Ubei Dau Vave Tlahi, Muxze Ziitai?

The most difficult part of moving from Vishanatar to Branturhem was the weather. No matter what time of the year it was, Vishanatar was hot, everywhere. From Pelalulei on the north end of the North Island to Aaliyalei on the southern coast of South Island, no matter the time of year, it never got as cold as the warmest of Branturhem's summer months.

Ẓala had never seen snow before coming to the north. Now, after six months here, he would have been happy if he never saw any of it again. It was the middle of the season that Branturhem folks called spring, but that meant that the city was only covered in about half a foot of snow instead of two or more. On some days it got warm enough for the snow to melt, partially, but then it would always be so cold the next day that it would refreeze, and then the whole city was covered in a sheet of ice with snow on top of it. The first time that Ẓala had experienced this particular phenomenon, he had slipped and broken his arm in the street right outside the university dormitory that served as his home in this frozen hell.

Still, it wasn't all bad. He worked a side-job at the Magnis Inn, which paid decently. Enough for him to eat every day, and he even usually had a bit of pocket money leftover at the end of each week, when he received his salary. Plus, it had turned out to be a fantastic way to meet people. Branturhem was a port city, one of the biggest trading hubs in the world, and so every day there were lots of people from all sorts of exotic places who needed a bed for the night. The Magnis Inn was right by the West Docks, it had a lot of rooms, and it was relatively cheap, so it was always busy.

He cleaned rooms and made beds and occasionally helped in the kitchen, but since he could read and was decent with numbers, his job mostly consisted of manning the front room, where customers were greeted and could buy rooms. He liked doing that part of the job, because most of it was just sitting around and waiting for people to show up looking for a bed.

One morning, he was sitting there behind the desk, working his way through a particularly tough chapter of Ori Tegsdotir's A Complete and Comprehensive Grammar of the Shalian Language when the front door opened. Along with the burst of cold air, a woman entered. She was slender, wearing a heavy fur cloak under which a shirt of silvery-white mail gleamed. She had a shortsword and a dagger hanging from scabbards on her leather belt, which set Ẓala ill-at-ease until he noticed the emblem carved into the gorget that covered her upper-chest: a many-petaled flower. She was a Chrysanthemum Knight.

"Hello," she said. "I am looking for a room for a few nights. Do you have any available?" She was Vishana, one of Ẓala's kinfolk. The dark skin and dark hair were a clue- most of the native Branturhem folks had skin like milk and hair the color of fire or straw- but she also spoke Norðmol with an accent, well-hidden but still noticeable if you knew what to listen for.

"A few," said Ẓala in Vishanalo. "One bed?"

"Two," said the woman in the same language. "I have friends coming."

Ẓala put her in room 32, which had a nice view of the University's famous clock tower. She paid up for an entire week, and he handed her the key. "Third floor, first one on the right. You been in the Norðmark long, baṣi?"

She smiled. "Nearly half of my life. My order," she tapped the chrysanthemum on her chest, "is based here."

"I've been here half a year. Does it ever get any warmer?"

She laughed politely. "No, but you get used to it. Would you be so kind as to send my friends up when they arrive?"

"Of course. How will I know them?"

"Suminara will probably introduce herself to you as soon as she walks in. She is Shalian, and has white hair that nearly trails the ground when she walks." The woman glanced at the book that ̣Zala had open on the desk. "She'd love it if you greeted her in Shalian. The other is Kvana. You will know her, because she will be the tallest woman that you have ever seen."

"Really? I don't know, my cousin Visvela is very tall."

"Kvana is taller. Trust me, you'll see. My name is Naala, if they ask for me."

"Certainly. Enjoy your stay, baṣi."

The woman went upstairs, and Ẓala went back to Shalian noun declensions. Why were there so many gods-damned endings? In Vishana, a horse was afik. Easy. In Norðmol, a horse could be hest, hesta, or hests depending on what it was doing. More than one horse was hestar, hestara, or hestars. More complicated, but not too hard. In Shalian, as far as Ẓala could tell, there were twelve different ways to say "horse"- four if it was a single horse, four if there were two horses, and four for if there were three or more. Who needed that much precision when it came to talking about horses? There weren't even that many horses in Felu Shala. They weren't native there, and the whole place was covered in thick forest, so they weren't much use except on trade roads.

