Work Text:
Self-Restraint, for Starters
It was dark.
It was always dark down there, but it was a little different on this particular occasion. Her flashlight had died on her all of a sudden. Perhaps she should've seen that coming, she hadn't changed it in quite a while. But she was on her way back already, the inspection of the tunnels was done and gone. Nothing out of the ordinary. The little sandbeast she had brought with her was walking back and forth just a few steps ahead of her, the sound of its paws on the ground and her own hand on the rocky wall of the tunnel helping her with maintaining her sense of direction. She was sweating a bit, but that was normal too. Not much ventilation down there, and some mining equipment -especially the older stuff- produced a lot of heat during operation, too much for a single night of inactivity to allow it to dissipate. Was that better than being cold, she briefly wondered. Probably not, being hot meant having to carry water around too.
She blinked, more out of habit than out of necessity. She was used to the dark, even to that pitch blackness she was currently shrouded in, but sometimes she still found herself wondering whether all that black wouldn't swallow her up whole, one day or another. Oh, but she'd have to at least bring the sandbeast back up before that happened. The thought made her strides grow a little longer. There was something oddly comforting in that darkness, she occasionally found herself thinking, and usually she corrected herself right after. It made much more sense to think it was the light of the main tunnel that was comforting. Was that the suspended bridge effect? She could remember having read that term once, but she couldn't actually recall what it was about. She was in a tunnel though, so it was unlikely to apply to her current situation. Bridges down there were incredibly rare too. Oh, but she had worked in a couple of mines which had a fair bit of them. She was sure one had closed down, but the other might've been still active. She had eaten a weird pumpkin cake there once. She decided she'd check out the market and see whether there were any pumpkins on sale once done with her work. Was it even pumpkin season though?
The skittering sounds of the sandbeast redirected her focus, and then she stopped.
There was something on her chest.
It was a bit heavy. And warm. How odd. She couldn't make out anything with her eyes and she was holding the strap of her crossbow with one hand to make sure she wouldn't drop it were she to bump into something, but the other one was free so she moved it from the wall to in front of herself.
Yes, there definitively was something on her chest. It was rotund, but not in a geometrical way. And it was covered in fur. It moved up and down rhythmically. Oh, that was an animal, and it was breathing. Made sense, although she wasn't sure when it had clung to her or why. And there was a... a fin on its back.
... the sandbeast.
When had the sandbeast's steps faded away?
She blinked, and her eyes opened to a different scenery.
It was still dark, but not quite as dark as a couple of moments ago. A soft, bluish light coated everything like a thin haze, just barely intense enough to keep one from stumbling into a drawer or a chair or any other sort or furnishing were they to walk around without turning the actual lights on. Right, that was the nightlight mounted on the wall. That was her room. She brought an hand to her forehead and found her own skin cool. She wasn't sweating. Her breathing was regular. She wasn't sure what she had just dreamed about, but it didn't seem to have been a nightmare. She believed she didn't even get many of those in the first place. On second consideration, however, her breathing was actually a little strained, and there was something warm and a little heavy on her chest. She brought her head up and saw the nameless sandbeast which had at some point decided to follow her for some reason, curled up on itself and cuddled on top of her, the sheets and her pajama combined still being too thin to keep its body heat from spreading at least a bit to her. She stared at its fin for a while, or at what she could make out of it at least. The room was dark but, compared to some -to lots- of the tunnels she had ventured through as a pitsinker, it looked relatively bright. Nightlights sure were fascinating things, uh.
I can't get up.
The thought occurred to her casually. The sandbeast wasn't actually that heavy, if anything it might've even been a little lighter than its size would've suggested. But she would've roused it were she to move, and that didn't quite feel right. Wondering whether she was holding back a yawn or not and coming to the conclusion that she was, she let it out and then simply gazed at the ceiling. Or she gazed in that direction, at least, the light wasn't bright enough to let her actually see that far. The opposite would've been troublesome, since it was supposed to not hinder her sleep, but the realization got her thinking.
This is weird. But it's nice. That's weird.
She looked down again. The sandbeast was sleeping peacefully, and Ray found herself thinking that gazing at the light -at what little of it was there- while unable to leave her bed was oddly...
... she wasn't sure. It wasn't a bad sensation, of that much she was certain, but it wasn't exactly relaxing either. Soothing, perhaps? No, that wasn't it? Thrilling? The word echoed with far too much strength inside her mind, but the general direction seemed a bit more accurate. Or maybe she was actually thinking about how warm and comfy the bed itself and the sandbeast's companionship were. That was possible too, she found herself wordlessly saying.
How long was left until her alarm? She decided to simply go back to sleep and not think about that. She'd have to get up a little earlier to clean the sand off the sheets too.
"Will this work?"
"I'm not sure, but it might!"
Gray-ears, or Warmy, or Potlid -the kid sure had a lot of names, didn't she?- didn't quite sound confident herself, but Ray figured there was nothing to lose in going along with her plan. The previous twelve had all failed, but perhaps thirteen would end up being the charm. There was a saying about that, right? Maybe not. Besides, she did kind of want to help Gray-ears with that matter anyway.
Which is why the two were currently huddled together in the middle of an hallway, one of the least busy of the landship. Ray herself was sitting on the ground with her legs folded, arms wrapped around Gray-ears and her chin softly resting on the young chef's head, pushing her ears apart a fair bit but not enough to make the position uncomfortable. Well, Ray herself was feeling a little awkward actually, she had to bend quite a lot to wrap herself around Gray-ears like that due to the whole thirty centimeters of height advantage she had over her, but Ray was also just the sort of person to not speak up about her own physical discomfort so long as she could simply bear with it in silence. And Ray could bear in silence things that would have normal people scream out in pain, to be honest. But this is a little besides the point, so let's go back to the situation at hand. Gray-ears was sitting on Ray's legs -she had asked three times already whether she wasn't too heavy- and had the older cautus holding on to her in an embrace of sort. Gray-ears herself was holding what looked like -and, by most reasonable metrics, actually was- a fishing rod. The tool in itself was novel to them both, there weren't exactly many places to go fishing in Rim Billiton after all, but the use they were currently making of it was... well, technically still appropriate. There was a bait at the end of the line and they were using it to lure in an animal, after all.
It didn't quite seem to be working that well though. Their target was staring at them from a distance of roughly four meters, its gaze mostly fixed on the slice of dry meat hanging from the fishing line, its head swaying softly left and right together with the bait. It would occasionally take a step or two towards the food but, as soon as Gray-ears tried to reel the line in even a little bit, the sandbeast would stop and not move any further until she conceded and unwound the line back.
They had probably been going at it for an hour by then. Gray-ears let out an heavy, disappointed sigh. Ray wondered whether she was sleepy.
"I can try and hold the rod for you" she then offered.
"No, I have to do it!" Gray-ears replied, surprising Ray a little bit "I don't know why the sandbeast started avoiding me but I have to get its trust back!"
Reasonable, Ray thought. Although she was more curious about why the sandbeast had started avoiding Gray-ears in the first place. It still followed Ray around though, so there probably was merit to the idea of trying to convince it to approach by sticking close to her while doing so. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to have worked out at all.
Oh, Gray-ears just sighed again.
"... I'm afraid this is another failure... "
Ray pulled her head back up and replaced it with one of her hands, patting the younger cautus a few times.
"It probably just needs time"
"That... might be so" Gray-ears replied, trying to at least not sound discouraged as she got back up.
Ray did the same and took the fishing line from Gray-ears. The moment the tool switched hands, the sandbeast walked up to the dried meat and started munching on it under the two cautuses' gaze, one clearly dejected, the other nearly impossible to read. Ray looked a little sleepy or distracted in truth, but that's just how she always looked so that wasn't actually indicative of anything.
