Amor Fabula Ep. 03

The two fingers continued to thrust, each time finding and exploiting some center of pleasure that she hadn't known even existed. There was a flood of heat and bliss from between her legs, as her mouth contorted and moaned from delight.

"You're not quite as frigid as you pretend to be, are you?"

A sudden fury possessed her, as she recalled how her father had called her mother a frigid bitch earlier. Before she could stop herself, her hand struck out and slapped her father across the face. Once she'd realized what she'd done, she regretted it instantly.

Instead of being angry, Hallbjorn laughed at her, as if he'd been caressed instead of slapped. "That was an old woman's slap." He teased, as he moved in close to her. "Now, close your eyes and pretend that I am Josurr about to give you a kiss."

Mist was ready to tear her nails into her father, when his heavy beard brushed against her lips and his heavy body pushed her back against the edge of the smooth rock. His lips weren't cold and calloused, as she'd expected. They were gentle and playful, yet much manlier and wiser than Josurr's clumsy ones. She was reminded of the work of an accomplished artist and a naïve beginner, when she compared her father's kisses to her admirer's. Again, the girl felt her body breaking away from her control, and her mouth mimicking the movements of her aggressor and accommodating him.

A third finger forced its way into her, impacting her with another wave of ecstasy, this one tumultuous enough to make her snap her head to one side and emit her first unhindered cry of climax.

Suddenly, the fingers were gone, and her father's body floated several inches away.

"I think you're ready now." Hallbjorn's stern voice said, as his hands gripped her by the waist and turned her so that she was facing away. "Grab the edge, lass. Pretend that I'm that unworthy poet of yours, if you wish. I'll be gentle with you, as I'd rather have you walk back home on your own two legs than have to carry you back over my shoulder."

A large, rough hand clenched at one of Mist's ample buttocks, before it came to a rest on her waist. Her father's head came in close behind hers. She could feel his heavy breaths fluttering at her hair. A moment later, that great tool of his was prodding about on her behind. It felt even bigger than it looked. As it pressed close to Mist's tiny aperture, she imagined it to be as thick as a fist.

Like an aimed hammer, it collided against her flesh, yet her flesh fought back its assault. Again, it rammed against her, and again it made no headway. Two fingers, then three, infiltrated her like scouts before the regiment, pushing apart her tight borders like obedient little soldiers, and then they fled away to report what they had done.

Hallbjorn repositioned himself behind her, guiding his mighty hammer forward, upward. This time, his daughter's flesh winced and sought to escape the coming war, and acquiesced the barest of breaches. Having found a handhold, or stated more succinctly, a cock-hold, Hallbjorn ordered his figurative army to forge ahead, and it did.

The war waged, as womanly flesh strained tight against the aggressive, manly flesh. Mist's sensual and reckless cries sought to smother her father's raging ones. Somehow, the large man managed to start up a motion. It was in vain, as the grip from his daughter's body was too constraining on him. He had no choice but to wrap his arm around her waist, to quiver from the inevitable eruption being incited within his body. A moment later he exploded into her. He held her, until the last of his seed was ejaculated.

His task done, Hallbjorn pulled away and swam for the opposite end of the crevice they floated in.

Mist stayed in her end, still clinging to the edge, as she heaved and tried to recover from the brutal sex, and sought to stem a flood of tears that threatened to spill from her eyes. Minutes passed, before she felt composed enough to turn and look at her father. He had his back to her, as if he were harboring some sort of guilt, or perhaps selfishness, but she couldn't tell exactly which.

"Is this..." She dared ask. "Is this the way it always is?"

"The first few times, yes." Her father answered, slowly turning around to face her.

He'd been looking at the offering he'd made, Mist realized. To see if the god Freyr might have come down from Asgard and taken away a morsel of it. Too see if his petition had been answered.

"Of course, it is much easier with a smaller man." Hallbjorn concluded. "And if I could, I would have made it more... comfortable for you, but a man can no more control the size of his cock than he can control the size of his leg."

"And we have to do this again?" She asked. "How many times?"

