A Piece from Mother of Demons

[wordwitch]

By Eric Flint:

It had been Nukurren's usual sentry duty. Not for her the prestigious post of standing guard by the main entrances, in daylight. Not for one as ugly as she, and helot-born.

She had heard a slight sound behind her, and turned. A small shape stood in the entryway. As soon as she had turned, the shape—a young truemale, she saw—scuttled back into the gloom of the hallway beyond.

"Who are you?" she had demanded, but her voice had been soft and, Dhowifa later told her, not unpleasant. After a moment, the truemale had come forward.

"I am Dhowifa," he said. Nukurren recognized him then, one of the Paramount Mother's recently wed husbands. It was very odd for such a one to be in that place, in the middle of the night, but Nukurren had not questioned him. After a moment, she had invited him to come forward, and had spent some time thereafter in casual conversation with Dhowifa.

On that night, the truemale had not explained his presence there. But he would reappear again, on many nights in the eightweeks that followed. After a time, as a strange friendship formed between the royal truemale and the lowborn warrior, Nukurren would learn of the cruelties of the Paramount Mother and the misery of Dhowifa.

By what manner, and by what route, the odd friendship turned into passion, Nukurren could never precisely recall. She could only remember that one night, with the rain thundering down, when the love and ecstasy she had only been able to dream of had finally entered her life. That it was a forbidden love and an unnatural ecstasy had mattered to her not at all.

Many nights of secret and illicit passion had followed, until the night when Dhowifa had crawled to her, only half-conscious, his little body a pulpy mass of bruises from the beating administered by the Paramount Mother. It seemed his love-making had displeased her.

They had left Shakutulubac that same night. Dhowifa had hesitated, in despair of leaving his malebond. But, in the end, he had not been able to bear the thought of returning to the Paramount Mother.

Comments

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah. Not quite alien erotica, that sort of thing happens later on with the young battlemother, doesn't it? But I love it that this infertile female warrior is actually getting it on with a guy. The pre-vert.

[wordwitch.livejournal.com]

Not just ANY guy! A truemale!

*blinks*

If a warrier got it on with a eumale ... what do you suppose the reaction would be?

[brashley46.livejournal.com]

I'd forgotten about the eumales. Clearly I need to reread MoD.

[othercat.livejournal.com]

I totally adore the way Flint writes/establishes romantic couples. :>