Author of SF and Fantasy erotica

Path of Lyssa is being written as part of a novel-writing challenge over the month of November. Please expect poor editing!

Current word count: 7,180

1 – Strays

“Lyssa…!”

With a start, she came to. She sat up on the creaking surface she had been lying on and took a deep breath of air into her lungs. She coughed, spluttering out a string of mucus, and she raised a hand to her lips to keep the bile from scattering across her skin.

“Here, love. Drink.”

A gnarled hand passed into view, holding a clay saucer brimming with chilled tea. The scent was sharp and arresting, tugging at the curtains still half-drawn across her mind. She took the saucer gratefully and drained the contents down her sticky throat. Sharp indeed! Another bout of coughing later, this time accompanied by a firm pat on the back by her unseen supporter, and she felt much renewed.

“Thank you,” she croaked.

She looked about. This place was entirely unfamiliar to her. A small, cozy, heated room made of rounded granite bricks, lined with straw and with heavy wooden beams overhead ready to catch the brow of the unsuspecting. The woodwork in the two doors and long table was chunky and pragmatic, lacking the elegant swoops and subtlety that she believed she was used to in such furniture. Four stools, set before four sets of cutlery. And pallets just like the one she was sitting on. There were two others that were not hers, each against a different wall. Neither was occupied. And the round window just behind her head told her it was night when she turned about to regard it. The room would have been dark if not for the glow of a lantern suspended above the table from one of the roof beams.

Beside her was an elderly woman wrapped tightly in a fur-lined cape. Her pale face was a labyrinth of wrinkles, but her small, dark eyes glittered in the lamplight with a vigour she should have left behind long ago. Her clothing was thick wool in simple colours, save for a tasselled belt of faded red loose around her hips and another tying back her grey curls.

“You rise with the scent of sustenance, I see,” the old woman chuckled. “That is well! No fiend of the Darke would react so familiarly to fresh food and drink. Are you hungry, love?”

She nodded her head, thinking of nothing else she could do. She could feel her own hands pressing against her stomach, though she hadn’t commanded them to do that.

“You are in luck, then. My Tomas is a fine cook. His glazing is a work of art!”

The woman laughed fondly. Her hand came down on her bare shoulder. Her skin was warm.

“You are very welcome at our table,” she continued. “I am Tabitha. And you are, love?”

She swallowed the lump in her throat. “I…” she tried, then paused to lick her lips. “I… know not.”

“You don’t know?” Tabitha raised a hand the brushed at some of her hair. The gnarled fingers slipped smoothly through her silken locks. Tabitha pressed her touch against her temple with a curious frown. “A loss of memory, is it? That is truly inconvenient. You don’t recall your own name, love?”

A face in the dark, a whisper on the wind.

“L-Lyssa.”

“Is that right?”

“I… I believe so,” said Lyssa. The name seemed to fit, for the most part. But it tugged uncomfortably around her, like a dress handed down from a stocky sister.

“You can usually tell much from a name,” Tabitha smiled with coy mischief. “Knowing your own should provide the foundation for recalling the rest of who you are. ‘Lyssa’ is a common enough name among the village girls, but this body of yours!” The old woman laughed, her dark eyes aglint. “Your shape would fit much more neatly among the courtly women of the cities, Lyssa! And this hair! I imagine all manner of hearts could be tangled up in it! I hope you don’t mind my saying so, of course.”

Lyssa shook her head, at a loss for words. She glanced down her own body to try and make sense of Tabitha’s words. She saw a rounded, feminine figure, large, pert breasts and a tight waist. Wide hips and creamy thighs bordering a trim bush of jet-black pubic hair. She reached up to where Tabitha’s hand had stroked and measured her bouncing, curled locks around her own shoulders with fascination for her own, unfamiliar form.

“Nothing?” Tabitha shrugged at her. “My words not ringing true at all?”

“I am sorry…” Lyssa sighed. “I have naught within me, not even mine own face.”

