Hippo-Taurs (Hippo Centaurs TFTG RC Preg) (Patreon)

By FoxFaceStories

A Commission for Spacebanana

John and his friends Raymond and Harold are on vacation in Kenya on a personal sightseeing tour when they get lost. The trio accidentally drink from a mystic bowl of water, and are soon transformed into female hippo-taurs with a desperate need to reproduce with the local hippo bulls.

Hippo-Taurs

John, Raymond, and Harold were all completely lost. They shouldn’t have been. After all, Harold was neurotic as all hell and had told them over and over again to stick with their tour bus and guides like glue, and not to get lost. After all, it was the first trip overseas for the young men, who were only twenty three years of age each, and they had chosen Kenya, of all places. Most people might think that choice a little strange, but the trio of friends had always loved African wildlife and wanted to see it in nature.

Well, John and Raymond did. Harold generally just stuck to the other two. John had been the one really pushing it. He was a large fellow, who had put on too much weight from stress eating in preparation for his university exams. With them finished, he hoped to lose some weight and travel the world, starting with this first stop to see some of the highlights of the continental wildlife. Raymond didn’t have that same blistering passion as John did, but as a massive gym nut and fitness ‘bro’ he was keen to go travelling not to lose weight but to bulk up even more muscle. He looked the opposite of John. Whereas John had blonde hair, a below average stature and chubby features, Raymond was tall, dark, and handsome, with muscles on his muscles and proud of it.

Which just left Harold. He was the thin, wiry, nerdy friend with glasses that were too thick and jeans that were pulled far too high up. He was a real whiz, and easily the best gamer of the trio, and despite his looks he ran a successful startup online business. But he was also very anxious, and tended to worry over the smallest things. He’d gone along with his friends out of loyalty, but now that very anxiousness was starting to become justified.

“Yeah, I think the bus may not be coming back,” John admitted.

They were in a large plains area, and there were numerous zebra herds, antelope, and other impressive creatures dotting the horizon. They were meant to stay in sight of the bus, stick to the guides, and not wander off. But Raymond had wanted a selfie with some of the sights up close, and soon the bus had gone, and left them in its trail. It had been a sketchy service, to say the least. John had booked it because it was cheaper. He was sharply regretting it now, given that it had not returned in seven hours.

“And no reception still,” Raymond said, checking again.

“Great!” Harold cried to the sky. “Just great! We’re going to die!”

“We’re not going to die,” Raymond said.

“You won’t. I feel pretty short of breath after all this walking,” admitted John. He was keen to keep moving to where he assumed civilisation was - the location of the dirt road was not always clear given that it toured through open stretches of the national park they were in - but it was tiring on his body. And they were running a little low on water in the great heat.

“We should have followed the zebras to a water hole or something,” Harold said.

“Don’t be morose, we can do this.”

“Yeah,” John breathed heavily. “W-we can. Just gotta keep moving. I’m really sorry again guys. This was my idea to come here, and now I’m slowing you all down. I just thought I’d get to see some wildlife here. And I could l-lose some weight. Now we’re lost . . .”

“But you probably are losing weight,”  Raymond said.

John smiled weakly. “And you b-bulked up. Though we didn’t catch all the wildlife. Still haven’t seen a hippo. A real shame. I’ve heard they’re amazing.”

“Probably also kill us,” Harold muttered.

“We’ll rest for five so John can catch his breath, then keep moving.”

John nodded, thankful. In truth, he rather felt like a hippo at that moment. Though perhaps they had it better. There were only around fifteen hundred of them left in the country, sure, but they could relax in the waters of their lakes and rivers and simply float. Man, that sounded really good right now.

***

The group were a lot more desperate by the time the mid-afternoon arrived. The sun was scorching on their backs. They were all pale-skinned, John especially. He was a bit of an indoors kind of person, and this trip was one way of branching out. Unfortunately, he’d branched out too far, and not even the magnificent sights could cheer him up enough. His pace was sluggish, and the other two slowed to help him, but the truth was they were running low on water, and needed to get access to more. John was just about ready to collapse and tell his friends to go forward when he spotted something strange out the corner of his eye.

