Chapter 7: Canvas

By the time she was done, and her wrist computer had finished transferring the data, it was getting too late to set off on another expedition. The suns were getting low as illustrated by what little light was still bleeding through the curtain, and the misty landscape was growing even more gloomy than it had been already. While the prospect of trying to bag some nocturnal insects was attractive, she would save that for another day, as the morning’s trek had left her exhausted and sore.

Just when she was starting to think about calling it a night and finding a sleeping pit for her and Sleethe, a call rang out across the village. It was deep and resonating, penetrating Lena to the bone as she felt the floorboards beneath her shudder. It was the longest and loudest Krell call that she had ever heard, so powerful that it sounded as if it must be coming from a creature a mile long. She wondered for a moment if it was a mating call, if the denizens of the rickety village were being assembled for a breeding frenzy, but this one was different. The Krell were certainly being called to do something, but what?

She looked to Sleethe, and he saw the question in her eyes before she had even opened her mouth to ask it.

“Community,” he said, a simple and cryptic statement.

“What does that mean, Sleethe?”

“All will assemble, commune.”

The Krell were being called together, but for what purpose?

The wooden planks beneath her hands began to tremble as she sat upon them, this time not from a rumbling voice, but from footsteps. They were faint at first, but getting stronger. What felt to her like an army of Krell was drawing closer, their heavy marching making the structure itself shake precariously.

“Are they coming here? To the temple?”

Sleethe nodded. Well, what had she been expecting? This was clearly the cultural center of the village as well as the physical one. If they were going to congregate anywhere, then it would be here.

The heavy footsteps drew closer and closer, until finally the first of the procession pushed its long snout through the bead curtain. It was a female, identifiable by her wider hips and thicker thighs, the same spinach-green color as Sleethe and about the same size. Following behind her was a larger male with a darker coloration, and behind him was a younger and more vibrantly colored male, they just kept coming. They filed in one by one, fanning out in a large circle around the cavernous temple, until finally the last one brushed past the curtain. Sleethe stood along with them, moving back towards the base of the wall to join his kin as Lena sat beside her duffel bag on the floor, feeling out of place and wondering if she was expected to participate.

She was now surrounded by a wall of scales and muscles. Her chosen sleeping pit and the small pile of her gear was near the far wall, a little to the right of the entrance. There must have been fifty at least, in all shapes, colors and sizes. Now that they were all assembled, the differences in their markings and jewelry really stood out to her. No two were quite the same.

The largest was the elder, his onyx scutes reflecting the dancing firelight like black glass as he stepped into the center of the room. He was still adorned in body paints, symbols and runes drawn onto his skin in colorful pigments. He wore more jewelry this time, laden with so many colorful necklaces woven from beads and shells that they hung down to his belly, overlaid one on top of the other until it became an indistinguishable mass of geometric patterns.

Lena turned up the gain on her translator and waited, sensing that something important was happening, listening intently as he began to speak.

“We commune to welcome outsiders into the great family. One born of our lakes, and another from above.” The translator had some issues with that last word. He had gestured to the sky to punctuate his statement, and the dictionary suggested that he was referring to a direction, but Lena got the impression that it was more along the lines of ‘on high’ or ‘the heavens’. He was of course referring to her and Sleethe.

“Step forward, those who are outside, and join our circle.”

Sleethe left his place in the ring of Krell that encircled the expansive room, lumbering towards the dark elder. He stopped beside Lena, putting out one of his scaly hands, and she took it as she rose to her feet. She began to blush, realizing that a hundred eyes were on her, examining her through the gloom of the temple as she walked beside her mate. She felt exposed, vulnerable. Her clothing was sparse and it had never completely dried out after her nap in the lake, it was sticking to her skin and leaving little to the imagination. She kept reminding herself that the Krell didn’t care. Krell had no concept of modesty in the sense that humans did, and yet a lifetime of social conditioning made her cheeks flush with embarrassment all the same. Humans were taught to be ashamed of their nakedness and it was a very hard concept to shake, the Krell were not.

