Fate Deals the Cards Temperance

  Chapter 15 Family Ties

  I staggered out of my lair and into the bright-bright too awful sunshine of sunrise, before I realized my error… Emmie’s cackle of glee, when I staggered back in, blinded, stunned and helpless was so cruel!

  She made it up to me, while my eyes recovered, by playing one of our favorite games. The giggling girl ‘bound’ me in ‘ropes’ of twisted grass from our nest; then stood over me grinning and touching me all over, except where I desperately wanted to be touched.

  Occasionally, one or two of the more adventurous girls would join our game, teasing and nipping their helpless leader, testing their own boundaries and mine.

  It was mildly dangerous and slightly naughty, as we played games that sweetly mirrored the dark truth of the world around us. Eventually the ‘enraged gobb-man’ would ‘break free’ and gently take vengeance on his tormentors in exactly the way they hoped.

  Today we were alone, as she tickled my tummy, fondled my feet, made out with my bellybutton and generally had a fine time, goofing on the ‘helpless captured male’ that she had in her power.

  If you’ve never just completely surrendered to someone you trust completely, you are really missing out, believe me.

  When I emerged into the late morning sunshine, goggled up, under a shady hat of woven leaves and much more relaxed, my young students were following Saphie and Thera through the first few phrases of our spear dance… without me.

  It was kinda heartbreaking, seeing how far she’d come and so quickly and the others as well… Saphie smiled so brightly that I felt better immediately, when she spotted me coming. I sensed it through the shift in her aura, through my connection to the garden, rather than with my eyes; but the feeling landed on me, as lightly as a butterfly alights on a flower.

  We finished our morning lessons together and I watched the students prepare to depart with a real feeling of accomplishment growing in my belly. I composed myself, then I spoke very slowly and clearly to my cheerful gaggle of sweaty, tired goblin children. “Kids… we move again next dawn. Tell all clan. Important job! Chief’s warriors now go, tell all.”

  The little pack of goblins darted away in every direction, giggling with excitement at being important and having a job from the chief. I was eager to have a stretch, catch up on my morning meditation and workout, before the entire day got out of hand.

  I had another two hours or so, by my admittedly crude goblin timekeeping skills, before I could really sleep. Sacking out too early was a certain recipe for throwing my whole pattern out of whack, which would throw my training out of whack and then I would be one more step down the slippery slope into pure goblinhood.

  It took a while before I stumbled on the key to successfully balancing my wildly chaotic hormones and emotions; moderation. I was walking a hormonal, magical, emotional, and mental tightrope without a net and people were depending on me.

  Keeping up my training proved vital to my continued development; including meditation, musical and mental exercises, those were the most critical. Slacking on those even a little could send me into a sour funk or angry, sulky and unpleasant moods. A moody chief made all the girls nervous, since I was basically a large, dangerous predator, restrained by a terribly thin leash. That was shit for morale and that made me feel shitty, which then made things worse…

  The flipside was also true; if I kept things mellow, breezy and light, the girls were naturally a cheerful and gregarious lot; so long as I remained a comfortable distance away. My proximity, or I suppose, the presence of any male, would cast a nervous pall over the proceedings. Couldn’t blame them, I wouldn’t want a chaotic, unpredictable and very large goblin looming over me.

  I was largely unwelcome in ‘girl-time’ and it was almost always ‘girl-time’ at my house. The runties and the few girls who weren’t afraid of me anymore were my only real social interaction.

  By day, I was almost entirely blind, outside my home turf… Which meant I was surrounded by fragrant, giggling, horny girls, who were not interested in what I had on offer, with no escape. In desperation I started messing around at my workbench, creating a huge number of potions, lotions, amulets and charms in an attempt to relieve my discomfort.

  All my experiments and prototypes failed utterly. In my house, I couldn’t not smell, feel, hear and just generally sense exactly how many yummy morsels were roaming around… and what they were getting up to… together, all the time.

