A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 14

A behavioral aspect which can be looked for is a tendency to like -- or at least appreciate great beauty in either gender in a sexual manner. It is not a certain indicator, since there are humans who are attracted to both sexes as well, but almost all demons have this tendency in them. For example, I have a rather strong preference to be attracted to males, but I recognize that I also have it in me to want a female -- at least in my mind now and then. Aside from a short affair when I was a very young female, just barely of age, I have never sought this again, and as far as I know, since we still see each other once in a while, neither has my first lover. But I suppose that if we had remained close, our love would have carried on."

Selena wanted to smirk, since her friend was obviously wrong about her, but she said nothing and Ny'Zeille went on to the next sign as Selena felt the demon's fingers against her lower back. She suppressed the shiver that she felt coming to her from the pleasant sensation of it.

"One of the surest indicators -- and one of the hardest to see is a feature of the tailbone," she said, "In normal humans, it is the end of the spine and serves as the anchor point for many groups of muscles inside the body. The tailbone carries on down under the skin between the buttocks of both demons and humans. But demons have tails, Selena, and this place is where our tails part with the tailbone to hang outside of our bodies. In an undeveloped one, or in a demon who is in their other form, there is a very small bump which may be seen sometimes and felt for here."

This time, Selena did shiver as she felt the demon's fingertip slip down to the spot just above her cheeks gently, just where the back ended and the haunches began. She couldn't help it. Ny'Zeille's breast was pressing softly against her own.

"There," Ny'Zeille smiled at her as she put her other arm on Selena's other shoulder to support herself in the motion of the waves, "This is the place where the tail would be. It can be undeveloped, as I believe that it is in you, or it can be there hidden when one is in the other shape. Can you feel that? Where my finger is now?"

Selena was only partially successful in holding down the quiet groan which escaped her lips. The demon's fingers felt so good. She nodded, "What can you feel? Is it there, ... what you would look for?"

"Yes," the demon smiled, "as I knew this morning that it must be." Ny'Zeille smirked just a little as her voice took on a knowing tone. "You don't wish for me to stop, do you? Very well, I'll continue for a moment. I don't mind."

Selena found herself pressing her bottom out a little as the demon's hand moved, cupping her haunch now and then in a caress before going back to that small bump, and probing a little lower now and then.

"This brings me to another indicator," she said in a low voice, as she looked into Selena's face. "The eyes will show a little reflectively during moments -- or periods - of stress, emotion, or pleasure -- as yours are now and as they did when you became angry with me earlier. It is why you almost always wear a hood. You just didn't know what it is that you seek to hide, but your own body knows of it.

I see that it is happening more easily for you now --another sign that your body is coming to accept itself at last, as even it knows that you are among friends, to use a figure of speech. I'll go on with my touch for only a moment longer -- unless you now do not wish to know the other signs."

"I -- I still want to know," her friend sighed, "This feels so good, Ny'Zeille," she said as she pushed her backside out and in involuntarily only a little against the fingers there, and she thrilled at the way that it caused her nipple to feel from the changes in the pressure against Ny'Zeille's breast.

"I know," the demon sighed, "I like it too, sometimes." She removed her hand slowly in a lingering way, her long fingers trailing across Selena's buttock longingly.

"The other three things are also in an intimate place," she said as she moved herself to stand more in front of the rogue. She moved her hand and Selena felt those fingertips against her again below her navel and moving south. What surprised her was that she hadn't already moved away from the touch.

"It is not a sure sign, since some human females remove their hair here," Ny'Zeille said as her fingers slid over the rogue's mound in only bare contact, "but no demon of my kind needs to shave this. It is also a sign of red demons, only in the opposite way. They are a different race than we are and they do have hair here naturally. I can feel that you do not shave. You have never had hair here, have you?"

"No," Selena said as she saw the way that Ny'Zeille lowered her shoulder a little as her fingers slid down lower to cup the rogue's mound, squeezing gently. "This is always more pronounced in anyone who carries demon blood. Both we and reds show this. It is not a true sign though, since there are many human females who have this as well."