"I don't know." Hallbjorn considered. "One more time, maybe two. My stamina is not what it was when I was a younger man. For today, however, it is done. I will not badger Freyr further with my selfish desires. If it is the will of the god, then you will give me a son. If not, then I'm afraid I may have to travel to another village and bed with another woman."

It was his vanity, Mist realized. Her father couldn't risk the men of their town knowing that Hallbjorn the mighty, the man who killed a bear with a stone, was not virile enough to produce a son. He wouldn't be able to stand hearing of them gossip about it. Perhaps her mother was not at fault, after all. Perhaps the barren one was him.

If Mist became pregnant, it would be a simple task for Hallbjorn to utter his threats and keep both Mist and her mother indoors for the next nine months. Once the child was born, the proud man would announce that his wife had given birth. None would know the truth, that it was Mist's child. They might suspect it, but they would never be certain, and that was the best that her father could hope to do. And if Mist or her mother said anything to the contrary, he would probably murder them both. Better that, she knew, than her father having to see his vaulted legend tarnished.

Such was the way of life that Mist was accustomed to.

"Come here, lass." Her father drew her attention. "Let me show you how to arouse a man's cock with your hand, so that it'll come to attention quicker. You can use this trick later when you meet with that young boy of yours."

Having no real choice in the matter, Mist swam over and listened to the man's instructions.

In the late evening, the two returned to the vicinity of the longhouse.

Mist hadn't bothered to pull her hair back with a brooch, as she usually did. Instead, she'd allowed it to drop listlessly across her face. She no longer felt like doing much of anything, except perhaps dying.

Her father cast one last glance at her, after which he slipped into the longhouse. Mist simply stood there and let the night console her, but the night was as bitter as she was.

There was still Josurr, she thought. Quietly, she turned and strode over a different path. Perhaps his laughter and his wit would infect her, and make her forget.

She went into the woods and found a patch of great oak trees. It was said that the All-Father Odin favored these trees. Josurr's older and brawny brothers cut them down on occasion to fashion great ships from their timber. On a trunk some five feet in diameter, she took her seat.

Mist didn't have to wait long, before Josurr came striding along with a lantern of expensive tallow in his hand and some silly song on his lips. He swept the lantern in a great, low arc and made a flourish of bringing it up high into the air.

"Lo, what vision of loveliness do my eyes behold?" He fancied. "Could it be that a goddess from Asgard has descended unto my father's grove, to grace me with her presence? Must I shield my eyes from her countenance before I am blinded by her beauty?"

On some nights, such words would have been enough to birth laughter from Mist's throat, but on this night no such laughter was born. As if sensing something amiss, Josurr dropped down onto one knee directly in front of her.

It was a mistake to have come, Mist realized. As she observed Josurr's happy mouth twist into a questioning one, as he took in her condition and the bruises on her face that she'd tried to cover with her hair. His mouth hardened, along with his playful eyes.

"Don't touch me." She said.

It would prove to be a costly mistake, having come. She knew this, but she could no more put a halt to it than she could put a halt to the waves crashing into the shore. Men were as forces of nature. Poor Josurr, who'd felt his honor and his love had been tainted, was but a gale when compared to her father, who was a tempest. His young face set in determination, he abruptly stood and marched off in the direction of her home.

Mist sat there in the darkness, contemplating nothing, considering nothing. She lowered her head, seeking to keep her tears from the moon. When the streams began to crowd her eyes in earnest, she hid her entire face with her hands.

There was a false hope that Josurr would come back to her, but the hours went by and his familiar face did not appear. Having shed her final tear, Mist stood and took steps even further away from her longhouse.

She walked to the edge of the sea, to a precarious point high above the water, where men with lanterns would sometimes stand during thick fogs and call out into the night to warn approaching ships. This particular night had no need for those men, as it was free of clouds. The moonlight shone like a feeble sun on the jagged rocks far below.

As a monster's crooked teeth, these rocks were, jutting out from a short width of beach. The sea served as the monster's tongue, lapping up and over the teeth that sough to devour her.

Mist crept as close to the edge as she dared, to peer down at those rocks, to wonder what it would feel like to be dashed against them. She nearly uttered a curse at the gods, that they would send a gust of wind to topple her over.

