For Kim
The Island Of Doctor Mister Kurma
Plainstriders lined the shore of the river. They neither moved nor blinked. No breeze moved their feathers. Each and every one of the birds was identical, massive, overweight and pink. Each of the birds held a gold coin in its sharp gray beak. He blinked and they were facing away. Again and they were so distant it was difficult to tell where they were facing and whether they were plainstriders at all. There was a breeze, then. Warm and accompanied by a faraway sound that he couldn't quite place. It wasn't a living sound, but that of a rusted hinge or spinning wheel on a badly bent axel. It was neither of those. He lowered his gaze.
The Southfury continued its endless crawl, warm and lazy in the late afternoon sun, as a broad, emerald leaf spun past the two pairs of thick, blue toes that pointed toward its deeper center. The toes, tipped with short, broad claws, remained on dry land, their owner being ever-leery of even the shallowest water. There could be snakes and shit in there. Even in his dreams, Larizu wasn't very brave.
He did, however, sport a pair of pretty impressive tusks. These weren't too heavy to carry, and didn't impede the movement of his head and neck, though he wasn't sure if he should have expected them to. The tusks were thick and nearly white, over a foot and a half long and not measuring from inside the mouth... Just from the lip. He stared at the tusks, one before the other and then back again, until his eyes ached. Both of his eyes.
When he finally had to stop staring at his beautiful, boner-inducing tusks ( They were tusks that could easily seat a sexy little elf on each, and if they wanted to, they could rest their tiny pink feet in his hands. He wouldn't even make them beg. Not at all. Dream Larizu was a benevolent ruler... He ruled with an iron tusk, and cock if the steady pulse beneath his sarong was any indicator. Why wouldn't the Virility Loa have a boner?), Larizu's eyes happened upon the river and what he saw, framed in long ivory curves, was not a river at all. He was standing on the bank of a pond.
Larizu looked up at the sky, the sun smiling down at him and he just had to smile back, didn't he? Suddenly, with his giant tusks and intact field of vision (and no stupid-looking little glasses necessary, not in Larizu's dreams) even the gold and violet blue butterflies that flitted above and around his head, tickled the air just inches from his long, pointed, and not at all pathetically floppy ears were somehow welcome and not annoying. In fact, the urge to light a leafy stick on fire and wave it, see how many butterflies he could reduce to curled ashes before the makeshift torch-slash-fairy-winged-insect-igniter burnt itself out... well, that never even occurred to him. Larizu lifted one blue finger but instead of smelling it, he held it out so that the smallest of butterflies, one with irridescent blue wings, could land there and slow its wingbeats until they were the rhythmic, methodic strokes of sleeping breath. The butterfly had two tiny pink hands and two tiny pink feet. Its hair was held up in a thick bun, wisps sticking out at all angles. The troll squinted at the butterfly with the glowing green eyes.
Curious.
He lifted his gaze to the sun, and it was beaming from behind and between a canopy of green and backlit, veined leaves. Fronds the size of his head - but not his tusks! - swayed in an invisible warm breeze as butterflies, no... No those were birds. Birds danced and flitted amidst the thin, scaly trunks of the exotic and un-Durotar palm trees. No saguarros here. No red stones. The sun was gold where it limned the leaves and glowed through them. The birds were violet as the butterflies had been violet. There were tiny ones that were gold with black markings. Some were bright red with beaks that looked like bananas, only blue-black. Crimson eyes regarded the jungle roof from between massive tusks as the troll craned his neck in wonder.