“What’s that?” he managed, his lungs heaving from so much walking.

He pointed to a strange pot of sorts that sat roughly a hundred feet or so away. Or perhaps it was a bowl, it was hard to tell. It was carved from wood, and was set in a circle of grass and dirt surrounded by carefully placed stones and several smaller trees.

“Signs of civilisation,” Harold said, hopeful. He hadn’t stopped complaining the whole time. “We should investigate!”

Raymond led the expedition, naturally. But when his face lit up with a great smile, they knew everything was okay.

“Someone’s been here recently!” he called. “There’s some ashes that are still smoking. And best of all, they’ve left us water! We can stay here and wait for them to come back - they’ve left a bag and everything.”

It was with relief that they ran forward. Well, Harold did. John lumbered carefully, tired and sweating and already feeling bad about this whole mess. But things were looking up: Raymond was laughing, and soon they saw why.

On the other side of the trees that circled part of the strange ritualistic set up, there was a deep and gentle river that formed into a large waterhole. And within it were a number of hippos relaxing idly in its coolness. They couldn’t have been further than two hundred feet away. It made the whole experience of getting lost worth it for John.

“Amazing,” he said. “Just amazing. I finally get to see hippos.”

“And more importantly, there’s water,” Harold said. “Though we’ll have to wait till they pass to get it.”

“What are you talking about?” John said. “We have a large carved barrel thingy of water right here!”

‘Are you serious? Do you really expect me to drink that? What if it was part of a religious ritual or something? What if there are chemicals or paint or something in it?”

Raymond laughed, slapping him on the back. “Classic Harold, always paranoid.”

But John felt a certainty rising in him. He’d pushed this vacation forward. It was his idea, and it was time to be decisive again. He took a nearby wooden ladle that was situated by the large bowl and scooped up some water.

“Looks fresh, and smells like it too,” he said. “What’s the worst that can happen, Harold? We’re all desperate for water, and me most of all. I’m trying it. I suggest you both do too.”

“Amen,” Raymond said, though it was obvious he was glad John was going first. The overweight man was desperate for water, but as the most fit one, Raymond could wait a little longer to see if it was all okay.

John drank the water. At first it was a mere sip, but then he guzzled it greedily. It was the clearest, cleanest, almost supernaturally refreshing water he’d ever tasted.

“Holy shit,” he said. “This is amazing! You guys should taste it!”

He lapped up some more, and then some more. Cautious, Raymond waited, but with no bad signs after several minutes he too joined in, and echoed John’s exclamations. That left Harold. He was clearly thirsty, licking his cracked lips. But the hippos by the waterhole were not moving, so there was no chance of getting water there. In the end, his desperation won out over his natural neurosis.

“Fine, fine! But if I get sick or something, this is your fault.”

“Fair enough,” John said. “My vacation plan, I’ll wear it. But it’ll fill you up Harold. Seriously, you’ll love it.”

Harold pretended not to when he drank it. He could be incredibly obstinate at times. But he still gave a satisfaction exhale when he drank, and then again when he gulped some more.  “That was good, too good.”

Raymond laughed. “Classic paranoid Harold!”

But that paranoia turned out to be more than warranted, for just at that moment there was a feminine cry. The trio turned to see a woman running towards them from a gap in the treeline. She was fit and beautiful, a native Kenyan by the looks of it, with dark skin and carefully maintained dreadlocks. She looked to be in a travel wears, albeit with something like a tribal flair to it, perhaps even ancestral.

“No, no, no!” she cried in a thickly accented voice, “what are you doing? Tell me you did not drink!?”

She ran between them to the pot and saw that it was almost entirely empty. John had drunk the greater share of that, and looked to her a bit sheepishly.

