The
River Divide
~Author’s Note
I’ll try and make this brief.
Firstly, Darsal is not a
hermaphrodite; I have just simplified the snake biology within reasonable
parameters. I’m all for anatomic-correctness.
Secondly, I would like it if
you read the whole story but for those of you looking for quick action
I’ve marked the yiff scene with [Yiff]. Enjoy.
PS - This is a rewrite after
some suggestions by Silver
Rain on
furry4life (a furry social networking site). She was right.
PPS - I’ve got a rough idea of
where this is headed, so any suggestions in the way of plot-twists would be
appreciated. Send them to cynical(dot)green(dot)eyes(at)gmail(dot)com
Chapter
3 – Fate or Fortune?
As the sun rose on the morning after finding his mate, Darsal felt the very
winds of change stir in the leaves and boughs of his forest. It suddenly struck
him that Mother, the omnipresent consciousness of the forest, had known
what this furry stranger would bring to his life, even before he’d brought him
to Father Tree where he’d collapsed into delirium. Who was it who’d told
him and his sister to relax and ‘go for a walk’ that day? He found it difficult
to be angry at this blatant manipulation of his love-life, especially since it
had brought him something he never dared hope he’d have.
He broke the news of his departure with Ra-Kai to his sister, Sa-She, that very
morning. At first she’d feigned cold indifference and then was reduced to
false-glee over complete ownership of their responsibility (which they both
knew she secretly enjoyed), before finally letting her mask slip to reveal the
anguish of a sibling, a twin at that, who was likely never to see their brother
again. Ra-Kai watched as she and her brother embraced one final time and cried.
Despite her act, Ra-Kai realised, she was just a
vulnerable as he was. She resumed her stone-faced facade when she took
him aside, threatening unspeakable acts if he didn’t take care of her
brother as he deserved, before making herself scarce. He suspected she’d done
her crying and wasn’t eager for another emotional farewell, and would come back
to the empty shelter when they’d left.
As the sun set on Darsal’s last day
dwelling amongst the trees a strange melancholy set in. He felt sad,
while wistful and optimistic at his new future, like a blank canvas hungering
for colour. His future and prospects stretched out
infinitely in front of him like the overgrown road ahead, and a new life with
his mate beckoned beyond the quiet glades and sky-pillar trees he’d called
home. He and Ra-Kai stood at the beginning of the unused road on the outskirts
of the forest, barely visible through the undergrowth which had leapt forth to
reclaim it. Ra-Kai sensed his mate’s anxiety and took his scaly companion’s
hand in his; then in unison they stepped into the outside world.
As they travelled they encountered no other creatures, mainly due to the
remoteness of the area, but this suited them perfectly as Ra-Kai intended to
keep his unusual mate from prying or violent eyes. Deep in thought; the two
moved together in contented silence along the widening path. Darsal had shed
his previous life like a skin without him even having to ask, not because he
was unhappy but because he saw something in Ra-Kai that made everything else
pale in comparison. Ra-Kai could never know what the forest and Sa-She had
meant to his companion, having never had a ‘home’ or family himself, but as he
stole a sideways glance at his love’s face his chest flooded with a sense of
fierce protectiveness. He swore he would make a new life for his mate, one
where he would want for nothing, and never go hungry, even if he had to starve
himself.
It suddenly struck him that he knew almost nothing about his mate; how old he
was, who his parents where, what his tribe-name was. This niggling notion
gnawed away at him until one night while they camped in a quiet glade, he broke
the silence and asked.
“Darsal?,”
he asked quietly, lying in his mate’s embrace with his back to the serpent’s
chest. Darsal leaned forward to rest his chin on the lion’s wide shoulder.
“Mmm?”
“How old are you?” The
adolescent lion bit his lip. The whole sentence sounded strange, wrong somehow
but he wanted to know more about the enigmatic serpent. His mate went still,
deep in thought, then replied.
“Your people measure age?,” he asked slowly, curiously. Ra-Kai frowned at the
strange question.
“Um
yeah. Don’t yours?”
“No. Why would we?”
Ra-Kai couldn’t think of an
answer. He chuckled, realising he’d been check-mated.
He placed a warm, furry hand over his mate’s on his chest.
