The more mundane denizens of the forest probably didn't quite understand what the wailing, naked human streaking through their forest portended. Ignorance, however, did not prevent all of them from coming to the immediate and unassailable conclusion that it was time to get the fuck under cover.
The princess had moved out of my hearing by this point, but we were able to track her at almost
donkey
-level speeds entirely due to my all-encompassing knowledge of wood-lore and Puppy's natural gifts as a hunting-mule. For those of you (most of you, no doubt) who are
not
expert at following the spoor of lust-crazed female human royalty with no survival instinct and less wit through an uninviting forest, the signs of such can be categorized as follows:
One - Detritus. Our quarry moved through the trees with all of the lithe subtlety of a boulder rolling down a waterslide clogged with fat tourists. Leafy carnage err'whurr.
Two - Silence. She may have moved beyond the range of my own modest aural senses, but occasionally Puppy's ear would twitch and angle forward, as though he were still picking up snatches of her banshee moan. The rest of the forest where she passed was quiet as a tomb, all of the various fauna no doubt fled or crouched deep in their burrows, trying to shit themselves as silently as possible.
Three - Geometry. A princess in deranged sprinting fuck-mode apparently only runs in a straight line, unless forced to deviate due to a sizable natural obstruction. And I do mean sizable. We passed a number of uprooted saplings before we hit the first oak ancient enough to deflect her. And most of the bark on the princess-facing side of the tree had been stripped away, leaving only exposed wood and shallow tooth-and-claw-marks. We contemplated the tree (and the wisdom of continued pursuit) for a moment, but Puppy resumed progress without any prodding.
Eventually we reached a small clearing. I was starting to consider calling off the hunt until the drider's venom had worked itself the rest of the way out of the princess's system, because at that moment if you'd asked me who I'd pick in a fight, I'm not sure I would have given a horde of angry barbarians even odds against her.
I was about to expostulate my internal debate to Puppy when the decision was rendered moot. Both of Puppy's ears swiveled to face front and he came to a full stop, unseating me. I caught myself with a curse and a flurry of my lovely gossamer wings. Closing my eyes, I tried to listen for whatever it was that had caught his attention. Faintly, just at the edge of my hearing, but getting closer, I heard the distinctive hunting-shriek of our missing charge.
Something was different about it, though, and it took me a moment to place the discrepancy. It seemed that her unearthly ululation had acquired a throbbing bass line. I chewed on the implications of this for about half a second, at which point I fell off of Puppy's head (this time on purpose) and flew down below his chin. I got a solid grip on his prized bib and began to tug it toward the forest, off the princess-cleared trail. To protect the delicate jewelry (and, unless I was wrong about the implications, his delicate life), he followed my urging with a snort. We'd just managed to get undercover when the source of the thumping beat burst onto the scene, fleeing for either life or virtue. Or both.
Ogres (of which this was one of... which) are not creatures renowned for the depth and breadth of their emotions. This isn't because they're misunderstood, it's because they're so tough that not even another ogre can really hurt one. When you spend your entire life more or less immune to mishap or physical consequence, you don't really end up with a very strong sense of empathy. They aren't even really that mean, per se, it just doesn't occur to them
not
to do whatever the fuck they want.
Let me explain it another way. Imagine you're sitting down over a beer with your best friend, and the two of you talk about the men (or women or spiders or whatever) in your lives. You might begin playing a round of Fuck, Marry, Kill (Giggle it. Goggle? whatever. If you can't keep up with your own culture, I can't be bothered to).
Well, when a couple of ogres sit down with a dozen gallons of grain alcohol and start talking about the objects of their desire, it's more like a game of Fuck, Kill, Fuck and Kill, Kill and Fuck, Sandwich. And then they stand up and go do everything they just discussed.
So, anyway, emotions. Prevailing opinion is that ogre emotions cover the entire spectrum from sandwich to kill, and that it's a short walk between the two. Which brings me back to the particular exemplar stomping into the clearing Puppy and I had just vacated. The only possible interpretation of the expression on its blocky, twisted features was abject, bowel-loosening terror.
Ogres are an elder race, just like the Sidhe, so I don't know what their origins are. What I was seeing was making a pretty strong argument for evolution as a primary mode of development, though, because it was pretty clear that something way, way,
way
back in the ogre's gene pool knew how to piss its pants with the best of them.
