Mira is flicker-dashing across the sand fast enough to leave a wake, when she sees the cookfire and slows down to catch her breath. And waits for her regeneration to take care of her sore muscles.

Are those people? Those look like people.

This is not a situation where avoiding people is the correct instinct, she scolds herself.

Mira approaches at a nice, nonthreatening stroll. She is a five-foot-nothing beauty with short black hair and a tight, supple body packed with as much in the way of sexy buxom curves as will fit on her frame without spoiling her agile build. She appears in a reddish enchanted cloak with the hood down, and under it she's dressed in the local 'bikini mage' style. She is carrying a backpack stuffed full and bulging at the seams.

The twiggy girl spots her first, and waves a cheery greeting; the others are at first too busy to follow suit, but after a few seconds when the big man is done with his laughing fit, he follows the girl's line of sight and turns and stands up and waves as well.

"Hey, stranger!" he calls out, in a deep friendly voice that carries very well across the distance. "We've room for one more, if you're feeling friendly!"

The woman serving the meal twists around to squint across the sands until she spots the stranger. "I'll warn you ahead of time," she calls, in a voice much fainter than her friend's but still audible as Mira approaches, "dinner's going to taste like dirt!"

The big man laughs and shakes his head and sits back down, with one more beckoning wave to Mira.

Well, that seems promising as greetings go.

Mira briefly weighs up sharing her picnic basket vs. saving it for herself vs. the probability that civilization is near and she has a backpack full of money with which to buy new food.

Well, she'll share if they ask.

"I've got my own," she softly responds. "But thanks."

She takes off her cloak and drapes it over a rock that seems intended as a place to sit, then sits on it, setting her backpack down between her legs. She isn't sure what to say, but she tries to make friendly eye-contact with each of them as she opens up her picnic basket and sets it on top of her pack, in case any of them have something to say.

This lands her next to the woman who warned her about the meal.

"What's your name?" she asks, passing the last couple of bowls around the fire and kicking the lanky man's boot to wake him up so he'll take his. "I'm Ekeshi."

"Eh? What?" says the lanky man, stirring groggily. "Right. Dinner. Yes." He takes off his hat, revealing a face as long and narrow as the rest of him, and accepts his bowl.

"I'm Mira," she introduces herself with a casual smile.

Mira hesitates for a moment over her basket, remembers she's magically clean now, and rips a piece of meat off with her fingers. It's cold, but fresh and delicious.

"Hey, um. Is this Vynait, yet? I'm sure I was headed in the right direction but I'm not sure how far I've gotten."

"Thereabouts, thereabouts," says Ekeshi.

"If you want the capital you've a ways to go," the twiggy girl says with an animated gesture expressing just how much of a ways that might be. "Hi! I'm Tafi!"

"We're in the outskirts," rumbles the big man. "I'm Aza."

"Outskirts of the outskirts, more like," Tafi objects. "Sure, if you just want to do a little dance and say 'I'm in Vynait!'," (she does a little dance on her rock-seat, demonstratively) "you could argue it, but if you want to see an actual settlement it's at least a couple days by camel. Not that anyone here has a camel, but if we did, it'd be a couple days."

Mira starts to do some quick math in her head, loses the numbers halfway through, and just rounds. She's maybe twenty times faster than a camel? So for her a couple of hours, then. She could make it by nightfall. Maybe. Unless the camels here are faster than she's imagining. That's entirely possible.

Mira does a little dance, wryly deadpan. "Yay, I'm in Vynait."

More picnic food. Nom.

Sitting among these people, these friendly strangers, in nothing but a cosplay bikini (which is actually at lewd living shapeshifting slime)...

She feels more comfortable, more open, more willing to draw attention to herself, than she ever has in her life. It's a glorious feeling, that her body actually reflects who she is and how she wants to be seen. That what is being seen when other people look at her is her and not the prison her mind happens to live in. If she's not careful she's going to catch herself preening when they look at her.

"So what's around here?" Mira asks, upbeat. "Any places you recommend?"

"Well," says Ekeshi, gesturing at the water beyond the campfire, "we've found what might be the nastiest-tasting oasis in the whole southern Sands, which could qualify as a tourist attraction if you think about it."

"That's why our dinner tastes like dirt," Aza adds helpfully. "We always make something with the water we find at an oasis first thing, it's our little tradition."

"And this one's got some sort of mineral situation going on," says the stocky woman with the dented cup, "and it is just not nice."

"Maybe we can market it as healthful," the lanky man says with slightly ironic optimism. "You know, like those hot springs the mountain folk are always going on about. Ah, I'm Ralin. It's lovely to meet you, miss."

"And a lovely miss, too," the woman next to him says under her breath, but she flashes a very genuine smile across the campfire. "Orss."

Mira blushes at being called lovely. Wow. That hit harder than she would've thought. She's not used to hearing that and not immediately disbelieving it, but it's true, now, so.

"Hi," Mira says again.

Uh. That was distracting, what had everyone else said? Marketing scam. Mineral solution. Dinner made with oasis water. They found it. Right.

Chew chew.

"Oh!" Mira suddenly blurts. "I have a..." She sets her basket aside and throws the flap of her backpack open, exposing its contents. The maps and stuff are on top, and under that is her money, and under that is... a cup! A shiny golden cup that glows with magic to anyone who can sense that kind of thing. "I have one of these! Wanna see if it works on the mineral thing?"

A circle of impressed eyebrow-lifts greets her golden cup. Tafi's go highest.*

"Sure, let's see," says Ekeshi. "One of those water-cleaner cups, you mean? Go on and try it, I'm curious now."

*(At least by relative elevation. By absolute elevation the winner is of course Aza.)

Mira will pass the Chalice to whoever is closest to the water, feeling only a slight twinge at letting it out of her hands, well after she's already handed it over.

It's not like it's an electronic device containing her only lifeline to the outside world and loads of access to her digital identity or anything.

That would be Tafi, who bounces up with the cup in hand and heads down to the water to dip it.

"Pure as the driven snow!" she pronounces after taking a sip. "Why do they say that, anyway? What drives the snow? Tiny snow camels?"

Orss snorts. "Wind, I think," she says.

Tafi returns to the campfire and hands Mira back her cup, now mostly full of water. She's about to sit down when Orss leans across the fire, dented tin cup in hand. "Here, so our new friend can make the comparison."

"Oh, good thinking!" Tafi bounces back to the oasis and dips the tin cup, rather more shallowly, then returns to Mira and hands her that one too.

Mira makes a face, but takes the tin cup like a good sport, and then takes the tiniest possible sip.

Euagh. That's worse than tap water.

She spits it out with a soft, "Bleh."

Tafi nods wisely. "Good thing you brought your own dinner."

"Ours is edible," says Ralin.

"Ralin, I have seen you pick up a lizard off a rock—"

"That was one time," he protests, laughing.

"You bit it in half like a snack cake!" She mimes the incident very dramatically. "It was memorable!"

"Cronch," says Aza, giggling.

Ralin folds his long arms and glowers, but he can't quite keep the smile off his face; it keeps sneaking in around the edges.

Mira giggles at this, ducking behind her next bite of food a little.

Huh. She's... not thirsty. It's been hours, and she feels... fine. Her throat feels, um, smooth and well-lubricated, and her head feels light as a feather. That's... neat. She sets the Chalice back out so anyone who is thirsty can use it.

"So, um. You mentioned the capitol city? I've never been there."

"It's great!" says Tafi enthusiastically. "It's huge and it's so pretty and there's always something to do and you never have to cook if you don't want to because so many places sell good food!"

"Too busy," Orss opines. "And the noise, by the gods, I don't know how you people stand it. I'll take a nice quiet oasis any day, thanks, even if the water tastes like if rocks could piss."

Mira nods at this and continues eating. She feels the urge to squirm, a slowly coiling tension in her body, far more noticeable now that she isn't sprinting through the dunes. It doesn't show on her face, but her eyes are starting to wander over her dining companions, drawn inexorably to rake their figures, if she lets herself look at all.

It's the... openess... of being seen in a body that suits who she is on the inside, she theorizes. That's why her slick, squishy pussy is softly throbbing and feeling oh so insistently empty. That's why her breasts are tingling with skin-hunger and her nipples are jutting into the slime-flesh inside her bikini top, feeling hot and needy. Because, for the first time in her life, her body is in line with what she desires to offer others, and with the desires in others that she wants to fulfill. As an explanation it feels incomplete, but she isn't sure why; it would suffice to explain why she's so horny.

Having an explanation doesn't make being seen as she is for the first time any less of a turn on, though.

"Is there any more you can tell me about it?"

Mira's voice is a little rough, but she succeeds in maintaining a casual tone. However, this is also the moment when her pupils finish morphing into heart shapes, which she has no way of noticing herself.

Orss nudges Ralin's ribs with a quiet smile, and Ralin double-takes slightly and then—is he blushing? He may be blushing.