Then the distinctive sound of steps approaching reached them and all three turned towards the direction the noise was coming from, past the sandbeast. Which, on its part, had bitten the meat off the line and was now holding it with its front legs while taking small bites out of it.
Then a little cautus entered their field of view. Little might've been a bit of a relative term since she was actually a bit taller than Gray-ears, but by most other metrics she was indeed short.
"Ah, Warmy!" she greeted, walking up to them with a cheerful spring to her steps, carrying a backpack nearly as if not even a little larger than herself as if it was nothing "And the cute animal too!"
Before either Warmy or Ray could say anything in return, however, the sandbeast turned around and dashed towards Ray, hiding behind her legs and casting watchful glances at Popukar. That reaction left Warmy startled, but the other child didn't seem to have noticed anything weird with that.
"What are you doing down here?"
"Hi, Popukar. We're... playing around a bit!" Warmy replied, because a part of her didn't quite want to admit she had just spent yet another hour failing to get the sandbeast to approach her "Tag!"
"Oohh, that sounds fun! Can I join?"
"I wouldn't mind... " Warmy answered, casting a brief glance at Ray and getting only a rather puzzled stare in return "But it's almost lunch time, isn't it? I promised I'd help out a bit at the canteen today"
"Is that so? Then I shouldn't insist, right"
"What's that?" Ray then inquired, pointing to the backpack Popukar was carrying, which on closer inspection was less of a backpack and more of a wrapped up package.
"Hello, ahem... Paella!"
"Ray is fine" she said back, completely unfazed by the odd butchering of her full name.
Warmy wondered whether she was a bad girl for having had to hold back a little laugh.
"This is a projector!" Popukar explained as she took it off her back and put it down, the dull sound it made upon contact with the floor betraying its weight "Midnight had borrowed it for a movie bli-a movie night! But then he and Spot had to leave suddenly, Catapult got kidnapped by the instructor and Orchid was asked to cover someone at work, because they are cold I think. So I offered to bring it back. I even promised it wouldn't break" she added as she unwrapped it a bit to reveal the projector itself, a rather old model by the looks of it.
"Are projectors always this large?" Ray inquired as she begun to walk forward.
Having noticed this, the sandbeast swiftly climbed up along her legs and back and nestled itself atop her head, staring down at the two girls -both gray-haired, short cautues- with either caution or apprehension depending on which one exactly it was staring at.
Popukar, whose attention had just been caught by the animal again, stared back at it and reached up with both arms. She couldn't quite reach properly down because, while she was a bit taller than other kids her age, Ray was simply taller than average, especially for a cautus. But the sandbeast still clung to Ray's head tighter, gripping her firmly as it tried to put as much distance as it could between itself and Popukar. Its claws were actually digging a little bit into her skin, but Ray figured there was no point in complaining about that since she could bear with it just fine.
"... Popukar, have you met sandbeast before?" Warmy inquired, tipped off by that unusually strong reaction, while Ray simply walked in circles around the projector.
"We met some time ago! I think it was... last month? No, the month before that. It's so cute and fluffy I couldn't resist and hugged it, but then I never managed to find it again... "
For as much as she wasn't exactly intimately familiar with Popukar, Warmy was still aware of just how exceptional -freaky even, some would say- her physical strength was, especially for someone of her age and race. And... the height difference between them was ultimately minor and they both had gray fur, even if the exact shade was different.
... hold on...
"Popukar, I think you scarred it" Warmy said, a mix of soft anger and veiled disappointment in her voice.
"I did?" she asked back, turning pensive and recalling some previous occurrences.
She had never hurt any animal but, now that she thought about it, there had been a couple of times Catapult, Midnight and even Spot went to the medical ward after Popukar had hugged them a bit more tightly than she had meant to.
"... oh. I'm sorry, I hadn't meant to... " she apologized, her gaze falling to the ground, the tip of her feet joining together, her ears... not moving at all because her hat held those down all the time anyway.
"Ehm, it's... it's fine, really! So long as you understand what you did wrong. I think? But getting the sandbeast to trust us again might be difficult... " Warmy said back, the clear guilt in Popukar's reaction having cooled her own resentment down.
"Does this work?" Ray then asked.
To distract Popukar, Warmy believed. Whether that was actually true or not, however, one could only guess.
"It does! And I think there's a thing here... no, it was here... here!" Popukar added, finding a somewhat hidden compartment and pulling it open to take what could only be an instruction manual out of it.
Ray was a little surprised to find it written in rim billitonian, to be honest. But then again there were four other languages too, which was perhaps even more surprising.
"This is pretty old. It runs tapes?"
"It does, but Catapult said it got... modded? And now can project video cassettes and disks too. ... ah!" she then exclaimed as the turned to Warmy "The projector's still borrowed technically so we can watch something together!"
"That sounds lovely! When do you have to return it?"
"By tomorrow before lunch"
"So... I think that just leaves this evening. But Alanna's shift changed and she'll be sleeping at that hour, we'd wake her up if we watched a movie in our room... "
"Oh. I think Orchid will be asleep too at that hour, she got a lot of work all of a sudden and needs to rest when she can"
"My place is fine"
Ray, who had been listening to the conversation with just one ear while reading through the instruction manual, threw that option out without quite really thinking about it. Gray-ears often visited her there and Popukar was a friend of Gray-ears, so there shouldn't have been anything wrong with that. The sandbeast might get a little upset perhaps, but at least for the time being it seemed to be relaxing a little bit too so everything should've played out nicely. She was sure she could prevent any accident from happening, at least.
"That'd be great! Thanks, Ray!" the two kids said, not exactly in unison but close enough to that.
"What will you watch though?"
"... oh. We already returned the movies... "
"I was going to the library later. I can pick up something?" she offered again, because that too didn't seem like a problem "You can drop this in my room in the meanwhile"
"Thanks a lot!"
"Are you sure we aren't intruding too much?"
"It's fine. This looks fun" Ray answered, running three fingers over the bulky projector as if to get a feel of its interior.
"Thanks again then!"
"Mnh"
And so the group split into two, Warmy and Popukar taking the projector to Ray's room -Popukar did the carrying, Warmy made sure they didn't get lost and had a spare key to unlock the door- before heading to the canteen while Ray went to the library, the sandbeast having apparently made itself too comfortable on her head to get off. That got her more than just a few odd stares as she went by, especially because while the sandbeast wasn't that large, it really wasn't small enough to perch itself on someone's head without causing discomfort either. In fact, ordinary people wouldn't even have been able to sustain its weight with just their neck. But Ray decided to leave it there for a while longer anyway. At least until she made it to the library's entrance, at which point she had to get it back down on the floor as animals required a special permit or something along those lines to be allowed inside and the sandbeast didn't have it. The two parted ways there, the sandbeast turning around to explore the nearby area and maybe find some cables to munch on while Ray walked in. Before she could reach the section she had meant to visit, however, she realized that she didn't actually know what movie would be good for the occasion and decided to start from that instead.
She ended up spending the whole afternoon browsing the movie collection, partially because it was kind of massive in its own right after all. In fact, had her stomach not started rumbling she might've ended up missing dinner too. Good thing the canteen was open nearly twenty four hours a day. She ate dinner, fixed a couple of cables the sandbeast had munched on in the afternoon and then she returned to her room, with a small bag full of cassettes and dvds which she placed down on the desk. Thinking about it, she had definitively taken too many. They would likely watch just one movie, not a dozen. But she wasn't sure what kind of movie those two might like, so the more the better. But that didn't matter all that much at that point, so she filled the sandbeast's bowl with some fresh food and changed its water too, because it was likely to arrive soon to eat. After that she started working on the projector, which had been left next to the bed. Ray's room was on the small side to begin with, and the sandbox she had personally built inside there took up nearly half of the already limited space. The projector, large as it was, was the final piece needed to make the whole place look downright cramped. But there was a certain sense of coziness to that which Ray actually enjoyed.