“You speak like a southerner. Does that sound right? The coastal cities of the ancient kings?”

“N-No. Only…”

“Yes?” asked Tabitha, leaning closer.

“I see… a man’s face,” Lyssa explained. She closed her eyes that she might recall the vision clearer. “He is close. He whispers my name…”

“What does he look like?”

“Dark hair, like mine… A firm jaw…” Lyssa swallowed, unaware of her own hand gently stroking at the sensitive skin on the inside of her bare thigh. “Luscious topaz eyes and thick, noble lips. A lord’s hooked nose. And… something on his brow. A gemstone? Wh-What is it?” she asked next, opening her eyes to see Tabitha’s smirk.

“You sound besotted, love!” the woman chuckled. “I don’t recall ever meeting a man such as that out here in the woods, and I suspect I would recall such a comely fellow! But then again, we do get so few visitors. You are the first we have had in well over a year, and I can’t imagine you came here by choice.”

“No?” asked Lyssa.

“I found you bare as a babe and curled up tight in the grass,” Tabitha sighed. “I could not suspect that you walked yourself here in such a state and then lay yourself down so casually. Especially with nothing to your name. No visible injuries, only the streaks of dried tears on your cheeks and… a scent. A scent like…”

The woman’s gaze shifted away from Lyssa and off towards a horizon only she could see. But a moment later, she shook her head.

“Eerie things like this do happen from time to time, now that we are living in this Era of Shadow,” she said instead. “The flow of mana is frightfully disturbed, thanks to the bloody Dark Legion. I had thought you some sort of forest sprite come to make mischief among my vegetables. But now that I see you up close, I can’t imagine you as anything other than a human woman. And for now, that is plenty.”

The woman’s smile was warm indeed. Lyssa found her lips bending to mirror it.

“It is hard to find friends in these dark times. We must reach out whenever we can. And if you need a-…”

One of the two doors in the stone room opened up suddenly, and in stepped a young man. Lyssa believed him to be around seventeen years of age, based on context her waking mind couldn’t recall. He had chestnut hair just slightly on the far side of unkempt, and dusky skin the colour of tree sap. His tunic had once been verdant, but it had faded with age and wear from rainforest green to winter pine, and the knees of his breeches were scuffed. But it was his eyes, dark and intelligent, which Lyssa used to draw the connection between this young man and the elderly woman seated beside her.

“Aunty, did you need my help to prepare the table?” Tomas asked at once. He had his hands crossed at his front in a show of obedience, but his dark eyes flickered shamelessly up and down Lyssa’s nude form.

Lyssa didn’t move to cover herself under the teenager’s attention. In fact, she could feel her shoulders arching gently backward to accentuate the curve of her breasts, though she wasn’t sure why she would do that. But Tabitha made up the difference. The woman moved with shocking grace in grabbing the empty saucer from Lyssa’s hand and tossing it through the air at the young man’s head. The clunk of dish against head resounded throughout the room. Tomas recoiled with both hands pressed over his temple.

“I’ll prepare your hide with a good roast, you little pervert!” Tabitha snarled. “Get out of here!”

He retreated at once, tugging the door shut behind him.

Tabitha sat back on her hands with a weary sigh. “I’m terribly sorry, Lyssa love,” she said. “You likely don’t recall what boys his age are like, but let that be all the evidence you need to judge them. Randy, opportunistic little pests, they are. Not like us women at all.”

Her aggravated sneer broke open into a wide laugh at once, and Lyssa was left blinking. Had that been some sort of joke?

—

Dinner was roast venison, served in slices and with a garnish of fresh herbs. Tomas laid the plate in front of her with a courtly bow fully at odds with their rustic surroundings, and his cheeks flushed with pride when Lyssa smiled gratefully for him. His aunt, meanwhile, slapped him on the back of the head as he passed her by. Still, the elderly spinster explained with a smile the rack of deer they were keeping chilled in the undercellar, the nearby glades where sprigs of herb could be readily collected, and the nest of bees that Tomas had been nurturing out near the back of the cottage, all ingredients in tonight’s meal. When Tabitha started eating, she wrinkled eyes closed with blissful pleasure. And Tomas couldn’t help but look a little smug from the far end of the table. Which left one additional plate of food.