He clears his throat. "Ah, my favourite part of the big city is the library, personally. Books from all over the world. Well, not all over, but certainly a lot of places."

What is with that weird look that is alarming---is that a blush? Why oh no did she do something.

Also, wow, a major Library in a world without internet. That's a thing. "I haven't been to a library in such a long time. That sounds amazing."

Nibble nom.

"What, um, about you guys? Where're you headed?"

"Farther out, most likely," says Orss.

"We're explorers, of a sort," Aza explains. "Mapping out the best oases."

"And the worst ones!" chirps Tafi.

"Ekeshi knows an old trick for making oasis jars," says Ralin, still a little shy. "And they taste different depending where you make them, so..."

"I'll make one here just in case it sells as a novelty," says Ekeshi. "But it likely won't. We can keep it in the back of the carriage to laugh over."

Mira giggles obligingly at that.

Why does it feel like they know, Mira isn't good at reading people-

Oh. That's not true anymore, is it. Her head is full of new knowledge and skills, including... And yeah. She can't tell how they know, but, somehow, they've noticed. They know. That she's turned on and full of horny feelings.

(Mira is still new to this experience, and it doesn't quite occur to her that she, herself, can do anything about this.)

The five friends finish eating their dinners. Aza eats what's left at the bottom of the pot, then looks down into it and sighs.

"I do not want to wash this in the bad water, we'll be tasting it for weeks," he says. "...Mira? Could I borrow your cup, to rinse out our dishes with?"

"Sure!"

She picks up the Chalice and hands it off.

Mira is done eating too, with plenty of left over food in her picnic basket, but she hesitates to put it away because having food in front of her is a Default Social Activity and she'll feel awkward just sitting there without a Default Place to put her attention.

No, if she lets herself do that she's going to eat the entire rest of the food in her basket and make herself sick, and she is way too horny to want to have to deal with that. She closes up the basket and puts it in her backpack.

Aza gathers up dirty dishes, and Tafi helps out by bringing the cup to pour water into them with, and Orss grins and nudges Ralin, who coughs.

"U-um," says Ralin, definitely blushing now. "So. Well. Er. ...sorry, I am trying my very hardest but I am terrible at talking to pretty girls."

Orss pats him comfortingly on the arm. Leaning toward Mira, she says in a theatrical facsimile of a conspiratorial whisper, "He's trying to say he's interested. In sex. With you."

Ralin hides his face in his hands and splutter-giggles.

"...really?" It comes out shyly hopeful, even though she knows she's beautiful, desirable and fuckable, now.

It's not like no one's ever asked to have sex with her, before. Both her former body, and her online presentation of her true self, have gotten interest. But separately. (Or at least, in her brain there's always a hard separation even where she was aware there didn't strictly need to be; it's just something her brain does.) Ralin doesn't have a clue about the latter, but being desired for a body that actually fits her somehow feels more like the latter than the former, which is objectively idiotic but subjectively delightful and in any case that separating line is gone.

Just, say yes. This doesn't need to be complicated. Just. Say. Yes.

"That's nice."

Goddamnit.

Ralin meeps.

"There's two of them now," says Orss, raising her eyes to the sky. "Ain't that a sight."

"It's all right to be shy, dear," says Ekeshi. "Just tell me: would you rather work up to it slowly, jump in all at once, or pretend like none of this ever happened and go back to chatting?"

Mira grabs her knees and wiggles them anxiously, leaning forward, back straight.

"It's not like that, I just didn't have a thing I usually say 'cause it's been a while since I've been around people and didn't have time to put words in places before my mouth moved and what I meant to say was, um: I like that he wants to have sex with me because it's nifty when someone wants something sexual that I can give to them, so like, he can totally jump in all at once if he wants to because that sounds appealing actually?"

Why is she like this. Why must her urge to be precise override everything else to the point of getting in its own way.

"Um, I mean, sure, Ralin. Sex. Lets."

"Two of 'em," Orss mutters, an affectionate smile tugging at her lips.

Ralin, fidgeting with the hem of his shirt and blushing, manages to say, "I like tying girls up, do you like to be tied up?"

"I'm... not opposed," Mira mumbles, feeling the heat in her face get worse.

The answer would usually be, yes, but I don't trust you enough to actually do it.

But she, well, Mira can think of at least three ways to use her new powers to escape being tied up, if it comes to that. Also, a lot of the reasons she might need to escape being tied up aren't a concern anymore. She has a sense of all the supernatural abilities of her new body and she just has far fewer things to worry about.

"Where do you want to, um, start?"

Mira is tempted to just tell her bonded slime to shift back into it's 'nothing but a layer of lube' form and spread her legs right in front of all five of them, but she's not going to do it unprompted.

Fidget fidget. "I, um..." fidget, blush. "CanItieyourhandsbehindyourbackandeatyouout?"

(Ekeshi silently gets up and retrieves a heavy round jar from the carriage, then heads for the water with it, presumably to do magic. She smiles at the two of them along the way.)

Mira giggles and scoots forward. "Yeah, alright. Um, right here? Or... elsewhere. I don't mind either way."

She... isn't sure what to ask her slime suit to do. She can't exactly not reveal what it is, when she's pretty sure she literally can't take it off, and will have to have it shapeshift out of the way instead. Probably it isn't wise to ignore this problem, but.

A blushing Ralin darts into the carriage and emerges with a short coil of rope and a rug. The rug looks like it was very pretty once and has seen a lot of use since then, but it's big and thick and soft and reasonably clean and looks very inviting when spread out on a bare patch of sand.

Their only remaining audience member is Orss and she seems to be busy checking over the carriage at the moment, but she offers no objection to the implicit plan where they have sex basically right in front of her.

Mira doesn't want to get in anyone's way, but if anyone wants to be a voyeur at her, that just makes the experience feel hotter, and somewhat counterintuitively, safer.

She hops over to the inviting rug and plops down on her knees on the soft material, giving Ralin a nervous but excited smile.

Ralin grins shyly at her.

As awkward and uncertain as he is about every other aspect of this situation, he's very quick with his hands when it comes to actually tying her up. The rope coils several times around each wrist, snug and secure.

"There," he says, satisfied. "Comfortable?"

Mira squirms a little against the ropes, feeling the bindings that restrain her. A small wave of heated excitement rushes through her at the feeling, anticipatory skin-hunger surging along the areas of her exposed skin that her bound arms can no longer defend. A part of her is disappointed that there isn't more, that her wrists are all that's bound.

"Yeah," Mira reports with a blush.

"Oh good." He ducks his head and smiles, and then, a little hesitantly, puts his hands on Mira's shoulders and runs them down over her chest.

Mira arches into the touch as the sensation crawls through her aroused body, making no attempt to hold in the needy, "Uuhnn," that she breathes out.

Her breast is soft and supple, but the bikini fabric is... oddly thick? And the texture is all wrong for cloth, way too smooth and slick, and the golden fringe around the edges is translucent and squishy in a way nothing made of cloth is. And it doesn't slide. It stays stuck to her breast like its glued there. He can still feel her rock-hard nipple through it, though.

If he isn't too distracted to notice, a magical crest pattern is glowing a very faint pink on the front of Mira's bikini bottoms, almost invisible on the pink not-fabric.

"...is that..." He gets distracted from groping Mira (despite the delightfulness of groping Mira) by a sudden need to examine her suspiciously fleshy bikini. This random traveler they met in the desert can't really have Living Clothes, right? (She totally can.)

Ooh, that is a magical crest pattern! He squints, trying to trace the lines with his eyes, then trying to trace the lines with his fingers when his eyes aren't up to the task, even though his odds of recognizing the pattern even if he could see it clearly are not high.

It isn't a standard pattern, but a lay expert in magical tattoos will probably recognize the crests for Pleasure, Slut, Resonance, and Purity composited together. With Purity currently slightly more visible than the rest. (The other crests are inactive, with nothing having triggered them yet.)

"Is what?" Mira glances down. "Oh, um."

Fuck it. Fuck it entirely.

Mira tries to press the idea of shifting back to 'layer of lube' at her bonded slime. There's a resistance, a reluctance... Oh. She tries a different idea. Less resistance, but...

"Um, can you close your eyes? Just for a second? It's shy."

"Of course!" He covers his eyes with his hands to demonstrate to her clothes that he isn't peeking.

He hears her moan helplessly, then, "Okay."

When he opens his eyes, he'll see that the bikini itself has vanished, leaving Mira's breasts and crotch completely exposed. Instead, her golden anklets have grown considerably, now covering her from ankle to mid-thigh in what might as well be dark green body-paint, with a golden edge where slime transitions to skin. Though her skin is shiny, up her inner thighs and across her mons, where it now appears the crest is glowing faintly on bare but lubricated skin. She's aroused enough that it's impossible to tell what is slime and what is her own wetness.

"So, um, yeah."