  Without the constant ‘release’ of smushing all those tender bellies with my babystick, morning and night… I was getting a little angsty and all up in my feels. I also had to dump my crock of ‘ink’ more than once, when it threatened to overflow.

  That meant I was spending most of my time alone at night, since only a few girls were still nocturnal and of those, even fewer wanted to be near a male who was clearly struggling to restrain his… sexual exuberance.

  At least by night I could wander under the stars, hunt, play my flute in the hills or just meditate beneath the sky, naked. If you’ve got a constant erection, wearing crude, restrictive, home-spun palm fiber shorts is pure torture. Getting out of my pants was job number one, as soon as I left the grounds.

  The kilt stayed, but it was more as a protection from the elements than anything else, since the scent of a ripe tummy would render it little more than a flag, indicating the angle of my dangle. My homemade kilt did a more than fair job of keeping my dick and balls away from thorns, nettles and cockleburrs; which was a vital task!

  My harem fantasies of goblin girls lounging by the sea, while I fished the waters in tranquil bliss were on the rocks, being battered apart by the cruel stormwinds of reality and the crushing waves of biology. Unfortunately, my mast was fully rigged and flying all flags, declaring fair weather and smooth sailing ahead, despite the wreck it protruded from so absurdly.

  Poor Sarafina started avoiding me, aside from her nightly ritual bathing; which Emmie now supervised, since I was becoming a little unpredictable at times.

  Three long, lonely nights in a row, I slipped into the forest and blazed a path through the night, until I found a good place to set up. I’d summon the house, then march my happy ass back to where the ladies waited, in their burrows, asleep around the circle of dark soil our home always left behind. We would follow my trail, then resume our daily lives. The end result was me, safely in the wilderness for half the day and the entire night, where I wasn’t constantly being tempted.

  It was unfair, marching them so hard all day, but it meant I was spending less time soaking in the hormonal soup that was inexorably eroding my sanity. It was also brutal on me, since I still needed to maintain my practices… my last thin thread of sanity, in a world where I couldn’t stop thinking about those sweet, tempting girls and their warm, fragrant, welcoming tummies.

  /

  “It moves swiftly, my lord. Still headed almost due west.” Axelrod spoke very briskly, while standing at attention before the lord inquisitor’s tent. The man was becoming unpredictable in his moods, as they pursued this strange phenomenon through the wilderness.

  “We follow as swiftly as we may, my man…” Peltier crooned merrily, in one of his manic moods today.

  Axelrod decided to take a chance, so he cleared his throat and paused.

  “Yes, sir Axelrod?” The lord asked mildly, still in his shadowy tent.

  “The… entity we are tracking, sir, it seems to be C rank in all of my readings, my lord. Is such haste truly needed? The men and horses are getting run ragged, my lord.”

  “Axelrod, don’t ever question my orders again. If the horses can’t keep up, we abandon them and march. We will kill this thing, at any cost.” The flap fell closed, as the sound of an armored knight making himself ready, rose from within. “We depart within the hour. Dismissed.”

  /

  “This is becoming unsustainable, my chief…” Sarafina grumbled, while supervising Emmie’s gentle and careful ride on my pogo stick. I was getting pretty antsy and couldn’t help fantasizing about just jamming myself into something warm, wet and wriggling, right to the hilt. The thought of being balls deep in Emmie flipped the right switches, but I had to shut that train down real fast!

  Naturally, that was when Sarafina had to butt in again.

  “Slow your breathing, Ghnash… Keep focus on Emmie, not your babystick!” She scolded me, while I was already working on that. I tried to formulate an answer, but I was focused on not hurting anyone with my damned dick, so a grunt was all I managed.

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  “Good boy. Emmie, talk to me…” The witch crooned, as she snapped her taloned fingers in front of my dazed mate’s eyes. “Oh, she’s gone bye-bye, chief. Help me pop her off of you.”

  That was the hardest part, feeling her slip from around me, taking that warm, welcoming comfort away, while the blood still thundered in my ears and spots danced before my eyes. I stood there, flat on my back, towering and raging at the cold, not-moist outside world.