As for the projector's actual usage, the instructions only talked about how to get it to play tapes in truth, but a closer inspection made it apparent which components were the originals -or the not recently replaced ones, at least- and which ones were new. A couple of not entirely uneducated guesses about which buttons to push led to the opening of a side compartment, one split into two for cassettes and dvds. She fetched the first cassette her hands landed on inside the bag and put it inside, closing the compartment and hitting what should've been the play button. The projector then sprung to life, a surprisingly loud rumbling filling the room for a few seconds before fading into a barely audible noise. Ray followed the light cast by the machine to the wall of her room, a couple of relatively modern-looking speakers installed on the projector's side reproducing the movie's audio while the visuals got displayed on the wall. She tried to adjust the volume a bit, accidentally hitting the rewind and the pause button before finding the right thing to push, then went back to staring at the wall.
There was too much light, that much was certain. She could hardly make anything out from what was being projected on the wall. So she started with turning those off, and the improvement from that single flick of a switch was as clear as day. The wall itself was... smooth enough, she guessed? She had been considering putting up something there, perhaps a poster or two, but given the particular development that day had taken those could probably wait. She adjusted the projector's angle to make the image appear a bit further up from the floor too. Having confirmed that everything was working, she stopped the projector, pulled the cassette out and turned the lights back on. Then the familiar sound of scratching brought her to the door to let the sandbeast in, the relatively small animal rubbing itself against her legs as it moved past Ray to reach its dinner. Ray then simply stood there, crouched down next to it as she watched it eat, then drink, then lie down against her thigh and scratch itself under its chin. Ray stared at it for a bit longer before getting back up, fetching a small pair of tweezers and scissors and sitting on the bed. The sandbeast waited for her to be ready and climbed on top of the sheets too, making itself comfortable on her thighs as Ray ran her fingers over its body, looking for little mats in its fur, pinching them and then cutting them off, taking care to cut only the bare minimum required. Mats weren't exactly a big problem for sandbeasts, but they usually cleaned them off each other in the wild. Since there weren't any other on the landship, Ray had come to the conclusion it was her responsibility to take care of that. That sandbeast was following her after all, so it kind of was her fault that it had nobody else of its kind around to clean its fur. It wasn't a bothersome activity anyway, and the sandbeast seemed to like the attention too.
Then someone knocked at the door.
Ray found herself waiting for an oddly long couple of seconds before getting up. Her mind had gone back by half a week, to that night she had woken up with the sandbeast sleeping on top of her. A second knock kept her thoughts from wandering too far off and she guided the sandbeast off her thighs, getting up to her feet and walking the short distance needed to answer the door.
"Good evening, Ray"
"Hi!"
"Hi"
Popukar spent a second or so just staring at Ray, possibly awed by the sight of a cautus that tall -despite that not being their first or second time meeting- then followed Warmy inside. The sandbeast had already burrowed into the sandbox by that point, unfortunately.
"Ooohhh, there's so many!"
"Do you have any preference?" Warmy asked Ray, who on her part simply shrugged.
That wasn't exactly the answer Warmy had hoped for, but it also was the one she had expected so she tried to not think too much about it and looked at the movies available. Some gave off the impression of being comedies, others sounded like actions movies, there was also one which probably was an horror? She would've rather avoided that, if possible.
"This one!" Popukar said, grabbing the oldest-looking cassette from the small pile and holding it up.
"... what's this?" Warmy asked, because the cassette's case was actually badly scratched and damaged, to the point she couldn't even make out the title. Nor the summary on the back, for the matter.
"I don't know" Ray answered flatly "It seemed interesting"
"Right! Let's watch this!" Popukar said again, hopping in place from the excitement, the mysterious cassette luring her in the same way a buried chest would lure a treasure huntress.
Warmy, on her part, was a little hesitant. But then again, that was just a movie. If it turned out to be something they didn't like they could always just take the cassette out and try something else. Popukar and Warmy sat on the bed -there was neither a sofa nor enough chairs for everyone- while Ray got the projector ready and turned the lights off. She had expected those two to six next to each other admittedly, so seeing the space left between them for her surprised her a bit. That was just fine too though, so she took her seat without saying anything, unlike Popukar who seemed to be too excited to keep quiet. That wasn't a problem either though, and the trio huddled a little bit closer to accommodate for the limited space they had at their disposal as the movie started.
Ray's thoughts ended up wandering off right away though. Where exactly, she wasn't sure, but the story seemed to be set in a small desert town of some sort which might've reminded her of Rim Billiton. Well, the town itself was nothing like the ones she had seen, but still.
With that said, the movie actually managed to catch her attention back soon, around ten minutes or so in. Although perhaps it had been the two kids who had dragged her back out of her own mind. She could have sworn they had huddled a bit closer to her still.
The two protagonists, or at least the two characters which gave off the impression of being the protagonists, had just found an old man dead on a power pylon. Apparently the fellow stayed up there with a crossbow in hand for so long he died of dehydration. Warmy and Popukar both found that weird, and Ray really didn't know what to tell them about that. But the characters found it odd too, so that was probably intended.
... the language used in the movie seemed a little bit crude for kids, Ray absent-mindedly thought. Her mind drifted away again, to that time she spent a couple of months working in a small mine somewhere near Iron Fist. The people there used to swear every other sentence, perhaps because the place was really prone to cave-ins and flooding. Compared to that, the movie's language still seemed kind of tame to her.
Popukar's hands closing on Ray's arm brought her attention back again. The protagonists had just found a bunch of dead sheep, or what was left of them at least. It kind of looked like they'd been eaten, and -oh, the old man tending to them was dead too. Did the filmmaker have something against old people? Warmy was clinging to Ray a bit more too, but what really stood out to Ray was the strength of Popukar's grasp. That child was surprisingly strong, wasn't she? Then again, she did carry that projector on her back without breaking a sweat.
Had Popukar ever broken anything? It seemed likely, given her strength and age. Oh, but then again that was an assumption, and those were bad. There was a chance she had been educated well enough to avoid that sort of incidents, and -the two kids let out a yelp when a jackhammer hit something underneath the ground. Blood poured out from beneath -it looked more like tomato sauce though, which was funny- and then the jackhammer got dragged away by something. Oh, the worker got his leg tangled up in the power cord and got dragged away too. He probably got killed off screen, if the noise was of any indication.
... perhaps she should stop the movie? But the projector was just barely out of her reach and Popukar's grip was so strong she doubted she could shake her off to get up. Gray-ears's weight resting on her more and more with every passing minute didn't help either, but... then again, those two didn't seem to be complaining about the movie so they were probably enjoying it. They seemed quite tense, but that just meant the movie was well made she guessed? It did seem to be trying to build tension after all.
... she had seen a miner get zapped by a defective high voltage cable once. Not a pretty sight, although the worst part had honestly been the smell. Movies couldn't really replicate smells though, could they? Kind of a shortcoming of the medium, she found herself thinking, although that sort of criticism didn't seem fair. Perhaps-
Oh, the protagonists found the culprit behind those deaths. Popukar called it a monster, but it honestly looked like an animal? A made-up one probably, Ray hadn't seen it anywhere on any of the animal almanacs and compendiums she had red. It kind of very loosely looked like a, what was that called, a quicksand beast. And it didn't seem terribly smart either, it just burrowed at full speed into a concrete wall and killed itself. It was blind apparently, but still. A monster would know better than that, right? Oh, Gray-ears was shivering. Was she cold? That would've been a first, given her Arts. Ray decided to pull her a little closer, perhaps that would help.
There was air conditioning inside there, right? She had never used it, just putting on and taking off clothes was enough and the landship itself had a centralized heating system anyway, but maybe she should turn it on and up a bit for good measure. She doubted it'd be anything too complicated.
