with a trunk so broad it struck many casual observers as the base of a hill. There lay the temple of the Forest Mother.
The ranger had discovered many things since coming south. She was a traveller by profession and by vocation. Her bow and her scimitar had never betrayed her, even during her travels on other worlds. The more she travelled, the more she realised there was much she had to learn. It was a boon that she had encountered the huntress in her first excursion into the Storm Forests. Not only because she had found a companion, but also because the huntress knew the place like her own soul.
The huntress was a stern teacher. The ranger had been mortified by her lack of knowledge of the local fauna and flora: the honey of giant termites was only good for a day before it became poisonous; when your cycle bleeds, you must wash your sex with camphor-balm, otherwise Arrow-Lizards will follow your scent. But she was learning. The ranger looked up into the misty sky and, in the distance, saw two shimmering metallic circles reflect the sunlight.
“Airship,” the huntress said. The word was alien on her tongue.
“Will it stop here?”
“Yes.”
“To buy?”
“Yes.”
“Should we go meet them?” the ranger inquired.
The huntress thought for a moment. Her last visit to Imej had opened her horizons. The strange, fire-headed woman she had met there had been the first truly interesting encounter outside her own lands. Now, perhaps the time was ripe to see other realms. “Perhaps. First we bathe, then we shall hunt, eat what we have taken and pray to the Forest Mother.”
“Couple?” the ranger smirked suggestively, patting the huntress’ iron-hard bottom.
“Of course.” the huntress smiled. A cutting, predatory smile that befitted her feral, indomitable beauty. “You ought to take me with more vigour. Remember, by day I am yours just as by night you are mine.”
“That is what we agreed. Our pact,” the ranger nodded.
“Long may it last.”
They bathed in a pool of glassy, warm water that had collected in a basalt crater at the volcano’s foothill. The jungle was shrouded in mist – dense, impenetrable, vibrant with life. They filled their waterskins with sharp, spicy sap tapped from deep within a thick vine. The huntress knew exactly where to slide her dagger so that the dense, amber fluid trickled out uninterrupted. It would be both food and water for them during their hunting expedition.
The ranger dressed swiftly and helped the huntress fasten the straps of her intricate corded armour. Together, they moved in silence – two ghosts hidden in the morning mist. The huntress felt the trail under her bare feet. Something stirred behind a serried rank of gnarled, dark trees, their roots half-submerged. The previous night’s rain had almost waterlogged the terrain. The ranger struggled, her boots slogging in the water. She had already begun to perspire under her jerkin. The sensation of clammy, wet leather and fabric liner against her skin was a constant irritation.
In front of her, the huntress navigated the wet ground with ease. Each tree, each fern, each moss-grown rock seemed familiar to her. The ranger followed, resolving to learn. There were no challenges left in the boreal and deciduous forests of her homeland – it was time to see the uncharted, exotic belly of the World-Mother.
They trekked through a narrow defile, ancient trees looming over them like knotted giants. Heady-scented flowers bloomed. The air was ripe with pollen. Fertility abounded, so that every crack in the earth gave shelter to some form of life.
The huntress paused. “Faral,” she whispered – for that was the ranger’s name, “do you see this?”
“What?” The ranger stepped closer. Her boot sank into the mossy ground, so that water splashed up under her knee.
“Here,” the huntress indicated, uncovering a pile of fallen leaves to reveal a scrap of dark, glistening metal.
“It’s a scrap of armour and crude at that.”
“Outlanders passed here,” the huntress said between gritted teeth. “The roots speak of the blasphemy of their intrusion.”
“Txat,” the ranger said with a grave nod. Feral bugbears.
“They should not be here,” the huntress said grimly. “Our meal must wait.”
“Someone injured one of their number – the metal is sundered.”
The huntress prodded the damp soil and dug out an oversized Ghatt-wasp stinger, the length of two of her fingers. “One of your people – we do not make wasp-daggers.”
“The Txat was struck from afar, perhaps wounded. His hunter is circling the group, waiting. That means there are many of them.”