"Oh my," says Ralin, blushing. He needs to take a moment, and adjust his trousers a little, but then he remembers what he was doing and can get back to it. What he was doing: groping Mira's breasts! It's a pretty excellent activity.

Mira moans.

Wriggling tendrils of pleasure shoot through her breasts and into the rest of her body, the edges of her vision fuzzing as she rides the sensation and revels in it.

Something's wet, under his hands, too. Something that to normal sight just looks like extra-sparkly clear lubrication, but that to magical sight would be blazing brilliant white. Her nipples are leaking a little with every squeeze.

(Over by the carriage, Orss goes 'huh'. Ralin does not even slightly notice.)

He keeps squeezing, gaining confidence gradually as Mira continues to so obviously enjoy herself. His touch wanders up and down her body, exploring the landscape of her skin with careful attention to both how it feels to touch and what noises she makes as a result.

And, once he has run his hands over her breasts and stomach and thighs and up her hips and the sides of her ribs and reached behind her to softly stroke the curve of her spine, he eventually wanders back around to see what treasure there is to find between her legs.

She likes it when he grips her---erogenous zones are erogenous obviously, but just having the full of his hand(s) firmly on her skin anywhere, she likes a lot. From the brightness of the Purity tattoo, she probably has a groping fetish. (It's not that bright, but it is any bright.)

The moment he starts paying any real attention to her (succulent, pristine, gorgeously formed, pulsatingly aroused, hot and slick, hungry-for-penetration) pussy, she shudders through an orgasm. The Cascade crest flares bright on her mons and she lets out a gasping cry as it forces the orgasm to double on itself, crashing through her a second time, more intense than the first. Her pussy spasms and quivers, visibly convulsing and pulsating as her orgasm stretches out for multiple minutes and her fluids drip onto the rug.

He spends those multiple minutes happily groping her body, there and elsewhere. As it happens, he also likes having his hands on her body even in non-erogenous locations, though the erogenous locations are very nice too and there's a particular kind of enjoyment in stroking and squeezing her sensitive breasts while her untouched pussy continues to helplessly spasm. On the other hand there's definitely also something to be said for sliding his fingers inside so he can feel her clench on them. There's just so many good options here! He's delighted to have the time to try so many of them!

He doesn't eat her out yet, though, because of... Reasons. There's reasons. Probably she won't be done after this one, anyway, and even if she is, he's had a pretty great time with her already.

Is he sure he isn't going to eat her out now? Or even just fuck her?

Because as he's groping her and she's cumming she loses her balance a little (okay, so it's half deliberate, it feels like she should fall over and is cheating at staying upright with her new superpowers) and flops back onto the rug.

Her legs splay wide, showing off her limberness as she curls her pulsating pussy upward to keep her hips from resting directly on her bound hands. It's not entirely an accident, when the fading daylight mixes with the light of the campfire just so and falls across her glistening vulva and swollen folds for maximum possible effect, but it doesn't register consciously that she's tapping into new instincts, new skills. Her only thought is, have more of my pussy, please!

And yes, as her orgasm tapers off, she doesn't appear any less aroused or any less eager for more.

He is very sure he isn't going to eat her out before she's done! And definitely not going to fuck her any sooner than that! Because of the reasons!

When she falls/lies back, he happily takes advantage of the new position to run his hands over more parts of her body, such as her lovely butt, and, okay, it is undeniably tempting to wrap his hands around her hips and bury his face between her legs, but he still waits. Because of the reasons.

He waits, and runs his hands over her some more, and touches her and fingers her some more, and then, once she's definitely tapering off and not just in a slight lull, he keeps his fingers inside her until the spasms slow to a halt...

And then wraps his hands around her hips and buries his face between her legs.

It's been said that he's pretty good with his tongue, but as hair-trigger as she was the first time, this may not end up mattering much. On the other hand, maybe it'll mean that this time is even better.

This time is even better.

As fun as the foreplay was, there is a depth of craving in Mira that he has not yet begun to explore, a deep well of lust that pours out of her with every lick, every thrust. Her moans remain soft, sometimes ripped out of her with a flare of the Pleasure crest when they get too soft, which she's thankful for, because every twitch and wriggle of her body screams for more yes more yes more!

She was 'insatiable' before, but now her new body literally doesn't have a limit on how many orgasm it can have, and there is a vast gulf between cumming a few times and cumming enough.

...there is only so much sex that the unenhanced human body can accomplish at once, but he makes a solid effort to ensure that she is at least somewhere on the road to eventual satisfaction before he changes gears. Actually it's entirely possible he spends way too long heroically trying to satisfy her insatiable lusts with nothing but his mouth and hands, and should have given up several minutes earlier.

But regardless, he does eventually move on from eating her out to fucking her, lying on the rug and pulling her on top of him with his clothes haphazardly tugged out of the way.

Mira's face is slack and utterly discomposed even before she sinks down on Ralin's dick, but finally, finally, FINALLY having his cock slide into her pussy is the most glorious feeling in the history of the universe (ie: the last few hours). Her walls flutter as her guts clench and her crest tattoo flares pink just above her split vulva.

She wants his hands on her, she wants her hands on him, but her hands are tied and she can't get at his skin or yank his clothes more off than they already are and that's so hot even though she wishes he was naked too. All she can do is channel that urge and that frustration into bouncing harder on his cock, her whole body pumping up and down as her silky-slick canal clenches on and milks his girth.

There's something supernatural about her pussy, too. (More than one thing, but who's counting.) Her insides feel slicker than slick. It isn't just that pleasure is overwhelming mild discomfort as she bounces. There is no mild discomfort. Her flesh glides up and down the length of his shaft with no friction even when her orgasms have her clenching so tightly. And finally, when he can't hold back anymore and fills her full of cum... his cock doesn't even slightly go soft, or feel oversensitive, or anything like that. It's as if any bit of him that reaches beyond the gates of her vulva is immersed in a healing bath of unlimited endurance.

(Oh, don't worry, his hands are very much on her.)

So, from a certain perspective, he has achieved everything he set out to achieve and then some, and now is the time when he planned to stop doing things.

From another perspective, those plans were made according to expectations that have been thoroughly falsified, and he might as well adapt and improvise.

He pulls her close to him and holds her for a moment, enjoying the pleasantly relaxing feeling of having just had an orgasm. It's a really nice feeling.

Then he says, sort of half a suggestion and half a question, "I could tie you up again differently and we could do this all over again?"

Mira giggles. Her head bobbles, nodding and nodding again.

"I... really want to see what you come up with." She wiggles her wrists to indicate the ropes.

He smiles shyly and hugs her.

"Gonna misuse the tent stakes again?" says Orss, amused, from over by the carriage.

"If you don't mind," says Ralin, blushing.

"I'll get 'em."

Tent stakes appear, along with more rope. Orss has a hint of a fond smile about her as she helps Ralin get the stakes in the ground, four of them, such that when he unties Mira's wrists he can then tie her up again with one limb at each corner. She's got plenty of wiggle room in there, since after all it's so good when she wiggles, but not enough to reach any limb with any other.

"Comfortable?" he asks again, running his hands softly over her breasts and stomach.

Mira giggles. Assesses. Nods. (There's a moment of fear, quickly quashed: she didn't used to be able to lay flat on her back and be comfortable, but for her new body that's not a problem.)

Squirm. Honestly she was hoping for something more elaborate. This is objectively more restrictive than before, and that's making her skin tingle with hunger to be touched and making her pussy throb even more, but it's not that much more exciting. Mira doesn't have the heart to tell him that, though. He seems so eager. Probably she should lower her expectations. Ralin, after all, does not have a mental library from over half a terabyte of DeviceBondage porn in his head to compare his ropework against.

He does not at all have that! Instead he has one ordinary person's ordinary imagination, some experience, and some tent stakes. Fantastically elaborate setups are pretty unlikely to ensue.

If she wants to be touched she's in luck, though, because he plans to do a lot of touching. The change in position has a lot of effects on where and how it's most natural to touch her now, and he seems to be really enjoying exploring that difference.

Mira is really enjoying him exploring that difference too.

She's not going to stay hung up on Bondage Art Standards once he starts. Not at all.

And it isn't any more difficult to reduce her to a mess of orgasms than it was before.

This time he's much less structured about the divide between the groping stage and the oral sex stage, and the transition is more gradual and involves more roaming around her body with mouth and hands.

Once she starts having orgasms, at first he rides each one out and spends a minute groping her before moving on to the next, but the delays get shorter and shorter until he's pushing her to cum again as soon as she's done with the last one, and at some point he manages to get most of his clothes off and then starts fucking her while she's still in the middle of the latest in a long chain.

She writhes and moans and arches into his every touch like she's starving for it, and when he finally, finally gets naked and on top of her and starts fucking her once more, having his cock in her is satisfying like nothing else as her orgasms pound through her with every thrust, her pussy slickly gripping his cock, begging for cum.

