Ethat and Korr insisted on carting me to my bath and attentively bathing me.
To be fair, I was fairly wrecked and very, very sticky.
"Is this honey?" I asked, touching the fluid dripping from my chin and breasts.
"It's more like nectar, which is made into honey," Korr commented just before he plunged me into the hot bath water. The water foamed and sizzled and a scent of flowers rose into the air.
"I am sorry if you don't like it," Ethat said with demure, downcast eyes and a soft voice. He was already in the tub with me, and his green hair swirled on top of the water while he held soap and a sponge at the ready.
I squirmed free of his brother and shoved my foot into the softness of his thigh. He twitched and his gaze fluttered to me for an instant before he caught himself, a shimmer of pollens, fireflies, and his teeth briefly shifting to needles passing over him. "I didn't ask for comment," I told him sweetly.
He shivered again and Korr just chuckled like the smug bastard he was.
They'd reverted back into their fully human forms. And Ethat's withering had improved. His hair was still a mix of withered and not withered, but back to mostly silky green, and almost entirely fireflies drifted around him, and the skin around his eyesocket had improved. Was that magical unicorn pussy, or he wasn't stressing himself out any longer?
"Are you hurt, my love?" Ethat inquired as he delicately sponged my breasts. Under the water, one of his hands cradled one of my thighs, and he looked directly at me, expression worried.
"No," I assured him.
"Because I know that--" He stopped talking.
"Your magic...does something," I said.
"I am too large otherwise," he said simply. "Fortunately, my magic allows me to... make a female body bloom to accept my size."
"I was talking mostly about the vines."
He smiled, mischievous and angelic, and offered no further comment. Instead, Korr passed Ethat a bar of scented soap, and the two brothers shared pleased smiles before gazing back down at me.
"I will chill the water," Korr answered the question before I'd even half thought it. "I will... watch."
"I can bathe myself," I said.
"Of course you can. But it is the custom of dragons to be very, very attentive. Let us indulge ourselves. You will find dragons, and I suppose hippocamp, far more... attentive... partners than wolves or gryphons. I wonder what male unicorns were like." Korr resettled himself on the edge of the tub and pondered this. "The world only has room for so many neurotic males."
I laughed. Ethat redoubled his sponging efforts, delicately sponging away everything, including tenderly bathing between my legs. He caressed me there, gently, and told me, softly and with regret. "You are swollen still. Did we hurt you?"
Of course I was still swollen and sensitive. I'd been fucked by two dragons. Unicorn or not, the flesh was delicate, if fully willing. "No, I'm fine. You don't need to worry."
"Are you sure?" he asked. Korr looked concerned.
I splashed water on him. They were so dramatic. "You want me to prove to you how fine I am?"
"Are you sore?" Ethat asked instead. "Inside? My magic can only stretch a partner so much, and I was quite rough. It was so difficult to hold back, but I thought I succeeded somewhat."
I splashed him again. "That wasn't rough."
His gaze, for a split second, was searing hot and the fireflies intensified in brightness, but only for a split second. Like a flash of heat that was here and gone, and he returned to his gentle tending, working his way down my my feet, where each toe got attention.
This was a bit silly, but it was also nice. Korr watched all of it like it was very very serious business. When he was done with my body, Ethat shifted to cradle me in his arms against his chest.
"What--" I asked as he lowered me. Korr moved to right behind my head and reached down into the tub to grasp handfuls of my hair, before using a cup to scoop water over my head. He hummed to himself while he soaked my hair, his hands cold but the water hot. Then he worked the soap into my hair, scooping and smoothing and rubbing . I sighed and closed my eyes.
Ethat, smiled.
"This is a bit odd," I told them after a few minutes. The water had started to cool a bit, especially with Korr's hands in it, even though he tried to limit his contact with it. Being cradled like this while my body was bathed and my hair attended to was... the cooler the water got, the more uncomfortable it became.
"Is it?" Ethat inquired. "Korr is practically purring."
"Dragons purr?" I asked. My attention on Ethat shifted it away from the strange, disconcerting I don't think I like this starting to brew in the back of my cheesy-lump head. But I was not about to ruin this.
"We purr when we're blissful," Ethat confirmed.
I listened. Over the sounds of water, Korr's quiet humming did, in fact, sound a bit like a purr. But also was a hum. "Will he start kneading like a cat?"
Ethat chuckled and Korr's humming paused for him to scoff.
"Are you quite done, brother?" Ethat inquired. "This water is only somewhat warm now."
Korr shifted off the stones and went to retrieve one of my robes. He held it while Ethat helped me to my feet and guided my steps out of the bath. Korr wrapped the robe around me and kissed my cheek, while Ethat used a towel to gather up my hair and press the water from it.
"Korr," I said while he held me and his brother wrung out my hair.
"Hmm?"
"You're squishing me."
He released me. Ethat went to fetch a hair comb to pick the snarls out of my hair. Korr stole it from him. Ethat snarled. Korr growled. Ethat tried to snatch it back. Korr held it out of reach. "You got to bathe her. I get to brush her hair."
"Um, guys--" I said.
"You bathed her hair," Ethat retorted.
"You dried it."
"You watched!"
"You pet her between her thighs. I am brushing her hair."