They needed no further confirmation. The huntress traced her hands into the mud and ran the rich earth between her fingers. The scent pointed towards the rising sun. Perhaps the bugbears were after the sun-rock of the cold river that flowed under the volcano. ‘Civilized’ Elves, who had forgotten the Forest Mother, and lesser races valued so-called ‘gold’. Now, the interlopers would know better than trespass the lands of the Sylvan Elves.
The huntress followed the trail due East. They would find higher ground first and prepare an ambush. Txat would be hunted like any other animal. Their presence in the pure lands was unconscionable. The huntress would bring shame on her mother and grandmother if she failed to repel them. By the time they reached the place where the jungle gave way to the rockier, shrub-clad volcanic pools, the scent of sulphur was thick in the air. There, it was easier to track. Predictably, the Txat had taken the easy, flat path that would lead them straight into the shallow mountain caverns where the sun-rock river flowed.
Faral spoke, her voice piercing the distant hum of the rushing river, “Should we pursue them through the upper caverns?”
“No,” the huntress shook her head, “the terrain will be difficult and we have little time.”
“And if we were to stalk them as the basilisk hunts?”
The huntress smiled – a cruel, predatory grin. “So be it.”
The ranger spread out her leaf-cloak and wrapped it around herself and the huntress. With a word of command, the druidic magic in the cloak began to shimmer. Light now reflected off the cloak, hiding all beneath in an illusion, so that they appeared indistinguishable from a moss-grown rock.
Taking position near a natural bottleneck at the entrance of the river-cavern, they concealed themselves near an outcropping of boulders and waited. The sound of the rushing river echoed through the stony cavern. It was cooler inside, and that brought relief to the ranger.
They did not have to wait long. In the distance, a trudging sound grew louder. Hunched, bestial and snarling, the hyena-faced Txat came baying and gibbering down the cavern path. Their eyes were yellow-orbs set deep into their haggard, grey-furred skulls. They walked on two legs, but their limbs were bent like those of a wolf, so that they stooped low, ready to pounce. Their armour was crude, a mishmash of leather, cord and metal, their weapons rusted.
Faral and the huntress waited. The Txatdid not march in formation, but one male at a distance from the other, more like a pack of wolves than a war-band. Three stragglers brought up the rear, snarling and growling invective.
In a split second, the right moment was decided. The ranger surfaced to the left and slipped her gleaming sword between two of the Txat’s ribs. That would collapse its lungs and sever its windpipe, preventing it from crying out. The movement was immediate, a flash of tense action. Blood gurgled from the bugbear’s maw. The creature thrashed and only succeeded in drawing the sharp, agonizing blade deeper into its chest. One of its companions shifted its head curiously to one side. The huntress was already upon it. With a jerk of her wrist, the huntress brought her red-braided dagger to cut the second Txat’s throat. A jet of dark blood splattered against the stony walls.
The third bugbear whipped around and drew its rusted broadsword. Faral swept forward and cut its belly open, her blade humming its deadly music as it sliced through the humid air. Steaming viscera spilled out like a bloody nest of worms. The bugbear fell before it even had time to cry out.
The huntress decided they needed to press their advantage. She went forward while the ranger readied two arrows in her ancestral longbow. It was dark, but the ranger’s eyes could pierce the blackness with the ease of an owl’s. The huntress struck from the back. She brought down a bugbear by slipping her obsidian dagger in its back to cut its spinal chord. Then her fang-dagger finished the job by cutting open its throat.
Two bugbears whipped around, excited by the smell of blood and the odd splashing in the waters behind them. Faral loosed her arrows. Giant thorns, sharp as steel, pierced the air and parted company in mid-flight, finding an erratic, curling path into the two bugbears. They fell, mortally wounded, into the stony riverbed. The huntress finished them off methodically, as if she were slaughtering wild pigs.
Six down. The huntress motioned the ranger forward. They progressed down, deeper into the passage. Luminescent mosses covered the cool, dark volcanic rock, shedding a phantasmal glow. The path led them to a wide cave. The sound of clashing blades could be heard echoing against the backdrop of flowing water. Someone had beaten them to their prey.