About half an hour later, Ẓala felt like he was just starting to make some progress when the bell rang again. He looked up. There was a dress in the doorway- simple, linen with a cord belt, off-white in color, holding back an incredibly large bosom, but then, absolutely everything about the woman wearing it was large. She was wide of hip, heavyset about the middle, and so tall that Ẓala couldn't see her face, because it was above the doorframe. She had to duck to step inside. Her skin was dark, like the previous customer's, but her hair was the color of fresh-fallen snow. She stomped her feet outside the door. They were... Bare? Ẓala did a double-take just to make sure that he wasn't seeing things. Yes, this woman had been walking through the snow-covered streets of Branturhem with no shoes on. Come to think of it- that dress was thin, and it left her arms, most of her legs, and a good portion of her chest uncovered. And yet, as she stepped inside she did not so much as shiver. The cold did not seem to affect her at all. She closed the door behind her and hefted the huge satchel that she was carrying as she stood up to her full height.

She was the tallest woman that Ẓala had ever seen. Easily.

"You are Kvana, I presume?"

The woman smiled. "Oh, Naala beat me here, I guess." She had a more pronounced accent than the previous customer, one that Ẓala couldn't identify.

"She told me to send you up to her when you arrived. Room 32. Third floor, first on the left."

"Excellent. How much do we owe for the room?"

"Nothing. Your friend paid for a week."

"Ah, she would have. Thank you very much." She went up the stairs, surprisingly light on her feet for someone so huge, and that was it. Ẓala whistled quietly and went back to his book.

Not five minutes had passed when the door opened again. The woman who came in this time was tall, though not as tall as his cousin Visvela. Her ears were pointed, and she had skin the color of the sky on a clear day, eyes the color of the sun, and hair the color of a cloud. It was bound up in a long, braided tail that hung all the way to her calves.

Ẓala said the very first phrase that he had learned in his studies of Shalian: "Pon sholiat. Kwame batesitu sha?" Good day. How are you?

Her face lit up. "Batesis pelnomie ponzhom! Suminare eom. Sha ati?"

Ẓala hesitated, for two reasons. First, he hadn't the slightest idea what she'd just said to him. He assumed it was something like "I am fine, how are you?", but he had never heard it said that way before. The other reason was that she had just taken off her heavy fur coat. Underneath, she was wearing a robe made of purple silk, open-fronted, but she wore it closed, with a sash. Well, mostly closed. The two halves of the front made a large V shape, which showed off a good portion of what were easily the largest breasts that Ẓala had ever seen. They were even bigger than the giant woman's, and she was much taller and, proportionally, more heavyset than this newcomer.

"I, uh..."

She laughed. "It is alright, I speak Norðmol. I said, 'I am very well. I am Suminara. You are?'"

"Ẓala," said Ẓala.

"It is nice to meet you, Zala!"

"Ẓala. You have friends here who told me to expect your arrival."

"A beautiful Chrysanthemum Knight and a very tall white-haired woman, yes?"

"The very same. They are upstairs, room 32."

"Fantastic. That book, you are studying Shalian?" She leaned forward to look at it, and Ẓala could just make out the edge of a dark blue areola peeking above the hem of her robe. "Ah... Yes. It is very difficult."

She stood, and hint of areola disappeared again. "My friends are expecting me, but I would be happy to help you later. Come to the room when you are free, I will tell you how to say things."

When she had gone up the stairs, Ẓala sat back in his chair. He didn't find either of the last two women attractive- he liked his girls small and slim- but bodies like that practically demanded a moment of reflection. He wondered if the two of them were the tallest and biggest-chested women in the world? They may well have been.

Branturhem was cold and miserable when it came to the weather, but he had to admit, there were some interesting people here.

---

The room was not especially large, but it was serviceable. The two beds were against opposite walls, the door between them. Naala was sitting on one of them, her back against the headboard. She had removed her armor, leaving her wearing only a pair of leather trousers and a strip of linen cloth that wrapped around and bound her breasts. Between her and her two friends she was the smallest-chested by far, though compared to most women she was anything but. She had a book balanced on her knees, and was reading while she absentmindedly talked to Kvana, who was sitting at the room's tiny corner desk with a quill and several sheets of parchment. It would have been small even for someone of less than her great stature, so she had eschewed the chair entirely. She was sitting on the floor as she wrote.

"'I am Kvana.'," said Kvana.

"Lele Kvana," said Naala, not looking up from her book.

The scribble of a quill. "No word for 'am'?"