Ethat snarled, "I did not pet, I tended to her!"
"You did both," Korr retorted.
I plucked the comb out of Korr's hand and went to go brush my own hair.
They followed along, Ethat quickly shrugging on one of Korr's robes (a festive purple one with gold trim), arguing at each other in hisses and chirps and human words in a few different languages while I picked out the tangles in my hair. But it wasn't very tangled at all. Korr had done an amazing job of washing my hair, and Ethat drying it without snarling it. Although they both had hair longer than I did, even if it was very straight, and mine had a slight curl.
The curls lived to snarl with other curls.
A knock on the door. Then said knock instantly followed by the door being punted open. Itek was on the other side, gold hair braided away from his face but otherwise falling free around him, and dressed in buttery red.
"If you lot are done," Itek drawled, smirking, "Marcus wants to know where we'll be eating dinner this evening. I wasn't about to say off Korr's ass."
"That would be an option, I suppose," I said.
"Don't tempt my brother!" Asund called from the hallway. "He'd do it just to prove a point."
"Well, the food would be served cold," Korr said, trying to sneak the comb from my hand while I was distracted. He did not succeed.
Asund popped his head over Itek's shoulder. "Did I not just warn you to not encourage the situation? Perhon would live to scandalize you. In the way you would not like nor ever recover from."
"That sounds intriguing and challenging."
"Could you not parade your ass for everyone curious about it?" I asked Korr, because knowing him, he would say something and one thing would lead to another and he would end up being a table for the evening. Perhon might have been family, but he was also a wolf who wanted something, and with wolves, their pack always came before their family.
Ormiss appeared in the doorway, expression dour. "It is not your ass to parade any longer, dragon. Be respectful."
Then Ormiss walked away in a swirl of dark braids.
Itek watched him go, then looked back at us. "I have to tell the bird something. Here or there? And we are going to have to decide what we are going to tell him. He is on his own with these bugs."
"Isn't that what we're going to tell him?" Ormiss asked from farther down the hallway.
"Diplomatically," Itek said over his shoulder.
Ormiss swished back into view. "I am aware you mean diplomatically. I am telling you that is the diplomatic way of doing it. He is a wolf that came all this way to beg for help. He is desperate, and he is doing something desperate, and he knows that we all know it's desperate. Respect him and his desperation enough to tell him we are not in a position to help him directly. Then we make plans to go to the northern mountains."
Northern mountains? Who ever said anything about the northern mountains? That was the exact opposite direction I wanted to go.
Ormiss looked around my room, then stepped carefully over the threshold, one eye on me to make sure I wasn't about to banish him.
Asund leaned against the other side of the door from from Itek. "Why would we go north?"
Ormiss pointed at Korr and Ethat. "If I remember my dragon customs properly, they need to present Theia to the other dragons of their roost. Breeching this protocol is somewhat on the same scale of disgrace as a Hippocamp stallion not having prepared his consort's abode."
Ethat fiddled worriedly with his fingers while Korr's lips bent down in an annoyed frown.
"And," Ormiss held up a finger, "Theia has been seeing snowy mountains. We need to pursue what the God of Barren Branches told her, and where better to do that than the last remote forest in autumn where unicorns were seen? And it will give us the opportunity to go to speak with the dragons and the gryphons to the south on our way back about the bugs. We have to send Perhon away empty-handed, but we do not need to abandon him."
Ethat fiddled, his fireflies turning to black flies with worry. Korr reached out and put a hand on his shoulder.
"After that, if we still have no real answers," Ormiss turned his attention to me. He came over and knelt at my knee, skirts pooling around him. "And then if we still need more answers, I will take you to the island where we met, and we will look for this tower."
/********
Peeeeepppsssssss
Ooooh, GONNA GO MEET THE FAMILY. GONNA GO MEET THE FAMILY.
Who's excited? I'm excited! Yay!
Now I must go try to puzzle over TikTok. I abandoned it for a while, then recently went back to it, and now it's just trying to convince me all I want to watch is people doing stupid dancing and/or lip syncing lame stuff.
It's so bad I actually checked all my like and follow history on my profiles to make sure my accounts weren't doing weird things while I was on hiatus. Nope. Literally the only things I've ever liked are book/author stuff. And the occasional cat video. I wonder if it's because TiKTok is quarantined on the "plague phone" (I keep TikTok on a factory reset stripped-to-the-bones phone tied to a burner Google account that is ONLY used to TikTok) and it doesn't have anything useful to spy on, so it's like "MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE LOVE THIS STUFF. YOU WILL LOVE IT TO. YOU MUST. PLEASE NEVER LEAVE US AGAIN. CONSUME. OBEY. CONFORM. SUBMIT."
I can't believe I'm about to say it, but the pimple popping videos it fed me when I first started were better than watching people dance in random places. Either I cringe or I get annoyed at the assholes who go into business for themselves making videos on planes or buses or the dairy section of Piggly Wiggly or gyrating on the Publix fried chicken or whatever. You aren't the Main Character. Stop. Just stop. Either way, I mush "do not like" and scroll as fast as I can.
Where are the cat videos. ._. I want to find that cat that wears capes and walks down a catwalk again...
~Merry
(paltry pantster)
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