It was the end of a long hot day. I had walked about 20 miles through much rougher terrain than I had expected and it was clear I wasn't going to reach my planned destination before nightfall. I was going to have to sleep out. I wasn't too bothered. It had happened before and would no doubt happen again. I had filled my water bottle at a stream an hour ago and I had a small spirit stove to make myself a hot drink and some food from the dried rations I carried. The wind was getting up though and without a tent I would need somewhere to shelter.
Up ahead I could see a pair of ancient standing stones surrounded by some scrubby bushes. They were not on my map but they offered the only bit of shelter around. I could probably rig up a bivouac using the bushes or at worst simply lie in the lee of one of the stones and keep the wind off that way. I pushed on and as I came up the slight slope to the stones I realised it was actually the remains of a stone circle. The other stones were still there but leaning over at crazy angles and overgrown. In the centre of the circle was a small area clear of any growth. I pushed my way into the centre. The sun was going down directly over one of the stones, casting a long shadow into the cleared area at the centre. As I reached the centre the wind dropped and the air filled with the scent of the heather. It was like breathing honey. While I had some light I tied off my bivvy to a couple of shrubs. It would screen me from the wind if it got up again, but if it rained I would still get wet.
Once the sun had gone down the temperature fell quickly, so once I had the basics set up I cooked up some mush on the stove, then arranged some stones to make a fire platform and set a small fire with what I could find around me. It wouldn't last, but the flickering glow made me feel warmer while it did. I pulled on an extra sweater, wrapped my ground sheet around me and sat back against one of the stones. I woke with a start to voices. Somehow I had got myself tangled up in the ground sheet and couldn't move. It was a full moon so everything was lit with a cold blue light. At first I thought I had got myself turned round in the night because I could see in front of me several upright stones where the night before they had been leaning at all angles. Then a cloud passed in front of the moon and the light dimmed. I was drifting off to sleep again when the moon shone again and I realised the upright stone was still behind me. I suppose because my mind was still befuddled I didn't panic when the voices started up again.
"Look we've been over this so often now. We need a male and a female. Either on their own just doesn't work," said a woman.
"I know that," said a second woman, "but I also know giving it to two of them is incredibly dangerous."
"Doing nothing would be even worse," said a third.
"Are we sure of that though?" from the second.
I struggled to open my eyes. It felt as if they had been glued closed, but I eventually managed to open them to see the speakers standing only about 6 feet away from me. Even apart from finding three strange women in the middle of the night on a Scottish moor, they were an incongruous group.
They were all tall, over six feet. The first one, a red head, was dressed in full on 'warrior babe' fashion with lots of leather straps and belts that seemed to do nothing but emphasise a full lush figure and a short leather skirt that was somehow even more revealing than her naked breasts. She carried a long and lethal looking sword with a jewelled pommel and over her shoulders an unstrung bow. In her navel was another jewel matching that on her pommel.
The second, a brunette, was wearing what looked like diaphanous robes out of an Old Master painting, covering everything but concealing nothing and seemingly held up by sheer will power. Even in the moonlight she was clearly as stacked as the first.
The third was a blonde and wore what looked like a soft porn version of a woman's business suit. The jacket was tightly waisted and flared to a stop just on her hips and was worn without anything apparently beneath it, plunging down to reveal deep cleavage. It was paired with a tight pencil skirt with a deep slash up both sides. The effect was stunning, but disconcertingly like a sexed up version of Margaret Thatcher.
As I scanned them I suddenly realised they had fallen quiet and all three were looking at me.