They came to a stop before the elder, the massive creature leaning down to brush his head against Sleethe’s, another one of their greetings. He did the same to Lena, crouching down to reach her and bumping his leathery forehead gently against her brow. She brushed her damp hair out of her face with her fingers as she looked up at him, wondering what was going to happen next.

She got a better look at his neckwear now that he was closer, resisting the urge to take a photo as he rose back up to full height. It looked so damned heavy, but then again he was an especially large Krell, the immense weight would mean little to him. The jewelry glistened in the wavering firelight, every colorful bead and stone reflecting the flames, every twisted shell glinting as it hung from his neck. It almost looked like a dozen poisonous serpents were coiled about his shoulders. The thick bands of vibrant reds and oranges were striped with black and white patterns, reminding her of coral snakes. Still others hung lower across his broad chest, curtains of decorative beads and shells not dissimilar from the ones that they used to cover their doors dangling free. They were more intricately crafted, arranged in geometric patterns, squares and triangles formed from sheets of woven beads that resembled pixels on a monitor.

“Welcome to our lake,” the elder said, his baritone voice almost deep enough to make her teeth chatter. “Tell me stranger, you have walked great distances to reach us, our eyes have not seen those of your kind before. Why have you come here?”

At least the translator was doing a decent job, the more experience the algorithm got, the more accurate the translations were becoming. It was hard to estimate if the reverse was true, and if the software was outputting anything coherent. She would have to rely on Sleethe to correct her if she slipped up. She cleared her throat, speaking as clearly as possible and trying to use very simple phrases.

“Thank you for your hospitality. I came here from ... far away. Our two peoples are friends, but we know little about you. I have come to learn. I want to know your history, your culture, how you live. I want to study you and your home.”

“You seek knowledge?” The elder asked, peering at her with his yellow eyes. That seemed to pique his curiosity, it was rare to see a Krell take interest in anything that didn’t involve sleeping.

“Yes, I want to learn.”

The elder turned his long snout towards Sleethe.

“And you, guardian of Benefactors. Why have you come?”

Guardian of Benefactors? Odd wording. That seemed to imply that not all Krell served the Brokers as soldiers. While they were members of the Coalition and they served as auxiliaries in the UNN, it was no secret that the Brokers were the ones who mediated on their behalf. It was a relationship that Lena was increasingly finding herself questioning.

“We are mated. Where she goes, I follow. She is my kin.”

It seemed that no further explanation was required, and the elder bowed his head, satisfied by their replies. He turned and made his way over towards the large clay pots on the other side of the hall, that Lena knew to contain the dyes and pigments that they used for marking their scaly hides. He called over the three nearest males, and they left their place in the circle, lifting one of the six pots in each arm and following the elder back over to where the pair were waiting.

They set them down nearby, Lena standing on her toes to see over the rims of the containers. Each one was filled with a colored powder. There was red and orange, yellow and white, blue and purple. She had already received a red mark on her forehead to indicate that she was mated, was the elder going to draw on her again? Much like henna, the pigments were semi-permanent and did not wash off. It had taken the better part of a month for the one that she had received on her first visit to fade.

“No afraid,” Sleethe said, and she looked up at him as he waited beside her. “Krell will not harm you. This is our way.”

Cryptic, or perhaps poorly translated, but the intent was clear enough. The Krell were going to do something and she shouldn’t be afraid of it. The elder began to speak again, his booming voice echoing throughout the temple.

“We accept you among us, become as kin.”

The elder dipped his hand into one of the clay pots, coating his fingers in dye, and then moved towards Sleethe. He drew runes on her partner’s pale belly, intricate, calligraphic text that Lena could not parse. It was as much art as writing, undeniably sophisticated, and yet oddly brutish and tribal. He decorated the runes carefully with dots and patterns, occasionally dipping his fingers into the pot again like an artist wetting a paintbrush. He worked quickly, clearly skilled and practiced. He might have been performing this ritual for hundreds of years as far as Lena knew.

