crispina kemp

Continuing the story of Thredwyl’s adventure. Read it all FOR FREE on Thredwyl’s very own site

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Fleur released Thredwyl. “How many times, Daisy? Knock before entering.”

“Have you had that waxed, Fleur? How disgusting. Does Mum know? You do realise that’s a sign of not wanting to admit you’re a woman – like anorexia: a refusal to grow up.”

By now Fleur had grabbed a silken robe and wrapped it around her body.

“Too late,” the intruder Daisy said. She’d quite a nasty tongue. “I’ve seen it now. And what’s—hey, what is that?” She was looking directly at Thredwyl. Thredwyl was looking at her.

Shorter than Fleur and without the sapphire hair, hers was more the colour of topaz or citrine, held in two unruly clutches to either side of her head. Yet she had the same emerald eyes, absent the deep blackness around them. Indeed, no black for her, but a frock of riotous colours, tightly gathered around her chest. The frock then fell in full folds to her naked knees. She had short white socks and besandalled feet.

“That,” Fleur answered, “is a Hobbit. And what are you doing home already and barging in here? And what does it matter if Jace has locked himself in his room?”

“Mum said to tell Jason the moment I came in—did you know it’s raining? Really ruined Jasmine’s barbeque—but don’t worry, her mum brought all of us home, though how dismal for Jazzy. And that’s not a Hobbit. Hobbits are taller. At least three feet, maybe four, fictional and Flores. Is it real?”

“Of course, I am real,” Thredwyl answered the girl, Daisy.

“I’m taking him to the guys at Anthropology,” Fleur said.

“But there’ll be no one there,” Daisy said. “Not after four on a Friday. No one there now till Monday morning.”

“Oh, fuck,” Fleur swore though it sounded like she didn’t mean it.

“I will take care of our little friend.” There was no doubt in Daisy’s tone that she intended to claim him.

“You can’t, he’s mine.” Fleur stepped in front of him.

This talk of Fridays and Mondays meant nothing to Thredwyl. But if holding his hand out to this shorter, smaller, non-sexualised Daisy stole him away from the luscious Fleur’s lascivious company, then he’d hold out his hand. He’d cling to her leg, he’d plead for her to take him away. But that wasn’t needed.

“Would you rather I tell Mum about you being waxed? And what I caught you doing with this little fellow? This innocent little fellow.” She scooped him up. Thredwyl allowed it without a struggle. “Come on, little fellow. Since she killed my Flopsy and Peeps, I have just the place for you.”

Thredwyl scrambled up the next set of stairs, unable to keep up with young Daisy despite her constant chatter must have slowed her. She was bringing him ‘up to speed’ on her family, she said.

“Me and Fleur, we share a father. Chris Doley—I don’t suppose you’ve heard of him? No, most people haven’t. He’s a musician. Guitar mostly. He used to play with a resident band at one of the holiday camps—Butlins, but I don’t suppose that means anything to you? That was before he scooped the biggie on the Lottery and bought this place. That’s also where he met Flirty Fleur’s whore of a mother. Sheryl—Sheryl Broadman. She was singer with the band and already sleeping with him—so Mum says. But as soon as he was stinking rich she wanted the ring, the bank account and everything.

“It didn’t last long. Their millions slid down the drain in a frenzy of spending—the whoring Sheryl being a shopaholic. Looking at imminent broke, Pops got a job. Session musician, like he still does, for Lynx Studios—that’s just down the road, in Cambridge—but that didn’t suit Sheryl. She fucked off with her personal trainer. Went to Tenerife, where the trainer left her and she, forced to fall back on her talents, became a singer in one of the hotel bars. Now she’s supporting her spending habits by servicing the hotel guests, after hours.

“So, you see, we mustn’t blame Fleur for her depravity—and she is depraved. I caught her once with Helas. You know, fiddling with him? She wasn’t doing that to you, was she? I mean, if she did, that’s abuse, and there are laws against that. Did she…touch you? Like, down there? Only you don’t have to be quiet and put up with it. We’ll blow the whistle on her, she’ll get put in the nick, and the world’ll be a sweeter place.”