... had Gray-ears ever cooked anything using her hands instead of a pan? It would probably be sanitary enough so long as she washed them before starting and reached an high enough temperature. That probably wasn't worth it though, a pan was just more comfortable to handle than raw food. But perhaps she could hard boil an egg like that? No, probably not that either, she was fairly sure water was better for that too. What about using her hand instead of a stove to heat up the pan though? Or directly creating a fire perhaps. Would the energy expenditure saved that way be worth more or less than the calories spent to use Arts in such a way?
A sudden giggle from Popukar brought her back again. There were other burrowing animals -giant worms of some sort- apparently, and now the characters were pole vaulting from one rock to another to get back to their car without having to step directly on the ground. One of them fell back on his butt after his first attempt though, and the music was pretty upbeat too now. That looked fun, perhaps she could try pole vaulting between rocks too. Were there enough rocks around Rhodes Island's current position for that though? On inside one of the training rooms? Perhaps she'd have to check.
Popukar's grip grew tighter again as the characters tried to get away from those animals, with varying degrees of success. Most of the buildings in the movie were all made of wood or recycled scraps, not exactly the most sturdy of constructions, and apparently those worms could kind of break through them.
... she felt tingly.
The realization hit Ray suddenly, and her mind went back to that night from a few days ago. She realized Popukar's hands were holding her so firmly she couldn't even shake her arm a little bit, but the tingle wasn't spreading from her arm. That would imply a loss of sensibility caused by a stop in the circulation of blood, probably, so that fact was in a certain sense reassuring. Well, her blood had actually kind of stopped circulating to her arm due to Popukar's grip, but that's something she would notice later and simply bear with in silence. As for the faint tingle, she couldn't understand why it was coming from between her thighs. It took her a while but she recognized what that feeling what, but that was just even weirder. She turned her head around, staring at the ray of light coming from the projector rather than at the projected images, and found an odd mixture of calm and excitement springing to life inside of her. It was... pleasant, but weird.
Gray-ears and Popukar then said something again. What exactly, of that she wasn't sure, she had honestly missed that, but they did bring her attention back to the movie. There were two people in a bunker with... she honestly wasn't sure whether they were holding guns or crossbows, the designs were odd. Had those two even appeared in the movie at all before this scene? They probably did. Anyway, one of those burrowing giant worms had just torn open a wall in their bunker and they were now shooting at it. Oh, so those were guns. How did they get bullets in a place that looked so poor? Talking about bullets, they just ran out and the worm was still -oh. Oh, they had a lot of guns on the wall. One, two, three, four, the camera moved away, Gray-ears was covering her ears -not her eyes- as she watched the two characters unload another set of guns at the worm, Ray had managed to count seventeen by that point, but Popukar seemed strangely enthusiastic. Ray caught her say something about how a certain Catapult would probably love doing something like that. How much did filming that scene cost though? Ray had always heard bullets were expensive. Perhaps those were fake? Probably, but how much did fake bullets costs anyway? She wasn't sure she really wanted to spend time looking into that. Her crossbow probably needed another round of maintenance, didn't it? It had been a little over three weeks since last time. She hadn't used it all that much during those three weeks so it probably wasn't an issue yet, but waiting any longer sounded like a bad idea. She had learned how to do basic repairs on it on her own, but Rhodes Island had some professionals aboard, perhaps it would be better to ask one of them instead. Would they let her watch the repairs or would that be considered a bother? Ray didn't mind other people watching her work but her work was also of an entirely different kind, comparing them didn't sit right with her. Maybe she could look up a manual? Or maybe not, that idea didn't convince her all that much either.
Gray-ears jumped in place and Ray's mind focused on the movie again. They were tricking the worms into eating bombs now? That seemed a little cruel, but she supposed that's what they had available. Popukar seemed to have relaxed a lot now, while Gray-ears still looked like she was a bit cold. Ray pulled them both a bit closer still and decided to try and focus on the movie, she didn't want to miss too much of it. They didn't really have a lot of room for sitting together like that though, uh. Should she get a sofa? She already had a couple of chairs inside there, foldable ones but still chairs. Even a couple of extra pillows. She doubted she'd ever actually use a sofa herself, and she wasn't sure where she'd put it anyway. Maybe an armchair would be good? But a foldable chair with a couple of pillows tied to it was basically an armchair already, so that sounded like a bad use of money. Perhaps she could get a few more rocks for the sandbox? Sandbeasts liked sandy, relatively soft soil as their name suggested, but a couple of rocks here and there might be nice to have around anyway, just to change the scenery a bit. What about getting a larger bed instead? Hers was a standard single size one, but it felt big enough already. So perhaps-
Popukar then threw her arms up and jumped a bit while Gray-ears let out a long, deep exhale, as if she'd been holding her breath for a long time. Ray's attention fell on the screen, or rather on the wall, again. They had just gotten one of the worms to dig out of a cliffside and fall down. Ray told herself to remain focused and not miss the rest of the movie, but then the credits started rolling. Was it over already? That was... a bit of a bummer.
"That was weird. But it was fun!" Popukar said as she got up.
"It was kind of scary... "
"Oh, yeah, those poor sheeps... but some parts were really funny!"
Ray tried to not give away her almost complete lack of knowledge about what she was supposed to have just watched by not joining the two kids' conversation about the movie, getting up to stop the projector instead and casting a glance at the clock.
"It's a bit late. You should probably go to sleep now, right?"
"Ahem... c-can I sleep here for tonight? It's already dark out, and... "
"Oh, can I too then? It's a slumber party!"
Ray found Warmy's request -and Popukar's too, for the matter- odd, but not bothersome, and allowed them to stay.
... oh. So this might be a reason to get a bigger bed, perhaps.
Or perhaps not, because being huddled together in a too small bed felt comfier than being alone on a large one after all.
Around a couple of days later, Ray was sitting on her bed, alone in her room. Well, the sandbeast was there too technically speaking but it was taking a morning nap in the sandpit so it probably didn't count. The lights were off, only the dim blue nightlight to barely illuminate the place, and Ray was staring at her arm, the one Popukar had held while watching the movie. In her other hand was a belt. She wasn't entirely sure what she was about to do or why, but she had an hunch it might be nice.
So she placed her wrist against the bed frame and ran the belt around it once, twice, thrice, until the whole length of the belt was holding her arm in place. She buckled the belt and tried to pull her hand away. The tying had been kind of sloppy, she immediately realized, but not to the point of allowing her wrist to break free just by wiggling it around.
Her hand was stuck.
Well, not stuck as in actually stuck, she could unbuckle the belt at any time. She was fairly sure she could even manage to just slip her hand away with a bit of effort if she actually tried, because she really hadn't put in that much effort in running the belt around her wrist. But something about that simple fact made her feel a bit different. Staring at her barely illuminated quarter was no longer soothing with an hand tied, it wasn't relaxing. But it wasn't bad either, it was kind of... she didn't want to use too strong of a word by mistake so she refrained from putting a label on it, but she was actually rather sure of what that state she was experiencing was. She knew she could experience it even out of season, but she couldn't really recall the last time she had felt like that outside of being in heat, and even then the sensation was a bit different. It was less... primal. More elaborate, perhaps. She untied her wrist and started digging through the drawers. She had a fair bit of equipment of different sorts lying around, some stored away neatly, some stashed with no apparent rhyme nor reason, and while some of those seemed like they could work she wasn't sure it was right to repurpose them like that. Why, she wasn't sure.
... there was a store on Rhodes Island, right? Well, multiple stores to be precise, but she had heard a certain Closure personally ran one at which you could find a bit of everything. She fetched the terminal she had been given upon registration as an operator, looked up that store's opening hours and location and then spent the following three days doing something else, because apparently it was only open for three hours on the second and fourth saturday night of every month. She could've placed an order and have the goods delivered directly, admittedly, but she didn't feel like she was in any hurry.