“I guess I can’t ask you how
long your tribe live then,” he smirked. As expected,
his mate replied with another thought-worthy notion.
“You can ask, but I can’t give
you the answer you want,” he hissed into his lion’s ear.
“Stop it!,”
he laughed, squirming as the hiss tickled his sensitive ears. His mate hissed
playfully in his ear again, prompting another laughing/squirming fit.
“Or what?,”
Darsal whispered. Ra-Kai growled gently, rolling over onto his partner so they
were chest to chest, and pinned his lover’s arms to the ground, placing his
mouth around Darsal’s neck in a lion symbol of
dominance. His lover shuddered with giggles reserved for seductive acts like those
and it was then his lover discovered his sweet-spot: his neck. He rubbed his
mane along the silky neck again experimentally, feeling the hairs slip softly
over the scales with near-no resistance. Darsal hissed and bucked, confirming
his suspicions. His lover collapsed into fits of laughter, which Ra-Kai found
were contagious. Eventually the laughter died down, and Ra-Kai let his mate up,
and lay on his side with him, chest to chest, Ra-Kai in the loving snake-hold
of his partner, exhausted from laughing. Just as sleep moved to claim another
victim, Darsal leaned in close and said something softly in his ear.
“I don’t know how lions measure
age, but I’m not fully grown yet. I shed my skin every time the earth grows
cold, and I get another marking.”
Ra-Kai reached around and ran
his paws down through the long, smooth, flexible, quill-like tendrils on Darsal’s head, down the slippery-smooth back of his neck
and along the fluid-but-muscular back, feeling for the marks that were clues to
the puzzle he lay with. He’d have to wait until morning to see them fully.
Within a week they’d reached the
They made camp, as much as one could without a tent and bedroll, on the pebbled
shoals of the
How do they stay warm in winter?, he wondered as he cast his
eyes abstractly over the sunset in the water. When he’d found the helpless
wreck of blood and fur pinned against a tree by the wreckage of a shelter made
from tree-flesh Ra-Kai had been covered in some kind of plant-derived fibre that had been woven together. He continued to think
until even the smooth, dark quill-like tendrils on his head began flick and
coil with his frustration. There was nothing that could be done about it now.
He looked over his shoulder to check for his mate’s return, but seeing as he
was still hunting, Darsal decided to take a swim.
Ra-Kai left Darsal to his thoughts as he slunk off into the undergrowth that
lay undisturbed by such hindrances as roads and rivers. These remote areas were
one of few places one could still find non-sentient prey, creatures which had
stayed behind when evolution had run its course. Ra-Kai pricked up his ears and
crouched low, sensing prey nearby before he smelled or heard them. He moved
forward, the leaves and twigs singing below his paws like claws against a
blackboard in the heavy silence. The moon peered out from above through the
canopy, leaving slits in the forest floor that gleamed against the coming dark
of night. Ra-Kai knew he had to find whatever was there before it became too
dark to see, but he’d never hunted before and every sound seemed to come from
nowhere.
There was a click of a breaking branch and, tired and frustrated, instinct rose
up inside and he pounced, in what had seemed like a random direction but, as
the poignant taste of fur and blood that filled his mouth, he realised some part of him had known how to hunt all along.
His blood pulsed, his heart thumped and his mane stood on end, and he realised what the females had meant by the ‘thrill’ of the
hunt. Coupled with the cold clarity of adrenalin was the primal pride in being
able to provide for his mate. Darsal, at least, would get a meal that
night...but his own stomach twisted with hunger. It had become too dark to hunt
further, maybe to even find his way back, but at least his mate wouldn’t go
hungry.
Darsal lay with his tail out in front of him, exposing his softer under-scales
to the last rays of the sun, and watched the sun set as the fire crackled
behind him. The sun had completely dipped below the horizon when the glow of
the fire glinted off something in the water. He frowned curiously and glided
silently forward over the smooth river pebbles, and then gently entered the
world under the water’s surface. In the hazy-blue depths he saw large, murky
fish dart in and around algae-covered rocks that lay embedded in the muddy
floor like guards. Darsal smiled at the notion, giving a brief mock-bow to the
rocks before letting instinct take over, propelling him efficiently with
serpentine flicks and twists of his tail.