Thredwyl tried to digest everything the young giantess said though a great deal of it skimmed over his head. But this of the touching…. Yet she didn’t allow him the chance to say. Off she went again with more family history.

“Me and Jason share a mother—we don’t know who his father is; Mum’s never said, at least not to me. Probably some Shakespearian bit-actor—that’s what Mum used to do before the sitcom that’s raked her in a considerable income over the years. Karen Kaye, but I don’t suppose you’ve heard of her either. Ah, and here we are. My room.”

She opened the door with considerably less violence than had the black-eyed, black-encased lascivious Fleur Doley. “Like?”

Thredwyl blinked at the kaleidoscope of colours. He stood just into the room, his jaw dropped nigh to his knees. Surely here he had stumbled upon a cave of gems, everything sparkling, everything bright in emerald greens, sapphire blues, topaz and citrines, amethysts, rubies, all hectically mixed with none of the obsessive order Thredwyl had seen in the giants’ lower rooms.

“I call it my Aladdin’s Cave,” Daisy said with a noticeable stride of pride. “Mum says as long as I keep it tidy—by which she means I have to pick up my knickers and things. But there’s more. This is my room. Now I’ll show you what’ll be yours.”

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Next episode in Thredwyl’s adventure. Click HERE to read from the start on Wattpad. Or visit Grandma’s Attic to read the full story of Thredwyl’s adventures.

The stairs being of a softer substance than Grandma’s bone-breaking stone, Thredwyl would have happily climbed them. But the giantess Neat Fleur wouldn’t have it. She scooped him up one-handedly and held him securely against her chest. That chest was unlike the Nixies’ chests, all grown so heavy they dragged down to their waists. Hers was soft and pillowy. And unlike the Nixies, she smelled nice too.

“Where are you taking me?” he asked on the off-chance she might answer. So far, her record of listening to him and answering was slenderer than a shard.

But wonder of wonders, “My room,” she told him. “Those guys at Anthropology can whistle a tune. You’re mine – at least while it rains. Mine to do with as I wish.”

Thredwyl swallowed hard. That sounded nastily ominous. His head filled with every jawman’s Heroic tale of Giants, and of Giants and Nixies, and particularly of the Giantess and the Stone. But he set his jaw firm. No matter what, he would not wed her. Besides, he wasn’t a hero. He was here by mistake, a spell gone wrong.

She kicked open the door. “Tra-lah!” And to his relief she put him down.

He’d no time to look round. There was one thing he needed and needed now. “I need a pee. Where’d I go?”

“A…?” That seemed to frighten her.

He jiggled from foot to foot, knees jammed tight, legs crossing, uncrossing, while she held a finger to her lips and looked kind of perplexed.

“Have you no channel? A hole? A urinal? Needn’t be fancy. Only I don’t want to pee on your floor, and I might have to. Soon.”

That spurred her to action. Her floor was smooth as water-worn chalk, though all-over patterned in a bewilderment of colours. This shouldn’t be called the Land of Giants. Better would be the Land of Colours, not that Home was such a dismal grey place. Yet he had to admit it never could equal nor rival this. And he still needed to pee. Desperately.

She picked him up.

“Don’t press,” he squealed. “Mind the bladder.”

With a kick at another door, she deposited him in a white-stone and crystal cubicle with a floor patterned in regular bumps.

“There,” she said and pointed to a silver-ringed hole in the far corner as if he needed the showing.

He turned his back to her. He’d prefer to wait for her to vacant his vicinity, but it seemed she intended to linger, and he couldn’t wait any longer. Oh, the relief. He peed and he peed, and he peed. He thought the stream never would end.

Eventually, he laced his breeches.

Now to clamber over the rim of this convenient construction. He’d rather the struggle up and risk the tumble down than to have her handle him again.

She watched him from a distance, arms crossed beneath her black encased pillowy chest, no attempt made to help him. In fact, she seemed to be smiling. Amused at his antics? But that shining white barrier reached only his waist. A deeply textured floor waited for him on the other side, where she stood. He did a quick leg up and slithered down, feet sinking deep in that texture. It reminded him strongly of the moss that grew around the cascades where, if you were extremely unlucky, you might be caught by a Nixie at play.

