An Orc Maiden...

Chapter 2: The Orc

As finally you move to exit the bathing pools, as you stride out from under the hammering falls, cradling your resplendent sword atop your outstretched palms, you notice her. A solitary figure lends its shadow to the stone-laden shore of the bathing pool. The sight of her stops you dead in your tracks.

First, through the water trickling down your brow and obscuring your vision, you see only the dim, forest-like green of her skin. The underhanded grip on your sword's hilt tightens as you start to wield your blade. Goblin! your mind reflexively snarls, but, no... She was certainly not a goblin: too large, too muscled, too firm of countenance. She was nearly your own match in stature, possibly larger, but her bountiful feminine curves were a marked difference. And what a difference...

This, you knew, was an orc, and a peculiar specimen at that. She sat complacently, confidently, upon the stones beside the discarded pile of your armor and empty scabbard. In her right hand she balanced a long, wicked spear, crafted skillfully of yellowed bone and sturdy, knotted wood. As your eyes roam across her curvaceous body the weapon's blade points haphazardly to the sky, the haft resting amidst the roots and stones of the pool's basin. Surely her spear was no match for your own holy blade, but without your armor...

"Ho, there," you utter sharply, firmly. The back of your hand wipes some of the water from your brow as the other hand twists the hilt of your weapon. "In Myr's name I demand you hold!"

Myr's silver sword levels itself at the orc's throat, a deadly threat if ever there was one. But the figure merely watches, tilting her head in a curious fashion. Amongst the roots, several paces behind her, you spy a slender longbow of blackened yew and a discarded quiver of hawk-fletched arrows. Though you expect her to retrieve it, or to level her spear at you in answer to your sudden challenge, her wielded weapon tilts instead back to the dense forest behind her. It falls gently against her shoulder as she reaches, unfazed, to her waist.

There, above her nearly naked legs, hangs a small brown pouch, and from it she removes a thin strip of dried meat. Your sword arm steadies itself instinctually, the point never leaving her, as you watch her lift and tear a bite of some poor creature's flesh between her teeth. Curiously, you study the woman, stepping cautiously forward.

Even from this distance, her face is... pleasing. Her eyes are slightly angled, somewhat reminiscent of the celestial elves that sailed from the east. Her jawline was strong, but elegant, her orcish underbite enough only to accommodate the lower tusks that protruded from behind her plush, lower lip. The left edge of those lips curls sharply, as if privy to some secret mischief.

You baited her with the promise of battle, yet she ignored the threat. Calm, for an orc. Steady. She is, or was, possessed of a bow - and undoubtedly knows how to use it - but she left it well out of reach as she watched you cleansing yourself of your enemy's blood. She'd had every opportunity to abscond with your gear, valuable pieces of silver, steel, and moonstone, all. Honest...? Or was there another purpose to her presence? Was she with the goblins, a Chieftain or General, perhaps? That seemed unlikely, didn't it? Only in the tales did orcs and goblins cooperate, and then only beneath the banner of some marked, greater evil. But what interest would an orc have in a holy site like this? Perhaps, you muse, she merely wished to bathe.

Your ponderous gaze does not go unnoticed, your guest silently returning the curiosity. Gradually, you realize her eyes are lingering more on your body than your face or blade. The slow smirk that spreads across her lips is almost predatory, her small, lower tusks looking like two slight needles reaching perpendicularly towards the sky. She chews her meat thoughtfully, her eyes low on your figure as you wade - carefully - ever closer to the shore of the bathing pool.

Naturally, you return the favor. A paladin should know his foe, after all. Though her bark-brown hair was a heavy cascade down her shoulders, it was gingerly clasped by a thin, bone-like fixture at her temple, creating an asymmetrical wave beyond her slightly-pointed ear. Her face was marked with a bone-white, powdery pair of stripes beneath one sparkling eye, and another down the center of her forehead, nose, and upper lip.. The other eye glittered dimly in the shade of a few long, loose strands of hair. A faded, barely visible scar streaked across her forehead, dipping into the shade of her brow. Her full lips smile tightly behind her upturned tusks as she notices your scrutiny.

"Back away!" you warn her sternly, but all it elicits is another sharp turn of her head and a low murmur from her throat. You point your sword to the bundle of leather and armor beside her, and she glances briefly at it before returning her hunting eyes to your waist. She shrugs delicately, humanly?

"Don't you understand me?" you ask pointedly, swinging your sword just a small measure for emphasis.

As she chews, her eyes dart back and forth from your waist to your holy blade, then to her spear. Again she shrugs, then deftly sets her weapon beneath the shroud of the forest behind her. You watch the woman rise to her feet, now empty-handed.

She is a graceful thing, for an orc. A feminine softness hangs about her in all the appropriate places. Her whole frame is thickly muscled, but her silhouette is the perfectly-proportioned hourglass of a court lady. This orc, though, is not dressed like a court lady.

Her massive chest is marked by a clean scar slashing from her left collarbone into the ample flesh of her right breast, where it disappears beneath a strip of leather armor. Armor is a generous term, perhaps, for it's barely more than a few wide straps of tanned hide supporting her bountiful chest from the shoulders and behind her back. Below that is a bare midriff, well-sculpted and lightly mottled by more old, silvery scars. At her hips she wears a waistcloth of thin, layered animal furs, and as she stands they billow just enough to reveal a flash of the scanty leathers she wears underneath. The heavy thigh emerging from the waistcloth's split is striped by more of the powdery white paint that marks her right cheek and forehead, and below the knee she wears only a pair of strappy, hand-made, leather boots.

"Hold!" you demand again, but the woman only tilts her head the other way as she reaches once more for her waist.