Nina Part One

Stepping within the portals of the Palace, I was gripped with near-panic. A vast space opened up before me, a wide plaza, paved with dressed white stone. On each side, there were low buildings, sheltering against the Palace wall. But ahead, stretching up almost as far as the eye could see, there was the broad tower of the Palace itself, a glistening spire of pink stone. I had never been so close to the tower of King Harrdon before. What an erection! So much open space! Such a fantastic, large column to fill it! It was truly an inspiring sight.

Mammari, if you must indulge in a little history, was founded by the god Ejacularis. When he thought he was dying, he decided to have one last wank. "Bury me where my seed falls," he commanded. He then spunked off over the fields and hills. Later, he remembered that he was immortal, so he commanded that a city be built where his spunk had fallen instead... that was Mammari. The same story is told about a great many cities, I know, which proves either that the others are lying, or that Ejacularis was a regular wanker.

In the centre of the square beyond the gates, there a fabulous fountain. A large rose bowl, at least twice my height across, was surmounted by a huge statue. A large, muscle-bound man, with an exceptionally large sausage, was standing over four kneeling women, at least one of whom seemed to have a tail, and another of whom had small wings on her shoulders. Each of them had turned her face up towards the man, lips opened wide and eyes closed in peaceful satisfaction, while something splashed from the end of his thing into their waiting mouths (the man's fingers cleverly divided the stream into four). The tableau was stimulating enough, but I couldn't make out what it was that was gushing from the god's faucet. It was a smooth, milky liquid. Surely, it couldn't be! I watched it for several moments, quite fascinated, before I realised that the shambling steps of my master, the Wizard, were receding into the distance. Tumescence was shuffling towards a small door in a small building in the shadow of the tower. I made to follow, but a firm hand pulled me up short.

"Not yet, bitch," snapped Titania. "First you bath, then you can go and play servants with the wizard." She seemed quite bitter, and the grip she took on my dress brooked no delay. I was roughly propelled towards the fountain.

"Fill that bucket," Titania commanded, pointing at a vessel beside the bowl. This being a task I was well-trained for, I complied at once, dipping the bucket into the slightly warm liquid. I couldn't help expressing my curiosity.

"What is this?" I asked.

"Ignorant brat," spat Titania. "It's a statue of Ejacularis, the God of Plenty. These are the four goddesses of Fellatius, who wagered each other as to who would be the last one to drain him of seed. He drowned all four of them. It's a famous legend from the Orgasmus, the Divine Book of Mammari."

I knew all that. Mum liked stories about the gods, about how they turned up in rural buildings, granting wishes and enjoying the favours of young maidens. It was all mills and boons as far as I could see, but mum kept a collection of mythic tales by her bedside, and she had read them to me so often when I was little that I knew them all backwards (which had further complicated my sex education!). I had recognised Ejacularis and the four goddesses at once; my question hadn't been about the statue.

"No, captain, I mean what is this?" I cupped my hand under the flow from Ejacularis. "That?" she mocked. "It's water, of course, heated by the caves under the Palace!"

"Water? That colour?"

"You stupid little town-bitch! It's that colour because of the rocks in the caves. It's still just water! We drink it all the time... here, see..."

She dipped her head in front of the statue and took a long gulp. It made my flesh tingle.

"Now come on!"

I filled the bucket without anything more said. Titania pointed back towards the gate-house with her baton, and I dragged the bucket towards a door which led inside the wall. Titania followed close behind, steering me towards a cell just inside the main door. It was a plain room, with a solid-looking door, dressed walls, a wooden bench along one wall which contained various vessels and brushes, and a large wooden vessel in the centre of the floor. There was more of the milky liquid in the vessel, steaming slightly.

Titania closed the door, and her face took on a smile that made me feel very uncomfortable. She touched the end of the baton to her lips.

"Strip."

It occurred to me briefly that this was going to be just another game of Nipple-Twist, but the games of my childish days were being left far behind. I took off my dress and stood it in the corner (perhaps I shouldn't have used it to clean the grate). Titania wrinkled her nose again, but she showed a slight gleam in her eye as she looked me over.

"Now, get in," she ordered.

