SUBJECT // avon averline // valkan diplomat //

THEORY POTENTIAL // clouded //

She's magnificent, in a hideous sort of way. Zanthic! Here, of all places! Whatever 'here' is, can't really pretend to care much at this precise moment so forget that and focus on the important, the intriguing, the vital, a true to life Zanthic girl in the toned and supple flesh right before my very eyes. Shame about her face and her brutality and her hygiene but one can't have everything—if given a first edition Roche does one complain about the quality of the binding, or the roughness of the paper, or the mustiness? One does not. One appreciates the rarity of what one has been gifted.

"Hold up."

I obey with a smile. Genuine, of course. She's looking around with those sleepy alert eyes of hers, jerking her head this way and that like a swamp hen. In some manner of hilarious coincidence a scrawny example of the type wanders out on the path ahead of us—perhaps not such a coincidence, this has happened twice in the last ten minutes so swamp hens are rather on my mind. I suppose we might even be able to eat them. Things are certainly looking up and up.

"Are we to move?" I ask, and she glances back at me. Not a scowl, not a glare, I have yet to earn either, simply a blankness of expression that makes my cock shiver. Patience, my pet.

"People," she grunts—might she grunt while being plowed, perhaps from behind? The very thought!

"People!" I repeat. "My favourite. What's our plan, my love?"

She turns to look at me properly, those precious blank eyes heavy with irritation.

"Ah!" I say, raising my hands. "I forgot. You are not 'my love'. If anything I belong to you, my life in your hands and so on. You are Briya Thorn, Muurian first scout, a proud Zanthic woman and entirely my superior. Would you like me to go talk to those people for you?"

She gives me a lovely long stare before replying: "Why haven't I killed you."

"I wonder that myself. My current theory is that you're not particularly enamoured of the murder act. You dislike me slightly less than you dislike killing."

"Hm," she says, and jerks her head towards a path. "They're a way along there. I'll be waiting."