“For Tomas’ mother,” Tabitha explained, spotting the angle of Lyssa’s gaze. “My youngest sister. Now… no longer with us, I’m afraid. But we still like to leave out an offering for her each mealtime, don’t we lad?”

Tomas nodded. “And then it goes straight to Gertrude, the lucky swine.”

“Well, there’s sentimentality and then there’s wastefulness. Tamarin would agree, I have no doubt.”

“So it is just the two of you here at all times?” Lyssa asked, pushing the cooked meat about on her plate with her fork. Her idle prodding nearly let the honey-glazed venison slip onto the lap of her new dress, gifted to her by Tabitha. She liked the way the dark wool hugged her chest and upper arms, but a belt would help pull the garment in around her waist for better effect.

“It was just me for longer,” Tabitha answered. “Until Tamarin and her little boy came along. This was during the Lord’s Rise, you see, the maelstrom that was the beginning of the Era of Shadow. Much safer for a young woman and her infant son out here in the protection of the woods than down nearer the cities, where Tomas’ father had perished in the conflict.”

“Is that so?”

“Oh, right. You wouldn’t know.”

“The Dark Lord’s ghouls patrol all the major roads,” Tomas told her around a mouthful of food with a sagely nod. “They venture into the woods from time to time, but they aren’t nimble like living people are. Some even get preyed upon by the wildlife. And the Dark Lord needs those ghouls to keep harrying the borders of the nations on either side of us, so he doesn’t like to waste them.”

“These dark trees have always been good to me in that sense,” Tabitha said with a smile. “Though they do not protect against all dangers. As we well know.”

Lyssa drew her eyes across Tabitha’s sad countenance, then to Tomas’, then to the empty seat across from her own. There was a tale there, and a part of her wished to hear it. But she relented.

“I thought you said you were hungry!” Tabitha said to her next with the earliest hint of a scowl.

“A-Ah, yes. Of course.” Lyssa obediently skewered some venison and took a bite. It was good… said a rational part of her mind. A calculating and logical part. Not the emotive and passionate part that had pushed out her breasts when a young man had laid eyes on them. She chewed and swallowed with easy familiarity, recognising Tomas’ culinary talent in the conflicting crispiness of the texture, the juiciness of the meat and the sweetness of the glaze. But not really tasting it for herself. Deep within, deeper even than her stomach, another void remained entirely unsated.

“I hope you do not protest mine remaining here this even,” she said by way of distracting herself. “Verily, I have nowhere else to turn.”

“You may stay as long as you like, though I’d rather you help me around the house tomorrow morning as recompense,” Tabitha smirked. “You any good with your hands, Lyssa?”

She looked down at them. Soft skin, free of blemish and callus. Finely sculpted nails. Not worker’s hands at all. Still, something in the old woman’s question caused her to smile.

“I believe I am,” she said.

“Then you can help me in the garden,” Tabitha said with a decisive nod. “Even a poor amnesiac like you can lend a hand. The onions are ripe, but many come up from the soil fallow. I would have you remove the rotten ones from the harvest and toss them to the roots of the hardy trees. You would be doing us a grand favour. My young layabout nephew will be free to fetch water from the river.”

“Ahh, you aren’t serious…” Tomas grumbled. “It hasn’t rained in days! The well’s practically empty!”

“Then it’s a good thing we have someone freeing you up for the day, eh?” Tabitha chuckled.

Tomas grimaced down at his plate. But something caught his eye, and he glanced up towards Lyssa with a curious raise of his brow. And Lyssa, though she couldn’t fathom why, winked at him. Tomas, flinching and reddening, dropped his fork with a clatter.

“But if we can reunite you with this handsome phantom of yours, love, we should be doing so,” Tabitha continued, thankfully none the wiser.

