Swift

3.

She stands upon a beach, alone. The sea before her is frozen solid, flat and smooth. A glacier. The mud remains spattered all over her, most of it still damp. Her hair smells of ashes. Yet she is no longer nude, not quite. Her pale blue shift has somehow restored itself over her body. It is wrinkled but clean—cleaner than the rest of her. It hangs to her ankles as it originally did, though one side is still torn, to allow full freedom of movement for her legs.

She is not the same person she used to be. She does not feel alone, not as she should—since she is, or appears to be. She feels as if a friend or a sister stands behind her with her hand on her shoulder.

The medallion is gone. It had dissolved into her skin. She had absorbed it.

Is she still a princess? Perhaps not. Unless she wishes to be. Does she wish that? She will become a different princess, if she chooses to. A different kind of princess. Her other life has ended. She will never return to the realm she was born in. Even if it were possible—she can sense that it isn't—she wouldn't want to. She will rule another realm now. This place is better. Bigger, far more interesting. The Shadowed Wood is only a small portion of it—an entranceway, one of many, countless. So much to explore, and to discover. And to enjoy.

No more ball gowns in this place, at least not ones requiring the constraints of a torturous wooden framework to hold their figure.

There are flashes of lightning. In place of thunder, the skies ring with laughter. Her own laughter. The frozen sea shatters, and from the sand around her feet, plants begin to shoot from the surface. A new forest arising around her. The straining vines carry colorful flowers once again, no more cruel thorns, and none of them reach for her, only to the sky, to the wind, to the light.

And now all at once the wolves are back, too. They sit around her on their haunches and regard her with solemn gazes. They are sleeker creatures than they were before. Handsomer, with cleaner fur, bright white and silver. She reaches out her hands to them. They sniff her palms and lick at her fingertips. Others close in to nuzzle at her thighs and her feet and her belly.

Their tongues feel quite nice, and their hot moist breath.

She decides she doesn't want her shift anymore. She would prefer be naked again. She is safe; there's no one watching her, no one judging her. If she wanted to become an animal or a monster instead of a princess, or in addition to being a princess, there is no one telling her she can't or she mustn't.

She doesn't have to tell the wolves in words for them to know. They can smell it from her, probably. The wolves seize the flimsy blue silk in several places with their teeth and back away to pull it apart between them from her body. She sighs as they do, or perhaps in honesty it is more of a gasp. It's quite a sensation, when the cloth tears away. A feeling of expansion, and of warmth, and of quickening.

Then their noses and their tongues move over the bare flesh of her thighs and the ridges of her hips. They nuzzle at her buttocks and her crotch, and press closer, and some of them take gentle nips with their teeth. She widens her stance and rises up on her tiptoes, clutching at their heads, at their ears, and feels her fluids stream from within her in a great giddy endless rush, and their eager tongues lap up all of the stuff as it emerges, and scoop deeper to bring out more ...

She breathes a great sigh. It changes before it finishes. The exhalation becomes a moan, and it is followed with another and another, their volume increasing.

"Huuhh! Ohhoohh! Ohhuuhhoohh!"

The pleasure grows greater than she expected, greater than she can handle. Soon the moans have been replaced with yells. Shrill tremulous shrieks. She hollers at the top of her lungs. She cries out to God. Instead of clutching the heads of the wolves, she clutches her breasts, pinching and pulling on her nipples. Her eyes have rolled back, and her legs can no longer support her—she slumps forward to the ground. As she drops, the wolves rise upright. They have stopped being wolves—they have all changed into men. All in a single moment, the blink of an eye. Naked men, mighty men, muscular and gleaming with sweat, and when they stand, they stand tall, and so do their phalluses, proud and formidable.

Princess Swift looks up and around at all of them, from her hands and knees in the sand. She trembles and cringes in her nakedness, while the expression on her face is a bit baffled for a moment, a bit frightened, and a bit embarrassed. She blushes crimson. But then she bites her bottom lip and wrinkles her nose at the men, and giggles at them all, and shakes her bottom in the air.

"Chase me!" she says, "Catch me! If you can!" And she launches herself from the middle of the group, fleeing from them, vanishing among the trees and the flowers, the shadows and the mist and the magic ... Her mocking laughter echoes, as she runs. Now the faces of the men in their turn have become baffled and ashamed. But only for a moment. Then, laughing themselves, the pack pursue their princess.