  “I’m sorry, chief… I can’t. I still haven’t recovered from last night.” Sara whispered hoarsely, sounding beyond exhausted. “Even my jaw hurts.”

  “Is okie, Ghnash will wank. Rest, we travel again.” I grumbled, while wrestling a fractious tribe member back into line.

  “Time, my boy is a luxury…” Sarafina whispered in my ear as she bathed me in the evening, after Saphie went to bed; something she’d taken up regularly. “Just as these moments we share are a sweet and idle treasure.”

  She chuckled as she washed my rump, getting right up box canyon with her wad of soapy marsh plants.

  “Don’t tell Emmie I touched your tushie… Even though I scrubbed it just for her.”

  She had a giggle and continued her lesson. “Goblins are long-lived, in our natural state. Two or three hundred years is not uncommon, I’m told by those who would know. We isekai take that a few steps farther, lad. We are largely undying, which means we will emerge from our graves in new flesh a few days after death. I speak of this now and only now. Do not discuss it with anyone, boy.” She flicked my ear to be certain I was paying attention, as she washed my back. “To continue; the thing about time is the relativistic nature of perceptions.”

  I grunted in confusion at that, and because she was busily massaging my shoulders with wise, skilled hands.

  “I heard it said quite succinctly once.” She sighed in my ear. “a whole day spent sitting next to a lover can vanish in a heartbeat, a single moment sitting on hot coals can last a lifetime.”

  We giggled together for a while, enjoying the camaraderie of two lost souls far from home. “You were human once, boy… I am sure of it now. A human from a world very different from those I knew, when I could walk the realms, before landing in this blighted mess.”

  Once again I declined to answer, mostly because I didn’t want to lie to her… and I had the distinct impression that I hadn’t been properly human in a very, very long time. Also, it seemed to amuse her a little, that was fun. “So be it, Ghnash, have your secrets…” She faltered and stumbled over her last word. “Ouch! I bit my tongue!”

  “That was decidedly… eldritch, boy!” She glared at me suspiciously and grunted. “There is some strange magic hanging around you, something I can’t see or smell. Something not even a little bit goblin, not of this world, but touched by mankind. Odd indeed!”

  I shrugged again, honestly clueless; but that word, Secret… It rang in my skull, shaking my senses a little like a name; the name of someone I knew well. I was absolutely the name of someone I loved like family, in another life.

  “Time, boy, we have much of it, but it is unevenly distributed. I sense that you will have very little time to savor peace in the near term.” She washed my hair and ears, before gently scrubbing my throat very slowly and luxuriously. A real show of trust for creatures with sharp talons like us.

  “That is why I lavish attention on you this way. I need you to remember that you are not an animal, when things get hectic.”

  She wrapped herself around me from behind, slowly raking her claws up me from my groin to throat, softly and gently, making me shudder with the pleasure of our trust and the strange bond we shared.

  “Now go, get on with your night, there is at least one girl waiting for you up there.”

  So there was. Emmie lay in my nest, waiting for her freshly scrubbed, very hard husband to come upstairs. “Mmm, you smell good.” She purred. “My baby-hole is still sore from last time, so you only get mouth stuff, chief.” She petted and stroked me like a sulky child, just for fun, before she took me in her mouth and put part of me to sleep, before crashing out on top of me, drooling a mix of slobber and me, onto my chest.

  I slipped out of the nest a while later, leaving Emmie wrapped up snug and still smiling in her sleep. As I rose, those golden-green eyes were watching again, from the far side of the house, among the burrows.

  I sat on the edge of the nest watching her watch me, until Thera crept out, her tail bottle brushed out into a huge floof and her ears pinned back. She wore the shirt and pants I’d given Saphie… and her confidence had grown quite a bit from just that small mercy.

  She’d gained some weight too, she was well groomed and looked a healthy. The poor thing no longer stank of abject terror, all the time either. She smelled scared now, but she sat before me, and waited for me to say something for a little too long.