“I shall have to ask other kind souls such as yourselves on the road ahead,” Lyssa said with a smile. “Where might you suggest I begin my search?”

“If I’m suggesting anything, it’s staying here,” Tabitha replied with a frown, jabbing her fork at her. “The world outside has gone to rot, thanks to the Dark Legion. I didn’t mean that as a suggestion that you should go gallivanting off into the wilderness like one of those heroic types. I instead meant that I send out some feelers. If we can deliver some letters out east, we might get something back. Stay here, love.”

Tomas was also nodding his head, his dusky cheeks still faintly red. “You should stay. You can stay as long as you like,” he told her.

“Thank you…” Lyssa sighed as her heart grew heavy from their compassion. She ran her fork through the layer of honey on her plate, her subconscious mind carving out the shape of the face of the man in her memory with her utensil. His eyes, beseeching her. His lips, naming her. The unspoken promise of… what, exactly? Something that made the void inside her quiver with eager excitement.

No, she could not stay. The whispered name was inexorable. She could no more ignore the call than she could decide to stop breathing. Looking up, her mind sought out what she would need to follow that call. She eyed the pair of leather boots hanging by their strings by the door, the shoulder satchel lying discarded underneath Tomas’ pallet and the waterskin squeezed between two herb pots on the round windowsill. They weren’t hers. In the deafening song of the man’s whispered voice, that didn’t seem to matter all that much.

Tabitha sighed. Lyssa couldn’t tell whether she could determine her thoughts or not. “Sleep on it, I beg,” said the old woman. “In the morning, we can discuss… maybe a shared trip out to Ducal Rout and the surrounding villages. Many strays from the south made their way up there after the massed armies of the Dark Lord razed their homes. Maybe one of those folks has seen your man. But that really is as far as I will take you, love. Any further east, and we will be in the shadow of the Dark Legion.”

“The Black Palace…” whispered Tomas, staring down at his empty plate.

The air had grown chill, the atmosphere heavy. Lyssa focussed on consuming her meal as the conversation dwindled at the mention of this Dark Lord’s perilous abode. Tabitha and Tomas clearly didn’t care to see the Black Palace for themselves.

So why did Lyssa find that idea so enticing?

—

It was late enough to be early, Lyssa could tell. Beyond the thin glass of the stone room’s circular window, she could hear the chirping of crickets. Every now and then, a stray moonbeam cut through the dark clouds and the thick canopy of the trees, illuminating the bracken of the undergrowth. Lyssa, meanwhile, stared up at the ceiling from her pallet, hands pressed over her tummy, and tried to will herself to sleep.

Wait until morning, Tabitha had said. An easy request, surely. But one that Lyssa was finding awfully difficult to obey. Each time she closed her eyes, his face…

“Lyssa…!”

She bit down on her lip in a bid for control. But even as she did, his smile echoed in the back of her mind. She could feel the sleek strands of his hair under her fingers, within her dreaming. In reality, she found herself probing the hem of her thick skirt and crawling her fingers up her bare skin towards where her thighs came together. She breathed out a hot breath of desire, then started as she came back to herself just long enough to scan the room’s other occupants. Tabitha was asleep. Her raspy snoring had ceased not long ago when the old woman had descended into deeper slumber. And Tomas’ pallet was empty. No sign of his shoes, either. Safe enough surroundings for Lyssa to try and relieve a little pressure for herself.

But her little smile was one of self-deprecation as well as excited anticipation. There was no doubt that the handsome man in her subconscious was doing something wonderful and perilous to her body. She felt hot and wet, pent up and powerful, her heart pattering like the trapped reverberations of bottled lightning. When she touched at the slickness between her legs with her fingertips, she hissed out a desirous groan that was louder than she had intended. And the void was shaking ravenously in her belly.

But in the next moment, Lyssa let herself fall back against the pallet with a muted snarl. She felt like a starving animal, not the human being that Tabitha professed her to be. Rubbing at herself until she was sated felt cheap and misguided, especially when she didn’t know the identity of the target of her lust. He could have been an evil man, for all she knew. It may be wiser to deny his illusion its power.

