Snow Wolves

Marike looked up to the peak again as the swirling snow parted just enough to reveal the ice covered point jutting into the leaden gray sky. Her breath came in needle agony gasps as the cold thin air seemed to resist being drawn into her shivering body.

She turned and looked behind her. Surely Artuck and his ruffians would have given up by now. She would not be taken by such as them, and would rather freeze than submit to their crude touch. Their superstitious ways would probably send them fleeing back down the trail once they realized she had chosen to climb Wolf Crest. The stories of ravaging beasts out of children's nightmares taking unwary travelers was obviously foolish prattle, nothing more than old wives' tales, though the sound of the wind moaning and howling through the stones could certainly strike fear into the heart of those who believed.

Surely she could rest a moment now. She sat on a stone and felt a rush of warmth flood through her. Just a few minutes of sleep and she could continue, just a short nap and no more.......

*

The male wolf snapped his head alert. His sudden movement awakened his consort who shook herself and yawned beside him. He sniffed the air at the mouth of the cave and picked up a scent that sent a roiling sensation through his belly. He looked at his mate his piercing blue eyes making contact with her mismatched gray green and blue ones. He let out a low growl punctuated with a short yip. She stood and sniffed the air and caught the enticing musk as well. Prey had entered their domain.

The male leapt forward out of the cave mouth into the swirling snow, his powerful haunches sending him bounding down the boulder-strewn ledges. His mate, smaller but no less powerful for her size, followed him closely. As the snow swallowed their shapes, an eerie howl echoed from the rocks of the mountainside.

He followed the scent until he saw the shape sprawled on the stone. A thin coating of snow clung to her hide parka. His lips curled back as he recognized the wolf fur lining the hood and cuffs. He approached cautiously. It would not be the first time one of their kind had tried to trick him. He barked a few feet from her face and elicited not the slightest response. She was already too deeply unconscious to hear. There was not much time. His powerful jaws closed on the shoulder of her parka and lifted her and began to drag her upslope. His mate bounced beside him, lending her strength to lift the human when larger rocks obstructed their passing. A particularly heavy jolt caused Marike to open her eyes, and through the fog of her nearly frozen brain she saw the one green-gray and one blue eye of the female staring at her. In that moment fear seized her heart and she knew that either she had begun to hallucinate in the last stages of freezing to death, or that the old tales were true. As fear sent a shiver more intense than any caused by the cold, she passed out once more.

She did not know how much time had passed before she awoke. It was very dark where ever she was. Marike was lying beneath a pile of skins. Her nose wrinkled at the smell of them, for they had not been properly tanned. On either side of her she could feel warm fur, then her heart skipped a beat as she realized that those furs were slowly expanding and contracting with breath. She moved her hands and realized she was naked. Her wet, ice encrusted clothing had been removed from her. She breathed in slowly and could smell the feral scent of the predators who now flanked her. "Why had she not been eaten?" she wondered. If the stories were true, these creatures, the dreaded Snow Wolves should have devoured her whole and played games with her still bloody bones.

Perhaps they were sleeping too deeply to notice if she slowly crept away. She began to inch her way upwards, stopping and counting to ten between each movement. She had barely freed her breasts from the skins when the creature on her left suddenly moved rolling away from her. Marike could not help but whimper in fear as she froze, half exposed. She could hear the padding of feet across stone, the click of the long nails with each step. Then there was a sound, like leather being stretched, and crackling such as one hears when they butcher a hog and pull the joints asunder. A smell filled the air, acrid followed by a rush of musky odor. Then all was still. She felt the beast next to her tense and then stand, pulling the skins from her the rest of the way. It shook and Marike began to tremble realizing how close it's fang filled muzzle was to her unprotected neck.

She heard the sharp clicks of stones being knocked together. Marike rotated her head to the sound and she could see sparks flying with each clack. Someone was knocking flint together. Several more attempts and the spark finally caught in the tinder. A gentle breath encouraged the tiny flame. Then light flared as the tinder was touched to the wick of a clay oil lamp. The yellow glow showed Marike the face and upper torso of a beautiful woman. Her long brown hair cascaded to the middle of her back. Her face was lean but not so sharp as to be unattractive. Her skin was pale and unblemished. Her breasts were good sized and round, tipped with light brown nipples that stood out from them, crinkled and hard in the cool air of the cave. The most striking feature was her eyes. They were mismatched, one bright blue, the other a hazel green. She stood unclothed and unashamed as she set the lamp onto a ledge a few feet above the caves floor.