The water licked over the ends of his toes, and Larizu looked down, more curious than startled. How did the slow river come up the shore? But it wasn't the river, remember? "Oh, right," the troll commented. His feet weren't on sand or dirt, but atop a very dry and cracked gray-brown stone that seemed out of place in the lush oasis he'd been magically transported to. He looked at the water, crystal clear where his toes touched. There were tiny fish, elongate and transparent but for the bright, electric blue stripes down their sides, the bright crimson of their tails. They darted about stupidly. Further out, about two feet in front of where he stood, the rock gave way to thick aquatic weeds that waved slightly at the edge of where they cluttered the depths and made them impenetrable. Everything was calm. There was no wind. No rusted hinge sound that wasn't a rusted hinge. He listened for it, cocked his head as he reached up to stroke at one deliciously thick, long, curved tusk. The sound wasn't there. It hadn't been ominous. Just... interesting. Now it was gone. Curiouser and curiouser.
"Keeeeyaah!" The sound was a sharp screech, like that of a young and voracious jungle raptor, and it ended with a growl somewhat akin to what one might expect (if one were generally obsessively worried about such things) to hear from an equally voracious jungle cat. Jungle cat on a raptor's back LOA! But he was the only Loa here, that he knew of. What good was a single virility god against the teeth and claws of vicious jungle beasts? Well, he could always stab them with his massive tusks and boner. Larizu spun, hackles raised and bent with his formidable tusks at the ready. Nothing was there.
"What." Larizu stared down at the rock he was standing on. It was bigger than he'd expected and it wasn't part of the shore, which was a good five yards from the edge of the rock. The rock was really more of a small island, ten foot by ten foot and rounded... a dome shape made of fused stone but there were segments to it, and these were roughly square. The "island", warm beneath his bare feet, reminded him of very thick and inedible nuts that used to fall from the trees where he grew up, during storms. He hated storms. He hated those stupid grenade nuts falling through the roof and making the screaming winds and crashing waves all the more frightening. Funny, though, he felt like it reminded him of something else, too, or that it should.
The growling sound came again, but Larizu had been expecting it, at least unconsciously and his red eyes snapped upward to behold the source of the sound, which was perched in a tree branch not twenty feet away. "What da hell?" The large, dark bird paused before dropping its hooked beak to let loose an answering screech, "Keeeyaaaah!" Dream or not, Larizu's ears folded back and he squinted, his expression pained. "A turkey?"
The bird's beak snapped shut and it tilted its ugly, bald head to regard the troll with a beady eye. "Cut dat shit out or I get a rock and knock ya a-"
"Nah mon, mi nu turkey ya dumb trool bahstad."
Larizu's cock and tusks pointed, but the finger he had leveled at the noisy bird curled back into his fist. His mouth hung open slightly.
The turkey-looking bird that claimed not to be a turkey shrugged its thick, charcoal wings and shook its head before continuing. "Seh't wit me, mon. Cyaryun croo. A birdie nu got to be a turkey fi be a birdie."
Larizu stared dumbly. It wasn't so much that the bird was speaking...
"Fuckry... Mainlandah," the non-turkey rolled it's eye comically and leaned forward on its branch. "Leesten more close, dumdum." It began to speak more slowly, the pinkish lump of its tongue wiggling dramatically as it drew out each sound. "Seh. It. Wit. Meee... Cah-ree-un croo."
Larizu glanced around and then back at the bird. "Ya don't look like no damn crow. What da hell ya carryin'?"
"Pfft... Cyaryun mean deat', mon. A dead shit be dinnah fi I." The carrion-crow nodded its wrinkled cherry head toward Larizu. "A full belly fer I, so mi tell Mistah Haad-dick dis: Him gon' be sum cyaryun shaat ordah if him nu get da fuck aweh frahm Mistah Kurma."
Before Larizu could finish deciphering the carrion crow's heavy and fast accent and ask him who the hell Mister Kurma was, his island moved.
There wasn't time to think, so Larizu ran! His toe slid into the crack that marked one of the strange squares carved into the island of Mister Kurma and he pitched, face-forward, arms pinwheeling. Oh shit! He was going to bash his godlike tusks and meat club of vigor on the strange island's shore!