Huffing to herself, Lyssa rose from her borrowed bed and crossed the room on tiptoe. She sought the boots hanging by their thread by the door, the ones she had plotted to steal earlier, and tugged them on. A decent fit. She didn’t think any more of her borrowing than that. Then she slipped out the door and into the chill, fresh air beyond.

Immediately, she wrapped her arms tightly about herself. Chill was right! And Tabitha claimed she had been naked when she had been discovered? How had she not fallen ill? The night wind whistled between the looming, dark shapes of the trees all around the stone cottage. Up above, grey clouds obscured the moonlight. Staring up at the veiled starscape of the sky, Lyssa wondered how best to determine which gnarled path through the trees led east.

Lyssa turned back towards the house and examined the hardy thatching of the roof, the slant of the chimney poking through the straw. The work of years, most likely. She rubbed her fingers together from under her armpits. A body such as hers, a woman such as her, was surely not capable of anything like this. Not like Tabitha.

The garden was a little plot of three rows in the earth beside the door. A suggestion of a fence had been erected around it to politely deter beasts, and the thick green of new growth split the soil all along the pathways. Beyond, slightly hidden around the corner of the house, was a stone well with a simple, wooden overhang. Two buckets, thick with aged moisture, sat on the earth beside the well. One was attached to the overarching pivot with a line of thick rope.

And something was shuffling about nearby. The dinnertime talk of ghouls returned to the forefront of Lyssa’s imagination as she now urgently wondered at what exactly a ghoul was. They preyed on people, apparently, which was what she was. Lyssa swallowed a lump in her throat and wondered whether she should wake Tabitha. But then she thought again. What was the elderly woman going to do? Beat the thing to death? She was no witch, either. Was she?

Information. That was what she lacked, so that was what she sought. Creeping forward on her borrowed boots, Lyssa approached the edge of the cottage and peeked around.

It was Tomas. Lyssa breathed a sigh of relief on recognising the young man. But then her mind re-focussed, eyes narrowing on his back. Tomas was holding to the edge of the well with one hand, and his other was lost beneath his tunic. His dusky cheeks were red with exertion, his black hair askew from undignified sleep. He had his eyes tightly closed, and his lips were pressed into a savage snarl. He snorted out his hot breaths in rapid staccato, and there was a faint rattle of metal as a buckle on the front of his breeches was shaken vigorously.

And Lyssa raised a hand to her lips. He was masturbating! The young man’s pleasuring looked sharp and painful. His wrist pumped aggressively against his crotch. He would be ready to sleep when he was done with this exercise, that much was obvious. But surely he wasn’t intending to ejaculate into the well, was he? That would be unsanitary. He was going to drink that water, too. Perhaps the distance from the tip of his cock to the well’s opening was further than he could accomplish. Grinning coyly behind her hand, Lyssa did a few calculations. This was… very exciting!

Which was when he saw her. Tomas’ eyes shot open over his shoulder at the sight of her prowling form, and he stepped back so quickly that he almost fell over the tangle of his leather breeches around his knees. He lunged for one of the buckets beside the well with one hand and used it to cover himself, his other hand trying desperately to return himself to his clothes.

“L-Lyssa!” he gasped as he fought to save face. “I-I didn’t hear you…!”

Her cover blown, Lyssa grinned as she stepped into view beside the cottage. “I am dearly sorry if I disturbed you, Tomas!”

“It isn’t what it looks like!” he insisted with a tug on the waistband of his trousers. “I was… Aunty asked me to refill the w-well with water, so I was… I was about to go do that!”

“At this moment, during the dark of night?” she teased.

Tomas shrugged shyly. “Why wait? I… I couldn’t sleep.”

“Ah. My predicament, also.”

He was still holding the bucket protectively over his erection. His intelligent eyes darted, never landing on her. Lyssa beamed encouragingly as she hopped across the thin grass and sat herself down on the well’s edge.