When he took a step back to examine his work, Sleethe was adorned with a new marking that looked almost like a tattoo. Unable to contain her curiosity, Lena dared to interrupt the ceremony with a question.

“What does it mean?”

“Guardian,” Sleethe replied. It was his vocation, then? It seemed strange to her that the aliens would adorn their bodies with such information, until she considered that humans also wore uniforms and insignias that denoted their job or their status. This was not dissimilar, however the Krell did not wear clothing in the way that humans did. She had seen them wearing ponchos on occasion, but those were body armor provided by the UNN, or garments with pockets that seemed entirely geared towards utility. A different story entirely.

The elder then dipped his hand into the white pot, and brought it up to Sleethe’s face, carefully decorating it with a series of white dots that stood out prominently against his spinach scales. The elder applied more of them beneath his eyes and on his cheeks, moving down the length of his snout as he added progressively fewer of them, eventually tapering off when they reached his nose. The red mark of matrimony was still prominent in the center of his forehead, as Lena had taken to calling it. Even after swimming in lakes and rivers all day, it hadn’t faded even a little.

Next the elder selected a blue pigment, painting a swirling pattern that intertwined with a series of runes across Sleethe’s chest, running from shoulder to shoulder. Lena gave him a questioning glance.

“My home,” Sleethe explained. Vocation, place of residence, marital status. It was almost as if the elder was painting official documents onto them. Perhaps this ritual was less frivolous than she had initially assumed.

The elder turned towards Lena, plunging his fingers into one of the pots and covering them in red dye. He brought his hand down towards her, but then hesitated, studying her alien body with his reptilian eyes. She realized that her sodden tank top was covering her torso entirely, the elder had nowhere to paint. All eyes in the room were on her, dozens of facing watching expectantly, lit by the dancing flames and framed in deep shadow. Sleethe was watching her too, making no comment, but waiting to see what she would do next.

She felt the heat in her cheeks, and she began to rub her hands together nervously, unsure of what to do. They had done all of this for her and Sleethe, a ceremony to welcome them into ‘the circle’, to make them ‘kin’. It would be offensive, a grave insult to refuse their hospitality. These aliens were trying to make her a part of their family.

Come on Lena, she though to herself, the Krell have no concept of nakedness. What does it matter if they see you topless? You’re an alien to them, an oddity. Are you really going to forego this initiation because of human hangups that are only applicable to a society that’s light years away?

She steeled herself, sliding her fingers under the bottom of her tank top, lifting the damp fabric over her head. Her breasts fell free, and she struggled to pull the clinging garment loose, finally discarding it on the floor as she brushed her wet hair out of her face. It looked like she could keep her shorts on, that was something at least, and she glanced about the room as she felt the villagers scrutinizing her. She resisted the urge to cross her arms across her chest, to cover herself. She had to get used to this, she had to grow accustomed to nudity.

Sleethe seemed pleased, as did the elder, who leaned closer and gently pressed his fingers against her belly. Lena flinched, feeling his cool scales and his dull claws, looking down between her hanging breasts as he began to paint. She was more sensitive than a Krell, her skin smooth and clean, unprotected. She had no armored scutes or tough scales, her nakedness making her feel all the more vulnerable and amplifying her senses as the elder marked her.

He painted a similar pattern to what Sleethe was now wearing, but the choices of runes and the decorative flourishes were subtly different. It seemed to be challenging for the elder, he had to miniaturize his work, Lena’s petite body serving as a very limited canvas compared to what he was used to. It was a struggle to stay still as he drew shapes on her pale skin, his touch tickling her, his scaly fingers leaving trails of dye wherever they roamed.

After a minute or two he stepped back to appraise his work, seeming satisfied. Lena craned her neck to get a look at the pattern over the mounds of her bare breasts, seeing swirling calligraphy that extended from the base of her ribcage down to her navel. It was a vibrant red, not painted on her skin, but staining it. It wasn’t going to be coming off any time soon.

“Sleethe,” she whispered, “what does it say?”

“Scholar,” he replied.

So she had been marked as a scholar, then? The thought filled her with an odd kind of pride. It also suggested that the Krell had scholars of their own, perhaps she would be able to seek one out and quiz him?

