Divinity's Reach: Throating Moot

Ella turned the statuette of Wolf, the spirit of the wild, carved from what Astrid had told her was a great cat-like beast’s fang, in her hand. Not because it was a rarefied and aesthetically pleasing piece of work – it was well enough carved, but no more than one could get from a number of merchants – but rather because it was the last thing Astrid had given her. Almost half a year ago, the norn set off again, as she always did, chasing some story, some fragmentary rumor, hoping that she might build the story of her life, her legend, as the norn called it and went on and on about at every possible opportunity.

Since then, nearing six months, Ella had been alone. She had gone to fetch the baked goods for the stall she sold from, had spent her whole day there, not quite selling out more often than not, bought something on the way home to the little home she had hoped that her and Astrid would share, in the cozy, some might say near overcrowded, Salma District of Divinity’s Reach. There she ate, and tidied, and cleaned, and knitted, and read, and tried not to pine over-much.

Breathing out, slowly, she settled the knitting needles and the start of the thick long-sleeve shirt that she hoped to be done with before winter set in, into her lap. Reached up to rub her throat, knowing perfectly well the immediate reaction that would come to her. A low, churning sensation, like little eternally bubbling spots of warmth and pleasant apprehension in her neck. In her chest, and in the pit of her stomach. Spreading, very slowly, to her thighs, and then to her forearms. She missed the stupid, tall, boisterous norn for many reasons, but the one her body recalled the best was the thing they always did. What they had done that first time they met, and what they inevitably did, again and again, that no one could or would ever do like the norn.

Every two months, at the latest, until this most recent longer wait, the two had found one-another. Or, rather, Astrid had made her way to Divinity’s Reach, last true bastion of humankind on Tyria, to the waiting little baked goods seller, retired caravan guard, to have what they now both called a very personal moot. Something the norn, the entire people, indulged in as a tradition. A reason to gather for competition, and for company. It was less competitive, for the both of them, but rather an indulgence both sweet and brutal. Ella swallowed, remembering the endless tears she could not hold back. How her throat burned, convulsing, throwing up from the depth and **** of the norn’s pounding, cruelly hard fucking of her throat, and face. That was what she desired. That, and the way she was gathered up, and held, and cradled afterwards, stuck in Astrid’s warm embrace, precisely the way she had been the first time they met. When it had saved her life. When she had been pleased to discover that her rescuer not only had the enormous strength and furnace heat of all norn, but also a massive, fat cock, the likes of which none in Divinity’s Reach could match.

It had taken her more than a few of their meetings to get the norn to stay for more than a day. Two, then three. Four. A week. But always, always, she left. Always, it was to build her stupid legend. But, until recently, she had at least always come back. Had even started to bring gifts, often odd ones proving her might and the far-flung places she had visited, as if Ella wanted carved teeth, antlers, shards of eternal ice, or anything else that she had been gifted with. She wanted Astrid to stay, and, slowly, it seemed the norn came to realize that, too. Staying longer, and longer. The last time they had been together, Astrid had even spoken of taking up residence in Divinity’s Reach. And then she had disappeared. Ella continued to hold out hope that her chosen mate, companion, whatever the norn called it, had not met her end in some foolish way, trying to build that story. She had a story already. In Ella’s heart.

#

The following day, Ella stopped, as she almost always did on the way home from her often only barely profitable business of selling baked goods from a stall on the Plaza of Dwayna, to buy a bottle of apple juice. To have, that night, with the potato scones she had decided to pick out of the day’s unsold goods to bring home, and eat. What could be saved and sold the day after was saved, and what could not, she typically dragged to the orphanage. With so much unrest in the world, sad as it was, the building was teeming, and always in need of more food.

More than once, she had come by the stall from which she bought juice, sometimes in Astrid’s company, and, as norn were, there had been little attempt at hiding that the two were an item. The natural, free way in which Astrid expressed herself was part of what had kept the flame alive, though it often lead to silly, sometimes absurd situations. Most times, when they had bought juice, it had simply manifested in one of the norn’s strong arms being draped around Ella, which she never objected to, in public or no.

The merchant, Petyr, seemed unusually chatty that evening. He had the bottle within reach, ready, as ever, but as she handed him the scant few coins and received it back, he said more than the usual pedestrian pleasantries.

“Things no longer bliss at home?”

For a moment, Ella lowered her brows just a touch. How would he know that Astrid had been gone for far too long? They were acquaintances, but she had never really shared anything with him that provided much detail. It was unusual, perhaps, but not entirely absurd that a human and a norn should find themselves together.

“I haven’t seen Astrid for months,” Ella said, taking the bottle slowly. “Why would they be bliss?”

“Ah, terribly sorry. Just that I heard someone matching her description having been seen but a week ago.”

“From who?”

“Some stumbling drunkard, nothing more. I’m sure it was nothing,” he said.

Ella took the bottle, and cradled it to her body. Her brows sank further, though she did not center her attention on the merchant, a blur of thoughts bumbling and falling through her mind such that it was difficult to identify any single one.

“Still,” Ella said. “Any idea who?”

“You know the jewelry shop that was robbed two moons ago? One of the former guards from there, best I could tell.”

“Thanks,” Ella said. She looked up to him again, nodding. Then turned, and left him behind.

She went no further than around a corner before she found a bench to seat herself, having decided to eat her potato scones and drink her juice right then and there, so she might try to track down the disgraced guard. Norn were not so uncommon that a sighting of one had to be Astrid, of course, but she was rather distinctive. Hair white as snow, tied into a single, thick braid which hung halfway down her back. Tall, and strong, and loud, of course, but not to a freakish extent – her people were, as a rule, built to tower several feet over the average human. And they were seemingly always loud, at least if they had been raised among the main cluster of their kind in the southern reaches. Within a reasonable distance from Hoelbrak, their capital. The Great Lodge.

Finishing her small stack of scones, almost potato flatbread, really, and the juice, Ella rose again and, for lack of anywhere else to turn, went in the direction of the recently robbed jewelry shop. Closed now, of course, dusk descending, darkness extending slowly from each daytime shadow, it was nevertheless the only real lead she had. Following the promenade, she came to the place. Shuttered. Next to it, however, was a very much open tavern, from which drifted the sound of a banjo, and an overwhelming buzz of conversation. A wall of sense-impressions which she had to mentally prepare herself to carve and push into.

The thought that had lingered at the back of her mind, that had made her feel as if someone rested two fingers against her throat where it met her collarbone, came to the fore. And as it did, she swallowed, and still the sensation of someone just keeping fingers lightly pushed against remained. What if Astrid had returned, but had grown tired of her dull little bread-seller girl? What if someone new, someone more exciting, had turned up on one of those long trips to go fight an ice elemental, or a great beast, or the sons of Svanir, who inexplicably still lingered on the fringes, in caves and in the endless cold of the northern Shiverpeaks? Would she, one day, run into Astrid, arm slung around someone else? Have to awkwardly nod, greet, and then excuse herself to run off somewhere?

