Flowers of the Imperial Palace Ch. 03

It was a curious place, the harem. It was peaceful, quiet despite the humming and the chirping and the burble of water all around. It was a comfortable place to wait, to spend a long time doing nothing, or nothing of consequence. It was a place where a girl could completely lose track of time until sundown.

Lor had still to become accustomed to many things about her new life. But one of those that she found most difficult to reconcile herself to was the way that darkness set in so abruptly, here in the tropics. In Uyraal. Her entire life, she had associated hot weather with long days and with sunlight, hadn't realized it it could be otherwise. It jarred, the near-constant length of the day, the nights that began right after evening baths. To her it felt as if something was missing. The seasons. Change was missing. She had tried to keep track of how long she had been here, but it was difficult. She had lost count after a month or so. Perhaps six or eight months now, enough time for the length of the day to have shifted, back home.

She had mentioned the seasons to some of the other girls who were from the south, those that she was able to talk to. They said that the cycle in Uyraal was dry and wet instead of light and dark. Lor had not yet been here long enough to see the rains, they said. Excited to understand what a wet season was like, Lor had hurried to tell Suria or one of the others each time that she heard drops falling on the glass dome of the harem. But no, just a shower they said. That happens all the time, even sometimes in the dry season. The real rains are still to come.

Lor thought perhaps some of the girls were laughing at her when they said this, and when they explained other things. Sometimes they smiled then hid their mouths behind their hands, a gesture she found difficult to read, but that hinted at vicarious embarrassment. Or maybe it was just the simple pleasure of superiority, of knowing something that she did not. Lor had stopped talking to many of them. In any case it was difficult to make herself understood.

Suria was the only one with whom she properly had a language in common, albeit one in which neither of them was entirely fluent. One of the coarse trading languages of the southern plain. Their shared vocabulary lacked many words that were everyday in the harem but even whose referent had no equivalent in the south. Suria substituted those with Uyraali, and Lor had worked most of them out by now.

Lor found Uyraali a very taxing language. But if at times she hated it, it was herself that she hated. She hated the way it sounded in her own mouth. In its pure and proper expression, it was the most beautiful thing she had ever heard. She knew that she loved it, because it was the language of her Goddess. Whenever Goddess spoke, the same jumble of harsh and soft sounds that so frustrated Lor's own lips was transformed into an intoxicating, seductive melody. Smooth, natural, and liquid. The Goddess' neck, perfect like the flute of a vase, bobbed gracefully with each guttural choke, her kindly plump lips twisted as if kissing out each word, and with the lisping of each sibilant her lovely pink tongue slid across her teeth, the same tongue that could wrap itself so smoothly around a girl's dick, make it twitch and spurt itself spent with even the most gentle licking.

Lor thought of Goddess a lot. The harem was permeated with the Goddess' love, was a reflection of her spirit. Grand, luxurious, imposing. A structure built for pleasure, and filled with kindness. At the peak of midday when the sun baked through the glass dome and the air became close and humid, Lor fancied that the cling of the hot vapor on her skin was an echo of the Goddess' touch. The rustle of the thick foliage in the canopy, the gurgling of the little fountains, were the same sounds that appeared in the sibilance and throatiness of Goddess' voice when she spoke her language.

It had irritated her more, in the beginning, having to share the beauty and the peace of the harem with the other girls. They talked a lot, loudly. And Lor did not understand many of their jokes. But now she found it troubled her less. She joined in sometimes, with simple things, splashing one another in the baths, brushing each other's hair. There was touching and kissing, too. The Goddess' work sometimes kept her away for many days, and the caresses of the other girls, though rougher and less skilled, were some consolation.

Lor now realized that it was mean of her to want to be the only girl of the harem. Her own meager seed could hardly fill a Goddess. This thought had saddened her at first, but she understood that as the incarnation of love, and as the architect of Uyraal's mission of peace, Goddess was bound by her nature to give the pleasure of her body to as many girls as she could. Goddess loved every girl in the empire, and those beyond. It was Goddess who had enlarged the harem, the matrons had said, and it was her duty of love to fill it, to bring as many girls into her embrace as she could.

