Pairs of Pumpkins

Pairs of Pumpkins 13: Pridemoon's Pride and the Problematic Prickvixens

Part 3 of 3

Chapter 8

Bare feet crunched on the rocky dirt as Portia paced in double time, zig-zagging with nervous energy while predator's eyes darted from one writhing, groaning mass of vixen to the other, who did so in silence.

Titania rolled onto her side in the middle of the road, clutching her back as their bitter eyes glaring at her mother. Her sister crawled one-handed to sit up, covering half her face. Blood escaped from under her hand, filling the gaps of teeth exposed by a trembling snarl.

Portia kicked Titania's broken spear up into her grip and gave it a twirl as a new staff, then stooped to fetch the bladed tip out of the ground. Standing up slowly, she locked eyes with her silent daughter, making sure she saw her brandish it. She wound back her arm and held the pose for emphasis before she threw the spear tip into the woods.

Turning to Tatiana, she slowed to a stop, staring for a long moment then slumped her shoulders. With a moment's hesitation and a shake of her head, she approached.

"I hope there's still an eyeball behind that hand."

"What the fuck do you care?" she spat back, glaring with her visible eye.

"I don't fight to maim but you didn't give me much time to react. You girls are faster than you look."

She knelt down in front of her and took her wrist, gently pulling her hand away, exposing an eyeball intact but the sclera dark red with burst blood vessels. Her cheekbone took the brunt of the blow, and the surrounding area would soon be a mighty bruise. "I should have brought some poultices. We'll have to dress these in town."

Tatiana huffed, misting her mother's chest with bloody spittle.

Portia stood and stepped back, glancing at Titania again. She hadn't moved. "You girls are quick and you're well-trained, but you need to learn how to fight in the bodies you were given. That's your problem. But if it helps your pride, no one your age has landed so many blows on me in years."

"No restraints?" Tatiana said, covering her eye again. "Is that really your secret? Reduce weight, anticipate the wobble, then use all the extra momentum to your advantage? That seems counterintuitive."

Portia shook her head. "No, that's an unfortunate circumstance. You can only predict the wobble so much! I prefer light armor too. Yours are too stiff, but protection and support are critical. You wouldn't have cut through my leathers with that grazing blow."

"I use the bulk to my advantage, but that works better when it's not jiggling all over. I can fight without armor because I practice without it. You need to train for ideal circumstances but also for the less ideal ones. Like having giant breasts or fighting naked. Or not being able to read your opponent's next move."

The barbed comment furrowed Tatiana's brow.

Portia tossed the broken spear shaft aside then knelt, several steps from either of them. A glance back at Titania assured her she was not forgotten. She then set about uncoiling the lengths of rope she'd been wearing as an improvised belt.

"I don't have secrets, Tatiana: I have practice. I pay attention to my opponent. Who are they? Who do they think I am? How do they think this is going to go? It's almost always overconfident men who underestimate me for my appearance. Those aren't dirty tricks. It's experience and observation."

The business of fumbling with her belt was more challenging doing so by feel, any view of her waist only possible in a mirror.

"Some of them are going to hold back and others are going to decide they want to hurt me. Or conquer me in another way. They're going to thrust and slash and grab and I'm going to feign and redirect then hit them while they're still overconfident. Once they put their weight into it, I'm going to use their strength to take them off their feet then my skills to keep them there."

Freeing the first pre-cut length, she set it down in front of her.

"For that to work, I learned to fight with the body I have. Why punch if you can barely reach past your breasts? Why turn sideways if you're just as broad that way, unless it's to connect with a kick? What I have are strong legs and a back like a stone wall. And I have mass, which translates to inertia and momentum. I can parry with my arms or legs but I can't spring into action like someone who doesn't have forty pound tits so I attack like a flywheel. Try to keep moving. Spin, swing, redirect. I can't take too long to end the fight or else they'll figure out my best attacks are counterattacks."

The twins looked to each other, their heaving pants now faded into deep, defeated huffs.

Five pre-cut lengths of rope laid out before Portia now as she'd prepared for the previous night: two for wrists, two for ankles, and one for gagging Tatiana, should she need to. She gathered them up and stood, looking between them.