It took me a few moments to realise that she meant for me to step into the large wooden vessel. Unbelievable! I hesitated, crossing my arms in front of my chest instinctively.

"In that stuff? No fear! It's not natural!"

"Do as you're told!" she snapped, swatting her thigh with the baton. I jumped with fright, and turned towards the steaming liquid. Tentatively, I tried the end of one toe. It actually wasn't too bad. I tried more of my foot, and it became positively pleasant.

Titania gasped impatiently, grabbed me by the shoulders and propelled me into the bath. My whole body disappeared under the milky liquid. She dunked me several times, finally pushing my whole head under. As I came up, and blinked the water from my eyes, I realised that a magical transformation had taken place. Titania was scowling unhappily at the thick sludge which had formed in the bath, but I was comfortable at last.

"Now, that's water," I asserted.

Whatever it was, Titania wasn't happy about it. She hauled me out of the vessel, tipped it over so that the silty muck spilled through a grate in the floor, then refilled it with several fresh buckets. A quiver of apprehension went through me as she crossed the room to the implements piled on the bench. There were several strange bottles, and a collection of stiff brushes. She selected one, and slapped it against her palm.

"Now we can get to work," she hissed. The brush had a long, thick shaft, and the head was covered in spiky bristles, so that it looked like a hedgehog with a tree up its bum. With that, she advanced on me in two quick strides. I tried ducking under the water, but there really wasn't anywhere to hide. It didn't help that if I ducked my head under the water, my boobs just rose further above the surface. There just wasn't any way I could keep my whole body submerged.

Titania scoured me with the brush, starting with my back, but leaving nothing untouched by the time she had finished. The water went from brown to black to semi-solid, but still she went on. Every inch of my flesh was scourged clean, and she took particular delight in scraping my scalp so savagely with a second brush I wondered if I were now bald. She clipped my nails with small scissors, and gouged muck from my ears with the corner of a damp rag. Every inch of me was being cleansed through to the other side. Now I knew I was leaving my past behind. Several layers of it at least.

"Get out," she ordered at last. I obeyed at once (the extra volume of her voice made me jump!). Titania doused me with one final bucket. Dripping wet, I stood in the middle of the room, my skin hot and red and as pink as the day that I was born. Only more so.

I felt quite giddy, not to mention several pounds lighter. Titania picked me up and carried me over to the long bench, laying me down on a soft pillow of towels. She picked up a large clear bottle filled with some pale, rose-coloured liquid, and smiled at me, in an almost human way. Frankly, she looked more dangerous like that than she had done with either the brush or the baton in her hand.

"Relax," she purred, and of course I became as tense as an innkeeper serving a weights and measures man. The quivering between my legs, which had started when I first saw her outside the palace, was becoming a very strong itch. I wanted her to scratch it, but I didn't know why. This sensation wasn't something you learned about spying through keyholes. My heart beat faster as I waited impatiently for her to reveal more to me.

She poured some of the liquid from the bottle onto my legs, and started smoothing the creamy substance into my sore flesh. The stinging heat was soothed away immediately, and replaced by a cool, blushing glow. My mind was screaming with terror, and the rest of me was burning with pain and humiliation, but my shins and calves were cooing with delight.

Titania's strong hands dug deep into my flesh and muscles. Then she lifted up my feet, and smoothed more of the luxurious basalm into every fold of skin. Curiously, she then took one of my toes into her mouth, pulling at it with her teeth, and letting her tongue taste its length. No-one had ever done that before! No-one would have survived if they'd tried, of course.

So it went on, with Titania telling me to lie in a certain position or to keep still as she worked the basalm into my flesh. She combed my short hair through roughly, then brushed it into unaccustomed neatness. She rubbed the basalm into my shoulders and arms, and I became quite drowsy. Next, she went to work on my back while I sat, and I drifted calmly towards slumber. Then she went to work on the front of my torso, and I was very much awake.

Titania was breathing very deeply, and I thought she uttered several small moans. She was sitting astride my waist, her legs tucked alongside mine. I could feel the warmth of her skin, and the way one particular part of her seemed both hot and wet, a feeling which made an adjacent part of my anatomy go the same way.

