The next morning, I awoke blind.

Well, I awoke with my eyelashes crusted together in such a manner that I couldn’t open them. Apparently, I’d dreamed of rivers of tears last night, and my eyes were crusted together from where they’d dried. Not feeling Red beside me, I called out for her. “Red, can you bring me some water? Apparently my allergies are acting up this morning.”

Holding out my opened hand for several moments, I finally felt the rough rounded shape of a cup being pressed into it. “Is everything alright,” Red asked? I could hear the concern in her voice.

“It’s fine,” I assured her. Taking a small sip from the cup, I then splashed the rest of its contents across my face. Using my hands to wipe at my eyes, I lied again. “It’s just my allergies crudding up this morning. I’ll be fine once I wash my face.” There’s no way I’m going to tell Red about how deeply her fate disturbed my heart – I’d lived long enough to know my guilt and misconceptions wouldn’t actually help, or change, anything.

Sometimes, it’s simply best to lie and leave things be.

“Do I need to prepare a face wash every morning then, Mi’Lord?” Prying my eyes opened, Red was standing no more than a few inches in front of me; her skirt lifted and clutched in both hands, giving me a perfect view of her bare and smooth bottom.

“Ummm…” As I sputtered in shock, Red leaned forward and dried my face with her skirt, before dropping it and stepping back. Going over to the campfire, she stirred a pan of something that was cooking as if nothing unusual had occurred!

How could she not hear the incessant pounding of my poor heart?!

“Uhhh…” She’d asked me a question? What was it again? My mind was drawing a blank.

“Uhhh… There’s a beautiful view this morning,” I finally sputtered.

“It certainly is, Mi’Lord,” Red answered, while staring out at the brilliant hues of the rising sun and setting moons.

That wasn’t the view I was thinking about at all.

Packing everything up after breakfast, Red finally squeezed back into her leather tunic. Frowning to myself as I watched her, I couldn’t help but feel pity. “Take that back off,” I ordered.

“Mi’Lord?” Red looked back at me curiously, then struggled to pull her top back up and her head.

“Drop that, and come here.” I pointed and the ground directly at my feet. “Face me, lift both arms over your head, and wait.”

Looking even more puzzled than before, Red said nothing, but followed my orders.

Digging in my pack, I pulled out the small jar of paste I had. As I screwed the lid off, Red shivered uncontrollably for some reason. Leaning up, I gently kissed her across each nipple. Assuring her, “This won’t hurt, you’ll like this,” caused her to trembled even harder as I scooped a little paste on my fingers, and gently rubbed it all over both her breasts.

“It’s a healing cream,” I explained, wiping the excess grease off across her firm, taunt stomach. “It’ll help where you’re bruising yourself.”

“Healing cream?” Red gave out a long, deep breath. Leaping forwards, she suddenly wrapped both her arms and legs around me, squeezing me tight.

“Wh.. What the hell!” Dropping the jar, I wrapped both arms around her ass and squeezed tightly, trying to keep from dropping her as I struggled to maintain my balance.

Laughing gaily, Red leaned forward and kissed me so passionately, it felt as if her tongue was trying to attack my tonsils and take them home as a souvenir. When she finally quit – it felt like it was a kiss that lasted for days – I finally released her and she returned to standing firm in front of me, both arms high in the air.

For some strange reason, her lips couldn’t quit twitching up into a smile as she slightly swayed her body side to side.

Even if I live another two hundred lifetimes, I’ll never understand women. All it was, was a little dab of common healing paste.

Shaking my head slightly from side to side, I bent and picked up the jar and brushed the dirt off it. Putting the lid back on, I packed it back into my backpack, and pulled out the round roll of gauze for bandages instead.

“Tell me if I get this too tight,” I ordered Red. Thinking of the tunic she’d been forcing herself to squeeze into, without complaint, I changed that. “Tell me how this feels,” I clarified. “This is my first time ever doing this for a woman, so we might need to do and undo it a few times to get it right.”

Starting at her belly button, I was working the roll of bandages around her waist over and over, gradually working my way higher. In my past life, I remember seeing pictures of Oriental women with their chests bound by what looked like bandages. I thought I’d try the same thing here.

“It has to be loose enough that it doesn’t bother any movement or breathing,” I informed Red, as I continued my wrapping, “but it still needs to be tight enough to help hold your chest in.”

“I understand,” Red nodded, waiting patiently for me to finish. “It’s not too tight now. In fact, you could pull it tighter, if you wished, Mi’Lord.”

“Let’s try it like this, this time,” I said, as I was running out of bandage. “Hopefully,” I wished, “you won’t be trying to rip your nipples off now, every time you take that tunic on and off.” Reaching under her skirt, I gave Red a gentle smack on the ass to indicate we were all finished.

Bending and grabbing her tunic, Red struggled to wiggle back into it again. I couldn’t tell if it really seemed any easier or not, but I hoped so.

It wasn’t hard to find our way down into the bottom of the overgrown quarry, to find a single mine shaft. Boarded up with weathered and rotted signs, it only took me a brief moment to hack them apart while Red double checked the oil in the lanterns.