Ella shook her head. Blinked, and ran the back of her hand over her eyes. She remembered still the feeling of Astrid crushing her nose, bottomed out in her throat, hands curled around her head to hold her in just the right place. It was a memory of many different occasions blending together into one sensation, one she now wondered whether she would soon want to forget. If she would be able to forget it at all.

The interior of the tavern was warm, and smoky, and crowded. A long row of booths, free-standing tables and chairs, a counter. And every surface darkened by decades of smoke seeping into the wood. Shiny, and clean enough, all things considered, but a place for the rowdy and the drunk. Near the bar, a seemingly endlessly patient bard strummed his banjo, and tried to rouse a too-drunk few tables who refused to sing along at his tempo.

Looking perhaps just enough like a lost bird flapping endlessly around, confused about where the doorway it had entered by now was, Ella soon found a waitress at her arm.

“Can I get you anything, love?”

“I’m looking for a norn. Astrid. White hair, braid?”

“Get at least one drink, Bert might feel chatty,” she said, grasping Ella’s arm and pointing her towards the counter.

A middle-aged man with a beard a little too thin to make him handsome manned the bar, speaking pleasantly with all the patrons lined up along it. Ella nodded her thanks to the waitress, and navigated her way past several tables to get to the counter, managing only to have someone accidentally touch her thigh once. Not knowing who it was, and not in possession of any fighting skills, she resolved to brush it off and reach the bar.

One drink later, a tall glass of dark beer, she managed to catch the bartender’s attention for more than a second.

“I’m looking for a norn! Astrid! White hair? Braid?” She had to shout, having gone deep enough into the saturated soundscape of the tavern that it was difficult to organize even her own thoughts with the noise of twenty different conversations blurring together, meshing with the banjo and the singing.

“Week ago,” he said. “Taken away by a few seraphs.”

“The guards? Why?”

“Ruckus. Brawling!” He said. He disappeared for several minutes, serving a few clusters of patrons, then returned. “Got a few people hurt, but they were antagonizing her. The norn love a good brawl, everyone knows that. A few seraph were nearby, saw it all, and decided to drag her off to the dungeons, I think. Haven’t seen her since. Maybe they’ve just tossed her in there and thrown away the key?”

“Was she with anyone?” Ella took a nervous sip of her drink, casting her eyes over the amazingly noisy patrons.

“What?”

She repeated herself, and he nodded along, perhaps not willing to admit that he had heard only half of what she said. Then again, perhaps half was enough. Ella managed another mouthful of her drink.

“Stupid. You don’t offer a chance to fight to a norn. They like it. It’s like a party, to them,” he said.

“I know,” Ella replied. “So she fought, got someone hurt, was taken away by the seraphs?”

“That’s about the size of it,” he said. Disappeared again to pour yet more drinks.

By the time he returned, only the half-full glass remained as evidence that Ella had been there at all.

#

Though Ella really did not have enough saved up to ditch selling for a day, she had nevertheless decided to forego serving the morning rush the next day. Instead, she navigated to the nearest seraph station until she learned where Astrid had been sent, and put. Into the dungeons, likely meant to be hauled back out, perhaps to pay a fine, after a day or three. But it had been over a week, and there was yet no sign of her, leading Ella to interrogate the decidedly sour-faced, tired seraph staffing the desk in the front room of the small two-story building.

At her insistence, he eventually went through a pile of hastily scrawled records, which revealed the name of the judge that had rapid-fire processed all the minor cases brought to the station that day, where perhaps the man had been in a bad mood. Several of those brought before him for rather minor crimes were nevertheless given the maximum punishment he could reasonably apply to them, and so, it seemed, was Astrid. A year in the dungeons for a tavern brawl which had, according to the record, grievously injured three other patrons of the establishment. Erin’s assessment of the place was that most of the people who spent time in there probably deserved a little injury. She had never known Astrid to kill indiscriminately, only to knock people out. As she would have with her own people, really – it was a sport, a part of most festivities that you fought. A few lost teeth and great bruises really only meant that you had had a good night. Moot. Whatever.

Ella thanked the seraph for his help, and sighed as soon as she left the station. Found a wall against which to lean. The whole day would pass without her being able to sell anything, but it seemed the only way to get to the bottom of what had happened to Astrid to seek out the judge. With a little luck, she would keep her relatively luxurious two-room apartment, rented primarily because it was situated in an old warehouse and thus had very high ceilings. Ceilings that suited Astrid much better. Of course, if Astrid had been in the city without telling her, perhaps there was no longer a reason to rent that place – if she had found someone else.

It took perhaps half an hour to find the house of justice in which the judge, she was told, worked when not visiting individual stations. It took another three hours of navigating the labyrinth of functionaries and secretaries and permission slips and telling the same story and reasoning four times over to actually find herself sat outside of his door. The man, judge Perkins, was in the transition period between aged but basically still broad and powerful-seeming, into the inevitable frailty of older age. Occupied more with carefully, at the speed of molasses, signing a series of documents. He barely looked up as Ella told her tale, merely waved her away. And, when she would not go without him actually speaking, he fixed her with a long and terrible gaze which she endured, and then he sighed.

“Fine, miss Valence. We shall hear her case again, on the morrow. You may go.”

“To visit her?”

Annoyed, likely just from the continued interruption, he nevertheless found a piece of paper and wrote, briefly, on it. Signed it. “This will allow you into the dungeons to speak with her. But no more. I shall see the both of you here, tomorrow morning. At ten.”

“Of course,” Ella said.

She did not know what proper etiquette was, thankful to have spent no time at all in the company of judges until then, and so offered him a respectful bow of her head, but no more. So as to not seem subservient, but neither impertinent. Once the house of justice was behind her, she went straight for the dungeons. Wanting to speak to Astrid, to find out what was going on. A knot in her chest, cold and aching. Anxiety over what she might hear. Anxiety over the mere idea that she suspected Astrid of anything, which seemed a kind of betrayal in itself.

The cell Ella was lead to, after pretending to be much more cheerful and kind and playful than she felt for the benefit of a few bored guards, was not made for the half-giant norn in it. Not that they enjoyed being compared to giants – she learned that early on. Made for a human, instead, she wondered if Astrid could even stand up in it. And if the bars could truly hold someone with the ludicrous strength of the norn. When applying herself, Ella had seen Astrid perform astonishing feats, deeds that seemed impossible even accounting for the greater physique of her kind, and in those moments, she remembered that the woman she now found sat, eyes downcast, in far too small a cell, was blessed by the spirits of the wild. Suffused with magic in a way that humans just, generally, were not. It heated her, it made her capable of lifting boulders five times her own size and weight.