"Not in that phrase. You could also say Beha laale Kvana. 'My name is Kvana.'"

"Name my Kvana?"

"Mm-hmm. The 'my' comes after the word, like in Shalian."

"No copula. Hmm... 'My dog.'"

"Talonu laale."

"'My shirt.'"

"Mbehala laale."

"'My rock.'"

"Aḍe laale. You're looking for gendered nouns, yes? Vishana doesn't have them. Also, aḍe is is different from ade. Aḍe is 'rock'. Ade is 'cloth.'"

"I can't hear the difference."

"Most people can't, until they learn how to listen for it."

"Hmm. I'll come back to that later. 'My dog bites a man.'"

"Talonu laale xonde rambeme.'"

More scratching. "'Man'?"

"Xonde."

"Rambeme means 'bite', then?"

"'Bites'. Rambe is the dictionary form."

"Oh, verb conjugation. Delightful! Let's figure out case first though. 'A man bites my dog.'"

"What a strange man. 'Xonde talonu laale rambeme.'"

"The same words... The order changes the meaning?"

"Yes. Just like Norðmol."

"So I couldn't say..." Kvana looked at her notes. "Talonu laale rambeme xonde?"

"You could, but it would be like saying 'My dog a man bites'. It sounds strange and wrong."

"Does the verb always go at the end? I think I've got the word order down."

Naala had to think about that one for a moment. "Yes. Most of the time."

"I'll bet that questions shake it up. 'What is a dog?'"

"A furry animal with four legs and a tail," said Suminara, who had just walked in to the room. She closed the door behind her and stretched languidly, like a cat. "Have you become so bored while waiting for me that you forgot what dogs are, Kvana?"

"Naala is teaching me Vishana. I figure that if we are headed there I should learn the language."

"By asking about dogs?" Sumi had begun to undress right there in front of the door, leaving her robe and her smallclothes in a pile at her feet. This was something that it had taken a while for Kvana to get used to: Sumi only wore clothes when weather or the mores of society forced her to. If she could get away with being naked, she went naked.

Not that Kvana minded. Sumi's tattoos were pretty- they covered the entirety of both of her arms from shoulder to wrist- and her mountainous breasts were great fun to watch as they wobbled and squished while she crawled into bed next to Naala. The two of them made quite a sight in the fading sunlight from the window: Naala, dark of skin and hair, all lean, hard muscle except for a few particular parts of her body; Sumi, blue skin and white hair, all wonderfully exaggerated feminine curves. They kissed- a brief peck on the lips- and then snuggled up next to each other.

This was also something that Kvana had seen before. When they were alone together, Sumi and Naala practically always cuddled in some way. About a week ago they had apparently decided by unspoken agreement that Kvana was now close enough for them to do it while she was present. Probably because she'd had sex with both of them. Sort of. Sumi was the one who'd had Kvana's cock inside of her, but at the time Naala had been sitting on Kvana's face. That counted as sex, right?

"This is how I taught myself Shalian. And Norðmol. I ask how to say things, Naala tells me. I work out the grammar myself."

"You can do that? That's impressive, if it actually works."

"It does. 'What is a dog?'"

"Xahe talonu?"

"When will you ever need to say that in Vishana? You know what dogs are."

"I won't, but now I know how to say 'What is...', which is useful. Xahe, followed by the word that I am asking about."

"Ah, I think I see."

"Actually..." said Kvana, "'What are dogs?'"

"The same. Xahe talonu. There are no plurals."

"Another piece of useful information!"

"Clever!" said Sumi.

"I'm doing all of the question words now. 'Where is the dog?'"

"Xongi talonu."

"Why... Why is Sumi massaging your breasts?"

"Xeklolu Sumi ubei zaaze nuluuzeme?" It took Naala a moment before she looked up from her book, which she was still reading even while Sumi gently groped her. "Oh, sorry. You were actually asking?"

Sumi answered for her. "Because it feels good and it's relaxing."

"For you, or for Naala?"

"Yes."

"If it bothers you we can stop," said Naala. Kvana shrugged.

"No need. 'My breasts are sensitive.' Uh... That was for you to translate, Naala. I wasn't just making a statement."

"Ubei laale saikanu." Naala set her book down and leaned back against Sumi with a satisfied sigh. "Oh, that feels good. Keep going. Ubei laale vave saikanu."

"Vave means 'very'?"

