2 comments/ 3343 views/ 12 favorites Trapped in the Thicket By: zoemiller The underbrush becomes only more difficult the farther I go into the thicket, and I grow only more hungry with each handful of tall grass and tangled vines I grab and cut with my machete. It's tough going, and tougher the longer it goes. Whoever said elves were meant for forests likely never met Rien Monfrense, a poor excuse for an elf if ever there were one—though, in her defense, she is only half of one, on her father's side. It must be midday already, but I can hardly see the sun through the thick canopy of trees overhead. Taking a pause, I lean against the broad trunk of a nearby tree. I lounge for a moment, swiping moisture away from my forehead with the back of my glove. I pull some of my short, ivory hair, dappled with the sweat of my effort, behind my pointed ears and sigh. I loosen the ties of my jerkin, fan the thick wool a bit to encourage a current of cooling air over my chest. I swipe fingers at my cheeks and my gloves come away laden with dirt and sweat. Looking down, I see how the dust has wormed its way even between the valley of my breasts, adding an ochre tinge to my obsidian skin. I shift the position of the bow slung over my shoulder to prevent its taut string from digging so tightly into my cleavage. My tongue is thick and dry. I pat the canteen at my side, but it rattles against the buckles of my belt, empty. Where am I? I should've hit the river by now, I'm sure of it. Suddenly, a distinct odor finds my senses over the smell of freshly cut grass—the tangy scent of roast meat, and the freshly stoked firewood. A camp is near. Starved as I am, it's all I can do to stop myself from breaking into a full-on sprint at the promise of a nearby meal. Caution, however, guides me to a slower step. Starved I may be, but a deserter too. This could be an army camp I'm approaching, and if the army finds me, I'll suffer a worse fate than an empty belly. My stomach emits a ferocious, needy grumble; caution can go screw. I trudge forward through the saw grass and the gripping, thorny bushes, grabbing and cutting, like a woman possessed, the thick brambles that attempt to snare around my high boots and slow me. My shoulders and back ache from the effort. My legs groan and beg me to stop, but I pay them no heed, nor do I pay any to the risk of being discovered by the very army I fled just last night. A worse fate with the army? I'll suffer the risk of a few dozen lashes if it puts a warm meal in me—or even a cold one, at this point. I stumble into a clearing, a small copse, finding a sight so pure, so beautiful, it compels me to blink several times to clear my sight, lest I discover I look upon only a cruel mirage. In the clearing is a small hut, built of raw-hewn timber with a small porch and a roof of dried thatch, joisted on rough pillars of tree trunk, bark and all. But that's not what captivates me so. In front of me, barely five feet away, is a fire pit, stones of various sizes ringing a smoldering campfire, above which, on a crude wooden spit, crackles and weeps the most precious sight my amber eyes have ever beheld: A full rabbit, skinned, trussed, and waiting for me to eat. I tumble forward another step, into the trodden grass of the clearing, reaching my hands as if they alone could breach the distance between myself and this feast. My stomach roars out a curious combination of joy and greed. Slow down girl, take a moment. Against all cries of my stomach—it thinks it knows better—I halt my ungainly steps. With a deep breath, I clear my thoughts, focusing on my senses. I slow my heartbeat, and use the clarity to sharpen my hearing. Someone's cooking, they must be nearby, but my heightened senses detect no beings among the nearby trees. Without the echo of living nature to guide me, I can be less sure of what lies in wait in the nearby hut, I see no candle light or oil lamp's glow through the crude windows of the small hut. I am surely alone. Beside me, on a wide, flat rock, is a wooden bucket brimming with fresh water. Thirsty enough to choke, I lift the bucket and upturn it. In my haste, I get more water on my face than down my throat, I'm sure, but my face needed a wash as badly as my throat needed a drink, so where's the difference? I gulp down eagerly, exulting in in the cleansing chill of water down my face and as much as I do each quenching gulp. I surface for air with a sated gasp and drop the bucket to the ground beside me. There, that's better. I slick damp hair from my face with both hands as assess my situation. This is no army camp. Of that, at least, I am certain. At worst, this looks to be the home of some defenseless old crone or hermit. Let it never be said that Rien Monfrense took pride in banditry—but let it also never be said that a fear of dishonorable behavior prevented her from engaging in it, in such times of dire need. Summoning whatever dregs of graceful heritage lie dormant in my half-elven veins, I silence my footsteps as I draw closer to the fire. The thick soles of my roughshod boots trace whisper quiet through the grass as I bring myself closer to my feast, step by aching step. I keep my hearing focused to a knife's point, but still I detect no beings among the trees, not even the small, black squirrels who evaded my poor archery all morning. Not only do elves have a taste for forests, but bows, or so the legends go. More's the pity this elf, or half of one, has no apparent in-born talent towards