Welcome to Layman-upon-Waters. Elliot is the city’s new overseer for the Office of Municipal Integration, and his days are spent encouraging the region’s secretly inhuman denizens out of hiding and into cooperative citizenship.
Each chapter is a stand-alone event with only a subtle through-line, so there should be no issue with reading them out of order.
Despite the winter’s chill, Elliot huffed his way up the stone steps to the Castle audience chamber with sweat on his skin. He’d dressed for the cold in thick boots and a fur-lined overcoat, but his hurried pace up the Castle Road had turned his outfit into a pocket of trapped, hot air. Now indoors, he was feeling the heat. He pulled off his coat as he reached the top of the steps and the sealed mahogany doors of the chamber, then folded and placed it atop the wooden bench where those seeking audience should wait.
All the while, the smirking eyes of one of the castellan’s guards were upon him. Elliot knew Sasha well enough. They’d essentially grown up together in the castle corridors, he as a rich scion of wealth and she as a well-armed servant. Their different backgrounds had prevented them from building much of a friendship, not that young Elliot would have known what to say to a rambunctious girl like Sasha. But her sharp face, replete with the little scar on one side of her upper lip, was a familiar one. And right now, that was welcome indeed.
Elliot smoothed the damp strands of his brown hair from windswept chaos into professional order as he returned to the audience chamber doors. He tugged on the hem of his green-and-gold coat of office and ran his fingers over the clasps. “Do I look alright?” he asked Sasha.
The guard shrugged. Her wide shoulders made light work of their leather pauldrons. “You look fine.”
“But do I look alright?” he persisted, as much to bide for time and recover his breath than to get an answer. “As in, meeting royalty degrees of alright?”
“I don’t think she’ll care that much,” said Sasha. “Just get in there.”
Without waiting for his agreement, the guard reached back and grabbed the handle of the audience chamber door, then pulled. The heavy wood swung to, and Elliot slipped inside.
“Ah, good timing, lad!” Castellan Thaddeus was beaming from in front of a wide table at the far end of the chamber, set beneath a huge, mounted flag from the Accord of Regents. The brilliant candlelight and twin roaring hearths on either side of the room lit up the old man’s face with a youthful vitality that Elliot hadn’t seen in a long while.
But his adopted father’s smile wasn’t drawing Elliot’s attention as much as the woman standing beside him. Wary of staring, Elliot swallowed his nerves and lowered his eyes, hurrying to his place on the green rug in the centre of the room. He willed his shaking limbs to comply to a courtly bow in the Castle style, arm crooked over an extended leg.
“Castellan,” he greeted. “I-I’m here as commanded.”
“Allow me to introduce you,” Thaddeus said, and Elliot could hear the proud smile in the shape of his words. “This is Elliot, who leads the Office of Municipal Integration. He’s been working hard in the Low Town some four months now with historically overlooked members of our populace. Elliot, this is… You can look up, lad.”
He did so with an urgent snap of his spine.
“This is Queen Rhiannon of the Grande Steppe, Custodian of the Horizon and Divinely Appointed Regent of All-Shrouded-by-Ferns-and-Conifers.”
“Rhian is fine,” came the giggling addendum.
Elliot’s eyes took in the stately posture of the Queen of the Steppe. Rhian was a woman of Thaddeus’ age, with long, soft curls of silver hair and a nest of lines and wrinkles around her terracotta cheeks and chestnut eyes. Her coronet was mercurial silver and studded with topaz, crafted in a design of bound reeds, and her long dress was saffron yellow like a rich field of wheat, flowing in baggy sleeves at her wrists and pleated across her lower body.
The lower body, Elliot recognised anew, of a horse. Rhian’s equine half was coated in fine, red hairs where it wasn’t covered by the long train of her dress. Her hooves were protected with anklets of silver vines, and her brush-like tail matched the starlight silver of her hair. On closer inspection, and with the lovely woman’s alien aspects fully in view, Elliot noticed that what he’d assumed to be a furry headdress was in fact a long pair of ears. Rhian’s ears were long, narrow and pointed like an elf’s, but were lined and tufted with fuzz the same red as her flank. When she smiled, the ears wiggled.
She stood a good two feet taller than Thaddeus, but Elliot’s eyes couldn’t call the pair mismatched. Perhaps it was the castellan’s own gilded finery. Or perhaps it was their shared smile, jovial and childlike in full defiance of their age.
“Your Grace,” said Elliot, bobbing his head.
“I have heard plenty about you, Sir Elliot,” said Rhian. “Your work is noble, though I may be biased in calling it so. I may have been one of your clients in another time.”
“Your Grace is too kind.”
“Rhian is fine, truly!” laughed the regent.
“It’s thanks to Elliot’s work that today’s meeting is possible at all,” Thaddeus agreed with a beaming smile. “Layman-upon-Waters has always been known for its close collaboration with the elves of Ilvarith. But why stop there? We have other neighbouring cultures, and I would open up our gates to them all if I was allowed!”
Like many citizens of Layman, Elliot had heard the stories of the Steppe and its four-legged people, far to the south of the city and indeed the entire Accord. Rhian’s people were isolationists, most recently evidenced by their refusal to join either side in the Demon Lord’s War. Their reluctance to trade with their neighbours and unwillingness to take a stand on the continent’s political stage had turned them into a legend among the common folk. Most questioned their existence at all. As such, Rhian’s presence here today was little short of miraculous. It would have caused quite a stir on the main road.
“How did… Y-Your Grace find travel to our city?” he asked. “I trust there was no trouble.”
“None at all, thank you,” said the queen. “We kept our numbers small to reduce attention, and we limited our hooves to less-travelled roads. And the few stares we received climbing the Castle Road this morn were, oh, quite flattering!”