  “Yub? Always free to speak. Ghnash is goblin king, not cat king.” I tried to smile, which was a huge error on my part.

  She settled down after a few seconds of panic, where she was convinced I was about to eat her alive. Some faces can smile, some can’t. I remained seated, until she crept back from the dark corner she’d scampered into and resumed her position at my feet.

  “Your daughter never orders me to do anything…” She whispered so softly only I could have heard, in that house full of sharp eared gobbos.

  “Yub, is good girl.” I agreed readily, with a raised eyebrow that clearly asked where the problem was.

  “You feed me, shelter me, even clothed me… Why?” She asked, barely above her previous whisper.

  “Nub trick, nub nasty surprises.” I shook my head in flat denial. “Saphie is boss. Her word is law.”

  “She just asks me to help with her chores and with guiding the little ones.” She almost mewed with the distress and worry of it. Her tail thrashed against my leg unconsciously as she complained about not being bossed around enough.

  “Good. Is important job. Chief’s precious daughters!” I grunted with absolute surety, closing the matter so far as I was concerned.

  “Saphie likes. Daughters like. Ghnash likes. Is good.” I gently and so very slowly reached out and patted her head, like Saphie often did.

  She flinched, but endured contact with me for a moment, before she fled, headed into the deeper burrows, where the kids slept in a group nest with a few of their mothers joining them from time to time. Saphie especially liked sleeping in a nice snug goblin pile.

  I watched her flee into the burrows, her tail still floofed out, but she seemed less terrified, somehow.

  I decided to declare that progress and moved on with my night. I had some hunting to do. Early spring by the river-side meant fish, big, slow moving, sleepy fish rising up from the deeps, looking for food in the shallows, where life moved more swiftly and abundantly. My four pronged fishing spear flashed down, taking my prey in the gills, spilling its blood into the shallows. A snatched the big, slimy brute up quickly, dragging it into my tree and out of reach of the pinchy monsters that swarmed to the scent of blood in the water.

  I traded my barbed bamboo spear for a long, heavy stone hammer, As I dropped down into my foes, swinging the awful weapon in arcing, graceful spins. Every few steps, my warhammer would split a carapace, sending the armored horrors to the afterlife they so richly deserved, in Beryl’s cookpots. All told, I staggered home exhausted, smelly and filthy, but laden down with a good number of crayfish and three big catfish. Along with a swamp python twenty feet long and a few unwary geese, I had quite a feast lined up.

  My night’s work set us up for another day of travel to the west, since walking while foraging was too slow and dangerous for my huge family. I shuddered, thinking of my girls, strung out in the woods, searching for food.

  I hunted those woods by night, when drop-bears, giant wolf spiders, coconut crabs, bark scorpions and worse things roamed.

  These peaceful grasslands and woods held dangers aplenty for the unwary, I thought, as my warhammer smashed a deadly centipede eight feet long, before it could engulf me in its manifold grasping legs and roll me up for a bite.

  When still, the giant ‘pedes looked just like a fallen log covered with shelf fungus… hop over, walk on, or worse, sit on that log and that was that. Ambush predators abounded in the marshes and woods, from humble trapjaw ants, a monster sweetpea plant that preyed on small animals; to the giant trapdoor and wolf spiders that lurked in the dark places.

  I rolled the dead ‘pede into the river to feed the mudbugs, since the centipedes were inedible to anything but the least discriminate bottom feeders and scavengers.

  I watched the corpse float away for a while, until something huge gulped it down a quarter mile downstream. I made a mental note to not swim in the river, ever.

  In my shadow, wherever things went, they didn’t degrade or go bad, so far as I could tell. Hot food went in hot and came out hot even days later, which I wasn’t going to question, not at all. I hadn’t bumped into any capacity limits, beyond being unable to fit anything bigger than me in there whole, nor could it take in living things. Whatever it was that prevented me from putting anything or taking anything out while anyone was watching was a little weird, but a magical shadow should certainly be a little odd, at least.

