Leora Pt. 01

Once upon a time there was a quiet young woman who liked to ride horses, named Leora. Leora lived in a mountain-perched village in which all the men had gone to war, so the whole town was filled with bustling, busy, bossy women. Leora often felt like hiding away from all those women and their confident directives, so she went to the forest beyond the village well, past the shared village pasture, and down through the border of the high pass into the valley.

This valley rarely saw straight sunlight. The mountains were so steep, and the trees so dense, that if a scrap of sunlight managed to wend its way through the trees and find the earth, it had turned a queer green color, and sparkled slowly like thick honey poured from a great height.

Leora would ride among the green syrupy light on her horse. She could not gallop here; the undergrowth was too thick. And she had to duck constantly under branches or they would snatch up her long dark hair and wind it around twigs until she was caught fast. But the muffled subtle sounds of the forest calmed her. Here no one told her how to milk her cow or coddle her eggs. No one offered advice on making friends or selling her handcrafts in the market or how to await the return of the men from the distant war. Her horse snuffled periodically, a quiet susurration of a rabbit's passing might rise from the sedges, and a trinkle of distant water was often the only sound.

Leora had ridden her roan mare, Sydva, in the forest every Sunday for months now. She crept deeper and deeper into the heart of the wood each time, even though no one was supposed to enter. The forest belonged to a long-gone chevalier. He was one of the men who had gone to fight the kingdom's many enemies, and no one knew when or if he would return. Even so, the laws were clear. To trespass on a chevalier's land was a high crime, punishable by long imprisonment or indentured servitude.

So Leora told no one of her journeys. When she found secret deer paths into the wood, she followed them quietly and carefully. She brought her Sunday meals into the forest with her, but made sure to leave no traces of her intrusion behind. And Sydva, though a large mare, was a dainty stepper—she never left hoofprints in the loam at the edges of the paths. Leora felt as if the forest was her sanctuary. At least until the men returned from war.

But let us consider Leora for a moment: She was tall, as tall as most of the men had been. Much taller than any other woman in the village, though not as tall as some of the Rama women that traveled from village to village telling futures and selling pins. She was dark, much darker than the blond, pale lovelies that lived in her village.

In this Leora resembled the Rama somewhat. And she was so large, her sisters would titter. In fact, this was the authoritative advice Leora heard most: "To become smaller, you must..." Rina said she should eat or drink nothing except cucumber water, and Laeva said she should wear tighter corsets, especially over those hips! Begostia said Leora must stop riding and sit very still, to lose some of the masculine musculature of her strong back and legs, and she should also eat only sorrel-parsnip gruel.

But Leora ignored them all. And so she remained much larger than the willowy wisps of women surrounding her, with her large round bosom, and large round hips and large round bottom. She had strong long legs, and hands capable of controlling any horse in the village. Her hair shot straight down her back to flare out when it reached her hips, and her grey eyes surveyed the busy work of the village like a pond so still that no ripples marred its surface. She wore the corsets required of her, though, even on horseback. She was awfully large, after all.

One Sunday in June, Leora rode quietly in the predawn darkness, down past the village well, the gate, the pasture. She entered the forest just as the sun rose, and headed straight for her favorite clearing for eating breakfast. At the edge of the forest birds were singing the dawn chorus, but as she entered the first row of beech trees, they immediately sounded muffled, as if they sung on the other side of a thick veil.

She sat on a log that curved to fit exactly to her posterior, let Sydva's reins dangle, and ate her oatcake breakfast. The pearly grey light of dawn slowly brightened into the green spangled light of the forest. Leora rested for a while, watching motes of dust and tiny insects flitting in a shaft of light.

She drank bergamot tea. After an hour or so, she stood and stretched, then mounted her mare. She steered the roan westward, toward the sound of water. This day, she thought, she would finally locate that stream.

Leora thought about living in the forest. Perhaps a tree house would work, she mused. Something snug in those larches over there, or high up a rope ladder in that hickory tree. She considered how she would sneak boards and nails into the forest, a few at a time, when she saw a new path peeking out beneath some dense berry bushes. She had never taken that path before, she thought, 'Perhaps the stream lays over that way.'