She laughed, and Elliot heard an echo of her musical voice behind him. Turning over his shoulder, he spotted two more of her people beside the door. He’d not seen them on entering. One was a muscular, russet woman with flame-red hair in a thick braid, and her equine flank and furry ears were chestnut-brown. Her leather armour bound her powerful upper body with tight straps that showed off her bulk. She wore an unstringed longbow in a quiver on her laden rump, and a sharp grin between her lips.
Her partner was slimmer and shorter, with raven hair in a sleek knot framing her round face. She had big, beautiful, black eyes and black hide on her lower body and long ears, and her garb was likewise black silk, flowing about her like liquid while leaving much of her amber cleavage bare. She wore a curved, silver blade on her hip above her forelegs.
At his attention, both women cast him a wave. The swordswoman even shot him a sly wink. He restrained himself to a bow, then turned away before the heat in his face grew too great.
“And is there… business in our city that I can help you with, Your Grace?” he asked.
Rhian and Thaddeus shared a long-suffering sigh, the meaning-filled smile of a shared burden.
“This is no business trip, Elliot,” said Thaddeus. “The Accord would be all over us if they thought we were engaging in a diplomatic discussion without their oversight. This is just a casual get-together between old friends.”
“Your father and I have known each other for a long time,” added Rhian with a soft smile. “We met during one of his campaigns in the south, back when he was even younger than you. We have been limited to written letters since that day, but I have cherished his friendship dearly.”
“O-Oh,” said Elliot, regarding Thaddeus’ rosy cheeks with keen eyes. His father had never suggested he was regularly writing to the queen of a foreign nation. He’d kept that secret well.
“It is unfortunate that our stations so limit us,” said Thaddeus. “Everything we discuss today will need to go down in some report or another for the Regents’ Council.”
“And I will need to share with my own people on my return,” said Rhian. “I am reliant on the keen memory of my dear attendants in that regard.”
“Only… Oh, bother!” Thaddeus slapped himself on the side of his head with a grin Elliot was forced to describe as ‘goofy’. “As a foreign national, Rhian, you will have needed to fill in a bit of paperwork before entering the city! I should have done that already, but I forgot. As it stands, this meeting is in violation of Accord regulations!”
“Oh dear,” said Rhian with a hand on her lip, hiding her own mischievous smile. “You will not be able to tell your Accord of what has transpired here if our being together is illegal.”
“It would be awfully embarrassing. Elliot, lad, since you’re here. Would you mind filling out the certificate of aegis paperwork for Rhian? So we can make this little chat above board.”
Elliot looked back and forth between the two venerable leaders. He was missing something, but his mind, ogled by the grandeur of his audience, couldn’t fill the gap. “A… certificate of aegis, Castellan? For Her Grace?”
“Since it’s so quick and cheap, you know,” said Thaddeus. “Go on. Head down the hill and get that started.”
“And take my attendants with you,” added Rhian, “as they can provide you with any necessary detail.”
“U-Uh…” said Elliot.
“And Rhian and I will wait here. By ourselves.”
“Saying nothing, of course.”
“And doing nothing.”
Rhian giggled, a girlish sound, and bumped Thaddeus’ shoulder with her fist. Elliot was frozen in place by uncertainty until a strong hand landed on his shoulder.
“C’mon, mate,” said the husky, muscular horse-woman with a wide smile. “Show us where you work, why don’t you?”
“We are most curious,” agreed her partner with a sweetly lilting voice. She even ruffled Elliot’s hair.
The strength of their equine bodies was more than Elliot’s weak legs could resist. He was dragged out of the audience chamber, leaving the coy smiles of Thaddeus and Rhian behind. The closing mahogany doors sealed the pair away together, and Elliot was whisked from the Castle.
* * *
There wasn’t a great deal of foot traffic at the city gates today. Elliot was grateful that the morning workers and commuters of Layman’s Castle Road, who had come out of their homes on hearing the sound of hooves on cobble and expected a procession, were responding with polite fascination to the aliens in their midst. The two horse-women, whose names were Roan and Pippa, took the attention with proud grins and waving hands. Still, one of the guards on duty at the gate gave Elliot an uncertain frown. He bobbed his head at Elliot with eyebrows raised, ‘Everything in order?’ Elliot nodded back.
“And this is Low Town?” asked Roan, the muscular archer. She looked up at the uneven roofs of the town’s wooden buildings, then down at the cracked plank paving and dried mud beneath her hooves. “Low is doing double duty, I see.”
“And you are the castellan’s adopted son, but you live here?” asked Pippa.
A window opened in a guesthouse’s second storey on Elliot’s right, and a woman in an apron leaned out to watch their passage. When Pippa waved to her, the woman called back into her home and was quickly joined by three others about the same age. Their eyes sparkled like they were witnessing a scene from a children’s fairytale.
“Yes,” said Elliot with a smile. “I live here.”
“Woah, check out all these little buildings!” Roan’s laughter was as sharp as the heads of her arrows. “Look at those little stairs. Aw, it’s got a little door.”
“Shh,” chided Pippa, though Elliot could hear the black-garbed mare giggling.
“Do you not have… doors on the Steppe?” he asked over his shoulder.
“We seldom need ‘em,” confirmed Roan. “Or maybe it’s that we need the wood more? Our doors would have to be, y’know, yea big.”
Peering back, Elliot saw that she was highlighting her own height with an outstretched arm. Her rounded biceps rippled with the motion. Roan grinned down at him when she spotted his attention, and her furry ears wiggled.
“And we don’t use stairs, for obvious reasons,” she added. “We have ramps for if stuff’s underground. Stairs seems like such a waste of time. Can you imagine the stonecutter doing all that work?”