"I am sorry for the violence but your briganding days are over. No more robbery. No more terrorizing the highways. You're going to issue a public apology in Brummel, then you're going to the dungeon and I'm going to get my fucking statue back."

"Is highway robbery really terrorizing? That's a bit dramatic talk for someone so supposedly worldly," her daughter said pointedly and finally let go of her face, revealing her crooked brow under sharp ears that flattened. "There are murderers and rapists from the Uplands to the Inferno. Slavers from the Helgraav Dominion venture down from the mountains to steal children for labor and breeding. We robbed people of wealth to spare and we hurt no one we didn't have to. We're trying to survive like everyone else, except everyone can see we're fucking freaks!" By the time she finished, she was drooling blood. She tried to slurp it back but it was too heavy. With a grunt of frustration, she wiped it away with her sleeve instead.

Portia sat down, knee first on her daughter's back before taking her wrists and binding them behind her head, glancing back to Titania with a warning. "Terrorizing was their word, not mine. I agree, it's dramatic but you don't get to decide how hurt people feel after you violate them."

"So we just rot in a dungeon for the rest of our lives because the people of Brummel are really sensitive? We never had a chance at anything else but we're unredeemable?" Tatiana rolled her head aside, looking back with her undamaged eye.

Portia finished the knot and pulled it tight. She turned around to sit on Tatiana's thighs, pinning them. "I don't believe that but do you have a better idea? The rest of the list is non-negotiable."

"You don't see the potential here? Surely you can find a more creative use for a couple of misguided teens? We landed some good hits on the famous Portia Pridemoon."

"A couple of misguided highway robbers? Cry me a river."

Portia tugged a calf up against her breast and held it, while her daughter tried to weakly evade her other leg. A quick hand snatched it and pinned both ankles between her knees.

"Your assessment of the way we learned to fight is topper. Like you read our minds," Tatiana sighed. "We trained as boys. We were boys! They sent us off to Takasunai when our first, fake family didn't want us anymore. We were good. Best in our class! Then as teens, we developed like girls. Then more than any girl. Then like fucking blowfish into what you see now. Nobody warned us that was going to happen!

"First, they thought it was a medical condition. Then a curse. We were orphans after all! They didn't know where we were from. They didn't even know we're inbred! We just kept developing and developing, til we were the freaks we are now. You can guess how these hips and tits were welcomed at an all-boys school."

Portia secured her ankles with the second rope, pulling the knot tight. She stood and moved to Titania, pointing at her as a stern warning. The silent vixen averted her eyes, then closed them.

Her sister continued.

"The masters had their shaman inspect us for witchcraft and curses. Thoroughly and invasively. There was no explanation. No trace of magic. They said our blood was strong but nothing in it explained this. The shamans used some spells and potions to stop or reverse it, then kept us isolated for a few months, measuring us weekly to see if the treatments were working. We couldn't train there, only practice. Obviously, none of that worked."

"Then they tried to send us to a school for women assassins but surprise: no dicks allowed. So nobody wants us for a second time."

Portia started with Titania's ankles, glancing back. "Go on."

"They separated us from the other boys and brought in a new teacher just for us: an older, female assassin. They decide we're females now and we're going to learn etiquette, seduction and all the stuff women are supposed to be good at."

"Takasunai women," Portia added. "Not the best place in the world to be one."

Tatiana nodded and continued. "She dressed us in gowns over tight bindings that crushed our male parts enough to hide them and made us grow our hair long and ladylike. It was so demeaning. To be raised a boy, then for your body to betray you? Suddenly you're supposed to act like a lady because the world says so? The clothes were suffocating! We were in pain all the time. 'That's what it is to be a woman' our teacher said. Sod that!

"When we trained as boys we got to work all of our energy out in the dojo. It was great! Training as girls, we were meant to be silent and still, studying poisons and other boring crap, as if we couldn't fight anymore, even though we were taller than a lot of them and could beat the sense out of most of them."

Titania wasn't fighting being tied up like her sister had but she double-knotted the bindings just to be sure.

"Instead, we learned how to flirt, hold tea ceremonies, poison people's food and a bunch of other daft trash. She'd whack both of us with a cane if I ever said the masculine version of either of our names or called Titian 'brother' or 'he'. All the while, every male in the dojo seemed to forget that between our legs, we were more men than any but the stallions and bulls."