“If you cannot sleep, and neither can I…” she said, “then perhaps we could help one another?”

“Wh-What do you mean?” he asked with a gulp.

“I mean, Tomas… why not join me? In conversation.”

“In conver-… A-Ah. Right. Of course.”

She laughed, enjoying her game immensely, and Tomas joined her. The void in Lyssa’s belly was practically thrumming with anticipation. For Tomas’ company? That was a measure of it. But the sight of his self-pleasuring form, the way he tried so desperately to hide his desire from her, that was all the more exhilarating. The crisp air seemed heavy and hot as it swirled around them, binding them together, in full defiance of the cold of the night. Tomas didn’t sit down with her. Lyssa fancied that he couldn’t, and she grinned with pride at the thought. Perhaps he’d been thinking of her when he’d assaulted his manhood.

“You must be awfully lonely out here,” she remarked, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forwards. “Your aunt is dear indeed, but I cannot imagine you having aught to talk about that would interest the both of you.”

Tomas shrugged. “There’s… not much to be done about that. We have the occasional visitor, and they bring with them stories from the rest of the land. Honestly, I feel lucky. Everyone is on the move to evade the march of the Dark Legion. I get to remain still. That is a privilege not shared by many.”

“Have you visited this Ducal Rout that Tabitha mentioned?”

“Yes, a couple of times,” he said with a proud smile. “I mean, there isn’t much to see at the Rout itself. It’s just a big field. But there’s the villages around it. I’ve seen at least five of them!”

“Goodness!” she cooed.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the correct response. Tomas’ face turned a deeper shade of red and he locked eyes with the dirt. “You must think me very simple, very provincial,” he said bitterly.

“Hmm. I am not one to make any such assertion, Tomas,” she replied with a purse of her lips. “I can recall visiting nary a single village in my lifetime.”

“But you must have!” he laughed. “And not just a village. You must have seen the grand cities, too! I mean, look at you!”

He met her eyes, then stilled. He licked his lips, then looked away once more.

“This man that you see in your mind’s eye,” he asked her shyly. “Is he… a fair man? Handsome?”

“Yes, he is,” she confirmed at once. She could think to do nothing else.

“Abounding in wealth and status, I bet?”

“Well, I know not.”

“He must be,” Tomas smirked. “He must be, to win a heart such as yours. To win your favour…”

Lyssa tilted her head at the shy young man. His bucket was slipping, so he must have come down from his state of arousal. Lyssa felt a wave of grief pass across the edges of the void, a guilt that she had rid him of that exciting feeling of intimacy that she apparently so loved. And now he looked so sad.

“Tomas,” she said, hopping to her feet.

“Y-Yes?”

“Do you have a precious person in your life?” she asked with a little smile. “A girl, perhaps?”

Now, his eyes were locked onto hers. “N-No,” he breathed. “I don’t.”

“Truly?” She stalked forwards, rounding her gait about her feet like a dancer and enjoying the swish of the skirt against her bare ankles. “You did not ever entertain some lonely wanderer from a distant land in your home? You did not cook for her and talk with her? You did not charm her with your understanding of the world she did not know?”

He shook his head mutely. He was stiff and red like a bulging blister, and he hissed out a surprised breath of air when Lyssa took hold of the edge of his bucket with one hand. They were close, and Lyssa realised that she was just a touch taller than him.

“Now I know that you are being deceitful,” she giggled. “For I know such a woman whose attention you have so arrested. I am that woman.”

She tugged. Tomas’ hands slipped free of the edge of the bucket, and his dark eyes followed it as she tossed it away behind herself with a mischievous laugh. His hands snapped protectively over the bulge in his breeches, but Lyssa took his wrists in hand and eased him aside. His belt hung open at his front, and the metal buckle clattered musically with the motion of their hands. Lyssa saw that the clothing appeared to be a touch small on him, based on the pressure visible at his crotch. He likely had to make do out here where tailors were rare. How horribly uncomfortable. Lyssa ran the back of one finger over his breeches along the throbbing of his cock with a hungry smile.