The store didn't really look like a store. That's the first thing Ray thought as she stared at the unassuming, anonymous steel door in front of her, no shop windows or signs or anything else to indicate the presence of a commercial activity of any sort. She had already gotten the place wrong thrice, in truth -Rhodes Island was so much more difficult to navigate than a mine's tunnels, for some reason- but she had a feeling she had it right at last. Which she found odd, in truth. There was nobody else around, after all, and she'd expected to find at least a few other patrons. Maybe she really had missed her mark again. Well, only one way to find out. No, there actually were other methods too, but just ringing the doorbell was definitively the simplest, fastest one, and so she did just that. Nobody answered for a good ninety seconds, but since Ray had time she decided to wait another couple of minutes. Then she rang the bell again for good measure, perhaps whoever was inside hadn't heard it the first time. Not much time went by before the door opened on its own and, taking that as an invitation, Ray walked in.
The interior was more resembling of a store, she found, but if asked to guess she'd probably have said she had just walked into a warehouse instead. A small and messy warehouse, so full of all sorts of gizmos and trinkets and boxes that the lamps themselves were obstructed. As a matter of fact, the place was illuminated mostly by a bunch of almost stationary drones equipped with torches. Not a cozy environment at all, but it sort of made her feel at ease with just how cramped it was. She took another look around, but the stuff inside there only really left her three possible directions to move in, two if we exclude the one she had just come from. One of those paths was barely illuminated so she went down the other instead, quickly reaching a turn and, after that, a sort of desk built into a wall, with a curtain to hide whatever might've been behind it, a door next to it to get... somewhere. Looking at it again, that looked more like a window between two rooms repurposed as a counter.
"I'm coming!" a voice shouted from behind the curtain.
"Alright"
A short while later, someone pulled the curtain aside and leaned on the counter. A black-haired sarkaz, and a rather short one by the looks of it. She was wearing an heavy jacket which looked a little too large for her, an oversized shirt of the sort people pulled out after a shower when they didn't feel like putting anything more than a single piece of clothing on, and... well, Ray couldn't really see anything else with the counter in the way -oh, there was a choker around her neck- but she wouldn't have been surprised to find out that woman was wearing neither a skirt nor pants. Weird one, that one.
"Alright, I'm here!"
"This is Closure's store, right?" Ray asked to make sure she hadn't gotten the place wrong again "Is this a bad moment?" she added, because the oil stains on the sarkaz's face and hands suggested she had been tinkering with something when the bell rang.
"It sure is the store, and I'm Closure herself in the flesh! But you do know there's a page on the landship's network to order stuff remotely, right?"
"Yes"
"Alright, uh... that's fine too"
Now that was new, someone physically coming to that particular store. The place itself wasn't even meant to be an actual store, Closure sold virtually everything on the net and used the opening hours as an excuse to get some free time to work on her personal projects, play around or do other stuff like that.
"Do you sell stuff to tie someone up?"
"... alright, wait a moment"
Closure disappeared behind the curtain again, resurfacing at most a minute later with an half-empty bottle of something blue and bright in hand. An energy drink, perchance? The color was pretty.
"Is this, like, for work? Do you work in security? Does it have to be sturdy or just quick to use? Oh, there's absolute privacy here! So long as you don't ask stuff not allowed on the landship, in which case... " Closure explained, leaning forward and whispering as Ray leaned forward too "What gets negotiated under the table stays there"
"That's nice"
"Alright, I've got plenty on stuff at hand, just give me some details and I'll fetch something" the sarkaz said before taking a long sip from the bottle.
"I need something to tie someone up"
"Yeah, you said that already"
Ray bent her head.
"To tie myself up"
"Oh"
Closure crossed her arms, bent her neck this way, that way, this way again, looked up and down, then threw Ray a really wide smirk while covering her mouth with an hand. The gesture seemed more theatrical than anything else.
"We're talking about some fun time alone here, aren't we?"
... I think we are? Probably. Does that count as fun?
Ray nodded.
"Alright, got any preferences?"
"Not in particular"
"Anything to avoid?"
"Not really"
"Anything you had in mind?"
"Nothing specific"
"Alright, last question!" Closure declared, because Ray really wasn't giving her much to work with "First time doing stuff like this?"
Ray briefly pondered the question.
"Yes"
"Alright then, I'll be right back! Give me ten minutes"
And with that Closure disappeared back behind the curtain again. A few moments later a miniature vending machine got slid over the counter, which piqued both Ray's interest and her confusion. There were a few drinks and snacks inside there, she even recognized a couple of brands, and it looked like the thing took both cards, coins and paper money. But the prices seemed a little high and she had already had dinner, so she refrained from purchasing anything and simply waited, letting her gaze wander on all the stuff piled up around her. She could spot... drones, tvs, some consoles, mechanical components, tablets, and then lots and lots of boxes with all sorts of different labels on them, from 't-shirts small size' to '15k lumen silent fireworks'. The more she looked around the more she got the impression that she was standing in the middle of someone's controlled chaos. It was kind of amusing, in its own way. She noticed some new drones flying around too, and two in particular made their way to an hidden gate above the counter at some point.
"Alright, I'm back!" Closure then announced, emerging once again from the curtain with a couple of thick cardboard boxes, one small enough to almost comfortably fit on her open hand, the other a bit bigger "This one here's got some nice stuff! Simple, easy, batteries included but I can't promise they're charged up already. Charger's sold separately. Everything that needs a manual has it included. It comes at -what currency do you have on you?"
Ray spent a second or so staring at Closure. She looked a bit dirtier than before, and she could even hear machineries working somewhere behind her. The longer she stayed there the more the cautus felt like she wasn't actually supposed to be there, to be honest. But that could wait, she looked into her pockets to check how much she had brought exactly.
"I have rim billitonian karrots and a few lungmen dollars"
"Those are both fine. Alright, this little box here comes for just forty five karrots, but if you get this other thing here with slightly funnier stuff inside" she said, pushing the larger box forward too "You can have both for just sixty five!"
"Can I look inside first?"
"You can, but then where would be the fun then? ... right" she added, since she couldn't quite make out what Ray's expression was indicative of and that was making her worry a little "There's a little transaction script you can sign here, think of it like a warranty. Five extra karrots and you have a whole week to return the stuff if you don't like it, plus a two-months warranty! So long as the damage is, you know, reasonable to fix"
Ray grabbed the two boxes and lifted them up, one at a time, to get a feel of their weight. She wasn't sure buying blindly like that was a good idea, but the price wasn't terribly high -probably? Hard to be sure without knowing what was inside- and the document seemed legit.
"... alright"
"Come back in two weeks and you get a 10% discount on your first purchase!" Closure kind of shouted after her as Ray signed her copy of the document and walked away with that and both boxes.
And then the sarkaz went back to her private, unofficial, semi-secret workshop to work on only Closure herself knew what.
Ray, on her part, leisurely walked back to her room, placed the boxes down, stored the document away and checked on the sandbeast, which seemed to be sleeping inside the sandbox again, deep enough under the sandy soil to not be bothered by the lights. The slight depression on the surface gave away the place it had burrowed into. Then she grabbed a bottle of juice from the mini fridge all dormitory rooms came equipped with, drank half of it and only then she started to check the content of the boxes. But she was getting kind of sleepy, so she actually stopped almost immediately and put those away too to get changed into her pajama and get some sleep.