Portia stood up and stepped around to squat by Titania's head, binding her wrists.

"They isolated us as best they could but they didn't move us from the campus. They couldn't even fully segregate us, as much as they tried, so people still saw us now and then. The other boys knew how our bodies were changing and word spread fast. Sometimes they'd yell at us or throw us notes about how they were going to show us our place. Nearly everyone stared at us like they wanted to devour us, even the male teachers. Even our old friends."

"And our female teacher? Well, we were still horny teens under our dresses. She used us like her own toys and said it was part of training us. That wasn't so bad. But the boys and the men? They got more brazen and our quarantine felt a lot less secure. Someone slipped us a note one day. We'd gotten all kinds of horrible notes but this last one wasn't a leer or a threat. It was a very clear warning. Someone had enough of a conscience to tip us off to what the rest of them were scheming to do to us. The boys. The men. Nearly every one of them. We ran away that night."

With both twins now bound at the wrists and ankles, she turned back to Tatiana from her seat. "I believe you and that sounds truly awful. But now you pass on your trauma to other people by making them victims."

"What kinds of honest work is there for teenagers built like this?"

"You don't have to show off those boy bits, you know. Even at your size. They make skirts, kilts, and cloaks."

"And our lady bits? Was it easy growing up a giant-titted freak? I'd imagine not."

Portia didn't enjoy thinking about her childhood. There was no pride or self-acceptance of her body taught in her religious oppression but she'd been prepared from the time she was a young girl what was going to happen to her and that she'd be burdened by it, just like her mother. It wouldn't stop her from being a princess or someday, the queen.

As a teenager in Snowcourt, she learned she must go to any lengths to hide herself from the public, and she hadn't realized how absurd that made the fashion there until she'd met royals in other lands.

They taught her it was shameful to tempt males but never to feel less capable than others for her body. No one had tried that before she ran away and was among the commoners. All of them had been too late to break her confidence.

Her figure, all of their figures were a secret sign of the royal family. That the natural rulers of the people must be the most resistant to temptation, therefore they must attract the most.

"Having big breasts wasn't a problem where I come from. I suppose I benefited from seeing my mother not let it stop her from wielding power."

Her mother had also never figured out how much fun it was to embrace that temptation and attraction.

Portia stood and walked back to Tatiana, the twins' attention followed her. A bound Titania wormed her way to sit up in the road.

"Lucky for you. We never knew our Ma. We just know she was knocked up by her own brother. Everyone who knows assumes that's why we have these freakish bodies. Sick, inbred freaks."

She squatted next to Tatiana's head and brushed back her short hair, revealing her fresh wound. "I don't think you're freaks. You're uncommon but you're both lovely. Or handsome, if you prefer. Your chests are surely from your mother. I bet she didn't look so different from me. And the rest? Well, it seems to work fine for you til now.

Tatiana flinched, then breathed out shakily, her gaze flickering around. She swallowed and sucked air through her teeth again.

"You could have a better life than hiding in the woods, robbing people and running from the law."

Tatiana's now mismatched eyes locked to Portia's.

"Are you offering a better life? Because we did the best we could without anyone's help."

Portia glanced back at Titania who had laid back in the dirt again, staring skyward. Her ears twitched with alertness, still listening. The fight in them was gone, their conveniently tragic story was hard to find fault in, and their accounts were close enough to Anastasia's version. The pattern continued of all the terrible ways that the world could kick around her children, thanks to Zarron.

She took a deep breath and stared down the empty highway.

"As a child, there were many, many things I was told I couldn't and shouldn't do but none were because of my chest. I didn't realize how uncommon my appearance was until I left home as an adult. They didn't prepare me for that, but it didn't matter.

"I was never teased or objectified until I already believed in myself, so it just became a thing people could either desire or underestimate me for. If I'd wanted a normal life as a baker or a tailor, I could have had that.

"Meeting girls like you makes me remember how fortunate I am. By the time anyone but my mother could question what I desired, I was old enough and strong enough not to care what they thought."

Tatiana huffed. "Where are you from? Can we go there?"

