Ancient Watchtowers Ch.01

It did change things as it turned out, but overall she liked it. He seemed to have some idea that she was particularly bright, and that no matter what, she was in charge and he didn't mind it, since she always helped him.

But there were other things which couldn't be gotten around and Nila had to come to a few realizations after a lot of wondering thought over the next few days as they repeated it often.

He wasn't stupid and he'd learned that her want of him didn't necessarily coincide with her being in season. He liked that because he could see that she was available to him far more often.

But he now considered her to be his and the young ones quite obviously now regarded her as something less of a curiosity and more like somebody that they watched for signs of what they ought to do or how they should act, taking their cues from her body language - as much as they could interpret it, anyway.

From the way that the male now acted in a similar manner, that wasn't a bad thing, necessarily. She just knew that she'd always have to be doubly-vigilant in her travels, because she knew that he'd probably throw his life away to protect her.

As large and fierce as he was at times, she knew well the damage that firearms could do, whereas he'd have no idea of his peril. The same went without saying for the boys.

Nila knew that between them now, she was his female as well as some type of surrogate mother to the young ones and it caused her to have her own struggles. But over the course of a long day and night, she came to see that as what she was - besides a human woman - she was unlikely to ever take a human man, other than those rare times when she found one that she liked enough for it and if it even happened at all.

It came to her with a sting of sadness that every time with a man, it had to end. She could never let him see her other side.

She threw her arm around the big cat's neck and wondering about it a little, she began to kiss him, needing to stop and laugh now and then at his comical expression.

This male knew about her and he wanted her anyway. That changed a lot of things for her almost instantly.

Her thoughts allowed her to smile as she laid her leg over her huge new mate.

She had them.

Always warm. Always happy with her, and always eager to be with her. And the most amazing thing about them all to her mind, was that she never, ever grew tired of them and they could always make her feel better, just by being their furry selves.

Nila didn't mind it so much when the realization came to her. It wasn't anything that she'd have ever wanted before, but she found herself with a family in a very real way and she even liked it.

He rolled onto his back and she just accepted it, moving to get her leg over a little more so that she could kneel astride him, though it was a stretch.

She didn't change for the moment and she lowered herself so that she could rub her sex against his for a little while. But that didn't last for long.

She wanted him again, so she changed so that they'd fit better and it felt so good to her to lie down on his large chest after getting them together.

She'd loved what they'd done before, now that she'd made her mind up. But this way, she was in more control and she relished it, knowing that she could hold herself away from those little spines.

It didn't matter in the end, and she accepted that too. When the feeling was on her, she'd jammed herself down and howled out her joy all the same.

Afterwards, she looked over and saw that the boys were mimicking them, not that they knew what it had been about at all. The larger one held his brother down and it was obviously a show of his domination between them, and the smaller one didn't seem to mind - not that anything was even going on.

The big male didn't even bother the horse - well after the first and only time. Her cat weighed over five hundred pounds, but one kick from the big mare settled things and they left each other alone after that.

What astounded Nila was the way that he made sounds to his sons, warning them in a stern way to keep away from the horse themselves. Being young, it didn't quite work that well, but his gentle follow-up swats got the message through and there was no trouble after that.

One of Nila's favourite things about where she lived was the complete absence of people. She never saw even one. A lot of the soil in the area was very sandy and other than for growing evergreen trees, it wasn't good for very much in the way of the kind of crops that settlers wanted to grow.

When she needed to, Nila took the cats out when she hunted. The only trouble was that after bringing down any game, Nila rarely wanted what her hunting partner and his sons left for her, preferring to hunt up another kill and spare some of that for later.

Besides being her mostly silent and constant companions, Nila always enjoyed the evenings spent leaning against the animal - especially over that first winter, and she loved to hold her two boys when they crawled to her, quite obviously needing to sleep against her.

It signalled an end of things for the night to her male, though she sometimes allowed him to take her gently while she lay holding her new sons. There were times when she felt him in another place and though the first time had alarmed her, he'd been extremely slow and gentle and she'd moved her tail to allow it, even liking it at the end of the day, since the position prevented those spines from getting near her.

The cubs sought at first to begin to suckle a little, once they'd figured out what was what, and she even allowed that for only short intervals, since their tongues were so often rough. It was just their way to show her their affection and it never lasted long before she pushed them away gently.

But the smaller one seemed to need it more, and she allowed him a little more time at it. She knew that they'd figure out that there was nothing there for them and give up in a little time anyway, but in the meantime she enjoyed the closeness.

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Europe, 1186AD

Loriel gaped as she stepped into the largest part of the cavern yet. She was looking for a new home and she was just coming to the notion that she might have found it. As she walked through cautiously, she looked around and was trying to think of reasons which went against the idea.

She was one of the 'lost tribes' of elves. What that meant was that they'd lost most of their connection to the forests and the others. What it also meant was that she and others like her were what was known as 'gutter elves' to the human people of the towns where they lived - most in poverty.