At first, when Ella stopped before Astrid’s cell, the norn did not react. Seemed content to stare down at the flagstones of the floor, not counting, not moving, rarely blinking. It was only when Ella sucked in a breath and rapped her knuckles carefully, but not carefully enough not to hurt, against one of the bars that Astrid looked up. Immediately, like a flower waking from a long winter, growing, blooming, Astrid came to life. Breathed in, cracked a broad, easy smile, and shuffled forward to the cell bars, one larger hand wrapping around the bar which Ella had knocked on. Enveloping her hand in that eternal, pulsing warmth which kept the norn alive in the brutal cold of the Shiverpeaks. And the further north.

“Ella! You won’t believe where I’ve been.”

“In Divinity’s Reach, without telling me?” Ella said. She chastised herself for the way hurt ran through every word, wanted badly to be calm, not to worry, to instead focus on Astrid, but found herself unable.

“What? No,” Astrid said. Leaning her head to the right, a little, smiling. She had a new scar. Four brief lines from what had to have been a claw, marking her jaw, close to her right ear. She furrowed her brows, and then shook her head. “Yes. But I came for you. You wanted us to live here, didn’t you? That’s why I came.”

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Because I brought back a bounty, haha! And I bought you a present, from the jewelry shop,” Astrid said. She seemed joyful, despite her circumstances.

“Which shop?”

“You know the one. Near the juice stall. With the… ah. The tavern next to it.”

An order of events began to come together in Ella’s head. An overjoyed, overeager Astrid arriving in Divinity’s Reach, perhaps even by Asura portal, though the norn had never liked them very much. Preferred her own two feet, even if it made everything much slower. She had bought some kind of trinket, and then gone into the tavern to celebrate. Because everything warranted celebration, for her. Ended up in a brawl, for one reason or another, perhaps because she had been too loud, or stood out, or just interpreted someone’s words or gestures wrong. It would have been a moot, a gathering, a party, to her. Ella took a deep breath, and sighed it out. Sighed the lump in her chest out, mostly, the weight on her shoulders easing.

“And you lost it? The bounty and the present?”

“They have it here. Not to worry, Ella,” Astrid said. She raised her voice, calling to the guards. “You have my bounty still, right? And the present?”

“Yes. Shut up,” came the reply, by a tired voice no doubt having had to answer that question more than once.

“See?” Astrid’s voice was much quieter, then. She released Ella’s hand, and moved her own up to stroke the girl’s cheek. Always so careful, the first time, as if she forgot, between each meeting, that humans were not porcelain creatures liable to break if she so much as breathed on them. “It’ll be fine. They have the present, too, though it won’t be a surprise anymore.”

Ella could not help but smile. Feel her lips, unbidden, curl. Her cheek stretch just ever so slightly, as she looked up into the blue eyes of her norn. Her beloved, stupid warrior-legend. “You… idiot,” she said. Removing her hand from the bar to lay it atop Astrid’s so that her cheek was doubly insulated. She leaned into those large, calloused fingers, used to work, to grasping hafts and hilts of weapons. Not, lately, very used to grasping her. “Idiot,” Ella repeated, quietly.

“Is this how Divinity’s Reach welcomes its daughters?”

“I thought you were of Hoelbrak,” Ella said.

“Not anymore,” Astrid announced, so the entire wing of the dungeon could hear it. There was another exasperated sigh from the direction of the guards. “This is my home, now!”

“Quiet!”

The guards, once more, exasperated, tried and likely entirely failed to get Astrid to moderate her volume. All the woman did was glance in their direction, raising her eyebrows, and then smiling calmly, comfortably, as she looked back down to Ella.

“Have you missed me terribly, little bird?”

“Terribly,” Ella said.

The initial blooming heat, the pleasant churning of contact with Astrid which washed clean her mind and made her think of nothing, gradually receded. Made room for an ache she had suppressed, had rarely felt, which now seemed entirely superfluous. She had pined and ached for, and missed, Astrid every hour of every day, and now that the norn, her norn, her warrior and silly and stupid protector was before her, it seemed as if all that lurking emotion rose to the surface. Ella turned her head and kissed Astrid’s hand, then moved closer to the bars.

“Terribly,” she said again.

Awkwardly, between the bars, their lips brushed against each other. Ella felt Astrid’s hand lower, fingers curling as they found a place beneath her chin, tilting her head upwards so she might look into her beloved’s eyes. Beloved. It was a word that felt almost too filled with hope and possession, the two of them having been apart for those many months. And yet, as her chest rose with deeper breaths that her body demanded of her, as heat rose in her cheeks, she felt the word too small. It disappeared in Astrid’s eyes.

“I’m here, now. With bounty. And tales. You won’t have to sell all the bread, you can feed it to me, instead,” Astrid said.

Ella sighed. And smiled. And clasped her hand around the norn’s forearm with a sharp sound, as if physically chastising her. “Idiot,” she said.

“You keep saying that, little bird. It makes me think you’re fishing for something.”

A single, deep breath. Ella kept her eyes locked on Astrid’s as she spoke a single word in response, which she had said tens, hundreds of times before. In the same tone. All that stopped them were the bars.

“Maybe.”

“Maybe,” Astrid said. Her hand moved to find a grip around Ella’s throat, and there was no resistance. No attempt to get away from the imprisoned, presumably violent and dangerous norn. “You can do much better than that. I know you can.”

“Yes,” Ella said, having drawn out the intense silence between for several seconds. There was some part of her, the part which usually reared its head when they were in public, that told her to stop it. A much stronger part of her, the one that made emotion rise whenever she so much as looked at Astrid, was in control, however. Made her lips part, made her smile, at first, only for the expression to fade into eagerness to feel her beloved in that singular way. To be used, in the way only Astrid knew to use her. To feel her throat full, her face bruised with the **** of the union, her mouth and face sticky with tears and saliva and the remnants of what the unforgiving use of her had **** her to throw up.

Without noticing it, Ella had taken a step closer, pressed up against the bars. Breathing elevated. As if they might, right then and there, proceed to do it. Reacquaint themselves in the way they did, every time they had been apart. Not possible. She closed her eyes, and sighed slowly. Reaching for Astrid’s hand around her throat, standing still, quiet, together, where others might hold hands or rest a head in the other’s lap. She gave a single, whining exhalation as she patted the back of that hand, and then stepped back again.

“We’ll… do something. We’re seeing the judge tomorrow. Have you told him you’re bringing bounty with you?”

“No,” Astrid said.

