Shifting Plains

by Jean Johnson

  It didn’t take long for him to stoke the fire in the brazier pan, or for the spicy-sweet scent of burning rora vine to spread through the tent. Crossing to one of his own chests, Kodan began removing his clothes. Watching him, Tava realized she should be doing the same, and started unbuttoning her top.

  “We’ll have a Washing Day before we break camp. There’s just enough water here for us to do that, which is why we like picking this particular pasture site as our last one before heading in for the winter,” Kodan told her, folding his chamak. He pulled off his boots and unlaced each ankle cuff in turn. “There won’t be enough water for laundry on the journey north, until we get to the City. They collect a lot of rainwater in its cisterns—if we hadn’t dug deep pits and piled up the resulting dirt and rock across half the crater floor, the crater would have gradually become a lake.

  “In fact, there is a lake, though most of us only see it in winter, when it freezes over.” Turning, he flashed her a grin. “We like to skate on it for fun, though not everyone can shift bone skates on their feet. You were getting very close to mastering the body of an eagle earlier, so I think you might be able to figure out the trick of ice skates, too. If not, they’re not that expensive to buy. The best bone-skate carvers are in . . . Clan . . .”

  His gaze dropped as she peeled back the folds of her chamsa, letting the material fall onto the bed behind her. Tava hadn’t shifted fur to cover herself. The appreciative heat in his gaze as it slipped down over her bare breasts warmed her more than the cheerfully crackling flames in the brazier. Glad she had been so bold, Tava loosened the ankle drawstrings of her breikas, then slipped off the bed and untied the one at the waistband.

  The slithering of the material down her thighs impelled him to move. Rounding the end of the bed, Kodan checked the urge to pull her into his arms and kiss her senseless, to feel every part of her against every part of him. This wasn’t an earth-priestess experienced in the needs of men, but a woman who had initially thought Shifterai men were nothing more than ravaging brutes. Glad he was still wearing his breikas, though the gathered folds did little to hide the tenting of his arousal, Kodan knelt on the felt-lined floor in front of her and gently caught her hands in his.

  She blushed when he lifted them to his mouth, and blushed harder when he didn’t just kiss, but also licked and sucked on her fingers. She remembered his descriptions of what to do with herself, of what he would do with her, and felt tingles of desire rising in her blood.

  His hands left hers, allowing him to skim his palms up her arms and then down her ribs. Tava giggled and squirmed, ticklish. She bat-ted his hands away, only to have him catch her wrists and tuck her arms behind her back. Leaning forward, he licked her stomach. That tickled her, too, but it also aroused her.

  His grip wasn’t strong; she knew she could pull away, but being lightly restrained also made her feel vulnerable. That Kodan kissed and supped his way around her navel and up to her ribs, treating her gently, made her feel cherished. The combination aroused her even further. She wanted to run her fingers through his soft, dark hair, to return each touch. Yet at the same time, she longed to stay the center of his attention like this.

  It’s just like Father said, she acknowledged, sucking in a sharp breath when Kodan licked the curve of her breast. When a man and a maiden truly trust each other, everything they do together is pleasure . . . and I truly trust Kodan. I love him . . . and I really desire him.

  Needing to caress more of her skin, Kodan released her hands. She shifted them to his scalp, stroking her fingers through his hair in counterpoint to the stroking of his palms along her back. The sensual caress pleased him. Leaving her hands free for whatever else she might desire, he smoothed his own down to her calves and back up to her thighs.

  The feel of her hand catching one of his, of her guiding his fingertips to the damp folds of her flesh, shocked him. Not that it was unwanted, but he hadn’t expected her to be so bold. Nor did he anticipate her words, soft and husky-voiced.

  “Touch me,” Tava urged him, cupping his fingers in place. “Like you said you would, that night.”

  Arousal spiked through his blood. Biting back the urge to groan, Kodan nudged her closer to the side of the bed. “Then sit, and part your thighs. Lie back, if you want.”

