Chapter 26- The Despoiling, pt 1
"Earth daughter..."
"Come to me..." A faint smoky voice whispered as Hlina woke up groggy from her dream.
The dream.
She had been walking into the cave again. Not the bathing cave in the village, and not the little cave where she grew up. No, this cave was dark and ominous. A fetid stench like a stagnant bog, an open privy, and a mass grave permeated the area surrounding it. It was far to the north and west. That much she always remembered. That and the walking. Passing by the little cave that had once been her home. Visiting her mother's grave. Stopping for the night and making camp at the old sight where she killed her mother's murderers. More walking the next day. Days of walking, and then coming upon her mother's people, the village where she was born. It seemed small and stagnate.
Dokkalfar women folk walked about the village completing daily tasks. Many in varying stages of pregnancy. They looked tired, none of them smiled. The luster for life that had been in her mother's eyes, even after their exile, before her death, was not present in any of these women's eyes. Their long ears drooped to their shoulders depressively.
Half-breed children ran around everywhere laughing, and playing while others argued and fought. A few were dark skinned like their mothers, but most were a lighter brown to almost white. Their eyes glimmered in shades that were of both alfari and human heritage. Ears ranged from long and pointed, drooping over slim shoulders, to short pointed ears that laid back against their heads, to rounded human ears.
The dokkalfar women's hair ranged in colors of pure white to golden-blonde, strawberry-red, and aspen-leaf green that always had a pale platinum sheen to it making it seem too vibrant to be natural. Of their half-breed children though, their hair ranged from their mother's alfari pastels to their father's human shades of blonde, red, brown, and black.
The children also ranged in age from infancy to their early twenties. For the most part the dokkalfar womenfolk ranged in height from four and a half feet tall to five and a half feet. They were slim of frame, slight of breast, wide of hip and thickly muscled from the buttocks down to ankles. The half-Alf girls resembled their mothers a great deal. A couple girls were as short and slim, but for the most part they were taller, standing five feet to six feet high.
Hlina herself was taller still by at least a couple of inches, she thought.
Many of the girls were broader in their shoulders, thicker chested, and most had breasts that would have been on par with Hlina's massive bosom in her previous life. They still had slim swooping waists, and wide hips and thick buttocks and legs.
Of the boys only the ones that looked the most like their mothers were short and slim, standing no taller than five feet tall. They also seemed to be the most angry and vicious. To a boy the lighter their skin the taller and more bulky they were built though they all seemed to retain the alfari athletic frame instead of their father's more square builds.
More than once Hlina saw one of the older boys slap, pummel, or beat what she could only imagine was their mothers or grandmothers. More than once she watched as a dokkalfar woman curled up on herself, laying on the ground, crying and wincing in pain as she tried to protect a gravid belly. As her dream continued it got worse. Of the young half-Alf girls, daughters of these human men and dokkalfar women, she saw more than a few that were already pregnant. They were barely old enough to be considered anything more than girls, and yet, here they were becoming mothers.
The human men she saw were all angry and violent, even more so than their sons who were following in their fathers' footsteps. What she saw, what she witnessed, what they did to the dokkalfar and their own daughters, it sickened her!
It was a nightmare!
Every time the dream came, it was a little different, and every time she reached the village she hurried past. The cave. The voice. That was what she sought. That was what she must find. North and west she ran from the village to a valley strewn with the bones of men. A hundred men or more. Still further north she ran until she found it.
The cave with the large black putrid maw.
——(!)——
Hlina gave a start as the memory of the dream lingered, and then she realized her arms were coiled around Chenoa's waist and her face was buried in soft furry breasts. Espowyes eventually got Chenoa's attention and won her heart and hand as a mate. It took a year after Espowyes came back to the village with Hlina as his mate before Chenoa realized he wasn't going to chase her around anymore. Once that happened she suddenly became interested.
Hlina moved her face back from Chenoa's large soft breasts and took a deep inhalation. Somehow Chenoa always smelled like wild flowers or lavender. It clung to her fur and Hlina enjoyed it immensely. Sliding her upper most hand down, since she was laying on her side between Chenoa and Espowyes, she rubbed the other woman's large round belly.
She remembered the night Espowyes took her back to his den on their marriage night. Of how he had gently taken her as his mate. She felt that she had been too young for children then, though she was a whole year older than when she had started dating Daniel's father. With every breeding she had hoped desperately that she wouldn't get pregnant, but it had been two years now and she was still childless. She was still young. She knew this. She still had plenty of time, but she was ready and now she was worried if she even could.
She was fifteen when she started dating Daniel's father as freshmen in high school. They dated all four years and well into college and were sexually active the whole time. She had been absolutely frantic about birth-control. At first for fear of getting pregnant so early while still in school, and then later because a child would have put a halt to all her dreams. Her goals. Daniel's father never thought about any of the consequences. If she didn't make him wear a condom he wouldn't. She never gave his reluctance much thought, at least not until after she was pregnant. She just thought all guys were like him, always eager to seed their lady. She was successful in rebuffing his eagerness until her twenty-first birthday.
Six years.
Six years!
