A wild Hunt (Sharub x Yondertoy)

Kharu stepped back from the woman he seeded. His cock still erect and dripping cum. Then one of the other masked men who had been holding her leg undid the hide around his waist and took Kharu’s place. One of the other Hunter came forward to hold the woman fast to the beam.

The other man’s member hard and formidable as Kharu’s slid easily inside the woman and started pumping savagely. This man had not brought in a quarry and would only be second, as Kharu would be second to the other Hunters who did own a catch. At least a handful would still seed the woman Kharu caught, to secure the progeny, but Kharu was first.

As the last of the catchless men had come inside the woman, the lower half of the pole was already drenched. They cut her loose and she was carried away by several elder women, for she could no longer stand.

Sharub was already trembling in anguish and fear for the outcome of the seed her rapist had spurted in her. She felt a little relief in seeing him walk away from her, his shaft still excited by the use he made if her body against her will; glistening with its virile secretion in the torchlit night.

She expected everything now, but one thing. The tribal on her right side let go of her leg and started to undo his loincloth, revealing to her its manlyness. Desperation took her as a new savage appeared to replace the other, rausing her leg and spreading her to welcome a new rapist. She was still crying bitter tears after the first hunter released its potent satisfaction into her. The new one grab hold of her hips and pushed its shaft into her with lewd squelchings and drips of trickling around his engorged member.

Pain revived by the new ravager's motions, pistoning into her drenched pussy like a wild beast. She lost track of time again; her lungs tired, her arms in a constant pain, her legs stretched wide, and her eyes burning. She started to feel the cock raping her insides to stiffen and twitch. She murmured again to not release it inside, mostly an unheard whisper.

She felt again warmth spreading from her depths, accompanied by a tickle where her womb accepted the males's sperm. The ravager thrusted in her a few more times before dislodging his thick manhood from her.

Sharub was left again on a single leg while for the third time a member of the other tribe positioned himself into her, thrusting wildly his thighs against hers. Sperm squelching and squirting between their legs, rivuleting in thick drops from her drenched channel to the pole behind her.

Again the rapist ejaculated into her depths with force, attempting to seed her.

She was drugged by those emotions, she felt her head to spin, weak feelings telling her that a foirth stud was ready to ravage her body and deposit his seed into her.

...maybe a fifth followed...

...a sixth... a seventh... a dozen...

Time and mens accumulated like sand's grains in a jar. Sharub started to feel deaf, no longer hearing the wild grunts of the males that used her body to their pleasure. No more she heard the chant of the tribal circle around her. She only felt a pain that turned to be more spiritual than phisical. Eventually she closed her eyes in silence and prayed when the males spirted their seed into her.

Not believing her tired, foggy eyes, she felt a knife passing trough the vines that held her wrists up to the pole; the mens holding her in the perfect penetrable position neared her dangling feets to the ground, but she slumped like a stone-filled sack.

She felt the wrinkled hands of the elder womens moving her, she didn't get in which position such was the fatigue and shock she accumulated, and carried her away.

And so the night was carried on in lurid anguish and extacy. The other women where also tied to slipperly pole. The tribe chanted themselves in a trance. The masked men performing their duties as hosts to the spirits that formed the will and soul of the tribe.

To Kharu is quickly became a blur, he thrust inside several other women, growing weaker each time. The flesh all merging into one, moving, pumping. The spirit no longer capably or willing to urging on, and his body becoming spent.

As the first of the light of Angur glowed through the canopy, Kharu stumbled and fell. So, it grew darker. The forest no longer whispered to him, he felt cold.

There should be comfort in knowing the progeny would be secure, the Batak Varr would watch over them. Still, he felt lonely and afraid. The darkeness calling. His breath halted…

… and stopped.

Sharub found herself in an improvised hut. Or just a few branches tied to a nearby tree. She was with her back, bruised and ruined against the pole, rested to the ground. She could see in a blir the elders speaking... saying something to her. She closed her eyes, concentrating on her aching muscles, feeling the blood to flow again in her arms for so long tied and locked high.

She felt what seemed gallons of sperm pouring out of her like honey. Moving her trembling hand to her belly, she sworn to have felt the same warm thickness into her womb, searching for the soil of fertility to seed...and create life.

