0 comments/ 26739 views/ 2 favorites Nina Part One By: PaulUK I don't know how much you know about the Kingdom where I live. We are, I have to admit, a little off the beaten track, so we don't see many visitors. We also have a problem with poverty that keeps traders and curious visitors away. Even wandering barbarian hordes tend to back off when they approach our borders, figuring that the demand for plundering, pillage and rapine services (while you wait) will be higher elsewhere. You'll find my people in the high mountains of the Jutting Peaks. There's an ancient caravan trail, which leads to the Dwarven city of Krak Lhabbia. You follow it from the trading city of Sphincter, across the brown, silty Menstrus River, then turn off and go up through the foothills past the Temple of Two Moons and the Great Stone of Fallus, where the goat people perform unspeakable sacrifices. Then there's the Forest of Kunnt and the Elven village of Cunnigularis... but enough of all this geography. Suffice it to say, you go past a lot of more interesting places before you reach the city in which I was born. After 500 miles of bone-shaking travel, you come to the kingdon of Mammari, its capital city, Mammari and its sole landmark, the Palace of Mammari. The city used to be bigger, and the kingdom too come to that, but both have seen better days. A lot of the outlying parts of the Kingdom were sold off to pay gambling debts. The city is about all there is left. Still, you're no more interested in ancient history than geography, I'm sure, so I'll pass directly onto my own tale. My name is Nina, and I was born in the upstairs room of the Humped Backed Beast Inn, the finest tavern in the whole city. You can be sure that is true, for ours was the only tavern left in the city, what with the drought and the bad harvests and the fact that the local water was stronger before the brewing process than it was after. There being so few customers interested in drinking at the Inn, my mother had kept the place going by offering services that required a different kind of lubrication. I grew up in an ordinary enough way for the first twelve years of my life. Then, somewhere before my thirteenth birthday, something strange happened. My chest started expanding, rather like a slowly inflating balloon... or rather two balloons, each threatening to burst at any moment. And my legs grew longer and longer, losing their girlish fat to become slender and well-defined. By the time I was fourteen, it was as if a different person had emerged from the shell of the old, rather like a snake sheds its skin as it grows larger. It was all very strange to me. My mother, on the other hand, seemed delighted. She explained that I was "becoming a woman". She had been looking forward to this event for some time, since it meant I could share some of the "burdens" of the family business. This struck me as decidedly odd. First, I did just about everything around the inn anyway... serving, cleaning, cooking, cleaning, carting barrels and cleaning barrels. Mother led a more subdued lifestyle, it seemed to me, away from the dark squalor of the tap room, entertaining particular patrons in her room upstairs. Now, it seemed, she expected me to do that as well. In the late summer after my fifteenth birthday, mum started to prepare me for what she had in mind. She bought me a new dress. I say bought, although I know that no money changed hands (I did the books as well). I say new, because it was new to me. In fact, it was extremely worn, particularly at the hem of the skirt, and at the neck. And I say dress, even though we had a dishcloth with more style and better material. It hung by two flimsy straps at the shoulder, and was worn so thin that I was sure I could count the freckles on my chest through it. "That hem needs taking up a bit," commented mum as I modelled the dress for her. "We'll cut off those worn edges at the throat as well." I looked down. The top of the dress was a long way below my throat already. I'd been wondering about sewing on a piece of ribbon or something. "No, no," tutted mother. "Take it from me, what that dress needs is pruning. Like a rose." The gardening commenced. Mum snipped at the edges of that dress on and off for most of the next few weeks. Every time it came out of the trunk, mum would hack off a little more, muttering about how things bloomed when they were cut right back. Week after week, month after month, the dress declined. By the time mum pronounced herself satisfied, the dress had shrunk to a little more than a belt. Any rose that had been subjected to such treatment would have regressed through some previous evolutionary stages. Mum was delighted with the results. By that time, it was almost my sixteenth birthday. As the day grew closer, mum started talking to me about some very strange stuff to do with boys, babies, birds and bees. New words entered my vocabulary, words like "thing" (pronounced with great emphasis, but in a low voice, and accompanied by a strange facial twitch). I could see that mum was trying to teach me something important, but I struggled to understand. Mum just wasn't very good at putting things into words. Of course, in fairness I have to say that no-one in Mammari wasted time on education, so I can't make a big point out of the fact that mum had never explained why I could never win at pissing over the fence contests. She made sure I knew how to count money, change a barrel, make the fire and cook her dinner, and that was that. Trying to impart this curious, new information at such a late stage was beyond her. I had left childhood behind me, I freely admit, quite ignorant of a great many things. I never knew, for example, why it was that mum went to bed every single time a customer came into the Inn. With the customer. How could she be so tired? She never did a minute of work, leaving it to me to slop out, and serve the slops to the next passer-by. Whatever this burden was that she was currently bearing on her own... well, I wasn't sure I wanted any of it. Then there were the noises. I thought some of the men were taking liberties with my mum, getting her running back and forth fetching stuff, that sort of thing. There was a lot of huffing and puffing, and furniture being moved about, and the men would shout "Now, bitch, now!" and my mum would say "I'm coming!" I wasn't sure I was ready for all that extra humping, so I decided it was time I found out exactly what was going on. I began peeking through the keyhole of my mum's bedroom door. At last, my education proceeded rapidly. That first time, I saw my mum sitting astride a large gentleman farmer, swatting his bare backside with a riding crop. I remember thinking how strange it was. I hadn't played Cavalry Charge since I was five. Mum was telling him he'd been naughty, which was another strange thing, because when I was naughty I had my ears boxed and was made to sleep in the wood bunker for a week. A few swats with a stick wasn't much punishment at all; the fat old farmer almost seemed to be enjoying it. I saw many bizarre goings-on through that keyhole, and I came to understand that there were things that happened between a man and a woman that meant a good-looking girl could earn a living without sweeping, scrubbing or scouring. Through that keyhole, I learned... at a distance, I admit... the art of screwing. That is to say, I learned about what went where, for how long (as in, not very), and other mechanicals, but