Her breasts had been in light contact with Selena's during this interval, and it felt wonderful. She wondered how it was possible. She didn't think that this sort of thing would have brought anything other than a feeling of mild revulsion to her, but ...

She wanted to reach for the demon's breasts, but felt her hand moving forward to cup the other one's mound instead. The eyes in front of her glazed reflectively in an instant and the demon smiled softly. "Rest your head on my shoulder, Selena. "I like this with you so much."

Selena lowered her head and a second later, she heard the low voice again as those long fingers moved a little more in a different way. If the two of them had been out of the water now, she had no doubt that by now she'd have been wet enough for it to be running down her leg. Even in the water here, Selena could feel the slickness of Ny'Zeille's inner lips so the rogue knew that she wasn't immune to this either.

"The last sign," Ny'Zeille moaned a little as she spoke very slowly, "is here. I can already feel that it has begun. Your pearl is becoming a longer little jewel, isn't it? Those of our kind always have this. It doesn't only lie there waiting hopefully to be pressed against or rubbed a little, no. It comes out a little more, doesn't it, peeking well outside it's flower to seek for its pleasure. Can you feel mine, Selena? It seeks for your touch now."

Selena was surprised and a little happy that her friend had the same sort of feature that she did. She stood groaning softly into Ny'Zeille's shoulder. "I, I don't --"

"Don't even try to tell me that," her friend moaned quietly as she continued to keep an eye on Nahl'een, "You have the blood for it, as I have shown you in many ways. We are the same, Selena. It doesn't mean that we must now run off to find a bed. I am coming to appreciate my friend -- and she is still my friend. I still want a prick inside of me, but I know what this is, "she sighed as she kissed the rogue's neck for a moment. Their motions became a little more urgent and Selena stopped hers as she came gently, hanging onto the demon. When it had passed, she began again for Ny'Zeille and a moment later, she felt the demon shudder against her.

Selena raised her head to look in confusion at the demon. What she saw were those eyes glowing faintly back at her.

"We both want a male more than anything," the horned one said, "but we both like this as well -- and it is safe with a friend who is growing close to us. It leaves out the possibility of heartbreak to a degree. Leave it at that, and know that we can help each other now and then. I see nothing wrong with that."

She kissed Selena softly for a moment, and then smiled at her. "Come, I need to make something for Nahl'een to eat for lunch. There is soup on the fire, a little away from the flame and it's been heating slowly since breakfast. I'll cut up some bread and we can eat."

They began to walk to the beach together. The rogue was more than a little surprised at herself and how she'd reacted to Ny'Zeille's touch. Just as the demon had said, Selena was absolutely certain that she still preferred males, but this had been a rather startling lesson to her about herself. And just as Ny'Zeille had said as well, she didn't have a great urge to drag the demon to a bed. She just liked the way that it had felt.

She felt Ny'Zeille's hand on her hip and she copied the movement, since it pulled them together as they walked, and their hands dropped down and they stepped apart a little as they came near the shore.

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He sat on a rock outcropping in the late afternoon wearily. He was covered in blood, not much of it his own, he thought a little thankfully, but he was a mess. There had been more than forty of them, and some had gotten away for a time and had needed to be hunted down. There was nothing which fought more desperately with its back to a wall than a red demon who knew that his or her number was up.

It had taken most of the past day, and he really hadn't been looking forward to doing this after nightfall. He wouldn't have minded and he could see just fine in the dark. But again, it would have brought out even more of their desperation. To realize that their last hope at hiding or slipping away unobserved gave them no advantage would have just made it even messier -- if that were even possible, he thought.

Dahlgren has just needed some warm sunshine on his tired body. He'd taken his clothes off for it, not caring how he might have looked. He needed to get away from the stench which his clothing wore now from the gore that he'd gotten covered in. He looked at the ruined town a little way off in the distance. Some of it was still burning and the three streets there were full of bodies. What a damned shame.

His eyes drifted to the one surprising asset that he'd found here on his arrival as she picked her way tiredly up the rocks toward him. She'd already been fighting and killing them when he'd arrived. Like him, she was a half-breed, born several hundred miles away in some little hovel that even she'd nearly forgotten since little of it came to his mind. Like him, she had some considerable ability, though she perhaps wasn't aware of the extent of it. Like him, she was naked, or very nearly so, most of her dress having been an early casualty in the fight, and there was one more thing.