During the night of the rites Yhuana had spent trying to busy herself with setting up the shelters with the other women of the tribe. She had a haggard look, the black paint around her eyes smeared, her black hair knotted on the top of her head, but lovely still. Her skin was the copper brown tone of the tribes near the mountains, marked by the bird tattoos on her bare shoulders. She wore a torn band of leather tight across her small breasts and a loincloth of the same material. Like the whole tribe she went barefoot, a bracelet of bone beads on her ankle.

Her son was sitting a few feet away toying with a dead lizard he’d caught and killed yesterday and now wouldn’t part from. Thrice the Nightserpent had passed through the sky, as the Wet and Heat followed each other—and as her son had grown, she’d grown ever more fearful of him. Something lay in the dark of his eyes that made her increasingly ill at ease.

The fact that he so comfortably sat flipping the scaly tail of the dead animal, while the chants sounded unbearably loud through the trees, made it no better. Yhuana herself was shaking. As she heard the screams of the women and the chorus of tribesman, she was called back to that terrible night. The night she herself had been taken from her village and raped by the Hunters Unbound. Flashes of their glowing eyes and their invasion of her body still haunted her dreams. Her son had been the result.

Yhuana’s life now consisted of cooking, gathering roots and caring for her precious son. However, she was increasingly burdened by the last. Each time the tribe was on the move, and she briefly lost sight of the boy, she wished he would just remain gone. Of course she would not survive such failure to serve the spirits, but she was not sure anymore if she cared. Most likely the spirits would not let it happen, for it was their progeny, which at times they already seem to reside within the child, behind the dark of his eyes.

The shelters where set up and the rites ended. Most of the masked ones had not survived the exhaustive few days without food and little water, the rites had burned them up—the Varr had used them up. But it was considered the greatest honor among the Batak tribe, to be a vessel of the spirits.

Now that Anagur’s Disk circled the sky its rays gave a yellow twilight to the encampment. The tribe counted as about as many members as that if Yhuana pressed both her hands in the mud as many times as she had fingers, then the fingers in the mud where as many as the members of the tribe.

The deceased Hunters where laid out on the forest floor outside the circle of tents for the rituals of their passing. Their masks gone, they were men again. Dead men. The Caller presiding over them.

Yhuana carried hollow gourds filled with water to the women who had undergone the rites and were now resting in several of the huts. She approached to one where two elders where speaking to one of the unfortunates. The old women spoke to woman of her duties, although she would probably not understand. When Yhuana came closer the elders moved to a different shelter.

The abused woman lay naked still on a bed of leaves, her caramel skin bruised all over and bloody at her wrists. Seed still oozed from her body where it had been so violently deposited. It was mixed with blood. She was beautiful and young, and Yhuana felt a horror of the thought of this woman having to undergo the life she did.

The woman moved her hand trembling over her belly, and without thought Yhuana took it in her own.

Sharub groaned in exhaustion. Pain had become his best friend. Her ears still loudly thumping in her brain the gruesome chants of the tribe during her rape giving her head spins like if in trance. As her hand searched for her womb, so unprotected and so ripe, she found other hands, less rough than a warrior... less old than an elder.

She opened her eyes with efforts, still burning and swollen after the tears they shed. She opened them and saw a woman looking in her eyes. Sharub tried to speak, bit only a whisper exited her tired, dried lips. A whisper and a painful moan.

Kneeling next to her, Yhuana gently placed her finger on the woman's lips: "Hush now, I will help" She cleaned the womans's ravaged body with water and cloth, and salved the bloody abbrasions on her wrists. Underneath the marks of violence, her skin was soft... The woman was not much younger then herself... Yhuana pushed away a surprisingly inappropriate thought and quickly made to leave.

Then she briefly turned and sought the woman's eyes. Pointing at herself, see said: "Yhuana." With a sweeping motion of her hand she gestured towards the rest of the tribe: "Batak".

Then she got up and returned to her other duties.

Sharub felt the woman's fingers touching her lips, her voice saying something in a sweet tone, reassuring the young one. Sharub felt fresh water on her body, a sense of freshness radiating trough the bruises and soreness of the ordeal. She said bothing, not she wanted nor was able to. Even if that included to be cleaned and touched, her already vanished pride long gone.