  /

  I got home just as the sky began to lighten in the east, as my daylight dwelling people began to stir. I was gross and filthy, but it was also time to begin the morning lessons and practices with my daughters. I emerged from the shower, squeaky clean and refreshed, and headed right over to begin the morning lessons with Saphie and the runties.

  Thera was there, as she had been lately, following along with the little ones, wielding a bamboo pole as she mimicked my steps and movements. The catgirl’s natural grace and liquid movements began to influence me, as I sought to match her smooth and elegant performance, myself.

  Before long, it was she and I, circling each other and elaborating on our dance as the kids stomped a rhythm for us. Saphie especially watched with bright and interested eyes as her new friend and I finally started communicating for real.

  Thera was not skilled, but there was something there, a strong suggestion that she already had a bit of training from somewhere.

  “You use spear before…” I grunted later, while the kids and I were soaking in the bath, after music lessons and meditation time. Thera squatted on the curb of the pool, watching Saphie bathe with mingled interest and suspicion; interest for the pool and kids, the suspicion was all for me.

  The cat woman pinned her ears back when I spoke, as if reminded of my presence and unhappy about it. “Yes, as a kitten, before I was taken as a slave. Slaves are forbidden weapons.”

  “Did Saphie forbid?” I asked very gently, while gathering my wet and giggly daughter into my arms as she swam by.

  “Nub nub.” my sweet, cheerful little green munchkin cooed happily, as she climbed on my shoulders and grabbed my ears to hold on. “I want Thera to play spears with us!”

  “Only Saphie is boss. Remember. Her rules.” I muttered gently. “Saphie, you tell Thera to nub get in pool?” My little jockey shook her head, which I couldn’t see, but she replied so vigorously, her little butt wriggled on my shoulders, transmitting her denial clearly.

  “You must remember… tell her what she is allowed. New member of clan, nub gruk our ways.” I whispered to the giggling child on my back.

  “Thera, Saphie says you is free to come and go, use bath, whatever. Yub-yub, daughter?”

  “Yub yub! Get in bath, big kitty-sister!” The real leader of the tribe ordered cheerfully.

  “Yes, master…” The cat woman mumbled awkwardly as she began to disrobe, while watching me with wide, frightened eyes. Fear and shame rolled off her in waves of unpleasant scents as she followed my silly child’s innocent demand.

  “Saphie, nub order friends to take bath… offer. Suggest if stinky. Nub command. Tell others to take off clothes is taboo. Chief says.” I told my little girl, as I plucked her from her seat and released her in the pool, to resume paddling around. I turned away, when I got out and donned a robe, before slipping out of the baths, leaving the kids and Thera to enjoy the bath in peace.

  Each morning and evening. Saphie and Thera were there, waiting on the lawn for practice and lessons. Sometimes a few extra runties joined, sometimes the whole mob, but my princess and her… slave, were always there, eager for my tutelage. So long as I wore clothing in her presence, Thera’s fear of me gradually began to dwindle, only to flare back up on the occasions when she encountered me ‘at work’.

  I wasn’t getting a line of three or four girls for my ‘office hours’ but a few still enjoyed visiting me for a bit of fun, even if their bodies had been deceived into thinking they were babyful, by my spells.

  Emmie always had time for me and was always there, if I had no ‘staffing requests’ waiting, occasionally bringing friends along for safe, supervised play with the lady of the house’s pet python.

  I began to feel like an amusement park ride, as the girls, one by one discovered that babysticks can be fun, even when their insides weren’t aching for a staking.

  With the urgency of all those unhappy bellies settled down to a low, drifting fog of extremely sexy aromas, I was having a hard time not having a hard time all the time, so I began wandering my outskirts by day and roaming the woodlands by night, for the fresh, non sexy air.

  Smushing the local nuisances and predators, got a good bit of my aggression and tension out, while also keeping my growing family safer. The tasty things Beryl did with the remains was a solid bonus too.

  /