“Don’t move,” she said and reached over him, into the cubicle, and Hey presto’d her magic. He’d been right about the cascade. It fell from far above him, all cleanly contained by the white-rock and crystal walls, to gurgle away down the silver-rimmed hole. “Neat, hey?”

“Neat?” he queried.

“Yea, neat. Clever. Simple. Ingenious. A mark of this world.”

Thredwyl frowned while his head coped with the mental sums. On first meeting, when he’d given his name, she had replied that hers was ‘Neat’. Yet her unrelated sib, Jace, had called her Fleur with no slither of ‘Neat’. What if he’d mistaken her intent, that she hadn’t said ‘Neat’ as her given name, but rather ‘Neat’ as a compliment to him? Which meant? Hey, that she thought him clever. He nodded. He grinned. This Fleur wasn’t so bad, after all.

The essentials taken care of, Fleur then allowed him the freedom of her room.

He ran all over it, looking at this, at that. Was that a bed? Hey, no thin mattress on the floor here. And mirrors, proper reflective mirrors everywhere. Apparently, Fleur liked to look at herself. But it was the transparent crystal that held Thredwyl transfixed the longest. Or rather, what was happening beyond it.

There was a cascade in Gruff’s Cavern. Indeed, there were many in Dolstone. But there they tended to fall from a hole in the rock, and be localised, the edges clearly seen. Not here, not in this Colourful Land of Giants. The water was falling everywhere, for as far as he could see. But he could see only as far as the trees. Were they trees? He thought he recognised them from the jawmen’s stories. And looking up, well, if there was rock up there then it was at an unfathomable height. Then again, another difference: a cascade fell. Like, it fell and fell and fell. Though at the end of the wet season it lessened or might even stop. But not here. If he understood it right, here it was unusual for it to fall and usual for it to stop.

“Hey, Big Boy.”

Thredwyl looked around him. Who else was here in the room? As far as he could see there was only him and…Fleur.

Hmm, Fleur. Oh, wow.

She had removed that black casing and allowed her chesty-bits to – he swallowed, he sweated, he could feel the blood rushing to all his places, though mostly to his face. He could feel himself blushing. Nay, that was nothing like a Nixie’s chest.

“You like?” she asked him, doing things to them that he thought she really shouldn’t.

He took a deep breath. And he ought to turn around, again to study the rain.

“You want to see more?” she asked, her voice gone all breathy.

He closed his mouth, teeth cutting deep into his lip. But he couldn’t hold it. He let it out as an appreciative whistle. She smiled. Grinned. Chuckled. And unbuckled her belt.

He tried not to watch how those chesty…things…bobbled, wobbled and moved about.

She dropped the belt. It landed at her feet, curled like one of the snaky things the Nixies had for a bottom. She hooked her thumbs into the top of her shiny black pants. No, no, he mustn’t see this, this was going a stripe too far. He turned away. Yet he couldn’t resist a peek over his shoulder. She saw. And grinned, her snaky tongue between teeth and lip. He hid his head under his arms.

But he was curious with a great urge to look. Would she have snaky things for her bottom like the Nixies? But, nay, he had seen her legs. Two legs, divided. Seen where they – Nay, nay, nay, Thredwyl, just keep those eyes closed. You know what she’s up to; you’ve heard the stories. She’ll have you wed and captured here. But he couldn’t stay turned away, he had to look. Just a glance. He turned fully around.

His eyes travelled from her naked knees up, his tongue licking his lips. But, Nix, nix, nix, he counter-spelled her. She wouldn’t trick him to wed her.

His spell didn’t work.

“You want to touch?” she asked him.

Nay, he did not, did not, did not. Oh, but aye, he did. He snapped his betraying hands away, clutching them with fierce determination behind his back. And in all her pinky-nakedness she leaned over him and pried those hands apart.

“You guys are all alike,” she teased. “Always trying to sneak a look, yet when offered a touch, you turn shy.”

“I…I…” He struggled against the pull of her hands.

The door burst open. Relief slid through him, even more blissful than when he’d peed.

“Jason’s door is locked,” stormed a female voice.