The ranger dashed forward, her curved, bloodstained blade held perpendicular to her body. She lunged into the twilit battlefield and struck down a bugbear whose back was turned to her. Metal and bone cracked together. The arcing slash cleaved the bugbear open from shoulder to spine. Through the mist of blood the ranger saw the war-painted face of a girl. She had no time to contemplate who the mysterious ally was. The air had shifted to her right; a bugbear was trying to flank her.
Faral readied her blade, ducked out of reach of a clumsy lunge and spun round to riposte. Her sword flashed through the air and struck the bugbear’s snout, slashing its muzzle open. She finished it off with a swift, furious thrust to the throat.
The huntress had taken the opposite end of the cavern and was closing in on the pack’s alpha male. It was bigger than the others and better armed, too, a fine lance of Grey Elven make was clutched in its hands. The huntress ducked under a wide sweep of the Txatchieftain’s wicked blade and rammed a dagger into its belly before sliding between its legs. The creature doubled over, howling even as blood issued forth from its mouth and nostrils. Faral took her signal, drew her bow and loosed a single, deadly arrow. The dart thudded in between the alpha male’s eyes.
Silence fell. Blood stained the river water red as it washed around the huntress’ bead anklets. Red on turquoise beads. The huntress called the strange girl over. “You are a Wood Elf, these are not your lands – introduce yourself!” The huntress sounded irritated. It was a common courtesy between sylvan warriors to declare name and intent when in the territory of another village.
The girl stood resolute. Handsome, wiry and tan-skinned, she remained defiant. Faral scanned her. The girl’s armour was first-rate leather, patterned like falling autumn leaves – gold, red and auburn brown to match her short-cropped hair. Faral sheathed her sword and said, “Do as she says, girl.”
“Iniila,” the young warrior said with a hint of indignation, “I am Iniila, a warden of the Caern of Brook-under-Sunshine and I beg your forgiveness for intruding into your pure lands, but I have offered my prayers at the First Tree and I am most certainly no girl. I am a warden and a ranger, just like you.”
The huntress laughed mirthfully. “Well met, but the jaguar-kit needs to learn to hunt before she roars.”
Iniila growled, “I am as much a huntress as you – archery, bladecraft any art…”
Faral interrupted her, “Speak when spoken to, understood? She is our host.”
“But…” Iniila protested.
Faral’s searing green eyes compelled her to silence. Faral was the more experienced ranger. Despite her bravado, Iniila’s archery bracers marked her out as a junior warden. She owed Faral obedience and that was final.
Faral nodded in approval, glad that she had defused the situation. “I am Faral and I follow my dream-geas. What brings you to the Dragonreach Mountains?”
“I came with the airship,” Iniila said – sheathing her crystal daggers for the first time, “there are legends of an ancient shrine deep inside the fire-mountain.”
“Shrine?” Faral inquired. She turned to the huntress, “What do you know of this?”
The huntress spoke gravely, “Only that our shamans use it in their rites and that the rest of us keep our distance.”
Iniila interjected, “By law or by custom?”
The huntress replied, “There is no difference, for us they are one and the same. But you are bold to address us so, we feel your bravery and are pleased that you, too, sought out the interlopers.”
Iniila’s lips curled into a half-smile. “It was my duty as an Elf, but your approval is greater than any reward – rarely have I seen such a fine, deadly art as yours.”
Faral gave a soft chuckle, “You flatter her only because you seek her permission to go deeper into the cavern.”
Iniila said, “If there is a shrine, I wish to find it. A friend of mine is a Grey Elf – an educated woman, who knows the drawn-words. She says that the shrine is powerful and I wish to see it for myself.”
The huntress nodded, “I will accompany you deeper into the cavern, but you must go alone to the shrine. I am bound to follow the advice of the shamans. There are spirits here I do not wish to anger. Will you come too, Faral?”
