Oppia
Oppia
*)The next day(*
Banon was the first person up the next day. After "breaking Allison in", to say the least, the two had fallen asleep with his head on her softer belly and with her sprawled faceup in the mud. His forepaws gently felt up her body, which, although rather unattractive by purebred human standards, was curvy enough for the Politoed to appreciate. A few times the curves on her back dipped into the mud, and it wasn't until Banon followed the curves that he realized that some of these curves made for a fat little tush, which he gently kneaded and groped. He stopped it when Allison, in her sleep, started to hump Banon, and decided against re-knocking up the half-breed.
Banon quickly got up and returned to the hollow in the tree, digging about in the dirt to find a penknife taken from an unaligned Moogle whose first and last visage of him was the back of his throat. The penknife was rusty and covered in his own feces, largely because he had not realized the Moogle had it until he shat it out a week later and found it floating in the semi-watery mess. He took it and started to scratch something on the back of the hollow in a script he'd learned from a passing Xweetok in exchange for not eating him. The little squirrelly thing had called it "Silvin" or something like that; it was the only language he could write, as the Pokélanguage lacked a script.
It didn't take too long before Allison woke up. Although she was used to sleeping in her undergarments in a tub of water to keep her skin from drying out, the mud did the job quite nicely. The temperature - a balmy 64 degrees Fahrenheit - was warm enough for her to evade torpor. As a little girl, when the kids got a day off from school in Kai Umi because of snowclouds coming south from Frignere, she had, the first time she had one, gone out in the snow to play. The last thing she could remember was her mother grabbing her and yanking her in as her vital systems shut down to conserve energy. She regained consciousness an hour later inside, and regained her motor and vital functions from torpor a week later, all the while sleeping next to a fire as her mother brought her crickets and small goldfish - food she wasn't fond of - to keep her from going hungry. From then on, she could only sadly watch from inside her warmer house as the other children frolicked outside in the snow.
The day was cloudy, but not unseasonably warm given Ivalice's tropical desert climate. Allison stood up and listened to her stomach growl, reminding her that she hadn't eaten anything since the night before she was attacked by Nerull's clerics. She felt some dry heaves, but ignored them, figuring that they had come courtesy of Banon's testicles and the egg cells he had impregnated. Indeed, the area right between her legs felt a bit more... uncomfortable... than usual.
She rubbed her belly and looked towards Banon, who was etching something into the hollow's tree wall. "What's up?" she asked. "Speaking of which, do you know where I could find a meal around here?"
"That's why I'm doing this," came the reply from Banon as he finished scratching out the script. "Do you know how to read Silvin?"
Allison approached and nodded. "The Analects are written in Sylvan, so I was required to learn it as a matter of course." She read the wall:
I know that what I did yesterday is, to you, about the same as tying you up and feeding your legs to a Bangaa. However, given your last words last night, I'm starting to think that you're willing to stay with me in this swamp as a mate. However, there's some things you're going to have to learn about being a feral if you're going to stay in the wilderness.
First off: Every Politoed (or in your case, Princess) for him or herself. If food is scarce, don't hesitate to eat your kin.
Second, expect to be mated as soon as you come into season. We may just be entering spring, but your dryhumper anatomy is going to mean that you're going to be mated every month or so if you aren't carrying kids.
Third, there's no law. Judges are little more than fat men on delicious birdies - I have eaten Chocobo before, thanks - and you could pretty much kill and eat anything you could fit down your throat without getting arrested, such as the laws of the land grant to half-breeds who do not live in society.
Lastly: Forget about any god. If they did exist, then they're failing to make good on their promises.
Allison read it, then looked at Banon. He looked at her and asked, "So... Are you a feral, or do you want to return to civilization?"
Allison's answer was, "Could you lead me to where you found me?" Banon frowned and sadly led the way.
Ashu's corpse was still lying in the middle of the path, untouched from the day before. Some bugs had started to migrate to Dead Chokie City, so far unpopulated, as Banon and Allison approached.
"Here's where I found you," said Banon.