Her arms and legs tug at the ropes constantly as she writhes and squirms under him, helpless moans torn from her throat by the flaring pink light at her crotch, and she revels in all of it.

It's very very good.

Good enough, in fact, to tempt him into going a second round after the first, and then a third, and at that point he really is starting to get too tired so he stretches out next to her on the rug and cuddles up.

Mira isn't really out of breath but she is sweating a bit and covered in fluids, at least until her living leg-sleeves soak a lot of it up. She presses herself against Ralin as best she can as they cuddle, tugging against the ropes in a way that is still thrilling.

"Okay," she says after a few moments. "Now I'm thirsty a bit."

She doesn't want to move. How can she get water to her mouth without either of them moving. Oh! Huh, would that work? Only one way to find out!

She pushes mana into her core, focuses carefully, and then incants, "Pretkenlo."

A ghostly blue-white apparition of a naked girl appears on the sand next to the rug. Concentrating, Mira carefully puppets it to sit upright on folded legs. Ohhhh, is that her face? She hasn't seen her new face. That's lovely. Okay, water. She has the apparition pick up her Chalice, carry it over to the water, fill it up, and carefully shuffle back over to her. It's a slow process, and a little water still spills, though the construct does seem to do some of the work for her, rather than making her point her mana-control at individual muscles. Once the construct reaches her, she can have her own ghostly puppet-twin lift her head and bring the Chalice to her lips to drink.

(It should at this point be noted that maintaining a full mobile clone of one's own body using Construct Magic for more than a couple of seconds requires a prodigiously above-average mana pool. Or a continuous incoming source of mana. Or a Soulstone Heart, like Mira has, that just spent the last while absorbing all the mana Mira's slime suit produced as it telepathically gorged itself on her copious orgasms.)

Mira gulps all the purified water down, then stops channeling her mana to let the apparition evaporate in a shower of blue-white sparkles. She nuzzles into Ralin with a satisfied hum.

...Ralin is rather torn between being gobsmacked and being too sleepy to be gobsmacked. He settles on cozy nuzzles. They seem like a good default.

It's very cozy.

She manages to wriggle around such that the tension of the ropes is holding her against him, making the cuddles more intense without making them more effortful. Mira is surprisingly comfortable.

But probably at some point they need to conclude the tied-up cuddles and clean up the ropes and the rug and stuff?

They really should. But, you see, Ralin is cozy.

...he yawns and buries his head against her shoulder for a moment and then says, "'kay, up."

A moment passes.

"Up," he says more insistently, and this time manages to disengage. "Gotta... untie you." He sort of paws at the nearest rope. Scowls grumpily. "'m not gonna have to cut the ropes again. We cann' afford to replace it alla time." But despite his determination, his sleepy fingers are too clumsy to make progress on the knots.

"...help," he says plaintively, flopping back down.

Orss, watching them with her arms folded leaning back against the carriage, shakes her head slowly. "I'm not so sure I should, is the thing."

"You jus' enjoy watching me be ridic'lous," mutters Ralin, sulkily, into Mira's shoulder. He's not looking at Orss and so can't see her thoughtful, guarded expression. "C'mon, help me let her out."

Orss does not reply.

A note of paranoia plays in the back of Mira's mind, but probably this is just some thing in how Ralin and Orss are with each other? Just because she's paranoid isn't reason to be rude or read ominousness into other people's social dynamics.

She does try to fumble for the knot with one of her hands. The rope is loose enough that she can sort twist her hand and grasp the knot, but once she gets her fingers on it she finds she just doesn't have the will do anything to the knot. Her fingers just refuse to try.

"Um, yeah, I think we need help," Mira admits sheepishly.

"Did you know that your milk is some kind of incredibly potent mana juice?" says Orss.

"Whaa?" says Ralin.

"I don't want to let her free, I want to lock her up and sell her. For more money than any of us has seen in one place in our lives."

Ralin instinctively wraps his arms around Mira and hugs her. "Nooo," he mumbles. "Be nice."

"I'm trying to think about our future here, Ralin! The oasis jar business is a good comfortable life but it doesn't offer much in the way of savings, you know that! Every time we've gotten a few gems to put by for retirement, it's been by taking slaves out here, isn't that so? What makes this one any different?"

"...I like her!"

Orss rolls her eyes and makes a contemptuous gesture indicating where she expects Ralin's liking for Mira is located, which is totally lost on him because he is still clinging to Mira like a sad sleepy limpet.

Clear Heart Milk, whispers a dream-memory.

Mira stares at Orss, it slowly sinking in that the woman is serious. Ralin seems still on-her-side-ish?

But she's not going to wait. Mira hyper-dodges to... her body just kinds of flops, as the attempt is stymied by a sudden reflexive flinch. Mira tries again to discorporate as she flickers out of the ropes... and again a reflexive flinch stops her.

What?

A surge of fear burns through her afterglow and she starts tugging on the ropes for real now, just trying to wrench one of the tent-stakes free as her mind races for an explanation for why her hyper-dodging isn't working.

Ralin sleepily lets go of her when she starts frantically struggling.

The tent stakes are pretty solid and not going to come up easily.

An enormous shadow displaces the last fading rays of the sun as Aza ambles over from the water to see what all the fuss is about. "Hey, what's the emergency?"

"I want to sell this girl as a slave and Ralin's getting sentimental," says Orss.

"Ah." Aza shakes his head. "You really shouldn't do that sort of thing, you know. Imagine what he'll say the next time you encourage him to flirt with a pretty girl." (Ralin nods vigorously.)

"The next pretty girl won't be worth nearly this much money!"

"...how much money are we talking?" says Aza, maybe a little intrigued.

"A lot, if we find the right buyer. Split five ways we'll still be halfway to retiring on it."

"Hmmm..." Now Aza is also looking speculatively at Mira. Ralin makes a disgruntled noise.

She can't get free, and Mira's not entirely sure she's actually trying to get free, since she's sure she can struggle harder than this, but even now the struggle is thrilling, making her pussy throb, and actually succeeding in getting free feels... blocked?

Mira growls at herself and switches to a different approach, incanting, "Pretlo!"

A simple geometric knife appears in her hand, and she slashes at the rope-

Reflex yanks her mana back at the last instant, the construct blade dissolving into sparkles before it can cut into the rope. Mira tries again. "Pretlo!" Again, she can't stop herself from holding back at the last instant, sparkles passing harmlessly through the rope.

Okay, she's actually really scared now. She's confused and alarmed about why she can't seem to stop sabotaging her own escape attempts, but takes it as a given for now that she can't and instead pays attention to what her captors are saying.

She thinks about attacking Orss and Aza with spells, but manages to think far enough ahead to consider that, for whatever mysterious reason, she needs them to untie her so making them less inclined to do that would be the opposite of helpful.

"What are we doing?" asks Tafi, following Aza toward the source of the excitement.

"Discussing whether to enslave this girl and sell her for an obscene amount of money," says Orss. "Ralin's against. Aza's undecided."

"Oh..." Tafi looks sympathetically at Mira, then at Ralin. "What an awkward situation."

"I really," says Ralin, struggling to enunciate clearly, "think we should just not try to enslave my dates. Aza's right, see if I ever let you encourage me again."

"Think of the money," says Orss. "You'll be thanking me in twenty years when we're all getting a little old for this."

"Gaaaaah," is Ralin's eloquent counterargument.

Think, Mira. Don't go passive. This is not the time. You still have some agency. Use it.

"Look, you want my magic milk, right? What if I just let you take a whole bunch of it for free and then you let me go?"

Even as she says it, she realizes that the source of a valuable thing is priceless compared to a mere stockpile of that thing, but if she can resolve this conflict by being accommodating then that's still her natural impulse: everybody gets something they want, everybody wins.

"Magic milk?" says Tafi.

"Magic milk," Orss confirms. "We don't have much of anywhere to put it, and it won't sell for nearly as much."

Tafi frowns. "...hey, I just had a crazy thought," she says, looking back over at the oasis where Ekeshi is finishing up whatever it is Ekeshi is doing with that jar.

"...that can't possibly work, can it?" says Orss.

"What can't?" says Aza, slower on the uptake.

"Well I just figure," says Tafi, "if magic milk is the problem here, maybe Ekeshi can figure out how to make an oasis jar of it, and then we can sell the jar instead of selling Mira, and everybody walks away happy."

Ralin perks up hopefully. Aza makes a doubtful noise.

"It'd take, like, a lot of milk," Tafi admits. "And I don't know if it'd work. But we could at least ask her to try?"

"...still probably worth less than the girl, but if it works..." says Orss, somewhat grudgingly.

"Oh! That's brilliant! I'm totally on board to help you make an Oasis Jar of Mira-Milk," Mira says eagerly. "I won't even blame you if it doesn't work."

