The Labors of Jasper Episode 22
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The Labors Of Jasper, Episode 20 free porn video
20Jas0020, The Labors of Jasper
Episode 20; 2976 words
Jas took a quick inventory. She wasn't prepared. They had no winter
clothes. No blankets. Melissa was wearing paper sandals. Jas didn't have
any cookware, not even a cup. No container to carry water.
Maybe one of her quivers?
She had fishhooks and line in the hat she'd given Melissa. Now all they
needed was a lake. Or a river.
She was using mana profligately, keeping them warm. She was using mana
faster than it grew back. She would have to dip into the mana reserves of
her pylons soon.
One way to minimize mana usage was by eating. Calories and shivering
could maintain their body temperatures. But she needed mana to avoid
frostbite and to armor both hers and Melissa's feet.
Jas felt her clothes pulse with warmth. Bio-electric heat. Mars-rated?
Ha, she thought again. Not quite. She removed her vest and gave it to
Melissa.
"No, you keep it," Melissa said, after trying it on.
"It's heated," Jas said.
Melissa shook her head. "Maybe when you wear it, but not when I wear it."
She picked it away from her boobs. "Besides, it molests me."
Jas took the vest back. She grunted. "Missy, I'm sorry. I think we're
fucked. If I don't figure something soon, we'll die out here."
"Would you rather go back?" Melissa asked.
"No."
"Me, neither. Dammit." Melissa smiled briefly.
Jas readied her bow. They followed a game trail. It worried Jas that she
didn't recognize any of the prints in the frozen mud.
Not hoofs, not paws. Lots of small bird sign, but no big tracks, like the
dinosaurs made.
This almost looked like a dino track.
A thing rose up in the sagebrush just off the trail. Too many legs.
Circular body plan. Flattened head, or body, or whatever that was. It
looked like a harry-long-legs, seven meters tall.
Jas fumbled with her bow. She dropped the arrow.
Melissa put a hand on Jas's shoulder. "Hold," she said. "Ready an arrow
but don't shoot."
"What?" Jas chose a medium-sized arrow, a wolf-killer. She ratcheted her
bow down so the arrow wouldn't snap as it left the bow.
Melissa smiled. "That's a dogwalker. Harvestman." Melissa lost her smile.
"Watch for alligators."
"In this weather?" Jas looked around. Some cactus, a few small trees.
Small birds.
No alligators in the snow.
"Remember that cryptozoology course Morgana made me take?"
"You're kidding."
"According to legend, they sometimes rescue people from alligators. They
taste you as they handle you, but generally don't bite."
"Generally."
"If they bite, it's fatal. What's left of the carcass will be full of
dogwalker eggs."
The dogwalker hooted. Dogwalkers rose up in the sagebrush all around Jas
and Melissa. Big ones, little ones, medium sized ones.
A feathered lizard scrambled toward them on four legs. It looked like an
oversized iguana. Or a small dragon.
The nearest dogwalker picked the lizard up. Hooted at it. Set it down,
facing the other direction.
Jas gibbered nervously.
"I think we're safe," Melissa said. "Stay on the trail."
"Right. What do dogwalkers eat?"
"Fish."
"In the Lakotas?"
"I dunno. Long memories if you do them a kindness. Equally long memories
if you hurt one. The meat tastes terrible, not worth killing. Bamahou
legends are full of dogwalker stories."
As they walked along, three of the big dogwalkers paced them, ten or
fifty meters to the side in the sagebrush and snow. Medium-sized
dogwalkers, which Melissa called tugatug, also paced or followed the two
humans. There was an ever-shifting count of tugatug. Some would drop out,
going off to whatever business these monsters had. Others would pop up in
the sagebrush and sometimes follow along.
The trail descended into a shallow gulch. There was a stream down there.
Cattails. Trees. Firewood.
Jas activated an improved gray pylon.
Red indicator lights.
"Take a break?" she asked Melissa.
"Sure."
Jas broke a hole in the ice with her sword. Melissa pulled up some
driftwood and sat on it. Jas used a bit of mana to mojo the fishing lure.
