Clem strode purposefully along the winding cobble street, feeling the cool, soft dirt pack between her toes with each step. This city seemed full of wonder, of boats that could sail on the sea and houses that reached taller than the trees she had grown up in, but she still couldn't understand why people would choose to walk on such hot, hard stone. Just one more thing she would try to get Neera to explain. In the weeks since they had arrived, the dryad had taken to exploring the city of Brinehold while her tiefling friend was off doing whatever it was she did during the day. It could get a bit lonely at times, but Clem never ran out of things to do. The contents of the book she was writing had tripled since coming here, the pages all filled with new entries of strange creatures like the one she was studying now.
	The thing in front of her seemed human, for the most part, but the sloped brow, stubby tusks and towering height, even while it slouched set it apart from any normal man. She had spotted it hauling a large sack to the docks and followed him. At least she thought it was a 'he'. Clem had half a page full of sketches and notes already, but she couldn't afford to let him slip by just yet. He could be the only one of his kind, for all she knew.
	The creature, what ever he was, began to pick up the pace, gently pushing through the crowded street. Clem followed suit, hurriedly trying to complete one last profile before he got away. She buried her nose in the book, scribbling furiously. She didn't realize just how fast she was walking and didn't look to see the great creature stop in his tracks.
	Clem collided into the thing's wide back and landed on her seat with a thud and started apologizing. The hairy man creature kneeled beside her and picked her book up from where it had fallen.
	"You drew this?" He asked.
	"I did, yes. Is it rude to draw people without their permission? I did not intend to be invasive if that is what this seems." She continued her apologies.
	"I like it. How much?"
	It took her a second to guess his meaning. She overheard the question sometimes in her wanderings around the port. She believed the thing meant that he wanted to take her book. Panic gripped at her chest.
	"It is incomplete. I cannot let you have this one." His furry, pointed ears twitched irritably. She tried to think of a way to console the thing. "I can draw another one for you. Will that be acceptable?" The hairy man gave a wide, pointy-toothed grin.

	Clem handed her completed sketch over to the bugbear. He was a bugbear, she had learned along with a few other things. Sitting calmly and drawing gave them time to talk. The bugbear, Daz, he was called, was going home to Lydelia for shore leave to visit his family and wanted to leave them a picture to remember him by. The dryad had never heard of Lydelia or shore leave and only had a rudimentary understanding of how families worked, but it was certainly nice to meet new people. Daz was so thankful for her hard work that he even gave her a present in the form of a round, flat, shiny gold disc.
	By the time she was done, a small circle of people had gathered to watch her draw. Once Daz stood from the stool he had been using, a plump, middle aged, human woman stepped forward to take his place. She wanted a drawing too and Clem was happy to oblige. Suzanne introduced herself and put one booted foot on the stool, hiking her skirt up to show leg up to her thigh. 
	It was a challenge to get the softness of her curves just right, especially when the blonde kept bringing her skirt up a little more and adjusting her ample breasts to sit just a little more our of her shirt every time Clem turned back from her book. A larger crowd had gathered, a crowd of gruff sailors that watched the dryad draw almost as much as they studied the way Suzanne rocked her hips to get more comfortable. Clem caught sight of Daz, still in the crowd for some reason and staring openly up and down the curvy blonde's form. She also noted Suzanne making the same looks back at the bugbear. How curious. She didn't get much time to analyze before Suzanne turned her steely blue gaze to her with a look that almost seemed to beg Clem to simply reach out and feel those soft curves for herself. Clem's pencil snapped and she hid her blushing behind the massive book as she fished for another.
	After Suzanne came another willing subject and another and another after that. Clem had run out of blank pages in her book by the time the sun was setting and the crowd dispersed. The dryad hefted the bag of gifts everyone had given her and looked up and down the dock street as it began to fill with the more unruly night life. Neera would still be at her 'work', so there was still a bit of time left to visit her new friend. 
	
	Clem brushed aside the small branches that weaved in a curtain across the archway entrance to the garden. Amidst the tall grass and long forgotten bushes stood an old, thick oak. The dryad approached the tree casually and gave it a hug of greeting, just as she had every day since she had found it, before scampering up into one of the lower branches.