The bushes were so dense that she was forced to dismount, and took up Sydva's reins to guide her forward. As she past the first thick branches, and rounded a sharp bend in the path around some hemlock trees, she thought she saw a glint of light in the distance, through the branches.

'The stream!' she supposed. A small hillock led her downward, and the deer path narrowed even further. Soon the path became so narrow, and was bordered on the left by a rocky outcrop, that Sydva seemed uneasy and balked at going further. "Come on, horse!" cajoled Leora, "Think how nice it will be to taste the fresh water in the stream."

Every time she looked up, she thought she saw the glint of water, though confusingly in a slightly different location each time. She continued further and further, westward, downward, into the lowest ebb of the mountain's valley, for another half an hour. Soon she saw that the outcropping of stone on her left was joined by one on her right, until they met in front of her, with only a couple of feet between them, and a precariously perched boulder capping the stone passageway until it looked like a gothic archway.

Leora peered through the natural doorway and saw a dark black ribbon of water cutting through a small gorge ahead. "Here's the stream at last!" she told her horse. Her curved hips felt as if they would barely squeeze through the stone opening, and Sydva had to be coaxed through slowly, because she didn't like the sensation of the rock walls on either side of her.

But once they were through the passageway, the outcroppings fell away, and the stream rushed before them, eddying over smooth stones in a tinkling song. Sydva lowered her head to drink, and Leora joined her, cupping her hands.

The water was icy and tasted like tree sap and clean air. Leora sat on the bank of the gorge for several minutes, enjoying the cool moist breeze that passed along the waterway. She had worked up a bit of a sweat climbing down the narrow path, and this breeze felt wonderful.

She unbuttoned her dress a bit, to capture the cooling sensation between her breasts. She unbuttoned a bit more, and flapped the sides of her bodice to assist the breeze in blowing down into her corset. Then she lifted her skirts high above her knees, laid back on the warm stone, and rested. She would never dare to do such a thing in the village—all her neightbors would tease her for her breasts rising half-exposed into the air, and the round thighs open to the wind. But no one was around except for her horse, and Leora wanted to take a brief nap. Swiftly, she fell asleep.

When she awoke, there was a bit of a problem. The stream was gone. Her horse was gone. Her dress was gone. And she was bound in ropes and being carried in someone's arms through the dark maw of a castle gate, across a drawbridge, and up the steps of someone's hall.

***

Leora's mind was spinning. What had happened to her?! She was now trussed like a goose against a wooden bench, her arms tucked behind her, her legs bound thigh to ankle with twining red ropes. She still wore her corset and drawers, and her woolen stockings and garters. But her dress and shoes were gone. Her hair was unbound.

She had watched the golden-haired man bind her through some sort of trance-state. He had carefully set her down on this bench, and started wrapping and tying her limbs until she was affixed like an insect in a web. She did not protest. She did not even wonder why this was occurring until after he left.

His dark eyes had surveyed her calmly, authoritatively, and silently. He hadn't said a word as he tied her and unbraided her hair. Only when he stood and looked at her did any expression cross his face, and then it was the most unsettling small smile she'd ever witnessed. He smiled like a cat, she thought. A hungry cat. And then, like a cat, he'd strolled out of the room, closing the door quietly behind him.

Now she was immobile, half naked, and ensconced in an open room filled with sunlight. Through the open window slightly to her right she could see the tops of trees spreading out unbroken before her. No other buildings or habitations were visible, only trees, and then soft mauve mountains ranged beyond them.

She turned her head. Another open window was just visible behind her—she could only turn a very little. Through it she saw a similar scene of trees, though a mountain reared up beyond them, and she thought she could see a road winding up its face.

Perhaps this was the road up her mountain? Towards her home? But it was far in the distance, and she could not see any people, houses, or other evidence of life. Another window revealed a forest scene. She was in a turret, or some sort of round room, with windows arrayed on all sides, located just higher than the tops of the trees in the middle of an enormous forest.

