Pairs of Pumpkins Episode 8: Pridemoon's Precipice
By Jess Faulks
The Grand Bridge of The Allicans was the tallest in the land, the deck a quarter of a mile above the water. Built a thousand years ago by a people who later vanished, it rose over an ancient fault line that formed a walled river. At the eastern edge of the continent and the sea, the bridge was the pride of the bustling sprawl of Stusport.
Where the river bisected the massive, urban hub on one axis, the towering cliffs of the edge of the continent split it on the other. There was High Town and Low Town but each also split into North and South Town. From either side of the Low Town's dock-laden delta, the bridge was a magnificent sight and often the only reminder there was much more city above them, obscured by cliffs and perspective.
Up in the High City, on a cold and cloudy afternoon, the spectacle had long faded for one, visiting, vixen adventuress. A long walk that got longer every time, every step reminding her how sore her body was.
The bridge was more crowded than usual and sometime that afternoon, Behemoth, the largest, tallest sailing ship in the Stusport fleet, would leave on a diplomatic mission and sail under the bridge on the way. It was a rare sight to see come and go, she'd heard. Not only was Behemoth Stusport's largest, but also one of the biggest sailing ships ever built, folks had eagerly explained to her. She hadn't asked. She didn't care.
Wrapped in her hooded cloak, the adventuress, Portia Pridemoon, shambled over the uniformly laid, unusual-colored bricks. That smoothness was a welcome departure from newer, rougher, cobblestone paths that paved High Town, South, where she'd rented a room at an Inn. The ground was wet from earlier rain but the stone of the bridge dried off uncommonly fast. Whoever the Allicans had been, they knew how to build. Interesting for such a thing to be in Stusport. She had come for several reasons but tourism was not among them.
Foremost, she had told herself again and again, was the rescue of her children. Hundreds of children. Over a thousand? It was more than she'd counted. She had no desire to know the exact number. It would only make it worse.
Each of them had come from an egg magically stolen from her, without consent and until recently, without her knowledge. Every one of them was logged in the heavy, leather-bound ledger she carried in an improvised sheath, strapped to her lower back. It was the only means she had to track them down: the species of their fathers, the names of their buyers and where the buyers lived.
Three had been adopted by Stusport residents: Bowen, son of Portia's stolen egg and Donor 26: another arctic fox, had been adopted by the family of the Harbormaster. Sienna, son of Donor 38: a red fox, adopted by another brothel owner. And then there was Jasper, the adopted son of the Lord and Lady of Stusport itself. He was the son of Donor 17: Bjorn Vasiljev. Like all the donors, Bjorn's seed had fertilized her egg without either of them present, in some unknown, magical procedure. Unlike the others, Bjorn was Portia's brother. Jasper was inbred.
The notes in the ledger rarely had any information on the children beyond conception and purchasing but between the lines and over the years, there was some suggestion that the wizard, Zarron had pursued experiments around inbreeding for a few years then stopped. It seemed something had gone wrong with what the log originally called "The Purebloods" but she didn't know exactly what.
Portia wretched every time she remembered and this time was no exception. Bootsteps on the stone bridge fell out of rhythm before she veered aside and grabbed the railing for support, half collapsing against it.
Life was never supposed to have gone this way. A fatefully barren womb and ambitions of adventure ensured a child-free adulthood she'd been grateful for. A storied career was to be her legacy, only to discover some sick wizard had made a mother without her knowledge, wiping her memory clean of the theft. The inbreeding only cemented in her mind how deranged the wizard was and what she would do to him if she ever found him.
A mother and father nearby gathered their cubs and ushered them away from Portia, eyeing her with fear while the mother stifled a deep cough with her forearm. She was the sick one? To them? Nothing about her appearance confirmed how right they were.
Zarron's perversion and cruelty motivated the other reason to come to Stusport before anywhere else: her best chance to find a cure for her condition was in a city this size. A condition that a week before, she blamed on Zarron himself. A condition to make the once-strong and independent vixen lose herself, sick with disgust and self-loathing.
In an all too quick and overwhelming series of events, she had an impossibly strong attraction to a young fox named Joseph and against her better judgement, seduced him. The sex wasn't just intense; it was life-changing, even had the events that followed never occurred. But they had. With him still tied inside her, she discovered the reason for her lifetime of infertility: her eggs had been stolen and used to breed legions of children, including Joseph! She'd seduced her own son! It felt like a trap, set up to ruin her.
As far as she could tell, her children became Zarron's industry: every child had been ordered, bred and sold as a product and Portia resolved to save them all. She was off to a good start but bringing children with her, even older teenagers, would be a liability in the adventure business.
Two weeks ago, she'd left her first five, rescued children all in the city of Zentia with a trusted friend, hoping to focus on the rescuing of the three here.
Instead, she found it easier to focus on herself, trying desperately to escape her spiral of depravity so she might actually be a good mother when she found them. Her failures to do so grew increasingly spectacular.