accuracy, and she spent every arrow in her quiver this morning in fruitless hunt of game hardly worth a mouthful to begin with. Yet here before her is a feast. No weak, woeful squirrel, but a fat, plump, juice-spitting rabbit! In the dim, filtered daylight, the sizzling sheen of its skin takes on an aura almost holy. My next step takes me within arm's reach. I grip the roasting spit on one side, planning to snatch it away, carcass and all, and sprint into the woods before I am discovered and whatever small lees of conscience lie left in the empty wine cask of my starving body compel me to abandon my thievery. My glove touches down upon the roughly whittled spit, I wrap my fingers around it, and I... ...find myself quite unable to move. The startlement that spills through me somehow refuses to transmute into physical response. Paralyzed, as if wrapped in thick chains from head to toe. I cannot move an inch. Not even my fingers, wrapped greedily around the spit will respond. A tremor of warning runs down my neck, far too late. "Well well," says a soft voice, youthful and curious, from behind. "Seems I've caught something quite a bit bigger than a rabbit." The supernatural senses of my elven heritage find themselves quickly overridden by the quite natural, quite mortal terror of being caught in the act. Inwardly, I thrash and shake, trying to will myself to life and motion, but it's all I can do just to move my eyes from side to side, trying to catch some glimpse of my captor in my peripheral vision. She does the job for me, duck-stepping around my frozen body to regard me from the other side of the fire pit. She wears a clean, but patchwork, cloak, grey and black, long enough to reach her small, moccasin-clad feet, and upon her head is a conical hat, its peak stooped with age, with a wide brim low enough to obscure her eyes, but not her freckled cheeks, nor her brimming smile, widening further with each passing moment. She is a short thing, obviously waifish, the way her simple clothes rest languorously over her slip of a body, but a tremor in the air compels a dread inside my body that clashes with her ineffectual physique. Glancing down to the short, crooked staff she holds casually clasped in both hand behind her back, I realize the source of my unconscious fear. A glade witch! The fire's heat buds fresh sweat to my brow. The witch raises her staff into the brim of her broad had, tipping it out of her face and revealing curious eyes of crystalline clarity. She purses her pert lips, regarding me as if I were a sculpture in a gallery. I groan silently, urging my body to move. Wrenching towards any ounce of strength I can find within, a forcible tremor finds my body. The knuckles of my fingers flicker. I can move! I can move! "Ah, ah ah," chides the witch, with a leisurely, one-handed wave of her staff through the air afore her. The air scintillates to life around me. Out of nothing manifests a set of spectral rose vines, glimmering in a pinkish color, around my form. They writhe in patient motions, tensing around my arms and legs, chest and neck, revealing the source of my bondage. Her casual smile opens wide enough to show teeth. "You're quite caught, I assure you." My chest sears with the effort it requires even to draw breath. "It's a long time since I've had any visitors," she says. Bringing both hands before her, she taps the crook of her staff a time or two against her open palm. Though I cannot even think to move, some casual command of hers compels me to do so. Without my input, my fingers untwine their grip around the spit. Her smile morphs to a mock frown, just for a small instant. "Or should I say: any trespassers?" I make to spit a blithe curse at her, but find my tongue as unresponsive as my fingers. I cannot speak. With a tut-tut motion of her staff towards me, the spectral shackles slack around me. I tense my body to leap, but before I can commit, the shackles bind me once more. I startle inwardly as my body moves to her command, not mine, my aching legs groaning to life one step at a time, backing me away from the fire. The sheer sense of motion thrills me, even if it is not my own, but my stomach cries out in grief. Paralyzed or no, all that concerns my hunger is that it is now three steps further from sustenance than it was a moment ago. "That's better," she says. "I'd be a terrible host if I allowed my first guest in ages to slip and get burned." My hand still hovers in the air, fingers arced around the spit it no longer holds. The witch lowers her staff, extending a hand to remove the spit from the fire. Turning her eyes to the heavens, she appears in meditative thought. The rabbit quite done, she dawdles the cooked beast lazily through the air, using the spit as if she were conducting an opera with it. My body quavers, the only motion it seems to maintain any capacity for, as the tantalizing smell wafts through the air and into my searching nose. My stomach roars its grief through the quiet clearing. I watch helplessly as she impales the spit in the ground front of me, close enough that I could reach and grab it, if could somehow find some untapped wellspring of movement lingering in my stultified form. My gut roars and fights against me from within, begging me to move, stretch, smack down her hands, and claim my well-deserved meal. Standing afore me, she squats down and rests her staff upon the grass. Noting the gurgling sound of my stomach with a wrinkle of her pert nose, the witch smiles