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InterLewd :I Just Held the Cup…

The dirt road into Hollowfield smelled like turned soil and woodsmoke, and Garry's nose drank it in like a cold tankard after a long march.

He'd been walking since dawn, paws kicking up little puffs of dust that clung to the brown fur of his shins. The loincloth; fresh laundered, thank Dukaar; flapped around thighs as thick as butter churns. His pack rode high on one shoulder, the staff in his other paw thumping a steady rhythm that felt good after weeks at sea. Hinterlands. Real dirt. Real sky. The kind of sky he hadn't seen since he left the mountains.

A goat bleated at him from behind a split-rail fence. He winked at it.

"Morning, friend. Don't suppose you know where a fella finds the temple in this town?"

The goat chewed.

"Tough crowd."

He kept walking. Hollowfield wasn't much; a clutch of plank-sided barns leaning toward each other like old drunks, a mill with its wheel creaking, chickens pecking the road like they owned the deed. But up the slight rise at the village's far end, set against a stand of birch, sat a low timber building with a crown of antlers and twisted branches nailed above the lintel. Fruit hung from the branches even though it was early autumn. Always ripe. Always heavy.

Garry's chest went warm. His god's house, even out here in the middle of nowhere.

He climbed the path. The door; heavy oak, carved with the seed-pattern; opened before he reached it, and a thin old badgerkin in green robes squinted up at him.

"You'd be the bearkin Brother Tovik wrote about," the badger said. He had to crane his neck to manage it. "Big fella, he said. Understatement of the harvest."

"Garry Blackpaw," Garry said, and offered a paw the size of a dinner plate. "You'd be Father Anselm?"

"I would. Come in, come in. She's been waiting since the bells."

She. Right. The whole reason he'd taken the long road instead of the river barge. A new candidate, a girl from the farm at the edge of the holler, who'd been dreaming of a wolf with green eyes and ripe orchards three nights running. Anselm had sent word up the chain. The chain had spat the letter onto Garry's plate at the chapter house, because Garry was the closest blessed-tier in two hundred miles and joinings didn't perform themselves.

The temple's front hall smelled like beeswax and crushed apples. Past it, through a curtain of woven rushes, lay the sanctum proper; round, low-roofed, the floor a circle of packed earth strewn with fresh straw. A ring of candles burned around a stone altar that was less an altar and more a wide, padded bench. Practical folk, the country congregations. They knew what their god was about.

The girl was kneeling at the foot of the bench.

Bearkin, like him, but young; not yet two decades by the soft round of her cheeks. Cinnamon-brown fur, a cream blaze running down her muzzle and throat, disappearing under the loose linen shift she wore. Her ears flicked when he stepped through the curtain. She looked up.

Her eyes were brown. For now.

"This is Marrow," Father Anselm said, soft. "Marrow, this is Brother Garry. He'll be conducting your joining."

She got to her feet. She came up to about his sternum, which was tall for a girl her age, and her shoulders were broad in the way of farm-raised bears who'd spent their childhood hauling feed. Her paws fidgeted in front of her belly.

"Sir," she said. Her voice cracked halfway through and she winced.

Garry set his pack down. He set the staff against the wall. Then he crouched, slow, until his eyes were level with hers.

"None of that sir business," he rumbled. "I'm Garry. You dreamed about a wolf with green eyes and a fruit-tree growing from his head, that right?"

Her mouth twitched. "Three nights."

"Third one he licked your nose, didn't he."

Her eyes went big. "How did …"

"He always licks the nose. Gets a kick out of it." Garry grinned, showing teeth, and watched the tension ease out of her shoulders one notch. Good. Scared candidates made for rough joinings. He stood up again, and she had to tip her head back to track him. "You sure about this, Marrow? Last call. Once the draft's down, you're his. Greener eyes, fuller life, and a whole lot of cubs in your future, gods willing. There's no taking it back."

She nodded once. Hard.

"I want it," she said. "I've wanted it since the first dream. My ma; my ma's been a follower since she was younger than me. She said it was the best thing she ever did."

"Smart woman." He glanced at Anselm. "She here?"

"Outside, with the girl's father. They'll wait."