She put on a silly face and mimed cutting angular blocks of stone with chops of her hands, and Pippa laughed.
“Do not mock the highlanders!” she said, placing a hand on Roan’s arm. “Their ways make sense for their physiologies.”
Elliot put his eyes back on the road. He hadn’t realised he was being mocked.
They reached the first intersection of streets, and Elliot turned left. The office was just around the next bend. And when they arrived, and he explained the situation to Mathilda and Jacque, they could-…
“Woah, what is that?”
Roan was pointing right with an excited grin. Elliot followed the point of her thick arm, then put his hands on his hips.
“That’s the Dancing by Lantern,” he said. “It’s a tavern.”
Despite their distance, the young woman leaning beneath the tavern’s red sign looked up at his words. Elliot recognised her from behind the bar on the occasions he’d visited recently, and she wiggled her fingertips at him with a bemused smile around her cigarette. Her coy confidence faltered only a little on spotting his two wards.
“And you work there? Fuck, yes. I’m thirsty as hell.”
“N-No, I don’t-…”
“I smell a lush fragrance from within,” remarked Pippa. She followed Roan as the broad woman clopped across the street towards the tavern. She sniffed the air. “Is that pear cider? I have heard tell of the distilling technologies of the highlands.”
“That’s not where I-…!” Elliot complained, then hopped to catch up. “The office is the other way! A-And in any case, isn’t it a little early to be drinking?”
“Pfft. Is that the law, or just a suggestion?” laughed Roan. “Hey, Miss? Can we drink now or no?”
“We were told to hurry! If we don’t fill out the correct paperwork, the castellan is going to be…”
But it was no use. The two horse-women ducked into the warm interior of Madam Lantern’s lascivious venue, following the barmaid and ooh-ing and ah-ing as they went. With a stamp of his foot, Elliot was forced to follow.
Roan and Pippa quickly made themselves at home. It was early enough that the Dancing by Lantern was empty save for the three of them, plus the grinning bartender. Both horses had moved some chairs and knelt down beside the closest table so that they approximated an appropriate height, and both were shedding their long backs of weapons and baggage, depositing them under the table.
“One drink,” said Elliot as he sat down. “One quick drink. Then we go to the office and get the paperwork.”
Roan rolled her bright eyes. “Uh-huh. What you having?”
“I don’t want anything.”
“Shit fucking host then, aren’t you?”
“In our culture,” said Pippa, leaning across the table and resting her hand on his, “it is considered rude to not share in a guest’s refreshment. You are saying that it is good enough for us but not good enough for you. Do you see?”
Her smile was warm, and her forward lean let Elliot see right down the front of her dress. He wriggled beneath her attention, just like her ears were doing.
“Small shot of Kenhurst,” he said, relenting with a sigh.
When their drinks arrived, he groaned. Both Pippa and Roan had opted for tall mugs of sweet cider, thick with bubbles and rich in scent. The sort of drink you took you time with. So he stared when both women clinked their mugs together, then took hearty swigs that drained much of the cider and left moisture on their upper lips. Elliot folded his chilly hands around his much smaller glass of spirit. The pair’s equine stomachs probably let them resist the effects of alcohol more effectively than he could.
“What’s a good drink on the Steppe?” he asked.
Roan wiped the back of her hand across her lips. “We do a lot with potatoes. My home does a wicked vodka.”
“And mine hosts an industrious apiary with a lovely selection of mead,” Pippa said with a proud smile.
“But cider’s rare?”
“We grow apples in our orchards, but pears are a more difficult fruit with specific needs.”
“I see.” Elliot raised his glass to his lips and drained his shot of whisky into his mouth. He shuddered as the alcohol burned his throat, then set down his glass with a thunk of punctuation. “The drinks are done,” he said, rising to his feet. “Time to move on.”
Both Roan and Pippa looked up at him with wide eyes. “You can’t be serious,” said the archer.
“I’m often serious, actually. I’m a government official. If you’ll just follow me.”
Roan scowled. She shared her ire silently with her partner, whose deep, black eyes cooled her anger into a hiss of resignation.
“Sir Elliot,” said Pippa, turning plaintive eyes on him. “Must we really spell it out for you?”
“Spell what out?”
“The nature of our visit, and the reason for our dalliance. I had assumed it was obvious, but…”
“We didn’t think you’d be this thick,” said Roan, swirling the last of her cider around the bottom of her mug.
Elliot rested his weight on his hands, pressed onto the tabletop. He let his frustration out as a solid line across his brow. “Please explain.”
“Let me ask you this,” said Pippa. “If your father the castellan values the art of bureaucracy, and he must do if he positioned his son in such a field, why would he neglect the proper paperwork for our queen’s visit? Does that not strike you as careless?”
It did, but Elliot had chosen not to blame the poor man for his oversight. Not when Queen Rhiannon had overawed him so thoroughly in the audience chamber. He’d almost forgotten his own name. Standing straight, he folded his arms tight and let the black mare continue.
“Your Accord of Regents requires all the correct forms to be completed ahead of any meeting between leaders, correct? So we are here, away from the Castle, to see that through.”
“Leaving Her Grace and your dad alone until we’re ready,” said Roan with a curve of her lip.
“Outside of the earshot of attendants, and outside the purview of formal reporting.”
They bore into him with their eyes, and Elliot tightened the fold of his arms. “Wh-Why would they want us to delay?”
Roan slapped herself in the forehead, and even Pippa put her hands in her locks and tugged.
“So they could fuck!” Roan shouted, slamming her mug on the table. The barmaid looked up from her station in surprise.
Elliot felt the floorboards lurch beneath his feet. His father and Rhian… were lovers? But… they were old! Old people didn’t… Did they?