A couple of days later, Ray's dormitory room could be found around as quiet as it always was. Even more than usual even, perhaps. Dinner had already gone by and the cautus was sitting alone on her bed, fully clothed except for her coat and cap. The sandbeast wasn't around, and it wouldn't be for the whole night. Ray had taken it to the Convalescent Garden for a semi-routine health inspection, where it'd stay until the next morning for observation. Sandbeasts weren't exactly the most adaptive of animals and there weren't even any recorded cases of any being raised in captivity so, other than the ordinary concerns which came from having an animal possibly contracting illnesses or parasitic infestations its body wasn't accustomed to when moving to a new environment, there was also a certain thrill about the chance to see the critter from up close behind the reason for its night stay. Well, that and the sandbeast had been coughing a little bit the previous day, which could both mean nothing and be a warning sign of something bad going on inside of it. But Ray wasn't worried. She knew sandbeasts, and the one following her didn't seem to be giving any sign of being in bad health. With that said, it was still better to be safe than sorry, and its stay was for a single night anyway.
It was quite handy, if anything. Ray hadn't quite yet decided what exactly she was going to do but she figured not having the sandbeast around was for the better, at least for the first time she tried stuff like that. Although she did end up starting way later than she had initially meant to. Probably shouldn't have gotten distracted by the herd of metal crabs at the Garden and their little swaying flowers. Or maybe not, she had liked watching them after all.
Back to the main topic at hand, she had expected the two boxes to contain more pages of written instructions than she ended up finding in truth, all the manuals combined barely amounted to five small pages of actual directions about the usage of the tools, but she decided to read them all twice anyway for good measure. There was also more stuff than she had anticipated inside there, but rather than debating whether she should've tried everything out right away or not she figured she could just improvise on the fly. That usually worked out just fine.
The first thing she pulled out was a choker. No, actually, that was a collar. Black and made of either leather or something that strongly resembled leather. The leash was rather long too, enough to give a lot of freedom of movement, to the point it probably would not be a problem to use it. How exactly, she wasn't sure. Either way she started by putting it on and tying the other end of the collar to the bed frame, to start out with something at least. She couldn't make it to the door like that, but it didn't really limit her range of motion all that much. After that she found a couple of leather restraints, each consisting of three progressively smaller straps bound together on one side. She was fairly sure those were supposed to go on the legs, so she put them aside for the time being and kept digging stuff out of the two boxes, one item at a time. The next thing she fished out of them was a plastic ball, red and filled with holes like certain varieties of cheese and equipped with a fair amount of straps too. She wouldn't have really figured out what that was for had it not been for the instructions, to be honest, and she wasn't entirely sure what the point of wearing such a thing even was in the first place, but since it was there and she had paid for it already she saw no reason to not try it on. The ball was a little large for her, Ray realized as she stuffed it into her mouth, and closing the straps around her head felt a little awkward. She took a look at herself in the mirror after that and wondered whether the straps holding the ball in place were actually meant to remind people of those masked wrestlers she had seen on tv every now and then or not. She rubbed her jaw a bit then placed an hand over her chest.
She was fairly sure her pulse had quickened a bit. She had realized what the cause was, but she couldn't really tell why that was the case. It was kind of weird, but she felt like she had dealt with weirder things already in the past so that was fine.
She went back to digging into the two boxes, decided to just pull out some things almost at random and put the rest away. There actually wasn't a whole lot left inside there to be honest, but that's beside the point. Ray stared at the small assortment she had placed on the sheets, one of her ears bending down as she tried to figure out on what order to put what on and how. All the electrically powered tools had remotes, so she decided to start from those. She grabbed a small suction cup of sort, the inner side covered in soft, tiny bristles, and fumbled with the remote a bit before managing to set the mode to random and make it start in... she figured half an hour would be good. She then took off her belt and slid the little thing between her legs, underneath her shorts, pantyhose and underwear. There were four tiny straps attached to it, but her clothes were tight enough to hold it in place anyway so she didn't bother fastening those. Putting that on her clit felt a little funny, but the sensation was kind of pleasant.
Then she realized she was drooling, a bit of her saliva running down her chin and threatening to fall off. Now that she paid a bit more attention to it, the gag was making it really hard to keep her drool from spilling out of her mouth. That had to be by design, but she still wasn't sure why someone would want to design something in such a way to begin with. Well, she could clean the floor later and she had meant to wash those clothes afterwards either way, so that wasn't a problem.
Would drool taste different were she to change her diet? She almost felt like finding out.
Oh, but that wasn't the right time for that, she remembered. Bringing her attention back to the bed, she fetched a couple of small, plastic eggs. The pink color didn't strike her as particularly alluring, but at least they weren't green. As for their remotes, those were linked to the respective egg with a short cable. She managed to put them on the same setting as the suction cup and slid both under her panties too, pushing one past her folds and leaving the other against her entrance.
Then she stared at her hand for a few seconds. Her fingers had come back a bit wet.
... oh. Right, this probably counts as masturbation, doesn't it? she thought, somewhat absent-mindedly.
It didn't feel like the most productive way to spend her time, but it didn't seem like the most wasteful one either so it was fine.
She moved her hand to a pair of headphones, a semi-universal model for people with ears on top of their head rather than on the sides. They seemed to be of the soundproofing variety, and when she tried them on she really could no longer hear anything as it turned out. But there was supposed to be a music player somewhere inside there too, and... oh, the buttons were on the headphones themselves. She wasn't sure whether that felt futuristic or impractical. She fetched the small piece of paper listing the pieces recorded on it, but the only one that caught her interest was the ambient sound of rain falling on a shed on a slightly windy evening. She wasn't sure why that was in there, frankly, everything else recorded there seemed to be actual music after all. Perhaps that's what people meant when they spoke of good luck. She took the headphones off to be sure of hitting the right buttons, selected that piece and set it to repeat indefinitely before putting them back on and adjusting the volume.
That was relaxing. Also kind of weird, in truth. Music was one thing, sound effects during movies or at the theatre -that one time she had been to a theatre play- were another, but hearing rain while deep inside a facility as massive as Rhodes Island felt a little wrong. She decided to lower the volume a little bit, then spent a few minutes thinking about that time a few pipes had been damaged by a minor explosion in a cave, all the leaking water making it feel like it war raining underground. Then she remembered what she was doing and moved her focus back to the other things she had prepared.
There wasn't much left at that point though and, as she considered what to do, she decided to sit on the bed for the time being. Having made herself comfortable -somewhat relatively, she wasn't entirely sure how she felt about the gag and the drool- she grabbed the leather harnesses she had taken out earlier and closed her legs. She fastened the shortest strap close to her knee, the longest one next to her ankle and waist and the central one between them, buckling and unbuckling the whole thing a couple of times as she made sure it fit nicely, tight enough to neither slip off nor allow her to unfold her leg while also not blocking off her blood flow either. Once content with the result she fastened the other harness on her other leg too, then thought that taking her shoes off would've likely been for the best and slid those off, leaving nothing but her pantyhose to cover her feet.
"I look like a frog" she casually remarked.
That was nice though. Frogs were kind of cute. A bit annoying too in truth, especially those that liked to sneak their tongue into your purse and jump off with whatever they managed to snatch away, but nonetheless kind of cute to look at. Some even ate mosquitoes.
With only two items left from the display she had improvised, Ray grabbed the pair of handcuffs. It was a rather simple model, a black cuff made of leather for each wrist, both with a buckle similar to that of a belt to fasten them close. Unlike that of an ordinary belt, however, these were shaped in a way which allowed them to be locked shut with a padlock. The inner side of the leather was also lined with a soft padding, to avoid chafing probably. The chain linking the two cuffs together wasn't particularly thick, perhaps it was even a little short, but it also seemed perfectly functional. Ray put the cuffs on, wriggled her wrists around a bit to gauge the fit -surprisingly comfortable, ever so slightly warm even- and then picked the padlocks. The keys were already inserted, but that particular model also had an electronic mechanism to program an automatic release. The manual said, it said...
