Inheritance

Month 2 – Week 1

Kron – Horde Territory – The Magic Forest

The last thing Kron had expected was for his morning swim to be interrupted by the arrival of someone else. None of his patrol mates came here. At least, not yet.

Eventually, someone else was bound to find their way here. But until then, this was his place. This was his time to be alone and soothe the simmering turmoil that had seethed just inside his skin since the day his berserker blood first showed itself.

Kron’s little rituals of self-care here in this place were how he controlled the insane rage which fueled his berserker blood. Not that Orc’s even had a word to express the concept of self-care, but he bathed, and relaxed, and took care of his emotional needs as well as he could alone. It was by no means a good thing that his day had been interrupted and he tried to repress, mostly successfully, the growl of fury that rumbled in his chest.

Gathering his clothing he dressed awkwardly, hopping into his pants as he ran for cover. It was probably just one of his patrol mates who had finally found their way through the obscuring magic of the surrounding forest. But the last thing he wanted was to be found naked and lounging in a pool when he was supposed to be patrolling the borders of Orc Territory. Especially after the stink he’d made when he first joined the team about how lazy everyone on the team was in his opinion.

Also, he had been pretty irritated the first time he’d been trapped by the trees. If the person coming mistakenly thought Kron was involved in their being trapped in the forest it would suck. There might be a fight. Kron could go berserk. And then Kron would have to hide the body.

He’d just been thinking about how odd it was that the sounds of approach were coming from downstream when the wind shifted and told him the approaching individual was a human female. If it was Dara, he couldn’t risk her seeing him and startling her away. What was he thinking, ‘If’? Of course, it was Dara. What other human female would be coming up the trail from Dara’s farm?

Kron had meant to share this place with the human female…someday…far in the future…when the time was right. Apparently, the day was today, and the time was right Gods damned now.

His heart raced as he felt the need to hide even more so now. It would be a bad start to being neighbors if his human was scared off her first day here. So, he hid. The magical forest obligingly created the perfect hiding place as trees leaned out of the way to make a pocket in the impenetrable wall. Branches then descended around the orc and the grass and shrubs grew tall and wild to create a veiled hiding spot from which he was able to see out but would be obscured to anyone looking into the foliage.

Not until he was fully hidden did the panicking orc breathe a sigh of relief. His heart began to slow, and he calmed as he watched the head of the trail eagerly for the moment his human would arrive. When she did, Kron felt his heart begin to race again.

His human was here. Disheveled, dirty, and wet from the knees down. But she was here, and she was his. His to guard and protect because she would never have been sent here if he had done his duty in the first place to keep her farm from being built.

And being his, Kron thought she was beautiful. True, she was a little on the skinny side. If she was an Orcish woman she might even be called runty. Sure, she had some height and shoulders and hips. But her muscles were too underdeveloped and her face too smooth for her to ever be considered beautiful by Orcish standards.

Considering that it was her first time in this place, the human woman showed no real trepidation. It caused the Orc to wonder if perhaps she hadn’t been forcibly ushered here by the plants as he had been his first time. Or perhaps, she wasn’t scared because magic like this was common in the human lands the way it had once been common everywhere? Before the Necromantic Wars. Before the Gods had been killed by their children.

No matter. Kron shook the thought from his head. Trying to imagine what the world had been like so long ago made his thoughts hurt. He was very much a here-and-now Orc. Not one of the thinkers.

And in the here and now, Kron watched with curiosity as Dara gathered kindling and tinder. The human was clumsy. Tripping over her wet clinging skirt repeatedly and needing to gather it up in one hand, the hem dangling around her calves. No wonder she was so filthy from her walk. Then she tried to light a fire…

It was painful to watch. So very painful to watch her ponderous attempts. She was clearly unpracticed. Her fingers fumbled vainly and she dropped her flint…so many, many times. So many. Kron covered his face with a palm in sympathetic embarrassment.