“I’m sorry, we were lost, and our guided bus left us. We saw the water and thought someone wouldn’t mind if we had some - we were so thirsty!”

The woman slapped her forehead, horrified. “You idiots! That was not ordinary water!”

“I knew it,” Harold whined. “We’re going to start tripping out. Was it drugged? Is this some ritual thing?”

“Of a sort,” the woman said, sagging. She sat back on a rock, putting her head in her hands. “My tribe will kill me. This is the culmination of many full moons of work. The hippo population is small in our country, but we druids of the plains wish to bring them back to flourish. We were to feed this to several of the hippo cows-”

“Cows?” Raymond said, giggling.

She stopped him with a stolid stare. “Yes, cows. Meaning, the female. The male is the bull. These cows would be blessed by the mystic waters we have enchanted, and it would bring them the blessing of fertility, and make them great reproducers of the hippo population in Kenya. And now you drank it all!”

The trio looked at each other, a little amused. This woman was clearly a believer in tribal fairy tales, and the notion that mere water could make a hippo population into hyper-breeders was ridiculous. Still, they felt sorry for her. John moved forward, ignoring a slight tensing in his gut.

“We’re very sorry, miss . . ?”

“Njoki,” she said, looking up at him, utterly morose. “And you are?”

“John. This is Raymond, and that’s Harold.”

“I tried to warn them not to drink!” he said, though his face betrayed that he too had drank of the water.

“It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “It’s too late. The hippos will never return to what they once were, all because of a bunch of lost Americans. I had such an honour in being the one to feed the waters to the chosen cows . . .”

John moved forward to place his hand on her shoulder and comfort her in whatever way he could, but he suddenly stopped as his gut clenched again, this time in a much greater fashion. He doubled over, clutching his large stomach.

“NNghhh!”

Njoki and his two friends looked at him as he grit his teeth.

“John, are you okay buddy?” Raymond said.

“M-my stomach. It f-feels kinda . . . eeuuurrghhh!!”

His stomach clenched again, but this time he felt something actually shift inside him. He squirmed, nearly falling over and just managing to be caught by Raymond.

“S-something’s w-wrong! My hips! My legs! M-my stomach, they’re all - OOHHHH!!!”

He groaned, and this time he was not just hit by feelings, but by actual changes. To the astonished awe of everyone, including the druid Njoki.

“Holy shit,” Raymond exclaimed. “John, what the fuck is happening to your legs? To your skin?”

But John could only grunt and groan as his legs expanded, growing massively. The skin turned rubbery and grey, and his toes fattened, his feet becoming more rounded in shape. He gasped, hit by the pain of his shoes being too small for them, but then said shoes gave way, exploding open to reveal a pair of hippo-like feet.

“That’s - that’s impossible!” Harold exclaimed.

“It’s the water,” Njoki marvelled, as John’s shorts also tore open, revealing more greying, yet pinkish skin. “It’s changing him! He’s becoming a hippo cow!”

“N-no!” John cried. His nipples puffed up, and his chest felt all sorts of funny. Worse, his ass was inflating like a beachball, expanding back. His spine elongated, vertebrae by vertebrae, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. “I’m n-not b-becoming a d-damned hippopotamus!”

But it didn’t matter how much he said it, because his body was insistent upon the matter: his lower half, anyway. He whimpered as his now-bare ass cheeks also changed. They were already huge, but now they pushed further and further out behind him. He fell backwards, his shirt ripping also. He tore it off, overheated and finding the covering strangely unnatural.

His friends gasped.

“Are those tits?” Raymond gasped. His own stomach was tensing, but he assumed it was just the shock of what was happening.

“It c-can’t be! This can’t be r-real! UGHHH!!”