Speaking of pants, and clothes in general, while the ogre was, to all appearances, unharmed, its clothing hung in tatters on its massive frame, like a less handsome version of the Incredible Hulk. Its willy (scratch that, too big to be a willy. William? Sir William? Of Hungstudhamshire?) was swaying around loose like a brutish, fleshy club. Given the claw marks in what remained of its hide poncho, it seemed the princess had already made a new friend.
Even though it looked slow in motion, it made pretty rapid progress across the clearing. I put it at around fifteen miles per hour, and it looked capable of sustaining that pace indefinitely.
Indefinite became definite about ten seconds later. The princess erupted out of the treeline like a blonde, uh, something blonde and fast and feral. Occasionally dropping to all fours and making bounding strides like a hunting cat, she had no trouble closing the distance to her quarry once she'd cleared the clinging undergrowth. The ogre looked backward at the penultimate moment, tiny eyes widening below the overhanging granite slope of its brow. It was just in time to see the princess in the midst of her final leap, hurtling through the air with every limb extended toward her prey.
The ogre half-stumbled as it turned around and stuck its treetrunk arms out in an effort to ward her off, but the princess sailed between the outstretched hands and slammed into its chest like a naked, horny cannonball. She probably didn't weigh a twentieth what the ogre did, but momentum and paralyzing shock did their respective work. The monster fell back with the ponderous dignity (and rigidity) of an ancient tree.
The ground beneath Puppy's feet rumbled when the ogre impacted the earth. Its arms were still stretched out to either side of the princess's clinging body, its fingers opening and closing, as though not quite sure what they should do. The princess, meanwhile, had torn the remains of the ogre's poncho off of its muscle-shrouded torso. She currently had her face buried in the hair of its chest, moaning and pumping her hips against its solid keg (ogre aesthetics do not include mere six-packs) with mindless fervor.
The ogre lowered its outstretched arms, looking down on the small woman trying to have her way with it. When no actual physical harm seemed to be accruing, the ogre began its journey to a second entirely unfamiliar emotion: outrage. It was a fascinating process to observe (from the shelter of the forest), as the monster began to suspect that this wasn't some sort of heretofore unknown ogre-killer after all, and that its own atavistic reaction and the ensuing emotional whirlwind were no more necessary than the first few dozen times it had encountered humans. Granted, usually they had a metal shell, but they were tasty enough once you peeled them. This one was small, but it had the advantage of already being shucked, and was apparently eager to be eaten.
Still, though, it wasn't right. The human should be cowering in terror, and it certainly wasn't acting frightened. It was acting like a predator. Sort of. At the moment, actually, it was just rubbing itself lewdly against the monster, her hips making a rhythmic slapping sound against its stomach. The ogre extended a finger down and tapped on the top of the princess's head. She pulled her face away from the trove of male pheromones she'd found and looked up at him with glazed eyes. Gently, delicately, it grasped her head between its thumb and forefinger. Holding her still, it craned its neck to put its face as close to hers as possible. It drew back its thick lips, revealing blunt, rocklike teeth and enormous incisors. Its great mouth yawned open and it cut loose with an enraged bellow that threatened to remove the leaves from all the trees surrounding the clearing.
I was pretty sure that my tenure as a fairy godmother was about to end. The princess's eyes opened wide, her lust stupor clearing momentarily as the force of the creature's roar made her long hair flap like a flag streaming behind her.
Finally, the better part of a minute later, its lungs were emptied of air and its bellow trailed off. It closed its mouth, looking down at the girl again to see the effect of the echoing roar. Her eyes were still wide, but whatever the ogre saw in them, it wasn't submission. An expression rippled across its broad features, and what that expression said was "Oh, shi..."
At roughly facehugger speeds, the princess launched herself from her position astride the monster's torso and wrapped herself bodily around its head. She began to emit a softer version of her hunting moan as she jammed her hands between the monster's closed lips. She strained for a couple of moments as the poor creature's arms flailed helplessly toward her. When one of them began to try to get a grip on her, she lashed out with a foot. It connected with the ogre's forearm with a terrifying
crack