Unlike him, she was part red demon.

It had caused him some confusion and now left him with a hell of a lot of doubts.

"They came from outta there- that cave behind you," she said a little wearily as she wiped a bit of sweat from her forehead. Since she was as covered in blood and filth as he was, all that she succeeded in doing was to smear what was there a little more.

"Here," she said, holding out a bunch of flash powder sticks to him, "I reckon you'll wanna close that off any time now, the sooner the better."

Dahlgren nodded a little absently as he looked her over without being pointed about it. "Yes, but while I'm not about to quibble about the way that you've helped me, I guess that I'd like to know why. I can tell that at least some of you is the same as they all were."

She looked at him a little hard with a slight tilt to her head, "That bother you or somethin'?"

"No," he said, "not really, I'm just very surprised, that's all."

She stood back a little, and he guessed that she was preparing to continue this, only between the two of them now. He looked at her black eyes as her eyebrows lowered a little. She was thin and lithe, though not wiry at all. The remains of her blood-soaked dress sticking to her by what was left of the collar did nothing to cover the hint of the slight swells that were her small breasts. She was as beat-up as he was, obviously.

He glanced at her thin, longish arms and the large, clawed hands where they ended. Looking more, he saw her thin hips and the dark patch of her fur between her legs -- possibly the only real human trait that he could see on her at all, other than her rather nice, human-looking skin. Even so, there was something to it that he'd never seen before. Beginning just below her navel, there was just a hint of hair. It grew in little more than a stripe, only widening a little when it reached her pronounced mound. Her long legs matched her arms, though he liked them on her, and they ended in feet exactly like the demons whose carcasses lay littered all over the landscape where they'd fallen.

"I think I'd understand a little better if you'd tell me who you are and how you came to be here. Maybe then, I'd get a grasp of the way that you killed these ones as you did. I have to hunt red demons. I've never met someone who is partly red demon and shows such hatred for them."

"My name's Faith," she said with a nod, "and all I need to know from you is whether we're gonna fight it out or not, you and me. Seein' the way that you fight and all, I guess that it'll be my last day alive. I wish I'd known that before I worked so hard to help you."

He shook his head, "No, that's not what I meant, "he said, "I don't want to fight you. I'm thankful, believe me. I'd still be at it without what you did. I'm just trying to understand, that's all."

"There's nothing to understand here, Slick," she said, "You want to know why I kill them?"

She tilted her head and gave him a hard look, "Well I'll tell you why. I'm mad at them, how's that? I'm mad and I fucking stay mad.

Bad luck, bad blood, you call it whatever you want to, but I figure that I got shafted before I was even born. All I ever wanted to be was a plain ordinary girl.

Look at me," she said, "My Momma was raped by one of them. Not any of these, but that don't matter. I was a regular girl til my time of women come the first time. Then I turned into this over three days of fever, agony and blood. My eyes went black like this and they stayed this way. My teeth grew and my hands and feet, ..."

She shook her head. "THAT'S when Momma told me what I am," Faith sneered. "Only then, so I got no warning about what might've been comin' to me. None of my clothes would fit. All of my friends ran off and wouldn't come within a hundred yards of me anymore. I couldn't go to school no more, nothing. People either ran away, or they shouted and cursed me for six years." She looked as though she was trying to hold her emotions inside and was about to fail at it.

"The people from the town came for us in the middle of the night soon after I turned eighteen," she groaned a little, "People I knew all my life, they dragged my Momma off and they killed my little sister with a club over nothin'. What did she do to deserve that? She wasn't like me. She didn't have this taint. I broke through the wall and ran off, and when I thought about it all, I just got mad and I ran to the town. But they was already burnin' my mother for bein' a witch. My momma wasn't no witch, but they tied her to a post and they lit her up anyway, all because of me.

All because I turned into this."