  Turning a little, Tava perched on the edge of the bed. It was somewhat low compared to the shelf of a Mornai bed, but it did put their heads at almost the same level. She watched him shuffle closer, then rise up a little once he knelt between her thighs, bringing their lips together. It also brushed his body against hers. The warmth of skin and the slight rasp of fabric teased her flesh. Wanting more of these wonderful feelings, wanting to share them, Tava slid her hands over his shoulders and down his chest.

  Her touch thrilled him. Kissing her thoroughly, Kodan coaxed her tongue into play, suckling it as he had suckled her fingers and breasts. He stroked her skin all over, enjoying the freedom to touch her wherever he pleased, to caress, rub, and tweak. Tava drew his fingers back down to her loins after a little while. The moisture that greeted his fingers encouraged him to rub and stroke her flesh down there, until her hips were rocking and circling into his touch in the quest to intensify her pleasure.

  Breaking off their kisses, Kodan gently pushed her back. Disappointed, Tava reluctantly complied with his urgings. She lay back on the rumpled bedding, hips barely resting on the bed. Kodan stroked his hands down her torso, skimming over her shoulders, breasts, and belly to her thighs. He stroked again and again, first swerving to the middle of her body, then dipping to the outside, before spiraling around her breasts until her back arched up in the need for more.

  “Please . . .” she breathed. She tried to catch his hands, but Kodan sank down onto his heels. Dipping his head, he licked the seam of flesh bared by her parted limbs. Pleasure rushed through her as he did it again and again, doing with his tongue what she had expected him to do with his fingers. “Kodan! Oh . . . Kodan . . .”

  Encouraged by her gasps and her sighs, by the fingers raking through his hair and the tensing of her limbs, Kodan loved her with his mouth until she spasmed and cried out. He gentled his touch, but didn’t stop kissing her flesh. Once her panting eased, he renewed the firmer strokes of his tongue, adding gentle nips of his teeth to her nether-lips.

  The feel of her hands returning to his hair pleased him. Untying the drawstring of his breikas, he freed his own flesh. Kissing his way up onto her abdomen, he ignored her wordless noise of protest. Rising onto his knees, Kodan guided his manhood into position.

  Tava felt her flesh stretching, and shifted automatically to accommodate him. A slow push was followed by gentle rocking. This was far more than the single finger she had used on herself. Far better, too. Tava pushed up onto her elbows, wanting to see as well as feel him loving her this way. Catching her hands, Kodan helped pull her upright, then resumed his gentle thrusts.

  “Look at us,” he murmured, his own attention more on her face than on the conjoining of their flesh. “Working together . . . moving together . . . being together. You and I . . . husband and wife . . . woman and man . . .”

  Tava pulled her gaze up from the hypnotic sight and sensation of him pleasuring her. She met Kodan’s dark eyes. The emotion in them matched her own intense feelings.

  “Loving each other,” she whispered, not quite making it a question.

  “Yes,” Kodan growled, shifting his hands to her hips. Pulling her closer, he thrust powerfully.

  Her pleasure intensified, but the position threatened to slide her off the bed between bounces. Dropping back, Tava let herself fall onto the bedding. Kodan rubbed his palms along her stomach and up over her breasts. On the return stroke, he slipped his thumb down between her folds, massaging her flesh as he continued to stroke.

  “Remember this?” he asked her, panting. “Remember how I said I would touch you? All of this, and so much more!”

  His words released her pleasure. Arching her back, Tava moaned as she fell, a qua
vering note of bliss that morphed into his name at its end. He picked up his pace, prolonging her desire, until he fell as well. Shuddering for several seconds, he finally stopped and slumped, resting his sweating face on her stomach. Tava gently stroked his hair as they both rested.

  She felt . . . free. No longer restricted by anything in her life, other than her desire to please her husband and the whims of her own will. Like I’ve finally escaped the cocoon of Valley life that confined me for too long. A whimsical thought struck. I wonder . . . should I try to shapeshift myself into a butterfly? I certainly feel like one, and even the Shifterai say that feeling like the animal you’re trying to imitate is an important part of getting that animal-shape right . . .

  Gradually, Kodan became aware of the sounds of the night. The crackling of the burning grass-logs had been joined by a pattering on the roof. Drawing a deep breath, he rose from the ground and scooped up his wife. Turning her a little, he laid her on the bed, tugged the covers out from under her.