all the more. "Hungry?" She asks, as if apropos of nothing. I make to reply, to tear her apart with my words if not my hands. I am urgent to even spew out some rank curses at her, anything to show I still possess some small amount of will. But I find myself unable to even flex my throat with the simplest sound. Turning her attention to the rabbit, the witch bends forward and tears a soft strip of flesh from its side with no apparent discomfort, though the meat must still be quite hot. With languorous delay, she wraps her lips around the ragged bit of succulent white meat, pulling it into her mouth. My toes curl inside my boots; for their impertinence, the vines around me constrict, choking my next breath out of me in a gasp. The back of her hand swipes casually away at the clear juices that spill over her plump lips as she chews. Then, swallowing, she says, "It lacks seasoning." She reaches up to my face, cupping my cheek and overwhelming my senses with a redolent, appetizing fragrance as she wipes the juices on her fingers into my skin. "You've the smell of a city on you, and all the pomp and pretension that brings; you wouldn't enjoy such a simple meal, I'm sure." By now, my eyes brim with hard tears. A meandering whine catches in my throat, the pitiful sound to weak to surface. In truth, it's a miracle I could make it at all. "Oh?" She asks, affecting a clear insouciance. "Do you mean to say you would enjoy it?" She turns to the spit. Placing her hands atop her knees, she regards the trussed rabbit for a moment as long as an era. Then, with practiced hands that belie her soft, youthful appearance, the witch takes one of the seared haunches between her fingers and cracks it easily away from the bone. My lips struggle even to quaver. My eyes flicker voicelessly, struggling to convey my need. The glade is still, but for the inquisitive creaking of insects in the grass around us, and the occasional flutter of a bird alighting the trees. With effortless poise, she pins the haunch between her forefingers and spins it like a child's toy. My eyes flick to the ground, fearful she'll drop it, knowing that I'd give anything to snatch it up even if she did, and swallow it whole, dirt, grass, and all. "Well, it's never been my custom to deny a traveller in need." Finding me bereft of response, the witch cants her head, and continues her monologue for my benefit. "But glade witches are trading folk, you might've heard, so I suppose that means a trade's in order. Give me your name and I'll give you a bite." Like a bubble caught in my stomach after a hefty swig of booze, a burst of energy climbs straggling up from my core. But before I can speak, the vines around my neck tighten all the more, and the sound of my voice is lost amid the popping suffocation of my breathing. "My dear guest, don't go to such efforts on my account!" The witch reprimands, her face quite white with feigned embarrassment. "I'd no idea the task I provided was so burdensome." Bringing her fingers to my mouth, she draws down the suffering flesh of my lower lip. "After all," she continues, "names are the first thing you give, wherever you go and whenever you come." My nostrils flare, awash in the perfume of flavor lingering on her fingers so potent I can taste it from smell alone. If I could twist myself but an inch, I could capture those fingers between my teeth, bite them clear off, and claim that aroma for my own—as hunger drives me over the brink of madness, I truly believe whatever lingering taste lies upon those deft fingers would be more than enough to satiate me. As the witch tenderly opens my teeth with her single finger and presses the pad of it down against my frozen tongue, I cry out, I cry for all I'm worth, begging my body to obey, but my neck is like a set of iron coils; hard and inflexible. Pressing the slender digit of her forefinger against my clenching teeth, she explores brimming wetness within my mouth that core, unsatisfied hunger has brought—I'm sure I'm fairly drooling, by now. And not just from hunger, much to my dismay. Though I might try to ignore the heat building in my dusky cheeks, I can do no such thing against the sore press of my stiffening nipples against the rough wool of my jerkin, nor can I against the clenching press I find building inside of me, somewhere south of my abdomen, quite different from the hunger pangs the witch is forcing me to endure... "Dear, dear, dear. You've gone all red!" She says, rapt with thought, seemingly paying no interest to the quavering pulse of my tongue beneath her touch. "If I caused offense in asking, I surely did not mean to." Glancing down, then, the witch widens her eyes, looking back at me with a knowing smirk. "Unless, there's some other reason you're unable to say...?" Glacially, she trails her wetted finger away from my lips and down over my chin, to my neck, where the constrictive, spectral vines that bind my speech release their hold on my throat at her silent touch. Suddenly, a clear, effective breath finds my lungs. I gasp in a lungful of clean, crisp air, unable to even finish my inhale before... "Rien!" I say—or shriek, more like. Clasping her hands together with aplomb, the witch beams her eyes, bright as aquamarine, into mine. "Wonderfully done!" She says, "And I, of course, am Cereza, the witch of this lonely, untamed wilderness." Taking my still-extended hand, she removes its glove before shaking it gladly between her two smaller ones. Her skin is supple as young