Pairs Of Pumpkins Episode 10
The Embrace of Disgrace
By Jess Faulks
Part One: The Dam of Degeneracy
Month of Adonnamoon, Day 17: Vindak
Boots and dress shoes rapped along the snaking, cobblestone streets of Stusport's Low Town, shattering the stillness of the night. The town was desolate while horns of alarm rang out in the distance above and around them, from the High Town whence they fled down a towering cliff's worth of zig-zagging stairs.
"Hurry! The safehouse is ahead!"
Portia wasn't fast with Jasper in tow. He was in his late teens and with a full stride and youthful vigor, he should have been able to keep up with the heavy-chested, older adventuress. Instead, he was panting almost as long as he'd been limping and he'd been limping from his first step. One leg was shorter than the other, he'd mentioned, unsolicited and repeatedly.
Plague had been simmering in the city while she was lost in her quest of self-discovery and Stusport was barren now. Sickly, green pennants warning of infection hung from every oil lamp lining the streets of High Town above and less consistently, here in Low Town.
Thinking back, she'd noticed the coughs and sniffles when out in public. Sebastian, the Counselor and Zhang, the exotic bartender were in less-than-perfect health when she'd met them. Things had been deteriorating in the city but it was only after her leap from the Grand Bridge just five days prior, when she started to notice.
It was one more thing to feel guilty about missing in her self-absorption but that phase was in the past. Whatever her mental sickness or disgusting addiction was, she had an obligation to her children, to ensure their safety and offer them freedom.
Her exact plan to check on, and if needed, rescue the three of her children who lived in the city formed quickly after meeting Varda but as the threat of plague grew more real by the day, they changed nearly as fast and she re-prioritized by threat level.
Young Bowen was with a family, Young Sienna at a brothel, and teenage Jasper was adopted into the local royalty. Bowen might be happy and safe with his family and likely didn't need to be rescued at all. Sienna absolutely did, whether she knew it or not but her rescue was a much lower risk than Jasper's would be, incurring the wrath of the whole City Watch. He was supposed to be last.
Portia wasn't sure if Jasper would want to leave his life. There was no inherent exploitation in his adoption but as the lockdown took effect, it was clear the Lord's Castle might become impossible to infiltrate if she waited any longer.
After some recon and preparation, she broke in that night. With a grappling hook, she scaled the castle walls, navigated the outer yards then climbing the tower to the balcony of a bedchamber. After peeking to be sure, she climbed in to meet a familiar-looking and very surprised teenage fox in his nightclothes.
Portia explained everything quickly enough: she was his biological mother. He'd been adopted. She didn't know any of this until recently.
The vixen offered him to continue his life as it was or run off with her, this stranger claiming to be his mother. Jasper knew of her by reputation as an adventurer, and she had some concern over how exciting he found that. He wasn't adventuring material.
The boy was handsome, like all of her children she'd met thus far, but was out-of-shape and overfed, soft from a life of privilege. In height, he was up to her collarbone with a mop of hair like the head of a mushroom. It was the worst haircut she'd seen in some time and the clearest evidence his family might in fact, be cruel.
The fur of his body was the same, stark white as the hair on his head. It came together to make his entire appearance strikingly monochrome except for his sky blue eyes. There was a slouch when he stood and he limped when he moved, in such a dramatic fashion that no one would miss his impairment.
Like every man she'd ever met, he talked to her chest as much as her face, even after explaining their blood relation. She didn't expect him to be so eager to leave with her but it didn't take long for him to rationalize. He spoke of how obvious it was to everyone he was adopted and how they treated him as a lesser for it. Nobody liked him. Nobody loved him. He had no friends. What convinced her was his dread of the impending responsibilities that came with royalty, something she related to as a former Princess.
Still, his awareness of her adventuring career had likely biased his choice in a way he wasn't thinking through Her appearance and figure might have too. Telling the boy a woman is his biological mother was not the deterrent of attention she expected, when he was eye height to breasts bigger than his head. They hadn't had enough time to talk before the guards arrived. What else could she do?
"Are we close? I don't know how much more I can run."
"You're going back home and I'm dead if you stop."
After zig-zagging down the cliffside stairs, his exhaustion was more justified and even the vixen adventuress had broken a sweat. The young Lord had likely never had to run for his life.
"C'mon, it's not much further!"
Jasper was only one of many hundreds of children Portia recently learned she had. Zarron, a raccoon wizard in her home of The Pale Lands had taken all of her eggs twenty years ago without her knowledge but possibly, with her consent. He'd been breeding and selling them ever since.
The seven she met before tonight were healthy and beautiful. Beyond his impaired leg, Jasper mostly seemed to be as well.
Unlike the others, Jasper was the result of one of Zarron's more disgusting initiatives: the raccoon sorcerer had bred some of her eggs with seed from her younger brother, Bjorn.
"Purebloods" Zarron called them, for some sick reason. Jasper could have been any manner of monster for his being inbred and there were hints in the ledger she'd stolen from the wizard, some became exactly that.
The first set of "Pureblood" entires had been updated in the years since its writing. The first two, Tati and Titian had their genders updated from M to I, which she presumed meant Intersex, something she'd met very few of in her travels and magic had often been involved. Was that also an experiment, the passage of time or some side effect of the inbreeding?
Additional, brief notes marked the first "Purebloods" as failures by angrily scrawled, single words in red ink: Hellions. Idiot. Runt. Feral. Murderer. Jasper was commented as "malformed," presumably because of his legs.
Skipping ahead through the pages, later inbred children were few and far between, most without the same updates added later. For whatever reason, Zarron hadn't made many of them. Perhaps because of the trouble they caused or perhaps for a lack of enough sperm.
Jasper's entry didn't indicate the Lord and Lady of Stusport asked for or had been aware they had an inbred child. Of the Purebloods, he was the second to have been sold as an infant. Only a daughter named Alena, a wife-to-be ordered to have "the biggest breasts possible" and later updated as "Murderer" had come first.
Jasper wasn't as slow as an overdeveloped Alena must be, but the limp was ever present and his commentary on it, consistent. The rest of his slowness she credited to a cushy, well-fed, courtly life.
"We need to get off this street!" he barked after a few more blocks, panting and winded.