Loriel was a rogue in a sense, taking what she could where she could get it, stealing what she had to in order to get by and listening and watching as she went. It could be a bit of a precarious existence. The magistrate in the area held no love for her kind and whenever he was presented with the task of adjudicating any matter which involved and concerned any elf, he always ruled against them on principle.

The sheriffs in any of the jurisdictions where he presided over were all in fear of him and acted as though he was their direct superior.

Thus far, she'd avoided getting caught and having to stand before him. She'd lost a few friends to him though, and told herself that is she ever crossed paths with him a little closer to her turf than his, well, she was known to be accomplished in the use of quick steel in the dark.

It was how she'd earned all of her biggest paydays, after all.

But this place, she wondered as she stepped through a little carefully, trying to be silent, this place was like a temple carved out of the living stone by, ...

She found that she had no answer to it.

Looking around, it wasn't difficult to see well, since here or there, there was a fissure in the ceiling - which she guessed couldn't be too thick - since light filtered down to varying degrees. Moving to stand under one of the thin openings, she looked up and was a little surprised to see by the thickness of the stone that she could see by it's edges was many feet thick. Perhaps it wasn't such a precarious place to be.

There seemed to be many openings in the walls around her, looking to her as though they might have been carved by underground rivers at some point.

She stood still, listening and in a moment, she heard what she'd been listening for - the soft sound of water flowing some ways off.

She stepped over to a wall to peer at it with her little torch. It confirmed her earlier thoughts that this place had to have been formed by a subterranean river or the meeting of more than one, perhaps.

She wondered about that and also if this place wasn't just a little far from town.

She shrugged. How much safer was the sewer that she lived in now? At least this place smelled a lot better. She sensed that there was some form of magic here which permeated the walls. She just wasn't familiar with what it was. She wasn't a mage or a sorceress by any means, though she was fairly well acquainted with most sorts and had some small ability in that regard.

She went on then and came to an opening which had been closed off a little with boards, planks, blocks and other junk which looked to have been washed up here by a flood long ago. She saw a little daylight through it and began to pull away the obstructions.

The best sort of opening that she could make without tearing it all away forced her to remove her leather pack from her shoulders and lift it through after her.

Something felt very odd to her as she'd squeezed through and it wasn't until she was on the other side and stepping out on the twisting path through the boulders into a second, smaller chamber that she noticed.

Her clothing was gone.

Well not gone perhaps so much as it appeared to have just fallen away. She looked down at the few scraps of fabric there and picked one of them up. It seemed to disintegrate right there in front of her eyes, looking as though it was hundreds of years old.

She could see that her return to the town might get a little interesting as she looked at herself. All that she had left on her body was her leather harness, a series of straps and snap rings which lay at the heart of her craft and trade.

When she wore clothes, the article was worn hidden between layers. There was a collar and at the back, just near her shoulder blades were the sheaths for her daggers. There was an arrangement of leather over her breasts, not to hold them so much, though they did still at least cover her nipples now and that was all.

Mostly her tits were now officially out there.

Normally, it allowed for a few thin spaces there for her to hide small articles pinched from pockets or purses, since there was the lining. But the lining was now gone, along with the rest.

Now the leather strapping just cupped her breasts and only in a stripe over each of her nipples. Below that, some of the harness was missing - since she now remembered that it had been canvas. So all that was left was the strap and buckle which passed between her legs to meet with the rest at the small of her back.

She noticed that at least, she still wore her long and supple boots and still had her long cuffed fine leather gauntlets, cinched as they were up her arms to above her elbows.

She smiled, thinking that she looked like a fine, saucy, thieving whore like this and decided not to worry about her clothing until it was time to leave. After that, well, she'd worry.

A lot.

She put out her small stick-torch and wondered for a moment where she'd put it, since her pockets were missing. She shrugged and slid the little stick in between two of the straps over her right breast. It was a rather magic article which her aunt had left her when she'd died. Unless it was pouring rain, she'd always have enough light and the second after it was out, there was no heat to it at all. She set her pack down next to a wall and looked further.

Hearing some wet, quiet sounds, she went that way. A quick side-trip brought her to another cavern, through which a stream meandered almost silently. The water was cold and tasted good, so she made a mental note on the plus side of her mental ledger, the one which related to finding someplace better to live.

The daylight had been too bright for her eyes just as she'd stepped out into this chamber, but now her eyes were getting used to the outside glare which came to her from the larger opening to the outside world. Without meaning to or noticing it, she'd taken a step forward and looking down again, she saw that she was standing on straw and that there was some hay in here, and even a large trough of water.

She must have stumbled out into somebody's stable. She looked down hurriedly and heaved a sigh of relief, finding that she hadn't stepped in anything.

Until just then, she hadn't noticed the sound of the waves. She walked out a little slowly, looking around and being sure to turn around so that she'd know the way back.

She slowly walked past the rocks and boulders, following a slightly twisting pathway down to the sand.

She looked back again and smiled. Aside from the tracks of at least one horse, the way in and out was hidden from view fairly well. The rogue in her just appreciated these things.

Looking around a little, she saw small sand dunes held in place by the grasses which grew there. She walked down across the beach and crossed the wet sand at the edge to where the waves lapped against the sand.