Sure enough, a large pair of female breasts exploded from his chest. They were immense, fat, wobbling things, easily HH-cups or more in size, each equal to his head in mass. His hair grew out, and his figure altered, the fat from his waist sucking up to form said breasts, though his middle was still thick. Even as this occurred, two new limbs pushed out from near his extending behind. He gritted his teeth as new bones and tendons formed. It was truly alien to suddenly have not four limbs, but six. But as they extended, becoming a full set of hippo legs, it was obvious what was happening to him. He really was becoming a hippo, or some sort of hippo-human hybrid.

“I don’t want this! Stop it!” he cried. His voice cracked, taking on a higher tone, and it even sounded a little accented.

“I can’t,” Njoki declared. “Once begun, the change cannot be stopped. You are lucky your friends did not also drink from -”

“NNGHHHH!! NO! NOT ME TOO!!”

All eyes shifted to Raymond. Suddenly, he too was changing. He clasped his gut, but it was his hips that broke apart his shorts. Soon, his skin was also the pink and grow combination of a hippopotamus, and his legs were becoming thick and animal-like. Harold shook nervously, caught between wanting to stay with his friends or running. He knew the latter would do no good. Already, he could feel a tension in his core. A pressure in his ass. He knew he would be the next to change.

Meanwhile, Njoki watched with fascination as John’s front legs came to match his rear ones. His lower half now resembled something like a centaur, but it was not nearly plump enough to be a hippopotamus. That was, until suddenly John felt himself being actively pumped with fat, muscle, and more fat, with his new organs inflating into being also.

“It’s t-too much! It’s f-farrrr t-tooo m-muuuuch!!”

Once more, his voice cracked, becoming even more womanly in nature. His lips puffed up, and his hair grew longer, turning dark instead of blonde, and curling into tight ringlets. His tits bounced as he thrashed, it was only looking down at them that he realised all his chest hair was gone, and on his arms as well. And worse, his skin was darkening too.

“What the fuck!? I’m not even me anymore!”

He was vaguely aware of his male genitals pulling back between his rear legs. He had a brief hope that his maleness would at least stay on his lower half, but the sight of Raymond’s body feminising into that of a strong woman, with skin that was also darkening, ultimately crushed that hope. They were all becoming female, that much was certain. And so it was that when it reached the point behind his legs, just below his new asshole, John quivered in unexpected pleasure.

“OOhhhhh! Y-yes! I mean, n-no! I don’t want to l-like this!”

But it was pure ecstasy. His penis inverted, suckered back into his body from a large vaginal passage. A fat, stubby tail pushed out from his hippo behind, and with one last massive surge of fat, darkening of his skin, and feminising of his face, his changes were finished.

Just in time for Harold’s to start. Their stubborn, anxious friend panicked as his body altered, screaming for Njoki to stop it. Raymond likewise was pleading: the gym bro was hit hard by the fact that he was not only changing to become part-hippo, but also losing his manhood in both halves. The pair of them looked at John, shocked by the knowledge that their friend now resembled a thick, curvy Kenyan woman in the top half. John was just as shocked: he had massive breasts, soft features, a female voice, and even a native accent like Njoki’s.

“What’s going to become of us?” he asked the druid, trying to stumble forward on his four hippo feet. His body was huge and ponderous. It caused the ground to shake, and his new bosom to wobble. He could have sworn he felt like he had animal teats on his underside. There was something wonderful wafting in the air, but he decided to ignore it. For now. “You have to save us!”

Raymond’s changes finished up, leaving him a well-muscled Kenyan woman with an impressive afro, and a strong hippo cow body. Harold whined as he became a smaller specimen, his upper figure more dainty, though no less beautiful.

But Njoki was only silent, watching in astonished awe.

“Come,” she finally said. “You must come. I need to see something.”

After a moment’s hesitation, John followed her. Raymond looked back at Harold, who was likewise finishing up his changes. His breasts were full C-cups smaller than Raymond’s E-cups and much smaller than the mammoth mammaries that John had. His figure was gorgeous, his face soft and young. He looked utterly cute, in a word. Certainly not the kind of look Harold would ever want. Like John and like Raymond, the new hippo-human female was fully naked, having hurled aside his shirt unnecessarily. All three looked in sympathy at one another (though Harold was perhaps more angry than sympathetic) - they all knew that for whatever unexplainable reason, the feeling of clothing upon their skin was anathema to them. It was simply too wrong.

