m elf x m kreen

From up above the red disc in the sky beats you down with constant heat. Your forehead and the pitiful rags you’ve been forced to wear are soaked in sweat, but it scarcely bothers you. Your weathered feet trudge behind the wagon ahead, where the silent, veiled Templar in charge of the slave caravan sits at the reins of the kank pulling it. You and other slaves are forced to walk, hands tied to one another and to the wagon in a string of bindings.
The walking doesn’t bother you. You’ve run longer routes than this for the thrill of it. What bothers you is the giant insect walking next to you. You’ve heard stories of course. The thri-kreen and their taste for elf flesh are the stuff of cautionary tales every young elf is suffered to sit through. Where you come from, you had never so much as seen one from afar. You’ve been stuck to this one for over a day of travel and it hasn’t grown on you.
You can feel its eyes on you, from time to time, turning in your peripheries. Rather than meet its eye you keep your gaze forward, trying to sink into that sweet oblivion you feel when you run, but this caravan is moving too slow. Sprawling desert sands give way to wilting, struggling forest as you near your destination. This place feels confining.
Behind you one of the humans further back stumbles and falls. The procession slows to a crawl as he trips up others behind him, the bindings on your arms yanked back. With an annoyed huff, you look on with some satisfaction as a kank-mounted guard jabs the man with the blunt end of a spear until he gets back up and moving. If the human can’t even survive the march to Gulg, he will hardly survive long under whatever labor they have planned.
The comforting monotony of motion resumes, but is quickly interrupted by a subtle jab to your arm. The thri-kreen beside you nudges you with one of four elbows. A jolt of worry shoots through you and you look over despite yourself, meeting those soulless compound eyes.
“The hu-man did not fall on accident.”
You nearly stumble yourself, startled by the kreen whispering to you in broken elven. The words sound wrong coming from that alien mouth. At the sound of the guards moving back up from the rear of the caravan, you quickly look away and fix your gaze back on the head of the human ahead of you. The fall hadn’t been an accident?
In a moment you understand the weight of those words, as there is a sudden slack in the bindings. The chain of bound slaves slows as the tugging of the wagon ceases, and it rolls ahead without them. It takes a few seconds for the guards to notice as the prisoners at the front begin cutting free their bonds with the same shank used to detach from the wagon.
You feel a tugging and look down. The thri-kreen is using its razor sharp mandibles to snap through its own bindings. “Quickly,” it says, motioning to your own hands. You hold them up and the mandibles swiftly sever the knot, freeing you as well. There are shouts from freed slaves at the back of the line, the fallen man is using a sharp rock he snatched up when he fell to cut them loose.
A powerful clawed hand wraps around your wrist and pulls you out of line; the guards too busy chasing the first escaped slaves at the front to interfere.
“Move.”
Your heart jumps to your throat as the huge insect drags you towards the tree cover off the side of the road. You haven’t anywhere better to go, but you can’t shake the feeling that this thing just wants you around for a mobile meal. Rather than contest its powerful grip, you follow it away from the caravan. Better chance fighting it off where you’re less likely to be recaptured after. You have a secret weapon of your own.
The kreen does not stop until you are out of clear earshot of the Templar and his lackeys. You can still hear distant shouts, and the snapping of undergrowth beneath the feet of escaped slaves. To your surprise, it releases your wrist. Pulling it back, you rub it and take several steps away from your ‘savior’. You are about to start weaving your hands together in the gestures you’ve practiced when it speaks again.
“Do not afraid. Better survive in numbers,” the clumsy mandibles of the creature’s mouth further maim the language of your people with every syllable, grating against your ears.
“Better to survive if I’m not eaten in my sleep,” your retort cracks in your dry throat, and you realize how long it’s been since you had any water.
Turning its back to you, the kreen crouches down on the ground, scooping at the dirt. Why? You don’t wait to find out, and begin to make a break for it in a different direction. You hear powerful legs pumping against the ground behind you. You can outlast any man or beast on the open desert, but in this wood and without a head start, you are quickly fallen upon by the monster. It covers your mouth with a hand before you can cry out, two more twisting your arms behind your back. “Stop.”