"Good." Garry rolled his shoulders. The fur along his spine prickled; that low hum that started up whenever Dukaar was paying attention. And he was, now. Garry could feel it the way a man feels the sun come out from behind a cloud. He's watching, kid. He likes you already. "All right. Father, the draft, if you please."

Anselm shuffled to a sideboard and came back with a clay cup, lid sealed with wax. He broke the seal with a thumbnail. The smell that rolled out was familiar enough to make Garry's belly tighten; pressed apple, fermented honey, a green herb that wasn't quite mint and wasn't quite anything you could name unless you'd grown up smelling it on your mother's hands. And under all of it, the dark earthy thread of zugroot, ground fine and steeped patient.

He took the cup. He turned to Marrow.

"On your knees again, sweetheart. Eyes on me when you drink it. Don't look away till I tell you."

She dropped down. Her shift pooled around her thighs. She took the cup in both paws; they were trembling, just a little; and lifted it.

"Drink it slow," Garry said. "All of it. Don't choke, but don't dawdle. He doesn't like dawdlers."

She drank.

Garry watched her throat work. One swallow, two, three; her nose wrinkled at the bitterness underneath the sweet, and a little of the draft beaded on her muzzle, but she didn't stop. Four. Five. The cup tipped higher. Six. She drained it and lowered it from her lips and her eyes were already starting to shine.

The brown went first at the rims. A thin halo of green, the color of new leaves, the color of moss after rain; the color of his eyes, Garry's eyes, the color every blessed bore. It bled inward in slow petals. Marrow's pupils dilated. Her breath shortened. The cup dropped from her paws and rolled in the straw.

"There he is," Garry murmured. "Hi, big guy."

Marrow gasped. Her whole body shuddered. She caught herself on her paws, palms flat to the earthen floor, and a sound came out of her that was half-laugh, half-whimper.

"It's hot …"

"I know. Ride it. Don't fight it."

He could see it working through her. Dukaar's rut; the divine flush, the body remaking itself into something the god could love better. Her fur fluffed out, glossier than it had been a minute ago. The cream of her chest deepened to a richer cream, almost gold. Her ears pricked higher. And under the linen shift, her chest bloomed. The flat softness of a farm girl's breasts swelled outward, pressing the cloth tight, then tighter, until the laces at the neckline strained and the curve of her cleavage rose into view. Her nipples darkened through the linen, big as a thumb-tip, wet already where the milk-fat was settling in.

She made a noise like she'd been punched.

"Easy," Garry said, soft. "Breathe. He's just settling in."

Her shift split.

Not torn; just outgrown, the laces giving up first with a wet little pop, then the side-seam letting go in a long sigh of thread. Her tits spilled out into the candlelight, full and heavy and high, the cream fur of her chest gone glossy with a sheen of sweat. Her nipples stood out fat and dark, and a bead of milk welled at the tip of one and rolled down the slope of her breast. Garry watched it go. He couldn't help it. Dukaar's blessings had a way of making a man stare.

Below, the swell was working her hips wider too. The bones moved under her fur with little audible creaks, the sound of green wood bending. Her thighs thickened. Her belly stayed flat for now; that part was for later, gods willing; but the cradle of her was changing, broadening, making itself into the thing it was meant to be. Her tail had gone to a stub of pure quivering excitement at the base of her spine. Her scent hit him a half-beat after, and Garry's nose flooded with it: ripe pear, wet earth, the heat that came off a sow in season multiplied tenfold by divine intent.

His loincloth twitched. Was already twitching. Had been twitching since she'd swallowed.

Marrow lifted her head. Her eyes were full green now, leaf-bright, and they fixed on him with a kind of dazed, hungry recognition.

"You're him," she breathed. "You're the wolf …"

"I'm his hands today," Garry said. His own voice had gone gravelly. He cleared his throat. "Father, you can step out now."

He didn't hear Anselm leave. He heard the curtain of rushes click behind him and that was all. The old badger had done this how many times, dozens? More? He knew his cue.

Garry crouched again. He set a paw under Marrow's chin, gentle as he could with a paw that big, and tipped her face up to his.

"Last piece of the rite," he rumbled. "He needs you seeded. That's how the joining locks in. You understand what I'm telling you, sweetheart?"

