Childhood Demons Ch. 01

"I am Zhaeri," the first one smiled in a small way, and when it had passed, her face returned to something not quite as friendly-looking, though A'ishah could see that it was just her natural expression in concentration as she worked looking into the mirror, "It is good to finally meet you. I have seen you out in the streets after dark once or twice and I followed so that you came to no harm. I cannot think but that that the one or ones who sent you need to feel my foot against their dull backsides for that."

She smiled again, "But you are here now and we can talk. Now maybe our brother and sister will shut up about you. Give me a little time to finish here and we can meet you properly.

And please don't be put off," she smiled again, "We know how we must look to your kind."

A'ishah shook her head, "No, you are wrong Zhaeri. When I first saw Yasmina it was a big shock because I had never seen anyone who looks as you all do, but I have come to like what I see - though if I can ask without seeming rude, why are your eyes red? And I see that your ears ..."

"We all have these ears of ours, "Zhaeri smiled, "I am the only one of us who does not hide them under a lot of hair. Show her, Koåhn."

A'ishah had a little more trouble seeing the other female well in the darkness, but she saw it when she held up her long hair to show her a pointed ear. Her eyes were the same as Zhaeri's.

"Except for Koåhn here," Zhaeri said, "We all come from the same mother and father. Koåhn comes from our father growing tired to hearing our mother's jealous accusations that he was fucking another female - so he did.

He liked her a lot and she liked him, so they kept on when they could for a time, since Father found that he liked it with his girlfriend quite a bit more since, for one thing he said, she was always happy to have him. He said to Yasmikha that it made a welcome change.

Koåhn's mother was a kind that is ... a little different. That is where her fur comes from, also her little horns and tail. Her mother was not any sort of goblinkind. She was a demon. Some few of them there were where we lived. For one reason or another, they were trapped there, some with their wings torn off.

Those ones could never go back. The ones without wings were another kind, only different, and didn't go back out of a want to remain. Koåhn's mother was one of those. She stayed because she'd found a good male in our father and all of us females seek to feel a good hard prick in us. In that way, we are all the same, no?"

A'ishah looked a little harder, "She has horns? Where? I cannot see well enough here."

"That is because they are small, as I said." Zhaeri held up her thumb and forefinger, "Only like this and she hides them in her hair. Just have a care, for though they are small, they are sharp.

My mother killed her mother when Koåhn was small, so we took her in. Father asked us to watch out for her so that Mother didn't kill her too. She and I are the same age and I am the most like my mother, so I kept my new sister with me always, for as small as I was, I knew the danger even then. Whenever my mother tried something, I felt it and turned it back to her instead and she gave up after a time."

She shrugged a little then, "Though it must be said that her hair was never the same after the last time."

She shrugged, "Our eyes are like most of our kind. Only Håkan and Yasmikha's are a little different. They are like our father was and I am more like Mother was. I have her shape, a little more like yours and I have her ability - and his.

My tusks," she smiled, "of us all, Koåhn and I have tusks more like a male's, though they are much smaller than most male's are. I have the longest in our family. I only wish that they were a little more ... even in length."

You had to stare to even see the difference to A'ishah's eyes, since it was miniscule. All the same, she liked what she saw. Yasmikha might be able to hide the way that her's peeked out, but there was no way that Zhaeri could. The slightly longer of the two stood almost an inch above her lower lip, and if she was feeling better, A'ishah might have wanted to kiss her once at least, because she'd always loved to feel Yasmikha's little tusks when they'd kissed each other goodbye.

"I like your teeth," A'ishah said, trying to be polite and it was truthful, even for how she felt, "I even see what you mean, but Zhaeri, there is only the smallest difference between them that I can see - and now I wish for earrings like yours."

Zhaeri smiled, knowing it was meant, but her expression changed then and she tilted her head, "Please, sit and let Håkan bring you something to eat. I see that you have cares of your own and I talk too much sometimes. Please forgive me. Our brother waits to hear of your mother - and I ... I am sorry for your loss."

She bowed her head slightly for a moment and went back to her shaving while A'ishah wondered how Zhaeri could know those things. After the last stroke with the blade, Zhaeri took down the mirror and with it propped against a pillow and switching blades once more for a sharper one, she began to shave her pubes as she leaned against Koåhn.