“I don’t think a bow will be of much use inside a mineshaft,” I muttered ruefully. “I’ll carry the lantern for us, since you’ve got the spear. If there’s something in there to fight,” I worried, “it might be the best weapon to use. Jabbing with it doesn’t seem like it’d be as likely to hit a beam, or support, as slashing widely with a sword or hatchet.”

Red lit and then passed me her lantern – mine was still strapped securely to the side of my pack – and we both hesitated for several moments to stare into the dark and dreary path that seemed to lead into a lightless abyss. Gulping down my trepidation, I cautiously marched several dozen steps into the darkness and then waited.

Working her way up beside me, Red whispered, “Is something wrong? What are we waiting for?”

“Just for our eyes to adjust a little better to the darkness,” I reassured her, whispering myself. It seemed like neither of us was wanting to be overly loud inside this old tunnel.

After a few moments, I couldn’t help but frown to myself. Moving forward again slowly, I didn’t bother to share my worries with Red – they wouldn’t change the fact that we were both determined to go into the mine anyway – and I didn’t want to add to her concerns. The more we walked into the tunnels, the more I was becoming convinced that something was terribly off.

I’m not a miner, and I wasn’t a miner in my first life either, but one thing I remember from all the movies, books, or shows which I ever saw concerning a mine, the walls were lined at regular intervals with supports. I’d been worried that swinging a weapon around in here might hit one of those old supports and bring the roof down on us, but I could see now, that was a baseless concern – the passage we were currently walking down didn’t have any!

Hewn from pure stone, the walls were hacked and carved roughly, with nary sign of any support in sight. The floor of the passage was smooth – I guess they had to put more care into designing it for carts and such to roll smoothly on – but the ceiling was like the walls; nothing more than just roughly hewn out stone. The design of this place didn’t make sense to me, and neither did the stories. If the stone was stable enough to support itself without any form of reinforcement, why did all the old tales say that it was a death trap and collapsed so many times on top of people?

The deeper we walked into the damp darkness, the stronger the feeling of forebodement grew in my heart. Something here was off. Dangerously off.

“Be cautious.” I didn’t want to add to any of Red’s worries, but I also wanted to make certain she was ready for anything.

“I am,” she promised, walking bravely beside me on my left.

Time is a hard thing to keep track of when surrounded by nothing but darkness, with your nerves blazing like fire. I have no idea how long we walked down the entry tunnel, before it finally opened up into a large hewn out chamber with tunnels offshooting in multiple directions. Two rusted heaps of metal lay collapsed off of the center of the room and dozens of dilapidated crates lay scattered in random corners of the place.

“Let’s be careful and check some of these old crates,” I told Red, while moving to the nearest ones on our left. Transferring the lantern to my left hand, I pulled my hatchet from my belt. “You open it, and I’ll cover you,” I promised, trying to sound manly.

Nodding, Red leaned her spear up against the wall, and then gingerly wiped a thick layer of dust off the closest crate. Gripping one edge, she gave a gentle tug of the lid. With a “Ker-klunk,” the corner of the lid broke off in her hands and the box’s sides collapsed outwards, spilling chunks of plain stone out across the floor.

“She-man!” I joked gently at Red. “You broke it, you brute!”

“It just fell apart,” Red snorted, crumbling the powdery piece of wood into sawdust with her hand. “Even you could’ve broken it, Mi’Lord.”

Ouch! Note to self – never pick on a woman. It just leads to a damaged masculinity.

“Plain rocks,” I pointed, trying to change the subject. “I really can’t understand this place,” I admitted, shaking my head side to side lightly. “If all the people wanted to mine was stone, why’d they dig so deep into the earth? Why wasn’t the town built closer? Or at least a trader’s shop? Waystation? Place to sleep?”

“We’re a whole day’s journey from a Nowhereville, so where the hell did the people stay when they were working here? Just what the hell used to go on in this place?” My concern was palpable now, and I couldn’t hide it any longer.

Frowning, Red looked back at me and bit her lip slightly. “I don’t know, Mi’Lord. I never found any records to indicate what type of mining actually took place here. All I found was the old division tax map, which indicated its location. I have no idea what they did here.”

Taking a deep breath, all I could do is sigh and shrug my shoulders. “Doesn’t matter,” I repeated, as much for myself as for Red. “We still have to find the damn heart of this place and take it back.” Since we didn’t know one direction from another down here, any was as good of a place as the next to start our search, so I slowly wandered into the nearest tunnel on our left.

Grabbing her spear, Red hurried her steps and made certain to keep pace directly beside me.

It didn’t take long for me to realize this place was an overwhelming maze. The left tunnel led to a hallway with dozens of paths branching off left and right, and following the first left there led to another large chamber with a half dozen tunnels branching off in random directions from it. “We’ve got to go back to the start and do this right,” I muttered sullenly.

“Do it right,” Red questioned?