I didn't really understand what it was all for! It appeared to me to be just another part of the innkeeping trade. I would have tried to share what I had learned through the keyhole with my friends, but my new shape seemed to have changed my relationship with them. The same boys who had enjoyed fighting me and racing me through the deserted streets now seemed much more interested in other games, games which involved taking off our clothes and poking each other with inquisitive fingers. It was just a freak statistical thing, I suppose, that I was the only girl in our district the boys wanted to play with. Hairy Mary and Skinny Sara Skunk were out of favour, and the other more presentable females in our peer group had drifted off as their families sold them to the palace as servants or packed them off to Sphincter to seek their fortune. I know, I'm drifting off the subject. Sorry. As I was saying, spring arrived, and... on my sixteenth birthday... mum had me wear the dress again. Not just for a fitting this time, but in the tap room. She put up a sign in place of one of the boards across the windows, so that any passers-by could see we were offering FREA GOTZ MILK TONITE! Then she got me to wash myself all over in a small basin of goat's milk... just like Queen Clitopatra, mum said. Finally, I pulled on the dress. It was a struggle. I had added a little more to the size of my bust since the last fitting, and as she attempted to tie the bodice, large parts of me tried to escape. We pulled and pushed at the material for a while, until I realised that mum was pulling when I was pushing. She seemed quite happy for more of me to be on the outside of my clothes than the inside, so I deferred to her good judgment. The neckline was hooked over the stubby tips of my breasts, and the hem covered my buttocks only as long as I stood still and didn't breathe. So, partially-wrapped in my finery, I tottered downstairs behind mum on a pair of large clogs with heavily built-up heels that threatened to pitch me over onto my chest. Mum said they were "sexy." "Men like that kind of thing," she added, and she laughed when I remarked that I had never seen a man wearing anything like them. "You want to see Testy Cal the Bard when he's in a funny mood!" she explained, obscurely. There was another addition to the decor of the tap room, which I noticed when I came downstairs. Mum had found a smoke-blackened board and some chalk, and she had written my name across the top followed by the question "NAM YUR PRIIS. HOO WILL BEE FIRZT?" The names of a few tavern regulars were listed down one side. We'd had something similar when mum was left a pig by a relative who had died, and she'd auctioned it off. I noticed that the leading bidders were the same individuals who had been most active in the pig-auction. My mum noticed that they were offering roughly the same amount. After I came into the room, though, the bidding perked up a bit. As I tottered around the room on those ridiculous shoes, quite a few of the evening's patrons became quite lively. When I bent over to pick up a tankard from Throbb the Blacksmith's table, he bit halfway through his tongue, and then topped the highest bid with a loud... if somewhat mispronounced... cry. Everyone seemed to be behaving out of character. Old Mister Stiffun, the undertaker, was the strangest of them all. He frequented the Humped back Beast maybe three times a year, and he had a wide reputation for being exceedingly careful with his money. Despite the fact that he was about 80 years old, he was as spry as a man of 75 normally. Tonight, though, he seemed afflicted with sweaty palms and shortsightedness. He kept pressing himself up very close, saying how he didn't recognise me (of course, he might just have been trying to catch a glimpse of the dress... from too far away there was no way anyone could have seen what was left of it). He also kept dropping things on the floor, and I was forever picking them up. It was the rowdiest night I could remember. As the end of the evening approached, Mister Stiffun was the clear leader in the bidding. He had offered the priceless sum of eight silver balls... trappings from his horses' bridles, I was told. "What has he won?" I asked mum in a low whisper, watching her sweep the silver into her ample bosom. "You, dear," she replied. "You're going to give him your maidenhead." I was horrified. I had few enough possessions anyway... what did mum mean by giving any of them away to undertakers? And besides, what was my maidenhead anyway? I'd never seen it, that's for sure. In fact, all I really owned was my ridiculous dress, and I had seen more of that thrown away than I was currently wearing. When mum used to say to me "one day all this will be yours," she always did so when she was escorting a gentleman up the stairs to her bedroom. Did this mean the bed was something to do with my "maidenhead"? "Just go upstairs with Mister Stiffun," mum explained. "I'm sure he'll show you what he wants. There's a good girl." I was outraged. After almost sixteen years of sleeping in a rough cot, it seemed really unfair of mum to give my inheritance away. "So! Bed-time, is it?" I wailed. Mister Stiffun's complexion became quite waxy. One of the other patrons had to stop him stumbling into the spitoon. "Just take him upstairs and let him decide what he wants," my mother muttered, irritably. Ah! So, it was burden-bearing time, was it? I didn't think Mister Stiffun was up to a game of Cavalry Charge, but mum had provided me with a glimpse of many other games that she played with the gentlemen who went to her bedroom. I wondered just which Mister Stiffun would want to play. If he was after my maidenhead, would it involving a lot of furniture moving? I was pretty tired already. Someone made a loud remark about moving the earth, or something, and I became really worried. Farming appealed even less than being a publican. The more I thought about the way the evening was progressing, the less I liked the idea. Playing stupid games with an undertaker in exchange for some second-hand horse trappings just didn't seem like a fair exchange. As the last moments of the auction approached, I started looking round for an alternative. And that's when I saw the Wizard. Tumescence, the Court Wizard had stopped off at the Humped Back Beast for a brief swill of rancid goat's milk about an hour before. He wasn't what you might call a regular patron. Once every four years, tops, he would drink a tankard or two and then spend an hour in the company of my mother. It had been at least three years since his last visit. In fact, the last time he came, I had still been as skinny around my chest as I was round my waist. Tonight, he had drunk himself close to oblivion before approaching mum... I could sympathise with that... then they had disappeared upstairs for about twenty minutes. Since coming back into the tap room, he had been drinking pretty heavily, and had paid almost no attention to the loud auction being carried on around him. And it was that, instinctively, which made me decide that he had to win it. One long look into the leering, watery eyes of Mister Stiffun, and I decided he wasn't going to get this maidenhead thing, no matter what it was. When I saw the Wizard, the final piece fell into place. Perhaps I could trade it to him. Let me explain. Although the city of Mammari was poor, the court of our blessed King, the Magnificent Harrdon, was rich. In