The wind came, unexpectedly, but instead of sending her careening down to her death, it knocked her back onto her butt.

Mist gasped, for surely this was a sign. The gods had spoken. She was not to die that night. She was to live, and Hallbjorn... Hallbjorn would have his son.

After contemplating the matter in her head, Mist slowly rose to her feet and started the long walk back home.

2. Betrayal

The man who stands at a strange threshold,

Should be cautious before he cross it,

Glance this way and that:

Who knows beforehand what foes may sit

Awaiting him in the hall?

Fire, I saw, warming a wealthy man,

With a cold corpse at his door.

(verses 1 and 70, from the Auden-Taylor translation of the Havamal, also known as The Words Of Odin.)

She stood there by the edge of the town, with the short piers where the fishermen anchored their boats to one side of her and the much grander shipyards to the other. In the moonlight, she could see a half-finished vessel there, among the great stocks of wood and iron fittings, looking like the carcass of some long dead dragon waiting patiently for the ship-builders to bring it back to life.

And she waited, as she had done for weeks now, staring silently into the blackness of the sea. On most nights, watching as the thick fog rolled onto the land, and feeling its chilly coldness embrace her pale flesh like a lover.

The wind whipped around her, spitefully slapping at her loose hair, angry because it wasn't as tangible as she was. As a herder would, the wind pressured the fog, the mist, further inland. From somewhere on the edge of the nearby cliffs, she could hear a watcher's voice carrying out over the water, warning any approaching ships of the location of the sharp rocks that lined the shore. Rocks that should have ended her life some time ago, she knew.

The wind buffeted her body, but Mist would not be moved. The girl stood still and defiant, as she had for so long. The overwhelming smell of rot began to filter in from the incoming waves, as if something large and dead were nearby and slowly swimming toward the shore.

Mist cast a wary glance toward the residences and shops behind her, but the fog had blanketed them like a curse. She considered crying out a warning, briefly, but decided against it. Who would believe the mad ravings of a woman, especially of a woman like her who had been through so much during the past year? The villagers would suffer, she knew, perhaps to a degree equal to the suffering she had suffered herself. Would that be a form of justice, then?

She looked up, into the black sky, watching as the cruel fog stretched its gray fingers and attempted to suffocate the moon as it had already done to the village.

"Where are your gods now, Hallbjorn?" She asked, as she brought her gaze down, back to the approaching fog.

The worst of the mist was now behind her, leaving only wispy, ghostly trails in its wake and a thin layer over the water lapping onto the shore.

The putrid odor intensified, so much that the woman's nose wrinkled in repulsion. The moon, boasting of its victory against the fog, once again illuminated the sea.

There were forms out there, Mist realized, walking stubbornly through waves and bringing that smell of doom even closer. This is when Mist understood what had taken place.

The Viking ship had been on its voyage home, when some unforeseen calamity had overtaken it. The ship must have been destroyed, for there was no sign of it. The sailors had all been killed or drowned. But in that ironic twist of fate that seemed to define the whims of the gods, the goddess of the underworld, Hela, had seen fit to allow the sailors to return home anyway. They were no longer the corpses of men, however, but the Draugar of the sea.

As they trudged onto the shore, with water pouring from their bodies and bedraggled clothing, Mist was able to observe them closely. Their skin was clammy, either gray or blue, or even a sickly green. Their bodies were twice as large as when the men had been alive. They walked haltingly, as if they no longer remembered how to walk. More than a few of them had empty eyes, perhaps eaten out by fish during their travels, and mouths gaping wide and seemingly hungry.

Hungry for what, she wondered. For the ambiance of their former longhouses, for the embraces of their families or the gentle caresses of their former lovers? Or hungry for something more sinister, the consumption of the flesh of the living, that they might take the souls of others back with them when they returned to the underworld?

A few of these monsters paused before her, beside her, even behind her, as if she alone held the key to their existence. Although Mist was gripped by terror, she did what she always did. She stood defiant, nearly provoking them in her stance, and strong and silent as much as any nineteen year old woman could against their assault.

