#slugwrites

"Don't fokkin' tell me to just deal wit' it, Fah'kiri!" Najirah glared, SCOWLED at her friend, and raked her claws through the pink frizzy mess that called itself a mohawk. What a mess, what a fine mess!

"Well, it's not like I killed anyone. He's fine."

"He's not fine! Ya bashed him in th' damn head, Cat!" It took some effort, but she got the big (and rather naked) frost troll rolled over onto his back. Kiri was right, the big fella was going to be fine, if perhaps a bit.. headachey. Poor old Iomante... perhaps Najirah should have been a little quieter during their romp, especially as rough as it had been. She guessed that had she been in Fah'kiri's place and sought out the source of such screeching and screaming, only to stumble onto a scene that looked like a full-out brawl... well, yeah, she might have also assumed that her friend would need help.

She bent over to take his arm. "Help me drag him to the furpile, Kiri, I can't do it myself while I'm.... in this condition."

"...Jiji... you're... are you pregnant?!"

((Oh god how did I miss this!))

It had been a long, long, long day and honestly Kulikara was ready to just drop to his furs and sleep, but Rham'bek was rather loud in his insistence that the hunter bathe. "You smell like a quillboar rolled around in a pile of Scourge leavings. You're NOT sleeping next to me until you scrub the stench from your fur, stinkrock."

He tried not to think too much about how warm and cozy Rham and Ji'kali likely were by now, and as he neared the pond he was too busy sulking in his head to notice the surprised red-headed druid in the water. In fact, his kilt had dropped and he'd already gotten ankle-deep before any notice was taken.

It was dark and cold when Kinlee woke, and the wet sheets clung to her like a blood-stained shroud. The first searing cramp had passed by the time her eyes opened, and a second ripped through her as she tore the covers off of her. The baby! Oh Light the baby! Panic gripped her, blood flowed slick between her thighs, and as her hands flew to her belly she screamed. It felt like she was being torn in half, and with a massive push something slithered hot and wet and slippery from her and balled itself between her thighs.

She sat up, through the haze of pain and the throbbing, empty ache in her belly, and reached for her son, she knew it was her son before setting eyes on him. Wet, matted wool stained her fingers red as she picked him up; a little lamb, with six hooved legs and a perfect little baby’s angel face, topped by thick black hair and long-lashed blue eyes. Oh he’s so beautiful he’s so perfect my baby my baby.

The lamb-baby cried, and Kinlee lifted him to her breast, baring it for him to suckle his first meal. A swath of light fell across her bed as the door opened, and the smile as she looked up to show Gren his son froze on her face. The man wasn’t Grenfield. He had Gren’s face, his hair, his body, but he wore her Daddy’s clothes and had his rifle pointed right at her.

“...Daddy?” She was afraid, but his face was stern and hard as stone. “Kinlee, we gotta put it down. A lamb like that is a curse, and it’s not going to live long anyway.” The lamb, ‘no, the baby, not a lamb not a lamb’, twisted in her arms and bleated pitifully, and she held him tight, shaking her sweat-dampened hair.

“I’m sorry, Kinlee.” Her daddy took aim and fired without another word, and the scream that ripped from her throat shook her awake, panting with breath no longer needed. It was dark still, and cold, and she’d almost convinced herself it was only a dream when the cold wetness that slicked her thighs and pooled beneath her in the bed had her tumbling out and to the floor with another scream just waiting to be released. No, no, no it was just a dream but I don’t dream anymore please oh please just a dream but as she tested her skin her fingertips came away covered in wet black and she choked out a sob. It was okay, her thighs were wet with Gren’s seed, nothing more.

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What a way to wake in the night: warmth, comfort, love… home. Rham’bek could hear his children snoring peacefully in the dark, and Metoa was curled against him. Shatterspear Vale was at peace, but maybe it was a little too quiet in the hut. The old sneak grinned to himself as he felt his wife climb atop him, but when he slid inside her the sound was all wrong, a man’s sigh, a man’s bulk bearing down on him. Startled into wakefulness, he nearly shoved the other man off of him until he came to his senses and realized it was his Kulikara.

‘No,’ he thought. ‘They’re gone now. Just a dream.’ The familiar hiss of tusk sliding against tusk as Kulikara leaned down to Rham’bek distracted the old man just enough that for a moment he didn’t hear that quiet chuckling just dripping with malice. Didn’t feel the wet spatters against his skin until they were joined by small chunks of some horrible substance. He opened his eyes, and the thing that was riding him like a cheap whore may have been wearing his husband’s body, but it wasn’t Kulikara, not really. Skin peeled and flesh sloughed off with each movement, and when he opened that too-wide mouth to grin, the high-pitched cackling came out sounding like a raging wildfire, like the screams of women and children.

-Zava's story he tells to Tapi and Eg on his deathbed, telling about his first wife and children and everything that happened after that.

-What's going on with Kuli the fatrock.

-What's going on with Jiji back in ZG.

-Some stuff about my Elder Scrolls/Morrowind characters, especially Jozrah.

But no matter how many times she swam, no matter how long she searched, she never found any more sharks. One was not enough to win the war. To save her family.