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Foreign Interest (by Tay Jaguar)

Chapter 1: Not Just a Tourist

The first thing I noticed about the Aluuoi island area is pretty much the place where every tropical postcard I've ever received was from. You can't look anywhere without seeing paradise, and I was absolutely thrilled to get the opportunity to be here. Most of the northern coast of the island is a vacation resort, so naturally it was where I arrived, packed in with people dressed in all kinds of loud-colored tourist clothes. They must have not thought very highly of me, dressed in just jeans and a green tank top with a old beat-up book bag slung over my shoulder. I was asked a couple times if I was some little scientist here to study the local wildlife, I guess I had that Jane Goodall vibe or something, and I just nodded and said "something like that" with a little smile. It was just cryptic enough to get most people off my back. I really didn't like talking to strangers, hell I grew up my whole life in one tiny community.

As the ferry came into port, my ears flicked nervously. It was something like realizing that I was throwing myself out into the unknown for the tenth time all over again. I pulled my bad up into place on my shoulder and filed out with all of the tourists. When I had made it though security and collected my things back into my bag, thank goodness they didn't look into all the drawing tablets I had some very less-than acceptable content in. I came out of the security center into the bright tropical sun, shielding my eyes and trying to seek out the liaison that was supposed to introduce me to the tribe I would be staying with.

As I said, I wasn't here for vacation, I had entered into a contest with the International Explorer magazine people to stay with a naitive tribe and learn from the experience. It just so happened that the same tribe allowed the resort on their land to keep their tribe secluded and protected in a pretty shifty deal with a tourism organization. The impact had been noticeable but not really major, most tourists don't want to stray too far from their comforts into the "savage jungle wilds". Me though? I was more than content to be in the company of more natural people in their own native land. Being cooped up in the tiny little community I was made me hungry for something totally alien to me.

I finally spotted who I was looking for, and not to put too fine a point on it but getting my first sight of him even through the blinding sun made my heart flutter. He had to be eight feet tall, a black stallion with a close-cut mane just above the height of his natural coat and a few strings of natural beads. He had a couple big scars over his chest that I could see, which instantly made me wonder how someone who had been through a life like that would stand being so near all these tourists. He had put on some kind of shorts, a crude guess really but I suppose passable by resort standards.

I walked up to him and made a hand sign and bowed, a respectful greeting that I had studied. If anything I didn't want to offend him, but I also really didn't want to just look like an idiot who won a prize to see how poor-off natives are. He gave a little grin and nodded at me, then immediately put his hand out and rubbed my ear tufts curiously. I knew coming into this that they were forward people but his blatant curiosity put me off guard.

"Are these some kind of fashion for your kind? I've never seen cats with these..." He said as he pulled his fingers away.

I smiled and shook my head a little, "N..no sir they're natural. I'm a lynx, we live very far north of here."

He shrugged and held a hand out towards a beach that went on along the coast for a couple miles or more, "You are Imille then? The one the explorers have asked us to host?"

"Yes, I am" I said with another little bow, "are you Millo?" I asked, being sure to pronounce 'me-yo' correctly.

"I am, come with me, I would like to leave these colorful birds to their business." He said, starting to walk along without waiting for me to start"

I had to laugh to myself a little at how he responded to the colors of the tourists' clothes, and I was happy that I had at least worn something he didn't disapprove of. I caught up the few steps he was ahead and walked at his thankfully moderate pace. For someone as big as he was I was pretty surprised he wasn't leaving me behind in strides. We walked fairly silently for the first mile or two, I guess I didn't mind it; watching him was fascinating. Mostly he didn't look at the people running around aimlessly with contempt, but rather with a dismissive attitude more like he was pretending they weren't there. When the end of the sandy beach was in sight, he finally spoke to me again

"It is a good thing you are grey, little cat. You will be able to do more than the last one they sent. He was some colorful bird, I forget, but we did not take him hunting as he would have given us away." When he said it, he seemed almost more interested in the walking, but it was an olive branch I wasn't willing to refuse.

"I'm glad, I was worried I wasn't going to be able to participate." I replied, glancing up at him to see his reaction, or really just to see if he would look back at me.

"How much do you hope to "participate" in?" He said with a look that told me he thought I was jumping in over my head.

"Well... as much as I can I hope. I don't want to come here and take up your resources while I watch. I don't want to be a burden while I stay."

He chuckled to himself and shook his head, "We will see if you can, little cat."

I frowned a little to myself; apparently somewhere along the line I had made myself seem like just some other little prick coming in to see the natives. I had to prove that I wasn't that. Of course there wasn't an opportunity at present, so I'd have to live with his doubt for the time being.