You struggle to no avail, weak and dehydrated. The kreen forces you back to where it had knelt on the ground and it shoves you down next to the freshly dug hole. You gasp and start to get up, but looking down you see a pool of water nestled within.
“Drink. You need,” it says as it takes two long strides to the side, putting itself back in your range of view. Hesitantly you do as it says and lower your head, cupping the water in your hands to sip it greedily. It is cool and fresh, the freshest you have ever tasted, the greatest thing in the world. They always are after so long without a drop.
You swallow the precious nectar of life and pull yourself up onto your knees, looking up at the kreen. “Why help me?” It looms, nearly a full head taller than you are at full height.
“You fit. No tire the full walk. Others no keep up with kreen. You fit,” it points at you with one of its clawed digits.
“And as soon as the going gets tough and you get hungry, I’m on the menu?”
“We hunt well, I not get hungry.”
You snort at the answer, getting to your feet. You start to wipe your face, but decide to let the cool wetness sit there instead. “Fine. I can’t outrun you, so I won’t argue, not now. Where do we go?”
“We move far while they gather human. Human slow. Make good-” pausing, the kreen looks unsure about what word comes next.
“Diversion.”
“Yes.”
Taking one last look back towards the caravan and listening for pursuers, you turn to the kreen and nod your agreement.

***

It’s been three days. After escaping from the slave caravan with your new ‘friend’, you fashioned a crude spear out of a tree branch. The bug prefers to use its claws. Suits you fine. It’ll give you better reach if it turns on you.
You’ve been giving it the tests. Seeing if it could be trusted. One day, you feigned forgetting your spear as you packed up the meager camp. It noticed several minutes later and told you to stay put, then ran all the way back to get it for you. You didn’t risk sleeping at first. The first night, you pretended. The thing didn’t sleep, it didn’t even move, just sat crouched in a tree like a monster out of your worst nightmares. All you want is to be out of this blasted forest and on the open dunes again, but you have to admit, there is ample prey here. And that means you stay off the menu.
Come the second night you finally gave in and slept. In the morning you woke up to the kreen having carved a wooden bowl during the night and somehow filled it with water, which it offered to you. You had to admit, that water-finding trick was useful.
The third day you devised another test, feigning a twisted ankle to see if the monster would make a move at a sign of weakness. Even another elf would have surely left you behind, and so you insisted on continuing to walk in spite of the ankle. To your surprise the kreen had plucked a branch from a tree and fashioned a crude splint for your leg to try and make it easier. You removed it after a while with a claim that you felt better, it had started to chafe.
Now it has come to the third night with the kreen. You’ve reached the edge of the woods, far from the main road. Here the barren desert and the verdant oasis meet. Far enough now, you risk a small fire to cook your catch this time, a lizard the size of your head that you had managed to hit with a thrown spear while it basked on a rock.
The kreen does not seem to mind waiting for you to prepare the food, another point chalked up in its favor. It was beginning to, well. You wouldn’t say it was growing on you, but its presence was tolerable. Gnawing at the chewy meat, you drop a cleaned off lizard femur on the ground.
“Are you not eat that?” it asks in its broken elven.
“The bone? How would I eat a bone?”
Reaching down, the kreen takes up the bone and snaps it in half against a rock, holding the ends to its mouth to suck out the marrow inside, a long thin tongue reaching for the last drops. You’d never seen a person do that before, only animals. It is times like these you have to stop and remind yourself that this is really nothing more than a particularly intelligent animal.
“Try,” taking the femur from its own lizard leg, the kreen snaps it in half and holds it out to you. You eye the tissues inside with a mix of curiosity and disgust. Despite yourself, you reach out and take the two halves. They must at least be edible, and you had best not waste food lest you be on the menu. Reluctantly, you suck out the fatty tissue within. All in all not as bad as you expected.
“Good?”