She nodded against his palm. Her tongue came out and licked her muzzle clean of the draft.

"Yes," she said. "Please. I'm so…"

"I know. I know you are." He stroked the cream blaze down her muzzle with his thumb. "On the bench. Hands and knees. Show him you want it."

She moved like she'd been waiting her whole life for the order; and gods, maybe she had. Three nights of dreams. A mother who'd done it before her. Marrow scrambled up onto the padded bench and went to her elbows and knees, her remaining shreds of shift falling away, and presented her hindquarters to him with her tail flicked aside and her thighs trembling. The cream fur between her legs was already dark and wet. The pink of her showed through, swollen, eager, a slick bead of want sliding down the inside of her thigh.

Garry let out a breath that was half a laugh.

"That's a girl. Look at you. He's pleased, Marrow, you can feel it, can't you?"

"Yes…" half a sob, half a moan. "He's everywhere…"

"He'll be more places in a minute."

Garry undid the cord at his hip. The loincloth dropped to the straw with a soft thump of weighted hem, and his cock came free into the candlelight; heavy, blessed, the pink of it veined with the faint green tracery that marked a high-tier. The knot at the base was Dukaar's doing too; not bearkin by nature, but the god had his opinions about what a blessed-tier ought to bring to a joining, and Garry had stopped questioning them around his third rite.

He dragged the tip of his cock through her slick, slow, just to coat it. She keened. Her paws fisted in the bench's padding.

"Garry… please …"

"Easy, sweetheart. He likes a good build."

He notched the tip against her and pushed.

She was tight; gods, of course she was, farm girl, never been with a soul; but Dukaar's rut had made her ready in every way that counted, and the slick eased him in, inch by careful inch. Garry watched himself sink into her. Watched the cream of her tail-fur part around the thickness of him, watched her back arch and her shoulders drop and her muzzle press into the padding as a long, shuddering moan rolled out of her. Halfway. Three-quarters. Her hips kicked back to take the rest and he gave a low laugh and let her have it, the whole length of him, until his hips were flush to the broad cushion of her ass and she was packed full of blessed cock from cervix to entrance.

"There," he breathed. "There he is. There you are."

"I'm full …"

"You're gonna get fuller."

He pulled back and rolled in. Slow at first, careful, learning the give of her. Her tits swung beneath her in time with the motion, heavy as harvest fruit, and a fine spray of milk pearled from her nipples and dotted the bench. Her scent climbed. The candles guttered around them like the air itself was breathing harder.

"Tell me what you are," he said, and dropped his weight forward, bracing one paw beside her shoulder. The bench creaked. "Out loud, sweetheart. He wants to hear it."

Marrow whined. Her cheek mashed into the padding. Her green eyes rolled back to find him.

"His," she gasped. "I'm his… I'm his ..."

"And what're you for?"

"Cubs; cubs, breeding; oh gods, Garry, please. Give me his cubs …"

He gave her harder. The bench rocked. The straw on the floor whisked under his hindpaws as he set his stance and started really working her, deep grinding strokes that buried him to the hilt every time and dragged out slow enough to make her sob. Her tail-stub shivered against his belly. Her cunt clenched around him in waves, milking him in the way only a Dukaar-touched body could, every clutch saying give it, give it, plant it.

He felt the god's hand on the back of his neck. Not a pressure, exactly. A presence. A nod. Garry growled low in his chest and bent over Marrow's back and licked a long stripe up the side of her muzzle, right over the cream blaze. She laughed. Actually laughed, breathless and wet, because he'd told her, hadn't he, the wolf always licks the nose.

"Garry..."

"I know, sweetheart. I'm close, I'm right there..."

"Inside... please inside... ma said inside..."

"That's the only place it goes."

He hammered into her three more times, four, felt his knot start to swell at the base and her body open hungry around it, and on the fifth stroke he buried himself to the hilt and locked. The knot caught behind her. He came with a roar that shook dust from the rafters, his hips grinding tight against her ass, and she cried out beneath him as the first thick pulse fired into her and didn't stop firing. Pulse after pulse, hot and heavy, a blessed-tier load pumped right up against the door of her womb with nowhere else to go. She shook. Her tits dripped. Her cunt convulsed around his knot and pulled at every spurt like it knew what it was for. Maybe it did. It did.