Allison didn't listen. She instead stared at the flies hovering in lazy circles over the bird's corpse. A bit hesitantly, she opened her mouth and shot out her tongue. Although it was much shorter than Banon's, it shot out a bit more forcefully. She entered the water, disregarding the decaying rags that were once vestments of the Church of Aslan, and got close enough to shoot her tongue out. Almost immediately, she got a fly, and the foul taste of decay entered her mouth. She ignored it and brought the fly back to her mouth, swallowing. She did the same with the rest of the flies - shooting out her tongue, getting a foul-tasting bug, and swallowing. As she did it, she learned to cope with the taste, until by the last one the taste, while still horrid, didn't bother her as much.
She then climbed out of the water and tried to pick up the corpse of the Chocobo. Banon sadly turned to leave.
"Oh, Banon..." called Allison.
Banon looked over his shoulder.
"Mind helping me bring Ashu back to our home? I think he'll feed us for the day."
Banon didn't know what to say. So this is why they returned here! She didn't want to leave; she wanted to butcher her steed's corpse.
"Gimme a sec, replied Banon, swimming across and coming over to Ashu, grabbing his left leg and hefting it onto his back as Allison held his right leg. He was dirty, yes, but feathers could be plucked, and he wasn't seriously decaying yet.
As they started to move, they heard another chocobo rider approach. Fearing the worst, Allison said, "Alright, move!"
They had barely gotten more than three yards when the rider came into view. It was a Xweetok rider, who was familiar with the area and conducted liaisons with Baguba. He was wearing the golden-white vestments of Aslan's faith in between bits of Peytral armor, but the Chocobo he was riding looked nothing like Ashu. White-feathered, with green eyes and a suit of armor of its own, the bird looked like it belonged to a judge, and rightly so. Its rider was Alk, a Xweetok Judge and a priest of Aslan certified by the late Judgemaster Cid before he passed on his duties to Radiuju. His fur was starting to frost itself white from age - he was almost twenty-five - and the judgesword in his hand was custom-made to take into account his weaker body. So when he saw what looked like a Politoed and a Frog Princess take the corpse of a Chocobo belonging to a friend of his - Allison Ûndreyr - away, he stopped his steed and said, "Hey! Drop him!"
The only thing he heard was a familiar female voice saying, "Poli, politoed!" - "Run, run faster!" Alk gave chase.
It didn't take long, however, before he lost them. They slipped into a pool and submerged, taking the corpse with them, and Alk couldn't find them from the surface. One thought, however stuck out in his mind, and he vocalized it. "Allison... Was that you? And if it is, what happened to your belt?"
After a few minutes, Alk turned his steed and left for parts unknown. A minute later, Ashu's corpse bobbed up, along with the faces of Banon and Allison, still carrying their prize. They continued swimming, crossing the lake and taking a path around the trees until they made it to their home, dropping the bird in the hollow before sitting down on either side of it.
"That was close," Allison said, panting.
"Someone you know?" asked Banon, looking at the bird. There was enough meat on him to feed them for a couple days if he didn't spoil.
"Kinda," said Allison. "He and I grew up together in the church." With that, she started ripping feathers off of the right leg.
"Want some help?" asked Banon. "You do have better teeth than I do, you know."
Allison stood up, looked over the corpse at Banon, and then opened her mouth wide. All gums.
"Oh, sorry. I thought, because you had human blood, that you had teeth..."
"Never had, never will have," she replied. "What'd you use to scratch into the bark?"
"A knife I fished out of my own shit."
"May I see it, Banon?"
Banon went over to the hollow and grabbed the knife from the mud, handing it to Allison. She thanked him and used the knife to remove the right leg, taking some time because of how ill-kept the knife was, before handing it to Banon. "Now where can I cook this?"
"Cook? No, no, no, Allison. We don't cook. We simply eat raw."
Allison looked at the leg. It was a large drumstick, with the meaty portion as big as her belly. She gulped. "Whole and raw?"
"Within reason," came Banon's response.
Allison looked at the leg again, then opened her mouth and shoved the meat in, pushing it to her throat, which seemed to be willing to accommodate and started to push the flank down towards her stomach. She was honestly surprised; she didn't know she could swallow something like this whole!
"Wait till you try still-living meat," said Banon. "No hidden diseases, no maggots or eggs, just meat, blood, and all the major organs dissolving at the same time inside your body."
It took some time for Allison to get the leg fully down - she had to cut off the leg at the knee to get it to fit without getting choked - but when she did, she felt full, and the gamy, bloody taste of raw meat seemed to satisfy her tastebuds. She laid on her back and croaked in pleasure.