Portia cracked a smiled but it faded when she looked down at her daughter, her battered nose leaking crimson, blood for lipstick and half her face a bruise. "The Pale Lands."

"Nevermind," her daughter shook her head, sneering around her bloody teeth. At least she'd kept them all.

"So you've heard of it." Portia tore off a shred of the remnants of her skirt and licked it, then carefully dabbed at some of the blood in Tatiana's face fur. She winced but allowed it.

"You're quite pretty, you know. You look like me when I was your age. You should grow your hair out."

"What are you? My mother?" the teen vixen sneered.

Portia chuckled and leaned in close from the side, a breast bulging against the unmovable mass of her daughter's leather breastplate. Muzzle to muzzle, a coy smile broadened as she stared into her widening eyes.

"Would your mother do this?"

Chapter 9

"If you bite me, I'll run you through."

Tatiana nodded, her saccadic gaze seeking focus between her mother's eyes and mouth before she closed them. Her head lifted with deliberate slowness to meet the kiss, her jaw hanging open with anticipation.

Portia cupped her cheek in her hand and moved in. Lip to bloody lip, she was gentle, minding their mutual injuries. In the lingering moment, Tatiana's knees pulled in tighter while her lips puckered and pushed. For the passionate violence of their battle, the touch was chaste, and when they parted, she hovered close.

The younger vixen's eyes opened with the pace of a sunrise to reveal a longing gaze, a tension she broke with a churlish chuckle. "That may've been the most innocent kiss I've ever had. So yes, that could be a mother's kiss, sure. How would I know?"

Fingers ran through Tatiana's dirty hair, caressing her scalp. Leaning in, she traced the curve of her daughter's sharp ear with her nose. "If I take you two as my apprentices, you're getting off far too easy for all you've done. What you did to my reputation. And those poor travelers! Husbands and wives. The feeling of being robbed is much more violating than you think. And some of those marriages didn't survive meeting you."

Portia's bold, green eyes darted with wicked thoughts as she drank in the sight of her lovely daughter, then over to Titania, who remained in place but watched with full alertness and interest. Life had dealt the girls a rough hand, and they'd kept some morality through it. She might redeem them, but they still deserved punishment. They needed to know the humbling shame of violation.

Tatiana was silent, only watching her deliberation.

With a creeping grin and a made-up mind, Portia leaned closer, glacially slow. "Tell me if this feels like a mother's kiss."

Eyes closed and mouths met again in another tender caress, breath from flared nostrils blowing through the fur of each other's faces. After another long moment, Portia's tongue boldly pressing into her daughter's mouth, finding the taste of iron against her teeth, their common blood mingling.

Tatiana's tongue found hers, carefully at first, then exploring and finally dancing together. She turned herself squarely aside, creeping forward with her open mouth, vulpine muzzles scissored to explore deeper.

With a gasp for air, she pulled away, lifting her head to peer down on her eager-eyed daughter. Not since her hallucinated tryst with an intersex Anastasia had a lover been so close to looking in a mirror. Tatiana and Titania were taller and leaner but otherwise, what she might have looked like as a teen with a cock. A glance down her body found the young vixen once again erect, that forearm-sized spire of slick, red meat engorged enough to stand skyward.

She leaned in again, stiff nipples crushed her daughter's shirt. Cupping a hand on her forehead, Portia's eyes stuck on her erection until the last moment. "I'm open to the idea of adopting you two. I just need a little more convincing that it's going to be worth it for me."

"Adopting is a funny word, considering the situation," Tatiana chuckled and Portia met her eyes again with a crooked smile.

"Are you going to convince me or not?"

Tatiana nodded eagerly before her mother climbed over her on all fours, tail lifted high. She came to rest with her breasts ballooning against her daughter's stomach, under her breastplate, their abundant bosoms meeting like joinery.

Thick thighs straddled her daughter's head, hovering her swollen, eager sex over her face while she casually brushed the dirt and gravel off her erection. Cleaned enough in seconds, her mouth dipped hungrily, consuming several inches of familial foxcock with complete nonchalance.

The young vixen gasped then cooed, her legs spasming eagerly. "Not your first big cock, I see. I'd never guess with this view."