"Take it," Garry panted, forehead pressed between her shoulder blades. "Take all of it. Every drop. That's yours. That's his. That's yours and his…"

She sobbed something that wasn't words. Garry felt her clench around him again, hard, milking, and he gave her another rope of it, and another. Dukaar's blessing didn't run dry in three pulses or six. He kept pumping. Kept filling. The bench creaked under their joined weight and he braced his free paw beside her shoulder so he wouldn't crush her, panting hot into the fur between her ears.

He could see, when he glanced down past the curve of her flank, the shape of her belly starting to round. Not a trick of the candlelight. The cream fur of her underside bowed downward, swelling slow and steady against the padded bench, the way a wineskin filled at a spigot. Three pulses more and she'd have looked four months gone. Six more and she was past it. Her tits dragged in the puddle of her own milk. Her hips quivered around the lock of his knot and every little quiver squeezed another spurt out of him into the hot packed dark of her.

"Easy, sweetheart," he panted. "Easy, easy... he's not done... there's more in me yet..."

"More," she whimpered. "More... Garry..."

He laughed, breathless. "Greedy girl. He likes that."

It went on. Gods, it went on. Garry had done this rite eleven times before in his life as a blessed-tier and he still couldn't have told a body how long the divine sack took to empty when Dukaar had a hand on the spigot. The candles burned down a finger's width. Marrow's belly went from rounded to swollen to taut, the fur stretched glossy over the curve of it, and Garry had to shift his weight back so he wasn't pressing on her. He ran his paw down the side of that beautiful heavy bowl of her and felt it warm and tight under his palm, and she made a sound like she'd been kissed.

"Look at you," he rumbled. "Look at what he's done. Heavy as a brood-mare already. Your ma's gonna take one look at you and weep."

"Garry…" muffled into the padding. "I can feel it sloshing…"

"That's because there's a lake in you, sweetheart."

Another pulse. Smaller now, the last of it, the divine well finally running shallow. He felt the knot at his base start to soften by inches. Marrow whined low at the loss of pressure even before he moved.

"Hold on, hold on. Coming out slow."

He eased back. The knot popped free with a wet, obscene sound that made her gasp, and his cock slid out of her on a long slick drag, glossy and still twitching. A thick rope of his seed tried to follow it and couldn't; her body had taken too much, packed it too deep, and only a slow pearly trickle managed to escape down the inside of her thigh. The rest was hers. The rest was the cubs, gods willing.

She turned her head against the padding. Her green eyes found him over her shoulder, glazed and blissed and very, very awake.

"Let me," she said, hoarse. "Let me clean you. Please. Ma said…"

"Ma said a lot of right things." Garry stepped back from the bench and steadied himself with one paw on the carved post. His thighs were shaking, just a little. He'd be honest about that later, if anyone asked. "Down on the straw, sweetheart. Mind your belly."

She slid off the bench with a careful grunt; that swollen middle was a new thing to navigate, and she had to brace a paw under it as she came down; and knelt in front of him in the strewn straw. Her tits hung heavy. Her belly rested against the tops of her thighs, ripe and warm-looking. Her muzzle came up level with his cock and she didn't wait for further instruction.

Her tongue came out first.

It started at the base, a long, hot, careful stripe up the underside of him, lapping the slick of her own body off his fur. He grunted. His paw on the post tightened. She licked again, around the still-fat curve of his knot, then up, slow, all the way to the tip, where she fastened her mouth and suckled the last bead of seed off the tip with a soft, satisfied little sound.

"Gods," he breathed. "Gods, girl, you take to this like…"

She swallowed him.

Not all of him; she couldn't, nobody could, not on a first try with a blessed-tier; but she took the tip and the first thick handspan of him into the wet of her muzzle and her tongue went to work along the underside, and Garry's hindpaws went quietly stupid beneath him. He looked down. The cream blaze of her muzzle was wrapped around the pink-and-green of his shaft. Her green eyes; his green, his god's green; flicked up to find his, and held them. Reverent. Hungry. A little pleased with herself, even, the cheeky thing.