"Mm-hmm." Naala was practically laying on top of Sumi now, her head resting on her expansive bosom.

"What's 'big'?"

"Every single pair of breasts in this room," said Sumi with a snicker.

"Dau," said Naala.

"Ubei lale vave dau. Does that work?"

"Laale. Not lale. Lale means 'I eat.' Vowel length matters. Other than that you've got it though. What happened to question words?"

"Those last two were just for my own curiosity. Do you want to stop for now? You are starting to look very distracted."

Naala was biting her lip, eyes closed, and her breathing was growing heavier as Sumi's massage went on. Two dark spots had appeared on her breast-wrap.

Kvana had once asked the two of them how they were both able to make milk even though neither of them had had a child before. Sumi had explained that the great size of her breasts and the milk that they contained was a gift from her goddess, Vela Shei. Naala had shrugged and said "I don't know, but I like the way it feels."

"Mm. No. I can keep going," said Naala. "Just let me do this..." She broke away from Sumi, just for a moment, to undo the wrap around her chest. Her breasts spilled out onto her washboard of a stomach, then she leaned back and Sumi resumed her massaging. Drops of white began to stream down Sumi's hands and onto Naala's lap.

"What does it feel like?" asked Kvana.

"Xuwe gaiye-" Naala opened her eyes and noticed where Kvana was looking. "Oh. Making milk, you mean?"

"I've never done it, but you two make it look like a lot of fun."

"It is!" said Sumi. "It feels wonderful."

"Clearly. Could you be a little more specific?"

"On this? Certainly. Will you understand if I explain it to you in Shalian?"

"My Shalian isn't as good as my Norðmol, but I should be able to follow you," said Kvana.

Sumi switched languages. "I will speak slowly then. I don't have the words for it in Norðmol." She paused for a moment, thinking. "I could describe what making milk feels like to you in purely mechanical terms, but to do so does not do it justice. The breasts feel heavier, and I do not mean that figuratively- mine felt as if they doubled in weight when Vela Shei blessed me with milk. They swell a bit larger than they were before. And they start to get full. If you go too long without release, this fullness becomes uncomfortable, even painful. The breasts become firmer, and they may start to leak. Expressing the milk from your breasts can vary in sensation. Some women barely feel it at all. For some, it can even be painful."

"It is very clearly not painful for either of you though."

"It is for me when I get too full," said Naala.

"Me as as well. Altough it takes a very long time for me to reach that point." Sumi grinned. "I have a very large carrying capacity. When it comes out, unless I am very full, the sensation is... A pleasant tingling. For me, if I am in the proper mood and the conditions are right, it feels even better than having my clitoris stimulated."

"That is very good."

"I am a special case. It is not like that for most women. But yes, that is the answer to your question, in terms of physical sensation. A pleasant tingling."

"Isn't that most sexual feelings though? 'A pleasant tingling' or 'a pleasant pressure' followed by 'a pleasant release'."

"It is! Rather boring when you describe them that way, yes?"

"I would have thought that a priestess of a sex goddess would be more enthusiastic about describing the details of the pleasures of the flesh."

"Ah, but here's the secret about Vela Shei and her devout. This is something that very few people understand about us: It's not about the sex."

"You can literally go to any Temple of Vela Shei in Felu Shala and the priests and priestesses there will pleasure you in any way that you'd like. That's not about sex?"

"No. It isn't."

Kvana rested her chin in her hand and tapped her cheek. "Okay. You've got me. How is your order and your goddess, the Queen of Whores, not about sex?"

Naala stiffened noticeably, and Sumi's normally ever-present easy smile disappeared. "Whore is a word used to belittle and degrade people who have found a way to survive in a harsh world by using their bodies. Porters and warriors use their bodies to make a living as well. Would you belittle them for it?"

"No! No, I didn't mean-"

Sumi waved a hand. "You meant no offense, I know. Think about the folks who come to a Temple of Vela Shei, or, yes, a brothel, seeking those particular services. What are they there for?"

"For someone to make them have an orgasm."

"Most people can give themselves orgasms. Masturbation is easy and free. Brothels cost money. If that was all there was to it no brothel on earth would be able to sustain itself. They would have no customers."

"Cunts feel better than hands."

"I can use my hands in ways that would make you reconsider that. Let me guide your reasoning in a different direction: When you come to them for sex, what do the priests of a Temple of Vela Shei do differently from the employees of a brothel?"