The stone sentinels flowed by as he travelled upstream toward the glint that
had caught his eyes in the dark. He was surprised at how well he could see;
picking out individual rocks and hidden fish along the dark body of the river
bed. He stopped dead, anchoring himself around a tall rock, when he found what
he’d been looking for. He reached down and immediately felt that it wasn’t a
rock. It was a ring, more dense and heavy than stone, while cold and textureless. Darsal turned it over in his fingers then
clamped his fist around it. His serpent-tribe intuition whispered of its
importance, and that he would soon meet its owner.
He had turned and began back downstream to see what Ra-Kai could make of it
when his tongue involuntarily flicked out and tasted the water. The taste was
arid, but he could sense an undertone of something fleshy. He suddenly realised a mammal had relieved itself in the river and he
gagged, shutting his mouth tight. He could almost taste it dimly through his
scales, he thought in disgust. There was someone else in the area, further up
river...and it was male. Darsal gagged once more but froze as inspiration
struck. Something else meant someone he could get cloth from, for Ra-Kai. He
darted further up river quicker than any fish, desperate to seize the
opportunity.
From his vantage point, cloaked by the dark of the night and his natural
stillness, he could see a fire ebbing beside a prone figure laying close by.
There was a shelter made from wooden poles and cloth laying
crumpled further on, and a small pile of bundles and boxes lying on either
side. Darsal’s flexible, quill-like tendrils flicked
with indecision but he took a chance and slipped forward, making only a small
disturbance as he exited the water. He slipped closer, to the prone figure. He
knew the beast was unconscious before he’d even seen the crimson leaf-litter
that stuck to the wound. He was tall, even lying down, and broad. He had thick
fur and was like Ra-Kai in many ways, but with patterns of deep orange, black
and creamy white around the underside of his neck and face, which was flatter
than Ra-Kai’s. The creamy fur on his throat disappeared beneath thick, scarlet
clothing which covered his torso and dark cloth tubes that covered his legs.
His serpent intuition whispered in his ear that this was the owner of
the ring, and to help the near-corpse. Look at what happened last time I
saved a blood-soaked bundle of fur, he thought wryly as he gently held his
fingertips against the notch where the jaw met the neck, and felt for a pulse.
Despite his injuries, there was still a steady beat under his claw-tips. He
raised an eyebrow in surprise, then peeled back the chest-cloth, and set about
cleaning and covering the wound with whatever he could find around the
camp.
Ra-Kai bounded playfully toward the camp with a couple of dead non-sentient
rabbits slung over his shoulder, grinning and glowing with pride at his first kill
and being able to provide so well for his new mate. The fire had died down to
embers and his mate was missing. Instead, a Tiger-Tribesman lay on his back
under a blood-smeared blanket which almost didn’t reach his foot-paws. He saw
the tiger’s doublet hanging over a nearby branch to dry, and marvelled at the rich fabric. The red dye needed to make
this single garment was about a month’s wage, not to mention the polished
metallic buttons. The tiger appeared to be in a deep sleep, his big chest
rising and falling slowly.
He pricked up his golden-furred ears as he heard a disturbance in the water.
His head snapped toward the water and he prowled down into the shallows, wading
quietly, and watching the water’s opaque surface for ripples. Something brushed
his leg and he leapt away with a snarl that revealed rows and curved teeth, and
fell back awkwardly into deeper water. He opened his eyes and saw little in the
murky depths except a long silhouette the gracefully darted and dived around
his submerged body, then came closer with a flick of its tail. He swam for
shore and stood up, shaking with adrenaline and snarling. Suddenly he heard
something slide from the water, then felt a presence behind him. His instincts
held him still despite every fibre screaming to move.
The smell of the thing wafted into his nose, fishy and cold. It came closer,
barely a hair’s length from him. He felt its long tail twist itself around him
before he had time to struggle and he was lifted with ease from the ground and held
in the air. He felt the familiar tickling hiss in his sensitive ears and he
squirmed with laughter.
When Darsal finally, and reluctantly, released him he questioned him on the
stranger that was lying by their dying fire.
“Who the hell is he?,” he whispered angrily. They spoke in hushed tones so as
not to alert their impromptu guest. He crouched next to the now-rebuilt fire,
facing Darsal.
“I found him bleeding to death
upstream. What was I supposed to do?,” his mate
hissed back. “...And he’s important. We can trust him.”