Time passed, not knowing how much. Sharub looked at the woman that so kindly and gently gave a sort of healing to her aching body. She placed an hand to herself <<Yhuana>> then her hands circled in a flourish <<Batak>>.

Sharub had not the time to say her name that Yhuana left the tent and disappeared.

Sharub lied there, her wounds cleaned and breathing, she decided to move, getting her torso lifetd with her elbows. Sparkles of pain rushed now and then, but surely she could manage that. Nearby, she spotted a bowl of water, like an hungry beast she launched her still trembling hand to reach it.

The fresh clean water touched her dried lips, the freshness almost unexpectedly real for the jungle. She drank and sighed, her empty stomach gurgling.

She listened in silence, the Batak are there. She groaned shifting her position, crawling outside the covered lay she had. No longer caring for her nakedness much, as they all witnessed her nakedness and rape, she placed an arm to cover her dark nipples, another arm covering her cleaned intimacy... and approacjed the tribe with an uncertain and weak pace. Eventually they will give her an hide to cover...

To her surprise Yhuana saw the woman she had just nursed stumbling from the shelter. She was naked, vaguely attempting to cover herself with her hands. Several of the tribesmen at the center of the encampment stopped from where they were gutting a deer to stare at her.

Yhuana rushed to the racks upon which cured hides and other materials where stored and took a length of striped skin of a forest antilope, an old black-leather boar skin, and some string.

With these clothing parts she approached the woman. Shielding her with her body from the onlookers as best as she could, Yhuana helped the woman cloth herself.

Sharub moved near the center of the camp, trying not to show her pain running trough her spine at each wobbly step she made. Her eyes reddened. But she was strong. She wanted to show them that they might have hurt her, deprived of her innocence and flattened her spirit... but she was not going to fall...

Her tired eyes spotted the woman that tended her wounds going to grab a couple of hides and strings, going in front of her, probably to cover her from other eyes... as they had not enough the day before.

With a faint smile sharub looked at Yhuana, trying to apply those hides, at least temporarily, like patches on her body. Emitting painful winces while shifting her arms. Trembling she fastened those pelts on her body, still lot uncovered, but the minimum of dignity shall be safe.

As Yhuana attempted to fasted the pieces of clothing to the woman, she caught sight of the brief smile on the other's lips. A flash of warmth extended through her body and she felt herself blush. It faintly reddend the skin between her breasts, and along her neck to her cheeks and ears. Yhauna averted her eyes. And when having helped the woman cover herself, she guided her to a place near the firepit.

A stew of roots and fruit was cooking. As the woman seated herself awkwardly, Yhuana laddled some of the food into a bowl for her. Later, after dark there would be fire-grilled meat. Also, the ritual passing of the dead hunters would take place and the passage of the spirits to the new life inside the taken women.

Yhuana looked to her side and saw here son. The child had discarded the lizard and was chewing a red fruit. The sap running down his chin, he stared at her. Yhuana supressed another shiver as she looked away from the dark pits of his eyes.

She seated herself next to the woman and pointed at other's chest, inclining her head questioningly.

Sharub covered her young supple mammaries with the hides that were given her, her intimacy now under a thick skirt of hairs.

She sat where the woman that called herself Yhauna, trying to be as invisible as possible. Her brain was trying to process what happened and what is going on. She was captured like an animal, raped, used... and now... she found herself wearing their hides, at their fireplace eating their soup.

She didn't knew what to do... her village destroyed, her friends killed or raped and resting in the camp nearby the fire. She had nowhere to go but the jungle. She could try an escape but where to go? unarmed and weak, alone among beasts and hunters.

She wanted to be free, but she preferred to be alive... and to be alive she needs her strenghts. And a soup would do...

Sharub nodded to the woman that is caring of her, windering what with the pointing she is doing...

Yhuana halted her attempted questioning as she caught sight of one of the elders coming their way. The old woman's long hair hung in thick matted strands around her, bones and charms woven into it. Those cold eyes set in the gnarled features seemed to be boring into Yhuana. So she busied herself with stirring the stew.

In anticipations of the Ritual of Passing torches where being lit around the dead hunters outside the circle of huts. In the center of those makeshift structures a larger logs where now starting to catch flame, the deer that had been gutted earlier was be placed on a spit above them.