“So be it,” the ranger said. She sensed curiosity in the huntress’ demeanour. It was a curiosity that had touched the bottom of the ranger’s mind ever since they had set foot into the cavern. As if the river were calling them forward.
So they set out, following the flow of the river, pausing only to drink the cool sap from their waterskins. The stone became a deeper black the further they penetrated into the bowels of the mountain. It was humid and, despite the river, the further they walked, the hotter it became. Iniila seemed to chafe under her leather armour. The suit was beautifully oiled, but tight, for it had been fashioned for far colder climates. Iniila’s hard muscles rolled under the leather. Faral admired her and found that the huntress did, too.
Faral reckoned it late evening by the time the huntress bade them to stop to rest. The crystalline basalt rock had given way to warm, black volcanic sand. The river had forked into three directions, the water sloshing against porous, soft rocks. The huntress sat by the riverbank and dipped her feet into the water. “The current breaks the rock into sand,” she said, almost as if she were giving Iniila a lesson, “water is the most subtle, and powerful of elements. All it needs is time and even mountains fall before it.”
Faral improvised a camp with a floating glow-crystal as a light source. She wrapped some slices of dried nut-bread in leaves and buried them in the warm sand to heat them. That gave her time to loosen her jerkin and pull off her boots. The leather was sticky and smelled of sweat and vegetation. She needed to bathe. Iniila had pre-empted her. The girl had cast off her leather armour and waded into the swirling waters. The huntress watched bemused.
“You are still smooth, kitten,” the huntress teased, her rich, lilting voice echoed throughout the cavern, “where are the scars?”
Iniila snapped around defensively, “All in due time.”
The huntress unclasped her intricate, corded armour and let the intersecting strands of jute fall around her powerful hips. “Look,” she called “can you tell me what this is?”
Iniila stared in wonder at the sharp, jagged scar that swept from the huntress’ muscular thighs to the hard, rippling flatness of her abdomen. “No…”
“Hellkite – a big female. I probably stepped too close to her nest and she struck me with her tail-spur. Have you ever seen a Hellkite, kitten?”
Iniila shook her head. Faral rescued her, “I know it in my heart that she will be a fine warrior in her time, leave her be,” the ranger chided gently. The huntress complied and began to scrub herself down with a piece of pumice stone.
They bathed and ate by the light of the glow-crystal. Once she had eaten, the huntress went about sharpening her daggers, exchanging playful banter with Faral over the scraping of stone against obsidian. Faral had warmed to Iniila and began calling her nyysel – ‘little sister’ in her native Wood Elven dialect, instead of etriel, or ‘girl’. It was a genuine term of endearment between Wood Elven women, but patronising, too.
Iniila accepted that indignity. It seemed to please Faral to have some additional company. “Here, little sister,” Faral invited, and Iniila obediently rested her head in the older woman’s lap. Faral’s athletic thigh was hard, rigid with muscle. Her pale skin smelled of mineral salt, mingling with the cotton of the loincloth she wore as she waited for her jerkin and breeches to dry.
Iniila lay there, rapt, feeling the warmth of the sand embrace her. Faral extracted a slim, flexible wooden pick and a pristine white cloth from her travelling pack and set about meticulously cleaning Iniila’s pointed ear. Iniila purred with pleasure. For an instant, it was almost as if the huntress were jealous. But then the dusky warrior went back to sharpening her daggers, nodding in silent agreement with Faral’s observations.
Faral worked with gentle, almost imperceptible movements. There was comfort in the act. The huntress was affectionate, to be sure, but never effusive. Wood Elves tended to be more transparent and warmer in their social relations. Though she was a ranger and used to solitude, Faral sometimes missed the carefree social contact of a festival or an evening between friends. This time, though, it was different. The place was strange. Not even the huntress knew exactly where the shrine was or whether they would recognize it if they saw it. Something disturbed Faral’s keen intuition and she knew from the huntress’ methodical sharpening that she, too, detected something slightly menacing in the air. It made her blood run faster and set each muscle on edge.