She felt strangely lethargic. She had no desire to call out for help. She only tugged a bit against her bonds, and settled against the bench when she realized that she would not be able to escape. She wasn't even scared, much. She remembered the man's smile, so satisfied and appreciative. She waited.

The bench was comfortable, for all it was built oddly. The seat was narrow, but curved to accommodate her. A padded bar embraced her, so she could lean back against it and felt secure. There were rings attached all over the bench, iron and sturdy looking. When she pulled her wrists, Leora heard a soft clank of something as if her wrists were tied to one of the rings. Her legs, she noticed when she looked closer, were each twined separately with the red rope, but they were then joined together with leather ties connecting each criss-cross of the rope. She looked down her legs and counted five leather ties, two joining her thighs, one at her knees, one mid-calf, and one at her ankles. They were black leather, and soft-looking, like lambskin. Her ankles were looped together and fixed to an iron ring at the base of the bench.

She looked up. The bench had some sort of supports built up into the ceiling, rising from either side of her. More rings dangled from these supports and even from the ceiling itself.

Next to the bench was a long table draped with a red cloth, and she could see some of the things on the table—more red ropes and leather ties, and several mysterious objects she could not understand. Over her shoulder she saw more unusual furniture, all of it dark wood and upholstered with the soft black lambskin. There was a low padded stool, very narrow, with more of the iron rings. Over there was a tall, long table, also padded with lambskin, and adorned with rings. And past these was an enormous bed, canopied in silver and red silk, with the lushest black fur coverlet atop it that she had ever seen. It must have been hundreds of mink skins, all stitched together.

Leora felt a distant pang of sympathy for the minks who had given their lives for that coverlet. However, she wondered what it would feel like to lay on it. Even—she blushed—nude. How would that fur feel against her skin? She noted that the iron ring decorations continued on the bed posts and on the carved wood and leather-upholstered headboard as well.

Leora could feel her faculties returning to her. She had been groggy when she first awoke in the man's arms, and completely disoriented. She was in a strange dreamlike state as he bound her. But now she started to emerge from this daze, and began to feel the first pangs of panic. What WAS happening to her? Who was that man? Why had he tied her and taken away her clothes?

While Leora was untouched—she had only come of age after the male villagers had all left (except for the very small boys and very old men)—she was not entirely innocent of what happened between them. And now she began to feel afraid.

Perhaps the golden man's small smile was more catlike even than she had thought. And perhaps she was his mouse.

***

Bertran sat in the dining room, eating his meal. He was delighted with what his men-at-arms had found next to the small eastern branch of the River Lythe. After years of war, hunger, atrocities, and a longing for home, he had returned to find that all of the women, children, and old men of Caer Lewen had decamped. They were, he heard, living in villages around the mountains. The only people left at the Caer were those who were sent back after their injuries made them unfit for battle. Luckily, they had taken care of the place.

He sighed. HE was unfit for battle. All that fighting, squalor, fear...what was it for? The boundaries between the kingdom of Homen and Flourn remained precisely the same as they had been ten years ago, when the war began.

Thousands of men had lost their lives, and were only now returning home. He doubted that any of the men had returned to the villages yet—they were being paid and rewarded after their efforts before being sent home. Probably none of them felt as weary as he, in his sorrow and exhaustion from all the needless hardship and loss.

Presumably all his men at arms were now traveling eastward to locate their sisters, wives, and lovers and bring them home. He had dismissed them after they found that woman in the woods. In the nick of time, he felt, because even though they were good men, honorable and steadfast, he had seen the way their eyes had glittered as they spied the woman's magnificent body displayed as she dozed by the stream. They laughed when they found her, saying "This one must be a stranger to the Lethe, and didn't know that to drink it is to fall into a drugged slumber!"

And his Bailiff, Cotrund, had said, "Since she is obviously unaware of the river's properties, she must be a stranger, a trespasser on Caer Lewan land. The punishment for this trespassing is imprisonment or servitude, Chevalier Bertran."