Marike was drawn from the sight of this strangely beautiful woman by the slow deep sounds of breath behind her. Part of her wanted to turn, the other more prudent part was terrified to even think what she would see. She felt gooseflesh rise all over her body, and it had nothing to do with the sleight chill in the air. As fear filled her, she heard the beast behind her make a curious growling moan. She could feel it edging closer. The hot breath steamed onto her shoulder. She heard it sniffing her hair, felt its exhalations moving strands. She sat stiff and motionless. Then Marike felt its tongue on the middle of her back licking upwards. The light went out.

When Marike awoke from her swoon the woman was sitting next to her. Marike sat up, clutching a skin to her breast and frantically looked around for the wolf.

They were in a small chamber with only one visible exit. All manner of things lay scattered about. She saw discarded clothing, tools and several weapons; swords, axes, a spear, and two bows and their quivers of arrows. The woman was kneeling on the pile of furs. Marike realized there was a huge mat beneath them made up of furs, skins, and on top several wool blankets that looked as if they could have been woven in her village. The woman, still nude, was offering her a wooden cup. Marike realized she was very thirsty and took the cup in her trembling hands and drank. The water inside had obviously been snow only a few moments before and the frigid fluid made her teeth ache and gave her a shiver as it flowed into her near empty belly.

The woman cocked her head as she looked at Marike, then she smiled, and her teeth were white and somewhat unsettling though Marike could not discern why she felt so.

The woman spoke in a soft voice, tinted with an accent Marike could not place. "Please, not to being afraid. I know this place must seem strange to you, but if you were not here, you would be frozen, out there." she indicated the opening in the cave.

"You must be running from something very bad to have risked these paths at this time of the year, or perhaps you hoped you would vanish, fall into a crevasse and never be seen again?"

Marike's cheeks reddened at that and she looked down at the cup held between her still trembling hands.

"What is your name?" the naked woman asked gliding closer.

The village girl could think of no good reason not to respond so she whispered, "Marike".

"Ma-REE-keh" the other woman said slowly as if hearing the syllables for the first time ever. "It is a nice name, I am thinking."

"Where I come from, one exchanges names." Marike prompted

The naked woman plopped onto the furs next to the still shivering woman. She reached over and gently took a strand of her hair and sniffed it. Not a quick sniff, but a long, drawn out breath through the nose, with her eyes closed, as if she were savoring every iota of the scent.

Marike shivered in fear of the peculiar woman who could sit naked in a near freezing cave. Without thinking she hefted the clay cup and swung it at the woman's head.

Without opening her eyes, the other woman flung her left hand up and caught Marike's wrist in a stone sure grip, the cup stopping inches from her own temple.

The woman's eyes snapped open, inches from Marike's own. There was fire dancing in both of them and the pupils were so wide that only rims of color showed around them like blue and green coronas on an eclipse.

The woman hissed, "Where I come from, guests do not try to brain their hosts, especially after being saved from a frozen death!" and with that she dropped the strand of hair and pried the cup from Marike's weakening grip. She did not release the village girl's wrist after she had disarmed her. Marike filled with fear again and cast a desperate glance at the stack of weapons.

"Do not even entertain such thoughts." The woman spoke in a low, even tone that seemed more threatening to Marike than if she had been screaming the words. "I would easily pry such toys from you ere you had a chance to use them on me. We took those away from their former owners in such a fashion. We keep them as, what is the word? Momentos? No... Trophies I think. Such as your type might keep the tooth of a predator for a good luck charm, or perhaps wear the skin of a wolf, or mount its head on the wall with staring glass eyes."

