[Flashback] Cat and Mouse [Dymphna]

[Tabarnac]

He shook his head, still not understanding. Apparently his knowledge of Pavi was confined to imperatives for slaves, not hearing what they wanted, what they desired. It was an oligarchy of the strong over the weak in a Zith settlement, as she would quickly learn. Still, her activity caused him no end of amusement. He didn't even seem upset that he didn't understand what she was saying anymore. Not knowing enough of Drykas customs, he couldn't say if what she was feeling now was a familiar thing or something entirely new, but he watched avidly to see how she handled it, to see what she would be capable of to quench the fungal fire. "Good, good. More."

[Dymphna]

It was getting too warm for comfort. She lay on the ground, pressing and squirming against it in hopes of getting even the slightest chill from it, but to no avail. She was by no means adept in poisons, but she couldn’t think of anything that would cause her to react like this. That thought, sadly, took her quite some time to complete, because every time she tried to lie still the creeping urge to move overcame her. And when she did move, her body seemed to react on its own pleased accord by shuddering. The shuddering caused her to moan, and for that small amount of time she found herself forgetting where she was or what had happened as her brain struggled with exactly what the feelings meant. It was too hot. She had too much on. The back of her knees were starting to sweat, which was a sensation that had always driven her absolutely crazy. She growled. She moaned. She edged herself further away, because she knew the situation she was in was possibly the most dangerous she’d ever been in. Her entire body was burning, and some other feeling was starting to come over her, too, though what it was felt completely foreign. By the time she started trying to get her clothes off, she found she was no longer capable of even telling if she had any on anymore. Instead she groped dumbly at her waist. It sounded perhaps like someone else was moaning, but as a moment passed she realized that it as her again. She blinked, looking up at the Zith, unable to hide the terror and frustration flashing across her face. A shaking hand moved to point to the empty plate, and she demanded slowly, “What did you feed me?”

[Tabarnac]

If he didn't understand her words, the sudden light in his eyes made it clear he understood her by tone and context. He moved closer to her, slowly and with a predatory grace. His smile was fearsome, and a memory flickered into Dymphna's awareness before being subsumed by the growing, pent up energy of her body: Her mother repeating a story learned from her mother, and her from her mother, that humans and Jamoura were one race in the dim, dark history of Mizahar, and that humans were the only animal who pretended that a smile was not vicious, a baring of teeth to warn away the wary. "Mushroom," he said, and then the delicate tip of a talon touched her in the hollow behind her ear, potential death tickling down her neck and through the hollow at the base of her throat. His next word started with a sibilant hiss that might very well have been the sound of that talon tip along her skin many times amplified, or the sound of a sickle parting a length of silk as it floated to the ground. "Salialana." Leaning close, he inhaled the smell of the soft skin of her neck, his next words coming out somewhere between a growl and a purr: "Horse flesh."

[Dymphna]

Each movement he took towards her caused her to move closer to the wall until finally she had no where else to go. Her eyes never left him, watching him with cautious terror in her eyes. The young lady of the Opal Clan struggled to make sense of why her mind and body, two pieces of her being that were meant to work together, were suddenly seemingly at odds. Her brain was scrambling with trying to form an idea of how to get away, and yet her body visibly shivered under his touch… His talon sending her to twist and, gods help her, press a leg against him. Salialana was a word she understood. Her mouth opened to say something, but her throat ran dry. She knew what that was, and for the time being she felt almost disappointed that he’d not poisoned her. If he was feeding her the fungus… That meant something. Possibly something worse than being eaten. Or perhaps it wasn’t worse than being eaten, because keeping him happy was the key to keeping herself alive. Being alive meant she could get back home and… Was she rubbing against him? It was then that Dymphna started to cry again. She couldn’t help it. At the mention of eating horse flesh, she felt her body heave violently. And again. And again. Each time she swallowed down the bile, perhaps intuiting that letting her stomach release what she’d been fed would certainly not end up well. All the while the world was spinning, and she was crying. A weak hand curled into a fist, which she halfheartedly aimed at his chest, but he was too close for her to get a proper punch formed. “Monster!” she screamed through a sob, leaning in to violently bite his shoulder. Anything now to try to get away.

