All Aflutter

Nicole's Note: The appeal of mommy domme/little girl is strictly the idea of a grown adult losing autonomy and independence and needing to be taken care of. Ásdís is 24 years old, and looks her age. All characters in this story are adults. If md;lg isn't your thing, that's totally fine! But I do want to be clear that I think lol*con and similar "kinks" are extremely sketchy, and it's not what we're going for here.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ásdís's antennae twitched as she craned her neck back, her gloved fingers straining to squeeze every last drop from her waterskin. She licked her parched lips, panting, squinting against the blazing sun. Even in her hooded cloak, still the light beat down, dazzling her, reminding her cruelly of her plight.

Ásdís had lost everything in the last few weeks. Everything, she thought, but that wicked sun, and the screaming whistle winds above.

She wiped her mouth with her sleeve as she lowered the waterskin back into her satchel. Well,

that

was a little melodramatic, maybe.

It had been two weeks since Ásdís had left the village. Two weeks since her training had completed, and she had been advised by her mentors to head north. This was a bitter note for her—she'd practically begged for an assignment in the Mountains, but the Mountains' lodges were all occupied, and the Northern Reaches were, to contrast, starving for protectors.

There was a reason for that, the dopterine thought sourly, fluttering her wings for a little breeze as she picked her way between the towering stone pillars that rose across the badlands like a porcupine's quills—or like an underground city of giants with only its massive chimneys visible.

She couldn't help but giggle at the thought, as it brightened her spirits a little to imagine. A whole city of giants living just underground, totally oblivious to her journey. It was a silly idea, but then again, the Northern Reaches didn't see a lot of travelers to and fro. Who knew what lay under the surface here?

The mothgirl danced across the barren rocky landscape with the grace of a ballet dancer, making an idle game of picking out spots of flat ground that didn't have potentially slippery or boot-stabbing pebbles or vicious goatheads to worry about. There was precious else to do.

The problem with sending a Toxin Ranger up north, she thought, rolling her eyes, was that she had been trained for the

Mountains

! She knew so well how to make her way up in the slopes and snowy peaks of her homeland—she knew how to hide from the mountain predators, how to negotiate with the spring nixies and scrub fairies and mirror naiads, which berries were safe to eat and which fey could be trusted, how to get water from the ice.

But down in the badlands? Her heart raced as she fluttered a little higher, trying once again to get her barrens. Down here there was nothing. Nothing but her instincts, calibrated for the wrong terrain entirely. Nothing but her instincts against the burning sun and freezing nights and windswept spires.

She couldn't even see the Mountains anymore. Even though she knew better, she turned to stare back south, and her heart spun in instinctive fright, her wings fluttering faster. The flat horizon, spiked only by this forest of cruel stone, felt emptier and more menacing than any snarling mountain lion or treacherous cliff ledge.

Ásdís had never, ever left the Mountains before in her life.

The badlands weren't even flat—they had their own slopes, but the cliffs fell down into the earth, now, rather than rising and falling into the clouds. Her heart quaked as she spotted a ravine just around the corner from her current destination. She couldn't even see the bottom, and the thought of falling down there, and not having room to fly back out...

Back home, the cliffs gave way to sky. Here, the cliffs drew down into the abyss. To contrast, the horizon was like gazing down from the tallest peak. Ásdís's breath started to come in faster as she bobbed in the air, staring at the blazing sun's descent in the western sky, imagining gravity remembering itself and her being dropped down into that void of teeth and open air... she could almost feel the world pulsing around her as she spun to face the eastern expanse, then the north, and it was all

nothing

, and the world was pulsing like drumbeats—and she realized it was her own pounding heart, realized she wasn't breathing—

Ásdís tore her gaze away and dropped to the ground, gasping for breath, clutching her head, eyes closed, trying to drive the fear from her quaking body.

It felt almost pathetic, being afraid of open spaces

and

feeling claustrophobic at the fairy chimneys all around her. The world just felt wrong. It felt twisted. Like she'd been tossed into a warped dimension and everything had been torn apart and put back together ill-fit.

It didn't help, she thought, feeling her stomach rumbling, that she was out of provisions, out of water, and almost totally lost.

The mothgirl forced herself to press on, using the sun as her guide—a fleeting guide, for sure, with the sun approaching the empty horizon she dared not look at and no helpful mossy trees in sight to point her way.