"That's it," he managed. "That's it, sweetheart; slow; you don't have to; gods…"

She bobbed. She'd seen something done before, somewhere, or Dukaar was whispering, or both. Her paws came up and one cupped the heavy weight of his sack and the other braced flat on his thigh, fingers curled in the fur, and she worked him with a steady wet rhythm that pulled little punched-out grunts from his chest. Spit slicked down his shaft and into the fur of his groin. Her tongue curled around the underside on every pull. She made small humming noises that buzzed straight up through him.

He hadn't expected to have anything left. Dukaar disagreed.

The second build came on him faster than the first, low and hot, the divine sack already filling again because the god wasn't done with this girl yet, not by half. Garry felt the second load gather and he knew; the way he knew the smell of woodsmoke or the weight of his own staff; that this was the lucky one. The throat-load. The one the country folk talked about over harvest cider with a wink and a nudge. His paw found the back of her head, careful, and he didn't push. He didn't need to. She was already pulling at him like she'd been told what came next.

"Marrow; sweetheart; almost …"

She hummed around him. Took him deeper. The tip of him bumped the back of her muzzle and she didn't flinch, only swallowed once, hard, and the squeeze of her throat was the end of him.

He came with a low rolling groan, hips locking forward, one paw braced hard against the post and the other resting featherlight on the back of her skull. Pulse one went straight down. She swallowed. Pulse two. She swallowed. Pulse three, and a little bead of it escaped the corner of her muzzle and slid down through her cream fur, and she made a small unhappy noise about the waste and licked her lips clean as soon as she could manage it. He kept pumping. She kept drinking. Her throat worked around the length of him in a steady slow rhythm and Garry watched, and watched, and felt the god's warm approving weight settle through his shoulders like a cloak in winter.

When the last of it pulsed out of him, he eased back. His cock slid free of her muzzle with a soft wet pop. A single pearl of seed clung to her lower lip and she caught it with her tongue without looking, automatic, like a child catching a crumb.

She looked up at him.

Green. Bright, leaf-bright, new-spring green. The same green he saw in his own reflection on still water, the same green Father Anselm had under his cataracts, the same green every blessed soul from here to the coast carried behind their eyes. Her brown was gone. Every petal of it. Dukaar had taken the last of it with the second load and left her shining.

Garry swallowed. His throat felt thick.

"Welcome home, sister," he rumbled.

Marrow's muzzle wobbled. Then she smiled; a wide, wet, exhausted, blissful smile; and pressed her cheek against his thigh and just breathed there a moment, one paw still resting in the fur of his leg, her swollen belly warm and round between them. He stroked the soft place behind her ear. Her tail-stub gave one small thump against the straw.

"Thank you," she whispered into his fur. "Thank you, thank you …"

"Don't thank me. I just held the cup."

"Thank him, then."

"He hears it," Garry said, and meant it.

He bent down and got his paws under her arms and lifted, careful as you'd lift a basket of eggs, and eased her over to the bench so she could sit with her belly resting on her thighs and her back against the carved post. She made a soft pleased noise and let her eyes droop. He pulled the cleanest edge of her shredded shift over her shoulders. It wouldn't cover much. It didn't need to; Anselm would have a robe ready, and her ma would have the rest waiting at home.

He knelt, paws on his knees, and breathed.

Devotions weren't done till the words were done. Garry closed his eyes and let his head drop. The Litany of the Seed came up out of him in his rumbling country-cadence, low so as not to wake her if she dozed; blessed be the furrow, blessed be the seed, blessed be the womb that carries, blessed be the paw that tills; and at every line he felt the warm weight on his shoulders shift and settle, the god's slow nod, the god's slow yes. He went through all twelve lines. He kissed the knuckle of his right paw at the last one, the way his own joiner had taught him a decade back in a temple half a world from here, and pressed the kiss to the earthen floor.

"Mine to your hand, yours to my mouth," he murmured. "Amen."

The warm weight lifted, polite, like a guest who'd stayed exactly long enough.

Garry opened his eyes. The candles had steadied. Marrow was breathing slow against the post, paw cradled over the round of her belly. Alive, blessed, kindled. Done.

He stood up; knees popping, gods; and tied his loincloth back on. Found his pack where he'd dropped it. Pushed through the rush curtain.

