Animal Urges - Chapter IV

Chapter IV -- Questions

Four nights ago...

In our camp outside Fort Amol, my craving undeniable, I fidgeted the early night away, nervously rising from my bedroll in the tent to pace and dawdle outside by the campfire, and back again. Vilja, Lydia, and I had cleared the stronghold of its evil conjurors earlier that day, and I had only to await my companions going to sleep before I could scavenge the remains. I was partly sickened, partly seething with anticipation; I squirmed in my bedroll, unable to assuage the yearning. Although I felt it most acutely in my innards, my female parts were inflamed as well, my nipples swollen and over-sensitive, sex moist and tender even though I knew it had little to do with sex. Furthermore, despite my keen awareness of my two comrades, I would acquire no solace from either (or even both) that way.

In any case, I was almost certain that Lydia was not inclined toward other females, and as for Vilja, I was unsure; I suspected she would be receptive, eventually, but I had yet to build adequate trust between us to broach the subject. I was assisting her as she sought the whereabouts of a stolen, purportedly magical, flute, as well as something to do with investigating the mysterious contents of a magic bottle that I had helped her recover but a few days ago, a short time after meeting her.

I decided the time was right to slip outside and, nude, make my way carefully in the dark away from the tethered horses and into the night. I willed the shapechange, and in heartbeats, I was a beast. The rest I do not care to remember, other than it was still not enough; the bodies were cold, unfulfilling.

Thus, I returned, my savagery unmitigated - perchance even worsened out of frustration -managing again (or so I thought) to remain undetected as I slid, shaking with cold and fury, back inside my bedroll.

"Where do you go at night?" Vilja asked me as she distributed bread, ale, and goat cheese later that morning.

I felt Lydia studying me surreptitiously as she ate; doubtless, she wanted to pose the same question but dared not, as I was her thane.

"To the bushes." It was partially true, to void the indigestible remains of my meals from either end.

"For so many turns of the 'glass?"

"Do you lie awake timing me with an hourglass?" I demanded, suddenly angry. "What do you care how long I spend behind the bushes?" I stood, hurling the remains of my unwanted breakfast - it turned my stomach anyway - into the campfire. "Strike the camp - we're leaving now!"

"I'm sorry I upset you - or questioned you," Vilja apologised a little later as we rode up the Throat of the World to High Hrothgar. Fine snow swirled about us in a bitter wind, frosting her fur mantle, long eyelashes, and the blonde hair not quite tucked inside. Her beautiful Nordic features displayed anxiety. "It's just that I worry about you. I don't want to see anything happen to you."

I was unsure whether to be flattered or even angrier.

"I'll not speak of it any more, if you wish."

"I wish," I snapped, heeling my mount away from her. That was the first time the thought of how she might taste - her heart, that is - prickled in my mind, which distressed me and caused me to express my anxiety for my travel mates as even more anger, contrarily directed towards the very objects of my concern.

The purported 7,000 steps up the peak to the abode of the Greybeards was perhaps decidedly less on horseback - but, being no pilgrim, I had no compunction about 'cheating', as one or two of the locals around Ivarstead grumbled when they saw that we intended to ride up to investigate my summons for supposedly being 'Dragonborn'.

I did not yet know what that meant, beyond a few myths about supposedly being of 'dragon blood' (surely not in a literal sense) and able to absorb dragon souls and to Shout, in their ancient language, using Words of Power. Certainly, I had already slain several dragons, and I had felt something each time, as their skin and flesh melted away in a fiery tumult about me that left aught but a few scales, bones, and myself untouched. Untouched, that is, aside from the feeling of some kind of power and knowledge burgeoning inside me that I sensed had yet to be unlocked fully.

Thus, this trek up the Throat of the World. I had already learned a few Words - one being Fus, which staggered opponents - but, again, I knew that I had but scraped a patina of rust from the sword, as it were. I would learn more from the Greybeards, and they would set me on yet another series of quests - but I digress.

Continued in Chapter V