Marike collapsed onto the furs. The strange woman's way of referring to Marike as if she were not of a kindred species only made the fears and old fireside stories more real to her. She stared at the weapons with tear filled eyes and saw flecks of rust, and perhaps some darker matter on the steel. These were indeed not weapons that saw care and use, but the equivalent of the antlers on the wall of the meetinghouse back in her village.

She broke into tears and the strange woman released her wrist so she could cover her streaming eyes with both hands. Her body shook with the sobs and her lungs seemed to strain for air in this high place. As she lay there crying without any way to stop, she felt the gentle caress of the woman's hands. It started atop her head, stroking down her hair to her shoulder, and then flitting across her ribs, down her hip and flank, to her thigh, stopping at her knee.

Then the hand would start again at the top and retrace its path, with slight variations, moving forward or back as the mood seemed to suit her. Sometimes fingers trailing down her back and across her buttocks, the next time stroking her front, barely catching the slope of her breast, across the left side of her belly, barely missing the curly thatch of hair that grew between her strong thin legs, moving across the front of her thigh.

Without realizing it, Marike had stopped crying, instead focusing herself on the path the woman's hand took, feeling an unnatural heat bloom under her touch, and a tingling left in it's wake.

As the hand went to her head again, Marike rolled more onto her back, without realizing what she was doing. She was entranced. She opened her red-rimmed eyes and blinked away the residual tears. She looked at the face of the woman touching her. The eyes were almost liquid, her cheeks a bit flushed, and her breathing was quickened. A red flush spread across the top of her breasts as well, and her nipples, formerly stiff, were now engorged, almost twice the size they had been when Marike had first seen them.

This time the hand stroked her hair, and then went to her face. Marike inhaled as the fingers went down her nose, breathing in the strange musky scent they carried. The fingers went to her mouth next and lingered there. The woman's nails were long and strong, and she felt them tracing the outline of her lips and the lips parted without conscious thought as if inviting entrance. Now they continued their journey to her chin, then just the nails barely touching her neck to the collar bone.

. A shiver convulsed her body, but she no longer felt cold. The fingers were now agonizingly slow and they moved down the upper part of her chest, and then began to ascend the white slope of the girl's breasts. Marike was no child, she heard the other girls talk about the tings that men and women do. Some had giggled as they told how pleasurable it was to have their nipples fondled or touched. Once a boy named Sittan had tried to grope into her blouse, grasping in a clumsy fashion at her new grown mounds. It had made her nipples stiffen, but she had still pulled his hand out and pushed him away. Sometimes as she bathed or dressed, she would brush over them and they would respond by engorging, and she would even sometimes purposefully pinch them to feel the delightful surge of tingles in her woman place. Only two days ago Artuck had grabbed her from behind and mauled her breasts through her coat. That touch had made her feel dirty, ashamed, but now she seemed focused on the building heat in her left breast as the woman's nails came closer and closer to the patch of crinkled skin that surrounded the base of her now swollen nipple. The fingers circled the nipple, once, twice thrice, never actually touching it, but sending jolts of pleasure through Marike anyhow. Now the fingers began to descend the lower slope. Part of Marike wanted to reach up and grab the woman's hand, pull it back to touch, squeeze and pull the now throbbing, fire filled nub of flesh, but she was paralyzed. The nails went over her rib cage, making note of each rise and depression, and then proceeded to trace down the center of the girls belly, stopping to encircle her navel Just as she had the nipple. The fingers continued after their ring a rosy dance, and soon were finding the edge of the curled mass of copper and brown hair. As they ploughed through the dense brush, Marike became aware of a tantalizing new feeling. The index and middle finger parted, one moving to either side of the slit buried deep within that pubic thatch. The fingers slowly went down either side and Marike felt something swell between them. The fingers paused, then moved together and Marike gasped as the place she sometime felt pulse as she touched her nipple throbbed at the pressure, The fingers flexed a few more times, gently squeezing together then spreading apart, pulling the pink folds asunder. Without warning the hand moved and two of the fingers were in the center of that slit, lower, below where Marike made water, She felt them, hot press against the second opening, the one the midwives said made babies. The two fingers probed in, spreading the pink petals of flesh and finding what they sought, slick, wet moisture. They moved in a firm pressure against that nether hole, and Marike pushed her pelvis towards them, somehow wanting the fingers to explore, having a feeling of distinct and almost painful EMPTINESS. They did not enter, instead now coated with the slippery fluid that had been slowly dripping from Marike, the moved up a few inches. The thumb expertly pulled the lips aside as the third finger did the same on the other side. Then the two fingers, covered in slippery fluid touched the button of flesh directly. Marike's back arched and she sucked breath in between her clenched teeth. She had never felt anything like that in her waking hours. Sometimes in dreams such feelings would come, but they faded as she woke and pulled her clothing on. Now the thumb moved up atop that hot place, and pulled back a small hood of flesh, exposing a pink, swollen nub. The wet fingers touched this ever so gently moving in a slow rhythm that made Marike squirm. She found her hips thrusting upwards wanting the pressure to be firmer. Sometimes the other woman would comply, other times she seemed to tease, moving back, keeping the touch maddeningly light.