More than that, in this posture I could see right into her eyes. She had very pale eyes, with dark lashes framing the pure white, and they had a slow, dreamy quality which hadn't been there before). Her blonde hair was spread out behind her like a head-dress (she had dispensed with the helmet at the beginning of my ablutions), shimmering slightly as she moved her hands.

Her hands... Despite the fact that she had already spent an age on my flesh, her hands hadn't tired a bit. With her palms stretched, she circled my tiny waist. She dug the heels of her hands into my stomach, kneading the flesh like the dough we had at home every other month. Her fingers traced my ribs, stretching my skin across them like a drum. I hadn't much idea of what being clean meant, but I knew a bath was more luxurious than anything I had ever experienced. Swimming in the river had never been like this!

Finally, her hands went to my boobs. I started to lift my arms up, but she pushed them aside impatiently. She possessed a disciplined strength which I would never have, no matter how many kegs I had lifted. I was powerless to resist.

"Keep still!" she whispered, hoarsely. I knew I was being silly, of course, because her own boobs were just as bare as mine, and she didn't seem remotely discomfited by the fact as she pressed me back. They were different to mine of course, much the same colour, but more conical, and crowned by tiny, bright, cherry-red tips. I wanted to touch them; I wanted her to touch mine, to caress and mould them, to do whatever she wanted. And she did.

Titania shaped my rounded globes in her strong hands, crushing and caressing the flesh, squeezing and stretching the tender skin. She was shifting her weight from side to side, wiggling her bottom against my hips. The feeling of dampness was growing more and more acute. And now she was pinching at my wide pink nipples, and stroking the bulging pennies of my aureolae. They were flushing a deeper rose colour and... as if it were possible... they were swelling, becoming a fraction larger!

It was getting quite difficult to breath, and I wriggled under Titania's weight. This only served to encourage her. She leaned forward, her belly laying on mine, her head just a few inches above my own. She was shivering (I had no idea why, I certainly wasn't cold!), and uttering small guttural noises as she jerked her hips, lowering herself ever more closely against me. Our breasts were already in close contact, of course, flattening against each other, smooth skin against smooth skin. Then, pinching my nipples even more fiercely, she whispered into my ear. "I want you!" And with that Titania bent down to kiss me.

I lay there like a rabbit caught in the lights of an advancing cart (provided it had been stunned first... nothing moves that quickly in Mammari). Don't get me wrong, I'd been kissed before. I might still have been missing on the casualty lists of love's battlefield's, but kissing was something I thought I understood. It was what you got when cousins came to visit, a fleeting wave of the head towards one's fond relative, abandoned when the smell became overpowering. In the circles I moved in, a kiss is something that involves no actual physical contact, the same as a head butt. There are enough illnesses circulating around already, without actually encouraging them.

To my horror and surprise, a greeting wasn't what Titania intended at all. She was getting much too close! Her lips fastened on mine, and her tongue... her tongue, by all the Gods!... penetrated my mouth. She smelled of blossom and flowers and other stuff I'd never paid much attention to much before, and the touch of her lips on mine, and the brief touch of her tongue on my teeth was like the first touch of a fiery spirit. Something close to desire, or perhaps just old fashioned hunger, blazed up inside me. In my heart I knew that something, something magical, was about to happen.

I was right. Titania fell to the floor, choking and gagging, which is what I would have expected to happen to anyone foolish enough to press their lips close to a mouth more used to the subtle notes and highlights of week-old goat's milk than a woman's kiss. I had no concept of bad breath, because I'd never known there was a "good" kind. I had all my own teeth, which was a rarity in our neighbourhood, but then I'd drunk more goat's milk than any goat. They were as sturdy as granite, but, in retrospect, I can see where they may have acquired an anti-social coating over the last sixteen years.

The mood had been irrevocably broken. I was aware of a floating feeling in the back of my head, of a cool tingle all over my body, and a deep chasm between my legs. I was also aware that Titania was on her stomach, retching into the drain. She had actually been desperate enough to use my bath water to rinse her mouth out.

She called feebly for help, and it is just as well that I had the sense to slip back the bolt on the door. Titania was shaking violently, her taut buttocks shivering with each explosive heave of her body. Three or four Rough Riders carried her out, watching me with wary eyes. A few moments later, a red-headed Rider arrived, bringing me some a fresh white robe, which I pulled over my head. She took a brief look at my clothes, before calling for some heavy gloves and a burning torch. So much for that dress. Still, it had brought me this far.