The elder coated his fingers in blue pigment, and began to draw across her chest. This was the pattern that Sleethe had said described as a person’s home, where they had originated from she assumed. He decorated the space between her clavicle and the top of her breasts with intricate markings, every complex character framed with swirling lines that flowed into one another like water. He seemed to run out of space, improvising as he went and extending the design down between her boobs until it neared the top of the red marking on her belly. Undeterred, he married it to the rest of the tattoo-like pattern, joining them seamlessly into one continuous design.

Again the elder plunged his hand into one of the clay pots, and this time withdrew it with a coating of purple dye. Lena had to make a conscious effort not to flinch away as he brought his many-fingered hand down towards her face, using his thumb to spread two symmetrical lines on her cheeks, just beneath her eyes. He brushed a finger along the bridge of her nose, extending it down across her lips and to the tip of her chin. This one was surely decorative, he was just following the natural lines and contours of her body.

It was an odd sensation, being touched so intimately by a stranger under the watchful eyes of all these people. She didn’t know how to feel about it, an odd excitement was rising inside her to challenge her vulnerability and embarrassment. Her skin glistened in the firelight, every droplet of sweat and moisture that clung to her smooth skin reflecting the flickering flames, accentuating her curves as reptilian fingers roamed across them. Despite the pervasive damp, the pigments stained her skin all the same, a semi-permanent mark. Why did that idea excite her so?

The elder retreated a few paces, raising his long arms into the air and glancing about the room.

“Purpose now revealed, origins known. Come, put your marks upon them.”

The circle of Krell began to close in, drawing closer as Lena turned her head this way and that, edging nearer to Sleethe for protection. He noticed that she was becoming alarmed, running his fingers through her hair to relax her in the way that he knew she liked.

“No harm,” he whispered. Having so many giant creatures bearing down on her made her nervous all the same, but Sleethe sprang into action whenever there was even a semblance of a threat, and so she had to trust his judgment. If he told her that it was safe, then it must be safe. She was out of her element here, a fish out of water just the same as the salamander that she had wrestled from the river that morning.

The Krell villagers crowded the pair, brushing against one another so closely that they very nearly blocked out the firelight. They delved their hands into the pots, reaching out towards Lena and Sleethe with a rainbow of colorful pigments. The villagers were going to draw on them too? For what purpose? What meaning would these new symbols convey?

A dozen hands reached out towards Sleethe, painting patterns on his pale belly, the Krell lifting his arms as they applied dots and swirling shapes. They placed their ‘marks’ wherever they could reach, his back and his tail, his thighs and his neck. They were covering his whole body in runes and decorations, less intricate and more artistic this time. It reminded her of schoolchildren signing their names on a classmate’s cast.

They weren’t just after Sleethe, and she pulled away as their claws reached down towards her, only to bump into the aliens who were pressing in from the rear. Their hands roamed across her body, feeling the smoothness of her skin, testing it. They had never seen a human before, let alone come into contact with one, and her lack of scales seemed to be an endless curiosity to them. They ran their claws through her hair, their size and strength alarming, but they were inhumanly careful and gentle. They recognized her physical limitations, just as Sleethe did.

Lena tensed as she felt someone’s fingers in the small of her back, drawing a shape or a rune just above the elastic of her shorts. More joined it, Lena sighing as a hand reached down towards her belly and began to write beneath her navel in purple dye. In an instant there were half a dozen hands on her skin, stroking her like masseuses, leaving colorful trails wherever they went.

As she had noted with Sleethe, these were not formal declarations woven from complex passages of text, but rather art and decoration. The Krell were adorning her with patterns that they found aesthetically pleasing, and perhaps the odd rune or character here and there. Their strokes were symmetrical where possible, the aliens taking care to work together in order to produce the best result, complimenting each other’s work.

She could scarcely prevent herself from twisting and writhing, the experience so unlike anything in human culture. There were no boundaries here, there was no consideration for personal space, no hesitation to make contact. It was frightening, leaving her feeling unmoored from the social conventions that had defined her life up to this point, and yet it was somehow liberating.