Well, she might regret making that promise, if it in fact doesn't work. But it's such a clever an elegant positive-sum solution to this situation that she's instantly captivated and her disappointment in the possibility of failure momentarily overshadows the whole sold-into-slavery thing.

"If it does work I might stick around and let you make more than one, if you give me a cut?" Mira thinks-out-loud. "If it's really so valuable and it can be dispensed this way, just doing it once seems like a waste..."

Mira is probably getting ahead of herself here.

Tafi bounces on her toes, proudly. "Let's get some light out here so we can see what we're doing. And blankets for our captive. And I'll go bother Ekeshi about my crazy notions."

Orss pulls a couple of lanterns off the far side of the carriage and sets them up on poles next to Mira's rug. Aza ducks into the carriage for a moment and returns with a large comfortable blanket to drape over Mira. Tafi skips down to the water and has a conversation with Ekeshi that's not quite audible at this distance, though Ekeshi's incredulous tone of voice comes across just fine.

Concealed from sight by the blanket, her slime suit melts and spreads evenly over her body again, appearing as nothing more than a layer of lube, like someone dipped her in a pool of tentacle slime and then shook off the excess.

Mira's attention mostly settles on Ralin. While the immediate threat to Mira's future is on hold, she's kind of concerned-curious how he's relating to this turn of events.

"...'m really sorry," he sighs, listlessly starting to put his clothes back on. "Orss is... good to people she cares about and not really to anybody else. I hope Tafi's crazy trick works."

"It's not your fault," Mira says earnestly. "You kind of have a legitimate grievance, here. But like. Also. Um. If this doesn't work, you can at least still comfort me. With your dick. And... maybe try to get me sold to someone kind, when the time comes?" Wibble.

...he blinks at her in confusion. "You'd want me to...?" Blush. "Really? Even after—?" A vague encompassing gesture at The Whole Situation.

"Well, yes," Mira says, sounding vulnerable. "I'm sad and scared that I might be in for a bleak future as abused milk-chattel but the part where I'm," rope-tug, aroused squirm, "at the mercy of your sexual desires isn't less hot because it's real. It's only being at all of your mercy for everything else that's scary."

Her tone goes wry, trying to lighten the mood. "I'll be extra sad if this happens to me and it doesn't even get me passed around like a sex toy."

Squeakblush. "I do not understand you... but okay."

He's too pensive and unhappy to be sexy right at the moment, though, so he just lies pensively and unhappily next to her on the blanket instead.

Tafi returns with Ekeshi.

"This almost certainly isn't going to work," Ekeshi warns Mira right off. "People would be hawking them on street corners if it did. It won't work, or there'll be some stupid thing, like that every time you make milk from now on it'll go in the jar and that's how the jar fills, or something like that. But most likely it just won't work. I can still try it, though, if you want."

"Does trying cost anything important or was that a rhetorical question. Sorry. Yes. Please try. Even if it steals my milk through a, a portal or something, that still means you wouldn't need to sell me, right? We can't not try."

"Fair enough. All right."

Ekeshi goes and gets an empty jar out of the carriage and returns, surveying the scene with a practical eye. Blanketed captive staked out on the ground, sulky Ralin snuggled up at her side...

"Lying on your back isn't the ideal way to be tied up if we're going to be milking you into a jar for an hour, but I suppose at this point we shouldn't really trust you not to bolt if we let you up..."

"I'm not sure she can bolt, if she's still tied," says Orss. "I saw her trying to get free and it looked... odd."

Mira fails entirely to hide her reaction to that.

Her unexplained inability to unbind herself is the one part of The Whole Situation that's causing her the most emotional turmoil.

"I'm not... ugh," says Ralin, rubbing his face tiredly with his hands. "For one thing I'm not sure I want to participate in re-tying her but for 'nother I'm not sure I can, I'm thoroughly exhausted."

"I haven't tied up as many girls as you but I do know how," says Orss.

"...were you serious about wanting to be passed around as a sex toy?" wonders Aza.

Mira blushes.

"Well it's never happened to me before so I can't speak from experience but thinking about it is turning me on and I have enough mutations to make it safe and I really do appreciate you guys putting effort into a mutually-beneficial solution even if it probably won't work so it's not like I want to spite you and given that, you all having sex with me while I'm your prisoner seems like the obvious stand-out silver lining of this cloud? I'm really horny and really into being... made available."

Pause.

"Also, um, are you under the impression you'll be able to milk my tits without making me cum my brains out."

"I hadn't gotten that far in my planning," Aza admits, "I'm just thinking about how to get you safely retied and it occurred to me that if you were very very distracted, such as by being fucked, it might be safer for us to rearrange the ropes."

"I think Orss is right and something's wrong with me and I can't... But. Sexual distraction. Is definitely a thing you could do to me."

"Happy to oblige," chuckles Aza. He tugs the blanket off of her and sits on the rug between her staked-out legs, running his hands over her body.

He does enjoy groping her, but he's not nearly as leisurely about it as Ralin was; in fairly short order, he has both his hands at her groin and is fucking her with his fingers and rubbing her clit. He's very very gentle about it, possibly overcompensating for his strength a little.

Mira is wet and hot and slippery---her entire body is slippery, thanks to her bonded slime. She moans and pushes helplessly into Aza's touches, thrusting her hips up to encourage his thrusting fingers.

She can be very distracted. Not distracted enough, if she was trying to keep her wits, actually. But she dives in and lets herself be distracted, because it just feels so good to give in.

And, with Mira very distracted, they sit her up and tie her arms together behind her back.

When they have her tied, Aza moves around behind Mira (nudging Ralin out of the way a little), sits down on the rug, and pulls her into his lap and onto his enormous dick. While he gently fucks her, Tafi and Ekeshi start milking her tits into the jar.

"O~ohh, fu~uck."

Aza's cock is plundering the deep reaches of her spasming pussy, the massive shaft hilting itself easily despite the disparity in size, Mira's pussy sucking it all the way in with no resistance. His full length is gripped tightly by every lubricious inch of her on each stroke, her walls squeezing and fluttering around him as sparkling mana-fluid squirts out of her nipples.

"Fuck ye~essssss. This's awesome..."

The Pleasure crest is already conditioning her to be more verbal, Mira distantly realizes through the haze of orgasms, but even so the fact that she's being verbal about it is a testament to how fucking hot this is. Also to just how mentally present she still is.

Huge, heart-shaped pupils swivel onto Ralin and Orss, the two who aren't already touching her, though mostly Ralin. "Touch me... Everybody should touch me..."

Ralin is at this point mostly falling asleep on the rug—listen, it has been a long and eventful evening—but he snuggles up and pets her leg, this being the part of her most easily within reach.

Orss just shakes her head and leans back against the carriage.

A little pang, for the slightly-more-intense-version-that-could've-been, but that doesn't make what is happening any less awesome.

That is as far as Mira has the desire to exert her agency in this situation, though.

She'll go back to being a nonverbal compliant fuckdoll until they're done.

Aza is apparently perfectly capable of holding her in his lap and fucking her for the hour-plus that it takes to collect all the required milk. Ralin does in fact fall asleep at some point during that time, dozing off with his hand still resting on Mira's thigh.

Through some unexplained trick, Ekeshi manages to fill the jar and then keep filling it, long past the point when it should have overflowed. As the process continues past that point, she requests that somebody blindfold Mira, and tells Aza to be extra distracting, which he accomplishes by groping Mira a lot and fucking her a little faster. The details of her ritual are thus obscured.

It's pretty obvious when the ritual fails, though, because the jar crumbles to dust in her hands and sprays an explosion of mana milk (slightly cloudy with pottery dust) all over everyone and everything present.

"Well, I tried," Ekeshi sighs, reaching up to pull off Mira's blindfold.

Mira shivers through the trailing edge of an orgasmic pleasure wave, trying to wrench her mind back into gear to process this outcome.

It's really hot that her body is still twitching in helpless pleasure while the implications sink in, Aza's cock stretching her walls and impaling her.

"Aw... damn." Mira shuts her eyes again, after taking in the pottery-carnage. "I almost hate that it didn't work more than what it not working means for me. It was such a good idea..."

It probably goes without saying that Mira has been feeling some early-onset Stockholm Syndrome in this situation, though not in a strictly irrational way given her values, but right now, with the question resolved, she teeters on the conceptual edge between continuing cooperativeness and desperate defiance. The allure of just... continuing to be friendly with these people is so strong, and yet the truth of what they plan to do with her is, well, it too might be hot depending on implementation, but she can't count on that, she can't count on anything, if she's a slave, that's the whole point.

She teeters...

"I can try it again," Ekeshi offers, "we've got more jars. Not that I have much hope of success, but there's a few things I could do differently, it's not pointless. First, though, we should take a break and get you fed and watered. Don't know if making this stuff will make you hungry the way regular milk would, but it's bound to make you thirsty, way I figure."

"Can we do that while I'm still fucking her?" asks Aza, squeezing Mira's hips.