She, too, sighed tension out, perhaps equally rising to the occasion. Ella’s eyes flickered down to confirm just that, and was not disappointed. Though a little dilapidated by long travel and days in the dungeon, Astrid’s trousers still managed to contain the beast of a cock that lay within. Straining against the surface of the garment now, memories of how the two had previously welcomed one-another no doubt playing in the warrior’s mind as much as they had, and did, in Ella’s.

“He might be more understanding if you tell him you’re bringing riches to the city,” Ella said. Another breath managing to calm her down just a little more. “That’s all.”

“Bounty, and a legend that the city can be proud of,” Astrid said, her voice, seemingly entirely naturally, rising once more. It seemed social conditioning that every norn could not talk about their legend in quiet tones. “Here, in this sorry dungeon, sits the slayer of Megharan! The great snow leopard, sadly corrupted. Terror of the Shiverpeaks!”

“Shut! Up!”

Ella drew in breath for a mighty sigh, but found herself lowering her head to hide a smile as she was about to pour evaporating exasperation into it.

“My great slayer,” Ella said. She reached in between the bars, finding Astrid’s hand one last time. “Tomorrow, you will be free. Or I will move down here, so we can be together. But until then, I must go and sell what I can. Will you behave for me, o great Astrid?”

“Of course, little bird,” Astrid said. For a moment, she seemed capable of being serious. Grave, almost. “I came here to be with you. Not to rot in a dungeon.”

“I’ve missed you,” Ella said. Embarrassed, for a moment, as she went on. “Beloved.”

“Beloved,” Astrid replied, without hesitation.

#

The following morning, both Ella and Astrid sat in the judge’s chambers. Along with a few seraph, two of them at the door, two on either side of the desk, what with Astrid being a supposedly violent criminal, and all. Not that the judge seemed overly concerned with that, sighing and combing through papers in between loudly sucking soup from his spoon. A favor, supposedly, that re-evaluation of Astrid’s case, squeezed in between all his other appointments. During lunch.

“Why did you break the first man’s nose?”

Astrid reached up, apparently unconcerned, rubbing the side of her nose with her left index finger. She fixed Ella with a look, at first, which told of confusion, and then instead set her eyes on the judge. “It was a brawl. People break bones in brawls, sometimes. Humans more easily than us. But it was just a brawl – they started. And it was fun!”

“Of course,” the judge said. He downed another loud spoonful of soup. “And the second one? He lost four teeth.”

“And put up an impressive fight, for a human, too!”

Ella closed her eyes and cringed. Tensed. That taste for life was what she enjoyed most about Astrid, but there were times, like sitting before a judge re-evaluating a case of her assaulting people, where Ella wanted Astrid to be able to moderate herself just a little more. She sighed, and reached a hand over to lay it atop the norn’s right, and without hesitation, her hand was taken. Wrapped up in Astrid’s strong grip, held snug and tight. As if it was Ella who needed reassurance, rather than the norn. Was it her that needed reassurance? She tore her eyes from Astrid, settling them on the judge. For a long while, he had focused on his lunch, rather than the two of them.

“I have had the staff at the tavern questioned, and the men you fought with,” he said. “Surprisingly, they all agree, more or less, that it was a brawl that everyone started. They opened up, you responded. Enthusiastically.”

“A fine fight, too,” Astrid said. She flashed a grin at the judge, who seemed entirely immune to her charms. But then, both seemed blessedly unaware of how incompatible they came off.

“Quite. But, regardless, I cannot set you free to wander Divinity’s Reach. You will get into more brawls, no doubt, knock out more teeth. Break more noses. Or worse.”

Ella took a breath, letting it out as an audible, long sigh. Squeezing Astrid’s hand back, she cleared her throat and leaned forward, signaling that she would take over the norn’s ineffective attempts at arguing her case.

“We were planning to move in together. To… bond, given time,” Ella said. She had not talked with Astrid about that latter part, and so she felt both uncomfortable and impertinent for bringing it up. But it was a usable argument. “And based on our time together, I feel quite certain that I can perhaps moderate her a little.”

“She will need a lot of moderation, miss,” the judge said. His impassive eyes moved to Astrid, then back to Ella. “Do you understand the responsibility your suggestion places upon your shoulders?”

Ella nodded.

“If she gets into trouble, it will be, just as much, on your shoulders,” the judge said. “She is your responsibility. But if you accept that, she may stay. Given a few months of good behavior, the arrangement will cease, and she will be allowed to stay permanently.”

Ella nodded, again. “I accept,” she said, her mind already jumping from one possibility to the next, the endless ways in which Astrid had, and no doubt would again, gotten into trouble.

“There is the matter of the destroyed furniture in the tavern,” he said. “A small fine ought to cover it.”

With a slight grimace, Ella dug into her very sparse purse and paid what was owed. She would very much struggle to pay the rent, due in a few days, if Astrid’s promise of bounty turned out to be more crudely-carved ivory, but if that were the case, at least they would be on the streets together. A few minutes later, Astrid’s chains unlocked and reassurance given that her property would be delivered to them the next day, Ella having signed a piece of paper declaring the norn her responsibility for the rest of the year, they were literally on the street. Together.

The first thing Astrid did was to stretch, to stand at her full, astonishing height. The second thing she did was to lean back down, wrapping arms around Ella. The two hugged, as best they could, with Astrid eventually lifting Ella off the ground such that the girl could first hide her face at the warrior’s throat, then rest her chin on a shoulder, and then kiss. And, finally, Astrid’s laughter booming in the streets, be slung over the norn’s shoulder, bounding down the streets at speed. Both of them knew where Ella’s home was, and while they were both eager to return, it was Astrid’s stature and long legs that would get them there first.

Not able to do much more than hang down the norn’s back, at once exasperated and smiling, Ella leaned her head against her beloved’s shifting, moving back muscles. Others might see her ass first, but she did not have her name written across her backside, and so, there was a limit to how embarrassing it really was. Not to mention that, in truth, it was not the first time Astrid had carried her around like so. The first time, when she had almost died, lost in a sudden snowstorm in the Shiverpeaks, she had been thankful. Thankful to be found, and rescued, and then thankful to share the norn’s warmth. And then too busy showing her gratitude by **** on monster cock to worry about the optics of being carried on someone’s shoulder.

#

They, or rather, Astrid barged into Ella’s home, their home, the door and its frame both groaning at the weight applied to the handle, and pushed against the wood. It sprang open, and only then did Astrid set her prize little human down. Ella turned and, rather more quietly, closed the door again. While Astrid stretched, and looked around the quiet, small place, the living room that they had entered, with both a sofa that, by human standards, was enormous, and a comfortable chair, equally enormous, and a table with several more chairs. Rugs and plants and a bookshelf, and a rack for Astrid’s weapons, which had stood empty for many months. And, along one wall, a table, a stove, and other furnishings of a simple kitchen. Ella preferred to buy her meals, and Astrid preferred roasting prey over a great big fire, which meant that neither of them cared over-much about building out the spartan food preparation area.

