Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 08

They dropped the small pudu they'd been carrying on their shoulders and rushed forward, darts raised. The hunting band all leaped to their feet at once, weapons drawn, and the dogs began a maddening chorus of yips and barks. "Kiravi! Kiravi!!" They both shouted, fear ringing their voices.

I struggled to stand, praying to whatever god would listen that I could get between them before blood was shed. "I'm here," I croaked and stumbled, "I'm alright," That wasn't precisely accurate, dear readers, but the Bhakhuri certainly hadn't made me any worse.

The Headman helped me stand, even though his face was knotted with concern, "Who? Who?" He asked me, his voice harsh.

I pointed at my chest, where my heart was thumping angrily, "Friends. My friends," I pointed at the packs and kit the women had left behind in the shelter.

He barked something in his tongue, then again, and his hunters lowered their spears and darts, cuffing and snapping at the barking dogs. A flash of recognition flashed across Leotie's snarling face, and she said something in her tongue. The Headman hesitated but responded. Back and forth they went, but Serina ignored them, striding through the standoff as if weapons weren't drawn. Her dirty dress swirled just above her knees, and her glowing eyes never left my hunched form.

"Shhh, shh, sit," Serina cooed, trying to smile despite her worry. She eased me back down, and I leaned on Niknik to help me. "Are you alright? We were so scared."

"I'm fine," I lied, "I just need to rest and take some more elixir." While she helped me, Leotie finished the heated conversation with the Headman and trotted over.

"We should be fine," she said, face hard but her eyes softening as she took in my frail form. "Their tribal lands stretch from here all the way across to the Nekoar, so he can understand me. They asked to share our camp for the night, though apparently Kiravi already offered?"

"I suppose I did," I coughed and shrugged.

I managed, barely, to stay awake through the rest of the day, huddling uselessly while Leotie and the hunters processed the pudu and a handful of small game animals they'd brought with them. Serina never stopped fussing over me, and Niknik stubbornly remained with me even while the Bhakhuri's dogs sniffed curiously all around us. That golden-eyed coyote investigated Niknik, and Leotie's companion stared intently back. I sensed that the coyote was no mere beast, but most of my willpower was being spent simply maintaining consciousness.

Another delicious stew was prepared and shared, and the Headman gave me the dried bulb of some flower stewed into tea, telling me it would help keep the desperately needed food down. To my relief, it did, and I fell asleep with a full belly and a smile on my face.

We stayed another day, and I could tell that Leotie appreciated the time spent amongst her own people. A pang of shame shot through my heart at seeing it. Leotie deserved to return to this life, the life she knew. What point was there for her to wander further and further from home with every passing day? I was giving thought to speaking to her about it when she caught my eye across the camp, dispelling all such foolishness from my mind with a dazzling but secret smile.

The Bhakhuri knew of the conflict in the valley, mentioning it'd spread beyond Tebis, but knew little beyond that. Leotie bartered with them, swapping her lower-quality knives and some of our beer for fresher meat and more of their strange medicine. It gave me a headache but tempered the fever alongside the elixirs.

The riverbanks rose again before nightfall on the day we departed, but the low greenery had returned by the time we awoke on the eleventh day. How long had Qusirlay said the fever would last? Two weeks? Damn this fucking fever. I could already feel that I'd lost a disturbing amount of weight. My skin was thin and felt as if it hung from my bones, and I was exhausted and out of breath every day.

Our surroundings slowly transformed from rocks and thin forests to cultivated fields the further south we went. Villages dotted the flatlands, both along the banks and closer to the horizons, but I was wary of stopping anywhere that the Old Nobles might hold sway. The days and nights were hotter, the air gaining a trace of moisture, but still, I shivered my life away.

Heat simmered, flesh melted off of my frail body, and an undercurrent of strain and tension built amongst us all the while. It wasn't adversarial or colored by anger but instead was rooted in the same fear and uncertainty I'd grappled with in the juniper grove. Every night, the three of us huddled close together. Every morning, despite my sickness, my manhood responded to my holding two beautiful women. And, every day, they noticed it, I noticed them notice it, and no one said anything.

On the fourteenth day, my fever broke, just as Qusirlay had said it would.