No, Dara wasn’t embarrassed. She was frustrated…clearly. But if she had known that there was someone watching her, the girl would have been embarrassed. Soooo embarrassed.

The number of times her fire failed to start filled Kron with enough frustration that he almost came out of hiding to help her. Didn’t she know that type of wood had a resin that inhibited burning?

But Kron didn’t speak human. The woman wouldn’t have understood a thing he tried to say. Instead, he hid his face in his hands and bit down on his palm to keep himself silent. Unable to stop himself, he peeked between his fingers with growing anxiety that Dara might accidentally hurt herself in her attempts at bushmanship.

When her fire was finally burning, she let down her long reddish-brown hair. It glowed in the morning light like hot embers. The Orc was fascinated by the way it sparkled. He’d never seen hair that was colored so brilliantly.

But when she then stripped off her clothing Kron stared in pure unadulterated shock at the way her pale skin dimpled and her only two breasts puckered in the cold. Only two? Well, of course, he had known that humans only had two.

They were differently shaped than those of Orcs. Rounder, perkier? Pert? Was that the word? They were definitely lickable, and Kron found himself inadvertently running his tongue over his lips and against his tusks.

Human nipples did seem too short to properly suckle yet their size and shape meant that maybe they didn’t have to be. Dara’s could probably fit just perfectly between his tusks. In which case he could, in theory, because he would never…with a human…what did human skin taste like? Not eating, but…Dara walked to the pool and submerged herself in the water.

Realizing he was watching inappropriately, Kron turned away and buried his face in his forearms where he lay hiding in the brush. It was wrong to stare. He shouldn’t watch. And he, an Orc, most definitely shouldn’t be imagining what that human’s skin would feel like pressed against his face.

Kron was reacting to the human woman in a way he had never thought he would. After all the negative things he’d heard said about her by the human males who had built this place, Kron had intended to provide her a place of refuge from…all of that. How was he supposed to sneak off if Dara intended to stay here until…how was Kron supposed to know when it was safe to look again let alone leave without being noticed?

Keeping his head down, Kron listened to the girl splashing and playing in the water. It must be so cold in there for a human with such thin skin. Was it odd that she seemed to relish such extreme sensations, as the little sounds of joy and happiness she occasionally made seemed to indicate? The cold didn’t bother Kron as much through his thick skin but what about humans?

It seemed hours before the sounds stopped and he dared look up to see if she was dressed and gone. She wasn’t! Dara sat on his sitting rock, naked as the day she was born combing her hair with her fingers like some kind of forest spirit. All the Horde younglings had heard the stories of the women of the trees and the springs and the streams who seduced males away from their caves and their homes.

Trying not to drool as he looked away again. Kron could easily believe his flight of fancy if he didn’t know already who she was. He wiggled onto his back, adjusting his leggings to be more comfortable and folding his arms he pillowed his head in his hands.

After another hour or so, long after the low humming she sang had drifted away, Kron took the chance to peek again. He couldn’t see her. He still smelled her though, and her fire was burning low but not out.

Cautiously he exited his hiding place and glanced around for any sign of her. The clothes were still there on the boulder, but the girl was gone. Had something happened to her? Some predator dragged her off while Kron had attempted to be a gentleman and not watch her? Panic rose and his heart thudded painfully in his chest.

Then he saw her. Sprawled ungracefully on her back, chin tilted up, lips slightly parted. Worried that she was ill or hurt, he hurried toward her. Seeing as how the only reason she lived in such dangerous proximity to his people was because of him, Kron felt very protective of her.

Light snoring stopped his headlong rush. She was only sleeping. Thank goodness. But she was still wearing nothing but her skin. Embarrassed, and if he had to admit it…aroused…by his proximity to her nudity, Kron took off his cloak and laid it across her.

The move was difficult because he tried not to look at her as he did it. But covering Dara was for her own sake as well as his. He then added a few sticks to her fire from the pile beside it. Still feeling protective of her, Kron went back to his hiding place. He would stay until she had left. Just to make sure she got home alright.