A'ishah sat where Håkan indicated and he brought her a surprising variety of small things to eat, from clams to kelp and bits of goat meat, and he joined her when she indicated that he ought to eat as well. Zhaeri spoke quietly to Koåhn over her shoulder and when A'ishah looked up, she saw Koåhn looking back at her with a concerned expression for a moment.

It took A'ishah a little while to feel comfortable speaking to him out of her feeling a little strange to be sitting near to someone as large and strong as Håkan appeared to be, but his face showed his earnestness and he encouraged her whenever she stopped talking. The more that she spoke, the stronger her feeling of grief came to her and she found that now it wouldn't stay down and only rose up in her more, no matter what she might have wanted.

When everything ... when all of it became too much for her and she began to weep, Håkan sighed quietly and carefully reached out to lift her very gently. She was shocked, but before she could really react, she found herself sitting on his thigh with one knee on either side of it.

He put one of his massive arms around her and pulled her gently until she leaned her head against his shoulder and just wept as everything came out of her. He said nothing, only making soft and sympathetic sounds to her as he stroked her shoulder and back softly.

Koåhn touched Zhaeri's shoulder and Zhaeri looked back and nodded. Koåhn got up then and crept closer as did Zhaeri.

In spite of the strangeness of it all, A'ishah began to feel a great deal of comfort and she started to cry then, really cry for everything; the death of her fool father, and what she'd had to live through with her mother, the shame and indignity and the absolute loss of choice and freedom. Most of all, she cried for her mother and then she realized that one day, she'd die too and nobody would even know or care. It all spilled out of her and she couldn't stop crying or trying to tell of it in broken, mournful and sad sobs.

Håkan heard it all and when she slowed down, trying to steady her breathing, she heard him sniffle once.

As she lifted her head, she saw the lines of her tears on him where they'd run down on his arm and chest and when she looked over, there were the lines of his own tears down his cheeks. It seemed impossible to her. She was sitting astride the leg of a mountain of strength, so large in comparison to her. He held her and even now, he was stroking her back so gently with his large hand.

And he'd been weeping silently.

She became aware of the others and looked around to find them close to her and all of them had wet lines on their faces, having heard and felt what had come out. They shifted a little and A'ishah found herself in the middle of them all as they touched her and leaned their heads against hers.

She felt a stirring against her knee and she glanced down to see that Håkan was hard - and very large to her mind. Before she could even process a thought, she felt his finger under her chin, lifting upward very gently.

She looked into his sad gray eyes, so unlike her own, and she saw him shake his head and shrug, so she knew that it was only the closeness that had caused the male reaction in his body.

"Our brother cannot help that," Zhaeri whispered, "No matter what his heart feels, a male's body always has it's own hopes."

Håkan struggled for a moment, trying to find the word and at last he looked at her a little searchingly as he strained to ask her something, whispering it in his deep voice.

"Better?"

He held up his hand indicating a small gap between his thumb and forefinger with a hopeful expression.

A'ishah nodded slowly, holding up her own hand with perhaps a somewhat larger gap and he smiled a little weakly to see it and he nodded.

"He is so strong and yet ..." A'ishah whispered, "I see that he is very shy."

"Yes," Zhaeri nodded, "as are we all with you, though Håkan and Koåhn show it most, I think. Yasmikha and I are the quickest to learn other tongues, but Koåhn and Håkan do understand what you say. They want you to like them, but they do not know how to say it and they do not wish to seem foolish if they try to say it in your speech."

A'ishah looked at him again before she turned her head to look at Koåhn, who reached to take A'ishah's hand from her brother's shoulder to place it in the middle of her own furry chest. After that, she placed her palm against the center of A'ishah's chest, nodding as she did. Zhaeri reached in from the other side and did the same.

"We feel you," she said in a low whisper, "A'ishah, you are not like us, but you are not alone. You are among friends here with us. It might feel strange, but all of us have seen you and now, when you have the need to be comforted, we are here and happy if we can ease your troubles in some small way."

A'ishah's tears began again for maybe a different reason, but she nodded and tried to make herself understood as she told them all that none of them needed to feel foolish.