“I’ve missed this place,” Astrid said. She extended both her arms as she stepped into the center of the room, spinning around herself once.

“Really? You’ve always been keen to get away from me again,” Ella said. Half truth, half just poking the norn.

“The road called. It wasn’t like I wanted to leave you, you’re soft and warm and pretty. And very durable, for a human,” Astrid said. She turned to face Ella, letting arms fall to hang at her sides. Strong arms, strong hands. “Which reminds me.”

“Reminds you of what?”

Astrid took a step closer. There was still a genial, soft edge to the way her head was leaned to one side, a caring bend of eyebrow, a welcoming shine to her eye. But there was also the reminder, in Ella’s mind, of what inevitably would come. They would dance, as they always did, pretending, until they came together not for punishment, exactly, but for what exploitative desire they both shared. How they learned it, exactly, she had forgotten. A slow progression, where first she offered something to Astrid, who took a little more than what was offered. And was then encouraged to take much more, in the way only she could.

Ella remained silent for a while longer, refusing to tilt her head backwards, though still looking up at the slowly approaching, broad, tall norn. Astrid. Her beloved. Chest rose and fell with audible breathing. She swallowed saliva, feeling as if her mouth, her throat, already wanted to open. Preparing for the inevitable brutality. Inviting it in. Ella moved in, very close, then. Placed her right hand, fingers splayed just so, against the hard core of Astrid’s abdomen for a long moment – lifted the hand, then, curling her fingers, tracing a row of knuckles over the soft fabric separating her from bare skin.

“Reminds you of what?”

Astrid’s strong, right hand found Ella’s throat, fingers bending around its delicate curve, pushing upwards so that the girl had to tilt her head. Insistent lips against hers, even as she had to take a step back to keep her balance. Astrid could not just kiss, she advanced. Eager, and unstoppable. Until Ella’s repeated backwards half-stumbling movements found her back pressed against the wall next to the door, where she bumped against the lower half of the framed picture of her childhood home. It had been reframed, the glass replaced, four times. All of those times it had fallen and shattered, ultimately, Astrid’s fault.

“Why won’t you answer?”

Astrid ceased her insistent kissing of Ella’s lips, and nose, and jaw, and throat, to look at her. Fingers crept upwards, making that grip more one of jaw, and cheeks, than throat. For a long moment, the two just stared at each other.

“Reminds me of your lips around my cock,” Astrid said, at last.

“Could’ve just… said that,” Ella said. She struggled to speak, some, the norn’s fingers effectively trapping her jaw. She tried to smile mischievously, but it was difficult to do anything but look either sensuous or stupid with the large warrior’s digits digging into her cheeks, caving them in between her teeth, some. “I’ve been waiting for you. For six months.”

“You won’t be so eager when we’re done,” Astrid said. There was a mixture of threat, satisfaction, and bounding joy in her voice.

“I won’t be able to talk,” Ella said. Still looking confidently up at her beloved. “When you’re done.”

Rather than reply, Astrid released the girl’s jaw and cheeks, then bent down to lift her, slinging her once more over a shoulder like no more than a sack of potatoes. The walk was shorter, at least, as they only had to make it some twenty steps further in, to the bedroom, where once more an enormous piece of furniture, the bed made for norn rather than mere humans, took up the majority of the room. Astrid swung Ella from her shoulder, placing the girl on her back, head hanging just over the edge of the bed. At a very well-calculated height, something that they had surreptitiously tested and made sure of before deciding on precisely that bed.

“You must’ve missed me terribly,” Ella said, unable to stop herself from cracking a smile. Inside her chest, anxiety fluttered alongside desire, and expectation. She knew that she could expect no mercy from the norn, and she wanted none. But, even so, her body would soon try to rebel against the onslaught. For once, at least, Astrid remembered to place down a towel. Not very thoroughly, dragging a used one over with a foot to cluster and bundle beneath Ella, and strands of her dangling hair, but it was more than could have been expected a few years back.

“-You- must’ve missed me terribly,” Astrid replied. “Come now.”

Upside down, Ella nevertheless raised her arms from the bed, up above her head, delicate fingers working Astrid’s belt buckle open, and then untying the slim rope that kept her trousers up even without a belt. And then began to work buttons loose, and open. Long ago, she had had the time, during a moment such as this, to ask why Astrid wore both a belt and the rope, and had been told that she had no intention of dying in battle with trousers around her ankles. It seemed unlikely that the kind of battle the two would engage in would involve such issues, but Ella had learned not to question certain things. Instead, she dutifully kept at her work.

As Astrid’s trousers sagged open, not only was smooth, unblemished skin revealed, wrapped over the iron muscle beneath, but so was the prize, the thing that no other human could handle quite like Ella. And she, only barely. The curve of the base of that massively fat cockshaft came into view, inch upon girthy inch revealed to the world, confirming Ella’s memories – when she tried to circle its root with both hands, such that her fingertips might try to meet, she found herself unable to. Just barely. Just as she recalled.

With one hand wrapping around the smooth, weighty shaft, Astrid lifted the monster. Swung it upwards, really, momentum carrying it up, then reversing, and then letting its full heft smack down against Ella’s skin. Resting against her delicate features, but further down, too. The broad, thick head settled between her breasts, and then pushing further as the norn shifted closer, letting that wide cumvein continually slip forward over the girl’s pursed lips. Ella relaxed, then, letting her head fall backwards. Breathing in just before the warrior’s heavy, plump balls came to rest against her face, knowing that she would be allowed to make lengthy re-acquaintance with them over the next many minutes.

After so long apart, after any amount of time apart, really, she always had to acclimate. To recall and adjust to what it felt like to be beneath the norn’s tender touch, what it felt like to be weighed down by nothing more than colossal, thick dick. Astrid never spoke of it, but Ella wondered, sometimes, lips working gently, carefully against the soft skin containing one huge nut, whether she was being scent marked without the warrior even considering what it was she was actually doing. But then, it could also just be a reaffirming of their union, of the way they had been together for years, on and off. Always, Astrid was jovial, and pleasant, and boisterous. Until it came time for them to fuck, where she would become assertive, demanding, and frequently push Ella to her very limits. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes merely as a result of the differences in size between human and norn.

