Kiravi's Travelogue Ch. 09

Sorry again, everyone, for the long delay. Hubby changed jobs recently and has a much longer commute. We were planning on 10 chapters in total, but that has since expanded to 11, and those final chapters are already reasonably well along! For those of you who've been following our little band of travelers since the beginning, you'll know that the POV jumps around a bit, but never to Leotie the huntress! That changes today, and let us tell you, she was a blast to write as a POV for their continuing adventures!

As always, keep the comments coming! It helps us get better and tell the most compelling story we can!

Hmm...gods dammit...I have no idea if I'm even writing this correctly. Most of the time, all of Serina and Kiravi's little scribblings just look like wriggling gibberish on a page. I still can't believe Serina managed to get me to sit down long enough to learn my letters, or that I stayed patient long enough for at least some of it to stick. Kiravi has been scribbling his nonsense in that magic book of his for ages -- Serina too, apparently -- and only recently did she tell me what it was. I suppose that's probably why I forced myself to learn the Ymdroki script.

What is it that those two call you? Dear readers? Well, dear readers, I learned my letters because I wanted to make sure they didn't portray me like some tribal oaf, and that everything I saw and felt during our travels had just the same weight as theirs. They've done, um, well it seems they've done pretty well so far, from what I've read.

So, well, with that said, here's the first bit Serina helped me sneak into Kiravi's wildly rambling notes.

I blinked awake around dawn to the sound of the last drizzling scraps of the storm. My whole body ached, especially my womanhood, but that only made me smile weakly at the soot-blackened roof of the cave. In those groggy, half-awake moments, I wasn't even sure that the night before hadn't just been a feverish and trembling dream.

Kiravi snored, loudly, as he usually did, his scarred and muscular chest rising and falling in its slow rhythm. They haven't told you that he snores like a rumbling thunderhead? Probably not, since Serina was snoring too, a dainty little squeak at the end of each outward breath. His arm was draped around me, solid and thick, protecting me even though I didn't need it. That was what drew me to him all those weeks before, despite his clumsy attempts to survive in the wild and his over-cultured speech and mannerisms. He was raw power, both physical and magical, and I wanted and needed to shelter within that power. None of the hunters or shaman from my band had had that brash, easy strength, but he did.

I eased from under his limb, feeling the pink, puckered skin where the knife had torn into his muscle. Beyond the scar, it seemed as though the elixir had made the limb as whole as possible. A cold and damp breeze blustered past the cave mouth, and I shuddered as I sat up. My naked skin rippled with goosebumps, and, for once, I wished Kiravi wasn't so violently eager when he stripped me; I had no idea where any of my clothes were.

It didn't matter, I decided, and I wriggled out from under the mess of the bedding to rise to my knees. I poked at the few remaining embers and added fresh tinder from the pile I'd set aside. The wood and dry needles caught, blackening and curling under the flame, and I heaped a few more broken sticks onto the blaze. Heat washed over me, or my front anyway, but I embraced the cold and damp air. It was helping to clear the last of the sleep from my mind.

Happy?

It wasn't a spoken word, just an impulse that curled its way around my thoughts and wriggled into my conduit. I looked to where Niknik had just unfurled himself from sleep, stretching powerful limbs. His amber eyes looked right into mine, waiting for my response.

"Yes, I'm happy," I whispered, not trying to wake Kiravi. Niknik would hear me even if I didn't even utter the words.

Good. Niknik happy too.

I beckoned for him with my hand and my mind, and my companion padded over. He purred, pushing his big head into my scratching fingers. I found more pemmican, and he eagerly snatched it up, his tongue rasping on my palm.

Serina and Kiravi knew Niknik was bonded to me through the power I pulled from the Kwarzi, but they couldn't know that bond's depths. Niknik held one of the Kwarzi within him, made more tangible than the land-spirits by flesh and blood. Our bond was as old as my womanhood and would only end with one of our deaths.

I glanced over my shoulder at my snoring companions and couldn't help but smile to myself girlishly, "We have a band again, Niknik." My face grew warm, my eyes hot and wet, "We have a home."

Home. Niknik home, too. Big Man and Magic Girl, home too?

I chuckled at the names Niknik used for Kiravi and Serina, "I think so. Big Man, yes," I frowned slightly, "Magic Girl, Serina...I don't know."

Big Man, Magic Girl, mate?