Ra-Kai bit his lip with
frustration.
“How do
you know?! He could have hurt you! He might’ve just been faking it,
waiting for you to get close then...” he trailed off. Darsal had a natural
cunning and intellect, but he hadn’t seen the evils of the world yet, and was
still very naive. Darsal saw the concern in his eyes: he’d really scared his
mate. He held Ra-Kai close, stroking his mane reassuringly. Ra-Kai calmed under
his mate’s gentle touch but was still wary of this intruder.
“Trust me.”
“I trust you, just not him,”
he frowned.
“Then trust my judgement,” Darsal said, looking over at the sleeping
figure.
“Fine, but don’t do this again,
alright? You don’t have to save everyone you meet,” Ra-Kai brooded.
“I saved you didn’t I?”
Ra-Kai was silenced, and
growled deep in his chest in annoyance. It was then that Darsal yawned wide,
displaying rows of curved teeth and a forked tongue, which captured his mate’s
feline curiosity. Bashfully, he wondered what it tasted like.
“Kiss and make up?,” he offered, probably blushing under his fur, but
obviously averting his gaze.
“What’s a kiss?,” he asked seriously, so much so that Ra-Kai knew he
wasn’t kidding. How could a whole race not have felt that instinct of
proximity, that urge to get close and press their lips together?
“Well...” he murmured, grinning
bashfully. He slid his warm, golden-furred arm around his mate’s back, came
close and pressed his muzzle against the serpent’s. Darsal’s eyes widened in surprise and his quills stiffened,
but being so close, and so warm, he melted into his mate’s touch and
surrendered to the experience. Aside from the sensation of being pressed
against his lion’s warm, soft-furred, gently muscled torso, he felt Ra-Kai slip
his rough feline tongue between his lips and begin to explore his curved teeth
before surrendering to curiosity and obsessing with his forked tongue. Ra-Kai’s
gentle paws stroked the back of his mate’s neck, the fluid muscles relaxing
under his soft, warm touch, but Darsal’s arms lay stationary,
parylized with euohoria.
Reluctantly, Ra-Kai broke off the kiss after what seemed like eternity, and yet
only a few fleeting moments, and looked sheepishly into his lover’s slitted, green eyes.
“That’s a kiss,” he murmured, smiling. Then, just as Darsal caught the glint of
mischief in his mate’s eyes, Ra-Kai began a caress of gentle kisses up Darsal’s neck, reducing him to fits of laughter as his
mate’s fine whiskers tickled the softer, smoother scales. He seemed to remember
their ‘guest’ too late, but ended up producing a choked, hissing sound when he
tried to stifle his laughter. He playfully pushed at his mate’s muzzle, wishing
they could continue but wary of waking the tiger.
“Shhh,”
he hissed, “do you want to wake him up?”
But resistance was futile,
because Ra-Kai’s primal feline playfulness had been awakened and he twisted his
maw out of his mate’s gentle grasp and resumed. Ra-Kai had worked his muzzle
down Darsal’s neck and was at the abdomen when his
stomach gnawed at his insides, gurgling with hunger. He relented and looked up
at the two non-sentient rabbits lying forgotten by the fire, and bit his lip;
there wasn’t enough for two.
Darsal caught on quickly, and realised Ra-Kai was
going to try and convince him to eat it all. Yet another problem without an
obvious solution, he thought ironically, the bubbling, childish playfulness
draining away at the sight of reality’s trials. His head-quills curled and
flicked with his annoyance, then went still as he gazed out onto the river.
Welcome inspiration struck. Oh look, an obvious solution, he chuckled to
himself. He slithered to the river, clenching and relaxing his claws,
stimulating the venom-glands in his epidermal-layer, readying them for some
use. Ra-Kai looked on in interest.
He slithered into the shallows on his belly, stretching out a claw into the
drop-off. He focussed inward and fed his glands the
fishy, cold taste from his memory of the river-bed. He lay there, still,
proteins under his scales clicking into place until finally the fish came. One,
large with silvery-brown markings slid right into his outstretched claw,
rubbing against his fingers. Darsal realised its
intention with a cringe of disgust and snapped its neck with the motion of a
mouse-trap. One..., he counted mentally.