There wasn't time to think, so Larizu ran! His foot nearly caught itself on a crack in the island, but corrected his gait deftly, pumped his arms as he sprinted to the edge of the island, which was somehow becoming taller in the water, gradually floating upward as if made buoyant by the madly frothing bubbles that exploded all along its edges. He would leap across the boiling water and to the safety of the shore. He would fly to sa-
"Coo pon dat. mon! Heee heee heee! Dissia troo worry im gone bangup di tuskie tusk; bangup di hood! Ha ha! Wa mek im fi hessytate? Hee heee hee! Mistah Kurma im fi biteup di hood, di tuskie, a di whole damn troo!"
Larizu squinted, teeth bared in consternation, "eh?" Then the island threw him.
There wasn't time to think, so Larizu sprinted majestically; long and lean with massive tusks and bouncing boner of silk and steel, he traversed the strange segmented island easily and vaulted to the shore, ignoring the fact that he paused, rewound, and moved forward again several times in midair as the turkey (ya in denial, turkey) cackled and babbled words of "encouragement".
Larizu awoke, already on his feet, staring up at the piss-yellow sun between his slightly-smaller-than-average sized tusks. They weren't tiny tusks. He just had to stick his finger way far back, well, not that far back in his mouth, but there was another very valid inch and- Fuck it. His tusks were depressingly small and they didn't obstruct his view. He sighed. Stupid dream. Stupid island.
His bladder was damn near exploded, nothing new there, and so he reached down, tugged at his sarong and grabbed for his Buddy, as he stared at the strange round fruit that was the sun. His Buddy was half-mast apparently and thick in his grip; smooth, long, and... and sort of slick-feeling... not really wet, but, cool to the touch and m-moving?
Larizu's brow flattened as he quickly looked down at his goings-on.
Larizu screamed. It was more of a bellow, but if he'd had it in him to scream like a woman, well shit, that's just what he would have done. He'd have pissed himself too, if not for, well...
Larizu screamed at the snake in his hand, the snake he gripped by its base, since it didn't have a tail, but rather disappeared amidst the tattle-tale indigo colored thatch between his legs. He roared again as the red and black striped thing that was definitely no Buddy of his twisted around on its five foot length and flicked its blue, forked tongue at him. Its eyes were red and made of glass. They rolled wildly in different directions.
"LOHOAAAA NU MI ITAK FWEHEHEH! NOT DA SNAKE!" Larizu spun this way and that, waving one hand in the air as the other held the base of the grotesquely animated thing that he had THOUGHT was his best friend. "Betrayah!" he shouted at his former Buddy, attempting to shake it at the base as he fell to his knees. Maybe he could thrash some sense into it. "Turn back dammit!"
He stopped shaking it abruptly, gorge rising as the thing only nodded its head mindlessly with the motion and continued flicking its tongue, bobbing as he jostled it. If Larizu could have pissed himself, right then, he would have drowned in it. He released the unwanted appendage with a sob and clapped his hands over his eyes, kneeling beneath the halved grapefruit of the piss-yellow sun and willing the thing, which he could feel shifting as it coiled upon itself, away.
He could feel it looking at him oh nonono Loa this was not happening no giant fucking maneater disgusting snake was growing out Larizu's... was growing out where his friend used to live! Oh Gods oh Loa oh Azeroth please he'd give his other-
"Larizu's dreamin'!" he cried out desperately. The thing that his thing had become continued to shift heavily, drawing itself up tall before him, though he didn't know how he knew this. Larizu made a wretched sound of disgust, swaying from side to side on his knees and baring his teeth in fear. He shook his head, hands pressed over his eyes, causing both of them to see blue stars where the imprint of piss yellow sunshine was rapidly fading. "Go da fuck away! Larizu's dreamin', ya nasty shit!"
The voice that answered was like the freezing wind that marked the instant before a brutal island storm; the kind of storm that brought waves so powerful that only luck could keep a troll on his island, where he belonged. Whereas the weakest little bastard might escape with his pathetic life, another ten times as strong as he and a thousand times as handsome could be torn away in an instant, still clinging to the broken scrap of hut, or tree branch, or root in his powerful grip, eyes wide and mouth open to let in the ocean before the shocked lungs can suck in the breath to call out, "But I am strong! He is the weak one! Nobody like his ass! Take him!"