I woke up before my lovers did, and I was surprised to see that Leotie was in my arms and Serina in hers. Sitting up, I looked around in the ghostly gray light of the pre-dawn. Village lights shone in the far-off distance. The east was speared with red-gray pearlescence, but not enough to wash out the endless fields of stars above us. The hearth-fires of the gods, some called them. Locked in their eternal dance, the two moons dipped close to the western horizon. Lataia, broad and round and scarred, and Onirac, oblong like a sling bullet and destined to spin around his more significant mate for all eternity. A muddy, silty wind rustled the winds along the river and filled my nose. Every kind of insect hummed and chirped and clicked, and the owls hooted defiantly at the coming day.

The world looked different, felt different, as if I was seeing and hearing and feeling it all for the first time.

After being useless for so long, it felt good to heft one of the cedar paddles and speed our meager vessel downriver. My body ached, my muscles were wizened, but I rowed. It would help bring the tone back to my arms and trunk; eventually, I supposed. For good measure, I drained the dregs of both elixirs, and the faint swirl of energy helped me row without rest, tears streaming down my face as this new world opened up all around me.

"Hey you," Leotie's voice whispered from behind me, and I felt one firm hand on my shoulder. The other slid across my chest beneath the arm driving the paddle into the muddy water. "So, you're all better now?"

I scoffed, "Hardly." Her warm breath traveled up my back to my neck, closely followed by her lips. "I just feel like a warm corpse instead of a cold one."

Her head came to rest between my shoulder blades, a soft cheek spreading warmth through my spine. "I was starting to worry about you, lover."

I smiled, even though my arms burned in protest, "Speaking of worry, aren't you worried our...unresolved question is going to wake up and see you?"

Leotie didn't laugh, just blew air out of her nose that tickled down my back. "That might make it easier than whatever we end up having to do."

"On another day, maybe," I rasped, "But like I said, I feel like a warmed-over corpse."

She pulled away, her fingertips lingering, "Your decision." Her lips were warm again, suddenly, in my ear, "I love you."

"Love you too."

Serina was just as excited that I was awake, trending back towards the First Life instead of the Second. Even with Leotie awake and watching, she embraced me and kissed me as deeply as she ever had. But then again, she didn't know what Leotie and I had done together. What we'd shared and promised to each other.

That first day after the fever broke, I rowed and rowed until my arms had the consistency of poorly cooked blood pudding. Leotie taught Serina how to fish, and the girl picked it up incredibly quickly. Most went to Niknik, but some went back into a tightly woven basket dangled into the river to keep them alive until we stopped again.

Another week passed like that: rowing, eating, fishing, and awkward glances between all three of us. Serina found some coarse thread and a bone needle and set about mending our various and battered traveling garments. The sandal was on the other foot as Serina tugged Leotie down beside her; she painstakingly taught the gruff huntress how to thread the well-made needles and slowly stitch the holes and gashes shut. Leotie was a dutiful if impatient student, swearing viciously every time her needle came unthreaded or when her teacher gently corrected her form. For an hour or two every day, we stretched our legs on the shore and roasted the day's haul of trout while Serina and Leotie silently communed with the local Kwarzi.

Between back-breaking rowing and deep, dreamless sleep, I coached my lovers through a handful of magical lessons I vaguely remembered from a decade before. Leotie borrowed my staff while Serina uncertainly handled Sata's. They piqued my curious spirit enough to help me forget the ache in my muscles, both of them studiously drawing power through their conduits and showing me the breadth of their abilities. Or, in Serina's case, the scope of her ability to control herself.

With a bit of focus, Leotie was able to create a spark of flame as I did to light our campfires, as well as make an object glow with dim light. However, most of her limited ability was focused on using the Kwarzi's power to either weaken or strengthen others. She even cast her strengthening spell on me for practice, and the ache disappeared from my arms to let my paddle strokes send us slicing quickly through the water for the few minutes it lasted.

Serina though...I was amazed. You'll remember, dear readers, that this was the girl who'd nearly killed us and almost blown my cock off with her out-of-control magical outbursts. There was something in her now, some new intensity and drive to focus on her powers. Whatever it was, I figured I'd learn about it sooner rather than later.