I was so caught up in my thoughts on how to impress him I didn't realize that we had reached the end of the sandy beach and come onto some rocks with grassy patches that stretched on as far as I could see. I was the one who ended up with an impression though, as he gruffly tore off the rough shorts to reveal nothing underneath but pure, unadulterated stallion manhood. All I saw was the size of his package and the flash of a silver piercing before my head shot away embarrassed. I heard him laugh quietly to himself and he sat down in a nearby grassy patch. All I could do was stand there and try not to stare at his strong, naked form; instead staring out into the surf. It started to relax me and my mind floated off a little for a moment, only to be brought back suddenly by his amused voice.

"Remind me the reason you came here? To spend time with us... NATURALLY? As we are in our home?"

"Yes... yes sir. That's why I came here." I couldn't get anything out of my mouth other than that.

"Well this is it, miil clas. Those stupid things restrict me too much and I'm certainly not going to wear them." He openly chuckled at me, "You can keep yours on as long as they last, then you'll see."

I turned back to him and nodded, doing my best not to let my eyes wander where they felt inclined to. He patted the grass in front of him and nodded his head at it, "Come and rest, we have ground yet to cover to reach the village. I can tell just by your look you will not make it without this and at least another stop."

I just smiled at him and sat down cross-legged a couple feet away on a flat-ish bit of stone, "Alright, and now that we'll be in the cover of the trees I should be much better off. I spent a month trying to get used to heat like this."

"By the mountain don't be so shy, miil clas. Come sit WITH me, we must speak about some things. " He reached out and grabbed my pant leg, pulling me off the stone and into the grass, uncomfortably close (for me) to the naked stallion.

I sat there as still as the rock he had pulled me off of, nervous and not sure how to feel with how comfortable he seemed in his nudity. He laid a hand on my shoulder and rubbed it a second in a way that made me lie down and finally relax.

"I hope you will not be so shy your entire stay, we are not shy people and you will be very uncomfortable." He looked at me, seriously and I think a little sympathetically for the first time in the couple hours since we had met.

"I... I will get used to it I am sure, it's just culture shock."

"What does that mean?" he asked; apparently I had finally found a weak spot in his second language skill.

"Oh, I'm sorry, it means that it is so different to me that it makes me uncomfortable at first." I smiled a little, now finding it easier to look him in the face now that the shock had passed.

"Well then miil clas I hope you find your comfort. We always have ours." Again he reached up and rubbed my eartips, this time almost affectionately.

I wasn't sure what exactly he meant by what he had said, but I smiled and thanked him, lying down and taking my first real breath since arriving on Aluuoi. We spent the rest of the time in mostly silence resting there in the soft grass, the rolling of the waves near me again having some magical quality to relax me. I nearly fell asleep when Millo rocked my shoulder with his huge 3-fingered hand and told me it was time to get on the move again.

We got up and kept on following the coast for a long time, hours for sure. I could tell the stallion had his eyes on something in the distance, but since this was my first time anywhere near this part of the world I just followed behind him. I was impressive how much more graceful he moved without the crude clothes on. Maybe it was more of a mental restraint for him than an actual one. I wasn't long until I found out though that he was right about my pants being a hinderance. By the end of the second hour travelling there were tears all along the legs and thighs of them from catching jutting stones when we had to climb or when sliding down off of rocks. I was pretty glad for my shoes though. I wouldn't think that with the touch hooves Millo had he would be bothered with the terrain, but there were several times I could tell I should be glad I had shoes to wear. After getting beat-up travelling for nearly three hours, the stallion leaned on an ornately carved stone and looked back at me with a sort of knowing smile.

"This is our rest before we make for the village," He pointed towards the base of a fairly nearby mountain, "It is the trip we have made and half over again through the jungle."

I sighed and leaned on the standing stone, letting myself slide down it into the patchy grass at its base, "Okay... okay," I went on, out of breath, "I can make that... I live in a pretty thick forest myself..."

"Really?" Millo said with an honest curiosity, "What is your forest like?" He sat down next to me and breathed his own sigh of relief, not used to travelling so far himself.

"Not as colorful. Everything here is so green." I looked around to admire the nearby tree line, the inside of the jungle filled with emerald light, "Leaves are much smaller and there are more trees but not so big as these."

"It sounds very... different. It is colder there too?"

"Yes, colder than ice at its coldest and at its warmest... well it doesn't really compare to this heat." I realized I had been panting heavily for a while, and reached into my bag for my canteen.