There was no preparing for such a beast of a cock, but she always pretended to herself that she tried, that if she swallowed, that if she tried to dilate her throat before their brutal union, she might last just that little longer. She might take Astrid a little harder. If only she could. No one else in Divinity’s Reach could rival the norn, and even then, even going as far as they possibly could, Ella still found herself wanting more. Even when her body ached, and her throat burned, her brain still greedily demanded more. Wanted her to let herself be used again, deeper, harder. Wanted hands wrapped around her to never release their iron grip.

Astrid rocked backwards just an inch, allowing Ella to breathe in once more. She did so, but soon found her lips wrapping around what she could of one of those enormous balls, sucking carefully, pressing her tongue against its languid curve.

“Little bird,” Astrid said, voice thicker than usual. Need having sunk its claws into her.

“My legend,” Ella replied.

Only momentarily releasing the norn’s balls from the sweet embrace of her lips, she dove back in after speaking. As much as she could, at least, for as long as she could, Astrid’s nuts stuck in her gentle maw even as the warrior pulled slowly back, until Ella released her, at last. Churning, sloshing gift made very much aware of her, readied to pump down her throat, and into her stomach. She turned her attention, instead, on kissing, on dragging her tongue over smoothly-veined skin, providing the massive cockshaft a pillow upon which to rest. Already, a considerable amount of drool had been deposited upon Astrid, and it would only get worse. Ella knew what was to come.

Before she could crown that broad, hefty cockhead with her lips, it began to press forward. Astrid, gone for so long, had evidently had no one to ease the pressure with, and wasted no time in beginning to work that behemoth into Ella’s mouth. She breathed dutifully through her nose, soft lips parting, gaping, nose scrunching, face screwing up. Opening her mouth as wide as it would go, encouraged by the beast between her lips, she nevertheless found that what her fingers could not unite around, neither could her mouth open sufficiently to allow in. Not without the insistent help, the unyielding strength, of her beloved.

A hand found its place upon her exposed throat, holding her steady as she worked and was worked into position, the back of her head finding a firm resting spot against the cushioned side of the bed. Nowhere to go, secured so that she could not squirm, or turn away, would not accidentally slip, Ella let out a strained, moaning, obstructed sound as Astrid pushed forward, grinding lips apart just that little bit more. Stealing room meant for her tongue, which felt more and more imprisoned against the bottom of her mouth, unable to move save the most perfunctory devotions and worshipful lashings against that colossal, fat dick. With another slow, grinding effort, the norn letting out a slow groan, she **** another half-inch of that cockhead in, and threatened to push up against the opening of Ella’s throat. Already, though, the girl had largely lost track of events, felt her firm grip on reality slipping as one thing increasingly took up her whole world, her jaw aching, the hand against her throat making it difficult to breathe even without that monster slowly driving into her.

With another insistent, deliberate push forward, the smooth skin of that crown met the back of her mouth, both trapping saliva before it, forcing it into her throat, and pushing more of it back out. What spit would, normally, have run from Ella’s lips and to her chin instead spilled forth, escaping pressure, to roll up to her nose, some strands working their way around and up her cheeks, to her eyes, and further up into her eyebrows and forehead and eventually into her hair. The rest ran back into her nostrils, where her body almost immediately wanted rid of it. But she could not shake her head, could not cough or snort, or breathe hard. All she could do, just that, was gurgle quietly, Astrid’s massively thick dick pushing an inch, and then another inch down. Making the girl’s throat begin to distend from its presence.

From the audible breaths above, it was clear to Ella that the **** contractions of her throat, both those intentional and those less so, made themselves felt. Not in pushing the invading girth out, but in tightening around it, pleasing it. Even as Astrid’s hand on Ella’s throat rose, elevated by that hefty, fat shaft’s steady, merciless progress, the girl felt what she knew was coming. What always came, what Astrid seemed not to mind, perhaps even desire, as she responded to the first tensing convulsion of Ella’s throat by slam-fucking another few inches down, in, only causing the watery bile to rise higher in her depths.

As merciless as that first, real thrust had been, just as responsive was the norn’s retreat. Rocking back and forth, still, dipping in and out of Ella’s throat almost as if she was trying to provoke it as much as possible, she nevertheless withdrew. Pressed in, insistently, holding herself in place just long enough that the feeling rising in Ella came to a head, rolling, crashing down past her barriers. A wave of sour, but thankfully watery bile rose, and incredible, rhythmic tension in her chest propelled it up, and out, as if her body might then expel Astrid.

Ella gasped, and tried to breathe, her mouth, what room still remained to her in it, awash with the thicker, sloppier strands of saliva-like liquid from her throat. What she had thrown up, she tried to spit out, but could only let the bubbly, viscous liquid seep from her lips. Strong cables of it, thinning but not breaking near their middles, formed, connecting her face with Astrid’s enormous girth, though she was only vaguely aware of their existence. Of the smearing, throaty mess already covering much of her face. She closed her eyes, taking in another shrill breath before Astrid returned. Leaned forward, more insistently than before, not so much thrusting forward as letting the sheer mass of her chiseled form grind her crushing girth inwards, slipping once again up against the opening of Ella’s throat. Remaining there, moving back and forth, before deciding to plunge several inches of fat cock down the girl’s throat.

Astrid leaned down, forward, settling one hand upon Ella’s stomach, the other on the reforming bulge on her throat, the norn stood in a wide position. She certainly could have used all of that prodigious strength to cram and fuck, as hard as possible, until she bottomed out in the little baker-girl, her beloved, but she instead employed the position to **** herself in bit by bit. That behemoth sinking past straining lips, coaxing forth, from the well eternal, new spilling strands of thick saliva. New gurgling, bubbling sounds of strain. And yet, Ella’s hands had been gathered beneath herself, at the small of her back, and there they remained. The girl did not once move them, no matter how much she squirmed, or how much her cheeks burned, no matter how much she wished for breath. Before all of those, she wished for her beloved warrior to find the home, the true home, in which she belonged. Bottomed out in her struggling, straining little human’s throat.

Heartbeat pulsing in her ears, in her chest, Ella nevertheless dutifully tried to wrap her conquered tongue around what she could of the top of that behemoth. Try as she might, she could not cave her cheeks in to suck, her maw simply too full, overcome with accommodating the monster. She tried, once, to reach her hands up to caress the warrior, her beloved, as they found unity in one-another, but her hands had been removed. Set back in their place. She no longer tried, now. She took. She trembled with the effort of the grinding, brutal attempt at fitting such colossal cock into someone so clearly not made to take it, and knew that that effort was precisely what Astrid desired of her. It was a guiding star in her mind, a light which was ever more assaulted, from all sides, by the red and black, thumping rhythm of her heart. By the ache of her jaw, by the rhythmic clenching, tightening, of her throat, which would have tried viscerally to expel Astrid again, if it could. If it, too, was not too full of that mammoth cockshaft to do anything but submit, and take those lazily pumping, thick inches.