“Look at his fucking face,” laughed Roan. “You really didn’t expect your dad to hold a candle to a prime mare like our queen?”
“I suppose they might be attending to a clandestine discussion on international relations,” giggled Pippa.
“No way. They’re fucking. Those two won’t hold themselves back. And because we all love our benevolent leaders,” she added to the stunned Elliot, “we’re gonna drag our hooves getting your certificate of whatever written up and give them as much time as they need to get inside each other.”
Dizziness assailed him. Elliot placed a hand against his brow and willed the Dancing by Lantern to stop spinning. His father… He’d had no idea he was so… Was this why he wanted to support the kin of humanity in entering the city?!
“Steady, mate,” said Roan, then leaned around to face the bar. “Miss! This one comes here a lot, does he? You know his favourite?”
The barmaid nodded with a wide grin. “Madam’s Red Flame.”
“Get on it, there’s a good girl.”
“Trust us, Sir Elliot,” said Pippa, rising onto her hooves and trotting around to his side of the table. She placed her hands on Elliot’s shoulders and eased him back down to his chair. “Political figures such as your father and our queen cannot openly share their desires as we can. They must be careful, perhaps even sneaky, to get what they want. Stay here with us, I beg. You will be doing the both of them a grand favour.”
Pippa stroked his hair. The hips of her black forelegs were warm and fuzzy on the back of his head. Elliot dazedly acknowledged the tall glass of smoky, red liqueur placed in front of him, then took it with both hands. He decided to trust. But he’d need a lot more than one glass of his favourite drink to calm his nerves after the revelation that his father was presently getting intimate with an equine regent. He took a heavy swig.
Roan’s applause filled the tavern. “Yes! Let’s have some fun!”
* * *
The tap on his shoulder roused Elliot to lucidity. “Excuse me, sir?”
He turned, but that was a mistake. Elliot lashed out and grabbed the sleeve of the young man standing beside his stool to keep from tumbling off it.
“Oh dear!” said Jacque. “Are you alright, sir?”
Elliot looked into the wide eyes of the youngest member of the Office of Municipal Integration. Jacque was in his mid-teens, a skinny boy with thick, black hair like a lion’s mane. His blue apprentice coat was big on his slim shoulders, but it was the only one they’d had in roughly his size. It was a little strange to see him outside his usual setting of their office, his hook nose buried in a tome of municipal legislation or meeting an applicant for a certificate of aegis.
For that matter, where was he? Elliot peered down at his high stool, the tall table he was seated at. The matching tables all around the lamplit room. The chattering parishioners, many eating what appeared to be lunch where they weren’t staring in Elliot’s rough direction. The answer came to him when a clatter of ivory preceded a cheer of victory from a distant table. This was the gaming hall off River Alley. And by the look of the empty wine bottle and red-stained glass in front of Elliot, he’d been here for some time.
“When you didn’t return to the office after your appointment with the castellan,” said Jacque, brushing Elliot’s coat where his tight hold had creased it, “we got a little worried. I asked around, and Melyssa at Madam Lantern’s said you were heading here with some guests of the city.”
“U-Uh-huh,” mumbled Elliot. He remembered walking in the cold air of Low Town. He remembered his stomach rumbling, seeking a meal…
“Is everything alright, sir?” asked the apprentice.
“Y-Yes.” At least, he thought so. He checked his fuzzy mind for signs of anxiety or panic, and found it clear of both. That was rare.
“Do we need to do any paperwork for your guests?”
At the lad’s words, a mental image assailed him, that of his aged father bent over the reclining shape of a lady-horse, and he sucked a sobering breath through his nose. “No!” he hissed.
“No, sir?”
“No! Jacque!” Elliot turned on his seat and took the lad by the shoulders. “We don’t have to do a thing!” he whispered. “We have to… give them time! It’s a secret!”
Jacque stared at him with an anxious frown. But then he was beaming. “You’re drunk!” he whispered.
“N-No, I’m not!”
“Yes, you are, sir! I never thought I’d see you drunk! I should leave you to it!”
“It’s a secret, Jacque!”
“Yes, I heard. Have a nice afternoon, sir.”
Winking with all the theatrics of a street mummer, Jacque pulled out of Elliot’s grip. Before he turned and made for the steps up to the street, he cast his eyes over Elliot’s shoulder and across his table. He swallowed, cheeks glowing. Then he left.
Elliot turned back about with a hand on his head to hold in his spinning thoughts. He hoped Jacque wasn’t going to tell Mathilda that he was some sort of lush. His reputation with his team was very important. Then he looked up.
The reddish-brown blob swimming under his vision coalesced slowly into two intersecting shapes. Pippa, clothed in black and with cleavage he could swim in, and Roan, with her thick upper arms and lovely, fiery hair. It was difficult to tell the two apart for a moment, since they were standing so close together on their side of the table. So very close.
Elliot’s heart thudded in his chest. The two horses were kissing. Roan had her fingers in Pippa’s sleek hair, and she was chewing her partner’s lips with lusty hunger. Pippa had her arms around Roan’s waist and was stroking the fuzz of her equine lower body. As Elliot stared, Roan pulled her mouth from Pippa’s and attacked her swan-like neck, causing the amber woman to gasp with pleasure. One of the archer’s hands slipped into Pippa’s bodice and fondled her breast. Elliot licked his lips.
“Ah, you are back with us?” giggled Pippa, regarding him with only one eye open. Roan didn’t acknowledge his attention at all. She continued to worship her partner with her lips.
“S-Sorry,” said Elliot. “I don’t mean to… That is, I’m not…”
“No apology necessary. Do you believe we are embarrassed to be witnessed so?” teased Pippa. She breathed in to say something else, but Roan’s teeth raked her skin, and she instead let out a squeak of joy.