Faral declared she would take first watch. She dressed, inspected her sword and arrows and set out to patrol the surrounding caverns. The huntress set down her leather bedroll and dimmed the glow-crystal. Even in a state of wakeful rest, the huntress was alert. She spied Iniila in the corner of her eye. The girl lay sprawled on her bed-mat, smooth tan skin pulled taut over the muscle of her back. The huntress considered the idea that perhaps she had misjudged the girl. Iniila showed promise. She had impressive skill and initiative – for a novice.
Iniila stirred and shifted onto her side. The huntress felt a tightening sensation at the pit of her belly. It was wrong. She had always mastered her desire in the wilderness, but now, with the rushing water in the background, she felt her blood begin to quicken in her veins like a torrential stream. Iniila’s form was tight – as an Elven warrior should be. The huntress knew she desired the girl as much as Faral did. But, with two rangers of equal rank, it would have been inappropriate to approach Iniila. It was up to the girl to choose which bed to share.
Iniila shifted, restless, and, for an instant, her eyes met the huntress’ predatory gaze. That scent, the huntress thought – it was unmistakable. An earthy, salty tang in the air. Iniila smiled and half-parted her thighs. The scent floated, rich and heady, and tightened the huntress’ throat. That fat, fleshy mound between Iniila’s thighs bloomed into dark, rich folds – velvety like roses. The girl was teasing her.
The huntress’ breathing quickened, even as she remained immobile. Her coffee-dark nipples felt tight and swollen in the air, almost as pulsing as the desire burning in her sex. Feigning curiosity, Iniila traced the hard, tortoise-shell of her abdomen and dipped her fingers against her own sex. The huntress watched, enraptured.
Iniila smiled and brought her fingers, wet with milky dew, to her lips. The huntress felt her sex roil with desire. She sat up. The black sands shifted beneath her, warm and soft. “Do you know your place, girl?” the huntress said huskily. She licked her dry lips.
Iniila stared back, not flinching for a single moment. “No, I am brash and arrogant – tame me,” Iniila challenged.
The huntress felt her toes curl involuntarily into the yielding sand. In her mind, the image was raw and very real. Iniila’s hard, beautiful body straining, streaked with sweat as the huntress fucked her. The huntress saw her hand slipping wrist-deep into this upstart girl’s cunt, to master Iniila and make her come time after time, until the sands were streaked and muddy with her liquid passion. She saw Iniila’s autumn-leaf hair between her thighs, the girl’s eager tongue flicking against her clit, her lips stained with thick, musky juice. The huntress saw and wanted it.
Yet…something was not right. The air was thick with the musk of Iniila’s arousal. Why her? The huntress thought, why not Faral? The huntress drew closer and Iniila clasped her wrist. They flowed together in a furious, wet kiss. The huntress’ tongue mastered Iniila’s mouth, soft and hungry. Iniila drew back, a coy, needy smile on her lips. The huntress saw Iniila reach for something hidden in her travelling pack. Iniila’s scent, that heady female spice was like a drug. The huntress’ keen gaze fell on the plump mound of Iniila’s sex – white, creamy come streaked the dark red inner lips. The girl’s clit jutted stiffly from its tight little hood, a pearly jewel. The huntress’ calloused hand parted the lips of Iniila’s cunt, thumb pressed against the teasing girl’s clit. Iniila groaned and rolled her hips.
It was then that it dawned on the huntress. The girl was fertile – it was the high point of her cycle. “Stop!” the huntress ordered.
Iniila whipped back, her eyes wild, her breathing frantic. “I need this…”
“No, wait!”
Iniila pounced to her feet and disappeared deeper into the cavern. The huntress cursed herself and moved swiftly to gather her armour and bow. She had to find Iniila before Iniila found Faral.
In a nearby passage, Faral watched in awe as she contemplated a vast, domed natural chamber, half-flooded with cold, flowing water, and dominated by a vast, smooth mound, cleft in half like a massive, granite peach. The details were so fine the loving hand of a long forgotten artisan had almost certainly carved them. A tapping of footsteps echoed through the passage.
Faral gripped the pommel of her sword and turned to face the intruder, only to find Iniila panting and deliriously happy in front of her.
