- Dar'ax -

I have no particular idea where I'm going with this being. My mind is in a daze and I can't make sense of what just happened.

She's talking now, speaking some alien language. Or possibly she's chanting something to her Ancestors. I will certainly have a stern prayer session with mine very soon.

When I first saw her, outside a cave that was rumored to be there, I thought she was a demon. An envoy of the Darkness, so different and strange that she could not come from any of the tribes. Illuminated by sudden lightning, she had a strange beauty that spoke to something deep inside me.

Only when I heard her thin voice, saw the way she ran and her face illuminated by the lightning did I realize that she was something much stranger than a demon – a woman.

No woman has been seen on Xren for many ages of men. They were taken by the dirty Plood, and then our tribe had to start using Lifegivers to keep supplying us with children, so that the tribe may continue. We all long for the day when the women will return, but nobody believes it will ever happen.

And here is one now. Sitting right in front of me on this kronk, so close I can reach out and touch her at will.

She's small, only the size of an adolescent boy before the stripening. But no boy has ever had a shape like hers. Her hips are wide and her chest is enticingly heavy and round. Her skin impossibly smooth and unstriped, her face full like a child's yet still with the maturity of an adult. Her eyes are dark and mysterious, big and clear behind the strange, flat rocks that she carries in front of them. Her voice sounds like that of young boys playing, but it's brighter and clearer and gentler, somehow. And more mature, although this is not an old being.

It all comes together in a series of overwhelming sensations and feelings that I have never encountered before. She does something to me, so profound that it feels as if the world has been turned around completely and everything is made anew.

A being like this ... can I be sure that this is not a demon? It seems to have taken over my thoughts and turned everything into chaos.

Last night, as soon as I discovered her, she ran into the cave, seemingly calling for help. And indeed two men came out, barely leaving me time to get away before they could see me. But I could see them.

Clearly at least one tribe still has women. Six of them.

Six women! The thought was too large for my mind. Still is.

I was intrigued. But I have a mission, and I was able to turn my back to her and then go straight to Bune that night. I kept vigil there, looking for something specific that might make my mission easier. I found it, too, and I was about to leave.

Then she came out of the darkness. And I just took her, as naturally as one takes a breath or picks up a sparkly pebble from the ground. I just knew that she was mine.

“Where we go?” She turns her head and looks at me. The transparent rocks in front of her eyes flash in the moonlight, and they look so otherworldly I still can't be sure that she wasn't sent by a demon.

I don't know what to answer. I have no idea where I'm going with her.

She holds my gaze for a moment, then turns back again and keeps talking her own language. I know she can speak my language, but I didn't know it could sound so sweet.

Still, has anything really changed? I still have my mission. Can I allow anything at all to stop me from fulfilling it?

But she's so soft and so small, so in need of protection, so enticing ...

“Raaah!” I punch the kronk's thick skin in frustration and anger. I don't have time for this! I can't let myself be encumbered by this ... this ... demonic creature! Because really, can anything that's not demonic be this wonderful?

On the other hand, wouldn't a demonic being seem more seductive and ingratiating? This woman is only one of those things. Indeed I find her so seductive that my loins have been continuously swelling to ridiculous proportions since I lifted her up onto the kronk's back. Ingratiating she's most certainly not.

What shall I do with her? I don't have time for this!

I groan in pure frustration, and the woman turns around to look at me once more. Then she turns back again, without a word, her back straight in a clear defiance that I find unreasonably attractive and which doesn't seem demonic at all.

'Dishonorable', she said right after I took her. It has worried me since. Does she know, then? Or is it so clearly visible in my face? That I'm the last and only?

I take a deep breath. She has thrown off all my plans and ambitions. She's a such a burden for me.

Until now, things were so simple. Dark, but simple: fulfill my mission. Only that.

And now, my mind is more infuriatingly muddled than it has ever been.

A whiff of the woman's soft, sweet scent momentarily fills my nostrils and I almost swoon, while my crotch again swells hard. 'Heidi', she said. Could that be her name?

At least one thing I know for sure, and that's what made me take her. One thing that shines through this new chaos like the sun through a thin cloud, one thing that I knew from the moment I laid eyes on her: she's mine.