leather. "I can't tell you what a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance. It is a lonely wilderness, as I've said." Mid-introduction, a flicker of hesitation crosses her brow. "Oh, but what's wrong...?" With an inquisitive flick of her eyelashes, she looks towards me, then down at the ground... ...where, in her hurry to applaud my success, she deposited the rabbit haunch directly into the grass and dirt. "Isn't that disappointing," she says, mild frown finding her lips. "I'm sure you won't want it now, it's gotten all dirty!" "Please," I croak between struggling breaths. "I'll take anything, anything at all." "Now now." She glances to what's left of the rabbit, still intact on the spit. "Don't denigrate yourself so, dear guest. It's important for a person to desire what they deserve, and deserve what they desire, don't you think?" I gasp, struggling to lock eyes with her, but I find even the concept difficult to entertain. My vision blurs. "I-I need it." "You have a need." Squatting to the ground, Cereza retrieves her staff. When she stands, she places it against my chest. As she speaks, the crook of it traces a casual figure-eight motion around the outline of my breasts. "I suppose I do too. What's say we see which of those we can fulfill, on this wonderful morning of our auspicious meeting?" In the wake of her staff, the vines follow, squeezing my breasts, shaping them. A spike of pleasure finds me somewhere in the itchy caress of the woolen jerkin around my sensitive nipples. I cry out, and the witch titters in response. "Exactly so!" She praises me, before losing herself in a pensive expression. "Well then, how shall we start? In the stories it's often with a kiss, no?" She steps into me, her body small beneath its voluminous cloak, wispy frame suggesting none of the power that lies within her. As she stands on her toes to find my lips, and reaches her hand around my neck to position me, bending over, to ease the difference of our heights, the brim of her hat catches beneath my nose before flicking over it, bringing a tickle across my face and eyes. Again, I find myself unable speak, though it is not, I suspect, due to any magical interference on her part. With the promised haunch lost to the dirt beneath me, and me still unable to move, my throat can do nothing but spill wrenching sobs out into the forest all around us. But when her lips find mine, I cling to them like a rope dangling above a chasm. I press myself into her kiss, squeezing shut my eyes and chasing the wet, cloying warmness of her mouth. It is a chaste kiss—and trust me, Rien Monfrense has known many an unchaste one—but the feeling is shocking just the same. Bundling one arm around my neck—the other holds her staff limply at her side—Cereza kisses me with a quiet, gentle sincerity, her nose brushing warm breaths across my face as she loses herself between my lips, and captures me between hers just the same. Her arm embraces my neck tighter and tighter, better than any spectral shackle, as the kiss goes on. In this moment, I would wrap my arms around her and squeeze her twice as tight, if she would only unbind me—though I would never dare to ask. Too soon, she breaks our connection. Her arms untwine from around my neck, and she takes a simple step or two away from me. "That was a wonderful kiss, Rien." A crimson hue has found her freckled cheeks, and she smiles, seemingly bashful. "Much more satisfying than any story, if you'll permit me saying." Trapped in the Thicket My hunger but a distant memory, I murmur a pleasant response, concreting the sensation of her kiss in my hazy mind before it too fades to ether. "I agree," she says, smiling quiet and sincere in the afterglow. Eyes laced to me, "But that's just one need sated, and I fear it's gone and awoken so many others." Lifting her staff, Cereza traces an idle figure in the air, and the rose vines turn towards her whim. Unwinding from my chest, they tangle around me, removing the bow slung around my chest and my empty quiver, depositing them carelessly to the ground as they go. The vines at my neck dawdle lazily upwards, stroking at my cheeks, while those around my torso undo the trusses of my jerkin with an easy proficiency and an utter lack of hurry, despite the hasty breaths that have me panting like a dog in heat. "If I am Cereza the witch," she says, "then you must be something too. Rien the...?" "S-soldier," I say. "I see," she says, nodding. "Wars are not just for story books, then?" Gaze finding her face, I observe as her quiet eyes watch the progress of disrobing, as her vines tenderly shake my jerkin open, baring my full breasts to the forest, the sky, and Cereza's inquisitive attentions. Now free of restraint, my breasts sag downwards, their slate-colored nipples stiffening in the cold air, begging for her touch, her taste, anything. Cereza takes a step to me, lifting her staff and pressing it against the taut muscles of my abdomen. "Then I suppose I have your soldier's life to thank, for providing me the treat of this firm stomach to enjoy." I groan, and the reverberation inside my chest squeezes harder down on the pressure in my loins. "Ex-soldier," I admit, after a moment's pause. "I deserted, last night." Her staff traces upwards, between my breasts. The vines circle inward, imbuing my flesh with the satisfying warmth of her magic. Though they appear thorned, there is no sharpness to their touch, only the teasing of their warm caress upon my already