Faral smiled with relief, “Iniila, you should rest…”
“I cannot,” Iniila sighed, “I cannot stop needing you. I feel this longing deep inside, as if my chest tightened with each breath.”
Faral stepped forward. Iniila was already in her arms, locking the older woman in a furious kiss. Faral’s heart surged in her chest. The wetness of Iniila’s kiss echoed the streaming water that sang through the cavern. Iniila’s naked body was firm, hard in Faral’s arms. Iniila nuzzled Faral’s throat, leaving slick, glistening trails, and exposing her sensitive, pointed ear to the ranger’s hungry kisses.
Faral’s jerkin was fragrant with fresh sweat and leather. Iniila fumbled for the waistband of Faral’s breeches. The ranger pressed herself against the stony wall and with a swift tug unlaced her jerkin. Iniila’s kisses trailed down the valley of Faral’s small, elegant breasts and the tautness of her pale belly.
Iniila finally found the clasp of Faral’s breeches and tugged leather down. Faral grunted. Cool, moist air flowed against the engorged flesh of her sex. She was sodden. The cotton lining on the inside of her breeches was soaked with salty, flowery juice. Sweat, leather, sex and the mineral scent of volcanic soil coalesced. Iniila pressed her lips against Faral’s pussy and began lapping hungrily. Faral writhed, her hips grinding her drenched sex against the girl’s lips.
Iniila’s tongue was deliciously agile. She took long, unhurried licks against the pearl-hard bud of Faral’s clit. Faral held the girl’s head close and caressed the tips of her ears. Iniila lapped as if entranced, one hand on Faral’s hip, the other frantically grinding against her own clit.
Faral sighed, easing her hips into a gentle dance with Iniila’s tongue. The ranger’s fingers clasped the girl’s short, soft hair drawing her closer. Faral’s passion was thick and molten; each flick of Iniila’s tongue brought a new jolt of ecstasy, urging her to ride the girl’s tongue harder. Faral’s peak came as a long, limb-loosening wave of release. She didn’t even hear herself cry out.
Iniila looked up pleadingly, her lips flecked with fragrant musk. “Please, take me.”
Faral slid atop Iniila, they kissed once more, sharing the slick, salty richness of the ranger’s passion. Faral pressed Iniila against the yielding ground and the girl rolled further onto her back to better present her blooming sex. The perfume was so strong Faral felt her throat tighten with desire. Iniila spread her thighs and placed one foot against Faral’s shoulder and the other on the ranger’s breast for support, rubbing damp sand against Faral’s skin. It felt like raw cotton.
The ranger slipped an expert hand between Iniila’s slick inner petals. Iniila gave a ragged gasp and bit down hard on Faral’s lip. Faral tasted hot iron – blood mingled with nectar. She raised Iniila’s nips higher and probed the girl’s rich, velvet sex. It was hot to the touch – like a blossoming tropical flower, the juice thick and rich. Faral brought her stained fingers to her lips and tasted Iniila. Her flavour was addictive, overpowering and female like a dense, musky cream.
With a deft, fluid motion she entered Iniila with three taut fingers. Iniila mewled softly and rocked her hips against Faral’s hand. She was loose – beautifully loose. Her pussy was pliant, like a primordial sea. With gentle, rolling thrusts Faral began to work more of her hand into Iniila. It was an unhurried rhythm, spreading the girl’s silky sex with the utmost ease. Iniila’s torso was slick with sweat, her muscles straining against Faral’s weight above her. Faral smothered Iniila’s rounded breasts with kisses, sharp teeth capturing the girl’s dark nipples and tugging, ever so gently, in time with the thrusting of her hand.
Iniila’s skin was flushed with heat, tasting of salt and stone. Faral felt the girl’s sex surrender and spread to accommodate her hand. Hot wetness clamped tight around the ranger’s wrist. She was inside Iniila, her fingers strumming the girl’s sweet spot in long, languid circles.