She tried to keep her spirit shigh. She just had to find an oasis, or a town, or the like, before she... well. Before the lack of water started to be a problem. That couldn't be too hard, right? Even just a little stream. Mountain Folk were no stranger to occasional hungry times, but going without water was quite another matter.

Anything other than the burning red cloudless sky and the burnt umber landscape would be a comfort, she thought, biting her lip. And a roof over her head, walls around her, a comfortable place to sit and take off her confining boots and relax...

Ásdís was so lost in her fantasies, she almost didn't notice the patch of green until she was upon it.

The mothgirl stopped short, her heart leaping into her throat as she stared at a genuinely verdant patch of greenery at the base of an especially massive fairy chimney. She didn't even believe her eyes for a moment.

But she had come upon what appeared to be a large patch of plump, ruby-red strawberries.

Immediately, Ásdísis' hunger and thirst rose to do battle with a panicked scrap of caution. She didn't know for sure that these were strawberries. It made no sense for them to be growing out here. Surely this was the work of a berry dryad, or one of the fey in her little booklet that she simply hadn't studied enough. The Northern Reaches were infamous for their cursed grounds—surely this was too perfect of a coincidence.

But despite herself, Ásdís found herself sinking to her knees, staring in rapt fixation at the beautiful berries. They glittered back at her in the dusky light, seeds shimmering like tiny inlaid gemstones, shining with seductive allure.

Her gloved fingers crept out slowly towards the berry patch, then retracted. No, she told herself. It wasn't... wasn't...

Her tummy rumbled. The rational part of Ásdís's mind sank beneath the tide of hunger as the rookie Toxin Ranger reached out and plucked a berry from the runners.

The berry was soft, as red as a cupid's lips. Ásdís felt her mouth watering as she imagined how sweet it would taste.

It was just a strawberry, she told herself, swallowing. Wild strawberries weren't uncommon. Clearly there was just some sort of oasis nearby here. She

did

see more scrub and bushes around the pillar, in fact—perhaps an underground spring? She dug her fingernail into the strawberry, positively melting inside at the juices that dribbled out over her fingertip, and smelled nothing out of the ordinary—none of the trademark spice or excessive sweetness or tanginess that tended to accompany spelled foods.

Unable to hold herself back any longer, Ásdís dug out the leaves and popped the strawberry whole into her mouth. Three more quickly followed.

Her eyes closed. She actually heard herself moan aloud as she bit down and flavor erupted in her mouth. Her lips parted in ecstatic relief. Juices dribbled out the corners of her mouth.

Then she realized what she was tasting, and her eyes screwed tightly shut, and she grimaced.

These berries were the

sourest

things she'd ever tasted. She opened her eyes and glared down at the berry patch, as her lips puckered into a little cherry shape of displeasure.

But... her mouth watered. They were ripe. They were juicy. And fey magic rarely came sour, that she knew of.

She couldn't help herself. Ásdís plucked more berries from the berry patch—just a couple at first, and then she totally lost control, and she was grabbing handfuls of them—even pink ones that weren't all ripe yet, even ones that were getting a little soft and wrinkly from too much sun—and devouring them whole, leaves and all. The sourness was unbearable, but they were

edible

, and she licked the juices from her fingers and lips and cheeks, not wanting to waste a single drop.

The strawberry bed was a mess, ripped and shredded in her desperation. She was

so

hungry, even though pangs of guilt chimed in her heart. Would a true Toxin Ranger be so reckless? She'd worked so hard to persuade the elders that she was ready. She'd desperately promised to be careful, to show good sense, to... to not eat strange foods.

But maybe they'd have seen it differently if they were as hungry as she was, she thought, her sourness matching the fruits as she plucked off four more and devoured them in seconds. She wasn't being reckless! She'd been careful! And besides, these

were

just ordinary strawberries!

The little carved wooden label lying half-buried beneath the runners and the soil told her so.

Ásdís stared blankly, still chewing. She reached down, blinking large eyes, and picked up the little garden stake. It was finely-crafted, in a rustic, make-do kind of way, engraved with the little relief carving, crude but easily understood, of a strawberry. Faded inked letters spelled below:

Su e St awb r y

.

Sunset Strawberries were, Ásdís recalled with a sinking feeling in her stomach, a popular strain grown down in the Sagebrush and other dry flatlands, good at drinking up all available water with especially deep roots and producing small quantities of especially beautiful, luscious berries.