“Not bad,” you answer, discarding the now empty bone. The kreen does not complain this time and returns to eating. Your half of tonight’s food finished, you scoop some sand into a more comfortable indent to sleep in and lie down. Your travelling companion puts out the fire and settles in against a tree to keep watch, still gnawing absently at a few leftover bones.
Sleep comes more easily now, and you find yourself drifting off. Your dreams go to carnal places, the lithe bodies of elven dancers and your bride-to-be flitting through your unconsciousness. The blissful vision is interrupted by a cracking branch alerting your sharp ears, and you jolt awake. The kreen is nowhere to be seen, and you quickly grab your spear where it lay beside you.
A survey of the campsite reveals footprints matching the kreen’s claws leading into the woods. What is it doing? Getting more water? Taking care not to snap any branches yourself, you follow.
You hear breathing behind a thick tree trunk scarcely ten feet from the camp and approach. Behind it you find the kreen crouched down with its abdomen twisted under it, pointing forward between its legs. It has steadied itself with its claws against the trunk, while one hand circles and prods at the end of its abdomen. You feel your cheeks flush at as you realize what you just walked in on.
“Apology. Did not want to wake,” it utters in obscene nonchalance, continuing to rub and circle the entrance without embarrassment. “You need too.”
Looking down, you see the bulge in your ragged trousers, and quickly turn away. If the kreen noticed your embarrassment, it doesn’t respond.
“How can you just keep doing that in front of me like it’s nothing?” you stutter out, looking back despite yourself. From inside the exoskeletal bulge of its abdomen, a fleshy light yellow protrusion has begun to peek out in response to the ministrations of its owner. You quickly look away again.
“It is nothing?” it – he – repeats in confusion. “Natural. Is long since mated. Need release. You too.”
You can’t deny that it’s been a long time. Your thoughts turn to the Templar and his cronies when they raided your tribe while they slept. You’d been separated from the rest when you were sorted into different slave caravans. Before that, you had been holding off until your coupling ceremony with your bride.
“Is it not something you do in private? You didn’t go away from camp for privacy?” you respond, doing your best not to turn around while talking.
“I went away so would not wake. Not far in case danger.”
You ignore the squelching sound that must be the kreen rubbing the space between its member and the interior walls of its – his hole. Primal spirits why?
“You can if need to. Want to together? Feel more good.”
This time you can’t help but turn to face the kreen, balking at the suggestion as you flush further. The very suggestion disgusts you, this creature, this monster, wants to masturbate together? At the same time, there is an undeniable smell in the air that seems to be getting you harder. Pheromones?
He is patient, slowing his activities and looking up at you expectantly. You can’t believe it, but you move a bit closer. Swallowing, you aren’t sure whether to look away or not. The kreen moves his hand from his abdomen and reaches over to tug at your drawstring, pulling your crude trousers down, where they fall to your ankles. He wastes no time in wrapping a claw, wet with his own fluids, around your erect staff. The same claw that felt like a vice grip on your wrist is surprisingly delicate in its touch this time, the smooth, cool exoskeleton beginning to gently squeeze and release with light pressure.
Is this really happening? You suppose it is.
After a few seconds of the bizarre squeezing and releasing, the kreen shows no signs of beginning any stroking motions. He just sits there holding your cock, and his antennae occasionally flutter around the head or brush against your sack. Scratching your ear and looking away you hazard to ask, “What are you doing?”
“What?”
“You’re just holding it. You’re supposed to move it,” looking back down and wave the bug’s claw away, then demonstrate. He regards the motion with some confusion, and then reaches out for it again. You let go and allow him to grasp your member. This time he starts to rub it along its length.
“Apology. Squeezing is how I do. You do me?”
Looking along the kreen’s abdomen, the smooth underbelly is facing upwards, its spiny outer shell facing the ground. The light yellow protrusion at the end is still hanging out, with a small dribble of clear off-white fluid coating the ground beneath it. Though revulsion tries to stay your hand, fair is fair. You bend down hesitantly to feel it with a finger. The surface is warm, smooth and rubbery, giving slightly where you press against it and then coming back up when you move your finger away.