The same woman showed me how to clean my teeth, and stood over me for the next hour until she pronounced her satisfaction with my work. Even I was prepared to run my tongue around my gums. The Rough Rider threw the brush onto the burning pile with the others, while I exhilarated in the first-time feeling of complete cleanliness. If it felt like this, I was quite prepared to have another bath in sixteen more years!

The first stage of my transformation was complete. My body glowed outwardly. Inside, something else was stirring, something I didn't yet understand.

The red-headed woman pointed out the way to Tumescence's apartments. The Rough Riders were too busy to lead me to him, because three hundred and fifty beggars were beating at the door, clamouring to be admitted now that they too had had a bath. I wondered if it had been as mysteriously intriguing as mine.

***

So, in all the excitement, I was left alone to find my way to Tumescence's wizardly laboratory. My new white gown, no more than a light shift really, sat loosely on my shoulders, and fell midway down my thighs. Compared to the dress my mum altered, it was virtually floor-length. My feet were bare, but I was used to that. I stepped lightly across the courtyard as... slowly and nervously... I approached the gleaming pink tower of King Harrdon's magnificent palace.

With the exception of the outbuildings which lined the palace walls, this was the only structure within the grounds. Yet it still managed to contain within its shaft over 5,000 people.

Most were, of course, servants like myself, marked by the same simple clothing that I wore, and who lived in two bulging halls at the bottom of the towering shaft. There were guards, of course, like the Rough Riders and Mustgethers, in their well-ventilated uniforms. What struck me most, though, was the attire of some other individuals, who I espied moving slowly towards the large, vaulted entrance into the tower. Out in the town, people tended to dress alike, in shapeless and rugged clothing, made thick with the muck of the streets. Within the palace of the magnificent Harrdon, things were different.

Apart... quite apart... from the servants and soldiers, there were other men and women, strolling in the early morning air. Each was more gorgeously attired than I had ever thought possible. Gold and silver, jewels in abundance, silks and satins and cloth of gold; every luxury I had ever heard of, and many I hadn't. But it wasn't just the beauty of their clothing and ornamentation that stirred me, it was the fact that they wore so little of it. The couple ahead of me, talking idly as they strolled through the entrance, fixed my attention. The one on the right was a woman. In some ways we were quite alike, but I was much more struck by the ways in which we were so completely different. She was smaller than me, with long, lustrous, blue-black hair. It was cut close to her her scalp at the front and sides, but fell in a thick, twisting rope from the back of her head to below her knees. She had woven jewellry and coloured feathers into the skein, and there were bands of silver snaking about her supple limbs which contrasted richly with the pale, almost ghostly colour of her skin.

I had a very clear opportunity to make that contrast, since so much of her skin was in view. She wore a very brief, two-part costume. A tiny band of material stretched around her hips, attached to a narrow thong which passed between her legs. Two slightly larger shapes, attached to cords, were stretched across her ample boobs. Her anatomy, front and back, wobbled and swayed hypnotically, unfettered by her minimal attire. She walked languidly, crossing one foot across the other, her shoulders held back, and her neck upright. I tried to copy her, thrusting my chest forward and my arse back. There was a clatter off to the right somewhere, and a great deal of bad language. Throbb the blacksmith, it appeared, had just crushed his hand with a fourteen-pound hammer.

My attention turned to the lady's companion. Where she was quite short, easily half a head smaller than me, he was extremely tall, and towered above her. His head was large and square-shaped, with a cascade of russet-brown hair. It reminded me of the mud at the river's edge, all deep earth and rich texture. More widely-travelled people could have managed more poetic comparisons, I'm sure, but everything about him made me think of rugged earth and hard rock. His broad back rippled with undisguised strength. It was pale, like the woman's but its curvature and tensile power were very different. His arms were thick, with more cords of defined muscle, and flesh glowing with vitality. He moved with long, deliberate strides, one hand protectively placed at the woman's lower back, the other holding her hand across his belly. My eyes followed the line of that arm, then drifted lower.