Members of the tribe, mostly men, but also women and children, busied about. They was a whole a ragged lot. Black paint around their eyes, and wearing little clothing, but for some hide loincloths and occasional leather tops. Except for the elders and the Spirit Caller, few wore jewelry. An intense look in their eyes that seemed focussed far awy. They spoke little to one another.

Yhuana's mind was racing. The whole tribe would attend the ritual, and it would be dark. She might slip of and not be noticed missing till dawn. But could she just leave this woman beside her, to the fate she herself sought to escape? After last night she knew she could stand the oppression no longer, and the looks of her freakish child. Was it fair to say it was hers at all?

And why would she try to held this other woman escape? There were others like her, others that Yhuana had nog chance of helping escape. Be honest to yourself Yhua! You fancy her, that's it. Nothing else. But surely that could not be held against her? As she debated with her self, she stole a glance sideways at the nameless woman and knew no amount of reasoning would solve this. Deeds come first, and thought follows.

One of the elders called out a command and the tribe was gathering towards the ritual site. Reluctantly, she got up and took her boy by the hand and followed the rest. She looked at the woman eating her stew with pity and recalled her own fearful first days at the Batak. No! it would have to be tonight.

The elder that had approached grapped the woman on the arm, her old hands like talons on the young flesh, and pulled her up. The rest of the taken women where escorted from their shelters in a similar way, one being unable to walk, being carried by several of the tribes women.

Sharub ate a few swallows of the soup, feeling energy radiating from the stew, witnessing how the batak readied themselves for another ritual, making Sharub to feel even more uncomfortably among them.

She watched like a silent spirit those tribals with painted black eyes getting busy with preparations barely speaking one with the other.

Sharub looked at the elder that approached her, looking down to not met the soul-looking abyss that sparked in her old eyes. Suddently the old woman grabbed the still aching arms. Sharub fekt those wrinkly fingers digging into her flesh as if driven by hate; emitting a meep Sharub followed the movements and rose to her feet, soon spotting the other preys being escorted in a similar manner outside the circle.

Again Sharub felt her heart going on a ride in her chest, they are preparing another ritual... what will happen next?

Anagur's Disk - whom the Batak called 'the Eye of Angur' - was setting. The light of the flames flickering brighter against the darkening canopy. The bodies of the Hunters were laid out in rows, torches around them. As the tribe gathered the Caller walked among the dead bodies chanting, shaking his staff over them as he threw small amounts of white dust over them.

The captured women were lined up by the elders, standing facing the bodies. Then the Caller walked over to them. He took a pouch from somewhere among his clothing. Continuing his chant he smeared red ointment in a circle on the belly of each woman. As he finished he turned his head upwards and fell silent.

The whole tribe seemed to hold their breath. The old men stamped his staff on the ground and shouted out: “Varr Mun! Marvak Tah’Kun!” Then a rustling seemed to pass through the leaves, the flames of the torches dimmed. The darkness thickened and seemed to gain substance.

Where the bodies lay, faint white tendrils like smoke rose from them. A whispering, as of a thousand voices started to come from all directions. I grew darker and with the air golden spots of light, like eyes moved in and out visibility.

The Varr had been called again, and Yhuana was scared. But her mind was made up. In the darkness she had moved back to the shelters and quickly assembled a bag with some foodstuffs, rope, a full waterskin and two knives. While the ritual unfolded, she hid the bag in the undergrowth out of the camp.

Presently, it was utter dark within the circle of tribesmen. The torches were extinguished and even the big roasting fire further the back was diminished to glowing coals. In the thick darkness shapes moved, glowing yellow eyes flickering in and out of existence. The whispering all around gained the semblance of coarse hissing voices, horrid and inhuman. Yhuana had experienced it before, yet was terrified nonetheless.

Sharub felt the fingers of the elders digging deeo into her arms, pushing and dragging her, her eyes wandering to get any hint of the situation, but she saw only other of her tribe carried like her. She started to see darker masses on the ground, as she approached the figures became clearer; her eyes went wide witnessing that those were the hunters, their strong body unmistakably ripe with musces and scars. They are all dead now. Sharub wondered about them... not having saw their presence before.

The elder placed her in front of a dead hunter, covered in white dusy, a strange mix of emotions twirling in her brain. And so does any other prey.

