Belney the Supplicant Ch. 05

Our lands are the most beautiful lands, filly.

He looked out where she was looking. Their eyes tracked down to a group of smaller goblins fishing with nets. They moved among many birds who seemed to be benefitting from the leaping fish they corralled. She hadn't thought of goblins as fishermen. Immediately she was overcome with a quick wash of gratefulness to be alive. To have survived this strange journey and to be seeing this sight.

Yes, master, She replied softly.

These lands are beautiful.

And they walked down toward a place to bathe.

It was the following day, after much eating and sleeping alone, that Belney was introduced to a circle of goblin women. They were hairless like the men, but more slender of face and body, with canine teeth less pronounced. One of the women had come to her stall, seemingly alone. The goblin woman had opened the slave's gate to find Belney already in her supplicant bow. She looked down at this big human before her. She took Belney's chin and moved it up to meet hers. Their foreheads touched and the goblin held it there. Belney found her touch calming and her breath slowed. She felt an easing. She realized she hadn't been sure how the goblin women would receive her and now- a long forehead touch. The woman clipped a leash to Belney's collar and led her away.

Belney found herself led to a wide circular room hung all around with many bunches of hanging herbs and flowers at various levels of dryness. Women were sitting and crouching and working on various tasks with their hands. Some were weaving baskets, some were shelling seed pods of a kind. Belney dropped down into her supplicant pose, but before her head had reached the floor, her hands had been each taken in one of these women's and she found herself rising and matching their folded leg sitting. Human's rarely sat this way past early childhood, but the goblin women did, and Belney found that she could too. They began a soft chant and Belney immediately fell into a trance. She felt the room fall away and only the shimmering outlines of the circle around her like the phosphorescence on water at night. Her mind held a new voice and it spoke softly but distinctly.

We thank you for joining us. We are grateful you arrived safely.

Belney felt the memories of her journey fly by in her mind. They were showing her. From their escape into the river to her arrival at the cave to the strange ecstasy of her first sexual joining with the goblins. She felt the pain of her bound running flight through the nights and days. She felt it at a distance but she also was aware of her lost family and friends.

We see what you see Belney. We feel your loss. We regret the pain that comes with crossing into the path of our clan and losing the life you left behind. You are here with us now, there is no returning. Because of your bravery and strength, you have lived. We honor that, Belney.

Belney felt herself starting to crack open. Her eyes filled. She took a gasping breath and began a long heaving cry. It came from deep and it was a powerful release to let out. she collapsed and was caught by the women and held. They held her gently, but not softly. Their quiet chanting voices carried Belney along. Belney spoke then, but not out loud, in her head like they were speaking to her.

Who are you? How are you doing this? How can you feel these things in me?

We are the Lu'Kaah, Belney. We've been here in these lands since the beginning. While your people learned outward expansion- building cities and growing grains and making books and domesticating animals and all the rest, we stayed on our lands where our ancestors want us and grew strong in our dreaming. In the earlier times maybe you could dream like us- but our people have gone different directions.

When she said these words, Belney say a swimming slideshow of brief images of the growth of human civilization, and of the goblin's time living underground, becoming tuned to the quiet rhythms of the plants and animals around them. She saw the way goblins are born together in waves in birthing rooms. How they grow fast, catching fish and wrestling and then dreaming vividly through the daytime hours. In just a few years time, they could expertly shoot a bow or climb from tree to tree like monkeys. She saw how the female goblins diverted off to the quieter dreaming side, going into themselves and learning to tune themselves together to take their spirit journeys together on the spirit plane.

Belney sat back up, her sobbing subsided.

Why are you showing me this, my Lu'kaah masters?

Belney was surprised to have remembered to use the right language of submission even now.

Am I a war trophy for your men, a pawn in the back and forth of retribution?

Why was I taken?

Will I live?

She felt a moment of consideration in the circle of women. And then,

There are limits to how we can understand each other, Belney.

Our Lu'Kaah men have a multiplicity of motivations. To protect our lands, we the women of Lu'Kaah have by necessity turned away from the sexual needs of our men, to be protectors in the dreaming-space. The men take slaves to relieve their loins, this is true. We understand this. Also to show that we are not a defeated people. Our men can strike back and reach them in their towns and take what they want, these daughters, these fillies. We avenge our fallen in this way. Most humans cannot survive long in bondage to us. Some, like you, become strong. Strong like us. To bear us the Gellihacq. The Gellihacq are important as more humans swarm into our lands. To stand against the humans, we must take your blood into our blood. To understand you- we will grow stronger by taking you into us.

Belney felt the weight of this, and some of the understanding, click into place. It helped to understand a little bit why she was taken- What was meant on that first night she was told about her destiny with them. The goblin women had helped Belney to feel them as a people fighting to survive against a larger, stronger invading force. She was shown the carnage of Royal Army victories, when goblins fought bravely against invading forces and were burned out of their caves. Whole clans slaughtered to the last, their bodies burned and their heads strung together like beads along the royal roads.

We will not show you everything at once, Belney. A little at a time is better for you. Our clan is very fortunate to have you as an honored slave. As you show strength, you will be taught more. Even this, answering us in your mind, shows great promise, Belney.

Belney felt a surge of feeling, with these compliments she had been given, first by the older goblin sage, if that's what he was, and now by these women. They were telling her she had earned a place with them- That her bondage to their people was a kind of honor. She'd have to let that sink in.