Bertran, though he was tired of capturing people, and binding them, and all manner of imprisonment and punishment, had looked at her black hair braided like a halo around her face, and her creamy breasts spilling over the top of a serviceable grey corset, and her pale round thighs disappearing into soft woolen hose, and thought, 'One more prisoner will do.' He smiled to himself, and then swung her up in his own arms and carried her to his own bedchamber in the western turret, and bound her to await his judgment.

He would, of course, let her go, he thought, as he ate his evening meal. The fright she must be feeling now is punishment enough for her trespass. He drank the wine the aged retainer brought him. Then he mounted the steps to the western turret.

***

He hadn't meant to keep her. He had enjoyed tying her up—that used to be his favorite hobby, after all, tying up women. But he was no ravisher of unwilling maidens, and he was planning to let her go. But when he entered the turret and saw her narrow back resting against the back of the bench, and the way her hips swelled to a deliciously extravagant ass, which was squirming against the wooden seat...it was so juicy looking, so lovely.

He decided to keep her a few moments longer.

***

Leora rested on the bench. She'd been there for some time now, and her shoulders were starting to ache. She moved restlessly against her bonds. Her ass was getting numb, and her hips wished that she could move her legs. She wasn't truly uncomfortable yet, but would be soon. And she was bored. Though she was perfectly happy sitting in silence thinking for long spells, she was concerned now about her fate. What would be her punishment for trespassing? And was the golden man the chevalier who owned the forest?

When she heard footsteps behind her, she turned her head as far as she could to try and look at her captor. She could just see him standing behind her. A long silence reverberated between them as she waited for him to speak. Finally he did.

"You were trespassing on my land, were you not?" His words were accusatory, but his deep silky tone was conversational, even teasing.

"I was," she whispered.

"And there is a punishment for such trespass, of course," he continued. And paused.

She squirmed slightly on the bench. Her face felt hot. As he ambled around into her field of vision, she drank in the sight of him. He was very tall, much taller than even she. He had wide shoulders that narrowed into a long lean torso and narrow hips. His breeches rode low on those hips, and a blue tunic just met the waistband. His legs appeared to go on for miles, calves tightly wrapped in soft brown leather boots. He slouched a bit as he strolled forward, his hips tilted slightly forward as if to direct her attention there. So she followed those directions, and saw a large bulge at the apex of his breeches. As she looked, it appeared to grow even larger.

He chuckled and shook his sheaf of wheat-gold hair off his forehead, then narrowed his eyes as he scanned her and her predicament. "Are you uncomfortable?"

"A little uncomfortable, chevalier," she replied.

"Would you like me to untie you?" he asked, smiling.

Leora took note of that smile. It was somewhat disturbing, and she felt a flush of suspicion. She did not answer.

He chuckled. "Clever woman. Perhaps you feel safer bound?" He came closer, until she could smell his fresh male scent, and if her hands had been free, she could have touched his long legs.

She dropped her head. Otherwise that odd bulge was right in front of her, at eye level almost. She didn't want to look at it. Or, she thought to herself, she didn't want to be seen looking at it.

Bertran stood right in front of her. She was biting her lip, eyes downcast, and he felt a surge of exhilaration. This was what his chamber was for, after all, to hold a beautiful woman captive...but not unwillingly so. He spoke up abruptly, "I will let you go once you've been punished, if you wish to leave."

Her head shot up. Why would she NOT wish to leave, she wondered. But there was that bulge. She tilted her head back and felt her hair brush against her thinly clad bottom. She met his eyes boldly. His eyes were dark brown, with slashing eyebrows above, and his mouth was full and twisted in amusement. She could not look away as he reached his hand forward, and brushed a long lock of her hair away from her breast, back over her shoulder.

She felt suddenly naked in front of him. Her breasts were only barely contained by the corset. She knew if she took a large breath or even wiggled her shoulders, her nipples would be visible, which would be horrifying. They were, she was sure, so odd. So large and protuberant when compared to the soft pale rosy circles she'd seen on other village women. And her drawers were old and threadbare. Tightly stretched over her hips and bottom. Both corset and drawers were linen, workaday garments. But there was so much of her exposed.