... she fetched it again to double check. The padlock wouldn't actually lock so long as they key was inserted and, with no previous input, it would automatically unlock after thirty seconds. It was also possible to perform an emergency unlock by pushing the shackle down or holding the reset button for three seconds straight. That thing was really made for solitary use, wasn't it? Even if she locked both cuffs with the padlock, she would still have more than enough room to open them, be it with the keys or with the emergency release. So... she could probably stuff the keys into her gloves, both palms would remain well within the reach of her other hand even with the handcuffs on. So she did that, then started to tap away on the padlock's small, minimalistic keyboards. She double-checked the instructions again and decided to set to... would an hour be too long? She didn't really have any commitments for the night though, so she decided to set it to a couple of hours instead. At that point there was only one thing left before locking the cuffs. Well, two actually. One was deciding what position to keep. A comfortable one would've been better, by all means. While thinking about that, Ray grabbed the last remaining item.
A simple cloth. Black, soft and also rather long. She stared at it for a bit, rubbing her fingertips along both sides go get a better feel of the texture, then wrapped it around her head and over her eyes. Once. It was thinner than she had expected. She she could still kind of see what was in front of her, a bit like peeking into a room through a really stained glass perhaps? She tried running the cloth over her eyes a second time, and the difference was remarkable. She could tell that the lights were still on, but that was pretty much it. She was pretty sure she'd walk into the first person she'd happen to stumble upon in the hallways were she to go out like that, but since that wasn't part of the plan it was fine. Good, even. It was... a little bit like having the nightlight on during the night, actually.
How nice.
There was enough cloth to run the blindfold around her head another couple of times, but she found that near complete blindness soothing and settled for tying it behind her head already, leaving herself almost but not quite entirely unable to see. The only thing left to do was lie down on the bed, adjust her position a bit and push her hands towards the headboard which, being made up of bars instead of a single panel, allowed Ray to slide her wrists past them. Good thing the bed wasn't pushed quite all the way against the wall. Having confirmed that she had gotten the cuffs past the bars -she had to unbuckle a cuff to achieve that, admittedly, and buckling it again while blindfolded required a minute or so-, she aligned them with each other, inserted the padlocks and closed them. That actually took another three minutes or so of fumbling around, in truth, she knew what she was supposed to do but being able to do it without looking turned out to be a bit harder than she had anticipated. Not being able to hear the padlock clicking due to her headphones, Ray kept tampering with it for a bit longer than actually needed, eventually testing the cuffs by trying to unbuckle them and pulling her hands away from each other and down towards herself. Having confirmed that she could do none of those things, she adjusted her position a bit more, lying with her hands bound above her head and both legs forcibly folded.
She was done, she told herself with a surprising degree of indifference towards the whole thing. Or at least with what sounded like indifference.
Ray was about to close her eyes when she remembered that she didn't quite need to, and focused on herself for a bit. She hadn't heard anything other than the background noise of the rain ever since she had put the headphones on, and began humming along to it. While not terribly rare, the rain wasn't exactly an everyday phenomenon in Rim Billiton either, not in the areas she had been to at the very least, so listening to it like that felt a little special. She tried to sway a little bit to the recorded sound of the wind too, but then realized once again that she couldn't actually move all that much. One of her ears bent to the side.
Was that her heart she was hearing? ... could an heart even beat that loudly? She had listened to the pulses of a few large animals in the past, but humans just couldn't be that noisy. Oh, but that was hers, so there was a chance it sounded more loud than it actually was to her. She adjusted her position a bit, as much -little- as she could in her current situation, and noticed that all she ended up actually doing was moving her hips a bit and rub her thighs together.
This is exciting she thought to herself, although the calm with which she thought that might've led any hypothetical mind-readers around to believe she was flatly lying to herself.
She pulled her wrists down, listening to the cuffs hitting the bed frame and preventing her from going through with the motion. Perhaps she had meant to scratch her cheek a bit or wipe a bit of saliva off her chin, perhaps she had just wanted to confirm once more the restraint would hold.
The rain kept falling inside her ears. The sound gave her a sense of coldness, but she could tell that her body was actually heating up a bit. The contrast between the two feelings seemed to make her pulse pick up a tiny bit more, her fingers relaxing while her fur began to stand up a little. She breathed, a surprisingly heavy inhale followed by a rather long exhale. She was fairly sure there was a little stain between her legs.
It was a little... annoying, she found herself thinking, but not in a bad way, which probably meant 'annoying' wasn't the right word to describe the feeling to begin with. She decided to rub her thighs together a little bit, on purpose this time -even though the purpose itself escaped her- and barely got anything to show for it. It had felt... no, that really hadn't felt pleasurable at all. Oh well.
A slightly stronger gust of wind hit the shed in the recorded audio, briefly distracting her from herself. She started to remember all the nights she had spent out in the wilds and all those times she had slept deep underground but, somewhat to her own surprise, that train of thought stopped at the first station. There was a certain tingle in her nethers which she was certain was not present in any of the memories she had just been about to relive, and that had kept her from getting lost in her own thoughts it would seem.
... perhaps this is weird.
How much time had gone by already? Probably not much. She moved her feet a bit, softly hitting the sheets with her left sole, her right, her left one again, somewhat on time with the raindrops, her own increasing warmth fueling a sense of expectation Ray herself wasn't quite entirely aware of and an excitement she was instead rather conscious of. She began to hum a little bit as well, wondering whether she could mimic the songs of some birds like that, at least their tempo. But she couldn't quite focus as much as that would've probably required. She found that a little unusual, since she would've described her current situation as rather relaxing, but also sort of... unsurprising at the same time. Somehow.
... this is probably weird she thought to herself again, the verdict carrying neither positive nor negative connotations in her mind.
"Mnff!"
Rather than the sudden twirl of the cup she had previously placed on her clit, its presence half-forgotten somehow, it had been Ray's own muffled gasp to startle her -despite the fact that she couldn't hear it at all through the headphones-, soft bristles spinning around over her sensitive nub and sending warm, somewhat weak but nonetheless pleasant jolts through her, her muscles growing stiff for a moment before she breathed in and out again to relax.
Oh, right she reminded herself Those were -ah?- there she though, the two rotors stirring to life too and buzzing either against or within her sex, making her hips shiver ever so slightly as the tingle which had been grounding her thoughts until then got scratched, even if just a little bit.
... this isn't bad she mentally commented, shifting her hips in place for no real reason as she paced her breaths.
She could feel her temperature rising a little, which gave her the false impression that the sound of the rain was getting a little farther. That in itself wasn't bad, but perhaps she should've thrown the sheets over herself before cuffing her hands to the bed. Not because she was feeling could, it just kind of... sounded right? She was confident she would've been able to push them off even in that state if need be. Oh, but then the sheet would end up-
Oh.
The toys changed intensity, each on its own, one picking up the pace, the other two growing softer in their vibrations, sprinkling small drops of fuel over her excitement while barely grazing the tingle which had taken over her nethers.
Is my face red? she wondered.
She had also tried to say that out loud in truth, perhaps because the headphones were blurrying the line between her words and her thoughts, but the gag made it impossible for her to actually speak in a comprehensible way. Her saliva was quite warm, wasn't it?
The sensation in her nethers was nice though. It was kind of like a massage, in a way. No, hold on, massages were supposed to be relaxing, right? But she was sure she was getting a little restless, so that either was a really bad massage or was something else at all.
... oh, right. That was masturbation. How silly.
The toys then changed their pace again, the one against her sex remaining at the same intensity while the one buried within her folds began vibrating with more vigor, the suction cup over her clit falling nearly motionless instead.
Perhaps a little deeper? she once again asked herself as she focused on the once cold toys, now warm with her own heat as they did their job underneath the layers of her clothes.