fact, the city was poor because the court was rich. What little wealth there was left in the Kingdom tended to migrate towards the centre, just as if it was huddling together for warmth. So, while the rest of us scratched a living as best we could from goat meat, goat wool and goat's milk, the King's Palace was an opulent repository of money, patronage and power. They say it's all relative, doesn't they? And the King and his relatives had all the money. Those eight silver balls Mister Stiffun had bid for my virginity represented a fortune among the clientele of the Humped Back Beast. But to someone who lived at Court they would be a pittance. From past experience, I knew that the Court Wizard was a wealthy man, and a generous one. In one night, he could spend the kind of money that would keep us in goat gruel and cheese for a month. It was getting close to closing time, but no-one was leaving. Mum was closing in on Mister Stiffun, making sure he didn't try to escape. The undertaker had no such intention. He sat in the corner, absorbing all the light at that end of the bar, watching every move that I made. I knew I had to think quickly. Just as I was close to despair, Tumescence rose to his feet, leaning heavily on his rune-carved staff. He looked a wreck. His straggling white beard seemed too heavy for his head to hold up, and he bore the weight of the years on his arched back. Funny business, wizarding. Earlier that evening, he'd looked about twenty years old, and had chased my mum round the pantry and up the stairs faster than a goat under a landslide. Now he was a sack of skin and bones, and walked with a severe limp. Was he about to leave? No, as with his last visit, he was preparing to sleep off the night's excesses in a fireside chair. Why, I don't know. The fire wasn't lit, hadn't been since the week before the last of the snow melted. Still, I decided to make him comfortable, and I bent down to make the fireplace more presentable. The ashes and grime were always a problem, and since there was always a big queue for the privy in the Humped Back Beast, some of our patrons used the fireplace as an outhouse. I wanted to clean off the worst of the filth, but I couldn't find a cloth. So, I took off the dress and used that. Look, there was nothing vulgar about it. I had my back turned as I wriggled out of the dress, and there were only mum, the undertaker, the wizard and ten or twelve others at that end of the bar anyway. I bent down to start work, and heard an immediate clatter behind me as Tumescence fell over the chair. I looked back. The Wizard was in a state of some distress. He was clutching his chest and swaying back into my mother's arms. As I turned around, Tumescence grew even paler. He stared at my chest, eyes fixed on the way my boobs were bouncing about as I moved. I tried to stop them circulating by pressing against them with my arms, but this just made Tumescence even worse. His face was now as yellow as a sheet, and he was trembling like a leaf, but after I fetched him an enervating tumbler of Thregston's Goat Groomer, he managed to beckon to my mum and point at me. I stood close by, arms crossed loosely across my chest, biting my nails with apprehension. "W-who's the new girl, Martha?" he wheezed, his eyes still out of focus. Mum caught the tone in his voice, and her eye narrowed. How I wished she hadn't lost her glass one! "It's Nina, my lord Wizard... you know, my daughter." Tumescence tried to remember. "She lives here?" he gasped. "She was only twelve when you were last here," my mum explained. "It's her birthday today. She's sixteen. We've been having a little auction to see who would be first to..." Tumescence wheezed, and sagged against the bar. He tried to keep his eyes on my face, but they kind of fell to my boobs, and sort of glazed over, as if he was imagining something. He started talking, but his voice was distorted by all the constant wheezing and coughing this caused. I worked out that the general drift was: "How much?" My heart fluttered... I thought I might faint! Mum, however, was a shrewd woman, and kept her feet firmly on the ground. Well, right now she did. "Mister Stiffun has bid eight silver bells for her," she said. "That's right!" piped in the undertaker, who had been slithering closer towards us. "And the bidding is closed!" "I'll give you four gold Randies for her," said Tumescence. "Closed, I tell you!" "Make it five." "Done." "NOOOO!!!" Mum and the Wizard spat on their hands and shook on it while Mister Stiffun howled with disbelief. Mum looked mighty pleased. Tumescence pulled out a purse from a pouch on his belt, and counted out five thick gold coins. All over the bar, people sucked in their breath. An elderly thief in the snug choked to death just from the smell of those coins. Tumescence started to replace the pouch when mum pulled him up with an impatient gesture of her hand. Tumescence looked at her quizzically. Nina Part One "What about last night, then?" "Oh, right." He searched again, digging deep into the purse to find a tiny mangled piece of tin, worn almost as thin as a gnat's wing... a one Buggerall coin, which itself was a rare coin in the Humped-Backed Beast. He placed it on top of the gold coins, and winked conspiratorially at my mum. She winked back. "I knew I was good," she said, "but I never knew I was that good!" "Keep the change," smiled Tumescence. Mum dropped the coins down the front of her dress. They jingled as they fell down. The tin Buggerall fell all the way through, dropped out of my mum's skirt, and rolled away under the tables. Mum chased the errant coin as if her life depended on it. Tumescence seemed to have recovered some of his composure. Mister Stiffun was banging his bony fist on the bar in the background, but no-one was paying much attention to him. Only once she had retrieved the errant coin, did mum lead him away from the tap room, taking him up the stairs, singing and jingling merrily. Mum believed in keeping all her customers satisfied. Particularly those with eight silver balls they hadn't spent. Tumescence crossed the room to the fireplace. He had a strange glow about his eyes, which only rarely looked into mine, and his hands were shaking as he handed me the dress. I jiggled ever so slightly, making my boobs bounce, and Tumescence turned a terrible blue colour. Fearful lest he should have a heart attack before he had taken me to the Palace, I pulled myself into my clothing. Tumescence became a little calmer. "Nina, you're coming with me." "Where are you taking me?" I asked, though I was praying hard that I already knew! "To the Palace," he replied. My heart jumped. Yes!! This was it! I wanted to thank him, but all I could think of was to ask another inane question. "How long for?" "Forever," he said, smiling and licking his lips more furiously than ever. *** Now, I know what you're thinking. You think I stage-managed all that business with the fireplace and the dress, throwing myself at the wizard to save myself from a night with the undertaker. Well, you'd be half right. To be honest, I acted instinctively. It was quite normal for me to remove my clothes when I scrubbed the fireplace, to avoid getting the grate dirtier (laundry wasn't a major concern in the Humped Back Beast). I think it was also instinct that made me realise that letting Tumescence catch a glimpse of my boobs wouldn't do any harm. Although, as I have confessed, all my practical knowledge of love-making had