“I need no wealthy man from the cities to satisfy me,” she growled. “Dear Tomas, I think you will do just fine.”

“S-Say, L-Lyssa?” he stammered, and she shot her eyes up towards his face. The poor young man flinched away from what he saw there. But then he was smiling nervously.

“I… am glad!” he chuckled. “I would… support you, Lyssa… if you need me.”

Lyssa flashed her teeth. “Good!”

She fell against him. Tomas yelped with fright as Lyssa turned him about and shoved his rear up onto the rim of the well. She took hold of both ends of the belt and tugged herself against him with it. His hands held himself steadily on the well’s stone. And that meant he wasn’t fighting when Lyssa snapped his belt off his hips with a yank, dropped it to the ground, then tugged down his waistband and exposed him. Tomas was hard and thick, a swollen, red pole against the cold of the night. Lyssa could feel fluid at her lips as she took in the sight of him. She tightened her fingers into a claw and ran her fingertips along the full length of him, and Tomas moaned deliriously with pleasure. He twitched, and Lyssa giggled.

“See? This impressive member will satisfy me!” she assured him. “Such a man you are, Tomas!”

She grabbed him tight and began to knead him firmly with her palm. Tomas let out a savage groan of pleasure, so she took her free hand and slapped it over his mouth. Best Tabitha didn’t wake to find what she was doing with her nephew.

“Sorry!” he mumbled.

Clear residue was creeping out of the tip of his cock as Lyssa worked it with her wrist. He must have been close to finishing when she had intruded. Also evidence, the arrhythmic shuddering of his thighs. Lyssa couldn’t help but laugh. Whoever she was, she knew little of the geography of the land, the joys of fine cooking or even social etiquette. But she knew a man’s cock like the back of her hand. And as shameful as she thought such a realisation should have been, she could feel no shame whatsoever. This was who she was! No wilting lily, weak and powerless. Oh, she had power! Just look at this poor young man’s expression! The elation of self-discovery made her heart sing!

“O-Oh, yes!” she groaned. Then she raised one leg and planted her knee on the well’s edge beside Tomas, pushing against him with her full body. She yanked up the hem of her skirt so that her bare crotch could receive the jabbing insistence of his erection. She felt his tip tickling her pubic hair. Entangled in Tomas, Lyssa slipped her hand between the two of them and pulled on his member. She knew exactly how to angle her hips to make this coupling work. As such, he entered her smoothly, wetly and fiercely. He penetrated her deeply. And Lyssa screamed.

“Yes!!”

“Sh-Shh!” Tomas implored, even as his eyes rolled back in his head.

Chuckling darkly, Lyssa lunged forward and buried her face in his neck. His skin was warm and soft. She kissed him. She bit him. And with her celebratory cries muted by the young man’s body, she began to rut.

Lyssa rolled her hips back and forth against Tomas’ cock. Her pussy was ludicrously slick, and his shaft met no resistance as she manoeuvred it in and out of her with long pumps of her waist. She could feel her fluid soaking his hair. She could feel her hands digging into his skin through his tunic where she gripped him around his waist.

Yes, this was her element! Lyssa was soaring on the winds of her expertise. She revelled in the primal dance that she was sharing with Tomas. She could feel his penetration filling up the void that had been lingering inside of her. Sating her hunger. So, it had been sex she had wanted! How scandalous! How glorious!

“W-Wait!” Tomas implored through tight throat and gritted teeth. “W-Wait, Lyssa! I am… about to f-f-finish!”

“Mmmmph!” she encouraged, kissing his neck voraciously.

“But… y-you might… with child!”

Lyssa laughed against his skin, then released him so that she could look into his lovely dark eyes.

“I shall not!” she whispered with a stroke of his cheek. “I promise I shall not! Fill me, Tomas!”