Their shaman kept chanting and shaking his staff, stomping it on the ground. Then he went silent, and Sharub saw him approaching the trembling girl on her side, smearing a red substance to his fingers and finally painting a circle on her belly. The shaman moved in front of Sharub, her eyes following his hands in the pouch and moving toward her belly. He lowered her loincloth, allowing him to cast his magical paint over her womb.

Immediately thei shaman passed to the girl at her side, leaving Sharub to feel the red paint drying on her belly, a little shiver ran trough her spine recollecting the memory of her rape, when the first hunter, after having releaded his seed in her, painted the same circle in the same position.

Then the tribe fell silent. Even the jungle fell silent. As if scared or waiting for something. Then she saw something... like fog roots and vines moving beneath their bodies... suddently voices unfurled within the still air, but the tribe was silent. Fear started to ran trough her heart, the voices growing in number, and in the darkness glowing eyes could be seen. Like demons in the night.

The sensation of fear grew as they all remained still, and the torches started to emit less and less light. Sharub could have seorn that those demonic eyes approached her more and more, almost touching her before disappearing. She closed her eyes. Hoping to not see those nightmarish eyes again.

After what seemed like an endless moment of bone-rattling fear, the voices subsided and the torchlight returned. The image of the golden eyes remaining till last, and where also gone. The corpses of the hunters still held faint traces of white tendrils of smoke and seemed even deader than before. As if the last traces of life’s essence had only now left the body. Then, without a word, the Caller moved away from the dead and towards the circle of the encampment. The ritual was over.

Amidst the throng, as the rest of the tribe followed the Caller, Yhuana sought the woman’s eyes. Yhauna felt fearful yet determined. Most of the members of the tribe seemed elated. There would be meat and drink, but maybe it was also that all were deep down secretly relieved that the rites of the Varr were once again behind them and that day to day life returned.

The women marked with the circle were now led to the middle of the encampment and present with the first pieces of roast deer. The rest of the tribe gathering round, and hollowed-out gourds with fermented palm sap were passed around. Yhuana only pretended to drink, for she knew the intoxicating effect of the juice. She needed her wits about her.

Sharub sighed in relief by seeing their shaman abruptly leaving his deeds and rushing away toward the encampment, bringing his magic away with him. The voices stopped and the ghosts and demons, with their nightmarish eyes fading away and disappearing into the darkness of the incoming night.

She watched the bataks: they seemed happier; their eyes smilimg on the inside, no longer appearing sorrowful, filled with rage and savagery. And with this new mood, they all followed their shaman There were nothing else to be seen.

Sharub was again moved like a puppet to the center of the tribe, moving her head she saw the other womens with the red cirvle on their wombs satting there, with carious degrees of resignatiom, fear and curiosity. Then the tribals started to cut pieces of meat, sharing them with the raped females.

She watched the chunk of meat in her hands. "What is happening..." thought Sharub looking at the meat in her hands "...first they abduct us... kill our families... forced us... then... it seems we are part of their tribe. ...and if.. no... i cannot be subdued so easily. ...or am i? ...is this my destiny? And if the spirits wanted this? ...should i reject their plan?" She was again in a storm of feelings and with the eyes emptily fixed on the ground in front of her, she digged her teeths in the meat.

She was consuming her meat while glancing at the others from her tribe; someone eating, someone cried, others rejected the meat, making Sharub feeling guilty for having accepted their meat.

Syddently the bataks started passing a bowl, from which they all drank and passed in circle. Eventually the bowl arrived in the still greasy hands of Sharub, that inquisitively sniffed the content, a smell that she never sniffed before, strong and pungent in the nostrils, almost warm but with an hint of sweetness. She looked in the eyes of the savage that handed the bowl, he was... happy... almost waiting for her to drink from it. She moved her lips to the rim of the bowl and, almost to ask a confirmation, looked again in his eyes.

She sipped. And gulped. The taste surprised her mouth, her tongue tingling, her throat burning. Another gulp. Her stomach was warm. She looked the bowl and passed to the woman at her side. She breathed, andbfelt a similar warmth moving to her lungs. Her tongue twirling in her mouth, trying to gather the sweetness of the fluid from her mouth.

She moved her gaze around, feeling a new sensation as the warmth in her stomach radiated, her eyes almost unable to focus on anything.