burning skin. Circling around my sensitive nipples, the vines urge my painfully tender peaks erect with their embrace. I cry out. A giggle finds Cereza. "May I undress you, Rien the soldier?" I fight against the confused fog of my passions boiling from within. "H-haven't you already?" "Not entirely," she says. Tracing the hard curve of her staff down over my belly button, she snags its crook in inside my belt. The vines obey, undoing the brass buckle in gradual motion. She is distracted, I think, as I find enough flex in my fingers to clench my hands into fists. The vines trace demonstrative patterns over the thick flesh of my waist, and the curve of my hips. Though the illusionary thorns do not cut me, their scraping touch brings a ticklish urge across my skin. I whimper as the vines tuck into my trousers, gripping on either side and urging downwards, as if politely requesting their assistance in the matter. My trousers spill down over my hips, pooling around the ankles of my boots, and now, I am bared to her in full. Cereza touches a finger to her lower lip, pulling it thoughtlessly down and exposing her teeth as she observes the thick mane of white pubic hair that obscures my cunt. I swallow, suddenly self-conscious, wishing for the ability to look away. "You'll do no such thing." She corrects my unspoken desire with an instructive pinch upon my earlobe. Folding a finger under my chin, Cereza turns my head to ensure our eyes meet. "Shall I touch you, Rien the soldier? I admit I want to, very badly; I might even say I need it. Do you?" "Yes," I say. "Please, I do." Her nose wrinkles with gratification. "That's the second time you've said please. If you do it again, I fear I'll develop a taste for it." Stepping close, Cereza pillows her ear atop my breast. The tower of her hat flops into my face, and I close my eyes. Her breath flows easily against the damp skin between my breasts. She traces a between us, finding abundant thatch of my pubic hair, coarse and springy beneath her touch. The pointed tug of my skin when a few of my curly hairs sneak beneath her short fingernails tears a gasp from me, a sharp pressure of air that futilely begs for more. I find enough slack in the binds around my hips to thrust myself forward, compressing the thickness of my pubic mound beneath her palm. She pulls away, and I moan with disappointment. "Be patient, Rien," she says. "Wonderful things require we act in delicate ways." Her fingertips trace along my skin, finding the clenching muscles of my thighs, hard from training drills and long hikes through wilds just such as these— —though perhaps not just such as these. She drifts her touch inwards, between my legs. At the first, lightest touch I realize how terribly wet I've become, a slickness that's coated the inside of my thighs. A groan shakes out of me. I bite down on my lip. A single bead of sweat breaks down my lower back and rolls over the swell of my clenching ass. Cereza's fingernails trace tender patterns across the crinkled skin of my yearning labia, and my inner core flexes with painful response. My head swims with need, echoing the angry, impatient clench of my cunt. Delicacy? Delicacy can go plough! Who ever heard of a delicate fuck, anyway? With that thought, Cereza steps away. My heart itself whimpers, pained in its part in creating the treacherous, needy thoughts that seemed to separate her from me. Abandoned, even the burning fire can't hope to warm my dripping cone—left alone, it is frozen, barren. My eyes brim with the tears of my need. Lifting her hand, Cereza examines the thin, squiggly line of one of my pubic hairs, caught beneath her fingernail. She smiles, placing her fingers against her nose and inhaling sharply of my scent. "Such a miraculous smell." She sighs, and fresh roses blossom in her cheeks. "You are an interesting being, two souls in one body." "A-a half-elf, you mean?" Surprised by my adroit turn of phrase, Cereza emits a chirping laugh. "Is that what you're called? A fascinating rarity, I think!" "Common," I say, the ruefulness of my heritage overwhelming my lust. "All too common." "Well," Cereza says, her face softening in reflection of my dour turn of mood. "Perhaps 'half-eves' are common, but Rien the half-elf is a different matter." I've some mind to contest the point, but, she steps to my, lifting my gaze with her palm against my cheek. "You've shared all manner of special things with me, Rien the soldier, Rien the half-elf. Shall I share something with you in return?" Snapped back into her moment, the troubles of my past wash away. My heart thrums, and my breasts lift with the heavy swells of my breath as my heart thrums along to the secretive promise of her offer. "Pl—" Standing on her toes, Cereza silences me with an affectionate kiss to my jaw. "Now, now," she says, stepping away, her staff held again behind her back with both hands. "I warned you against saying that word a third time. Threes Bring Terrible Things; that's a thicket curse, and thicket curses are baleful things indeed." Doffing her hat, she reveals a spriggy shock of short, unkempt hair, red as a swarm of fire bugs. She places the hat upon the wide rock near the fire, then reaches up to undo the small metal clasp, shaped as a leaf, that holds her cloak around her neck. She steps away from it, and the patchwork fabric spills from her body like a waterfall, stroking its way down her slender body and spilling onto the ground around her feet. A sharp pop interrupts her