Sex had become as pleasurable as a handshake but she kept trying despite what she'd learned of her condition. She'd hoped in Stusport, there was a chance to pinpoint her condition and do something about it. If Bowen, Sienna, Jasper, and all the others down the road were to have a chance, she needed to uncloud her mind and fix this.
The Shaman, Samir
The different kinds of magic were all jumbles of uninteresting nonsense and Portia was generally averse to the whole concept but her condition sounded a lot like a curse. Perhaps the anti-Magic charm she wore to protect her from spells left her vulnerable to curses, especially if they were in her blood?
Curses weren't a favored magic anywhere on the mainland and the best shamans, in her experience, were foreigners. Low City, North, the rough and tumble industrial docks would be the place. She set off there on her second day in town to fact-find and cavort among sailors and travelers.
She drank countless pints over casual inquiries of the kind of people who could help her but the rowdy docks were also a comfortable reminder of what her life used to be. She fell into it willingly, occasionally being recognized or otherwise, getting involved in telling stories and other one-upmanship.
The interest of so many foreign men over the nights that followed was impossible to ignore, even as she pursued leads of a shaman. She sucked seventeen cocks and indulged three bent-over-a-barrel-in-a-filthy-alley fucks that would've disappointed her even in easier days. None of it was necessary to milk information out of drunken sailors, but they were old habits, amplified by current frustration. The attention of men remained a drug, even without physical pleasure in sex. By the fifth night, she'd tracked down the man said to be the best Shaman in all Low Town.
Samir was a towering wolf from somewhere exotic, a place she'd traveled once long ago. His body was chiseled and handsome, with long dreadlocks and a thick accent. Assured of his discretion, she explained her predicament as carefully as possible.
The wolf's interest in her was obvious from the start and he delighted in the revelation of an insatiable, foreign woman. He offered to help, with the admission that his methods were a bit primal for some but Portia followed him back to his dockside shack, fully aware of his intentions.
The wolf wasn't a selfish lover nor an inexperienced one, and he ran himself ragged, hoping like so many men before had, to be the one to fix her. Of course, he didn't and eventually, exhaustion got the best of him. With a panting chant in a language she didn't recognize, he dramatically climaxed and threw a handful of powder over their combined, rocking bodies. Quickly, he drew symbols in it, with her back as the canvas.
"The bad news..." the winded wolf spoke after some time, his weight tugging at his fist-sized knot inside her. Clawed fingertips delicately reached over her breasts to fondle the anti-magic amulet hanging from a necklace. "...is that this wouldn't stop an old curse in your blood. The good news is that at this moment, there are no curses on you or your family. If you have no curses and magic cannot influence you, then whatever has happened is affecting your body or your mind. You should see a healer."
The Healer, Pranav
Having a next step refocused her. Samir offered a recommendation, and she investigated herself the next day but everything pointed to the same healer, one they called when any of the nobility were injured or ill. That night she visited his modest home and found the older tiger named Pranav, orange but greying. Another accent made his words more compelling, and she might recognize from her travels, had it not been long tamed by time. The hour was late and he answered, clearly prepared to turn her away but after drinking in an eyeful of the vixen's incomparable cleavage, he invited her in.
Portia explained her predicament and was undressing soon after, at his request. Little time was wasted before he inspected every inch of her naked body with firm fingers, tracing contours of muscles and bone. It was professional at first but turned seductive once he'd explored her completely, his broad nose also drawing lines in her fur.
"I'd like to try. As part of the evaluation, of course."
"Of course," she smiled and turned toward him, draping arms over his shoulders. The vixen been far from selective over the last two months and not terribly selective before then but both Samir and Pranav were the kind of potent, magnetic males that any straight woman with desires would have considered.
Sex with the tiger had been like watching a master in action, making love with someone else. His every move was sensual and erotic, a coiled spring of power and violence wrapped in smoldering sensuality. The touch of his hands and mouth was considerate and keenly pushing boundaries but her body was off. He was a blazing inferno trying to set align soaking, wet wood. Pranav lasted for what must have been hours, stoic and steady while heavy brows betrayed his concern.
"It's okay. Just finish," she assured him several times before he obliged, collapsing in exhaustion and despair. Cheek to cheek, the vixen held him in the aftermath, and turned away enough to keep him from feeling her tears.
"I don't understand. That's not happened in decades. Since I was a boy." The tiger sounded just as broken now as she was.
"I warned you, Pranav. It's me," she consoled him, stroking his back.
After an unsatisfying nap and a needed bath, they sat across a desk from each other, once again clothed. "You've suffered no injury, Portia. Your body and mind are perfectly sound and you are very healthy. To not have the sensations of pleasure from sex is not unheard of but it usually comes with the lack of desire, and you are in no small supply of that. For the joy of sex to just stop? That sounds like magic to me."