The notion of being Goddess' chosen girl still filled Lor with melancholy longing, but she had succeeded in relegating it to fantasy. Her unconscious spun many elaborate dreams around the idea of being Goddess' one inexhaustible fount of pleasure, filling her and filling her, never leaving her side, being borne around in the imperial litter, ready to fill Goddess even as she did the work of empire. Clinging to her, always hard, always ready, spending herself as soon as Goddess demanded it. And the bedchamber, the bedchamber that Lor had never seen but that her imagination had decorated with detail, was the scene of her most ardent, sweltering dreams, those that made her cry out. She would lie on Goddess' body, or under it, as Goddess pleased, buried inside her cunt, gushing and throbbing, continuing to serve her even in her sleep.

Lor's fantasy was fed by the bragging and the gossip of the other girls. Some of them claimed they had indeed been taken to Goddess' chamber, as a night-time toy for her comfort. Outside of fantasy, Lor knew that she herself would never be able to last for that long, to serve Goddess privately for the whole night. She doubted that any of the other girls could either.

She recalled once having lasted almost an entire turn of the clock before falling exhausted. There was a clock over one of the smaller arches along the edges of the old southeast wing, with the Uyraali hours marked in black paint. Goddess had once lain there and received, on one of her open litters. Lor had not been first, of course, but she had saved herself while waiting, had tried to focus on the almost imperceptible movement of the clock's dial instead of on the sight and the sound of her Goddess being served. On the richness and resonance of Goddess' laughter, her groaning, the shifting of her soft, luxurious body. Looking away when the Goddess was before her felt like a terrible waste of something beautiful, a minor sacrilege, but Lor found that it was the only means by which she could keep from spilling her excitement already before she was required.

The first one, the matrons had said again and again, the first is the most potent. You must fill Goddess with everything that you have, but the first above all, for that is when you will sire her.

In the early months, when everything had been new and bewildering, Lor had often spilled not only her first but also her second before she was called. It was the voice that she found most difficult to resist. Especially when Goddess sat astride another girl. That was when she seemed to groan the loudest. And when Goddess gripped and squeezed at her own breast and bit her lip, Lor knew that her cunt was wet and clenching, she felt that clench as if it was on her, and the depth and richness of Goddess' sweet cry ignited Lor's desire. In those moments she became so pulsing hard that the pressure had nowhere else to go and she would often erupt, without touching herself, without even moving. The other girls had laughed at her. Though it happened to them sometimes too.

But Lor had gotten better. She did not often spill now. Only when the other girls touched her. Or sometimes in her sleep. Otherwise, all of her seed she put into her Goddess. It was possible that she had sired already. Lor tried not to give in to the hope, not yet, though she wanted it ardently. It felt presumptuous. The harem matrons would tell it, the other girls had said. When Goddess gave birth, her servants would determine the probable sireship, if it could be determined, and the news would reach the matrons. Then the matrons could usually be persuaded to tell.

If there was a certain thickening tension in the mood of the harem now, more than just the gathering closeness and humidity before the break of the rains, it was because Goddess was ready to be sired. And the girls knew it. Her last birth was some months behind, and she was overdue to fall pregnant again. The matrons were fretting. They said that Goddess should be spending more time in the harem, letting herself be filled more often. But there was perhaps some business that was keeping her away. Lor wanted to be there, to be ready as soon as she was needed.

Lor felt sure that there was some routine, some reason, to the timing of Goddess' visits to the harem. There were a few dependable rules that Lor had gleaned, mostly concerning the times when Goddess was almost sure not to appear. She almost never visited in the very early hours of the morning, nor in the last few hours of true dark before the sky began to lighten. That was when she did her work, when she administered the empire, read petitions, wrote law. The other girls had said so. Still, Lor had more than once crept about the harem at daybreak, after having risen early and left the others sleeping, hoping that she might be surprised and be the only one ready. But she had been disappointed. Just before dawn was also when the flowers of the harem released their sweetest scent, having secreted a store of it overnight beneath their closed petals. It was overpowering, and Lor had found herself unable to wait for very long before she became too painfully hard and too desperate. She had lain on the ground and spurted without touching herself, gasping for breath in the thickness of the scented air. Fortunately the others had not found her. Once she had recovered, she had quietly rejoined them in the dormitory, and had slept until woken by the matrons for morning baths.