“I had no idea that you were… lovers.”
“M-Mmm?”
Roan’s shoulders were shaking as she rested her forehead on Pippa’s skin. “Lovers, is it?” she laughed.
“Do you object?” asked Pippa with her own giggle, taking a firm hold of the archer’s braid. “My sweet lover?”
“Girl, I will be whatever you need me to be,” growled Roan.
Elliot’s eyes danced back and forth between the teasing horses. “Are you not?”
“While I can see why you would have that assessment, Elliot, Roan and I are not lovers,” said Pippa. “It is a cultural thing.”
“We’d explain but, honestly, the state of you right now,” said Roan with a sharp grin. “I don’t think your chaste heart could handle it.”
The wine in his belly cooked the shame into hot indignation. Elliot pushed his empty cutlery aside and leaned on his elbows. “Try me,” he said.
Both sets of eyes on him, one blue as a morning sky and the other shining dark like twilight, widened their appraisal. Their impressed smiles were warm.
“Alright,” said Roan. She unhooked her arms from around Pippa and copied Elliot’s lean. “You touch yourself, right?”
Elliot coughed out a surprised laugh. When neither woman explained, he shrugged. “Is that relevant?”
“Yeah, you do,” said Roan with a sharp grin. “It’s easy for you humans. You just…”
The muscular woman reached a hand down past her stomach to where her crotch would have been if she was physically a human male. She took hold of a phantom cock and rubbed it with a theatrical grunt of masculine ecstasy, and Pippa giggled.
“It is much more difficult for us,” Pippa explained. When Roan continued to mime-handle herself, even pretending to spurt semen all over the table, Pippa pushed her partner’s hands back down to her sides. “I would welcome you to imagine it, Elliot,” she said coyly.
He did. His eyes measured the length of each woman’s bodies from their shoulders, down the curved length of their equine spine and along to their hind legs. Their sex would be hidden beneath their clothing and the brush of their tails, right at the far end of their bodies.
“We can’t do it ourselves without some hefty specialist kit,” Roan confirmed. “So we rely on our friends. It’s perfectly normal out on the Steppe. Pip and I are very familiar with each other’s preferences, having worked together with Her Grace for so long, so we’re each other’s go-to.”
“We are not lovers,” said Pippa. “Our behaviour isn’t necessarily romantic. We are scratching a pernicious itch for one another. Though I would say I care for Roan a great deal.” She leaned her shoulder against Roan’s and gazed up into her eyes. “She is my sister, in many ways.”
“I wouldn’t touch my sister like I touch you,” laughed Roan, nuzzling her hair. “But thanks. I feel the same.”
Elliot was staring. How could he not? Two beautiful women, so comfortable in one another’s arms. He thought of the women he had known over the past few months. He scanned his heart for a word to define his relationships with them. Even that word, relationship, became blurry as it struggled to incorporate Roan and Pippa’s coupling.
“Is that… the same as my father and Queen Rhian?” he asked.
Pippa tapped her lip. “I do not believe so. Not if the way Her Grace’s eyes light up on hearing his name is any judge.”
“Then they are lovers?”
Elliot’s finger tapped on the tabletop. When a splotch of wine stained his fingertip, his subconscious dragged the digit into a twin loop, like an eight resting on one side. One of us, and one of them, his mind whispered. Like Eli and Miriham…
The two horses were staring, and he started to attention. “What?”
“What the fuck did you say?” said Roan.
Had he spoken? Elliot plumbed his alcohol-stained memory. “I just think…” he said, “they should be careful. In case there’s… children.”
“Elliot,” said Pippa with a mother’s patient smile, “come, now. That isn’t possible.”
“Are you sure?”
“Quite sure. My womb is not even the same shape as a human woman’s. Such a thing has never been known. Not even in tales.”
Roan folded her arms with a purse of her lips. “Y’know, Her Grace worries about folk finding out about her human suitor, but Elliot does make a good point. Taking a human lover eliminates one massive risk from the equation. Is that why you brought that up?” She turned her bright eyes on Elliot and showed him her teeth. “Are you proposing a friendship between the three of us, Elliot of Layman?”
“Ooh, are you?” giggled Pippa, snuggling up to her partner once more. Elliot heard the resonant thud of an excited hoof clopping on the wood below the table. “You might well be up to the challenge, now that I think about it. If a human male is good enough for Her Grace…”
“You’ve got one thing Pip and I can’t give each other, at any rate,” purred Roan. She put an arm around Pippa’s shoulders and leaned forward, fixing her eyes on him through her eyelashes. “How about it? Fancy being our friend?”
He licked his lips. A part of Elliot’s mind raised its hand to tell him that he needed to be cautious with matters of the heart. But the wine was sloshing about in his consciousness, and the voice was drowned beneath the red.
“Yes,” he said.
“In that case, there’s something else friends can do for each other,” said Roan. “And that’s get another round of drinks in.”
“I saw they serve a liqueur here with cocoa in it!” said Pippa, clapping her hands. “Be a friend, Elliot?”
In his haste to reach the bar, he almost fell off his stool.
* * *
Elliot sneezed, and his vision swam. Wiping his face with one hand, he sat up on the prickly mound he’d been reclining on. When he adjusted his feet, he made contact with a thick, glass bottle, which toppled over and rolled across the stone floor.
He peered back and forth in the gloom. Wooden planks making up roughshod walls, a primitive, sloped roof, stalls with swinging doors. A pile of hay, his current seat. A musky, animal scent. This was a stable, not that he’d ever had need to visit one before. There was a chill in the air that the little oil lantern on the ceiling was not able to subdue. He sniffed.