"Don't see why not," says Ekeshi. "Tafi—"

Tafi is already scampering down to the water to fill the golden cup.

She teeters. Possibilities flicker through her mind, futures she might suggest aiming for that embody a compromise, but...

Mira is familiar by now with this state her body's currently in, hanging off the edge of orgasm, ripples of soft convulsion spilling over the divide with every jiggle, like her body isn't quite sure if she's starting an orgasm or ending one, but ready to erupt back into deep, powerful orgasms as soon as the stimulation ramps back up. It is not, actually, very impairing.

She is thirsty. Most of her magic breastmilk apparently is just mana, but in aqueous solution, and also her pussy's been juicing all over Aza's cock for hours, so yeah. She does need some water intake for her optimized digestion and regeneration to work from. She drinks, as they discuss.

Even with the gallons of mana-fluid they drained from her, she's overflowing with mana of her own. The spells welded to the bottom of her mana pool feel solid under metaphorical mental fingers. She could cast. She could unleash overwhelming destruction. She doesn't want to. She viscerally does not want to attack her new friends / hurt the first people she's met / kill the first sexual partners she's had in this new body and place / be the thing that ends these five stories.

Tafi fetches her cupful after cupful of water, and takes a moment to discreetly inquire if she is going to have to pee at any point, while Aza very gently fucks her.

Orss is rolling her eyes a little about the second attempt, but it doesn't take more than a few words from Ekeshi to get her on board. The emerging consensus seems to be that they're going to do their best to make the positive-sum solution work even though it's a long shot, partly out of a general feeling that it would be better that way (shared by everyone except Orss), partly out of consideration for Ralin's perspective even though he is no longer awake to argue for it.

The most glorious fact about this entire day is that she does not need to pee and never will again, though she just shakes her head with a smile at the inquiry about it.

But being caught by slavers who are actually reasonably friendly people (at least to a cute girl who immediately starts stockholming at them), who are trying pretty hard to make an alternative to enslaving her work so everybody can have a happier outcome, and who seem quite appreciative of what she can offer sexually, is...

Mira doesn't want to end these stories. She doesn't even want to make these stories go in a worse direction. She wants it to be possible that being cooperative enough will buoy their stories toward a better direction, enough-so that her own story gets dragged up with them toward a better outcome.

Probably she won't get what she wants, but just knowing what it is she actually wants is helpful and steadying.

Once Mira is sufficiently hydrated, and the mess from the manamilk explosion has been cleaned, they set up for the next round. Items that might be water-damaged by another milksplosion are moved farther from her rug. Ekeshi fetches the next jar. Aza hums to himself as he fucks her. They blindfold her early, this time, maybe just to save time later, maybe because Ekeshi wants to be sure she won't glimpse any secrets of the oasis jar ritual.

And once again, she gets milked into a jar for an hour.

The chill of a desert night is really starting to set in as they near the end of this iteration, but Aza's lap is cozy and warm. If she weren't being gently fucked senseless and milked incessantly, it's not hard to imagine she might fall asleep like this.

It is probably very startling, therefore, when the bottom drops out of this jar and it pours its contents all over her legs, Aza's lap, the rug, and anything else caught in the miniature manamilk tidal wave. Ralin wakes up spluttering.

It would be kind of hot to fall asleep and have them keep fucking her anyway but frankly she's more awake than they are, by now. She could sleep but isn't going to nod off by accident. She doesn't know if that's a mutation or if this new body has merely restored her prior youthful ability to pull all-nighters with ease.

They're not going to try a third time to make an Oasis Jar of Mira-Milk, are they.

Tafi and Ekeshi are both yawning by this point.

"I'm not going to sleep without a collar on her," says Orss, arms sternly crossed.

Ekeshi, pulling off Mira's blindfold again, looks like she wants to object but is too tired to make the effort; instead she says, stifling a yawn, "I'll sleep on it, see if I have any brilliant ideas in the morning. We can always take the collar off if I make it work."

Aza is the only one of them still doing fine on the sleepiness front. He asks Mira, a hint of wry humour in his tone, "If I keep fucking you all night will that cheer you up any?"

"Collar?"

But Aza's question is more important, and the idea of going to sleep with an empty pussy and no-one touching her is oddly terrifying.

"I think it'd probably help. You can try it and see." Not playful, just true.

They seem briefly confused by her question about the collar, but then she responds to Aza and nobody follows up on asking her what she meant.

Orss gets a simple leather band out of the carriage and closes it around Mira's neck, while Aza cheerfully gropes her breasts and fucks her, and Tafi gets her some more water with the chalice.

The collar doesn't actually do anything, until someone gives her an order. Her slime suit wriggles around her neck and coats the leather, and once it does the feeling of wearing it almost disappears, and Mira forgets to be curious if it might be more than symbolic.

During a pause in the sex to drink more water, Mira feels tears coming into her eyes. "Would it matter at all, if I begged you not to sell me? What if, what if I joined you, instead. I could promise to be a part of your group for however long you all agreed would be worth the same as what you'd get upfront from selling me?"

"No offense, girl, but we don't know you nearly that well," says Orss.

"If you're agreeing to join us just so we won't sell you, that makes it pretty hard to really trust you," says Aza. "I like you fine, but I'm not sure I'd want to make camp with you every night for a year, knowing you probably resent us for catching you like this. Too many things can go wrong there."

Orss is helping Ekeshi lay out bedrolls, but she nods sharply at that.

"If I don't resent you already, I don't think that's something you need to worry about?"

Mira lets what she just said percolate through her mind.

"...no, I wouldn't resent you for my own sake but, I don't know everything you get up to obviously, but I suspect I wouldn't be able to go along with everything else you might do as easily. And I never make a promise I know I might not keep."

She presses herself back against Aza, her pussy clinging to his monumental shaft, and lets herself quietly cry. It's kind of hot, someone fucking her while she's crying. She let's herself fear her uncertain future as a child fears the darkness.

Aza fucks her and hugs her. Tafi fetches a handkerchief and wipes her face.

Everyone except Aza goes to bed. Ralin, too bleary for anything complicated like speaking, still manages to pat Mira's knee before he curls up on the rug and goes back to sleep.

Gentle crying sex is really nice, actually.

Mira was right, though, about having Aza's cock in her all night. Once he stops moving, going to sleep impaled on Aza's massive dick keeps her constant arousal from tormenting her, finding an odd but comfortable equilibrium of edging-that-doesn't-feel-like-edging. She suspects multiple of her mutations are interacting to achieve this effect, which is still pretty neat, despite The Whole Situation.

In the morning, Tafi makes breakfast and Ralin cuddles Mira and gropes her while Aza continues to fuck her. Ekeshi spends an hour muttering to herself and then they make a third try at the jar, which, this time around, disappears completely with a soft popping sound and leaves a tingly crackling feeling in the air. She declares herself out of ideas at that point.

They pack up and swing around to head for the capital, where they have the best chance of finding a buyer who will be both highly interested in this rare commodity and also halfway decent as a person. Apparently, the setup while they're on the move is that everyone else rides in the carriage while Aza pulls it. After a brief discussion, they decide to have Mira ride on Aza's dick, tied to him by a fairly thorough rope harness that Ralin helps construct.

Thus passes their first day of travel. The second is much the same, though without an oasis to stop by at night. The night after that, they find another oasis, this one with some rudimentary semi-permanent infrastructure, though no other travellers are stopping there that night. Ekeshi makes a jar at it.

Aza is less enthusiastic about walking a civilized road with a slave strapped to his cock, so they retie her with her arms behind her back and stash her in the carriage, where Tafi is always happy to molest her if it makes her feel better. Ralin is more generally morose about this turn of events, but still perks up enough to fuck her most evenings.

All in all, it takes them six days of gradually increasing civilizational density before they finally reach the capital. Everyone puts the word out to their own personal contacts, and they conduct a quiet bidding war over the course of a few days (with Mira still sleeping on Aza's dick in their camp just outside town and staying tied up inside the carriage most of the rest of the time, though Ralin makes time to show her the library one afternoon) until they finally settle on a large, orderly, well-run house of pleasure that has plans involving a milking machine and a wall with a hole in it.

It's really, really hard to dislike these people. It really is.

Riding along on Aza's dick, strapped to him by a rope harness while he pulls the carriage, gets a delighted laugh out of her.

Ralin is a sweetheart. She hopes she ends up somewhere he can visit. The library is a delightful surprise, even if she probably won't get to spend much time there after they sell her.

When Mira sees the milking machine and the wall with a hole in it, she's relieved, honestly. And grateful all over again to the Oasis Gang. Without her mutations that would probably be less fun than it looks but it looks pretty fun and with her mutations it might actually be that fun, she's willing to give it a chance before she falls into despair about her new life.

The house of pleasure in question is called the Masked Garden, and the co-managers are an unassuming married couple going by Mr. and Mrs. Lucratite.