Lor had noticed one other such regularity, a time when Goddess had never visited. During the first hour just after the highest midday sun. Lor had decided that this was when Goddess dined. Lor had guessed that this must be the case because whenever Goddess did visit shortly after this period, later in the afternoon, she was a little more sluggish than usual, preferred to lie on her back or on her side, and did not ride any of the girls or thrust herself against them with her usual vigor. Also, whereas Goddess would sometimes eat small fruits during her other visits and share them with the girls, she never did so in the afternoon, and the reason must be that she was already full. Lor was quietly pleased that she had observed such things and inferred this small detail about Goddess' life and the pattern of her wants. Lor had not told the other girls. Perhaps they knew it, in some way if only by unconscious intuition, for most of them slept during this period, or bathed, and did not check the main chamber of the harem as often.

It was perhaps late afternoon now. Lor was not sure. The sun was bright, but it remained so for most of the day. Goddess might visit soon. Or she might not. Lor stood halfway along the southwest wing, strolling, plumping one foot down idly before the other, only just swiftly enough to keep herself in motion. She looked up and around at the tall crossed arches of the ceiling, thick with the tendrils of the llimhendel. She filled her lungs, drawing in slowly through her nose, tried to fix the scent, and found that she could not. Sometimes, in its ubiquity, it eluded her. She fancied instead she could feel it on her skin, damp and dewy, cool against the tropical swelter of the air.

Looking along the base of the arches, she recalled the clock that stood at approximately this point in the neighboring wing, and thought to go and check it. She knew now how to tell the Uyraali hours. She let her saunter swiften, but gradually, instinctively averse to being seen to hasten. She looked ahead, through the foliage, and saw nobody. The other girls were elsewhere. She was not sure where. But not here observing her. She was alone.

Then, where the tall tunnel shape of the building abutted the wall of the central chamber, she walked in through the arch and stopped. What she saw at the center of the chamber ought to have startled her, kicked her into a state of tense surprise. But she found herself simply smiling, joyful but unruffled, as if in retrospect she had known what she would see. As if, somehow, she had by the force of her imagination conjured it.

Goddess lay resting, at the edge of her bathing pool at the concenter of the rings of steps and tiered flowerbeds that circled the huge, sunny space of the chamber. Goddess was on her back, freshly washed and oiled, the rolling smoothness of her bulk glistening in a patch of sunlight, the glimmer shifting slightly as she breathed.

Lor leaped forward. Or she tried to. Yet she found herself sluggish. Her legs were weak, and carried her forward down the shallow steps in an awkward stumble. Perhaps now belatedly this was the nervousness she knew she ought to be feeling. She should be running, her heart should be beating for fear that she might be usurped, that another girl might appear. But as she staggered the last steps she found she could not wrench her gaze from Goddess' bare beauty to look up and check the other arches for the faces of her rivals. Instead she continued to drink that beauty in, cramming each detail greedily into her imagination, the glowing sun-bronze of Goddess' skin, the soft strength in her upstretched arms, the stretched weight of her breasts, sloughing off her chest and into her armpits, the perfect unblemished expanse of her stomach, dented at its center by her navel, the outward bulge of her thighs beneath her resting legs, and at their apex the oil-darkened mat of short hairs that lined her divine, welcoming cunt.

Lor stumbled to her knees and threw herself atop Goddess' body, mumbling half-formed declarations of desperate worship through her slurring lips. Her limbs dragged, trembling, weak with excitement. Then the beautiful, blanketing warmth radiating from Goddess' oiled skin spread across the bare front of Lor's body as they made contact.

"Yes, Lor, I must be sired," Goddess spoke simply, as if announcing a happy matter of fact.

Goddess' rich, womanly voice was tinged with drowsiness. Its sound in Lor's ear ignited a hot rush of desire in her body. She felt her insides already throbbing with pressure as she fumbled to bring her dick between the thick, hair-lined folds of softness either side of Goddess' cunt.