It was unlike any other sound he knew, and one that he might have imagined, so rare and briefly and long ago did it occur. It didn't seem imagined anymore. The whisper before the storm answered, sharp and hissing and insisssstent, "Tellll it to Kurrrrmaaaaah."
And just like the winds and waves that came, when the air conspired with the ocean, turned against the island trolls, turned against Larizu (though the betrayal hadn't been as severe there; Larizu had never trusted the water, or much else for that matter) and forced all present to face them... There will be no sleeping, hiding beneath your roofs, cowering in the shadows. Not from us, troll. Live or die, you will face us until we tire of this game. There is nowhere to hide! ... Just like the bastard rogue elements that played with innocent trolls, or at least trolls who hadn't done anything serious enough to warrant that kind of punishment, so too did the whisper strip away Larizu's hiding places.
There was nothing poetic about it. It was quite literal.
Try as he might, Larizu couldn't stop his hands from sliding away from his face. He watched them go until they escaped his line of view and he felt and heard them land on his thighs. He closed his eyes but he could see through their lids. "Dreamin'," he croaked, throat drying up. He felt that his heart was drying up. Anything but that, please. Not a fucking snake. Not a fucking snake with a wind-before-the-storm voice.
His eyes were opened or closed or didn't have lids but he had perfect vision and he damned it through his teeth with what part of his conscious wasn't reduced to panic babbling. The snake was piled before him, all thick, slick and rubbery-looking coils that shined in the too-bright sun as it regarded him. This was no five foot snake. This was a monster serpent, ten or more feet of generously heaped loops of blue-black and bright red stripes. Its black head was as wide as his own as it hovered, face-to-face with him, now. The whites of its eyes were preposterously bright and huge; reflecting no other color, they were dead, had never lived. He knew, then, that one of them belonged to him and he was suddenly sure he didn't want to know what his new left eye looked like.
The snake's glass eyes had crimson irises, black pupils, one a pinprick, the other a slash. They continued to roll in a very - as far as Larizu was concerned - unfunny manner; one might say searching, but Larizu knew the truth. Glass eyes don't look at shit.
Its dark tongue flickered out again, tickled at the air and withdrew into the hole that parted the lipless line that was its mouth. "Dreamin'," Larizu mouthed, but it seemed he was out of breath and out of sound; breathless as, and perhaps because, the glass eyes paused in their roving dance and began to slide forward, the motion fluid and purposeful and as painfully slow as it was dreadful to behold, until they were fixed directly on the horrified troll.
They lie together, the troll and his elf, for it was only when he held her that way that it felt safe to let himself think it, even if tentatively, guardedly. His right arm was still thrown over her, warming her sleeping form beneath the blanket. She'd kicked off the lower half of it, legs bare as her dress had rolled up to just where her panties began, her heart-shaped bottom nearly showing in a view that he would both have died for and cursed Loa over (before hastily claiming "duress" and apologizing profusely, though perhaps grudgingly in his heart. He was only a troll... and look at that ass-view.)
Her left leg was thrown over his left, and his right bent over both of them, not crushing her but caging her in, his foot twisted so that it was touching the ground. There were tangled legs, a conspicuous contrast of pink and blue; above those, a long, blue body, shirtless and wrapped protectively around a toasty blanket parcel. Above that, hunched shoulders and an ear that flicked restlessly every so often, head bent forward and chin tucked into the messy crown of hair (Golden, Loa but he couldn't stand how he loved that hair.)
The face belonging to the elf that often maddened him in more way than one (wacky butterfly) was hidden in the blanket, hidden in the troll's neck and chest. A small sound of sleep escaped her, muffled and low. She squirmed and fell still.