The silent buzzing was pleasant, but she was starting to think she had left it a little too close to the entrance? Her mind went back to the last time she had touched herself, and -hold on, she wasn't actually touching herself now, right? So it was probably wrong to use that expression. How long ago had that been again? Not on her last heat, of that she was certain. Around... perhaps six months ago? Or had it been five? She wasn't sure, but she was certain that wasn't important so it was fine.
Ah?!
The suction cup had picked up the pace suddenly, closing around her clit a bit more tightly while spinning one way and the other quickly, much more quickly than she had expected, turning her mind white for half a second or so. Then the toy went back to a much slower speed. The sudden spike in pleasure had damaged the regularity of her breathing, a few beads of sweat visible here and there on her skin, and...
... was her tail shivering a bit? It kind of felt like it was shivering, but since it was pressed between her back and the bed she wasn't sure. But her ears had stood straight up, of that she was certain. A lock of hair had also fallen over her eyes, or rather her blindfold. She tried to pull it away, but the cuffs kept her hands from getting close enough to her face to be of any help. Right. Perhaps that was just her impression, but she kind of felt like the heat between her legs had increased as soon as she had remembered that she was tied up.
That was exciting, wasn't it?
A pressure against her thighs made her notice that she was trying to open her legs. That got her thinking and, after a relatively short deliberation made longer by all the breaks in her thoughts brought about by the toys doing their job, she came to the conclusion that she was pushing against those straps simply because they were there. There was a certain kind of thrill in it. Then she focused on her breathing again. Being unable to hear herself, she had to concentrace a bit to realize how ragged her breaths had become. The chain hit the bed frame again, her fingers curling and stretching as the intermittent buzzes of pleasure teased her with no real rhythm to get accustomed to, heat building and dissipating at random as they vibrated now with more intensity, now with less.
She was getting close, she realized, and she decided to try and push her hips up. That proved a little difficult with her legs bound as they were, relatively speaking at least, and didn't really change up the way the toys were stimulating her at all, but she settled on keeping them raised for a while anyway, her fur standing further up as the vibrating eggs and the suction cup continued to shift between one setting and the other, now distracting her from the sound of the wind and rain, now letting her focus on that and allowing her mind to drift off to vaguely related memories, however briefly.
Then two of the toys pretty much stopped completely.
"... mmnfhph"
That was a bummer, she was almost there by that point. The rotor inside of her was still working a bit, but that had been switching between one low setting and the other for a while and she doubted she could actually finish from that. She tried to bring her hands down again, getting nothing but a warm shiver down her spine to show for it as the chain once again hit the bed frame and held her cuffed wrists in place, and resorted to her thighs instead. Rubbing them together had done nothing for her earlier, but perhaps she could push the toy placed against her sex a bit? Unlikely, but she didn't really have anything else to do at the moment anyway. Unsurprisingly, that attempt proved as unfruitful as she had expected, but she realized it had actually made her grow a little bit more excited. Was that her own scent she was smelling? It was a little bit sweet. Right, sweat could actually take on an alluring fragrance when aroused. She had red that in a book. ... that... probably wasn't a book about humans though? But humans were animals too at the end of the day, some things surely applied to them as well.
"Mnh?"
The suction cup suddenly picked up again, pulsating against her clit as it brushed it from all sides with soft, tiny bristles, an abrupt surge of pleasure shooting up within her and pushing the air out of her lungs. Ray's muscles grew stiff, her insides contracting as the flame within her grew past the tipping point, spreading from her nethers and enveloping her in an hazy, warm layer of bliss, short breaths making her chest heave up and down quickly as her limbs strained against their restraints, the inability to move making her high feel more intense, last longer. Then she trembled, a pleasure more intense than any she could remember still coursing through her as the toy simply kept going, assaulting her sensitive nub without giving her pause. One of the rotors picked up the pace a little bit too, and between one muffled, silent moan and the other Ray wondered what kind of sounds she might be making at the moment. If any at all, she added to the question. She felt her muscles relaxing and then contracting again, the three toys changing intensity once more, the stimulation being different but still strong enough to guide her into another climax soon after she had fully come off the previous high, one ear bending down while the other stood straight up, her toes curling a little as she savored the sensation.
She wasn't entirely sure how much time went by before the toys switched back to a lower setting, probably a minute and something or so if she had to guess. She could still feel her hips trembling a little, and by the way her clothes were kind of sticking to her skin she had sweated more than she'd have expected.
Does everyone do this from time to time?
The question had wandered into her mind on its own, the temporary -if partial- respite allowing her thoughts to wander a bit again. She was feeling good, after all, honestly much more than when she simply tended to herself with her fingers, so it stood to reason that doing it like that would be somewhat of a common practice. Oh, but she had only found out about that now, so perhaps that wasn't actually the case at all.
... the keys were still there, right?
She was sure they were but, just as with all things, checking one more time couldn't hurt. She reached for her left palm and pushed her fingers against the fabric, quickly finding the key tucked under her glove, then did the same for the other and found the second key still in place as well. She didn't want to test the emergency release again though, that would ruin the fun.
Ruin the fun.
That was one way of putting it, wasn't it?
Well, 'fun' might not have been the most appropriate of words admittedly, but she was just spending some quality time on her own at the end of the day so that had to be good enough of a description.
Then her thoughts got interrupted again as two of the toys picked up in intensity once more. Still a bit sensitive from her previous orgasms, Ray either allowed herself to moan out or forgot to keep her what portion of her voice could make it past the ball gag in check -although she wasn't being loud at all anyway, to be completely honest- and simply relished the feeling, the vibrations now bringing her near the edge, now simply teasing her, now making her climax once more, each toy switching from one setting to the other independently and at random. That felt a little bit like opening one of those surprise gifts some stores sold, not really knowing what she was about to find and... actually, that was basically what she had done at Closure's shop, and thinking about it a little bit more the two things were really different.
The chain clinked again, unheard, as she began to put more strength into her limbs. She had lost track of how much time had gone by, but since she could get out of that situation whenever she wanted she saw no reason to not stay like that for a bit longer still. The accidental edging, the occasional teasing, the irregular orgasms, they were all pleasant in different ways, although she couldn't help but wonder whether a more purposeful control of the vibrators wouldn't have led to better results.
To be completely honest, Ray stayed there like that for more than two hours. The padlocks produced a short but relatively high-pitched noise when the timer expired and they unlocked, but since they weren't in a position in which they would easily fall off Ray didn't notice and her hands remained stuck above her head as she simply kept enjoying the random stimuli, decidedly pleased by the novelty of the entire situation. But at some point she got tired of precisely the randomized, ultimately aimless nature of the setting switching, perhaps because it would occasionally lead to moments of relative boredom or to multiple changes of pace too close to one another for her tastes. Either way, she only realized the timer had expired when she tried to unlock the padlocks with the keys and found them open already. Slipping them off the cuffs' buckles and then unfastening the cuffs themselves, Ray freed her hands and pulled the toys out and away from her nethers. She stared at them for a few seconds, mildly surprised by just how drenched they all were, then stared at both her clothes and the sheets. She had expected them to get wet, but not so much. Especially her shirt, her neck and the collar, all wet with her saliva. The collar had been kind of pointless, probably? Well, she had had fun, so that wasn't so bad after all.
She finished freeing herself, stretched her legs and arms a bit and even opened and closed her mouth a few times to make sure her jaw was still working fine, then she packed everything she had used back into their boxes, wondering whether she would explore that sort of pastimes a bit more and finding herself a little surprised at the way the question actually took shape inside her mind, phrasing itself as a matter of when rather than if.
But it had gotten late, later than she had planned. For the time being, taking a shower and going to sleep was probably the best course of action. Oh, thinking about it though she should've washed the stuff too, right? She had better be quick though, she had to pick up the sandbeast from the Garden the next morning after all.
And maybe look for a pumpkin cake too, yes.