been gained through the keyhole of my mum's bedroom door, I had discovered a few things out by myself. I mentioned the neighbourhood boys a while back. Whenever we played Gods Go A'Frolicking, a game in which I seemed to spend a great deal of time in a state of partial undress, the boys would get that same glassy look in their eyes. And whenever we went swimming, one of the boys always wanted to do the breast stroke, even though it didn't seem to help any of us swim any better. The only other word I knew for "boobs" at that time was "Fuckin' hell!", which is what the local lads said whenever they saw them. I had also come to realise that I had other equipment of equal importance. The local goat butcher's name was Sausage. He had a boy called Pork (an exotic name round our way), who was much the same age as me. Pork used to work in his father's shop, except when there wasn't any meat to sell. Which meant that he was free roughly eighty days in every eighty-one. Pork and me used to play together. We played Dung Rolling, we played Knock Down Ginger ('til old Ginger stopped standing back up), we played Hunt the Cat. Then, suddenly, at exactly the same time as my boobs magically appeared, Pork wanted to play different games. Two Ferrets In A Sack was one. We both climbed into one person's clothing, and we had to fight to see who could get out first. I always won, and it never dawned on me that Pork wasn't really trying. Then he wanted to go skinny-dipping. Well, I'd always been told not to play in the river in case I got dirty, but I liked Pork so I went along with it. He seemed to think I would have more difficulty swimming now I had this chest, because he was always grabbing hold of it. Then came the day that Hunt the Cat became Hunt the Pussy, and I became really confused. It was about ten weeks before my sixteenth birthday. Pork and I had been playing strip I Spy (in the circumstances, I realise now that asking him if "I could have a butcher's" was a little inelegant). A little later, I caught Pork sitting behind his dad's shop playing with his willy. He was kind of tugging at it and rubbing it, and I suddenly realised that there was this big difference between us. An average-sized difference, anyway. The important thing was that I realised that while I had grown up in one way, he had grown in another. And he was still growing. "What are you doing?" I cried. Pork jumped up in alarm and the strange growth seemed to shrink very quickly as he went a kind of puce colour. Stammering wildly, he replied: "I'm playing with myself." Well, I thought that was a bit selfish, so I said: "Can't I play?" Pork didn't seem able to make up his mind. His face went blanker than usual, and his voice offered a muted "GLLLLGLLL" sound. So, I took matters in hand. I wrapped my fingers round his willy and started jerking them back and forth in imitation of what I had just observed. It didn't seem like much of a game to me, although it did seem to make the sausage get very rigid. Pork didn't have much to say, except he was grinding his teeth and going "Aaaaaahhh!" a lot. Still, I kept at it because I was curious. How could I have not noticed it before? I had these large wobbly things on my chest, and Pork had this, this thing, which looked just like a nanny goat's udder. Why, I wondered, didn't I? In the same place on my body, of course, I knew I had this slit, and it occurred to me that maybe I did have something like Pork's udder-thingy, but that it was tucked up inside. So, without slackening the pace on Pork's willy, I pulled myself open with my free hand to take a look. The next thing I knew, Pork yelled "AAAAAAHHHH!!!", and there were great dollops of watery stuff... like goat's milk, only runnier and not so yellow... splashing all over me, pumping out of the end of his thing. It was quite a shock, I can tell you. Even when I calmed down, I remember thinking that even if I did have one of them things tucked up inside me, it could bloody well stay there if it was just going to leak like that. Later that night, I made the connection between what I had seen through the keyhole in mum's door and the spurting udder on Pork's belly. Mum had let men put their udders inside her. I started looking at myself in a different light. Mum had a piece of broken mirror in her room, and I would sneak up to take a look at myself. Tricky, because it only measured about two inches square, but I made the best of things. And there I was. Not all that tall, like my mum, but long-limbed. I had quite well-built arms... that came from humping kegs of goat's milk... but my legs were long and slender. I have very dainty feet, and narrow ankles, but there was a little bit more meat on my calves and thighs. I have a fairly narrow waist, so my hips always appeared relatively full, although there wasn't an ounce of fat on them. My bum was trim, with a deep cleft. My upper torso was... of course... quite broad, and I had a delicate, long neck. What more can I tell you? My hair is black (I wore it very short back then), my eyes are very dark, and wide beneath full brows. I have very full lips. When I looked at myself, I had no way of knowing if I was pretty or not. But I wasn't unhappy about the way I looked. My greatest asset, of course, were my large, full jugs. My skin was taut and pale, and kept the captive weight high upon my chest. The tips were full fruits, almost the size of ripe strawberries (or so I was told!), and my nipples were very easily coaxed into becoming stubby, broad stalks. The skin was smooth, pale ice, like the rest of me. I also took a long look at the pink crevice between my legs, trying to work out just how Pork's thing might fit into mine. Pulling it open triggered a very odd sensation inside me. I inspected it closer, but I couldn't find anything that looked like Pork's thing, although there was a tiny stalk that seemed to grow a little if I rubbed it. That felt very strange too... but quite nice. I did a lot more exploring, and a lot more rubbing, in those rare moments of calm my hectic life allowed. Something told me that Pork's belly was my future, and that there were plenty of other men besides Pork Sausage who possessed sausages of their own. This was what my mum had planned for me. This was the burden I had to share. If you're asking me if I really knew what I was doing on that day when Tumescence paid my mum five gold Randies, I can't answer. I just knew that whatever it was that my mum expected, I would find more of it and better at the Palace. Other girls had been taken in up there... why not me? Suddenly, I wanted to leave it all behind. I knew I was running away from home; from mum, from Mister Stiffun, from the Humped Back Beast and all its wonders. But no, I didn't really know what I was doing, what I was letting myself in for. My story was only just beginning. *** Next morning, I left the Humped Back Beast Inn with Tumescence, to enter service in the Palace of the King of Mammari. It didn't take long to pack. In fact, I just got dressed. I didn't see my poor old mum to say goodbye. With five gold Randies and a frustrated undertaker between her tits, I doubt she surfaced for days. The Palace sat on the top of the hill on which Mammari was built. In the dawn light, its walls and central tower glowed pink. I had lived in the shadow of that tower all my life, but I had never dreamed that one day I should actually enter its doors. Now, it seemed, the dream I had never had would