Iniila’s toes dug into Faral’s shoulder, her low, plaintive cries filled the cavern. Faral built up the pace of her fucking. She was close to Iniila’s heaving breasts; she could hear the hammering of the girl’s heart. Faral strained, her back arching, pressing Iniila down, forcing the girl to receive her hand. Their passionate struggle mounted. Faral saw the tension build in Iniila’s eyes the moment was close. She jammed the pads of her fingers against Iniila’s sweet spot and heard the girl wail out her passion. Iniila’s slick pussy contracted helplessly around her hand. Faral felt hot and musky fluid spray against her arm, staining the sand beneath them, streaking her belly with the girl’s passion.
“Now,” Iniila purred.
Faral was breathless, “Now what?”
“Here,” Iniila handed Faral the bundle she had taken from her travelling pack.
Gingerly, Faral unwrapped the fabric. It was a fertility-rod, a dildo shaped like a thick plant-stem capped with a wide tulip-bulb and inlaid with druidic pictograms. “No…you cannot really expect me to do this…”
“Please,” Iniila hissed. “You feel it too, I know you do.”
Faral knew Iniila was right. The rod felt right in her hand – a living plant, a symbiont with a life of its own. “Are you certain? This is imbued with creation-magic, it would leave you with my child.” Merely uttering those words sounded blasphemous.
“Why do you think we were drawn here? This place calls to us, so why resist it?” Iniila held her thighs open, hips raised, awaiting Faral’s pleasure.
Faral’s reason was banished to the back of her mind. The sand grew warmer under them, as if the heart of the volcano had begun to beat. Faral slipped the root of the dildo into her own channel. The implement immediately sprang to life and took root deep in the ranger, forming sympathetic links with her sex. Faral positioned the rod’s bulbous head against Iniila’s pouting cunt. The sensation was electric, like damp silk against her sex. It felt like when she and the huntress coupled face-to-face, pussy grinding against pussy leading to a slow-burning climax.
With two quick thrusts, Faral felt her sex press against Iniila. The girl was so loose, so welcoming. It wouldn’t be long. Faral could feel it. Iniila braced herself and Faral began to fuck her once more. It was an altogether new motion for the ranger, but Iniila was quick to help her find her rhythm. They flowed into each other, grinding, sex pressed against sex.
The tension in Faral’s belly tightened with each thrust. She felt Iniila’s sex against hers, felt the silky, creamy flesh enveloping her clit. The rod made her feel like Iniila was enveloping her, sucked into a fertile vortex. Her pace quickened, Iniila’s moans filled her ears. Faral alternated wet, suckling kisses on the girl’s turgid nipples. Their hips melded, dancing, as if by instinct, to the same beat. Faral’s hard fingers pinned Iniila down; forcing her in place in anticipation of what they both knew must come.
For an instant, the voice of reason pierced the fog of lust in Faral’s mind, “Are you sure?”
“Imagine me,” Iniila murmured, “imagine me receiving your life-essence time and time again, full with your child – you, all-mother, the Goddess who creates, I the Earth like clay in the Goddess’ hands.”
That was all the encouragement Faral needed. She had ears only for Iniila’s mewling sighs. Then the fire burst through her belly. She drew Iniila close and thrust down as deep as she could go. She felt a visceral spasm deep in her sex and she knew that her essence was coursing down the rod and into Iniila.
“Yes,” Iniila sighed, her powerful thighs locked Faral’s hips into position, “now hold me, all-mother, hold me and love me until the new day dawns.”
Faral exhaled contentedly and nuzzled Iniila’s throat. In the cavern below, the cleft mound glowed and pulsed, awakened from its sleep. The waters rushed faster, so that the huntress’ voice in the distance was drowned out. Faral ignored it and snuggled closer to Iniila. The huntress would find them in due time. Meanwhile, the cavern rumbled with the silent voices of fertility-spirits well pleased by the impromptu ritual.
Look, ranger, - a distant breath on the wind called through the darkness; perhaps, a nymph-handmaiden of the Moon Huntress, — here is a World-Womb. A shrine built by the magic of another age.