Astrid’s strong, broad frame descended ever closer over Ella, a feeling more than something she could see, the norn’s clearly elevated, strained breathing seeming to sound from nearer than ever. Densely-muscled thighs came closer, too. Those hefty, massive balls risked swinging forward enough to meet her face, making the mess ever more complete.

“Missed you… very much, little bird,” Astrid said, sounding as if she worked the words out past gritted teeth, or with a set jaw.

To underline those strong feelings, perhaps, the norn finally thrust forward. An explosive movement, controlled such that it fed a mere three of those colossal inches of cock down Ella’s throat. A break of two seconds, perhaps. Recovery. The beating of her heart, the burning of lungs desiring air, coming back. Focus stolen from them again when Astrid employed both weight and muscle to hammer another three inches in. The outermost curve of one of her nuts kissed Ella’s forehead, at that, and she closed her eyes more tightly, aware of what would soon come.

Another brutal thrust, sinking more weighty, wide dick into Ella’s maw, into her throat, into her depths. Astrid’s balls pounded against her face, the thick, slowly-running mess of saliva and throat-slop seeming to welcome them, forming connections drawn out into long, slowly drooping, breaking strands. Precious few of those pillars collapsed, though, Astrid hammering in again, coming dangerously close to making Ella’s tense, taut lips form a seal around the root of that monster. Forcing another meeting of the girl’s face and those churning orbs, swinging not quite so far away the next time. Smacking against her features, helpful in their ability to absolutely ensure that every spare inch of skin was covered in the translucent, thick mess, sharing the bounty.

The final few inches, Astrid did not thrust in, favoring the slow bottoming out of grinding up against Ella, trapping the girl between pelvis and mattress, filled to the brim with that slowly pulsing monster of a cock, lips trying to deposit a kiss around its base. She still could not breathe, however, and having what little air remained in her jackhammered out by her beloved’s needy, hard thrusts finally made Ella capitulate. Made her pull her legs up, slowly, in an inverted v. Made her curl up her toes, and then her soles, made her begin to dig her nails into her own palms. Made her tense and pull tighter still around that enormous conqueror, her throat at once bulging with its presence, and trying to contract. Rhythmically squeezing, imparting pleasure. That much was clear from Astrid’s breathing, and the way she leaned in, keeping herself hilted, balls feeling as if they rose just slightly against Ella’s face.

Endless seconds passed, at once eternal as they slipped by and through Ella, and yet near forgotten once past her, her focus entirely on the need to breathe. And the vague knowledge, from previous encounters, of what was to come. Astrid reluctantly withdrew. Four, six, ten inches of that massive shaft. Exhaling with great pleasure, the warrior then began to roll her hips, fitting all that she had removed back in. With great insistence, no doubt, but not in a berserk fury. Calmly – Ella could imagine widened eyes, excited, but still in control – feeding that fat dick down her beloved’s throat once more. Even as the girl arched her back off the bed, leg muscles twitching, Astrid still kept that hand upon her bulging throat, allowing her to go nowhere. To stay in place, accepting colossal cock, deliberately and slowly bottomed out in her again, and again, and again.

On the verge of letting decorum or consciousness, or both, slip, Ella then felt what her darkening, panicked mind desperately clawed for. Astrid pulled back, not just to prepare for another thrust, but pulled inch after fat inch backwards, upwards, the distension on Ella’s throat sinking, her mouth then feeling oddly empty as the norn left her behind. Empty for a moment, at least, as she drew in a shrill, whining breath, hacked out a cough, and then breathed a second time. Convulsed as yet more throat-slop rose, her chest contracting, pumping it out of her, a thumb-thick, sliver-thin strand of it soon running over her face, into her hair, where it mixed with what was already there to hang in lazy, slowly extending, breaking strands towards the floor. Towards the already near-soaked towel.

Unable, seemingly, to decide whether she was coughing, breathing in, or breathing out, Ella laid slack on the bed, gasping, heaving for breath, staring at the floor, at the feet of her beloved, yet seeing very little. There was no time. She felt a few fingers gently caress her throat, again, and knew that she would be called upon again within seconds. Closed her eyes.

Lips pursed, parting slowly against the tip of Astrid’s behemoth, defeated almost routinely as the kiss spread into gaping to envelop the monster. Inches sinking in, playing less, questing deeper, instead. No slow conquest, the second time that Astrid began to find her home in Ella’s throat, but neither did the norn try to push as deeply as before. It was rather simpler, then, and Ella knew what to expect. The large hand upon her throat found its place once more, and just in time, the first thrust, the beginning of building a new rhythm, hammered into her. It was not conquest, not in the way it had been before, but rather something more simple. Using her to pound relentlessly into, so as to coax forth orgasm. That was the goal. For her to stay in place, to remain perfectly aligned, to take every titanic inch, and to do her best to suck and rhythmically tighten as multiple handfuls of girthy inches drove in, and out.

The steady rhythm of thrusts went on. And on. And so the two became acquainted again, in a way that they had not been for months, in a way that Ella missed, despite the near-retching contractions of her throat, despite the thick mess on her face, despite the embers that now seemed to ever burn in her mind, desiring breath. To be taken so, at her beloved’s mercy, was precisely what she had missed for all those months. The hollow was emotional, but it was physical, too – none in the city, in all the lands that belonged to its domain, could measure up to what Astrid gave her, or come even close to it. Nor could anyone in those same lands give the warrior woman what she now received. Who else could hope to endure the repeated, mercilessly hard, pistoning thrusts, to never falter and try to shrink from the inexorable rhythm with which the beast plowed into her face and throat?

Once more, Astrid withdrew. More slowly, but then, she had not pushed Ella quite so far up to the brink, instead allowing the girl to let thick saliva pump from her mouth, previously stuffed to beyond the point of fullness, once more letting rivulets of it path over her face. Soon enough, what did not drip to the floor and the towel from her hair would find a new home as heavy strands straining longer and then collapsing between her features and Astrid’s weighty balls. She heaved in breath after breath, after breath, until it came time again.

Again, Astrid pushed in. Placing a hand upon the shifting bulge on Ella’s throat, almost as if she were trying to increase the pleasant friction further. That same pleasure could not help but manifest, the girl’s velvet lips tight around each mammoth inch as it slipped in. Ever more, the grinding, continual pressure giving way to thrusts that powered that fat cockshaft forward, almost as if Astrid’s goal was to have her balls come to rest on Ella’s face, to make the mess more complete than it already was. So it seemed, certainly, as thrust followed brutal thrust, staccato, hammerblows falling once, then resting, then falling again. Driving in, until the final, fat inches found a home in Ella’s body, where they remained. Five, ten, then fifteen seconds, until Astrid finally relented, pulling backward almost halfway, only to press in again, to the root. Bottoming that behemoth out in the girl’s small frame for the second time. Third. Fourth time. Standing over her, terribly close, exhaling with **** at each meeting of body and face, the large, broad norn once again trapping Ella’s head between mattress and strong thighs. Once more leaving her to fight her natural instincts, those wanting to expel the colossus from her throat by whichever measures available, her reasonable and emotional self fighting back, trying uselessly to push herself up against Astrid’s toned body, as if she might then discover still-hidden inches which she could swallow, and thus prove herself and her love all the deeper for it.