Humans lived in an invisible hamster ball, repelling one another like the opposite ends of a magnet when they got too close. Touching a stranger, or even a friend without express permission was a social faux pas at best, and an affront at worst. It would be unthinkable to go up to a stranger and run your hands across their body, to paint on their skin, no matter how benign your intentions might be. Some cultures were more friendly and physical than others, but personal space was always of great value, as was security of self.

The Krell had no such hangups. They were as close to her as a fond friend or a lover, there was no distance between her and them as there was with other humans. In that moment she truly felt like a part of their ‘circle’, one of their kin, and the thought moved her.

Alien hands glided across her belly and shoulders, painting shapes on her hips and writing runes down her spine. Her nervous system was being assaulted from all angles, overwhelming her brain, still more fingers pressing into her flesh and teasing her senses as new Krell cycled in. A gasp escaped her lips as one of the females gently stroked her throat, Lena’s instincts ordering her to pull away and to shield her vulnerable vital point, while at the same time a rogue shiver of pleasure rolled down her spine. The Krell were not aware of her erogenous zones, running their fingers wherever they pleased and exploring her.

She arched her spine as someone brushed her hair aside, exposing the back of her neck as they drew circles with their dull claws, the sensation making her weak at the knees. Another gripped her gently by the hand, applying red dye to the sensitive region on her wrist, moving up her forearm and tracing a swirling line up towards her elbow.

One of them was painting on her thigh, his fingers roaming tantalizingly close to her crotch as he drew bands in shades of orange and yellow, not unlike the patterning on some of the jewelry that they wore. He wrapped them around her leg, winding down towards her shin.

Someone cupped one of her breasts, taking the opportunity to test its shape and firmness as they stained her milky skin with a yellow hand print, a jolt of undeniably erotic pleasure weaving its way through her body. Another one of the females dipped her finger in the purple paint and circled Lena’s nipple, making a pattern that resembled a blooming flower with petals that trailed across her breast. The woman was decorating the natural contours of her body, likely having no idea of the way that Lena was responding to her touch. They were so forceful, yet gentle, not giving her even a second of reprieve as they transformed her body into a beautiful tapestry.

It went on for minutes, until finally they withdrew, leaving Lena standing beside Sleethe in the middle of the circle with trembling legs. The elder began to speak again, his resonating voice jolting her out of her stupor.

“Now walk among us as kin. You are one with the circle.”

At that, the ceremony seemed to be over, and the Krell began to file out of the temple.

Lena stood beside Sleethe on shaking legs, watching as the procession of Krell slowly left the great hall. When the last long tail had dragged through the bead curtain, she turned to Sleethe, her voice wavering as she gripped his scaly arm.

“Well that was, uh ... intense...”

He huffed appreciatively, combing her hair with his claws in an effort to calm her. Lena didn’t know how to feel. So many conflicting emotions were roiling in her head that she felt as if she she might explode under the pressure. It had been frightening, moving, sexual. She was confused and aroused, her nerves still tingling, as if the hands of the Krell had never left her skin.

It was all over now. They had been inducted into the ‘circle’, the extended family of this Krell village. They were now marked with all of the appropriate information, and then some...

Yet still she felt agitated, like there was a rising pressure inside her, ready to burst forth at any moment. She realized that she was wet, and not because of the humidity. She looked up at Sleethe with imploring eyes.

“I think ... I need to...” She shook her head violently, trying to compose herself, as if she could somehow dislodge the obtrusive thoughts through the motion alone. Sleethe gazed down at her with his yellow eyes, blinking with his nictating membranes, and then he took her by the hand. Lena stumbled along behind him, allowing herself to be led, too dazed and affected to question what he was doing. The elder had replaced the clay pots in their usual position, and Sleethe came to a stop before them, gesturing with his long arm.

“Elder give mark. Kin give mark. And now Sleethe give mark.”

“What?” Lena asked, “isn’t the ceremony over?”