The couple has a sharp eye for deals, and once the nature of Mira's 'milk' is demonstrated to them, they immediately understand what they're looking at. Their son runs the next-door fleshcrafting business, and is trained in the creation of Clear Hearts, in addition to the more usual fun-oriented mutations. This could be an incredible boon to that business, allowing their son to vastly undercut the competition.

Mr. and Mrs. Lucratite are prepared to offer the Oasis Gang thus and so much money in these and those denominations to take ownership of Mira immediately. Does the Oasis Gang have a counter-offer?

Orss haggles them up a little, enough to maintain her reputation as a sharp-eyed trader who can't be fooled into taking a lowball offer, but doesn't draw things out any longer than she needs to.

They make time for a private goodbye, during which Ralin promises he'll come check on her once in a while when the gang is in the city, and Aza says maybe he'll come along and fuck her if he can spare the coin. Ralin hugs her one last time.

Surprising everyone, Orss casually mentions that they'll probably hang onto most of her stuff, and if she ever gets free she can come collect it from them if she happens to run into them again. Not the money, but the cup and the cloak and the gauntlet and all that, if she's sentimental about any of it.

And then they turn her over to the Masked Garden and walk away.

"Thanks," Mira says to Orss in a dryly deadpan manner that straddles the difference between genuine gratitude for hanging on to her possessions and annoyance at the explicit dis-inclusion of her cash gems in that promise.

Her goodbyes with everyone else are a lot more genuine.

Wait, hang on, did they tell the Lucratites about Mira's weird inability to undo her own bondage?

(They did, as it happens. Orss unapologetically admits that it brought a higher price.)

Of course. In any case.

Goodbye, Oasis Gang. Hello, Masked Garden.

"Cast no magic of any kind," is the first order Mira receives.

     Mira wants to protest that surely some of her magic is harmless and just for convenience, but a sudden cringing repulsed feeling sweeps over her and stops her in her tracks. She is too distracted by the mysterious phenomenon to protest again.

The Lucratites assume this means the slave collar is working as intended.

Mira's nude body is shackled into place with thick leather cuffs. A soft silicone gasket sort of thing holds her waist secure in the middle of an interior wall. On one side of the wall, her lower half is presented and exposed to a comfortable lounge where guests may make use of her holes alongside several other wall-mounted slavegirls. Her thighs are bolted to the wall and her ankles are shackled to the floor, keeping her hips poised to present her ass and pussy for maximum appeal.

On the other side of the wall, Mira's upper half is locked into place with padded metal bars, presenting her breasts for easy access. The milking machine is mounted right under her, pressing the ends of its suction sleeves into her areola, making sure her nipples can't slip free no matter how she wriggles. There's a horseshoe-shaped seat for her face, with a pink silicone dildo sticking out of it. At the Lucratites' order, Mira is forced to impale her throat on the dildo and then have her head strapped securely to the seat, leaving her with nothing to look at but the floor. The dildo is hooked up to a tank of lightly-sugared and even-more-lightly-salted water, and will slowly trickle the liquid into her stomach to keep her hydrated.

Once Mira is locked in, and the milking machine turned on, they close her up in her little 'backstage' cubbyhole and only come back to collect her 'milk' and to refill her feeding tank.

The Lucratites confirm that Mira has the mutations she's supposed to, and... that's it. Her optimized digestion means that she doesn't need bathroom breaks. Her cleanliness mutations mean she doesn't need hygiene breaks. Her Slut crest means they don't have to let her see a fleshcrafter to make sure she's not pregnant. Her full suite of sexual mutations means they don't have to ration or micro-manage access to her holes. And thanks to her regeneration, they don't need to let her out to stretch either.

They can just, leave her there, mounted in the wall, with the milking machine sucking away at her breasts. For as long as they want. Days. Weeks. Longer.

Mira has had fantasies like this.

At first, it really isn't that bad.

She can close her eyes to the bland view and just focus on the sensation of being in such secure and comprehensive bondage, thrills of excitement and pleasure racing through her with every wriggle, thick dildo violating her throat while her lower holes are free and on display for anyone who walks into that other room.

She feels hands on her ass and thighs, and at regular intervals feels the cocks of strangers penetrate her and thrust away until they spurt their hot cum deep inside her, usually in her pussy but sometimes anally, and having no say in that is exciting too.

Mira doesn't bother to count her orgasms, there are so many. Even when no one is fucking her, the constant, inescapable suction on her breasts and the pressure of the bondage holding her in place slowly drags her to the peak, the need welling up inside her until her pussy starts clenching on nothing, quivering under the eyes of whoever might be watching.

That first night, when her lower half is left untouched for hours and hours and hours while the machine sucking her breasts keeps forcing her to cum anyway... Well, it was a kind of torment, but a sexy torment, a torment that served mainly to make the bondage she was locked into loom ever-greater in her mind. The raw emptiness of her pussy keeps her awake all night, though.

It's busier the next day.

Less busy the day after that.

Busier again the day after that.

Nothing changes other than that, and at night Mira's poor pussy continues to be neglected.

The lack of sleep would be getting genuinely unpleasant, but thankfully her bonded slime suit comes to her rescue.

No one would be able to tell, just by looking, given how Mira perpetually appears to be drenched in lube, but her slime suit has shifted some of its mass down to her crotch, forming a lump that applies constant pressure to Mira's clit, as well as forming the head of a disembodied slime-phallus deep inside her, swelling up between her walls to calm the ache of being empty.

The next day when the Masked Garden's clients start fucking her again, no one seems to notice the tip of their dick squishing into the back end of the deeply buried slime-dildo already inside her. Some of the dicks that pound away at her don't even reach that far. Her pussy can take a lot of cock before it hits its limits, and yet the smaller ones still manage to feel nearly as good.

And then at night, Mira can bliss out on the steady pressure of slime against her womb and clit, and on the steady pulsing suction on her nipples, and cum in a way that doesn't leave her aching and tormented.

That's good, because this is Mira's life now.

There are no plans for different accommodations any time in the future.

This is all there will be for her.

It barely takes a week before the soul-crushing boredom can no longer be kept at bay by kinky bondage sex and lots of orgasms, when there's no variety in those things. Mira can't even ask for a change of pace because there's been a dildo stuffed down her throat for the last hundred-and-seventy hours.

She'd kill for a book. Hell, she'd kill for a mirror. Even just being able see herself in this predicament would probably be hot enough to stare at for a couple of days.

Her slime suit tries to help, tries to fuck her more thoroughly itself, so she'll spend more time cumming hard enough that she doesn't notice the passage of time, but there's only so much it's willing or able to do when it doesn't want to be seen by anyone on the other side of the wall.

That she's stuck here, trapped like this, forced to cum even when she grows listless at the prospect, is hot in the abstract. If she ever does get out of here she's probably going to masturbate furiously to the memory any time she's alone and horny. But first she has to get out of here. And she's still incapable of releasing herself from bondage, even if she didn't have a weird aversion to using magic, now.

The next time a staff-person comes into her cubbyhole to replace the 'milk' tanks and refill her water, he misaligns the new tank a little. It's still hooked up correctly, but after he leaves, Mira's next orgasm rattles the bondage frame.

The tank slips.

The frame bends.

With a creak of metal, the water tank jerks free and bends downward, impacting the restraining bar that holds Mira's right arm in place. It warps the bar too, crushing Mira's arm with bruising force.

Mira squeals in pain, but with the feeding dildo stuffed down her throat it probably doesn't sound any different than her squeals of pleasure. She can't call for help.

It feels like her arm is breaking, agony and panic signals lancing out from the bones inside her flesh. She struggles violently, half-panicked, for the first couple of seconds, but there's no more escape now than there was before. Her whole body goes rigid, braced against the pain, and the cock currently fucking her stops moving as she clamps down on it. A moment later it spasms, squirting hot cum into her pussy, which is at least a little bit of a distraction. But then it withdraws.

Pain. Pain. Pain. So much pain. Her arm is breaking. The nipple-suction isn't even making her cum anymore. This might be the least aroused this body has ever been, though that isn't saying much. Her pussy is still wet and the next cock splits her open with ease despite how tight she's clenching.

She cries out in a desperate plea. It hurts! Help! Someone help! Please!

A sensation of oozing movement around her injured arm. Her slime suit! It's helping! But what's it going to do?!

The slime thickens, darkens, turns purple and smooth. Pseudopod tendrils grow from the slime, reaching out to twine around the lever holding the bondage-bars on that side in place.

The slime tendrils pull the lever, and the bondage bars pining her right arm fall away, releasing the painful pressure... and freeing her right arm entirely.

Mira stares at the helpful slime tendrils, and at her free arm as it rapidly heals, and back at the helpful slime tendrils.

I, am the most useless bimbo, ever. Of all time.

The slime slithers and flows and goops its way around her body, helpfully unlatching and unfastening. She pulls up, freeing her nipples from the milking machine with a soft cry.