“A-Ahh!” came a moan from in front of him. “R-Right there! That’s good!”
He rubbed his eyes. Roan and Pippa were sharing the stable with him. Roan’s terracotta skin and rippling muscle was facing the wall, and she was leaning forward on her hands. Pippa, her rich, ochre flesh and black fur complementing each other gorgeously, stood at her partner’s rump. Elliot’s bleary vision needed a further moment to adjust to the dim light. Then he saw where Pippa’s hands were.
“Is this not painful?” she asked Roan. She sounded out of breath. “I have never put it in this deep before.”
“It’s good!” groaned Roan. Her equine flank rolled against her partner’s touch.
“Very well, then.” Pippa laughed, and it sounded like singing. She began to plunge the item in her hands into her partner with a rhythmic pace. Then she turned to regard Elliot over one bare shoulder. “Why did you stop? You looked like you were enjoying yourself.”
Finally, Elliot realised where his other hand was. His cock was out of his trousers, and his grip was tight around his rigid shaft.
“You look as though you have awoken from sleep!” giggled Pippa. “You have straw in your hair, dear!”
“Don’t stop,” hissed Roan.
“I am sorry. But my wrists ache awfully.”
“Pip!”
Pippa stroked Roan’s bare back with a soft touch, then stepped away. In doing so, she removed a bulbous rod of varnished wood from inside Roan. It was slick with fluid. As Pippa trotted to Elliot and brushed at the dazed man’s hair with her fingers, Roan turned about with a clatter of hooves.
Elliot was aghast. He furiously searched for the lost memories that would tell him how he’d achieved this intimate meeting with the two horse-women. He remembered staggering through Low Town’s streets in search of another place to buy alcohol. The thick haze of the smoke emporium on Oak Street, resting in pillows while Roan massaged his shoulders. Then the lobby of the guesthouse near the city walls, sharing a little bottle of brandy with Gerald, the owner.
Then, a vivid recollection, like the remembrance of a lucid dream. Elliot had been riding on Roan’s back and holding to her shoulders, and the three of them had been singing. The sky had been black, but the people of the town hadn’t minded the disturbance. Some had joined in from their windows. And the song had been an old soldier’s ditty that Thaddeus had taught him, one Roan and Pippa had known but with different lyrics. Part of the where their songs matched up was a desperate plea for booze on a cold night. And their celebrant wanderings had rewarded them with a bottle of moonshine, passed down from the second storey of a little house off Halbardier’s Avenue. The old soldier who lived there had been singing along as he’d gifted them the bottle that now lay empty at Elliot’s feet.
And now, here. A touch of privacy around the back of a townhouse construction on the north side of Low Town. Roan and Pippa had gotten undressed. They had kissed, teased and played in the lantern’s light. And Roan had asked Elliot to show her what masturbation really looked like. He had acquiesced with giddy pleasure.
Pippa was humming their booze-hound hymn as she played with his hair. Her great breasts hung unimpeded above his head, but Elliot didn’t trust his own balance enough to try reaching for them. Oh, how he wanted to sample their amber softness! Roan’s chest was smaller and firmer, but still sweet. Her red-brown areolas had sharp, proud nipples. Elliot imagined what it would feel like to run his lips over them, and the cock in his hand throbbed.
But Roan’s scowl, her rosy cheeks, spoke of frustration. “I was so fucking close,” she hissed, clopping over to the pair. “You know how pent up I’ve been, Pip. It’s cruel to leave me on the edge.”
“I know, and I am sorry,” giggled Pippa. “Perhaps Elliot could help. He is our friend, after all.”
Roan’s eyes moved down Elliot’s dishevelled coat of office, down to his open trousers and the swollen head of his cock. She didn’t look away. Pippa cantered from Elliot’s side and slipped her slender arms around her partner’s waist. She looped a hand around Roan’s side and fondled her breast, keeping her attention on him.
“I saw you watching him,” Pippa whispered. “You would like to see what he can do. Am I wrong?”
Roan, usually so fiery and confident, swallowed. “I… I’m curious.”
“It would give me a chance to rest my hands. And I would like to see it also.” She brushed Roan’s cheek with her lips. “I would like to see you lie with a human, my lover.”
“For your sake, then,” said Roan with a sharp laugh. “Elliot? If you’re game, and… it looks like you are, how should we do this?”
After some embarrassed, giggling negotiation, the two of them got into position. Roan lay herself down in the hay with her human half closer to the wall, and Elliot tugged off his trousers. Pippa caught his shoulders when he nearly fell, then gifted him a languid stroke of his cock with her tan fingers.
“She will like this,” the mare whispered into his ear.
The dulling booze in his blood, coupled with the pair’s matter-of-fact attitude to having Elliot fuck them, did away with the burning remnants of his anxiety. He knelt at Roan’s rear and placed his hands on her flank. She was firm and warm. When one rear leg stretched out to give him a look at her vagina, he could feel the strength of her powerful muscles beneath the surface.
Roan watched Elliot’s inspection of her pussy with red cheeks and an uncertain frown, which Elliot thought was very charming. Her fuzzy ears flicked up and down as if striking at a passing fly. He brushed her tail aside, then ran a curious finger over the wet opening she was presenting to him. Roan shivered. Her pussy throbbed with need.
It was a substantial slit, just as he’d feared. Elliot worried that his meagre human cock wouldn’t be enough to satisfy her. Surely males of her people were much larger. But to halt here would be to break the spell of the night, and he desperately wished for the magic to persist.
Elliot leaned over Roan’s rump with a balancing hand on her back. With his other, he brushed her slit with his cock. Roan gasped.
“Shit!” she laughed. “Didn’t I say I was close? Don’t tease me, Elliot.”
Her blue eyes burned. “Ride me.”