When I pulled it out he gave it a curious look at the artificially blue-furred disc, but when I drank heavily from it a knowing smile cracked his face. He pulled a decorated skin of water from around his hip and took a more moderate, and maybe smarter, drink for himself.

"What kind of animal does that come from?" He asked, pointing to the strangely-colored furry canteen.

"Oh... it isn't real fur. It is thread weaved into cloth and dyed this color." I held it up, not really realizing how strange it must have looked until that point.

"That sounds like a waste of thread and effort to me." Millo said with a shrug.

"I guess it really is, huh? Haha... The artist in me was just fascinated with it when I found it..."

"Artist? You are an artist?" He asked, again intrigued by my strangeness to him.

"Well... not by my culture's standards, but it relaxes me." I smiled and looked to my bag, considering whether or not I should have wasted the space to bring drawing books.

"We have not had artists in some time. It was lost on us a while ago, this is all we do now, " He said, holding up the water skin marked with red and black dyes in simple but intricate patterns. "What do you call art, miil clas?"

"If you tell me what that means I will show you while we rest." I said, nervously brokering some kind of deal to understand what the black stallion had taken to calling me.

"Fair, I am calling you 'little cat', miil clas. Now that you know, two words is a start in teaching you how to speak. Now show me this art you make." He smiled, seeing the telling look of embarrassment on my face.

"I should have guessed that was what you were saying." I sighed at myself and started to dig for a pencil in my bag.

My body jolted instinctively when I felt his thumb come up in the seat of my pants, and before I could react at all he had torn half of one of my pant legs into shorts. He held me surprisingly firmly to get the rest of the job done, and by the time I had swallowed my surprise and found a pencil, I was in a pair of denim short-shorts. Thank goodness I was this far from people with pants, or I might have gotten more than a few looks for the hand-torn girl's fashion. Truth be told inside I liked them but being such a shrew I would never wear them... At least not in front of people who wear pants.

I sat up and looked to Millo, a bit of professional in me and asked him, "What do you want me to draw then?"

"Me." He said flatly with a smile.

"Oh..." I was a little surprised, and immediately thought 'oh god what will I do when I get past the hips', but there was little point in refusing; if it was what he wanted he wasn't going to be inclined to change his mind, "Okay, I can do that."

"Shall I toss a bit of your torn pants over my sex? You still seem tense when you see it. It intimidates you?" He said the whole thing with a sort of sly smile and took up a tattered bit of denim and draped in over his hip.

It didn't hardly cover much, but he seemed happy with the censorship. I had to swallow hard a couple times and reply honestly, "Yes, Millo. It does intimidate me..."

"But you also like it, I can see in your eyes admiration." He lifted his chin proudly.

"Well I..."

"Do not deny, miil clas, you are afraid and attracted. I thought you were only disturbed at your first reaction, but I can see now you do not know how you should feel." He reached out and rubbed me on the knee, making me tense a little as my thoughts mixed around over what he was saying, "You should not think about what you should feel, it gets in the way. Think about how you DO feel. But enough of that now, draw me and let me see your art."

My head was swimming so much from the things he had just told me that all I wanted to do was draw and not think. A little old autopilot habit kicked in and I started the drawing, looking back from him to my book over and over. Now and then he would be smiling at me as I did it, lying there still in the grass with barely enough torn cloth over his manhood to make any difference whether it was there or not. It took me a little over what I guessed was a half hour, and l looked it over, and looked him over to his outward delight. I handed it to him to look at and his face lit up the moment his eyes fell on the paper.

"Ez bouu folle en traa biin, mille clas..." He spoke affectionately in his own language.

"Thank you?" I said unsurely, having no clue at all what he actually said.

When he flipped backwards in the book my heart jumped out of my chest. His eyebrows climbed his head as he looked though a couple more. I was absolutely stunned and mortified, he seemed more curious than anything and handed it back to me pointing out characters in a picture he had flipped to.

"This large animal... do they often mate like this with these other smaller horned ones?" He asked, showing me a picture of a bear and a small male deer being less than decent.

"N.. no not... not normally..."I took it as gently as I could manage, and got it put away as quickly as I could manage. "They just... I just..."

"You prefer males. That or everyone else you draw does, and I think that much less likely." Millo was regarding me with a look that I wasn't sure made me leery or just regular old embarrassed.

"I don't.. I don't know if that is acceptable for your people. I had just intended to partake in what I could and leave my own interests in that regard out of it."