display, as the fire finds an untouched bit of smoldering log to feast on and consume. I spare no glance to it, nor to the rabbit in front of me, I have no eyes for anything but she. Beneath, she wears a simple white shift dress, which covers only to about her thighs. Her breasts are small buds, suggesting the recent ending of adolescence, and a not-particularly-effective puberty, a tale her baby-fat cheeks and slender, freckle-peppered shoulders corroborate nicely. Rubbing fingertips against the slender crook of her elbow, Cereza touches a glance at the grass beneath her. "You've seen something few've had the pleasure of." "You're beautiful," I say. "You are kind to say so." It's her that's unable to meet my gaze, now, and so she toes one of her leather moccasins at the dirt between us, saying. Her palm rests against her flat belly, and moves slowly down her body. "But there's one more secret we glade witches have..." My rapacious eyes follow the motion of her smooth hand down her nymphic body, heart beating, hungrier by the moment. Swallowing, eyes clouded by lust, I nearly miss the unexpected bulge that seems to form when she closes her hand, bunching the simple fabric of her shift around her crotch. I startle, my whole body jerking in response. "You've a—" Cereza's eyes go wide in response to my surprise. Reacting to her confusion, the vines constricting around my chest and neck. I choke! She squats to the ground, fumbling in the grass for her staff. My hands twitch, struggling against their bonds in a vain attempt to reach my neck and strip away these other shackles that see fit to suffocate me. The pressure on my neck heightens until the bones of my spine seem to creak. My eyes bulge, my vision dims. At the last moment, Cereza stands, thrusting out her staff and shouting a word of release. The vines slack around my body. I feel as if I could shake them free. I could free myself, escape, possibly even snatch up that rabbit in the doing of. Instead, I look to Cereza, staff still held aloft, other hand wrapped plaintively around her shift at the waist. My tongue rolls against the inside my lips. I take a few testing breaths. I do not attempt to shake free the bonds—in truth, I've no idea if I even could, or if I'd want to... Releasing her grip on her shift, Cereza smears her wrist against her face, swiping away what tears have sprung up in her distraction. I'm well aware it's uncouth to stare, but nothing about my upbringing ever trained me to be "couth" in the first place. So, body recovered, my mind's first instinct is to look towards what Cereza so pertinently kept hidden. The small tent that's grown in her shift is obvious, now that she devotes no hand to hiding it. In the white fabric, a small, wet spot grows. "You've a—" She pauses in the wiping of her eyes to interrupt me. "I am a glade witch." "And glade witches possess—" With a certain measure of surliness, she says, "This one certainly does." Taking a pause for breath, she lowers her staff. "I'll free you, Rien, with my apologies. I'd no intent to hurt you I only—I only wanted to have a little game." "Tighten them again," I say. Looking up, Cereza blinks at me through the pools of her tears. "Pardon?" "We haven't finished our game," I say. A smile, buoyant, finds Cereza's face. "You are a rarity, aren't you?" Lifting her staff, she draws a slow circle in the air, and her vines pull around me once more. Again, I am shackled tight. The vines at my back correct my posture, pushing me into a proud stance that lifts my chin and lofts my breasts. Cautiously, she asks. "Are you comfortable?" A pox upon my head; somehow... I am. And so is she—or that's how it seems to my simple eyes. After setting her staff on the ground, Cereza rises again from kneeling, and this time her shift rises with her, its simple material bunched up on either side by her fists. Her dress hesitates, but for a mere moment, as it tickles over the edge of her bulge, then, with a shy tug, she springs free. It is a somewhat precious phallus, which is something I'd only thing because I sense the owner of it would not bridle at my diminutive description. It is no large thing, her cock, but that gives it a kind of unique air. It is pretty, unintimidating, nestled in a bank of fiery pubic hair, downy and soft as a feather bed. I spare a glance at Cereza's face. As soon as I look, she finds reason to place her gaze anywhere but upon mine, up into the trees, it goes, counting the birds, or the curves on every leaf. Her soft leather shoes curl against the ground. Her knuckles are white with tension at her sides. It is pale as she is, though its head burns with crimson need. As I watch, it seems to tremble. With an upward twitch of her shaft, the bead of moisture budding from Cereza's slit spills over, desperately reaching towards the ground like a strand of spider silk. "You're beautiful," I say. Looking back to me, she releases grip on he clothing so she can fuss both hands through her mussed hair in evident embarrassment. Her shift drapes over her cock, hiding it from sight, at least for the moment. But in that moment, she tiptoes back across the ground, to me. As she touches a finger to my lips, the vines around my bared chest apply a warning pressure. "Shush," she says. "You've said it twice now, and I've already warned you about threes." Taking fistfuls of my hair, she drags me into another kiss. I reply with all the passion my bound body is capable of. Her small form folds into my burly