A pressure was building within Marike, heat, clenching, wet, pulsing, then it burst. She thrust her hips upwards suddenly mashing the other woman's fingers into her wet slit. Her body convulsed and shook, she wanted to be touched more, and yet wanted to lay still and couldn't.

As the waves of pleasure subsided her hips dropped back to the furs. She was breathing rapidly through parted lips. Her hands, still wet with her own tears had of their own volition dropped to her breasts and she now held both nipples pinched tight between fingers and thumb.

The woman with the strange eyes moved suddenly, springing up until her face hovered only inches above the panting girl.

She brought the fingers of her hand up between their faces, and Marike could smell her own wet musk, pungent yet sweet. Then slowly she placed her index finger into her own mouth and licked the slippery sheen or Marike's wetness from it. Not understanding why, this made Marike shiver and her still shaking womanhood clenched once more in an aftershock.

Then the woman slowly brought her middle finger to Marike's lips. Without even thinking, the girl opened her mouth and closed her eyes, allowing the slippery finger to enter, and press her tongue. She tasted the fluid that had come from her own quivering nether lips and it was heavenly.

As the finger pulled out she opened her eyes and looked up at the woman. She had sat upright, her hips touching Marike's, and was smiling slightly down at the girl. Then she took her other hand and reached between her own legs. Marike watched as her long slim fingers parted the straight brown hair of her pubic mound. There she saw coral pink lips, ruffled and ridged running the length of the woman's slit.

The woman's middle finger stroked up and down and for an instant she closed her eyes and threw back her head, whimpering slightly. Her long middle finger eased into the wet, tight hole there, until it was buried to the first knuckle. The woman smiled at Marike, as her hips began to gyrate and move almost of their own accord. She pulled her finger out swiftly, shuddering as it evacuated her wetness. She offered it to Marike.

Marike could smell her, different than her own scent, yet similar in ways too. Smelling this made her even wetter below, if that was possible. She saw the oil lamp light dancing off the wet sheen on the woman's recently buried finger.

"You never told me your name," Marike whispered.

"I cannot remember my name most days," the woman said. "Our kind have other ways of identifying on another. My master sometimes calls me Swiftmoon. Will that suffice?"

"Swiftmoon..." Marike said, then opened her mouth and engulfed the proffered digit. She closed her eyes and lights flashed in her vision. Fire seemed to be radiating from the finger, filling her mouth with heat, washing down her throat as she swallowed, causing her heart to pound and her lungs to fill to bursting as she drew a shuddering breath in through her nose. The scent of Swiftmoon blotted out everything else, and then the colors became the sun and she saw no more.

A few moments or hours later, she knew not which she blinked her eyes open. Her body felt flushed, more alive than she could imagine. The smell of Swiftmoon's cunt,(for that is what the girls whispered to one another as they shared what boys had done to them) was still pervasive. As she became aware of herself, she closed her eyes again. Her own cunt was filled with warm sensations, a soft movement there she could not identify. That nub felt wet and alive as something hot moved against it, Then something hard, scraping, delightful almost pain causing her to swell even more. It felt like... teeth, as if someone with sharp teeth were nibbling on her there, but that was impossible, so she opened her eyes and looked down.