Melissa fished while Jas gathered deadwood and made a hasty shelter to
keep the wind out. Jas violated dragon-country rules, building the
shelter just a few paces from the cookfire. She didn't want to leave
Melissa unattended.
There wasn't enough snow for a proper snow shelter. But she could bank it
up around the shelter.
She watched Melissa hand a fish to a waiting dogwalker. As that dogwalker
walked away, others lined up, tall to small.
"Save some for us," Jas said. She broke ice and dug in the freezing mud
for cattail roots.
"Plenty of fish," Melissa said.
"I hope so."
Jas washed her hat and then used it to make lake salt.
Some of these trees were evergreens. Jas cut low-hanging branches to form
a bed. She cut more to act as a blanket. It would be scratchy, but maybe
she could magic away the irritation.
She cut trees and retrieved the inner bark as Badoesa had taught. "I hope
these are the right trees." If they were the wrong trees, they'd end up
sick. Or dead.
Jas packed the salt into a squarish patty. She gutted fish. She stuffed
them with pine bark. She started a fire. When it had burned down to
coals, she put the fish and cattail roots directly on the coals. She
turned the food over from time to time, burning her fingers in the
process.
She almost caught her hair on fire.
Melissa asked, "When did you learn to cook?"
Jas smiled. One of the large dogwalkers stole her brick of salt and ran
off.
"Hey!" Jas grumbled. "Bah. I need your hat again."
"I just dried it," Melissa said.
"Gotta make more salt. Thieving monsters." She fed one of the fish to a
waiting tugatong. It dropped the hot fish in the snow. Then it picked it
up again and scampered off.
"Too many legs," Jas said.
They ate fish and roots and the inner bark of a pine tree. Jas flavored
it with sagebrush and lake salt. She made pine needle tea in the bottom
of her quiver, filling it partway with creek water and minced pine
needles. She dropped hot rocks from the fire in the water as she'd seen
Badoesa do.
Dirt, ashes, pine flavor. Not yum. But it was warm. And it had Vitamin C.
Jas turned the quiver inside out and rinsed it in the creek. Then she
filled it with arrows again. She had Missy lay on the bed of evergreen
branches and covered Missy with more greenery. Then Jas laid beside her,
spooning. She covered herself with as many branches as she could manage.
She watched the sun set and the sky grow dark.
A bright moon. At least there was that. If the local equivalent of wolves
came down for a sniff, she could....
She fell asleep.
She woke some time in the night. Sore from sleeping on evergreen
branches, but warm. Too warm.
Heavy weight, all around her. Like a blanket.
Something licked her nose. Something was breathing on her face. It wasn't
Missy because Missy was behind her.
Something with feathers. It licked her nose again. Like a snake tasting
its food.
Or a big lizard.
Jas felt her heart trip-hammer in panic. She reached for her sword.
She couldn't reach it quickly. She tried. Other warm bodies pinned her
arm and blocked access to the scabbard. Leathery. Poofy. Too many legs.
She was covered in harvestmen babies. Spiders, essentially. They varied
in size, from the size of her purse, up to the size of her rucksack. The
feathered lizards were the size of alligators.
Jas nearly peed herself.
She didn't get any more sleep that night.
The next morning, Jas rose slowly from her bed, avoiding actually
touching any spidery things as much as possible. She had to pee, was fit
to burst. She rose up into the cold. She renewed the spell that would
keep her warm at the cost of burning mana and calories. She stepped over
one of the feathery lizards. It wriggled in, huddling up against Melissa
for warmth.
The harvestmen settled back onto the bed of evergreen boughs.
Jas was covered head to foot with welts. She hoped they weren't spider
bites. Or fleas. She scratched her hair, thinking about that.
She needed a shower. A hot bath. She stunk like dead things. She thought
back at the dragon's offer of a bath and sighed.
Pee. Jas wandered a few steps from the shelter. Cold!
As she squatted, her bowels let loose. She'd eaten well at the feast, and
every bit of that, plus most of last night's meal, came out in a watery
gush.
It smelled evil.