No such thing happened. Astrid withdrew again, and allowed Ella her shrill, rapid breathing, coming ever closer to sobs with each passing second. It was her traitorous body that made the sound, and not the mind which nominally controlled it. Astrid seemed to know as much, at least, as she ignored them and began to ram that huge, fat cock back into the girl’s maw, and throat. With greater strength, more insistence, she once more set a hard, fast pace, not quite bottoming out, merely pumping more than half of that behemoth in, and out, for every thrust.

Ella could feel the urgency in her beloved’s movements, the occasional tensing of muscle, not in the way that promised release, but rather something insistent, something coaxing, the norn seeming to try to push herself ever closer to orgasm by those hard contractions, seeming usually to coincide with having pounded herself in as far as she were going. The primal urge to ensure that nothing of her potency was wasted lived in Astrid as it did in so many others, and it never failed to manifest in her when the two found each other again. And so it was that she slipped a little deeper in, every thrust, pushing herself towards that inevitable climax, the rhythm becoming slow, almost more like singular thrusts, each growing closer and closer to burying the norn to the hilt in her small human’s throat once more. Pulling back, and then cramming all of those fat, pulsing inches of thick dick back in, straining, tensing as she did so, Astrid approached orgasm. Ella felt it clearly when her beloved bottomed out, balls rising against her face, that colossal cockshaft seeming to expand just slightly as it came to rest entirely in her throat, the norn’s chiseled muscle standing out, clearly defined, as she tightened.

At last, just as Astrid seemed about to pull back entirely, trying to allow Ella one precious moment to breathe, the solid foundations which kept the warrior in control of herself crumbled. A single, hard thrust, hammering herself in to the root, tensing, and what had been mere prickles of pleasure turned into lashing waves, unable to be stopped. Astrid’s hands moved, fastening around Ella’s distended throat, holding her down and in place, pulling her ever harder into an already inescapable embrace of lips around that massively thick base. Face mashed up against nuts, and thighs.

Before Ella could feel the deeper bio-machinery, the frightfully powerful, regular, pounding quakes, she first felt a kind of weakness in her beloved’s grip, fingers staying in place, but seeming to lighten the strength with which they wrapped around her throat. Unable to see, she nevertheless sensed, felt, Astrid’s body tensing, tightening, preventing even breath for a long moment, until a raw, grinding exhalation emerged, a sound balancing on the knife-edge between pleasure and pain. A starting signal, of sorts, the breath spilled into one that was softer, and then another, softer still, edged not with pain but with fierce pleasure.

It was with that second breath, Astrid’s body loosening its grip on itself, that the dam broke. The norn’s core rhythmically tightening, bursting pleasure forth with as much power as it began to send those hammerstroke, hard jets of molten, copious seed through the throbbing, fat shaft, its thick vein expanding further to accommodate each strand, each hefty pillar pumped down, and into Ella’s stomach. Very nearly, she felt, their bodies merged. With the urgent need of release, Astrid had speared and crammed herself inside to the deepest possible spot, Ella’s lips flattened around the root of that monster cock. Each heartbeat seemed to send another boiling, sweltering rope down her throat, splattering into her stomach. Load after load, after load, and still, she remained dutifully in place. Hands behind her back. Taking every drop.

By the third load, her stomach showed vague signs of fullness, as if she had eaten to satiation, and then kept going a little longer. A moment later, a fourth and then a fifth came, and the first signs of a bump appeared, a gentle little curve. More massive loads followed, and what had been a bump grew into a hill, and as the endless, pumping, thumb-thick cables of seed splattered into the girl’s belly, it continued to rise, building to a pregnant dome where she had been flat. And even then, the mass of semen still moved, wobbling with the **** of each additional rope joining the uncountable ones already sloshing around inside of her.

Gently, carefully, as if the mist-spawned demon inhabiting her had finally been excised, Astrid more caressed than gripped Ella’s throat as she withdrew. Slowly, clearly trying to be steady as opposed to fast, perhaps so as to not disturb the half-sphere left behind, protruding up far enough to measure up to the top of the inverted v of the girl’s knees.

Astrid halted halfway, pressing back in just half an inch, forcing another few strands of seed from that massive shaft, halfway crumbling forward over Ella at those last growing halos of pleasure, control returned only then so that she might continue pulling back. Breathing hard, still, she nevertheless withdrew until the girl could drag in ****, high-pitched gasps of air, coughing, and then breathing again.

Ella hacked, and then breathed, and let her abused mouth hang open, unable to open her eyes for the sheer clogging mess still settled upon her face. She was terribly free of her beloved’s monster down her throat, but the breaking of contact made her anxious, as it always did once they were done. Without logic behind it, given all the time they had spent together, the thought that Astrid was now done with her, bound to leave her, always came unbidden. More so when she could not see, and yet did not want to break the position she had been instructed to take. Long seconds trailed between them, but then she felt the norn’s hands upon her cheeks. Fruitlessly wiping, not exactly clean, but at least less covered.

Gentle fingers cupped Ella’s cheek, other digits briefly guiding her jaw to close, then finding a home on the other cheek. Holding her in place with all the **** needed, after having been so thoroughly used – none at all. Warm lips met hers, then, and she let go a pent-up half-sobbing gasp, breath rising its pace as she near cried, not from the strain, or the ****, or the endless impacts against her face, but from relief that she had once more measured up. To Astrid’s desires. More importantly, perhaps, to her own demands. It was the warrior’s repeated, tender kisses that kept her grounded, that kept her mind from flying off in the direction of the most disastrous possible ideas she could muster.

“Little bird,” Astrid whispered. “Beloved. You did so well. Worthy of bragging about at the next great moot, even.”

Another lingering kiss.

In their own way, they had sealed their union. Ella opened her mouth, lips trembling, and tried to speak the depths of her feelings to Astrid, but found nothing coming out. It would be hours, perhaps a full day, until she could speak, after what her beloved had subjected to.

She wanted more, and knew, now, that there would be more. No more hoping against hope, in silence, alone. Instead, tucked into the warmth of Astrid’s embrace, she would be held. And cared for. And taken again, and again, and again.