Father Anselm was sitting on the bench in the front hall with his paws folded in his lap and his clouded eyes pointed at nothing in particular. He turned his ears at the sound of Garry's hindpaws on the boards.

"Done?"

"Done. She's resting. Going to want water when she wakes, and something soft to eat; bread soaked in milk, that sort of business. Belly's tender after."

"I remember."

Garry crouched at his pack and dug. He came up with a leather purse, heavy, its drawstring stiff from sea-salt. He set it in Anselm's paw and curled the old badger's fingers around it before Anselm could fuss.

"For the branch," he said. "Coin from the chapter house. They knew you'd be light by autumn. Don't argue with me about it, Father, I walked it here, I'm not walking it back."

Anselm's whiskers twitched. "I wasn't going to argue."

"Liar."

"Old habit."

Garry grinned and went back to the pack. Two slim leather-bound books came out next, both stamped with the seed-pattern on the spine. He stacked them on the bench beside the badger's hip.

"New copies of the Greater and Lesser Litanies. Yours are dog-eared to ribbons, Tovik said. And this;" a third book, fatter, with a green ribbon marker, "is the Denmother's Handbook. She'll need it. There's a whole chapter on the first six months. Cravings, cramps, what to do when the milk comes in early. Read it to her if her letters aren't strong yet."

"Her letters are strong. Farm girl, but her ma taught her."

"Better and better."

Anselm ran a thin paw over the top book. His mouth worked once. "You travel heavy for a pilgrim, Brother."

"I travel prepared. There's a difference." Garry stood and slung the pack. It was lighter now by a noticeable margin. Felt good. "Tell her; when she's up to hearing it; tell her the chapter house wants her in correspondence by midwinter. Just a letter. Nothing fancy. They like to know how the new ones are settling."

"I'll tell her."

"And put her up at the inn tonight. Don't send her home on those legs. Charge it to the temple purse; you've got the coin for it now."

"I'll do that as well."

Garry hesitated. Then he bent and pressed his forehead, briefly, to the crown of the badger's skull; the old greeting between blessed and clergy, fur to fur. Anselm smelled like beeswax and dust and a faint ghost of apple. He smelled like every country temple Garry had ever walked into.

"Walk easy, Father."

"And you, Brother. Where to next?"

Garry's grin spread slow and easy across his muzzle, the kind of grin that had charmed innkeepers and stern-faced customs officers from the capital all the way to this dusty corner of creation.

"Across the sea," he said, and hooked a thumb vaguely east, toward the coast he'd come from. "Old verse out of the Greater Litany; third book, ninth canto, if you've got a mind to look it up later. Where the furrow lies fallow and the grove stands bare, there shall the blessed walk; let no shore be too far, no field too forgotten, that the seed not find it. Something like that. My recitation's rougher than the page."

Anselm's ears tipped forward. "I don't recall that one."

"Country branches don't always carry the third book. Chapter house keeps the long versions." Garry shrugged, easy. "Point of it is; pilgrimage. Real one, the old kind. Across the great ocean and back, hitting every little holler and harbor where the green's gone thin. Joinings where they're needed. Litanies where they're forgotten. Bit of coin where the roof's leaking." He patted the lighter pack at his hip. "Dukaar pointed me at the water and I figured I'd best start walking."

"That's a long road, Brother."

“Got long legs”

Anselm's mouth crinkled at the corner; not quite a smile, but the badger version of one. He nodded slow, and his clouded eyes drifted past Garry toward the curtain, toward the soft sound of a young bearkin breathing easy in the sanctum beyond.

"Then I won't keep you on the step," he said. "But you'll take bread before you go. And cheese. The yellow wheel from the miller's wife; she tithed it last week and it's better than anything you'll buy on the road."

"I won't say no."

"You never do. Tovik warned me."

Garry laughed; full-chest, the kind that rattled the antlers nailed above the lintel; and ducked through the front door into the autumn light. The dust of the road waited for him. The goat was still there behind the rail, still chewing, watching him with the same flat yellow judgment as before.

He winked at it again on the way past.

"Told you I'd find the temple."

The goat bleated.

"Tough crowd," Garry said, and shouldered his staff, and started walking.