Larizu's eye rolled from side to side beneath a closed lid. The other was still and heavy, and neither had a slash for a pupil. His lips pulled into a flat line between his tusks, pouted and then pulled taut again. Translucent eyelashes trembled like the plucked strings of a musical instrument.
He didn't want to see. Larizu didn't want to see, but he was (Loa, so often he was) the rabbit, the wiry prey animal, built for running and hiding and now cornered, transfixed. Wildly mismatched eyes - so much white and did snakes have any white to their eyes? But they weren't real snake eyes - stared at him, through him, into him. The tongue flicked. The eyes stayed fixed on the troll. Seeing. It was seeing him, with or without the idiot and horrible glass eyes.
"Leeeg pisssserrrr," the sound came from the snake, from the tiny hole where the tongue flicked out. "coooooowaaaaaard.... ss-ss-sss-ssss-sssss."
The troll moaned in horror as the thing laughed, its weight shifting as it spread its coils and leaned them against his parted knees.
"Laaariiizzzzzuuuuu," the sound was like a blade driven into his ear, long and thin and coldly vicious as it sawed briskly away at his mind, hurting like a rotted tooth that was so far gone as to have no business feeling anything at all. He wanted to tear out his mind. He had a feeling that might happen.
His eyelids returned, had been there all along, maybe. He drew them shut, squeezing his brow down, cheeks up to prevent that voice, that frigid windy blade of a voice from prying them open. He didn't need to see those eyes. He would always see those eyes.
Something touched his neck, firm and pointed as it slid and scraped gently, caressing almost affectionately across his throat and his traps, slid over his shoulder and back down to tickle across his arm. Its tail. It was touching him with its tail. His stomach lurched, a thick, round noise in the back of his throat as he focused all of himself on his eyes; keeping his eyes shut.
The tail continued its journey, fumbling and prodding its way across his body, making his sides draw in with a sharp his (Larizu, hissing at a snake... Loa...) as it worked its way to the center of his upper belly, settled beneath the ribs and along the line between the pats of muscle that ran down either side of his slender abdomen.
"No," he croaked. No, to all of this.
"Yesssss."
The clumsy, tickling, itching and pointed finger that he knew was its tail began to twitch its way jerkily down the line of his belly, wiggling nastily as it paused in the indigo thatch of hair that belonged hidden just beneath his sarong. He wanted his sarong, damn you Loa. No duress. No duress and fuck all ya names.
When it came to rest on the base of his dick, sliding along the side to catch itself in the wrinkles of skin where his single ball hung - well, would have hung. It had taken this moment to hide somewhere up inside him - Larizu tried to make a sound that may have been a scream, far in the back of his throat. It sounded more like a dying gurgle.
Larizu never did dat to nobody. Dis is dat. Dis-
The tail-finger wrapped its keeled scales partway around the troll's flaccid member, lifting and then dropping it as it drew the skin forward. The touch returned, sliding about on his blue pubes.
"Kurrrrm-!"
The snake's cry was louder, insistent. Larizu's eyes snapped open, halfway through the alarmed-sounding call. But who da hell is Kurm- The snake was massive, monsterous beyond comprehension. Its head was large enough to engulf the troll and its mouth was open as it stretched out the "r" in the unfamiliar and popular name. Before it could finish, the scaled behemoth was suddenly wrenched away.
Larizu clapped his hands over his Buddy-and-friend, screaming in anticipation of being taken with the hissing monstrosity, but they were no longer gruesomely attached. He continued to scream, though, as he watched the snake sucked backward like a little toy. It flailed and wiggled, thrashing from side to side as it sought to escape whatever force was drawing its coils, which blacked out the sun and lit the land around him red with its stripes. Maybe everything had red stripes. Maybe the land was black.
The snake's eyes were rolling stupidly, disgusting but not as frightening as having them fixed on him. Then there was a sound like the wind's pissed off, be-good-stick wielding granddaddy and a resounding thud, and the snake-light went out. All was dark.