Lyssa had no clue where such insight had come from, nor why the thought of her catching pregnant was so amusing to her. But she knew it to be true. And she took in the feel of his body stiffening electrically against hers, his cock pushing into her depths and the gasp of release from between his lips, his hot breath on her face, with pride. His come slathering her insides too, she felt proudly.

“O-O-Ohhh!!” he moaned. “L-L-Lyssa!!”

“Yes!” she hissed, taking his face in her hands and drawing his lips close, drinking in his breath. “Yes…!”

He was so thick inside her. Glazing her pussy like honey. Lyssa felt weakness in her knees as she received him. The edges of her vision went white as though she was about to pass out. A feeling of lightness, as though she was flying.

And then, she saw something. In the depths of her mind, the climaxing shape of Tomas. Only, it looked nothing like him. Tomas was a bubble of swirling white gas like a trapped cloud. He wriggled and flailed in the gentle confines of himself. Lyssa felt a desire to slacken her embrace around the poor boy lest she burst him. But she had no control over her body in this dream she was experiencing. Though she could still approach him. She could lean herself forward, inch her lips towards the glistening, wet shell of him. She did so now. And the faintest whiff of his gaseous inner form trickled through the membrane and into her nose.

And the void in Lyssa’s belly screamed with greedy relief.

But before she could think to examine her body’s need for the essence of Tomas, the essence drawn close to the surface by their rutting, it was gone. His climax was fading, and with it, her vision. The stop-and-start of physicality reasserted itself in her vision.

“P-Please, relent!” Tomas gasped. “Please! I-It’s uncomfortable!”

Lyssa looked down. She had been pumping away on his cock even now, with his erection waning and wet come dribbling down her inner thighs.

“I… I am sorry if I did not satisfy you,” said Tomas with weariness and despair. His dark eyes were creased with guilt.

So Lyssa kissed him on the nose with a smile. “Nonsense!” she giggled. “You say so because I did not experience the same release as you? Mark my words, Tomas. I enjoyed you immensely.”

And now there was a trickle of him lingering inside herself. Lyssa could feel him nourishing her weak body and exciting her mind with inspiration. Just imagine if she had taken all of him!

“T-Truly?” asked the young man.

“Absolutely,” she grinned. “What a man you are, Tomas!”

“O-Oh. Good!” He laughed. “Because you were incredible! No other woman… will ever match up!”

She kissed his cheek. Perhaps she was hoping to suck some more of his deliciousness out of him. But his laughter was a pretty sound, even if he didn’t give her any more sustenance.

And she suspected he was right. No other woman was quite like she was.

—

Lyssa quietly gathered some supplies from around the little cottage. The satchel and the waterskin. In the kitchen, a little bread and cheese wrapped in oily paper. She didn’t know whether she took any strength from non-ethereal food, but it paid to be careful. A map would have been nice, but Tabitha didn’t seem to have anything like that in her possession. A knife from a block in the kitchen. Then, she passed one more time through the little dining area. Tabitha wasn’t snoring. Lyssa passed her by with only a shred of guilt.

Outside, she nearly ran into Tomas. They both tried to pass through the door at the same time, and he laughed bashfully, she with a little more heat. She slipped around him with a hand on his chest, letting it trail down his front.

“O-Oh!” he remarked quietly, turning about to follow her. His eyes were on her waist. “Y-You’re keeping that?”

“Is that well?” she asked him with a little smirk, fingering his belt that she now wore tightly around her hips.

Tomas grinned. “Oh, certainly!” he said. “It looks far better on you! Y-You can keep it as something to remember me by.”

His belt, and something more. A jolt of power. A taste of Tomas, lingering on her lips. She kissed him on the cheek, then passed him by, making for the trees. She’d meant to ask Tomas which way was east. But with the wisp empowering her steps and her spirit lifted, her muscles soft and pliable from their workout, she discovered that she didn’t feel like it. She’d rather advance on her own power. And she began to head east purely by instinct. The wind whistled through the dark tangle of the trees, creating the whispering voice of the man in her dreams.

pathoflyssa