“Where are we going?” John asked.

“I need to see something. It’s important,” Njoki said.

She led them closer to the hippo herd. Towards the wonderful scent that was increasingly intoxicating the trio. It was irresistible, and despite the horrifying changes that had just happened to them, and how big and heavy and cumbersome their hippo halves were, they found themselves determined to master their new quadruped walk in order to reach that scent.

That was, until they realised what the scent was. John was closest, and so he had the dreadful revelation first. He was steering his ridiculous new bloated body, with all its animal heft, straight towards one of the big hippo bulls. To one of the males.

A male that was looking at his body was a clear and fascinated interest.

“Oh no! Oh, no! It’s the bulls! We have to turn around!”

“Shit!” Raymond cried.

Harold shrieked. “Not happening! This is not happening!”

But they couldn’t turn around. Literally couldn’t. Instinct overcame them, a magical need to get to those bulls. Their animal parts moved without permission, while their animal private parts became slick with desire, with an estrus that could only be solved through breeding. They each advanced to a separate bull, the trio feeling a rising heat, a desperation to be fucked and bred.

“It worked!” Njoki cried. “I can’t believe it worked!”

“Change us b-back!” cried Harold, as instincts drove his body towards the powerful musk of the hippo bulls. His female form - humanoid and hippo - yearned to be mounted. To be filled. The thought horrified him nearly as much as it turned him on.

“I cannot!” the druid called. “The change is only one way! I’m sorry, but no magic can alter it.”

Harold screamed. “WHAT!?” Already, his slightly smaller hippo body was being investigated by a male bull, and his stance was widening, ready to receive him.

John too was panicking. His upper half was now that of a deliciously curvaceous Kenyan woman with a thick waist and enormous breasts. His lower half was the biggest of the new hippo-human cows, and his sexual needs were twice as powerful as his friends due to the dosage he’d imbibed. He felt like he was going to die if he didn’t have a bull mount him soon. “What’s going to happen to us!?”

“If the mystic waters have served their purpose, then you are now blessed future mothers of many, many, many calves,” she announced, gleeful. “You will be incredibly fertile, able to go through pregnancy twice as quickly as an ordinary hippopotamus, and immediately enter heat after giving birth so you can become pregnant once more.”

“F-for how long!?” Raymond cried. A bull was readying to mount him. It smelled too good. His powerful form had attracted this virile creature, but for all his alpha male appearance as a man, he felt a deep need to submit to it.

Njoki gave a sheepish smile. Harold and Raymond could only just see her out of their peripheral vision, but John took it in. It was a guilty look, but not a despondent one. Like a performer who made a mistake during their set but still pulled off a winning score.

“Um, I don’t know how to say this, but kinda . . . hundreds of years?”

All three spoke as one. “WHAT!?”

“You are blessed! I know it sounds bad now, but sex will be very enjoyable to you, and you will always lust after attention from your bulls! You are gorgeous new women as well, so you suit your forms, and are now Kenyan too, accents and all! How wonderful it will be once you accept it. Your bodies are blessed to bring back the life of the hippopotamuses to these plains!”

“But we don’t want that!” John screamed. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen, I didn’t intend for this, guys! I didn’t - Oh God! He’s mounting me! Why do I want this so bad!”

“Because you are blessed to desire it!” Njoki announced, pleased as punch. “Embrace your new life! In moments, you will be impregnated with the first hippos of many to come!”

John could barely focus on her words as the large bull rose up, holding fast against his massive animal lower half as best as its fat front legs could. It shifted, positioning its rising cock to enter John’s passage. He whimpered, trying to avoid his fate, but finding it impossible to do so: his mating instincts were too strong. Her clutched his breasts, massaging them, groaning with the immense pleasure of rubbing his fat nipples as the bull prepared to thrust. He needed this. God, he needed this more than he’d needed or wanted anything before in his life. It was wrong. It was unnatural.