"Yes, uhhh, Goddess, my Goddess, yes yes yes! I will, I will, I..." Lor scrabbled at her dick, hurrying yet wary of inadvertently bringing herself over the brink of her rapidly-mounting excitement with her own touch. She grit her teeth, biting down on the groans of desperation that rose from her chest, trying hard not to raise a sound that might alert the other girls, "I... will fill you. Much. I can, I can... I will fill you, I and not the othhh... uhhhh!"

"Lor. My Lor. You will give me many daughters. With your seed I will be the largest I have been. You will fill me with a host of queens, enough to rule over every province of Uyraal. And when my daughters take their thrones I will send you out to fill each of them too."

"Oh, oh oh oh! Goddess, I..."

No! Lor's face knotted in frustration, a sudden agonizing release tainted by failure. She felt herself throb hard, her dick still pressed into the loose cushion of Goddess' lower stomach as her fingers fumbled numbly at Goddess' cunt. Not understanding what was happening to her, nor what she was doing or why, Lor leaned forward to kiss the beautiful face beneath her, its smile glowing with kindness. But Goddess seemed to turn her head and suddenly Lor's mouth was full of a bundle of her thick hair.

***

Lor's body stiffened and then sagged, expelling a despondent groan as awareness came to her, slowly seeping in. When the realization coalesced, she tried instinctively to wake, to force her eyes open, then changed her mind and scrabbled to hold on to the image as it evaporated, to keep herself under and immersed in the happy ignorance of illusion at least until she spent her climax.

But sunlight swept in through her gummy eyelids. Real sunlight. Unmistakeably real for its harshness and insistence, its independence of her imagination. And horribly realer than the sun that she had dreamed on Goddess' skin.

Lor's body, her real, waking body, announced itself to her gradually. One of her limbs was trapped beneath something. A torso. Her other arm was thrown over that same torse in a limp embrace. Lor felt the bodily warmth of her bedmate, Suria, against whose back Lor was pressed. The two of them were curled, spoonlike, on their sides. Lor's body ached with the tension of a tight pose held too long, and her skin pricked with the sweaty heat trapped between their bodies. She felt acutely the stiffness in her own nipples, pressed into Suria's broad, taut back.

Lor wondered at the nagging ticklishness on her lips and on her nose, before she spat away a tangle of Suria's thick red hair and freed her mouth for a deep breath. As Lor's chest swelled, Suria stirred, arching and pushing herself backwards. The sweat-slick touch of Suria's skin on hers was, Lor realized to her chagrin, so much more vivid now than what she thought she had felt, at the tail end of her dream. It was immediate, stark in its insistence on her senses, needed no sustenance or mind.

Suria's body was broad, at the hips and at the shoulders, was not entirely unlike Goddess' figure in its construction. But it lacked the luxurious softness, the enveloping weight, with which Goddess' body greeted an embrace. Suria's softness was slight, only tangible when the muscle beneath it was slack.

Lor vacillated, feeling the crest of her half-spent climax beginning to ebb away. Her insides still pulsed with frustration, with the unresolved energy of her dream. Groaning, she let instinct overwhelm her, and the ache between her legs resurged as she tensed the muscles of her backside to nuzzle her still stiff dick into the groove of Suria's spine. Suria stirred again, and Lor clutched at her to hold her still, fingers digging into Suria's shoulder, then the looser flesh of a breast. Lor muttered a few half-formed phrases behind her teeth, admonitions to herself, for her weakness, pleas to Goddess for forgiveness, for not saving herself. Then the tension poured out of her, a second climax even less satisfying than the first, an acute, trembling sting followed by several long pulses, the heat within pouring out of her and onto Suria's back, smearing across it as Lor writhed, holding herself to Suria's body while she tried to rub out something a little more satisfying, more worthy, than simple release.

"Lor," Suria did not wait for the throbbing to abate before turning over. Her voice was cracked with the disuse of sleep, but alert, and loud in Lor's face.

"Ugh," Lor gasped. She reached for her dick and nursed herself. She curled at the stomach, lifting her legs and clutching tight with her fist to wring out the remains of orgasm. "I had to. I dreamed."

"Mmh," Suria nodded, her grunt a straightforward acknowledgment, unfazed, understanding. "So. Now, quickly. It is after dawn. The matrons will be here."