come true. We walked up the steep slopes of the hillside, up the broadest part of Spittoon Street, banging our elbows on the walls of the shanty dwellings that clustered together all over this part of town. One of them fell down when Tumescence leaned against it to catch his breath. It took about an hour to make the climb up to the Palace Walls, and another hour and a half to fight our way through the crowds of beggars outside the Main Gate. When we were just about in sight of the gatehouse, Tumescence cupped his mouth and called out: "Hello, the Gate!" Three hundred and fifty beggars echoed the call, cupping their grubby hands as close to their mouths as the smell allowed, and hailing the guards. A small window opened in the outer tower, and a woman's face appeared. She wore the plumed helmet of one of the King's Rough Riders, an elite guard unit. "Is that you, Tumescence?" "Yes!" he replied, followed quickly by three hundred and fifty other voices all trying to mimic his voice, and demanding that they were the King's personal wizard. "Right!" snapped the guard, and the window snapped shut. There was an excited buzz amongst the crowd as chains rattled and bolts were drawn, and three hundred and fifty-one people surged forward, all trying to look wizard-y. I had never realised how many others shared my dream of escaping the drudgery of life in Mammari, and how few had the means to do so. The gates opened, and the Rough Riders poured out. Twenty tall women, each built like the privy over on Gas Street, moving as one, wielding batons against the pressing mob. Heads were cracked, stomachs thumped, and they seemed to take aim quite deliberately at the male beggars' loin cloths, which proved a particularly efficient method of crowd control. The surge was halted as quickly as it started, and the beggars fled away from the flailing sticks, crawling, limping or hopping as best they could, and leaving just me, the wizard and the amazons in the plaza before the gates. The senior guard, the woman who had appeared at the window, was about to wallop me with her baton when Tumescence stayed her hand. "She's with me." The Rough Rider wrinkled her nose and gave me a long, hard glare. I stared back at her in return. I had no idea what she thought she was looking at, but I was looking at something unlike anything I had ever seen before. I think we've established by now that I was not a very worldly girl. Aye, so my mum had given up laying down wines in the cellar in favour of just lying down. Aye, so I had grown an impressive pair of boobs, legs up to my armpits and a tight little arse. Aye, so every boy down my street had seen the aforementioned tits, legs and arse more often than they had seen a decent meal. Aye, so most of the aforementioned boys had touched the aforementioned tits, legs etc, and had turned a strange colour before rushing off behind a building. All this is true. I had wanked Pork and I had (unwittingly) come close to wanking myself. I'd worked out that sausages and slits equalled a lot of huffing and puffing on the other side of a keyhole. But I had no idea about sex. All I had learned from all the groaning and bucking and thrusting I had witnessed through the keyhole was that men became hopelessly excited if a woman let them put their thing in her slit. But I had seen nothing, and felt nothing which had ever made me think the woman could be capable of any reaction... barring the obvious ones of boredom, a lust for money and the occasional fit of the giggles. Mum enjoyed the encounters, yes, but only the money-counting parts of it. I had no idea that sex had any purpose of its own. Quite apart from the obvious problems of avoiding getting knocked up, I'm sure you can see that I had a lot to learn. I wasn't just a virgin in the sense that I hadn't had sex, I was a virgin where it counts. In my mind. All that was about to change, of course, and the first change came that cool spring morning, while Tumescence and I were outside the castle gate, being examined by the Captain of the Rough Riders. She looked at me, and I looked at her. And I felt this strange, runny feeling in my insides. You can imagine my confusion... no way did I connect that with sausages. Titania... that was her name... was everything I wasn't. We were about the same age, but while I was an unworldly, bewildered girl on the threshold of a new life, she had a more mature air about her, one born of confidence in her abilities and position. She was tall, and straight-backed, her chin set firm. She stood with her hands braced on her hips and her head thrown back. She had on this tall, plumed helmet, decorated with silver and glass, and her hair, which was golden and shining, cascaded from its edge in a great spray of yellow, reaching down below her shoulders. She had on a pair of long, black leather boots, which rose from her small, arched feet to halfway up her thigh. Underneath, just visible over the tops of the boots, she had on a pair of lacy white stockings, fastened to her broad leather belt by small ribbons. She had tight-fitting gloves which reached up to her elbows. No, I haven't neglected a single detail of her uniform. That was it. Apart from her boots, gloves, belt and helmet, Titania was bare-arsed naked. Tumescence was quivering again. I was quivering a little myself. I stared at the Captain with my mouth wide open, and a strange knot in the pit of my stomach. The last time I'd felt that was when old man Sausage gave my mum some meat for her birthday. He brought over a bit of goat fat as well, but, strange to tell, neither ever actually appeared on a dinner plate! Titania's nudity was playing equal havoc with my appetite. She wasn't just naked in the sense of having nothing much on. I mean, I understood naked; naked was what you got to be all the time if you played Strip I-Spy with Pork the butcher's son. But when I took off my clothes, there was still a lot of dirt and innocence insulating me from the cold outside. Titania, however, was naked. I could see nearly every inch of her smooth, dusky skin. It was a rich, bronze colour, but it seemed to go pink as we stood looking at each other. She didn't have my weight in the chest department, but Titania wasn't unendowed. Her globes sparkled with perspiration from the jaunty exercise she had just enjoyed, and the nipples were taut, erect little buds. Her whole body glowed with sweat, in fact, from her handsome, severe face, to her pale, gleaming thighs. As she breathed, small drops slid their way down her torso, detouring around the obstacles on her top half, joining together to make little rivulets across her flat belly, then slipping slowly into the wide space between the tops of her legs. She looked quite damp there. I was feeling quite damp myself. "Who's this then, wizard?" she sneered at last, sounding just a little throaty. Tumescence had stood perfectly still throughout our long staring duel, seemingly trying to hold a similar contest with Titania's chest. He had that same glazed look he had worn in the tavern. His staff was almost bent in two where he was leaning on it. "Her name is Nina," he wheezed at last. "I've just bought her. She'll serve under me in my laboratory." "I wager she will!" laughed Titania, only she didn't seem to be amused. She slapped her baton against her booted leg. "I thought you wizards weren't supposed to like that sort of thing." "We like it, Captain," replied Tumescence, "it just isn't very good for