one. She spears out her tongue, closing her eyes and claiming my mouth for her own. Her hips arc upwards, spearing the slippery head of her cock against my thighs. My pussy trembles with the proximity. I groan out, scraping my teeth against her invading tongue. She lunges upwards again, seeking, seeking, seeking— "Enough!" Spewing frustration into the air as she breaks our kiss, Cereza storms in plodding steps towards the fire, clenching her fists as she paces. "This will not work! This will not work at all!" I open my mouth to—what, I'm not sure. To apologize for my height? To suggest she lay me down? To order her to march back over here and slam that beautiful cock into my aching, wandering, wanting cunt? Before I do any of these things, however, she grips the large sitting rock from beside the fire, squatting, and lifts it into the air as if it were just a sack of child's toys. Bracing the rock—a boulder, in my eyes—against her stomach, Cereza returns, step by waddling step, and deposits it at my feet with such alacrity that, for a moment, I'm afraid I might've lost a few of my toes in the bargain. But no, she has good aim, this glade witch. Clapping the dust from her hands, Cereza clears her throat. "There now," she says, stepping up onto the rock, leveling us nearly face to face. Her fingers twine behind my neck. "That makes up the difference quite nicely, wouldn't you say?" I speak my reply in the form of a lust-soaked growl. Cereza shares with me a canny grin that morphs into a subtler smile. Her voice is soft as a whisper in the closeness, high-pitched and clear, putting shame to my gruff, surly one. I nearly blush from the sound of it alone. She draws me close as she can. "Now then, Rien the soldier, Rien the rarity," she says, eyes flashing with quiet wit quickly subsumed by something else—a certain tenderness that fringes the aspect of her face. "In taking you, I suppose I'll also be giving you something, so to speak." In frets her lower lip between her teeth. She hesitates. "Do you understand?" My mind batters around the inside of my skull, sick of waiting, sick of puzzles, sick of games! My mind is impatient—and that's saying nothing of my long-tortured cunt—but my heart is open wide to this precarious creature, who bears this strange capacity of shyness, of vulnerability, even as she still holds me, quite bound. Whispering my breath against her face, I say, "I do." "Wonderful," Cereza replies. Hands still around my neck, Cereza guides her hips against mine. I find enough slack in my legs to part them for comfort; but only slightly—a little discomfort can be a pleasant thing, in proceedings such as this. We share a twinned gasp the first time her small cock slides between the dripping wetness that's coated my legs seemingly from thighs to knees. Frozen by her vines, I can only rest my nose against the top of her head and inhale the pure, clean scent of her hair as she attempts to guide herself, without hands, directionless, into me. Her nails pierce furrows into my neck as she thrusts between my legs. I groan with each stab that swipes across my lips, and she seems to shiver each bristly brush of my pubic hair, matted down by the flow of my excitement, over her sensitive shaft. I begin to whimper, much less impressively than the groaning, when the spongy, giving pressure of her thrusting head starts to find the slick, wanting folds of my lips. With each near miss, my knuckles tense a little harder, and my nipples seem to swell with pain, brushing against the downy-soft material of her shift with each moment of her body, until that alone might drive me insane. The next time her cock head swipes aimlessly across my clit and splits my lips wide, but misses my cunt by a country mile, I burst into an anguished shout. "Just fuck me, Cereza, please!" Going as rigid as I am, Cereza freezes. She pauses in her panting to look up at my, eyes wide and worried, but when she takes in my own expression, frantic, dripping with need, she spools her mouth out into an easy grin. "That's three times," she says. The next strike hits home, and I cry out the trees. What she lacks in experience, she makes up for with enthusiasm. Each strike of her hips brings stinging impact to my flesh that I fear will leave me red and raw for days. I said she was small? She certainly does not seem so now, plunging herself into me with voracious hunger, filling the throbbing tunnel of my body with her perilous appetite to go deeper, and deeper, and deeper still. My insides sop with their need, so wet am I she fairly glides into me. But there's nothing gliding in how she bottoms out with a percussive slap of flesh joining flesh. The vines she's laced around my bottom constrict, amplifying Cereza's thrusts with a forward yank of my hips into hers. Each time she hits her full extension within me draws a wistful moan from her, and a needful cry from me. The trees around us rattle their leaves as whatever small wildlife near us abandon their voyeurism and flee the tidal wave they sense is brewing. If I could move my arms, I would grab her around her twiggy body and crush her to me. Instead, all I can do is clench my cunt, ripple and tighten the walls around her to give her pleasure as best as I'm able. For her, for her, everything for her. Her huffing breath spills down the slopes of my breasts. Her nails dig painful rivets along the skin of my neck. The staccato beat of her body into mine reaches its apex. Her scent fills my nose. Clinging