	Oak was old, older than the city that had built up around him. He knew plenty of things that most everyone else had forgotten. He even knew how to be comfortable with being the only one of his kind in such a big, scary city. Clem had tried to learn that from him in the past weeks, but hadn't quite gotten the handle of it so far. She tried desperately to fit all the things she wanted to talk about into the half hour of daylight they had left.
	She told him all about her day at the docks and all the drawing she had gotten done and all the new friends she had made. Oak seemed glad to hear she that she had a good day. She needed to know the purpose of the little gold circles people kept giving her, but Oak had no answer. He didn't disagree when she proposed the idea of the coins being gifts given to friends, though. By the time she asked him about his day, Oak had started to fall asleep. She thought about who she could give the friendship tokens to. Neera was the only real friend she had, she supposed. Clem wondered if she would even like the present, worried that it might be too little or too much. What if they weren't friends? Thinking about the tiefling's feelings always put Clem's stomach in a jumbled mess.
	The sun finally set and the lack of sunlight put the plant girl to sleep.

	A commotion in the bushes below woke Clem from her long nap. The dryad rubbed her face into the worn bark of Oak's branch, trying to fight sleep back into her body. The sounds underneath persisted and she felt with a bit of sadness that she was truly awake now. She reached out to Oak and he did not answer. Trees were heavy sleepers. Clem's eyes began to finally unblur and her hearing focused.
	The sounds were voices, whispers that sometimes cut into a giggle. It was dark around her, excluding the little glass cages the people of Brinehold kept fire in at night. A sliver of lamplight coming through the archway illuminated a patch of the garden just below Clem. The dryad peeked over the thick branch that had served as her bed. At the foot of the tree, she saw the bulky creature, a bugbear, if memory served, that she had met earlier in the day. He had Suzanne, the plump, middle age blonde from before, pinned against Oak's trunk. Clem thought about crying out until she saw that he was kissing her.
	He was shirtless, his hairy barrel chest heaving with excitement. He held his partner's head into the deep kiss while the other massive hand fought to undo her soft, blue dress. For her part, Suzanne moaned into the lip lock and felt her monstrous partner, running fingers through coarse body hair and paying extra attention to something in the front of his trousers.
	Clem knew she should leave, sneak away and never speak of this, but she couldn't for the life of her find enough will to abandon such a unique opportunity. Heterosexual inter-species mating? She'd never heard of such a thing and it made her head swim with questions of compatibility on both the physical and genetic levels. Could this couple successfully produce offspring? Could this couple's parts even... fit? She really should be going. She tore her eyes from the scene and turned to try and scurry onto an adjacent roof.
	"We shouldn't be doin' this out here." The gruff bugbear voice whispered behind her. "What if somebody sees?"
	"I hope they see." The soft woman moaned back. "I want them all to watch you fuck me with your nice, big cock."
	Clem froze and felt her face burning. Curiosity won. She just wanted to see how it worked, honest. She took her place back, down on her belly and staring over the side of the branch.
	The bugbear had gotten Suzanne's dress open. Her chest was even more ample than Clem had thought. Hefty, milky-white breasts spilled out of the open gown and into her lover's hand as he mauled them. He harshly tugged on one broad, pink nipple before popping it into his mouth. The hand that wasn't roughly playing with her chest had snaked its way up Suzanne's skirt and she feebly pawed at the knot that kept his pants up with small, shaky hands. She was moaning loudly now, almost yelling.
	Clem felt an odd heat growing just beneath her stomach. She rubbed her legs together and felt something sticky begin to coat her inner thighs. This sort of thing had never happened to her up until a month ago, until she had met Neera. What was that woman doing to her?
	Suzanne let out a gasp as her partner sprung loose from his now open trousers. Her hands ran down the veiny length, making him groan into her pillowy breasts. The bugbear hiked up his partners skirt and closed in on her, picking her up effortlessly and pinning her back against the tree to get the right angle. Clem doubted the mechanics of this. Even if they could fit together, it would only be pain for the female. Right?
	She was proven wrong as the human woman screamed in delight. There was only a split second of deafening sound before her lover covered her mouth with a big paw, but it confirmed that she was certainly enjoying herself. Her mate took no more time on foreplay and began to buck into her as she moaned and screamed and giggled into his hand.