But he needed to be fucked pregnant with hippo calves immediately.

The bull sensed that horniness, and answered his reluctant prayer. It entered him.

“Oohhhhh G-God! Yes! F-fuck me! FUCK ME!”

The other two former males looked at John with astonishment.

“D-dude, what the hell?” Raymond exclaimed.

“I am not going to be like that!” Harold added.

But John didn’t care what they said or how they felt. All that mattered was the sensation of being filled with a big, fat, hippopotamus cock, and finally experiencing the act of being bred. He shifted his rear hips, getting used to his new centre of gravity. He whimpered as the creature bucked harder and faster, and he in turn pushed outwards to greet the bull’s continual pounded.

“You’ll - know - what - I mean - S-SOOON!!!”

And they did indeed. Soon Raymond and finally Harold were also being fucked by their respective bulls, and despite their hatred of their new femaleness, their bodies, and their new, centuries long destiny, they were unable to resist the instinct to mate, nor the sheer unbridled bliss of doing so. Soon each was moaning and crying out in their feminine voices, while Njoki watched, utterly fascinated and joyful.

“I never imagined it would happen this way, but it is still happening! You are all so close! So close to your very first hippopotamus pregnancy! I hope you enjoy it!”

John tried to shoot her a glare, say something snarky and angry. But he was lost in agonised pleasure, and before he could do anything else the bull suddenly seized, its enormous tusked mouth exhaling against his back.

“Oh, h-here it comes!”

His new vagina was suddenly flooded with hippo bull semen. It came in gushing waves, feeling like gallons were being poured into him. The large penis throbbed several times, drawing out further pleasure, and John finally orgasmed. He wailed as another orgasm followed, then another, each in time to another tidal wave of fertilising agent being shot deep inside his new animal womb. He had been transformed utterly, and his new hippo-human body was little more than a factory to create more hippos. As it would be for lifetimes.

The bull dismounted, causing John to start breathing normally again. Somehow, innately, perhaps even magically, John knew he was pregnant. The first hippo within him was already beginning its conception. Moments later, his friends cried out, and the same was true of them. Harold looked especially horrified.

“Congratulations, gorgeous girls!” Njoki exclaimed.

They all just looked at one another, terrified of what they’d just done, and how much they had enjoyed it.

Especially since three more bulls were approaching, intent on making certain that they really were pregnant, just in case. All three former human men felt a tingle of arousal begin.

“Oh God, no . . .”

The instincts took over once more.

***

Jane groaned as another contraction came over her. The hippotaur had long accepted that she was more accurately described as a hippotauress. After all, she had a large pair of milky breasts, long dark dreadlocked hair, and gorgeous black skin that would make anyone think she was a native Kenyan from the waist up. Her humanoid waist was still thick, but it was a gorgeous, feminine thickness that was enhanced by the widening of her hips where they flared out to join her hippo half. Yes, she was a woman now, and there was no denying it.

Especially because, as she groaned at yet another contraction, there was also the fact that she was always getting either mounted by hippo bulls or pregnant with calves or birthing them from her large, heavyset hippotauress body.

“Nnghhh,” she grunted, bearing down. She spread her rear legs, and her little tail shifted from side to sight. “OOhhh . . . ahhhh.”

Rachel chuckled from Jane’s left flank. “Another calf coming, Jane? Already? I thought you gave birth to one last week?”

“Th-that was f-four months ago and you kn-know it,” Jane stammered, trying to focus on the birth. Her body was already heavy enough just from her massive hippo half, but having a huge calf inside her overstuffed womb only made her more unwieldy. And the fact that, once again, she was carrying twin calves, only made it more strenuous. God, she wished she had managed to make it back to the water in time for labour. Giving birth to calves in the water was much, much easier, though no less painful.