“This position isn’t going to work,” you point out. His abdomen is long enough that you have to lean over from where you are beside his torso. He appears to understand that the posture is uncomfortable for you, and begins adjusting. Together the two of you try out a few positions, some more awkward than others.
Ultimately you wind up seated in his ‘lap’ on the ground, your bare ass on the bae of his cool abdomen as you lean back into his torso. His abdomen is at an odd angle, lifting up his penis to chest height for you, but he makes no complaints of discomfort. The smell of his pheromones is more intense this close, it’s not a very pronounced scent to your elven nose, but it makes your head spin. He reaches around you to take hold of your own shaft again, and resumes a steady pace.
Swallowing down your pride and reluctance, you recall the motion he had been doing to himself earlier. You reach out and gently slide a finger into the space between his member and the walls around it. It’s warm inside, and slick with some sort of lubricant.
Your finger bumps up against something else, eliciting a twitch and a scolding, “Not that.” Deciding not to argue with the deadly predator with a grip around your junior, you move your probing away from that section of his rump.
“You, um. You said you like it squeezed?” you ask uncertainly.
“Yes. Do not need to rub.”
Moving on from circling the edge, you wrap your hand around his length. It’s about as long as your fist is wide, but wider than your grip. The entire thing is slick with the same substance that was inside his passage. You tenderly give it a small squeeze, and a bit of his semen dribbles out of the top. As you release, you feel the warm flesh twitch and another gob is dropped to the earth below. You settle into a rhythm doing this, while he continues to stroke you at the same pace.
“Doing it wrong?” his grating voice is right next to your ear as he looks over your shoulder. It’s bizarre not feeling breath against the back of your neck with him this close. He must not breath using his mouth.
“This is fine,” you feel one of his antennae brush against your hair.
“Nothing is come out,” he taps your tip with one of his digits.
In spite of yourself, you let out a laugh. Of course he would expect that, it’s what his has been doing this whole time. You correct him, “For us it all just goes at once. I’m getting there.” Not your best time, but you’re pent up and those pheromones are doing a number on your endurance.
No more words are exchanged as you and he continue to work at each other’s alien dicks, and you can feel yourself on the edge. Your legs, wrapped around the abdomen in front of you, stretch out as you finally get release, your load splattering itself onto this kreen’s exoskeletal underbelly. Spirits you still don’t even know his name. Instinctively you give him a squeeze in return, and he twitches out another gob of bug spunk.
“That’s good. You can stop now,” you tell him as your erection starts to shrink down. “How much longer for you?”
“If very long since mate, can go for days.”
With a groan, you switch hands. There’s a clicking sound near your ear – is he laughing at you, now?
“I am okay now. You can stop now,” two of his arms hook under your armpits to help you stand, and you step aside, panting from the exertion. Then you decide to sit back down, leaning back against the tree next to him, the dirt and struggling grass cold against your bare backside. You use the grass to wipe off his juices from your hand, but you see he has other ideas. His long tongue is washing over the hand he used to jerk you off, licking up the semen.
“Well? Does it taste like elf?” you ask.
“Not very.”
The kreen takes something from his other side and you see it’s the wooden bowl he carved. Accompanied by chittering sounds, he holds a hand over the bowl and water burbles up from the bottom as if from a spring made of air. You’ve seen something like that only once, from a travelling elemental shaman.
“You parlay with the primal spirits of water. That’s where you keep getting it.”
“Yes. Drink,” he offers you the bowl and you take it, sipping from the rim before passing it back for him to take a turn.
After taking a few minutes to catch your breath and trade the water bowl back and forth, you finally gather the will to speak. Reaching over, you nudge him with your elbow in the same way he did to you just before your escape from the slave caravan. “Hey. What’s your name?”
“Name is P’ekwtchk.”
“Anon. Mind if I call you Peck? I can’t say whatever that was.”
“Peck is good.”