"Done eating?" he asked.
"I never thought raw meat could be... so delicious!" replied Allison.
"That's because your mother was warm-blooded," said Banon. "I'll guarantee you that if your mother was a Politoed, then you'd have been raised on feral food."
Allison sat there for a moment and looked at the hole where Ashu's leg once was. She sighed and patted the corpse. "At least your body will go to good use," she said. At just about that time, she felt a pressure in her "middle hole" that she'd never felt before.
"Um... Banon, my middle h--"
"Follow me," was his swift reply. He knew what was going on and quickly stood up, going around Ashu and grabbing Allison's arm to lead her off somewhere.
They stopped at a large abandoned shack, which had apparently once been a hideout given the current state of it. The shack was made of teak imported from Allison's home province of Tsube, and had been built with an eye to detail to make it look abandoned in the first place. The roof had somewhat collapsed, and the window, which once held paned glass, now only had glass shards and dead birds on the sill. A mound of what was obviously Politoed feces was right outside it, and the sounds of Poliwags were heard inside. The shack itself, from the outside, looked like it had several rooms in it.
Banon opened the door. "Daddy's home!"
Almost instantly, six Poliwag charged their father and started to hop up and down before him, crying, "Dada! Dada! Dada!" all the while. Allison barely had room to enter and examine the inside.
The inside was in bad disrepair. While the outside looked like a fixer-upper, the inside looked like someone had let loose the Tarrasque in here and removed him once he'd fallen asleep. Every wooden thing in the house, including walls to adjoining rooms, had been either badly damaged or completely annihilated. The front room was decorated by a badly-damaged table (with a Bangaa skull beneath it for good measure) and a fresh facedown Poliwag corpse. Allison gingerly lifted it up only to see intestines spill out; disgusted, she dropped the surviving Poliwags' latest meal. When he said "every Poli for themselves", he meant it, realized Allison.
The next room was a storage room, and had a set of stairs leading down to the bedrooms. The storage had been raided long ago; any foodstuffs that should have been present were gone except for some fruits, which were so rotted that they disintegrated when Allison touched them with a rusty spoon on the floor. The only thing salvageable in the room was a bag of marbles, and even they were brittle and broke on impact.
The bedroom downstairs was a horror show. The bog had completely reclaimed this place, and water covered the whole floor up to the beds, caused by what appeared to be an untended drip from one of the trees above. Fortunately for Allison, the only thing that looked like it had been down here in a while were the Poliwags and, judging by the smell in the air, Banon. The bunk beds' mattresses and frames had rotted to little more than piles of junk, and a bathtub in the far end had been busted; it looked like someone had attacked it with a maul before the whole house had gone into disrepair. Floating by one of the ruined beds was a casing from a mermaid's-purse; Allison assumed that this is where Banon wanted her to go and she went out into the water.
The water was cool to the touch and tossed up silt from dirt and Poliwag dung every step she took. She approached a bed and got on all fours, spreading her legs and aiming her now-painful hole at the pile of trash, and felt eggs pop out of her in a steady stream. As soon as the eggs started coming out, the pain vanished, only to be replaced by a soothing feeling as her mermaid's-purse latched onto the detritus that was once a bed and stayed there. After what felt like the hundred and twentieth egg, the feeling passed, and her middle hole returned to what it felt like before. With that, she turned around and looked. Twenty eggs were floating on the surface, about the size of a shooter marble and each with a black dot in the middle.
"Allison!"
"I'm in the basement!" she called back. "I just finished laying!"
"Good. Now come on up here so I can show you where we'll be sleeping."
Allison thought a bit. They were staying here? After a few moments, she decided she'd listen to Banon and went upstairs.Chapter End Notes:Feel free to review (and give suggestions, if you wish). And to preempt any questions about my nationality stemming from the title of this story and this chapter (and all chapters after this one), I will state here and now that I am an American, racially mixed, with Irish, German, and Cherokee blood (not enough to claim membership) coursing through my veins. I use Wiktionary to find titles (hence the Finnish); I am not a native speaker of any language besides English (and if you are a native speaker of Finnish, please feel free to call me out on my chapter titles in your review if I've butchered them somehow)