From across the fire were the deer was still roasting, Yhuana observed the woman drinking the fermented palm sap. Grease from the meat making her lips shine. The scant clothing of animal hide revealing most alluring curves. Yhuana felt herself flush with longing. Thinking she might have caught her eye, she stepped away from the light in embarrassment.

The warm food and the intoxicating juice seemed to enliven and loosen the members of the tribe, and they became openly friendly towards the newly assimilated women. As if the brutal deeds of the previous night had not taken place, men and women chatted to them introducing themselves and trying to get the women to reveal their names.

Suddenly one of the captured women shouted something in tears and burst from the group running, but after few steps was stopped by two men who had apparently been standing guard among the shelters. They were gentle as she struggled but held her tight in between them. All the time saying words to calm her as they guided her back to the rest of the tribe standing around the fire.

Yhuana looked around for her son and spotted him amidst the forest of naked limbs around the fire. He was standing a few feet from the fire with a twig in his hand. He had pushed the end in the flames and was now staring at the glowing tip. Someone from among the tribesmen gave him some meat, which he absent-mindedly chewed. Yhuana felt a pang of guilt. Would she really abandon her own son? Then he looked straight at her, glowing points in his dark eyes. Yhuana suddenly felt cold, and she knew. He was never my son. She turned away.

As the night progressed several of the tribesmen started singing and dancing. Their movements sluggish from drink, but expressive nonetheless. The dances told of the hunting of fierce animals, of being lost in the forest, of the spirits that helped them to find their way. The muscles on their slender frames drawn in stark lines by the firelight. The Spirit Caller stood watching him with his back to the flames. Staff in one head, his shadow cast high against the trees, looming above.

Sharub's head started to spin, she felt so light and warm, as she concentrated on those feelings and sensations she saw a woman, looking at her; The drink affecting her senses, blurring her sight, disallowing her to clearly recognize the who was.

She was lolling her head side yo side, now light now heavy, witnessing the bataks starting to talk their barklike tongue, so different from hers, but clearly trying to talk. She looks around, looking at foreigners pointing at their chest and then emitting a noise... a name pheraps. Same happened to her, a woman approached Sharub, lowering herself in order to meet her gaze; the tribal placed an hand on her chest, saying something, then awaited with a smile for an answer. <<Sharub>> the young woman answered placing an hand to hers, almost missing due to the altered sensations of the drink effecting her weak body. <<Sharub>> repeated her almost smiling.

All around her was in a sort of blur, a confysed mass of people started to talk, then dance. Suddently a screan and a figurestarts to run... soon is cartied back, just like when people tries to escape celebrations but are gently forced to stay, also making Sharub understood that is not yet time for an escape. If ever she decides.

Tribals started to dance, moving around the gire, casting their long shadows all around the huts. Their movements almost hypnotizing. Then a shadow stood. Taller than any other in the orange firelight: the shaman reappeared aming his tribe.

The shadows of the tribesmen are larger than they are themselves. Yhuana lingered on the thought, as she stole glances at the woman, the woman she had decided to spare a further fate among the Batak. And their shadows.

Time past and for many the night drew to a close in a haze. With the fire burning down the tribesmen where now slowly retreating to their shelters, many swaggering from inebriation. The tribe would travel again tomorrow and the events of the last the days sleep was much needed.

The elders came to escort the captured women to their huts. Each was accompanied by a man holding a spear, and mostly sober, who would be their nightly guards. Yhuana kept track of where the woman she meant set free was being taken. It was the same lean-to shelter that she had woken previously that night.

The captured woman would not only be under guard, but tied to a stick in the ground. Like a dog. Yeah, but one that might eventually bite. Yhuana thought as she gathered her son. And went to the hut that she shared with two other women where she waited for the camp to quiet down.

The night passed with the turnoil of feelings coming returning to their places, while the warmth given by the potion started to slowly fade away as well ascher head slowed her spins. Eventually another piece of meat passed trough her hands, definitely sating her hunger.

She looked down for a second, gasping as she saw her belly slightly protruding, even by being only due to the meat and water she had, a certain surprise remained as she remembered the past ordeals and the consequences that might show up. With almost an absent eye fixed to the firelight, her hand crawled to her belly, as to feel if it really was only food and nothing growing up inside of her.