Maybe it would be smart to wait, and escape at night when no one will notice for a while. Maybe.

She's not going to. She is walking out of this place, right now. Badly hurting her because of careless negligence? Yeah, she's angry.

She feels the slime ooze around her thighs and ankles, unbolting her and unshackling her lower half from the wall. And finally, lastly, it pulls the latch on the wall-gasket, suddenly releasing the pressure around her waist. She slides herself backwards, emerging from the hole ass-first, and stands up.

There are a handful of well-groomed men in airy silks lounging around in the lounge. They watch in horrified and baffled fascination as living slime dismounts one of the mounted girls.

There is one security guard standing unobtrusively in the corner. He steps forward, brandishing a heavy stick. "Whoa there, girl. You're not supposed to be out of your hole during business hours."

The insight hits Mira in a flash: the Lucratites didn't tell their staff about her. They wanted to keep the Clear Heart Milk a secret, even from their employees.

Does this change anything?

Not in the immediate moment.

Either you're cooperating, or you're not. Either you're negotiating, or you're at war. Either the people between you and your goal matter more than your goal... or they don't.

Mira hates conflict. That doesn't mean she's bad at it. It's always easier to destroy than to create.

With a twist of will, she splits her mana into three streams and empowers three of her runenodes in the same instant she flicks her hand toward the guard. Her core, [Attack], and [Projectile].

The spellbolt takes the guard in the chest like a gunshot, impacting before he even sees the girl casting a spell. It drives all the air from his lungs, cracks his ribs, and throws him backward hard enough to crack his head against the wall and fall to the floor in a heap.

After a moment, he starts regenerating, and his eye flutter open.

Three more sparkling blue-white spellbolts slam into him, rapid fire, breaking more of his bones and driving him back into the floor before he can get up.

As she stands over him, Mira nudges her slime suit with a thought. In response, it flows out over her skin and then contracts, turning opaque and glossy as it solidifies into a featureless purple-black latex leotard, covering her crotch and torso while leaving her arms and legs bare. It's split at the bottom, exposing her pussy, and has cut-outs for her breasts. That wasn't part of the image she intended, but her suit seems to like it better and she's not going to complain about being lewder, even if this is serious time and not sexy time. At another nudge, some of its mass flows down her legs to coat and protect the bottoms of her feet.

The airily-dressed rich men scramble out of their seats and hide behind the richly cushioned furniture, one of them disengaging from another wall-mounted slavegirl to do so, his wet cock bouncing in front of him even as it wilts.

After three more spellbolts, the guard starts regenerating but stays unconscious.

"Don't hurt us!" one of the rich men blurts in an attempt at an authoritative tone.

Mira feels a warm and fuzzy affirmation flow through her as she thinks to herself that she has no intention of hurting any of the brothel's customers.

What?

Orders.

Her mind makes the connection, obvious in retrospect. She feels repulsed and cringey and alienated when she disobeys, she feels accepted and fluffy and fulfilled when she obeys. Any order. Any person. The slave collar she now wears is the obvious culprit.

"I wasn't going to hurt you," she says without looking back. "But you might want to cover your ears. This is going to be loud."

Turning to the door, Mira blasts it to splinters and strides out of the room.

Splinters and wood-shards spray out into the main pleasure den, causing patrons and prostitutes alike to scream in fright, to duck and cover. A low, crooning song about tentacled dreams screeches to a halt.

Security is tighter, here, with the less affluent clients. A full dozen men with truncheons and brass knuckles emerge from the shadows on high alert.

Stairs lead to an upper level. A hallway sealed with heavy double-doors leads out to the greeting area and the street-facing section. Here in the main den, there is a bar, and a pillow pit, and private booths, and a stage.

When the figure of Mira becomes visible, the guards immediately start shouting orders like, "Stop!" or "Don't move!" or "Cease all actions!" and things like that.

It feels terrible, disobeying.

But Mira is not operating in a mode where she cares about that, right now.

Three concerns. First, getting out of the physical building. Second, not being chased, violently. Third, not being chased, legally.

She reaches out with her senses. She's a Mana-Esper and has Truesight. Nothing magical can hide from her.

The most magical things present are her own breastmilk. There are tanks of it back in her cubbyhole, as well as behind that wall over there, and a smaller amount upstairs among a few other enchanted items; probably the Lucratites' office.

Two of the twelve guards are mages, both with far smaller mana pools than Mira. That one has lightning magic. That one, water. That one has an enchantment etched on his truncheon, something to cause extra pain.

Painchantment is the first to make a move, his eyes bugging out when the orders to stop don't even slow Mira down. He dives at her, swinging his blunt object.

Mira steps into the blow, then flicker-blurs through it, appearing behind the man in an instant. She twists her mana into four streams, hitting the right nodes within her soul as she spins around.

A scintillating beam of blue-white sparkles slams into Painchantment's back. Mira holds the beam on him as he flies through the air, shredding his spine and accelerating him until he smashes into and through the back wall of the den, shattering the claycrete with his broken body.

"Weapons free weapons free! She regenerates!" Mr. Lucratite is on the balcony above, staring down at the carnage in outraged dismay.

Several of the guards draw crossbows.

The lightning mage get's off a, "Kazchirr talkot!"

From across the room, the water mage attempts to catch the rogue slavegirl in a crossfire. "Lurchir-"

A bolt of lightning strikes the floor at Mira's feet, but as the flash clears, she's gone, already hurtling across the room in a blur.

Sparkling blue-white spellbolts slam into the water mage in a volley, cutting him down in the blink of an eye, then she switches spells, a glimmering blue-white ghost-blade forming in her hand as she takes the lightning mage in the gut, bisecting him cleanly before he spills to the ground in a flood of blood and entrails. She really hopes that one has regeneration but she's not going to let worrying about that slow her down!

Switching spells again, back to the mana-beam. She sweeps it over the crossbowmen, sending them sprawling, then holds the beam on the biggest one, driving him through a banister and ripping a hole in his shoulder.

She switches spells to something new, a scintillating cyclone of mana gathered in her hand, blazing brighter and brighter as she dodges another truncheon and then flicker-blurs directly into him, body-checking him with her full weight. She's tiny compared to him, but she hits him fast enough that it breaks her own shoulder, and sends him careening into his companion, both of them tumbling to the floor in a heap.

Her latest spell has charged enough by now, she figures. Mira dashes forward and then leaps, shooting straight up to eye-level with the shocked-looking Mr. Lucratite, hanging in the air, eyes meeting across the empty space above the main den. Then she flicker-blurs and appears right behind him on the balcony. She grabs his arms and holds the blazing ball of mana up to him threateningly.

"Dispel that! Let me go! Obey me damn you!"

The still-standing guards look on in horror as their boss is taken hostage.

"No."

Hostage? Hahaha, as if. This isn't a hostage situation you silly thugs.

"Before you decide to chase me, I want you to think really hard about this." She waves the now-screaming and blindingly-bright ball of mana in his face, making him wince. "I could survive it, if this was an explosion spell. It could've been an explosion spell. Next time, it will be an explosion spell. Anyone asks about me? I'm a free woman, and you have no claim on me. Tell me you understand."

"I understand!!! You won't be chased! Whatever you want! Just dispel that!"

"Good. If you feel like changing your mind once I don't have a spell to your head, just remember: next time, this will be an explosion spell. ZUD."

Mira discorporeates in place, dodging without moving, as the spell goes off like a bomb. Chirr sushmelva-zud.

An orgasm bomb, to be precise.

A wave of mana blasts outward, sweeping over the room and shaking the walls as it forces its way through. Everyone in the building and probably the entire city block collapses in instant orgasm, creaming their pants or spraying cum everywhere as they writhe around on the ground.

Mira casts a shield over her head with a slot in it, then fires her spellbeam at the ceiling. She could use the front door, but she feels like this'll be more satisfying. A few seconds later, the beam erupts into the sky, clearing a hole for her to jump through.

Mira leaps, shooting up through the hole and into the evening sky.

At the peak of her arc, she releases the energy from the jump, allowing herself to kick off of empty space, and flicker-blurs forward, sending herself shooting over the city like an arrow. She's going for the River. She doesn't want to stay somewhere she's legally a slave, and from what she saw and read during her library visit, civilization was mostly on the Sands side. In the Green, nothing will care what is and isn't written down in a ledger in Vynait.

Arcing from rooftop to rooftop, from spire to flattop, brings Mira to the water's edge in minutes.

She flies from her last leap, passing over cargo barges and pleasure yachts as she arrows through the sky.

Then she flicker-blurs into the water, creating a bizarre reverse-splash as she materializes already underwater, and rapidly decelerates, without ever actually hitting the water's surface.

Mira dives, and swims, and dives, and swims some more.

And once she finally emerges on the opposite shore, the jungle welcomes her with open... petals.