In wine, the truth always comes out.

There was nothing left for the chastened redhead sisters but to drink.

Using the shallow bowls provided for them by flanking priestesses, both Kiki and Vivi downed the first few drafts of ceremonial, age-old finely-brewed wine under Tamah’s watchful eye. Every drop was as dark as a stormy ocean, and had similar effects once imbibed. Nobody had to explain that the plants that grew in this part of the world produced various chemicals that increased need.

They both just felt it. Part of it was psychological; after days denied the restroom aboard ship, and now seeing that restroom dashed across the rocks, and confronted with new things to drink by the angry locals? Even the act of drinking itself was taking on a dreadful tinge that caused their thighs to rub together like they were trying to start a fire to survive.

It's not possible for wine to hit your bladder after literal seconds, right?

Yet before Vivi expected, in mere minutes as she was wading through the ocean with only a tiny spoonful at a time of progress made, it hit. When the first waves of bladder pain came, then the more sullen of the Violetta duo knew for sure that everything which came before was mere child’s play.

Forget the heat of the sun she’d been eager to escape with a cool drink; now it was the cool drink setting her enormous lower body on fire.

Kiki fared no better, though now that the gig was rumbled, she was talking a lot of shit for somebody in drinking distance. “You ladies don’t know who you’re messing with. You don’t know anything about us, but I know all about you. We’ve taken out primitive tribals all over space, visited so many of those twinkling stars up there.”

She pointed up towards the clear blue sky dramatically.

“You can’t see stars during the day,” The young, trembling priestess administering her drinking of the ceremonial wine sighed. “Just drink it, stranger, and don’t speak any more heresies to offend Her Grace.”

With a choked off groan of frustration and pain, Kiki drank. She wasn’t necessarily in love with the taste, but it was hardly some kind of torment to feel the explosion of naturalistic, but highly-refined, elements in the drink on her sandpaper tongue. What stuck with her most there was the aftertaste of grape; it stuck, enduring after the other mixtures blended in had passed downwards.

“Please tell me you people have retained indoor plumbing?”

Tamah nodded. “Of course! That technology has long been a core value of our people. Who are, by the way, though you have never had the consideration to ask, known as the Sunfire Confederation.”

“Pretty cool name. I get the sun part, but what’s with fire? You guys win a lot of wars?” Kiki mused though another gulp of wine. Alarmed that a trace was drawing itself down her cheek and threatening to fall, one of the priestesses reached up, and licked it off her mouth, much to the extremely heterosexual Kiki’s alarm. “Hey! Ew, ew! Watch it! Social distancing!”

“Then be more careful,” The priestess huffed, channeling her own fear of her superiors, on heaven and the one standing right over there blatantly topless, into annoyance at the newcomer.

“As it happens, we were once a warlike nation,” Tamah admitted. “In our distant and brutal past, we took whatever we wanted. You are likely familiar with such thinking, though you are from another world.”

“Now, you just abduct strangers and **** them to drink,” Vivi said. “How civil.”

“Well, if you’d prefer the punji pit…”

The point was well-taken, to avoid more and far sharper points.

Though by the time the great pitchers of ceremonial wine sounded hollow to the tap and were visibly draining, the two kitsune were visibly filling, and betraying all the classic and well-beloved signs of holy suffering. Tamah was delighted to note their pale complexions darkening, and turning red under sustained pressure. The kitsune darted around with their eyes, looking for a way to escape at first, and later simply unable to focus, as their minds became more occupied with need.

Worse than either of them had ever experienced before in their decades and centuries of life amongst the stars.

Both Kiki and Vivi were given to the nervous shuffle of feet that the Sunfire called the ‘devil’s dance’, for the temptation it expressed of wanting to relieve pressure and suffering. Suffering itself being, of course, central to the Sunfire religion. When the sisters were told this on their way back to the village, neither were particularly surprised.

The real surprise was that they could keep moving, at all. With every shallow sip and drawn-out break for more drinking, they leaned harder against the nearest tree or overburdened priestess. They bent forward at the torso much as their captors were prone to doing, and for the same reason. They broke out in a new wave of cold sweats even under the shade of long tropical tree leaves the size of people.

“Indeed, it is as I suspected,” Tamah said, leading the procession, skipping along, her attitude a contrasting sun to the setting, gloomy night-time of the rest of this column of wide-hipped women. “You two are not divine in any sense. Even for a normal outsider, some shame or decency would be expected. I see none in either of you, not even in your absurdly-covering excessive clothing.”

“We’re well suited to our environment,” Vivi argued. “Well, we were. Judge us if you want, but society is harsh out there, society is the reason-”

“Yes, yes.” Tamah didn’t even bother to really hear them out; rudely, she assumed somehow that she knew about them. They were aliens, for stars’ sake, but Tamah acted like she had a window peeking into their souls.

Admittedly, their half-opened black flight suits opened a deep window, but only to the bountiful valley of their cleavage.

“I am now convinced, you were sent here for a purpose. What seemed the random accident of a botched escape, was it? Was, in fact, the guiding hand of the Goddess. She sensed your wicked hearts, and knew we could sort you out better than any temporal authority.”

That kind of statement implied a lot of things, but it did mean they probably weren’t beng taken to be executed on an altar to some primal god, or cooked for dinner. They were going to be kept alive a good long time in order to repent.

Kiki wasn’t sure she’d have rather preferred, but Vivi already knew.

Not that what these girls wanted or needed mattered any longer.