This wasn't a conveniently-placed wild patch, nor was it an insidious fey trap. At first, Ásdís had the absurdly silly idea that her 'giants in the earth' notion had been correct. But then she realized the truth.

Ásdís gulped, and she looked up at the massive fairy chimney that the strawberry patch and surrounding greenery 'happened' to be growing around.

Many of the hoodoos were especially bulbous at the top, in some strange whim of wind and rain and long-past ice that Ásdís couldn't begin to understand. It gave them the appearance almost of great towers, or, um, well... Ásdís blushed, embarrassed at the crude alternative comparison.

This one in particular had an especially large top, and now that Ásdís was looking, she could see that carved into the side was... She stood up and backed away to see more clearly.

A deep alcove had been carved into the side, and in that alcove stood a door. It was a front porch. And there were windows of smoky colored glass, and from the top billowed smoke from an actual little clay chimney.

Ásdís hadn't gotten lucky with a wild berry patch.

She had just desecrated somebody's little garden.

Immediately, the suppressed guilt came flooding back stronger than ever, now with a purpose.

Why don't you think?

the dopterine thought, feeling her pale lavender face blushing a deep, hot pink.

All you had to do was look up! All you had to do was not stare at the ground like a great, big blundering beetle!

She had to apologize, she knew. She had to make amends. And she had to

pray

... She swallowed, fluttering into the air and making her way to the top of the spire. She had to

pray

that whoever lived here wouldn't be too angry to give her directions to the nearest town.

Whoever it was probably wouldn't be dangerous, she hoped, if they were just growing ordinary strawberries. She licked her lips, frowning. Horribly sour strawberries, but perhaps the dry season was a bad time for them. And she wasn't about to make complaints to her hopefully-host when she only knew the taste because she'd ransacked their garden.

Ásdís was halfway there when she remembered why she hadn't been flying so high before.

And then the winds picked up, and the dopterine gave a squeak of fright as her fluttering, delicate little moth wings suddenly found themselves buffeted and punished like a poppy being fought over by three petulant children.

"

Crumbs!

" she cried, as her topknot came undone and her curly pink hair billowed in her face. She whirled about, disoriented, scrambling to clear her vision as her wings fought desperately against the roaring tide. She got her hair out of her face, only for her massive violet pupils to be dazzled by an accidental glance toward the sunset.

Ásdís's arms lunged out as she felt her wings failing her, and she scrambled for a handhold, a foothold,

anything

. Her fingers grasped at rough but unpocked stone, and the knee of her trousers ripped as she scraped the side painfully—

And her hand grasped the edge of the little alcove, and on pure adrenaline, she folded her wings safely against her body, to keep them from carrying her off like sails, and scrambled all the way up and onto the front porch.

She lay there, curled up, panting desperately for breath, knee stinging and head spinning and eyes blinking away blazing comets and sharp, spiky galaxies...

"Oh, you poor

thing

."

Ásdís looked up, startled, eyelids still fluttering. Her vision was still messed up, as dopterine eyes tended to struggle with vivid color, but she realized that the door was open.

And there was a figure standing in the doorway, staring down at her with a look Ásdís couldn't interpret because faces were still a blur of white and pink and blue.

"Are you okay?" the figure asked, head tilting to the side. They seemed to be wearing a strange hat, or something—something was sticking out from the sides of her head. Ásdís couldn't make it out, but when the figure reached down, Ásdís took their hand and let them help her to her feet. "Can you understand me, dear?" Their voice was high, melodic, delicate, like aluminum windchimes.

"Y-Yeah." As Ásdís rose shakily to her feet, her vision began to clear. She blinked rapidly, shyly kicking her right foot behind her left, as she saw the speaker more and more vividly.

The speaker was a gorgeous human woman—or, well, not human, Ásdís noted, blinking up at those two massive curving horns, and that twitching tufted tail behind her, but human-like—wearing a pretty blue sundress.

Her face was clear of blemishes, with deep magenta lips that seemed to glisten in the fading light like morning dew. Her eyes were a depe, vivid hazel flecked with positively electric green glow, and her hair was a beautiful burning chestnut brown, shimmering as it spilled down to her shoulders.