vines tilt my jaw upward with a forcible jerk, giving her head the space to nuzzle deeper against my bobbing throat. Her teeth find my shoulder blade and bite down into skin, seeking the hard bone beneath. She grunts like a rutting animal, and even that sound is pristine, spilling over her lips and against my sweating flesh. "Rien," she gasps, her lips swabbing each word into my sweat-damp skin. "I'm going to—I must—" "Please!" I shout. "Please!" She unleashes herself, filling me further, as if such a thing were even possible. She is magnificent, and I a wretch, groaning with painful denial as the surge of her spunk seems to stretch my body to bursting. The pang of tension her explosive burst tears out of my pulsing pussy reaches all the way into the pit of my stomach, and my well-fucked cunt clenches around her invasion, silently shouting for more of this exaggerated, inexperienced, completely inelegant use. It's not over, it can't be over—Cereza's cock may be satisfied, but my cunt is not. Cereza hesitates for only a flutter in the wake of her magnificent outflow, she does not stop. Hips moving on instinct, she continues her fuck of my paralyzed form. I feel the mess of her output squelch from me with each continued thrust. I snivel, sniffle, and moan with discomfort, trapped beneath the new ferocity she brings to this post-orgasmic plough, and she beats her body into mine until her aimless battering draws a painful half-climax from the shuddering, spasmodic clenching of my cunt. The sticky slap of our joining hips fills the glade and she forces me through the inferior orgasm she wrenches out of me, small and feeble without a guiding hand against my clit, and yet somehow unbearable. With her eager, fucking use she tears from my body a climax as all-consuming and powerful as a blustering gale, bracing as a sock in the gut, and laced with raw yearning for more, somehow worse than if I hadn't had anything at all. Trapped in the Thicket I scream to the trees all around us, "Stop!" I beg, laughing. "Stop! I can't take it anymore, please!" She obeys, though none too quickly. Drawing to a close after a few languid throws of her hips, Cereza releases her bite around my neck, resting her cheek instead against my shoulder instead. Her breathing comes in ragged wheezes. The air is still, for a moment, until we break it with our shared giggles, when the slip of her softening cock out of my abused cunt—and the dribbling flow of her essence that follows—sends a trembling chill through both our stomachs that she, unbound as she is, is fortunate enough to express with a wriggle of her body. For my part, still quite unable to move, I'm forced to simply endure how my inability to shake out the tickling in my gut simply compounds its pressure into the still-building desire in my loins. Let it never be said that Rien Monfrese was ever satisfied with one orgasm, to say nothing of only a half of one. Cereza's hair smells of fresh sweat, and forest dew, and all the wonderful things in the world. I murmur with the soft sensation of her vines stroking affectionately through the hair at the back of my head. She nuzzles her nose curiously against the curve of my shoulder and sighs, wriggling herself against me, smearing the sticky sap of our shared bodies between us in a woeful mess—but oh well. What fun ever came from a clean fun? As she recovers, Cereza lifts her head, blinking up at me with a lethargic groan. "That's five times you said please, now," she appraises me. "Six," I say. "Lost in the throes of your passion, you must've missed one." "Six? Why, that's even worse!" Giggling, Cereza separates herself from me. Stepping down from the boulder, she walks backwards a pace or two, deft eyes surveying the sopping waste she has made of my body. I follow her gaze, finding the vines that still constrain my movement burning brighter than ever, like chains of beautiful, pink stars. Bridled energy bristles through my limbs. Once she lets me loose, I've no idea whether I'll scream, shiver, or run around the clearing until I'm out of breath. I clear my throat. "Perhaps we can speak on your superstitions after you free me?" In the wake of her resplendent use of me, my stomach finds space to begin its rumbling anew. An uncharacteristically shy smile finds my face. "To say nothing of feeding me—which was, beg pardon for reminding you, your part of the bargain in the first place." "No, no, no," Cereza replies, firmly. "This won't do at all. After all, what is six but two threes?" Groaning, I flex my muscles against my shackles, finding, quite expectantly, that they've become no looser in the interim. "Then what do you propose we do on the matter, great glade witch?" "Mind your tone, Rien the soldier, Rien the half-elf, Rien the rarity." Cereza says. "Thicket curses are never to be trifled with." Touching her lip and deploying her eyes to the sky in thought, a look of shrewd revelation soon tinkles in the corners of Cereza's eyes. Reaching down beside her, she lifts the cooked rabbit, now cold, and waving it right front of my face. The still-overwhelming smell of sustenance wafts beneath my nose. The meat is so close, I snap my head forward, aiming to tear it from her grip with my teeth alone; but the second I make my play, she snatches it away from me. "I suppose we'll have to find a way to make you say it again." Hiding the spit behind her back, Cereza leans fully forward, her grin growing in eager measures. "For your own safety, of course."