	It was a fascinating display, but Clem found herself drawn to the woman. The man was too hairy, hard and rough for her to really be interested in him, but the way Suzanne's heavy breasts bounced, the way her slender neck glistened with sweat hypnotized the dryad. She let one hand wander under her stomach to the source of the wet heat she was feeling. She nearly joined in on the blonde's revelry. It felt so good to be touched. She'd gotten some practice at this over the past few weeks and knew what felt good. Two fingers spread the petals of her sex while a third found the fleshy nub that sent little shocks of joy through her. She pressed and rolled and flicked at it, covering her mouth with her free hand to keep the sounds she wanted desperately to make inside. She knew this was wrong, but the threat of being caught only made it more exciting. Part of her even wanted to get caught. She fantasized about being invited to join by the soft woman. She wanted the human to touch her. She wanted to touch the human back. The visions swam in her head and made her fingers accelerate, but none excited her more than the thoughts that came, uninvited, of the tiefling who was probably waiting for her back at the room.
	The couple's pace grew erratic, both bucking against each other wildly. The dryad felt herself quickly climbing that slope to climax and lost herself to pleasure, grinding frantically at the hand that lay sandwiched between her sex and the tree branch. A wild thought crossed her mind, the desire to be the bugbear and take that woman, to enter her and ride her pushed her over the edge. Her whole body shook, her legs kicked and it was all she could do to not convulse herself right out of the tree.
	By the time she was done, she found the couple panting and standing still against the tree. With horror, the dryad saw that Suzanne's head had gone back at some point and the human's dazed eyes were locked on her own. Clem felt frozen and wanted to run, but her limbs hanged limply beside her and refused to respond. The plump woman simply winked at her and turned back to her lover.
	"That was wonderful, darling. You need to look me up again whenever you get back in town."
	"I think I'll do that." The bugbear responded, still trying to catch his breath.
	The large man thing collected his clothes and stalked away, leaving Suzanne and Clem alone in the dimly lit garden. The plump woman pretended that the dryad was not there as she closed only the first button of her top, letting the pink nubs that capped her massive breasts poke out over the top and began to walk away. At the entrance, she turned back to where she knew the dryad hid and flashed a smile before disappearing into the night.

	The sun was starting to rise by the time Clem got back to the room Neera and her shared. She found the tiefling laying face down on top of the covers, still clothed and with her hair a tangled mess of knots and loose straw. The dryad perched, cross-legged, on the bed next to her friend and idly plucked bits of hay from the inky black jumble. The sack of gold coins was cradled in her lap. That could wait for later. Clem had quickly learned how Neera felt about being woken early and besides, it was nice to watch her sleep. The strange woman always stressed herself into a little ball with 'work', just another concept the dryad couldn't wrap her head around.
	The tiefling stirred and mumbled something into the goose down pillow. Clem dared to run her fingers through her friends ragged nest of soft hair and coo, "Good morning, Neera. I brought you a present."
	Neera rolled onto her side, revealing swollen, deep crimson bruise around her eye. Clem tried her best to ignore that and handed over the heavy bag.
	"Where did you get all this?" The tiefling asked as she dug through.
	"People gave it to me, it does not matter. What happened to your eye?" Neera winced as the dryad carefully touched the darkened spot, but didn't try to pull away. Instead, she brought her own hand up to gently lay on top of Clem's.
	"Working, hun. Sometimes, it gets kinda dangerous."
	"Oh." The dryad replied. "That is fine. If it is dangerous, next time I will just go with." She tried to make it sound like it wasn't a question, but heard her voice falter a bit at the end.
	"Clem, no. It's important that-"
	"If it is important, than I want to be a part of it, too." That might have been a bit too forceful. Neera's eyes wandered everywhere: the ceiling, the gold, the pillows on the bed, but never once at Clem. Her response was little more than a resigned sigh.
	"Fine." 
	The dryad beamed. Feeling especially daring after her victory, she planted a kiss on her dear friend's lips and wasn't rejected. She was so happy that she went in for a second, a third, a fourth. Eventually, Neera broke away and spoke.
	"But you need to listen to me. Everything I say, you do, no matter how small or silly it might sound, got it?"
	Clem beat her fist against her chest as she had seen the armored men in town do. "Yes, boss." Neera smiled. The dryad like watching her smile, too. "So, uh... What do we do first, boss?"
	"I'll figure something out, hun. I always do."