The stallion laughed in that quiet way he had been all day now and looked at me and spoke frankly, "Quite impossible, miil clas. Anyway your art is very nice, my people will be impressed with it and you may be able to trade with it at first until you are out of these dry white leaves." He stood up dismissing where the conversation had gone, it almost seemed on purpose to make me nervous, "Come, let us make more progress towards the village."

Millo helped me up and set my bag on my shoulder, and took a long look up and down me. He smiled and pat me on the back and set me off aside him in a direction he obviously knew well. I kept along with him through the green-lit forest and colorful foliage , checking trees as we went along. Our progress was a lot slower and the sun was well on it's way toward the horizon as we trudged through the thick woodland. We shared another awkward silence but this time not nearly as long as the last few. After maybe an hour he started to tell me things about how to act among his people, what was permitted and what was not, and even things I needed to know as someone new coming in. Most of what he said I had learned through study, but there is a lot the books don't tell you.

One thing he mentioned stuck particularly in my head, "Do not hesitate to show your opinions or feelings. It means you want to hide something in our culture and this is not wise. If someone does not speak though, it is not necessary. When we decide to speak is when we open ourselves and you must be as open as the person who speaks to you."

I responded to everything he said with a noise or an acknowledging word, trying to take in as much as I could before I was in the thick of it. As time wore on into the twilight I began to fully realize why Millo wasn't wearing anything. Between the heat and the time it took us to travel this kind of terrain, my groin was decidedly not happy with me. I was pulling the crotch of my short-shorts down every few minutes when finally the stallion stopped us.

"Imille, fighting with your clothes and putting off that scent is not worth staying covered. Is it?" He turned around and faced me, trying to be nice but he was obviously frustrated. "Take them off or we will be past dark arriving and you will not be good for the morning's chores."

I stood there for a moment dumbstruck; a stallion I had been trying to keep my thoughts to myself about and who was nearly three feet taller than me was demanding I take my clothes off. He stared at me waiting on me for a long and tense moment. Just when it seemed he was ready to let me find my own way, I grudgingly surrendered.

"Alright, okay okay, you're right. I'm slowing us down and making my scent collect, I know..." I reached for the waistband and slid my thumbs around to the button in the front.

I watched the stallion watch me, and I slowly and nervously unbuttoned my shorts, then slid the zipper down. When they fell off to reveal my purple briefs the stallion put a hands on his hip and pursed his lips impatiently, not happy I think to see more clothing. I looked up at him pleadingly and he relaxed his gaze.

"You may stay 'decent'" He said the word with such distain, "unless it becomes a problem, in which case..." He looked at me as a wide grin came across his face, "I get to take them off of you."

I must have looked like a mouse when he told me that, my knees knocked and his grin broke into a smile. It took me a little while, but not seeing my underwear being a big issue I nodded slowly and timidly.

"Good, now give me those. We will keep them as a reminder for you." He pointed at the denim shorts in my hand and I tossed them to him.

He caught them deftly and tucked them into his own beaded waistband in front of his water skin. He waved for me to follow and I did, in my purple underwear through the jungle of all things. We stayed silent for more of the trip after the stop, though I'm sure for a different reason. Now when he walked, at least for a little while, his limp member swung below him with his heavy package and I was doing my best to be leaning over at least a little when he looked back to check on me so I wasn't showing him so obviously what I thought of his reaction to having more of my scent to breathe in.

We moved a bit quicker after that, and besides being an eyesore against my grey fur and green top the underwear worked well enough, keeping me covered and not slowing us too much. Eventually we both moved on from our arousals and things again got silent except for the crunching of leaves and the creaking of the treed above. We finally came to a point where I could tell the village was ahead of us; I could see a lit clearing and smoke rising, most likely from dinner being made. Millo slowed our pace to walking in open spots and waved into the trees, I can only assume at scouts or guards. Just before reaching the clearing, he stopped me and held me on both shoulders.

"Everyone expects you because we were told, but some are still not happy about your being let here after the last one. For now, stay by me and I will introduce you around. You will only need to greet respectfully and speak to those you can understand. If they speak too fast for you just say so and I will talk to them in your stead."

I nodded to him with an eager smile, despite his warnings I couldn't wait to see how life here was. I was never really happy with the limited boundaries of the society I grew up in, and I knew that even if I moved anywhere else there were still things that would stop me from being what I wanted in life. Being here didn't mean there weren't boundaries, but it did mean a different experience and that was really what I was after. As we approached the edge of the village I can only imagine what they thought of me in my dirty purple briefs and tank top, carrying a bag on my shoulder and led by a tired and anxious member of their own.