Tales of
Erogenia
Episode 1: The Snow
Princess
Epilogue
Zenaria swept the furs aside
and ignoring the cold and her nudity stepped across to the
rough planking and opened the
shutters. It was still dark,
but already she could hear the familiar sounds of the stockade
stirring. She had been back only
a week and sometimes it seemed as if she had never
left. But some things had
changed. One was the attitude
toward her of the other warriors in the
village. Where
before she had been looked upon as a brash and foolish young woman, now she
was accepted as one of them.
Several of the men had already proposed sexual liaisons with them,
at least until they learned her condition.
Tren had given her one final
gift. She ran her hand across
her belly sensing the gentle swell of early
pregnancy. She wondered whether
the child would be a boy or a girl.
She really didn’t care, but now she had one more reason to find
Tren again. He had a right to
know that he was the father of a barbarian
warrior.
Her eyes sought out the
place where she and Garrod had duelled.
She had thought his betrayal unfinished business, but she had discovered
that Garrod was no longer a factor in anyone’s
life. A hunting party had come
across what was left of his body.
Apparently he had been set upon by Urtts and dismembered and
eaten. Out of respect for his
family Zenaria had kept his treachery to
herself. What was past was past
and revealing Garrod’s deceit would have gained her
nothing.
She was home now and in
a few months she would be a mother and would also celebrate her eighteenth
summer. Already her mother was
integrating her into the leadership of the tribe, saddling her with minor
duties in preparation for the time she would become
queen. Zenaria did as her mother
asked, but she knew that it would be many years before she became queen if
it ever happened at all. Cirilia
was not yet out of her thirties and still more than energetic, if the number
of lovers she currently had was any
indication. And Zenaria had plans
of her own. Her adventures had
given her a small taste of the world, but it had only whetted her
appetite. Her unborn child came
first, but children in Snow Leopard society were looked upon as belonging
to more than the mother or the father, if the father could be
found. With some rather active
young women it was difficult to tell.
Once the child was weaned
he or she would became the responsibility of the
tribe. There would be no lack
of young girls and older women willing to take over the raising of the
infant. The custom was so strongly
followed that Zenaria had not even realized Cirilia was her mother until
she was three years old, and she regarded several other women with the same
affection normally reserved for a loving
parent.
It left Zenaria free to
choose. She could remain the
dutiful mother or assume some other
career. Whatever path she chose
no one would fault her. She closed
the shutters and climbed back under the
furs. “Tren,” she murmured,
“you’re not rid of me yet.”
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