Ásdís struggled to keep her eyes there, at face level—no easy feat, especially with how dizzy she was, and how much shorter she was than this woman. It was all too easy to let her eyes drift lower, over that low-cut neckline, those massive, beautiful breasts that filled out the dress like...

Ásdís swallowed, feeling her cheeks heating and hoping she wasn't blushing too bright against her freckles. "Um. I mean, yes. Yes, I can understand you, and y-yes, I'm fine." She glanced down sheepishly at her dusty attire. "Just... scraped my knee a little bit getting up here."

"I can see!" The woman frowned, putting a finger to her lips. "I'm awfully sorry, I would have lowered the lift had I known..."

"Oh." Ásdís blinked behind the woman, spotting a basket contraption just on the other side of the doorway. "W-Well... that's how it, um, goes sometimes, I guess!" She gave a bright smile and extended a hand, remembering her village manners. "My name is Ásdís Haust, Toxin Ranger of... of the Northern Reaches! it's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, um, Miss...?"

"Aura." The woman smiled slightly. "Goodness, I almost didn't see that clasp!"

"Oh! Yes!" Ásdís nodded and giggled shyly down at her clasp, which was dusty indeed. The clasp depicted a mushroom, the trademark of her Ranger order. "Um, well, it's very nice to meet you, Miss Aura!"

"Just Aura is fine for now, dear," Aura said, giggling as well. "You're very polite!"

"I was raised to be, M—Aura." Ásdís beamed proudly. She tilted her head slightly, feeling her antennae twitching as her curiosity got the better of her. "Um, Aura, what are those, may I ask?" Aura was clearly not human. She couldn't be a demon—there weren't any freed demons known in the Northern Reaches since the end of the Horny War, and if there were, surely Ásdís wouldn't have been sent> That was Rift Ranger business. Aura was clearly a fey.

"Hm? Oh, these?" Aura blinked at Ásdís, seeming a little surprised. "Don't tell me you've never met a... a cowgirl before?"

Ásdís cocked her head to the other side. "No, Miss! I only just graduated, though. I've been training the past five years back home, and we haven't got any cowgirls there!" She paused. "At least, none I've heard of."

She didn't want to admit to this stranger—whose protection Ásdís was probably responsible for—that she had almost never left the village even while training, blessed and cursed with a bounty of seasoned Rangers in the area only too happy to teach her everything they knew. She especially didn't want to admit that she'd met lamost no fey at all, aside from a few fairies. The rest was just... theory, and study. But she had studied well!

Studied mountain fey, anyways.

"I see!" Aura's smile widened. "Well... oh, dear, it

is

windy out, isn't it?" Ásdís had shivered as the breeze picked up. "Honestly, that's why the lfit wasn't lowered today. Normally it's down for any travelers who may happen by, but with the winds..." She reached for Ásdís's shoulder. "Would you like to come inside, dear?"

"Oh! Yes! Yes, thank you!" Ásdís beamed and bobbed her head, eagerly popping into the little cottage—though she tried to politely shrug off the hand, not wanting to seem like she was just letting herself be led around. "Thank you

so

much, Miss! I mean, Aura!" She looked around the cottage in wonder, startled at the way the stained red glass—so precious, and surely brought here at massive expense—made the whole chamber glow with rosy light. It didn't feel like a cave at all. It was snug, but cool, and decorated with pretty woven carpets and surprisingly fine furniture. In the corner smoldered a rustic brick beehive oven, its faint crackling accompanying the steady, easy-going heat of low-burning flames.

Aura seemed to be rather wealthy, or else things like this were much easier to come across up in the Northern Reaches than the Mountains.

"Not at all! Not at all! Here, dear, let me fix you something to eat." Aura tutted as she led Ásdís to the table, a beautiful bleached-white feat of carpentry with lacy abstract patterns carved into its surface like scrimshaw. "You must be starving!"

"Thirsty, mainly." Ásdís bit her lip as she sat down in the chair—there was only one, which made sense for a hermit, but did make her feel a little guilty. "It's... I mean, not that I can't find water, but—well, it's—"

"It's different down here in the badlands," Aura finished after a pause, as she swept over to the cooking area. Ásdís watched her hips sway, then blushed and tried to concentrate on the pretty pink crystal chandelier hanging above them, each candle glowing with very faint twinkling light. "Of course it is, dear. That's not your fault. Water does not come cheaply out here."