  Tava sat up and helped, pushing the bedding down with her hands and heels. Underneath was the feather pallet she had brought from her home. Unstitched to its normal size, it was narrower than his own wool-stuffed mattress and now might need extra fabric to extend its width properly, but the extra softness was worth it. So was the extra warmth; the night air was now damp as well as chilly, enough that she didn’t mind cuddling close to Kodan. Helping him pull the blankets up into place, she curled up against him and grinned.

  “Mm?” he asked, eyeing her almost smug expression.

  “I like being married. I’ll never have to shiver in a cold bed all on my own anymore,” she said.

  Kodan chuckled and pulled her closer. “I can think of several ways to keep you warm.”

  “I hope so,” Tava muttered boldly, sliding her hand from his hip to his backside. From his sigh of appreciation, she guessed he liked her touch. “I hope I can come up with a few ways to keep you warm, too.”

  “I have no doubt,” he agreed. “Do you hear the rain on the roof?”

  “Yes,” Tava said, wondering at the change in subject. “What of it?”

  “Father Sky is smiling on our marriage. Rain on a wedding night is said to be a blessing on the union from the Gods, because rain is how Father Sky kisses Mother Earth, and wind is how He caresses Her. Sometimes He gets overly passionate, but we never doubt that He loves Her, even during the fiercest of storms.”

  “I’ll settle for just rain,” Tava told him. “I’m not too keen on the thought of all these geomes blowing away in a strong wind.”

  “They’re very stable, Tava,” he reassured her patiently. “Geomes don’t blow over in the wind.”

  “What about a whirlwind?”

  “We have several priestesses and even a mage, all of whom can pray and even cast a spell or two to avert such things. You needn’t worry, wife,” Kodan stated. Then slid his hand down to the junction of her thighs. “But I can see I’ll have to work harder at distracting you from all your worries and cares.”

  Lifting her knee to give him more room to work, Tava kissed her husband.

  “If you can find one, you’ll want to get a camp stove with the pipe hole offset to one side,” Sinya lectured her daughter-in-law. “That gives you more cooking surface. My sister swears by the round-bodied ones, but I prefer the octagonal fireboxes. It’s easier to find a water tank that can fit flush against the side. You get less water overall, true, but the replacement tanks are cheaper and easier for the City smiths to make when the original one rusts through. Are you done stirring the dough?”

  “I was thinking of adding some wild chives,” Tava said, setting down the bowl full of biscuit dough. Now that Tava was no longer being fed either by the priesthood or by her fellow maidens, Kodan’s mother had offered to feed her until she could set up a camp kitchen of her own, just as the older woman still often fed both of her sons despite the fact that they had geomes of their own. Moving over to the washstand, Tava rinsed bits of flour and dough from her fingers. “I saw some growing next to the cistern just north of the Right Flank earth-priestess geome and thought it might be nice to have. That’s what we do with our biscuits down in the Valley, either add chive or small onions. Sometimes we even add cheese.”

  Sinya eyed the stew she was making. She stirred it, sniffed at the steam, and covered it with a lid. “. . . I think chives and cheese would taste good in the dumplings. Go and fetch some chives from the cistern. Extra cooking time never harms a stew, so long as you keep adding water now and again.”

  Tava smiled. “That’s what my father said. Well, he said it more about soups, but a stew is like a thickened soup.”

  Sinya laughed. “I have two boys and a girl, plus my husband to feed. Soup’s a bit thin for a shapeshifter; they expend a lot of energy when they shift, so they need food that will stick to their bones. There’s a small bowl in that chest over there, and the scissors I use to cut food.”

  “Where is your daughter?” Tava asked, moving to fetch the implements. “I haven’t met her.”

  “She moved to Family Bobcat when she picked her husband. You’ll get to meet her when we get to the City. Bobcat’s a bigger Family than Tiger, so she often brings her kin-family to stay with us in our tenements where there’s more room. Bobcat also has five princesses—oh! That reminds me, the full of Brother Moon is coming up in just two more days. That’s when the Council of Sisters traditionally pays our princesses their Family fee. The Council of Shifters does it on the new of Brother Moon.”