Time passed and the fire started to be less full of energy, as well as other tribals slowed their dances and retreated in their shelters and fragile huts. It was then that their elders appeared again, holding ropes and vines in their callous hands.

She was made stand, a vine tied to her neck without being too tight, and a rope tied to the vine with a thick knot, pressing against her skin in a duscomfortable manner. She had not protested. She couldn't. And even if she could have had the opportunity, nothing would have changed. Resignation is what appeared in front of the other womens from her tribe. Resignation... or acceptance.

Sharub was led to her shelter like on a leash. A pet. The guard looking at her without expressions, while the elder tied the leash to a pole nearby, tugging it and trying to undo it, without results. Satisfied, he glanced to Sharub, satting in the shelter inspecting her collar, remembering the necklaces she lost somewhere nearby.

With a sigh she distended on the rug, and closed her eyes.

The dark belonged again to the insects and their nightly chorus. Most of the members of tribe were already sinking into deep sleep. Only a handful of guards walked among the structures of the camp. The embers of the fire emitting a faint reddish glow.

Somewhere a woman lay weeping quietly, her occasional solitary sobs heart-wrenching pleas. To be met with only the animal indifference of the jungle.

Yhauna waited for what seemed an eternity, listing to the guards walk by and the chiming of the insects. Beside her, Yhuana’s son was already sleeping peacefully. He had always been a sound sleeper. No nightmares ever seemed trouble him.

Eventually, the sound of their breathing told Yhuana that the other two women and their children had also descended into the recesses of sleep. Yhuana carefully sat up in the dark. Leaning on her hand she raised herself over her sleeping child. Placing one foot and then another, she was out the side of the shelter. Crouched in the darkness, she paused to listen. No one seemed to stir.

The night fell dark again on the encampment, only reddish sparkles and creaks told of the dieing fire burning nearby. Sharub lrned on the ground, now and then tugging the collar and the leash; more tugs if bore than effective tries for an escape.

While looking at the ceiling if the narrow shelter, she just listened to her breath, closed her eyes and started to think again "I don't understand... with the atrocities they made, why i am not shattered? with the pain i've felt... why am i not trying to escape? with the murders they made... why am i not trying to kill them? Is my attachment to life so strong to making me accepting those pains?"

She rolled in her side, feeling the leash containing her head to move further "...or is that you are fine by being ravaged by unknowns...raped, tortured, but fed and welcomed among them? "

"Afterall... here i have a shelter and a share of deer... if i escape... where will i go? Running alone in the jungle. At night. Without a knife. Chased by demon-calling tribals lurking the jungle itself as their home."

A tear formed in the corner of her eyes "Maybe i just have to accept this life. ...afterall... i was alone... and soon forced in an arranged marriage... bear childrens for someone i barely knew..."

"What's the difference?" with that thought, Sharub closed her eyes, feeling her energies floating away with a yawn...

As soon as she had ascertained herself no one in the shelter had noticed her missing, Yhuana started to sneak out of the camp. Keeping to the darkness beyond the circle of huts, she moved carefully towards where she had stashed the bag earlier in the night. Twice a twig had snapped under her feet and twice she’d frozen, and waited a spear to come find her. But none had come and she reached her bag.

She reached inside and withdrew on of the bone knives. The handle hard in her hand, the white of the blade like a predator’s teeth in the night. She felt determined and strong. The blade had been drawn, there would be no turning back.

She put the bag across her back by the string that held it closed and started slowly to where the woman was being kept. Having made a circle around the camp, she approached the hut from the among the trees.

To her shock, a guard stood next to the shelter. The thin man was leaning on his spear, apparently looking towards her. His silhouette outlined by the faint glow of the embers in the middle of the camp. She stopped and flattened herself against the trunk of a tree. Her heart was racing as she thought he saw her.

Then the guard turned slowly and seemed to kneel near the shelter. He did not see me, I am hidden by the dark. Yhuana waited for him to leave.

The man had rested his staff against the hut and leaning forward reached halfway into the hut. Yhuana could not see inside, but could discern that the man undid his loincloth with his other hand and started touching himself. Sitting there awkwardly hunched, he was making stroking motions in the dark.

Then the naked man suddenly moved into the hut. With shock Yhuana thought she could hear a muffled female voice ...