They sat that way for a time until A'ishah looked at Håkan for a moment and reached for him to put her arms around his thick and muscled neck, her hands slipping under his surprisingly soft hair and she hugged him tightly until she heard his deep sigh.

She knew then and she found that she didn't mind at all. He smelled clean and a little salty from the waves and he was so warm that she couldn't help it as she pressed her face against his throat and held on like that for a long time.

When she drew back, she looked at the others and then she was against Zhaeri and Koåhn with her face buried in the short, soft fur of Koåhn's neck, just where it grew thicker as it joined with her mane toward the back. She opened her eyes after a little time and she saw Zhaeri there looking back at her from where she rested her head on Koåhn's shoulder, only an inch away.

Zhaeri reached and held her hand against A'ishah's cheek, "We would have wanted a happier time to meet you, "she smiled wetly, "but I think that this might be better for the way that all of our hearts are bared to each other.

Yasmikha spoke truly of you. We all feel it, but I think that I am the only one who can see what shines from you so clearly to my eyes. We are strange to you, but you like us and we cannot help but like you.

I cannot tell you when it might happen, but little friend; we will try to help you somehow very soon."

A'ishah didn't really understand, though she knew the way that they made her feel and in their way, it was nothing subtle. To her, what she felt in her breast was raw warmth from them, like suddenly finding oneself standing before a blazing fire. The only difference to her was that she didn't want to draw back out of fear of being singed. She somehow knew that it was just not possible.

She knew only that if what she felt was their comfort to her, then she wanted to stand in that fire and be warmed.

Zhaeri read her thoughts easily, "We are not always gentle in how we do things. To us, we do - or we do not - it is simple. We seldom dislike something to a small degree, just as we do not like something else by the same amount. We do or we don't. In that way, our kind is more like ..."

She thought a moment to try to find something to help A'ishah understand, "We are like one of nature's forces. Like them, we are hard to stop and it is nothing that we can help."

Later, as A'ishah pulled her cloak back over her shoulders out on the beach, she wondered why the stiffness and the sting were gone from her back and she tried to look back.

"Håkan took it," Yasmikha smiled, "We can do a little when there is need."

A'ishah walked back with her new group of friends - more than she'd ever had in her life. They walked with her, sticking to the darkened alleyways until they drew close to the brothel.

When it was time to go, she didn't hesitate.

She kissed them all right on the lips for a long moment, one after another, meaning every bit of it, "I am so lucky to have such friends."

They kissed her goodbye in return and watched as she struggled up to the gate and it opened for her.

As they walked back down to the beach, Yasmikha looked over with a little smile, "What do you think?"

Håkan sighed and glanced at the lash lines there on his palm, "I think A'ishah needs a much better life."

Koåhn struggled in silence for a moment and then just said it in their language, "I have never felt something like that before. Before I even knew it, I was ... I was in love with that poor, beautiful girl."

Zhaeri nodded, "I am the same sister, and I had no say in it at all. She is just like that somehow. I think that if she had no cares, her personality might allow her to be a little like a child again. - you see how she has little fear of us, only a sort of honest fascination in her way."

Yasmikha nodded with a quiet grunt, "So then, it sounds to me as though you'd want her, you two."

As Zhaeri and Koåhn nodded easily, she looked at Håkan, "Do not be too quick to agree brother, I would say that you fascinate poor A'ishah no less than any of us seem to, but if it comes to be, you must always be careful, for she is much smaller."

He nodded with a look of concern, "I would never want to hurt that one, knowing that it could happen in error so easily. Perhaps if I was slow and as gentle as possible, then ..."

"Always a caring heart," Yasmikha smiled over, "No wonder that I had to fight to keep you alive so often before you came into your own strength. It was not what I meant. Imagine her with child from you. At best, she would be torn terribly and at worst ..."

"Do not say it," Håkan growled softly, "I would want her even if I could only look at her and kiss her. How can we get her free of her yoke?"

Zhaeri looked up and across for a moment, "As much as I hate to admit anything sometimes, I must admit that you were right, Yasmikha. There must be something that we can do."

Yasmikha nodded, "I only need a little time to think - and while I plan, you must all hope that her choice ends in our favor. I have known her only for a little while, but she is a friend that I do not want to lose."

With that, they walked on silently, for nothing more needed to be said.