That was when she noticed a few things about her surroundings.

She turned around and looked back. She could see no way to get to the top of the long and large cliff that the opening was in. The only water that she could see was what crashed against the shore. Yet there had been water in that trough inside.

Unless somebody went to a lot of trouble every day, the water here must be fresh and not the salted water of an ocean. Even slogging a pair of buckets of it up from the shore a few times to water a horse would be work, walking in soft sand. She thought of the stream then and it made more sense, not being that far at all to carry water.

She looked at the sky and wondered. She guessed that maybe she'd been inside and wandering for maybe three quarters of an hour. When she'd slipped in through the outside opening an hour's hike from the village, it had been - at most - mid-morning. Yet it was looking here as though evening couldn't be that far away to judge by the brightness and color of the light.

It was windy here but it was also warm. There was a rock not far from the shore which stood up about six or seven feet from the waves and those waves crashed around it, driven in by the wind. There was also an uneven and very stiff swirl of breeze which came from where the wind hit the cliff and it often caught against the waves.

The result was that the waves lifted up a little before they dashed themselves down and with the low sun trying as it was to penetrate the brooding cloud line in the distance, the waves which were high enough for it - some five feet she guessed - well they were turned amber by the light which penetrated them from the back.

The sight was a rare one to Loriel's mind, and she couldn't recall ever seeing anything like it. She looked up and down the strand as far as she could see.

She was alone.

She stepped forward and walked to the water's edge to squat down and dip her hand in. The water was cool, but not cold and as she raised her hand, cupping it to hold a little of the water, she watched as some particles of sand settled out instantly. A moment later, she tasted it and knew that she'd been correct. This was no ocean.

Loriel might not be a sea elf, and she was far enough removed from all the rest, she thought, but she was elf enough and that gave her a little sensitivity.

She felt the approach of a galloping horse and jumped up to step back and hide herself among the dunes higher up.

But she hadn't been careful - not for a rogue of her kind - especially one who was an elf, and she missed the fact that she'd left tracks to the water's edge and back. She could leave no tracks behind her if she wanted that, but she'd been sloppy.

She looked off in the direction that she knew the animal would be coming from, though for a lot of the time that the animal approached, she couldn't see very much, the grasses hiding the view from her just as effectively as they screened her.

She did see it from perhaps the last two hundred yards and even for who she was, she had to stare and gape.

She saw the heavy beast come running flat-out and looking strangely pleased to be doing it. On the animal's back, ...

She saw a woman, absolutely naked and laughing as she rode that creature, her thighs clamped a little, her knees bent, the flesh of her hips quivering with the beat of the mighty hooves there below her and, ...

Her fine breasts almost dancing as they jiggled.

Loriel was spellbound and she stared on, taking in as many details as she could of this vision from her hiding place.

Her skin ...

Her skin was dark when compared to her own.

Loriel obviously had none of the High Elves in her blood, and by her own skin tone, she'd always guessed - along with her other female relations, that they'd been some sort of Wood Elves at one time.

But this beauty didn't carry any of that slightly brown tone. Loriel thought of an uncle who made furniture in the village, working in a shop owned by a human master. She'd seen wood of this color before and she remembered that he'd called it mahogany.

Her skin was like that; fairly dark to Loriel's and it was a little reddish.

The woman's face was filled with joy and her head was thrown back for a moment as she laughed, and then they flashed past Loriel's hiding spot, the woman's amazingly long and shimmering black hair flying in the wind and the animal throwing up divots of clumped, wet sand in it's wake.

Looking from behind now, Loriel saw that though the horse wore a bridle, the reins were back on the animal's neck and only held in place by the lightest grasp of two of the woman's fingers. She noticed that the rider sat well forward, suspended above the animal's shoulders by the position of her thighs.

She was leaning forward a little, her hands placed against the back of the animal's neck.

Loriel stared even more for a second as she admired a backside that lovely.

She was actually a little surprised when she'd noticed that she'd let out a sigh.

The light changed a little subtly then and she looked out over the water, noticing the change in the cloud color. The gathering clouds had won. There was no direct sunlight anymore.

Just dark and brooding clouds.

"One,..." Nila counted as she rode on, "Two, ...

Three."

She snapped her head around for a moment and then she looked forward once more. The girl in the dunes hadn't seen her looking back. A little hard to miss the sets of tracks from the water's edge to the dunes in a place where she hadn't walked herself for days. Still, she wondered at the one she'd gotten a glimpse of.

Not large and with mysteriously slim hips, a beautiful, if unfamiliar face to ones she'd ever seen, though topped by oddly-bound reddish-brown hair and pointed ears.

And those breasts ...

Nila wondered about the feeling which came to her then. She'd never really been drawn to other females, but she did like what she'd glimpsed back there.

Loriel looked back down the beach at the receding pair for a few seconds and then she turned and began to walk back up to find the trail, wondering a little why it suddenly looked a little gloomy. As she stood, she felt the first drops of rain and wondered about how the change could have come about so quickly.

Before she'd even had the thought that she'd better be getting back, the sky opened up and it teemed down.