us." Titania snorted her derision. "I wonder where she'll be spending the nights!" she mused. Two of the other Rough Riders chuckled knowingly. I decided to prove I wasn't coming completely unprepared. "Fear not," I told them. "I left my maidenhead back at home." The two Riders froze on the spot, jaws slack. I would have told them that I could go and get it later, if someone would ask my mum where she kept it, but Tumesence was coughing and spluttering, almost falling to his knees. Titania recovered her poise. She took another look at me, and lifted the hem of my skirt with her baton. "Well, whatever you have planned for her, she can't come into the Palace looking like that. She smells. She'll have to have a bath." Titania's voice was loud, and seemed to echo off the walls of the nearest hovels. "Bath, bath, bath." Strange, but the echoes all seemed to have different voices. "Very well," sighed Tumescence. "A bath. And when she's had this bath, she can stay?" "We'll see," snapped Titania. "Bring her inside." She turned on her heel and marched briskly back towards the gate. I turned to Tumescence to tell him that I had had a bath barely a month ago and a rub-down with goat's milk only the night before, but he was in no fit state to listen. He was watching Titania's firm, pert back end wiggling towards the Palace, and it was making him wheeze and slide closer to the ground as he lost his grip on his staff. I helped him stand up, and we lurched forward. I had the strangest feeling that my holding him up was actually making things worse, but I hauled him towards the gate anyway. Once Titania was out of sight inside, Tumescence seemed to recover somewhat, and he hobbled inside on his own. Close at his heel, I entered the Palace for the first time. *** In Mammari, only buildings of consequence were built much taller than the average dwarf with a stoop. The palace gatehouse, on the other hand, was a heavily fortified, two-storey building, dropped foursquare across the path of anyone who wanted to enter the court of King Harrdon. It housed the barracks of the two guard regiments... the all-female Rough Riders and their male equivalents, the Mustgerhers. As I passed under its shadow, I shivered, though whether from fear or excitement I can hardly remember. Nina Part One Stepping within the portals of the Palace, I was gripped with near-panic. A vast space opened up before me, a wide plaza, paved with dressed white stone. On each side, there were low buildings, sheltering against the Palace wall. But ahead, stretching up almost as far as the eye could see, there was the broad tower of the Palace itself, a glistening spire of pink stone. I had never been so close to the tower of King Harrdon before. What an erection! So much open space! Such a fantastic, large column to fill it! It was truly an inspiring sight. Mammari, if you must indulge in a little history, was founded by the god Ejacularis. When he thought he was dying, he decided to have one last wank. "Bury me where my seed falls," he commanded. He then spunked off over the fields and hills. Later, he remembered that he was immortal, so he commanded that a city be built where his spunk had fallen instead... that was Mammari. The same story is told about a great many cities, I know, which proves either that the others are lying, or that Ejacularis was a regular wanker. In the centre of the square beyond the gates, there a fabulous fountain. A large rose bowl, at least twice my height across, was surmounted by a huge statue. A large, muscle-bound man, with an exceptionally large sausage, was standing over four kneeling women, at least one of whom seemed to have a tail, and another of whom had small wings on her shoulders. Each of them had turned her face up towards the man, lips opened wide and eyes closed in peaceful satisfaction, while something splashed from the end of his thing into their waiting mouths (the man's fingers cleverly divided the stream into four). The tableau was stimulating enough, but I couldn't make out what it was that was gushing from the god's faucet. It was a smooth, milky liquid. Surely, it couldn't be! I watched it for several moments, quite fascinated, before I realised that the shambling steps of my master, the Wizard, were receding into the distance. Tumescence was shuffling towards a small door in a small building in the shadow of the tower. I made to follow, but a firm hand pulled me up short. "Not yet, bitch," snapped Titania. "First you bath, then you can go and play servants with the wizard." She seemed quite bitter, and the grip she took on my dress brooked no delay. I was roughly propelled towards the fountain. "Fill that bucket," Titania commanded, pointing at a vessel beside the bowl. This being a task I was well-trained for, I complied at once, dipping the bucket into the slightly warm liquid. I couldn't help expressing my curiosity. "What is this?" I asked. "Ignorant brat," spat Titania. "It's a statue of Ejacularis, the God of Plenty. These are the four goddesses of Fellatius, who wagered each other as to who would be the last one to drain him of seed. He drowned all four of them. It's a famous legend from the Orgasmus, the Divine Book of Mammari." I knew all that. Mum liked stories about the gods, about how they turned up in rural buildings, granting wishes and enjoying the favours of young maidens. It was all mills and boons as far as I could see, but mum kept a collection of mythic tales by her bedside, and she had read them to me so often when I was little that I knew them all backwards (which had further complicated my sex education!). I had recognised Ejacularis and the four goddesses at once; my question hadn't been about the statue. "No, captain, I mean what is this?" I cupped my hand under the flow from Ejacularis. "That?" she mocked. "It's water, of course, heated by the caves under the Palace!" "Water? That colour?" "You stupid little town-bitch! It's that colour because of the rocks in the caves. It's still just water! We drink it all the time... here, see..." She dipped her head in front of the statue and took a long gulp. It made my flesh tingle. "Now come on!" I filled the bucket without anything more said. Titania pointed back towards the gate-house with her baton, and I dragged the bucket towards a door which led inside the wall. Titania followed close behind, steering me towards a cell just inside the main door. It was a plain room, with a solid-looking door, dressed walls, a wooden bench along one wall which contained various vessels and brushes, and a large wooden vessel in the centre of the floor. There was more of the milky liquid in the vessel, steaming slightly. Titania closed the door, and her face took on a smile that made me feel very uncomfortable. She touched the end of the baton to her lips. "Strip." It occurred to me briefly that this was going to be just another game of Nipple-Twist, but the games of my childish days were being left far behind. I took off my dress and stood it in the corner (perhaps I shouldn't have used it to clean the grate). Titania wrinkled her nose again, but she showed a slight gleam in her eye as she looked me over. "Now, get in," she ordered. It took me a few moments to realise that she meant for me to step into the large wooden vessel. Unbelievable! I hesitated, crossing my arms in front of my chest instinctively. "In that stuff? No fear! It's not natural!" "Do as you're told!" she snapped, swatting her thigh with the baton. I