After they’d eaten, ravenous from travelling, they both sat by the fire, Darsal
‘sitting’ with his tail out in front of him, leaning back into Ra-Kai lap.
Ra-Kai had discovered Darsal’s quills were flexible and
prehensile, and ran his fingers gently down through their smooth lengths.
“Darsal, you falling asleep?,” he murmured, noticing his mate had gone still. Darsal
yawned, sticking his forked tongue out, then replied.
“Mmm. Not yet,” he whispered, his eyes still
closed. “I just get tired when I eat...no idea why.” Then he smiled wryly. “And
that feels really good,” he chuckled quietly. Ra-Kai smirked, and
stopped. Darsal’s quills flicked sleepily, then seemed to wake. Darsal turned his head. “What’s wrong?”
“I have a couple of questions,
and if I let you go to sleep then I can’t ask them,” he said quietly into his
mate’s neck, making Darsal twist as the lion’s speech made his whiskers tickle
the sensitive scales.
“You could ask but you
wouldn’t get an answer.”
“Do you move your...”
Ra-Kai gestured to his mate’s quills vaguely, “on purpose?”
“They mostly move by
themselves,” he said distantly. Ra-Kai realised the
quills were an indicator of what his mate was thinking. Finally, after
days of his mate’s eerie intuition he had something of his own. He watched them
then: they swayed back and forth gently like thin, dark leaves in the wind. Darsal’s quills
flicked around where they hung down the side of his face. “What was the
other question?,” he asked, warily. He could smell a
fleshy, spicy scent that made his chest thump wafting from his mate’s groin and
he had a rough idea of why.
“You know that...trick with the
fish...?,” Ra-Kai asked casually, his tail flicking
behind him.
“Mmm?,” Darsal intoned, raising his brow cynically. Something
was up.
“Does it...” he ruined the
disinterested act by heating up, something reptiles were receptive to, “work
with lions...I mean...could it work...” he trailed off. Darsal rolled his eyes.
“Yes, but I’d need to know
the right musk ,” said Darsal, picking up his mate’s
disinterested act where it lay. Oh, he knew the right musk alright. When
he’d slept with his mate for the first time, it had oozed out of every pore.
The spicy, fleshy, warm smell was still vivid in his memory, even without the
subtle whiffs that rose in delicious columns from his lover’s crotch. “Unless
you’re after something inter-species,” he continued, gushing with internal
laughter as his mate’s temperature jerked between horny and embarrassed.
“I think I could do a fair tiger-musk impersonation if you’re into that sort of
thing...”
Ra-Kai looked over at the sleeping tiger in confusion and horror, then back at
his mate. “I could try for...oh I don’t know...bear perhaps? Don’t ask how I
learned that one...” Darsal’s teasing wavered in the
face of his mate’s awkward denials, but he continued, wavering on the edge of
hysteric giggling.
“...Or I could just try a
little of everything and we’ll see what clicks.” Darsal struggled to keep a
straight face as his mate stammered clumsily about him ‘not understanding’.
Finally his mask slipped and he let loose torrential laughter, writhing and
jolting with amusement in his lover’s lap. Ra-Kai realised
he’d been played, and sought revenge through a barrage of whiskery kisses down
the softer scales of his mate’s abdomen. Darsal was incapacitated with giggling
at this point.
[Yiff incoming. This is where you
‘interested’ people can start reading]
Ra-Kai was about to relent when a scent that filled his veins with fire and
enflamed his sheath drifted up from his lover’s scales under his nose. He made
deep, gentle growl in his chest and rubbed his mane and nose against Darsal’s scales, near-worshipping the scent. He ripped away
his loincloth and laid his mate down on the leaves, a safe distance from the
fire, and lowered himself on top, placing his mouth around his mate’s neck
gently, like an over-sized kiss. The fire in his veins reached his lionhood, which became heavy with blood, then erect,
sticking up against their navels between the two bodies. He felt Darsal
respond, his own ebony, prehensile length slipping out from its protective
body-cavity, along with the soft, dark skin of his scrotum, and his penis
curled around Ra-Kai’s. Ra-Kai moved up from his mating bite and kissed Darsal,
pressing hard and moving his cock-tip up and down his mate’s smooth navel. Darsal’s tail slipped out from under him and coiled around
him, cool against his hot fur. Darsal turned under him, sending Ra-Kai insane
with the sensation of his scales against him, until their heads were at
opposite ends. Ra-Kai nearly wondered what he was doing until he felt Darsal’s forked tongue tease his lionhood’s
entrance. He arched his back at the sensation, but moaned in pleasure.