Swallowing, Elliot pushed forward. He sank his cock into Roan, and he shuffled his knees forward on the dusty stone to gain some more ground within her. He let Roan consume his erection up to the hilt, and he held himself at his zenith, leaning his full weight on her mighty body.
Roan moaned. Her eyelids fluttered, and she gripped the wall with one hand. “Fuck! That’s more like it!”
She approved. Pride blossomed into a wide smile on Elliot’s lips. And, holding himself up on her flank, he began to thrust. He held to the inner thigh of one hind leg and tugged himself into her over and over.
Roan felt magnificent. Not tight, but wet and hungry, a complex orifice that soaked and massaged him. Her internal shape was quite unlike any woman he’d lain with before. Rigid where others had been soft, accommodating where others had squeezed. Riding her was a marvel. He increased his pace.
“Ah-ah-ah!” gasped Roan. “Ah, yes! Yes!”
“She loves it.” Pippa’s hands returned to Elliot’s hair. She encouraged him with tugs and strokes. Elliot could hear her panting breaths above his head.
Elliot began to moan as he plunged Roan with his cock. His voice matched Roan’s rhythmic sighs at first, but before long, he was lost in the moment. Elliot groaned a long note of pleasure. He pounded his partner with slaps of his hips, safe in the knowledge that he wasn’t strong enough to ever harm her. In fact, Roan tipped her head back and let out a wide-mouthed scream of joy at Elliot’s aggression. Her thick braid of red hair danced across her naked, rippling back.
“Oh-oh! Ohh!” she cried. “R-Right there! Right there!”
“She loves it…” whispered Pippa again. “Oh, how she loves to be ridden!”
“Y-You, get over here!” grunted Roan.
“Me?”
“You. Get over here and let me taste you.”
Giggling, Pippa trotted around Elliot and turned her back on the reclining Roan. She laughed merrily when Roan took hold of her rump with her strong hands and pulled her close. Roan buried her face between Pippa’s equine thighs.
“Oh, my lover knows… just how to… to please me!” Pippa’s gasps were airy and resonant. She ran her hands through her sleek, black locks in a dreamlike daze of pleasure.
The sight of the pair enjoying each other lit a fire in Elliot’s loins. Holding tight to Roan, he shuddered against and inside her. He rubbed himself in her slick grip until his vision blurred.
And in the concert of the trio’s voices, Roan broke the rhythm first. She pulled free of Pippa with slick lips and a tight snarl.
“F-Fuck, yes!” she grunted as she came around Elliot’s cock. “Yes! Ahhh!”
Elliot was brought right to the edge by her celebration. He pressed himself against the extremities of Roan’s vagina and let himself revel in her. Roan watched him over her shoulder with burning, hungry eyes. And in short order, Elliot was coming too. He fell against his partner’s flank and spilled himself inside her. He rubbed his stomach against her soft hide and drained his cock of the last of its payload. Safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t become a father in doing so. There was no way that would happen…
Elliot panted for breath atop Roan, who reached back and took his hand.
“That was some good work, my new friend,” she said, bringing his fingers up to her lips and kissing them. “Was that really your first time on one of my kind?”
Elliot’s laugh was bashful and unsteady, and Roan shared it with flush in her cheeks.
“I had fun,” he said. “I can see why…”
He recoiled with a grimace, pulling his wet cock from Roan and sitting back on his bum. I can see why Thaddeus likes Rhian so much, he’d wanted to say. But that was the wine talking.
“I had fun,” he said again instead.
“Well, in that case.” Pippa moved towards him again. She towered above Elliot, who could have sat entirely under her with only the top of his head brushing her underbelly. “I am the only one who has not yet had fun. What are we to do about this imbalance between friends?”
“I gotcha,” said Roan. She stretched her arms up over her head and grunted as the muscles pulled taut.
“No, I have had plenty of you, lover,” Pippa giggled. “I want some of the exotic mating of Elliot of Layman. If he would indulge me.”
Roan laughed, shrugging her shoulders. And Elliot nodded his weary, dizzy head.
“You’ll need to give me a minute,” he said.
“Oh, I would rather keep you busy for that minute, if I may be greedy.”
She coaxed him up onto his feet and took him in an embrace. Pippa leaned down and kissed him with her arms about his shoulders, and Elliot returned the kiss with sleepy amour. Pippa’s tongue was a confident, searching snake that wriggled into his mouth and painted him with her saliva. Her moans were music in his throat. And in no time at all, the fires of lust were burning bright once more.
Elliot reached up and cupped Pippa’s grand breasts in his hands. She was heavy, but also soft, jiggling in his palm and around his fingers. He recalled Madam Lantern’s exquisite excess from his first month in service. He remembered believing that he would never find another woman with such a superb chest. Well, he had. He’d just needed to look outside of his own environment.
Pippa hissed with need as Elliot played with her breasts. He ran his thumbs over her nipples and kissed her deeply. He rubbed a valiant new erection against her fuzzy hips. Pippa’s hands grew tight in his hair.
“Come, then,” she whispered against his mouth. “Let us play.”
Elliot watched with fascination as Pippa knelt in the hay against Roan’s flank, then rolled onto her side. And then, with a heave of her four legs, onto her back. A wholly unnatural posture for a horse, if Elliot’s uneducated judgement of the creatures was any indication. But it did leave her pussy open for him. And her entreating arms, ready for an embrace, were inviting.
Elliot returned to his knees between the woman’s rear hooves, which stuck straight up in the air around his hips. He planted his hands on her belly and felt the smaller hairs that had been hidden under her dress. He stroked her flesh with a rake of his nails, and Pippa laughed, twitching and wriggling beneath him.
“That tickles!” she complained.