Faith stood there weeping a little, but it wasn't long before she had it in hand again. "That night," she said coldly, "that was about the only time that I killed humans. I ran right into the flames and I killed my Momma so's she wouldn't suffer no more. My dress burned right off me, but my hair didn't even catch fire. And I'm not gonna tell you what I did to the man with the club who killed my sister."

Her gaze came at him from beneath her eyebrows, "Then I gave 'em all a reason to fear me, since they seemed to want to do that so much that they'd murder them that ain't done 'em no harm. I grabbed the ones who came for us and I dragged them into the flames and I held 'em there til they lit up themselves. I showed them all how I play with fire," she said, pointing to herself, "and you've seen some of that.

After that, I've killed any of the ones like what spawned into my mother that I could find.

Just as soon as I know what they are, I kill 'em. And I can sniff 'em out in nuthin' flat, you'd best believe me.

I've never killed humans after that one night, other than the odd bastard who wanted to use me, but it was a heap of bodies before I got done, I can tell you. Lookin' the way that I do, I just live alone, since nobody will come near me. Whenever I try to get to know somebody, they start to lose their little minds and I just walk away.

Now," she said, squaring her thin shoulders, "if you reckon that I've done somethin' wrong bad enough to need to killin' for, well then, you just go on ahead and do what you think you gotta do. If you kill me, fine. My life's been nuthin' but a worthless thing -- the same as me, and I won't have to scratch around so hard tryin' to stay alive no more. If I kill you, well I'll know that there's not even a true ranger who's any use to me, and I reckon that I'll just go on back to the town there and start rummaging around for a new dress before I head off."

He shook his head, "I don't want to kill you, I just wanted to know." He stood up and stepped closer to her, putting his arm over her shoulder with a smile, "So I hear that you hate red demons..."

It made her laugh, "Well wouldn't you? Look at me."

"I did," he said, "You look like a demon. I don't see anything wrong with you. I think you look lovely -- but then, I'm a mutt too, aren't I?"

Faith found herself laughing again, but inside, she had a hopeful doubt now, wondering just how much of what he'd said was the truth. When she felt for it, that was what came back to her and she found herself looking at him in a new light -- at least a little, anyway.

He took the bundle of flash powder sticks from her and walked back to the opening in the rock. "They mined here, those people?"

"I didn't live here," she said, "but that's what it looks like, so I reckon they did. I was just passing by and I heard the screams. It didn't take me long to feel what it was about, so I come running to kill me a few. They screwed those poor folks over pretty good from what I see."

"Yes," he nodded as he walked away from her, looking for the best place to set the charge. Faith couldn't help liking the way that he looked to her as she watched him. They walked off together a few hundred feet. "Why'dja take so long to get here?"

He shrugged, "I was far away when I heard."

"You're not gonna be needing a match, are you?" she looked up at him with a small smile, "They're expensive hereabouts and I ain't got any."

"No," he said smiling at her, "I thought that you'd just set the charge off from here, since I know that you can do that. You could have just done it while I was standing there with the sticks in my hand, but you didn't."

"Reckon I coulda," she grinned a little, "but ya gotta trust somebody sometime, the way that I figure it and I could see that you were trustin' me then. You about ready?"

He nodded, and she smiled up at him. The roar of the explosion didn't even make them jump as half of the cracked and fissured old mountain face collapsed on itself.

"Come on," she smiled as she tore the rest of her dress off, "I know of a little place around here where there's enough of a trickle that we can wash some of this shit off us. We got a little while before the sun sets, and that oughta be long enough for me to find some clothes and for the two of us to find a freshly-killed cow for something to eat. There's enough of them lyin' around now."

He was a little surprised when she showed him the little dell where there were at least a few trees which could manage to stay alive under the relentless sun. "This starts out as a big old river far over that way in the mountains," she said, "but this is all that's left by the time that it gets all the way over here."

The water was cold and it was good to drink. They took turns standing under it and helped each other to wash what they could of the blood from their hair and bodies. "Come here," Faith smiled, as she led him around some rocks. "Most folks don't even know this is here, unless they can guess why there might be a few trees here. This little place is hidden well enough, I guess that most don't think to look. But the real treat is back here." He stared as he looked at the little pool in the rocks.