  “It feels strange to be paid money just for existing. I mean, I haven’t really done anything for the Family, yet. You don’t even need me as a scribe, since all of you can read and write,” Tava said as she shut the chest lid, bowl and scissors balanced in her other hand.

  “If my son hasn’t thought of it yet, I’ll strongly suggest appointing you as the scribe for both Councils. You’ll learn a lot more about how a Family is governed by sitting in on both Councils than you would in a hundred days of listening to the hearth-priestess,” Sinya asserted. “Arahala will undoubtedly want to sit in on both Councils, too. She always wanted to sit in on the Sister Council, though we told her she just wasn’t experienced enough—in other words, mature enough—but then, that girl never learned to keep her mouth shut.

  “Mark my words, you’ll learn more by listening and thinking everything through than you’d ever learn by flapping your lips with your half-formed opinions,” Sinya added. “Now that she’s a princess, we can’t by law keep her out, but I doubt she’ll remember the law that she’s supposed to shut up and listen for the first two turns of Sister Moon. Make sure you don’t take after her.”

  My, these Shifterai women are blunt at times. Tava shook her head. “My father bribed the Alders into letting me sit with him during the various village meetings, even the ones the women weren’t normally allowed to attend. I don’t know what he did to blackmail them, but for my part, I had to keep utterly silent and very still, save for whatever notes I was supposed to be taking. I learned the value of listening and thinking things through for myself long ago. Particularly since some of those graybeards didn’t seem to think before they ‘flapped their lips,’ as you so accurately put it.”

  “Good. Then you’ll be miles ahead of the other girl. I wondered if Kodan was thinking right when he said he wanted to pursue an outlander woman—don’t just stand there!” his mother half scolded. “Even a stew won’t cook forever, and that dough needs to be dropped into the pot! Go fetch the chives while I grate some cheese. I should have some sharp cow’s cheese left—oh! You’ll want to get a cold chest for your kitchen goods, too, for storing delicate foods. The spells are depressingly expensive, though thankfully they only have to be renewed once every few years. But the convenience is utterly worth it in the long run, and since you will be paid a tithe every two weeks, you should be able to afford it . . .”

  Quickly ducking out through the door, Tava let it shut behind her. Kodan’s mother was intelligent
, opinionated, and talkative . . . and thus a little exhausting for the Valley-bred woman to deal with. Kind, though; Tava would be the first to admit Sinya Trei Dan was kind. She was glad to get away from the chatty woman, if only for a little while. Tava just wasn’t used to the presence of so many adult women in her life. It was one of many changes she was still getting used to, here on the Plains.

  A stray thought made her chuckle. No wonder he’s so quiet and thoughtful! His mother “flaps her lips” more than enough to carry a conversation by herself, though at least what she says is worth listening to. The same can’t be said for everyone, alas. She’s also right in that I’ll learn far more if I keep my lips shut and my ears open. These are my people now. And being born a female shifter, they’ll expect me to be a Princess of the People . . . which means becoming a leader. Particularly if Arahala plans on apprenticing to the Queen this winter. Everyone here will be looking at me to be the Princess of Family Tiger.

  At least getting married to Kodan seems to have cut off the annoying flood of suitors, she thought, smiling at Torei as she passed the front of his geome on her way to the cistern. The youth stuttered a greeting, but didn’t get up and chase after her, thankfully. Tava nodded politely in reply. She suppressed the urge to chuckle as she reached the center of camp. I can’t believe I yelled what I did about using the refreshing tent yesterday. Back home . . . I probably would’ve been whipped for such vulgarity, and by my own father . . .

  I think I’ll want to avoid being so vulgar in the future. It’s hard enough trying to think of myself as a princess, but I should try my best to live up to the honor these . . . my people are now giving me. After all, the princesses from the stories in Father Fox’s Tales are kind and courteous young women. They may be fictional stories, but they do make a good example.

  I just wish my own father was still around to see me now. To know I’ve found a place for myself at last . . .