First bit of diarrhea she'd had on this trip. She wondered at that. Her
gut flora produced mana now. Maybe it regulated her bowels.
The ground was frozen. She couldn't dig it up, even with a magical sword.
So she covered her waste with snow.
She broke ice by the stream and washed her behind. Then she washed her
hands. She went to pull that box of laundry detergent from her pack but
there was a baby tugatong sitting on it.
Jas woke Melissa. "Don't freak," she said.
Melissa woke up with a start. She went rigid when she saw feathers.
"Move slowly. They'll let you out if you're gentle."
"Eeeee." Melissa pushed away harvestmen and branches. "I pissed myself."
"Be happy you didn't drop chocolate." Jas helped Melissa to her feet. She
renewed Melissa's heat spell, too.
One of the lizards followed Melissa out of the nest. It found Jas's waste
and ate it.
Jas groaned. "That thing licked my nose." She rubbed her nose to clean
it. "I want to go home." Jas dumped the tugatong off her pack. It looked
like a partly deflated football with eyes. Too many eyes. The tugatong
huddled with the others in the shelter.
Jas activated a pylon. Earth Prime, red. Oz, red with flickers of yellow,
but there was no going back there. She checked the coordinates around
both branes. She dialed until she found green.
That was so far from where she wanted to be. Much farther than this
brane.
"Fish," she told Melissa. "We need calories. I'm going to scrape tree
bark and hunt for cattails." She tried to hand Melissa her bow.
"I have a shotgun," Melissa said. "Two shells left."
"Okay."
When she came back, Melissa had rekindled the fire and had an amazingly
large bed of coals. It was probably a normal campfire for her, but after
spending weeks with Badoesa and her tiny cook fires, Jas saw it as
wasteful.
Warm, though.
Melissa said, "Did you change clothes?"
"Camouflage. Smart fabric. The clothes...." Jas stopped. Her vest was
larger. She could almost wrap it around her whole chest now. Her skirt
was longer. Even her panties - more like boy shorts than a tanga. Puffy,
too. Warmer.
"The clothes are alive," she said.
Melissa nodded. "Testify."
"They're self-cleaning and self-repairing," Jas said. "Apparently they
adapt for winter."
"What do they eat?"
"I don't know. Dead skin and body hair? I hope I don't have to feed them.
Do they take a shit? Do they pee?"
"That would explain the smell." Melissa grimaced.
"Thanks."
A dogwalker loomed. It was the same dogwalker that had stolen her salt.
Jas glanced at her pack. The lake salt was still in one of the pockets.
She could see the bulge.
The dogwalker was carrying a ... something fuzzy and kicking. Whatever it
was had four legs and a nose. Strange-looking hooves. The dogwalker
placed it into Melissa's arms. "What is this?" she asked.
"Looks like a long-haired deer," Jas said. "An antelope?" Hoofed feet,
three toes each. That explained some of the sign.
The ungulate struggled and broke away from Melissa. It bolted across the
ice.
A lizard chased it down and killed it. The dogwalker strode over, took
the ungulate from the lizard, then ruffled the lizard's feathers. It
brought the now-dead mammal back to Melissa.
"Th-thank you," she said.
"I guess we eat it," Jas said. She gutted the mammal. She saved its heart
and the liver. She fed the rest of the entrails to baby harvestmen.
Watching the spiderforms eat was disconcerting. The lizards waited
patiently for the babies to finish, then they ate what was leftover.
Jas skinned the ungulate. She cut its head off and skewered the carcass.
Then she stuffed the body cavity with the heart, the liver, pine bark,
sage, salt, and cattail roots. She sewed it together with thread from her
sewing kit. Then she balanced the carcass over coals.
She went to work on the hide, scraping it to remove the fat. Then she
rubbed it with brains, as Badoesa had taught her.
"Why are you peeing on that?"
"Because I don't have acorns," Jas said. "Even if I had acorns, I don't
have a pot to boil them in."
"Eww. I'm not wearing that."
"It gets cold enough, you'll wear it."
Jas considered making a cup from the skull. She made tea in her arrow
quiver instead.