“Yeah.” Starting the long trek back, I decided, “We’re going to need torches so we can preserve the oil for deeper tunnels, and we’re going to have to draw a map somehow, so we don’t end up staying in these tunnels forever.”

“Torches, we can make with limbs and vines,” Red replied, “but without paper or ink, how are we going to map our progress?”

“Hide,” I told her, and Red instantly jumped to the side and pressed herself tight against the wall to minimize her presence.

“No,” I corrected, laughing in spite of myself. “Hides. As in leather hides. I’m going to need to hunt us a deer, so we can skin it and carve the tunnels into its hide.”

“Oh.” Blushing brightly, Red hurried back over to my side. I couldn’t help but smile to myself. This was a new side which I hadn’t had a chance to see of her before.

Embarrassed Red is still an amazingly beautiful Red.

The walk back out passed without any issues, and I left my pack and supplies just outside the entrance. If I was going to drag a deer back here for us, I didn’t need everything else to just add to my burden. Kissing Red once deeply, and squeezing her ass twice for good measure, we parted ways so she could make torches while I hunted.

The morning slowly turned into afternoon, as I explored the area around the quarry. Finding small game wasn’t difficult – nobody had apparently hunted this area in years – but I wasn’t having any luck with anything larger. The one thing that was conspicuously missing, however, was any sign of old human habitation. I still couldn’t figure out where the hell all the miners of old used to stay at when they weren’t working.

As afternoon turned into evening, I started setting larger snares and traps. Normally, we hunters wouldn’t set a trap large enough to harm a deer, because it could harm some innocent person instead, but this place was off the beaten path and deserted. I figured it’d be fine, and we were pressed for time. The longer it took us to find the heart, the longer Jewel had to suffer, and the lower her chance of recovery became.

Returning back to the entrance as the sun was starting to go down, I was only slightly surprised to see Red working hard away, her chest once again completely free and unrestrained. Seeing her, the first words out of my mouth were, “Boing. Boing.”

“Boing? Boing?” Looking back at me, Red didn’t seem surprised to see me there, but she did seem puzzled by my choice of words.

“Boing, boing,” I repeated, lifting my hands up and down like a slinky. “What happened to your tunic,” I had to ask?

“Oh.” Laughing lightly, Red shrugged her shoulders and returned back to tightly weaving a vine around the end of a long stick. “I started sweating and getting a rash under the bandages, so I just took it off. It seems more annoying out here than it does useful, at the moment.”

Nodding, I had to admit that it did make a strange sort of sense. Well, that is, only if one completely ignores any sense of modesty. I didn’t even bother to ask why she didn’t just put a different shirt on. I was almost afraid to hear the answer, and, in all honesty, I enjoyed the view

Supper went fine that evening, and I took Red up on her offer for some entertainment several times afterwards.

I might feel bad and regret that she was a slave for eternity, and I might feel bad that she was forced to obey me completely, but I couldn’t change anything about the situation even if I wanted to. That, and I was a horny little teenager being offered, “Do what you want with me,” by a truly gorgeous young woman.

Heaven help me, but I took her up on her offer, and we did things together that I never even would’ve dreamed of doing with my wife of 54 years, Julie.

Luckily, I awoke the next morning feeling refreshed and revitalized. I suppose Julie was so shocked by what she’d saw the night before from Heaven, she was too embarrassed to visit my dreams.

Red was still sleeping for a change – normally she wakes up before me – so I pounced upon her helpless form and ravished her completely. The look on her face as she jerked her eyes open with a moan, was priceless.

Getting dressed afterwards, I quickly ate breakfast and then headed out to check my snares. I’d nearly circled the entire quarry, fearing disappointment, when my luck finally changed. One of the larger traps which I had set was tripped, and blood covered several inches of the roughly hewn spikes which I’d carved out.

Finding and following the blood trail wasn’t difficult, but it took me over an hour before I finally found where the large doe ending up collapsing. Gutting it took only a few quick minutes, and I hacked the head off and left it where it lay, before draping it across my shoulders

Returning to camp took me several hours, as I had to stop and rest multiple times from the strain of carrying the weight across rough terrain, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised to find Red happily working away completely naked this time. She’d had boots, skirt, and gloves on when I left, but not when I returned. I’m beginning to think the girl is secretly a nudist.

Or, maybe not so secretly, looking at how she was dressed…

Hearing me approach, she turned and waved energetically at me. “You got something!” Her bouncing with excitement made her bounce with excitement.

“I’m not even going to ask,” I muttered, dropping the carcass on the ground and rubbing my sore shoulders.

“It was bright and sunny, the wind felt good on the skin and…” Red shrugged lightly, then bounced over to toss a fresh load of wood on the fire.

“Whatcha doing,” I asked?

“Going to cook enough meat for the next several days,” Red said, beaming a smile. “We may as well stretch our food as much as possible, just like the oil in the lanterns, and the meat won’t keep long, unless it’s cooked.”

I couldn’t help but smile, admiringly. She might be naked, but that certainly didn’t make her a brainless idiot.