In that first day we practiced, she could barely concentrate her reddish-orange variety of magic through Sata's staff. Leotie and I both flinched at the far-too-close flashes of light and thunderclaps of sound, but it was at least somewhat of a start. She grinned with childlike pride at me as waterfowl scattered into the air, honking their indignation. The grin soon turned into a determined, scrunch-faced scowl as she tried her spell again and again. It was, honestly, the only spell I'd ever seen her use more than once, and I hoped then that the next step would be to recreate some of her other fantastic abilities. There wasn't another healer I'd ever heard of that could channel the healing power she'd displayed in the Ketza. I was hoping we could get somewhere with it, dear readers: by the end of that week, Serina could already create her thunderclap spell whenever and wherever she wanted.

The next day, the river descended through a series of banks and bars where tributaries flowed into the Mother River and flooded her course with sediment and driftwood from their own catchments. Our practice was postponed; all three of us had to row and steer the ungainly craft around one bar or islet after another to avoid being tipped over or stranded on the many tussocks of reeds that emerged from the stinking water. Sweat poured off of my face to join the puddles of river water dotting the bottom of the canoe, and my muscles strained to the breaking point. I'd be lying, dear readers, if I claimed the sight of Leotie's lithe arms and back powering the paddle through the water, underneath her bandeau and the hot sun, didn't stir the already dangerously repressed lust I felt. Serina's dress clung to her, translucent as she sweated through it, and I noticed that the petite little farm girl had grown some wiry muscles of her own in her arms and trunk, rippling slightly beneath sweat-sheened skin.

We half-beached and tied off on one of the tussocks just after the sunset; I wasn't willing to drift down such strange waters as we slept or flounder around in the darkness. Beyond exhausted, we collapsed together in the center of the canoe in a tangle of limbs and paws. Sleep bore down on us quickly, but in those few minutes before we slid into its embrace, our exhaustion melted some of the inhibitions that had hampered us for weeks. Four small hands roamed slowly, lazily, across my chest, back, and thighs, brushing close but never quite touching. I pulled them close to me, a hand on each of their backs, feeling their soft skin. Leotie, muscles hard and warm, rippling like cords under my fingertips. Serina, more delicate but still firm, her body seeming to press back insistently at my touch.

I was too tired to know which hand was who's and where. My eyelids kept fluttering shut, staying open only when one hand settled on my slowly hardening manhood. Another hand reached to the same place, felt the first hand, and recoiled. But soon, tentatively, it slipped back to rub both the hand and my hardness at once. Desire and excitement flushed through me like a boiling tide, but the whirlpool of exhausted oblivion was too strong for any of us to deny. First Serina, then Leotie fell asleep before me, breathing slow and regular, and I followed soon after.

Between the sickness and exertion, I should've slept until noontide, but instead, I woke in the dim before-dawn air. My lovers embraced each other and me at the same time, and Niknik warmed my feet with his purring belly. My hardness, my constant companion, throbbed insistently at me. A hundred different ideas rushed through my mind, all of them lewd and involving either or both of my sleeping lovers. Dear readers, it was with deep disappointment in myself and intense frustration that I wriggled out from underneath them.

I collected a morning meal for the three of us from our seriously depleted provisions and nibbled on sunflower seeds and pemmican to sate my growling stomach. I tried to rock the canoe as little as possible, but my movements must've woken my first lover. Serina clambered into the center of the boat, worming her way adorably under my arm and snuggling against my wounded chest.

"Why are you awake?" She murmured. Her lids draped over her glowing eyes, and she failed to stifle a yawn.

I shrugged, "Couldn't sleep anymore." She took an offered piece of fried dough and pemmican, chewing slowly. "I'm sorry I woke you, darling."

"It's alright," she yawned again, "with both of us awake, we can get started down the river, can't we?" She glanced around at the marshy, mist-shrouded river, "I'm sick of this river. This boat." Her hand drifted along my chest and thigh, "I want to be with you, Kiravi." Her face betrayed hesitation, brow furrowed in thought, and I could only assume she was remembering the strange interaction the night before.

I was so close, dear readers, to just blurting out that I'd had Leotie twice, that I loved her and Serina both, that I wanted them both so fiercely. But I didn't. Perhaps it was cowardice, born from the fear that I'd lose one or both of them. At that moment, I told myself that it was out of respect for Leotie, that she deserved to be a part of this discussion, this attempt, to rectify my foolish and selfish young mistakes.

"You're ready to visit another temple and find more answers, too, you mean?" I hugged her tightly to me, hoping to steer the conversation away from difficult topics.