“She’s very sensitive, my Pip,” said Roan, nuzzling her partner’s hair and stroking her shoulders. “Be gentle with her, Elliot.”
Elliot positioned his cock, then leant forwards across Pippa’s raven-black body. As before, he sank right in. And Pippa’s luscious cooing filled his ears.
“O-Ooh, that is good,” she sighed. “That is… lovely.”
Holding tight to her body, Elliot began to thrust into her. He looked up her length and drank in the sight of her heaving breasts with greed, wishing his arms were long enough to touch them again. But Roan, meeting his eyes with a mischievous smile, took his place.
“You love these tits, don’t you?” she teased, and she began massaging her partner’s chest with firm, practiced hands. Elliot watched them dance. “I love them too.”
In answer, Elliot could only grunt his desire. Pippa’s dark eyes were on him, and her great, beautiful body rolled under his ministrations. She chewed her lip, and her eyes creased as her natural decorum began to fall away. When Elliot leant in and kissed her equine stomach, her resolve crumbled.
“O-Ohh, yes!” she screeched. “M-Make me come, human!”
Elliot increased his pace. He held tight and rode Pippa’s upturned body. He explored her pussy with his cock and dominated it with his length. So sweet. So strange and wonderful. He ploughed Pippa with slaps of his aching hips, and his cock sang with satisfaction.
Roan was right there alongside him. She kissed Pippa’s breasts and lapped her dark nipples. One of her forelegs hooked around Pippa’s, and her hands caressed her flat stomach. And Pippa’s celebration only grew louder.
“Keep going! Keep going!” she sang. “O-Ohh, Elliot! Oh, that is so… so good!”
“Finish her off, Elliot,” growled Roan around a mouthful of breast.
“I-I’m gonna…!” Elliot grunted. “I’m gonna…!”
But in the end, he came first. Pippa’s luxuriant shouts and the soft rippling of her body drew his exhausted, inebriated mind to distraction. Pressing his face into her underbelly, he came with a muted bellow. He painted her insides with a load of his semen.
“Oh, Pip!” moaned Roan, taking on the remnant of the work. Elliot could feel her massaging Pippa with her hands, and he could hear her kisses on Pippa’s flesh.
And Pippa continued to buck beneath him, howling and shrieking. Her horse legs squeezed Elliot’s sides as he held himself within her. He willed his cock to remain thick and hard for her. Just a bit longer. Just a little bit longer…
Pippa’s hands gripped his hair and pulled, and she bellowed out a climax. Elliot’s raw cock felt the pulsating vice of her pussy as it drank his come. The sensitive flesh stung just a little, but that was nice too. It was a reminder that he’d worked hard.
Panting and gasping, Pippa came down from her high. She smoothed Elliot’s thick hair with shaking hands.
“Oh my,” she breathed. “Oh… That was just what I needed.”
“Good girl,” laughed Roan. “And good boy, Elliot. You’re a good friend.”
“Such a good friend,” moaned Pippa. “Such a good friend, Elliot.”
* * *
The night sky drank up the noise of horse hooves and winter boots on Low Town’s rough, wooden paving. Elliot walked slowly between the two women, his two new friends. Their going was languid and their clothes dishevelled. The midnight silence was comfortable.
But at the town’s central intersection, Elliot’s fatigued brain recalled that he was employed. Up ahead, the Office of Municipal Integration. The end of the night, and the end of the spell. He sighed.
“Sure you don’t want a ride?” asked Roan, resting a hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine,” he replied, patting her hand with his own. “The exercise will help with tomorrow’s hangover. What I do want is a tall mug of water and a nice bed.”
“Hear, hear,” laughed Roan.
“You two will need to head back up the Castle Road tonight, right? You have apartments in the Castle?”
“Yes,” sighed Pippa. “Such a long climb.”
“And back down again in the morning to do some shitty paperwork,” groaned Roan. “Tomorrow’s gonna be awful.”
Elliot sympathised, and he knew he wasn’t the only one. Once the certificate of aegis was in the hands of Queen Rhiannon, she would be a legal guest of the city of Layman. Her words with Castellan Thaddeus would have to be recorded for the Accord of Regents and the queen’s people back on the Steppe. The sweet secrecy of her undocumented time with her lover would have to end. And so would Elliot’s time with his new friends.
But perhaps not right away.
“Why not spend the night in the office?” he asked. “It’s not exactly the Castle, but there’s space on the main floor. I could bring down some spare sheets from my bedroom. And we could all drink some water and help each other with tomorrow’s hangovers.”
“You sure?” asked Roan, peering down at him with blush in her cheeks.
“That sounds lovely,” said Pippa, and she stroked his hair again. Elliot was getting too used to the woman’s pampering. When she left, he would miss it.
But not tonight. Tonight, they could sleep together, pamper each other.
“And in the morning, I know a good place for breakfast on Castle Road,” he added as joy blossomed in his belly. “I’m sure we don’t have to go straight to the Castle, do we? We can take our time.”
“Well fucking said,” sang Roan. She pulled him against her flank and hugged him.
Yes, tomorrow was sounding better already. Elliot spent that night tucked between the heavy, warm bodies of Roan and Pippa on a makeshift bed in the centre of the office. He slept soundly and peacefully between their alien forms. And he dreamed of his father.
Eli would have had this with Miriham, his dreaming mind realised. And it also realised that to go from this companionship between species, to falling in love, to maybe starting a family, did not sound so unrealistic. Questions of physiology and fertility felt insignificant in the wake of such love.
That night, Elliot decided that it was in fact possible he was half of ‘one of them’, and half of ‘one of us’. And that sounded wonderful to the sleeping Elliot.
laymenstory
Ewan Stone 
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