And assault they did, as the pained screams started up in the fog-enshrouded homes behind her. As if remembering their dark intentions, the Draugar no longer stared at her but staggered past, ambling around her like a horde of single-purposed creatures.

When their wave diminished, Mist noticed one final form emerging from the water. The great, hulking shoulders, the wide chest, and the well-kept beard were unmistakable. It was the form of her father, Hallbjorn, the man who killed a bear with a stone.

Not even death could keep her father from his favored weapon, she noticed, as the Draugar dragged a great broad axe, nearly the size of Mist, out of the sea with him.

Mist had waited for the return of the ship, to bring her news that her father was dead, killed in battle as he'd always wished. She did not expect him to have gotten on the ship as it started its long voyage back to the village. The girl sneered at her father's memory, as the gods had played one final joke on him and not allowed him the honor of reaching the home of the greatest heroes, Valhalla.

The single Draugar knew well who she was, as it stepped directly to her, towing its great weapon behind it. It paused before her, its skin toned a deep blue, its eyes barren of pupils and plainly colored off-white with streaks of blood. As she watched, the Draugar began to pull on its cock, soon lengthening it to the size of twice what it had been when it was a man, and nearly to the size of a horse's cock.

Hallbjorn, the man who had killed a bear with a stone, who had died on the voyage home, apparently had one last thought in his mind as the depths of the sea took his life away from him. That one thought was to return to his longhouse to coddle his daughter, as he had, often and violently, during the time before he'd departed with the other Norsemen. This was in blatant opposition to his earlier, false promises of that accursed day when he'd taken Mist to the Cauldrons, when he said he would only sleep with her for that single day and no more. The man's phantom, his Draugar, meant to carry out these same carnal desires, as it pointed its massive erection toward her and took another step forward.

Mist stepped back, deftly avoiding the creature's reaching grasp, escaping it only narrowly because the Draugar was as intent on holding on to its axe as it was in grasping and raping her flesh.

Rarely in her life, had Mist been bold enough to speak defiantly toward her father, as she did so now. "Hallbjorn, the great." She started. "Such a noble, fierce warrior, and yet the gods have no more desire to have you walk among them than they would a feeble old man!"

A flash of anger crossed the Draugar's face. It showed gritted and rotted teeth in a mouth twice the size of that of a normal man. It reached out and grabbed Mist by the shoulder, as harshly as she'd expected him to. She wanted, no, needed to be close to her father, or what was left of him, for the words she was about to say next.

"You son is no more, Hallbjorn, the bear killer." She spat out. "Your son is dead!"

If a monster could show surprise, it was doing so now. While its grip did not release the girl, it did loosen enough for her to yank her arm away. Instead of running, however, Mist stood before him.

"One month ago, as he turned into his eighth week," She admitted. "I smothered him with a cloth! I killed him, just as you killed my innocent Josurr. I took your son's little body outside and I fed it to the wolves!" She was shrieking now. "Do you hear me, Hallbjorn? You will not have an heir to carry on your legacy! Neither the gods nor men will ever remember you! I have made certain that you will be forgotten!"

The Draugar straightened out to its full height of nearly twelve feet. It howled such a ghastly scream that Mist nearly lost her composure and fled. It was a scream that could have reached all the way to Asgard, the home of the gods.

It must be finished, Mist resolved. For now, for all eternity, it must be finished. "Would you still take me, Hallbjorn, as you took me that day at the Cauldrons? As you took me over and over in your longhouse, while my failure of a mother turned to her side and pretended to sleep? Would you have me bear you another son, Hallbjorn? A Draugar son to be born in the image of a monster, because in life, his father was indeed such a monster?"

Another howl left the monster's mouth, but whereas the first one was distressed and desperate, this second one was fueled by anger.

As a further response, the incensed creature used its great strength to lift its massive axe high over its head.

In one fell arc, the life of the young woman was silenced.

Unless, of course, the gods may have noticed the tragedy of her short life, and perhaps, in their unpredictable manner, may have been moved to a course of action...

3. The Irony Of The Gods

I know a twelfth one if I see,

up in a tree,

a dangling corpse in a noose,

I can so carve and color the runes,