“Sorry,” Rachel said, though she wasn’t at all, still being as prone to stir her friends up as ever. “It’s just that you’re easily the most fertile out of the three of us, it’s hard to keep track of all your pregnancies.”

The contraction eased, and Jane shot a look at her friend. Rachel, unlike the larger, curvier Jane, was a more muscular woman on her humanoid half. Fitting, given her gym nut nature in her previous life as a human man. Now, the fellow hippotauress continued to take pride in physical activity, and so she had an Amazonian build, with strong arms and a muscular chest, though still with an impressive set of milk-filled E-cups on her chest. Her hair was in a wild afro that somehow suited her new look. Just for fun, Rachel had even pierced her ears with little shards of bone she’d found. Though, as fit and muscular as she was, it hadn’t stopped her from being mounted and fucked and impregnated. Her body wanted it just as much as Jane’s did. It was pure instinct. Jane reminded her of just that fact.

“You’re one to talk,” she reminded her friend. “You’ve got a calf kicking around in th-there!”

“True, true. But you’re the most fertile of all of us, isn’t she, Harriet?”

Harold rolled her eyes. She was in the water, trying to relax. Her pregnancy wasn’t as far along as the other two, but given that they gestated their calves in literally half the time it took for a regular hippo to do so, that didn’t really mean all too much in terms of time disparity.

“I don’t care how much either of you have embraced being females, don’t count me among you!” she called, cleaning her silky dark hair in the water. “I’m still Harold, thank you very much!”

Rachel just laughed. “It’s been five years, Harriet. Time to embrace it. Hell, we’re even thinking of getting Kenyan names, isn’t that right, mother-to-be?”

Jane just grit her teeth, baring down again. “C-concentrating here!”

“I’ll take that as agreement.”

Jane gave a pained grin, but continued to work on forcing the enormous hippo calf out of her distended vaginal. It was painful, it was effort, it was exhausting. But it was also not something she was unaccustomed to. Just as Njoki had said, every four months she gave birth to a new hippo, or hippo (as the biggest drinker of the water, Jane was practically always overwhelmed with twins), only to immediately enter estrus again, and a bull or two would end up impregnating her all over again. As such, she’d been pregnant twenty times already, and had painfully birthed thirty seven hippos into existence. She knew that if the ‘blessing’ really was for centuries, then that number would eventually be literal thousands, the same for each of them.

It was hard to grapple with, living this life. But the herd of hippos accepted them at least, and the pleasure from the bulls was something they just accepted. Njoki visited from time to time, and though she wasn’t the most sympathetic of company given how excited she was for them, she at least brought the occasional modern amenity for them to enjoy. But it didn’t stop the endless cycle of breeding, pregnancy, birth, and nursing. The only reason Jane didn’t have two hippos currently sucking on her teats was because of her labor.

“OOhhh! N-nearly th-there!”

She strained, gave one final push, embracing yet again her nature as a hippo-tauress. This was what her body was built for, and what it was best at. It would take Harold time, and Rachel too, but while Jane’s directions had failed in the past, she could at least lead by example now.

“C-c’mon! You’re b-both about to exit! Mama wants to m-meet you! She’s got a lot of milk for you both! C’mon now, and then I can enjoy some nice breeding with my f-favourite bulls!”

One last push, and the first of her new twins slide out of her distended passage and into the world. A few more pushes, and its sibling joined it. Jane gasped in relief, panting, and her two friends cheered congratulations. It was something they all did for each other.

“There we are,” she muttered, as they began to stir and take in the world. “C-come to Mama. You’ve got a lot of siblings to meet. And a lot yet to come.”

She shared a glance with a bull across the stream. The small tingle was already starting. In just twenty four hours it would be a full blown sexual need. Another batch to be made and birthed, as was her fate now. Probably another set of exhausting twins, too.

Njoki would be so pleased.

The End