She tensed and slowly shook her head, "No, Kiravi. I don't want to do that again. Please," she looked up at me, glowing eyes plaintive. "Please don't leave me like that again. I don't want to ever be apart from you."

Gods dammit, dear readers, but who was I to say anything other than a soothing balm for her fearful heart? "I promise, darling. I won't leave you with any more priests or holy men. Whatever answers we get, we'll get them together, alright?"

She smiled at me. That perfect, pure, young smile that dimpled her youthfully plump cheeks and spread up to her alien eyes. "Okay," she murmured, humming happily as she nuzzled her face against my chest without breaking our shared gaze.

I may have been able to stop myself from revealing our tangled web of lust, either through fear or tact, but I couldn't keep from saying what was in my heart next. "Serina, I...I realized something when we were trapped in Tebis." Her face was searching, pleading, knowing what I was going to say but needing to hear it anyway, "I love you, darling. I won't leave you. Not ever."

Her smile somehow grew wider, and tears gathered around her eyes, "I love you too," she whispered, "but that was obvious, wasn't it?"

I chuckled quietly, "Not that obvious."

Serina still beamed at me, but her giddy visage faltered for a moment, and she glanced past me at the sleeping Leotie. Whatever her thoughts were, though, she buried them. Instead, she held me tightly for a bit longer, just pressing herself as close to me as she could, drying her joyful tears against my shirt.

Wading through the muck, I untied the canoe and shoved it back into the slowly moving water; still, Leotie slept. We rowed hard, just the two of us, the mist swirling around us before the rising sun began to burn it off. My second lover rose after the sun crested the far wall of the valley, ravenous but apologetic. Her added strength helped drive us beyond the worst of the stinking fen and back into something resembling a river.

I shared Serina's sentiment; when in the Akagi's Hells would we be done with this gods-damned river? Leotie vociferously agreed after wolfing down some breakfast. The days all began to blend into a single, painful blur, punctuated only by the aches of my body and the unrelenting tension between all three of us.

Perhaps the gods had been listening; a large village hove into view around a sharp bend in the river.

I'd been avoiding markers of civilization and any taint of the Old Nobles, but our provisions were low, and we were sick of the water. The low buildings mainly were constructed from the ubiquitous mud-bricks of Anghoret, but the inhabitants had made thatched roofs out of the endless reeds that choked the riverbanks. A handful of canoes plied the waters around the village, dangling lines or pulling up fish traps, and two dozen more sat beached on the shores before the town.

None of the canoes challenged us, a lone vessel still bearing scars from the revolt in Tebis. However, a knot of figures emerged from the tangle of buildings when I splashed out of the craft to pull it ashore. To my surprise and piquing my curiosity, they were all diminutive Hazuba. Though I towered over them, they still carried flint-tipped spears and knives with determined intent.

Their skin was darker than Qusirlay's, their hair lighter with a slight curl to it. Squat and muscular, none of them had Qusirlay's prodigious fat rolls and bulk. Believing in an excess of caution, I'd left the bronze swords in the canoe and carried only my looted staff.

I opened my mouth to speak, but a female Hazuba with a copper knife at her waist spoke first, "Qhatuq?" She scurried forward, pulling aside my tattered shirt, "A Qhatuq, here? In Fosuyu?"

For another moment, I just stared, towering over the apparent welcoming party. Leotie kicked me in the back of the leg, "Of course," I beamed, lying smoothly, "Why not?"

The aged Headwoman peered at me curiously but soon smiled back, "A Qhatuq has not stopped here for many seasons, not since Pochay was built."

"Ah, I see," I said. I did not, dear readers, see anything of any sort. "Well, here I am. Here we are." I said magnanimously, spreading my bandaged and scarred arms wide. We introduced ourselves, as did the Hazuba. The headwoman was Ayusca, and we chatted amicably for a time about Qusirlay and Tebis. The conversation remained cordial and hollow as we meandered through the low huts and buildings and were led into a broad circular pit dug into the hard dirt. At its center, a vast and ancient mud-brick pyramid stood proudly. Each of its stepped terraces had been bleached pale by the sun, but simple, striking paintings of various crops and animals still shone. The riot of blues and reds and yellows was a welcome change from the endless muddy colors of the river.