jumped with fright, and turned towards the steaming liquid. Tentatively, I tried the end of one toe. It actually wasn't too bad. I tried more of my foot, and it became positively pleasant. Titania gasped impatiently, grabbed me by the shoulders and propelled me into the bath. My whole body disappeared under the milky liquid. She dunked me several times, finally pushing my whole head under. As I came up, and blinked the water from my eyes, I realised that a magical transformation had taken place. Titania was scowling unhappily at the thick sludge which had formed in the bath, but I was comfortable at last. "Now, that's water," I asserted. Whatever it was, Titania wasn't happy about it. She hauled me out of the vessel, tipped it over so that the silty muck spilled through a grate in the floor, then refilled it with several fresh buckets. A quiver of apprehension went through me as she crossed the room to the implements piled on the bench. There were several strange bottles, and a collection of stiff brushes. She selected one, and slapped it against her palm. "Now we can get to work," she hissed. The brush had a long, thick shaft, and the head was covered in spiky bristles, so that it looked like a hedgehog with a tree up its bum. With that, she advanced on me in two quick strides. I tried ducking under the water, but there really wasn't anywhere to hide. It didn't help that if I ducked my head under the water, my boobs just rose further above the surface. There just wasn't any way I could keep my whole body submerged. Titania scoured me with the brush, starting with my back, but leaving nothing untouched by the time she had finished. The water went from brown to black to semi-solid, but still she went on. Every inch of my flesh was scourged clean, and she took particular delight in scraping my scalp so savagely with a second brush I wondered if I were now bald. She clipped my nails with small scissors, and gouged muck from my ears with the corner of a damp rag. Every inch of me was being cleansed through to the other side. Now I knew I was leaving my past behind. Several layers of it at least. "Get out," she ordered at last. I obeyed at once (the extra volume of her voice made me jump!). Titania doused me with one final bucket. Dripping wet, I stood in the middle of the room, my skin hot and red and as pink as the day that I was born. Only more so. I felt quite giddy, not to mention several pounds lighter. Titania picked me up and carried me over to the long bench, laying me down on a soft pillow of towels. She picked up a large clear bottle filled with some pale, rose-coloured liquid, and smiled at me, in an almost human way. Frankly, she looked more dangerous like that than she had done with either the brush or the baton in her hand. "Relax," she purred, and of course I became as tense as an innkeeper serving a weights and measures man. The quivering between my legs, which had started when I first saw her outside the palace, was becoming a very strong itch. I wanted her to scratch it, but I didn't know why. This sensation wasn't something you learned about spying through keyholes. My heart beat faster as I waited impatiently for her to reveal more to me. She poured some of the liquid from the bottle onto my legs, and started smoothing the creamy substance into my sore flesh. The stinging heat was soothed away immediately, and replaced by a cool, blushing glow. My mind was screaming with terror, and the rest of me was burning with pain and humiliation, but my shins and calves were cooing with delight. Titania's strong hands dug deep into my flesh and muscles. Then she lifted up my feet, and smoothed more of the luxurious basalm into every fold of skin. Curiously, she then took one of my toes into her mouth, pulling at it with her teeth, and letting her tongue taste its length. No-one had ever done that before! No-one would have survived if they'd tried, of course. So it went on, with Titania telling me to lie in a certain position or to keep still as she worked the basalm into my flesh. She combed my short hair through roughly, then brushed it into unaccustomed neatness. She rubbed the basalm into my shoulders and arms, and I became quite drowsy. Next, she went to work on my back while I sat, and I drifted calmly towards slumber. Then she went to work on the front of my torso, and I was very much awake. Titania was breathing very deeply, and I thought she uttered several small moans. She was sitting astride my waist, her legs tucked alongside mine. I could feel the warmth of her skin, and the way one particular part of her seemed both hot and wet, a feeling which made an adjacent part of my anatomy go the same way. More than that, in this posture I could see right into her eyes. She had very pale eyes, with dark lashes framing the pure white, and they had a slow, dreamy quality which hadn't been there before). Her blonde hair was spread out behind her like a head-dress (she had dispensed with the helmet at the beginning of my ablutions), shimmering slightly as she moved her hands. Her hands... Despite the fact that she had already spent an age on my flesh, her hands hadn't tired a bit. With her palms stretched, she circled my tiny waist. She dug the heels of her hands into my stomach, kneading the flesh like the dough we had at home every other month. Her fingers traced my ribs, stretching my skin across them like a drum. I hadn't much idea of what being clean meant, but I knew a bath was more luxurious than anything I had ever experienced. Swimming in the river had never been like this! Finally, her hands went to my boobs. I started to lift my arms up, but she pushed them aside impatiently. She possessed a disciplined strength which I would never have, no matter how many kegs I had lifted. I was powerless to resist. "Keep still!" she whispered, hoarsely. I knew I was being silly, of course, because her own boobs were just as bare as mine, and she didn't seem remotely discomfited by the fact as she pressed me back. They were different to mine of course, much the same colour, but more conical, and crowned by tiny, bright, cherry-red tips. I wanted to touch them; I wanted her to touch mine, to caress and mould them, to do whatever she wanted. And she did. Titania shaped my rounded globes in her strong hands, crushing and caressing the flesh, squeezing and stretching the tender skin. She was shifting her weight from side to side, wiggling her bottom against my hips. The feeling of dampness was growing more and more acute. And now she was pinching at my wide pink nipples, and stroking the bulging pennies of my aureolae. They were flushing a deeper rose colour and... as if it were possible... they were swelling, becoming a fraction larger! It was getting quite difficult to breath, and I wriggled under Titania's weight. This only served to encourage her. She leaned forward, her belly laying on mine, her head just a few inches above my own. She was shivering (I had no idea why, I certainly wasn't cold!), and uttering small guttural noises as she jerked her hips, lowering herself ever more closely against me. Our breasts were already in close contact, of course, flattening against each other, smooth skin against smooth skin. Then, pinching my nipples even more fiercely, she whispered into my ear. "I want you!" And with that Titania bent down to kiss me. I lay there like a rabbit caught in the lights of an advancing cart (provided it had been stunned first... nothing