Anup/Sourang 17 (Patreon)

Wow. This fan favorite (and one of my earliest Patreon stories) has been paused for ages. And it's not been that I haven't wanted to continue it. It's... Well, let me give you a little explanation.

What I really wanted was to skip ahead a few months, and I really stink at just saying "A few months later..." because a lot has happened in the intervening time. I hate having characters casually comment about stuff they know so the reader knows too, so how can you sum it up without making it sound ... bad?

I'm not fully sure about that, but I've done the best I can with telling instead of showing. Hopefully the first few paragraphs of "summing up" aren't too painful.

Scene Suggestion—anup and sourang 1
Scene Suggestion—anup and sourang 2
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 3
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 4
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 5
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 6
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 7
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 8
Scene suggestion—anup and sourang 9
Anup/Sourang 10
Anup/Sourang 11
Anup/Sourang 12
Anup/sourang 13
Anup/sourang 14
Lunsdie/Ckkkrt 15
Lunsdie/Ckkkrt 16

———

High Priest Arnalruk gave the sourang a mansion. Truthfully, it wasn’t his to give, but since the Collapse, the church held a vast number of properties that it didn’t need. No one did, actually. Relatively few people remained on the planet, but still there were houses and cities for a vast number more.

As such, no one would miss the mansion. And better yet, no one lived within several kilometers of the place, so no one was liable to stumble across it and see what went on there.

As for what went on there, “sex” covered most of it.

Rrrr kept his word and delivered five vials of a secret fluid that he injected into Arnalruk and the four priests and priestesses that he trusted most. Each felt ill for a few days following, and though they feared it was the Collapse, the five soon recovered and the sourang declared them cured.

Each could safely touch other people once more! The five were so thrilled that they did just that—frequently, vociferously, and often creating a fair amount of mess in the process.

Technically, they could touch anyone safely—even those who weren’t in on the secret. Having been cured, they could no longer catch, no longer carry, and no longer transmit the plague that had ravaged their world, but without any good explanation for why this might be, the five turned Rrrr’s mansion into a den of iniquity. All five visited the place frequently, and they didn’t return home until completely exhausted and sore.

Unsurprisingly, the priests and priestesses treated Rrrr like a god. They cooked for him. They cleaned for him, and they saw to his other corporeal needs whenever he could muster some more desire. Arnalruk knew this, of course. When the four visited the mansion, they set aside their modesty with their spans, and the high priest often stumbled across twosomes, threesomes, and even a foursome once in any of the mansion’s rooms. hallways, or even the porch.

Arnalruk too serviced the sourang, but far more discreetly.

And while the four would gripe about having to cook and clean, the high priest found he actually enjoyed doing manual labor once more.

And there was a time once—after an extended session with the insatiable sourang—when Arnalruk was on his knees, scrubbing the floors when he nearly slipped into Total Awe without any help at all…

Curious! Most curious indeed, he thought. What could be worthy of awe in such a mundane task? Or was it merely exhaustion he’d been seeking all along?

Rrrr paced while the high priest mopped marble floors. Despite his desires, Arnalruk resisted the urge to sing a hymn in Rrrr’s presence as that irritated the sourang to no end. At last, the cleric could take the pacing no longer. “What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I am … irritable,” growled Rrrr.

“I can see that, but why?”

“Because… I do not know why!” he snapped.

Arnalruk squeezed out the mop with a smile. “But you have everything you’ve ever wanted.”

Rrrr glared at the priest. “I just feel … restless. Do you not ever feel the need to get out?”

The high priest scrubbed a dirty mark for several seconds before finally deciding it was just a natural swirl of colors in the stone. “No, not really,” he said. “I keep busy. I never have a chance to get bored.”

“I did not say, ‘bored’!” snapped the larger creature, his whiskers fanning in irritation. “I said, ‘restless’.”

“Oh, my mistake,” said Arnalruk, trying to keep a grin from his black ears. “I don’t get restless either, just rested and tired.”

“Well, take me somewhere!” demanded Rrrr. “I want to see something new.”

“As you wish,” said the high priest, putting the mop back in the bucket, “but I have to return for some more obligations this evening, so we can’t go far.”

So, the priest took Rrrr out for a ride, down to the city and around town to see the sights. for years, Arnalruk hadn’t driven. He had very few places to go, and when expected somewhere, there was no shortage of volunteers to take care of it, so he could sit in the back and focus on more “spiritual issues”. But now, with his frequent visits to the mansion—visits that he insisted on taking care of privately—he had finally broken most of the rust from his driving skills, even if they hadn’t been polished back up to how they’d once been.