My cheeks burned, not from gazing on Kiravi's golden-bronze chest, but at Serina's naked back and slowly moving ribs. "I don't know."

Niknik chuffed at me, grumbling.

Your mates. Your home.

"Oh, stop it," I huffed and shoved his head away. My skin was flushed with embarrassment, and the cold wind suddenly made me realize I was filthy and sticky from the night before. The cold pool called to me, its surface gently rippling in the wind and dark in the faint dawn glow.

I couldn't help but gasp as I slipped into the cold water, my muscles clenching and my entire body immediately wracked with shivers. It parted before me, embracing me in its frigid totality. I gently scrubbed the sweat and dust, Serina's nectar, and Kiravi's seed that Serina and I had missed, all of it from my lean body. My fingers teased open my tight braids, massaging water into my hair and pulling out the worst clumps of grease and dirt. Then, with the help of a short stick, I brushed out the tangles of my slightly curled hair, making sure the cold water reached every strand.

The fire flickered brightly by the time I finally emerged, soaked and shivering, from the pool. The almost painful cold sharpened my other senses, filling my mind with sensation while something else filled my conduit. Yellow-bellied Junco birds chirped among the striking green trees. Tangy, sharp scents of high desert plants filled my nose. Smooth sandstone pulsed beneath my feet.

I added more wood to the fire and sat, cross-legged, in front of it. Fresh heat and damp frigidity clashed across my skin. My long, sodden hair draped across my shoulders and over the swell of my breasts, the weight comforting. Then, closing my eyes, I focused inward on my daily communion with the Kwarzi.

Serina had already helped me in the days before, and I knew the whispered names of the Kwarzi that made their invisible homes in those jagged hills. Water-Striking-Stone, Green-Leaves-Against-Sky, Roots-of-the-Hills, Shimmering-Red-Heat, Bones-in-Water, and a thousand more. I could feel Niknik's bright presence nearby as well. A few of them sniffed around me, their power tickling along the shallows of the magic in my conduit.

"Good morning, Grandmothers and Grandfathers," I spoke in my mind, "I honor you with my heart and my power."

More spirits, tiny scraps of mortal souls tied to this land, swirled towards me, both hungrier and more energetic than I could ever remember them being. I felt Bones-in-Water hovering close to me at the forefront of the flock, dipping its power into my conduit. Our minds brushed against each other, and I felt a rush of old emotion. Ancient pain, confusion, regret, but new release and closure. Like always, I tried to press, to understand the confusing scraps of emotion, but they were simply too alien, too different.

"You are remembered. You are honored. I give you my notice in exchange for your power," I focused more deeply, opening my mind and my conduit to the Kwarzi. Invisible to everyone -- except, perhaps, Serina -- tiny motes of my magic bled out of my conduit. The dozens of gathered Kwarzi flocked around me, sating their eternal hunger with my offering. My conduit would refill the lost power long before noontide, but the Kwarzi had lost their easy connection to the Eldritch River when their first lives ended. The spirits pressed closer for a moment, a brief surge of euphoric heat filling me, and Bones-in-Water embraced my conduit one more time before disappearing from my mind.

Small fingers brushed my knee, gentle as a whisper, and my eyes snapped open. Serina's softly glowing eyes stared back at me, her cheeks dimpled with her warm smile. Behind her, Kiravi was, of course, still snoring.

"You should've woken me," she whispered, but there was no hurt in her voice, "I love helping you."

"They remembered me from yesterday," I responded, "I didn't want to disturb you."

She giggled, and my heart fluttered for half a moment. It made me feel like a love-struck little girl, and I hated it. "I doubt that you could disturb me, lover," her words and the earnest adoration behind them left me wrong-footed, and I half-mumbled something. Her hand brushed through my wet hair, fingers teasing it off of my shoulders, "I don't think I've ever seen your hair down. It's beautiful, and there's so much of it."

I regained my voice, trying to ignore the light, soaring feeling in my chest, "My tribe never cut our hair, to honor the gifts the land and the Kwarzi give us."

"So beautiful," she murmured, looking not just at my hair but also at the rest of my body that she'd explored the night before. "I love the color, the way it waves. You're so unique."

Heat flushed through my chest and cheeks, and I knew my skin was turning even darker red. But, gods dammit, why was I feeling like this? The night before, we'd...well, I don't know exactly what we'd done, or how we arrived there, or what it all meant. I certainly had no idea how I felt about it.