Her breath caught in her throat as he dipped a hand into one of the pots, coating it in red pigment, and then turned to loom over her. Lena could guess at his intentions, her heart was already racing, that residual tension left over from the ceremony only growing stronger as his fingers neared her belly. He hooked a clawed digit around the elastic waistband of her shorts, pulling them slowly down to expose her, the crotch of her panties linked to her loins by a glistening strand of excitement.

She trembled as they fell around her ankles, leaving her standing naked before him in the now deserted temple.

“Sleethe,” she whined, her voice scarcely a whisper. “What if someone comes back? We can’t...”

He was a willful creature, and he ignored her concerns as he he pressed his large hand flat against her mound. She shivered, suppressing a gasp as his touch sent a ripple of pleasure through her body, his scaly hand pressing down over her womb. Lena liked to stay clean for him, so she was shaved down there, and when he pulled his hand away she saw the red palm print that he had left on her pale skin.

She was immediately overcome with arousal, a droplet of her juices leaking down her inner thigh as she examined the semi-permanent mark, the heel of his hand print not a millimeter above her lips. His seven fingers were splayed wide, his thumb on one hip and his pinkie on the other, his ring finger rising to meet the vocation mark that the elder had drawn on her torso. The fingers would be visible above her waistline, everyone would be able to see it...

He plunged his hand into another pot, coating it in orange dye, and reached behind her back to take a generous handful of her ass. She yelped as his fingers delved into her soft flesh, his dull claws kneading her fat and seeking out the firm muscle that lay beneath. His hand was large enough that it encompassed her entire cheek, and when he pulled away he left another massive imprint on her milky skin.

“Sleethe, h-hold on, this won’t come off for weeks!”

He took another handful of dye, purple this time, a low moan escaping Lena’s lips as he gripped her inner thigh and squeezed gently. His touch was like an electric shock in her heightened state, and Lena couldn’t help but wrap her slim fingers around his scaly forearm, his digits sinking deep into her supple meat as she trembled. He drew back and she peered down to see another bright hand print on her skin, he was marking her erogenous zones, branding her.

Why was this making her so hot? She was burning up. She felt feverish, like there was a smoldering fire inside her that was slowly rising, its flames licking a her sanity.

Sleethe wrapped one of his arms around her, pulling her towards him and pressing her up against his muscular midsection, Lena feeling the firmness of his abs through his fat layer. He reached his hand behind her back and cupped her other butt cheek, mauling her supple flesh as she writhed in his grasp. She couldn’t hold back any longer, she was going to explode. With a desperate whine she abandoned her self-control and wrapped her arms around her lover.

She ran her fingers across his scaly ass and tail, so thick and muscular that it felt like steel overlaid with crocodile skin. Her arms scarcely reached around to the other side, his body so large that her fingers couldn’t even meet. She slid her hand across the smooth surface of his belly, his scales so fine that it almost felt like human skin, biting her lip as his rock-hard muscles bulged up from beneath. There was so much of him, and she wanted it all, a seething lust overtaking her as she pressed her lips against whatever she could reach. He gripped her ass as she mouthed and kissed, rubbing her naked body up against his as if trying to meld into one being, the heat of her face contrasting with his cool skin.

He released her, leaving another colorful hand print to mark her as his own. Lena felt something warm and hard against her belly, looking down to see his erection slowly rising from beneath the genital slit that housed it, blue and prominent as it throbbed in the air. She took it in her hand, taking a moment to stroke it as Sleethe rumbled appreciatively. It was still growing, sliding up her belly until its flared tip was resting between her breasts.

Lena used her upper arms to press them together, engulfing him in her cleavage, her heart racing as she felt his member throb against her chest. She kissed his belly, not really sure what she was doing at this point, but the desire to taste him was maddening. She began to slid up and down, Sleethe so endowed that the length of his shaft rubbed against her stomach, even while the glans was buried between her boobs. Pressing up against him to trap his erection between her body and his, she stimulated him with her damp skin, running her fingers lightly up and down his length and pushing her breasts together more tightly.