The tongue slipped down the underside of his shaft and under his ball-sack,
hanging loose from the warmth of their encounter. It slid up, behind the ample
orbs and slipped back and forth, tasting his lover’s musk. Ra-Kai realised this would be short; his lover knew all his
sweet-spots and set them ablaze with a single stroke of his tongue. Finally,
all foreplay exhausted, Darsal slipped the burning rod inside his mouth and
pumped it passionately. Then he pulled out yet another snake eccentricity by
stretching his mouth open wide enough to incorporate both his mate’s fragrant,
golden sack and his ample length...no mean feat. The organs slipped back and
forth inside the serpent’s wet maw, and Ra-Kai, almost delirious with pleasure,
half-remembered his mate and licked his chops before feasting hungrily on his
silky-soft ball-sack. His arms strained, pulling the two of them together with
titan force as he let his mate’s ample testicles slip from his mouth, strings
of saliva like silver chains, and moved straight to the point. Darsal’s penis squirmed and curved inside Ra-Kai’s mouth,
like a hundred false orgasms, leaking slimy pre with each pump of his maw.
Darsal’s mouth sent thunderbolts of ecstasy up
Ra-Kai’s groin, the whole thing practically in his mouth. His teeth
unintentionally massaged the stretch of flesh between his mate’s scrotum and
his deliciously-curved backside. His own pleasure was sent to new levels when
he felt his mate’s growing muscle flex and tense under his scales. Ra-Kai had
been leaking pre in handfuls and Darsal knew he wouldn’t last long. Then, he
felt Ra-Kai’s fingers trace gentle rings around his entrance. Well, maybe he
wouldn’t last long either. He sucked hungrily at the new streams of pre, and
the oozing pheromones that soaked from the sodden fur of his ‘lower-mane’ and
sent streams of warmth down his neck and into his belly.
Ra-Kai was so close. So close. Painfully close, he reflected, his
mind hazed with lust and his balls aching with seed. He became aware of his
mate’s scales against his erect nipples, piercing the golden fur like pink
mounts, and the feeling sent him over into an explosion of euphoria as he came
in torrents into his lover’s all-encompassing maw. His entire abdomen jerked
and spasmed with his cock, attempting to empty his
entire sack into Darsal’s waiting mouth. As the last
trickles of seed oozed gently from the tip like a dripping tap, he felt his
lover come in unison. Nothing in the universe existed except the jerking length
and the stream of seed near-gushing from the tip. He sucked harder, trying to
drink his love dry, squeezing the dark-skinned balls for every spurt he could
get.
Finally, the two lay together on their sides near the fire, Ra-Kai in his
lover’s coils once more, both tired like nothing they’d experienced. Darsal realised he wouldn’t be stroked to sleep like he’d hoped,
but was secretly happy with the trade-off. Just before they slept, Ra-Kai piped
up with another question through the sleepy after-glow.
“Darsal?”
His lover pressed his lips into
a thin line and sighed.
“Mmm?”
“Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Wrap around me like this?”
Ra-Kai had been secretly wondering, not that he didn’t enjoy the feeling of
cool scales between his legs. Darsal went into one of his trademark pensive
silences, then replied.
“I don’t know, it just feels
right,” he crooned, planting a gentle kiss on the back of his mate’s shoulder.
“Probably for the same reason you put your mouth around my neck.”
He’s right, some
part of Ra-Kai thought sleepily. Every time he did it, he felt so much closer,
closer than proximity could give, and he loved the faint taste of tree sap and
fish that Darsal’s scales always seemed to have. He
suddenly remembered his promise, that he’d stroke Darsal to sleep if he
answered his questions, so he gently ran the very tips of his paws along the
length of Darsal’s tail around his chest.
Darsal fell asleep before
Ra-Kai, but neither saw their ‘guest’ pumping his barbed length under the
blanket after witnessing the steamy encounter.
[Yiff
has left the building. Show’s over people.]