"I have to braid it, um, to keep it out of the way," I said lamely, pulling my hair out of her hands and busying myself by braiding the wet, auburn strands together.

She simply knelt in front of me, as naked as I was, gently rubbing my knee or thighs with soft swipes of her fingers. My hands trembled as I braided, and I didn't get the braids nearly as tight to my scalp as I wanted. So how did she manage to make me feel so ridiculous with just a smile and a touch?

Tying off the ends of my braids with leather thongs, I tried to focus on something or anything other than sitting a hands length from a naked and smiling Serina. The easy answer, of course, would have been to wake Kiravi up and so not be alone with Serina, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. So instead, I found my bandeau and breech-cloth -- damaged by Kiravi, of course -- and did what I could to repair them before pulling them over my curves. Thankfully, Serina also retrieved her tattered dress and slipped it on, but the thin gray cotton did very little to disguise her nubile body any longer. We mixed fresh dough with water from the pool and handfuls of potato flour and fried the small cakes with pemmican and nuts I'd gathered the day before.

New sunlight dappled its way through the brilliant canopy above and around us, and still, Kiravi slept, and still, my heart danced in my chest. Serina finally seemed to notice that I was merely trying to keep my hands busy and laid her small hand on my arm while we pulled the simple breakfast off of the flat cooking stones.

"Leotie," she whispered, face pulled down into a faint frown, "I'm sorry if I upset you. The ritual showed...so much. I didn't intend to pull anything from your mind...I didn't mean to force you into doing any--"

Her words turned into little more than a faint whimper when I dropped the food, grabbed her face in both my hands, and kissed her.

Those lips were just as soft and pillowy as I remembered from the lust-maddened haze of the night before. Then, I'd been so surprised and wrong-footed that she'd been able to take the lead, pushing me and nudging me to the intimate heights we'd all reached. At that moment, though, I was hungrily throwing myself at her, overpowering her as Kiravi usually overpowered me.

Her body melted against mine, hands trapped against my chest, with her head twisting to kiss me back timidly. She moaned as her head tilted back, opening her lips to let my insistently pushing tongue inside. I'd never thought about how much smaller she was than me, and feeling her submit so quickly and naturally to me fanned the lightheaded feeling I'd had since she woke. Her back arched as I hungrily pulled her into me, my hands moving from her cheeks to her slender waist, our bodies melded together into a single unit of heat and passion.

I'd never felt this, this need to overpower a lover, to have them melt for me and let me mold them how I pleased. I'd never, not ever, even considered having a man like Kiravi act in such a way. But this wasn't Kiravi. This was Serina. Gods, dear readers, before that night in the Ketza, watching Kiravi rut her so roughly, I'd never even looked at a woman that way. And here she was, so soft and delicate and small in my arms, lips soft and warm, and she was mine.

"I think I'm going to love getting used to waking up to that," I heard Kiravi's baritone voice over the thunder of blood in my ears.

Serina pulled back quickly, smiling and blushing, and a surprising surge of embarrassment flared inside of me. I easily turned it into stinging anger, "If you keep sleeping the day away, every day, you won't ever see it again," I turned and snapped at him. "Get up, you petty, useless man." I threw one of the potato cakes at him, hitting him square in the face.

He sat up, that infuriating but gorgeous grin on his scarred and broken face. "You didn't think I was so petty and useless last night," he taunted back, smirking while he plucked up the cake and took a bite. But, of course, the bite was half-filled with soot from when I'd dropped it, and he screwed his face up in disgust.

I grinned, triumphant, but still felt that same damnable flutter in my core. I may have wanted him to pin me down and fuck me senseless at the end of most days, but the rest of the time, I fiercely enjoyed my independence from him. It warmed my heart to see him so utterly oblivious at times, and to know that life in the wilderness would always be mine, not his.

Serina's fingertips brushed my arm and, after one more superior smirk at Kiravi, I turned back to her. "Nothing you did upset me, nothing at all. I was just...nervous, and uncertain," I leaned down to kiss her forehead lightly, "I loved last night."

She smiled with ridiculous, unabashed happiness, cheeks dimpling and turning red, "Me too. More than anything."

Kiravi stood up, and despite ourselves, Serina and I took a long and hungry look. "Last night was amazing," he echoed, "But are we going to talk about whatever it was your magic did, Serina?"

Serina thought for a moment, then giggled and shrugged her shoulders, "You know I don't know, Kiravi. It was the goddess, coming through all of us."