The high priest pointed out all sorts of interesting features as he drove around town, but instead of entertained, the sourang just seemed more bored. At last, Rrrr pointed across Arnalruk’s line of sight, forcing the anup to duck so he could still see the road in front of them. “What is that?” demanded Rrrr.

“That?” asked Arnalruk, glancing over quickly so he could keep his attention ahead. “Nothing. Just a farmer’s market. Farmers bring food they’ve grown. They set up little stalls and sell their produce to the locals.”

The pair drove on for a moment before the priest added, “Well, it used to be farmers, I suppose. With time, fewer farmers have come, and more and more middlemen buy from the farmers and then resell it in the market.”

“Traders,” said Rrrr.

The anup nodded, and the pair sat in silence until he glanced over to find the sourang staring holes in the side of his head. “What?”

“Why are you acting like that?” asked Rrrr.

“Like … what?”

“Like… I am not sure,” he said. “It is just, I have always gotten this sense that you love everyone, but just now, you seemed … disdainful.”

“I-I do!” Arnalruk gasped defensively. “The orthodoxy loves everyone … even traders!”

“You just did it again!” shouted the sourang. “What is wrong with traders?”

“N-nothing,” said the high priest, but even to his own pointed ears, the denial sounded strained. “The church just … holds more respect for other professions of doing and making … less for professions that exploit hard-working farmers and hungry people.”

“Exploit?” asked Rrrr, his voice still raised. “There is nothing wrong with trading!”

“Of course not,” Arnalruk said quietly.

“I suppose you did not wish to trade my vials of cure for the mansion and your loyalty?”

The anup stared straight forward, grinding his teeth. “What other option did you give me?”

“Oh, all my fault!” Rrrr seemed angrier than the anup had ever seen him before. He grumbled, “This is rich. Of all the people to complain about how someone else exploits people, the high priest of the orthodoxy…”

The sourang’s words tapered to silence, but then he was pointing and shouting once more. “Stop! Stop the vehicle! Stop here!”

Arnalruk pulled over, but before the car had even come to a stop, Rrrr was out and bounding across the street. The high priest rammed a tire against the curb and gave chase without even checking if he had remembered to shut off the engine. Rrrr ran and Arnalruk followed, despite how that meant he was entering the market—a place he’d not been since attaining his lofty position so many years ago.

Crowds in the marketplace scattered to make way for the sourang, but as Arnalruk approached, the shoppers closed back in. “High Priest Arnalruk!” some called. “Welcome, your holiness!”

The traders standing behind their carts avoided his eyes,

“Excuse me. Excuse me, please,” he begged, threading the best he could through the crowd while still maintaining a respectable distance from everyone else. “Thank you, yes. Please, allow me through.”

Soon, he found Rrrr confronting a second sourang.

A second sourang! She was huge—just like Rrrr, himself—reared up on her powerful hind legs and bright yellow-orange, shining like starshine. And standing beside her—too closely, truthfully—was a male anup, a trader with a dull and dingy coat.

As he approached, the other three fell silent into a strange and uncomfortable silence.

Arnalruk waited a moment more, then cleared his throat, trying to sound as friendly and cordial as possible. “Well?” he asked Rrrr. “Will you not introduce me to your countryman?”

The anup trader stepped the tiniest bit forward. “There’s no need,” he growled, “we know damn well who you are.”

In truth, it wasn’t as if Arnalruk had declared the traders to be anup society’s lowest tier. That hierarchy had been established centuries—or perhaps even a millennium earlier. But of course, it was the high priests who had perpetuated the system. He, like any of his predecessors, could have tried to abolish the caste system—if such a system could even be removed. But so long as the orthodoxy’s high priest remained silent on the matter, then no others, no matter how highly ranked, would dare speak out against it.

“Why? Who is he?” asked the female sourang.

But the trader was ignoring her, his eyes focused only on Rrrr.

Likewise, Rrrr ignored him. He reached across the little circle that the four stood in and actually grabbed the female’s wrist.

Dozens of onlookers had already encircled them, and when they saw one of the aliens touch the other, they all gasped in shock.

“You are my apprentice and my mate, Ckkkrt!” Rrrr growled. “And you’re coming with me.”

Ignoring all the anup, Rrrr turned and began dragging the female away.

———

Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1qeHK0L_ZuYVsiEwb6wgCQ-pnry2cv1hxfpnmHZq2cj8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?