Today's tea tasted just as awful as yesterday's.
They started walking again by mid-morning. The day turned warm and still.
Frozen mud turned into mud. Melissa's paper slippers disintegrated.
Jas cut some of her wooly antelope skin and wrapped Melissa's feet.
Melissa refused to wear the rest of the skin, so Jas draped it over her
own shoulders.
At least she wasn't draining mana as quickly today.
The wooly hide stuck to Jas's vest. She couldn't separate them. After a
while, she gave up trying.
They found the large animals that made the game trail. They were larger
than bison. They had odd-looking horns. The dogwalkers avoided them,
climbing up a side trail and onto the plains west of the stream. Jas
followed.
Jas couldn't tell, looking at the big browsers, whether they were mammals
or dinos. That could be feathers or hair. It was hard to tell at this
distance.
They dropped down into the gulch after walking past the herd. On the way
down, Jas cut trees, collecting the inner bark and pine needles. She cut
several trees, trying to avoid damaging any one tree enough to kill it.
Jas checked her pylon every hour, or so. Earth Prime remained red. She
got some flickers of yellow on nearby worlds.
At noon, Jas stopped to take a shit. More diarrhea. A lizard ate it
almost as soon as it hit the mud. While she washed her butt, Jas checked
her mana.
Green mana was almost depleted. Red mana was low, too. Odd, because her
spells used gray mana.
The diarrhea? Some of the mana was produced by gut bacteria. Jas checked
the lizard.
Brimming with all three kinds of mana.
There were no other sources of mana in this area. Just herself, Melissa,
and a single shit-eating feathered dragon. Jas made a small cookfire. She
heated rocks and made tea. She expressed milk into the tea. Her breasts
had been aching all day. This relieved pressure.
"Drink this," she said to Melissa.
"Why?"
"It's calories and vitamin C. It's warm. It's also full of nanites. I
need you to manufacture gray mana."
Melissa eyed the tea doubtfully.
"Look, I'm using mana to keep us warm, but I'm using it faster than I
make it. Help me out."
Melissa drank the tea.
They made it to a river valley in three days. They slept in a dogpile of
monsters each night. Jas traded bricks of lake salt for small game. She
accumulated three furry hides. Each day she peed on them and worked ashes
onto one side of each hide. Melissa relented. She wore one of the smelly
hides. Which was good, because every time Jas wrapped herself with one of
the hides, her clothes ate it.
Jas had sleeves and a hood now. The beginnings of leggings. A wrap-around
skirt. A living bra now - the clothes had eaten the bra Icky bought her.
She gave the jacket to Melissa, and leggings. She kept the skirt, the arm
gloves and bra, and the cap.
As they entered the river valley, the dogwalkers departed.
Jas prepared a meal there. She made another brick of salt. She sharpened
Melissa's kitchen knife. As they ate, Jas checked her pylon again. She
found a green hop, about halfway between here and Earth Prime. "Ready to
leave this world?" Jas asked.
Melissa nodded.
"Ready your weapon. I never know what we're stepping into."
It was another Hive world. At least this one didn't attack immediately.
Not all the plants were mobile. Some of them were just plants. She saw
animals in the distance. They didn't look like bugs. Perhaps the Hive
coexisted with some forms of life.
The yummy ones, at any rate. Or useful. She saw a songbird get captured
by a tree.
Jas shuddered. She saw a city off in the distance. It looked organic.
Farmland. Roads with culverts. Melissa stood watch while Jas hunted for
another hop in the branes closer to Earth Prime than this one.
She found three. Jas put her grey pylon aside. She tied depleted pylons
to little rafts she made with driftwood. She activated a green and a red
pylon and sent them each floating downstream on separate rafts.
The pylons would collect mana. With luck, they would attract trackers
from Red and Green worlds - at a location far from here.
Jas opened a rip to the nearest brane in bulk space. They stepped into
snowy forest.
She retrieved her pylon and checked it. It still had thirty percent
charge. Two hops, perhaps enough charge for a third hop. Jas smiled.
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