Kiravi shrugged and walked past us. He obviously had the same idea I did and plunged into the pool, scrubbing sweat and grime and my nectar from his body. Again, we unabashedly stared as he emerged, water sheeting down muscles and scars and pouring off of his long black hair.

He paused, looking up at the sandstone crag holding the cave. "Um, Leotie...was all of that there yesterday?"

I frowned and got up, walking to the edge of the pool to see whatever he was talking about. Then, I cursed myself, frustrated that he'd noticed what I hadn't. All but bare the night before, the rock was now nearly covered in bright mosses and splotches of lichen. I looked up and around at the rest of the high glade, seeing if anything else had changed. The trees' canopies were thicker, lusher, and more moss grew in dense mats all the way up to the pool's edge. Maybe this was why the Kwarzi had been so energetic?

Serina gasped, and we turned to look back at her. She knelt beside the fire, holding a chunk of black stone in her hand. The god-stone, the catalyst for our vision and, I think, our shared tryst, had shattered without any of us noticing. Much of it was little more than dust, but a handful of shards remained amongst the tiny flakes and chips.

"We did this," she murmured, "I don't know how, but we did."

"Has the magic left the stones?" Kiravi asked before shaking himself dry right next to me and earning a punch to the shoulder.

She shook her head, "It's still here, some of it." She turned the piece in her hands over and over again, "We should take it with us."

Kiravi snorted but walked over to the pile, scooping up one of the stones and hefting it in his hand, "I don't see why not. It's not too heavy anymore." He raised an eyebrow and smirked that devilish, beautiful smirk of his. "You can use these for more...rituals?"

My heart surged with pride when Serina puffed her chest out slightly and jutted her chin out, "I don't think we need a god-stone to do what we did last night."

"I'd hope not," he said, squatting down between the two of us and grabbing great handfuls of both of our rears with those massive hands. His face split into a lecherous grin, and his eyes seemed to glaze over when he squeezed us roughly.

Of course, I immediately punched him in the shoulder again, hard enough for him to wince, "Could you stop thinking with your cock for a single second?" My anger was real, but I also wanted to leave this place before I was tempted any more to throw myself at either of my lovers.

"Alright, alright," he chuckled, holding his hands up defensively, "both of you did quite a good job wearing me out anyway. I'm just as sore as any of those nights we spent slogging through the Ketza."

I smirked at him and smiled at Serina, "Good. You earned it. Now cover that thing up before you're tempted to let it do the talking for you again."

He obeyed, reluctantly, pulling on his ragged traveling clothes and helping to pack the rest of the camp. The sun was still struggling to break through the remnants of the storm when we finally left the strange glade. I barely felt the weight of the handful of black shards in my pack when we stepped off. The stream burbled fiercely down the hillside, swollen and swift from the storm, but our path mainly had survived.

I led the way, confident and sure-footed, even though this land was so unlike the arid crags of my home. My former home, I realized with a secret smile, for as Niknik had pointed out, my home was now Kiravi and Serina. Still, anxious worry gnawed at the back of my mind and had for weeks, kept at bay for now only by the afterglow of love and lust. Kiravi was our leader -- my leader -- but they looked to me to guide them and help them survive beyond the trappings of village and city walls. The further we traveled, the less familiarity the world held. Which plants could we gather by the path and chew on while we walked? How could I track and trap the new and unfamiliar game in these too-green hills?

The Kwarzi helped me when I spoke to and honored them every morning, the only thing lending weight to my easy but mostly false confidence.

Just as I'd said the day before, we spent hours backtracking down the hills and following the cold stream. Finally, we reached a more significant watercourse by noontide, flowing from the north where another line of hills crowded the horizon. Far to the northeast, a spur of the Yavloni Mountains scraped the deep blue sky, and I inferred from Kiravi's vague descriptions of Imperial territory that our destination lay between the sea and the mountains.

While the morning had been a downhill ramble over moss-damp rocks, following the larger river became an uphill slog. Despite her fierce determination to keep up, Serina still lagged behind, and we had to take half a dozen rests in the blazing heat. At one of those stops, Niknik pounced on a fat ground squirrel, and at another, I practiced with an old leather sling and knocked a fat Junco bird from its perch. Kiravi and Serina chatted -- when they had the breath -- about what the god-stone could've been, about her visions, about the magic that had coursed through all three of us. I just focused on absorbing as much as I could about these strange hills.