moves that quickly in Mammari). Don't get me wrong, I'd been kissed before. I might still have been missing on the casualty lists of love's battlefield's, but kissing was something I thought I understood. It was what you got when cousins came to visit, a fleeting wave of the head towards one's fond relative, abandoned when the smell became overpowering. In the circles I moved in, a kiss is something that involves no actual physical contact, the same as a head butt. There are enough illnesses circulating around already, without actually encouraging them. To my horror and surprise, a greeting wasn't what Titania intended at all. She was getting much too close! Her lips fastened on mine, and her tongue... her tongue, by all the Gods!... penetrated my mouth. She smelled of blossom and flowers and other stuff I'd never paid much attention to much before, and the touch of her lips on mine, and the brief touch of her tongue on my teeth was like the first touch of a fiery spirit. Something close to desire, or perhaps just old fashioned hunger, blazed up inside me. In my heart I knew that something, something magical, was about to happen. I was right. Titania fell to the floor, choking and gagging, which is what I would have expected to happen to anyone foolish enough to press their lips close to a mouth more used to the subtle notes and highlights of week-old goat's milk than a woman's kiss. I had no concept of bad breath, because I'd never known there was a "good" kind. I had all my own teeth, which was a rarity in our neighbourhood, but then I'd drunk more goat's milk than any goat. They were as sturdy as granite, but, in retrospect, I can see where they may have acquired an anti-social coating over the last sixteen years. The mood had been irrevocably broken. I was aware of a floating feeling in the back of my head, of a cool tingle all over my body, and a deep chasm between my legs. I was also aware that Titania was on her stomach, retching into the drain. She had actually been desperate enough to use my bath water to rinse her mouth out. She called feebly for help, and it is just as well that I had the sense to slip back the bolt on the door. Titania was shaking violently, her taut buttocks shivering with each explosive heave of her body. Three or four Rough Riders carried her out, watching me with wary eyes. A few moments later, a red-headed Rider arrived, bringing me some a fresh white robe, which I pulled over my head. She took a brief look at my clothes, before calling for some heavy gloves and a burning torch. So much for that dress. Still, it had brought me this far. The same woman showed me how to clean my teeth, and stood over me for the next hour until she pronounced her satisfaction with my work. Even I was prepared to run my tongue around my gums. The Rough Rider threw the brush onto the burning pile with the others, while I exhilarated in the first-time feeling of complete cleanliness. If it felt like this, I was quite prepared to have another bath in sixteen more years! The first stage of my transformation was complete. My body glowed outwardly. Inside, something else was stirring, something I didn't yet understand. The red-headed woman pointed out the way to Tumescence's apartments. The Rough Riders were too busy to lead me to him, because three hundred and fifty beggars were beating at the door, clamouring to be admitted now that they too had had a bath. I wondered if it had been as mysteriously intriguing as mine. *** So, in all the excitement, I was left alone to find my way to Tumescence's wizardly laboratory. My new white gown, no more than a light shift really, sat loosely on my shoulders, and fell midway down my thighs. Compared to the dress my mum altered, it was virtually floor-length. My feet were bare, but I was used to that. I stepped lightly across the courtyard as... slowly and nervously... I approached the gleaming pink tower of King Harrdon's magnificent palace. With the exception of the outbuildings which lined the palace walls, this was the only structure within the grounds. Yet it still managed to contain within its shaft over 5,000 people. Most were, of course, servants like myself, marked by the same simple clothing that I wore, and who lived in two bulging halls at the bottom of the towering shaft. There were guards, of course, like the Rough Riders and Mustgethers, in their well-ventilated uniforms. What struck me most, though, was the attire of some other individuals, who I espied moving slowly towards the large, vaulted entrance into the tower. Out in the town, people tended to dress alike, in shapeless and rugged clothing, made thick with the muck of the streets. Within the palace of the magnificent Harrdon, things were different. Apart... quite apart... from the servants and soldiers, there were other men and women, strolling in the early morning air. Each was more gorgeously attired than I had ever thought possible. Gold and silver, jewels in abundance, silks and satins and cloth of gold; every luxury I had ever heard of, and many I hadn't. But it wasn't just the beauty of their clothing and ornamentation that stirred me, it was the fact that they wore so little of it. The couple ahead of me, talking idly as they strolled through the entrance, fixed my attention. The one on the right was a woman. In some ways we were quite alike, but I was much more struck by the ways in which we were so completely different. She was smaller than me, with long, lustrous, blue-black hair. It was cut close to her her scalp at the front and sides, but fell in a thick, twisting rope from the back of her head to below her knees. She had woven jewellry and coloured feathers into the skein, and there were bands of silver snaking about her supple limbs which contrasted richly with the pale, almost ghostly colour of her skin. I had a very clear opportunity to make that contrast, since so much of her skin was in view. She wore a very brief, two-part costume. A tiny band of material stretched around her hips, attached to a narrow thong which passed between her legs. Two slightly larger shapes, attached to cords, were stretched across her ample boobs. Her anatomy, front and back, wobbled and swayed hypnotically, unfettered by her minimal attire. She walked languidly, crossing one foot across the other, her shoulders held back, and her neck upright. I tried to copy her, thrusting my chest forward and my arse back. There was a clatter off to the right somewhere, and a great deal of bad language. Throbb the blacksmith, it appeared, had just crushed his hand with a fourteen-pound hammer. My attention turned to the lady's companion. Where she was quite short, easily half a head smaller than me, he was extremely tall, and towered above her. His head was large and square-shaped, with a cascade of russet-brown hair. It reminded me of the mud at the river's edge, all deep earth and rich texture. More widely-travelled people could have managed more poetic comparisons, I'm sure, but everything about him made me think of rugged earth and hard rock. His broad back rippled with undisguised strength. It was pale, like the woman's but its curvature and tensile power were very different. His arms were thick, with more cords of defined muscle, and flesh glowing with vitality. He moved with long, deliberate strides, one hand protectively placed at the woman's lower back, the other holding her hand across his belly. My eyes followed the line of that arm, then drifted lower.