[Tabarnac]

He frowned then, not understanding what the word meant. There were clever guesses, but he wanted to know exactly what she was saying in her barbarian tongue. "What word, monster?" he asked in broken Pavi, but then she was pushing at him and biting him, showing more fight than he had imagined possible, and arousing competitive and lascivious urges within him. Sharp teeth pressed to her neck without quite breaking the skin, though she would likely suffer bruising if she survived at all. It was somewhere between a mother predator taking its young by the neck and an alpha wolf holding its lesser down until due submission was shown. Though a part of him wanted her to fight, as it would make the winning all the headier. His growl reverberated through his teeth and all other contact points into her body, teasing those traitorous feelings that the fungus kindled within. His talons went to work on her clothes, shredding away whatever shield her modesty might be. Releasing his jaw grip on her neck, he licked her from the hollow below her ear to the highest point of her cheek. It was too wet, too intimate, but he was tasting her like a glutton before a feast. "You like?" he asked, confident of the answer.

[Dymphna]

“You. Monster. You. You! You’re bad! Monster!” She found herself getting spitting mad. Furious even, and somehow she wasn’t sure that the emotion was going to end well for her. What he did next, the biting, seemed to cause her to tense up and freeze. Her dark eyes went wide. Did that feel bad? Or did that… Did it feel good? She struggled to figure it out. Then came removing her clothes, which she only then realized she even had on. She was absolutely certain that the air against her skin felt like ecstasy, and she whispered a tiny “yes” before she even remembered that she had a voice. There was her anger, and then there was the mushroom that was fully coursing through her body. The two had brought her inner-struggle to a fever pitch. As she tried to push him away again, as he licked her and asked her questions, she found that any muscle not focused upon was seeking to press against him. “No!” she said loudly, a mixture of a sob, moan, and scream.

[Tabarnac]

"Lies," he hissed, amused by her struggles with herself even more than she struggled against him. He could smell her desire and, running a taloned finger gingerly inside her, he could taste it as well. In an act uncharacteristically chivalrous for a Zith, he offered her a taste as well. "See?" Though his eyes were all black, there was an unholy excitement in them, and he watched her intently. Even his ears seemed to perk forward, his nostrils to flare, as he demanded all manner of sensory input regarding his new plaything. When she wouldn't taste, he ran his finger along her soft, bald cheek, almost as if he was caressing her. Then he kissed her as he had seen humans do, not quite the same as the Zith did things. She tasted sweet, the aroma of her fear and loathing and traitorous desire adding a heady bouquet to things.

[Dymphna]

In all of her life she had never once heard of a Zith kissing a person. Of course, she’d never been kissed at all. Drykas, human, or whatever… In truth, it dumbfounded her. So much so that she ceased all movement. She didn’t push. She didn’t press. She didn’t pull. Instead she just stayed still in place while blinking back the tears she knew he didn’t want her to cry. Zith didn’t kiss people. Zith ripped faces off with their teeth and ate them… What was this one doing? Was he playing some sort of game with her? And what was she supposed to do? What was going to keep her alive? After a moment she swallowed, eyes lifting up to him miserably. He was touching her, and the drugs kept causing her to lose her train of thought. Then, acting on the fear of dying and some hunch that she had to play along, she kissed him.

[Tabarnac]

The rape that followed was brutal not so much because he was rough with her, though he was that, but because he was laughing at her, enjoying a game like the cruelest of children tormenting someone less powerful than him. Whether he had truly fed her the flesh of Striders, she could only guess, but certainly he had given little evidence that he was above such things. Drykas morality was peculiar to the Drykas people, and Zith morality peculiar to the Zith. Rarely shall the twain meet. It might have been quick if he hadn't taken his time to break her down a little at a time, and she really had no chance. The drug in her blood made it burn, made her body betray her at every turn. Even her pain was a pleasure, and he seemed to take equal pleasure in both. When he was done, she had suffered through several screaming orgasms that left her too weak to move, let alone threaten his safety, and he quickly fell asleep like a child wearied from too much play. She had very little time in which to think, her thoughts still swimming in salialana and self-loathing, before her body, aching and warm, dragged her down into sleep, perchance to dream. But there was no waking up from this nightmare. END/BEGINNING