Pairs of Pumpkins: The Seam-Straining Songstress

Behind the thick glass of a modest and remote house built into the tallest of trees, an impossibly voluptuous vision of teenage vixen stood in envy of the taiga’s icey desolation that spanned as far as she could see.  Her lofty living space was perched on a foothill of the jagged mountain range that helped make the arctic island Queendom of the Pale Lands into an icy, natural fortress. Her vantage from the house was of a blanket of evergreen trees wearing gowns of snow so thoroughly conservative that from afar, they looked like the upright, white spears of tens of thousands soldiers. At least they did when the clouds were high enough to see any significant distance, allowing one spire to be identified from the next. Usually they were inside the clouds themselves and she could barely see the next tree over. On the rare occasion when the sun cut a hole through that thick, grey blanket of the perpetual clouds, the white-clad evergreens all blended together in blinding reflection. Colorless. Conservative. Indistinct. Unindividual. Trees named for what they were: evergreen. Not what they appeared to be: white and brown.

But at least the trees all had each other. The young vixen was alone.

Her name was Anya, a lonely fox of curious appearance and suspicious heritage. Her coat was unusual by the norms of foxes in this and any other land. She was not white or red, sandy or grey. Her coat wasn’t unlike the half-hidden trunks of those thousands of trees: a dense and thick, mahogany color that promised to both keep her warm and blend in well at the floor of the forest among the tree trunks were she ever allowed to venture down to them. 

Her ears were similarly unusual, long and upright like a fox but instead of coming to a point as her kind’s ears often did, they were rounded at the ends.
 
Her hands were white-furred from the wrists down, splayed in the windowsill, matching white feet that her forest dress concealed. Her unbelievably bountiful bosom, cradled in her dress stood so far out from her chest that they reached the cold, thick glass before her nose did, despite being at the end of a sleek,long, vulpine muzzle. The dress, which she had made herself demonstrated the prowess of an skilled tailor despite her age of youthful womanhood. It was perfectly fitted to the curves of her form from her broad hips up and in to her sturdy waist before blooming out like a wine glass to contain her prodigious breasts. The thick fabric carefully hid an elaborate spiderweb of support she had sewn into it, shaping them to be high and proud on her chest, so much so that she could barely touch her fingertips together around them at their most broad. 

It was as conservative a cut as her body would allow, the dress reaching just above the floor all the way up to wrapping her shoulders and down to her wrists. A hole at the base of her spine allowed her tiny nub of an un-foxlike tail to poke out.

Only the dress’ neckline plunged broad and low in defiance of the Queendom’s conservative fashion, a fashion she only knew about from dress patterns and different guests over the years. The low cut emphasised not only the artificial curves of a bust created by it’s support but also the contrasting, golden brown fur of her belly and breasts that cut through the darkness of the rest of her, from her groin up to her muzzle. Sparse, accent spots of white peppered her upper body, from her cleavage up to her neck, cheeks and muzzle.
	
The revealing alteration, which all of her dresses and blouses bore had been at her master and keeper, Wilhelm’s request, encouraging her to be proud of her chest but she knew it was not her pride and self-confidence that were his primary motivation.

	Anya’s thick, black, head hair was neatly triple-braided and hadn’t been cut in years, a thick mass of rope spilling down her back to bat against her tiny tail when she turned. It was heavy but her requests to cut it had been denied. “It makes sure you always hold your head high,” he’d said.

She sighed wistfully, blocking what survived of her own reflection’s opacity in the window in a cloud formed of her own breath. She raised a lone digit of her disproportionately large, brown-furred and clawed-tipped hand and drew one rounded ear, then another. Below it an eye, another eye, a dot for a nose and below it all, a dramatic and distinct frown.

The treehouse prison of the top-heavy teenager was small and modest, with nearly adequate space for it’s two residents to move freely without getting in each other’s way but also ensuring it could be continually warmed efficiently by a magical ring of pyromancy that had been adapted through some clever engineering to function as an under the floor furnace requiring no dangerous, open flame. 

The round room was divided up like slices of pie, with each area serving a different function.  The living area was the biggest of the slices, with a couch and two chairs, a dining set for four but mostly, open space and room enough for Anya to dance when it was requested of her. In one of the chairs, behind a giant harp sat a scowling and impatient, grey, hag of a mink, staring at the back of Anya’s head. Behind the dining set was the only traditional doors breaking the walls: double doors to a small balcony that had once been opened for two whole weeks in a particularly long summer.

Off to one side of the room was a large, wooden cage with a two yard, square base. It was the car of a hand-operated elevator and it hung from a thick rope and pulley from the ceiling. Beside it, the rope was rolled up on a giant spool connected to a ratcheting, automatic hand brake and a robust and elaborate set of interconnected gears so broadly decreased that a child could likely use the large hard crank at the end of the whole machine to lift a boulder. Two bells of different sizes were attached to the housing of the gears and cranks, one connecting to a smaller spool attached to the elevator car and the second, smaller bell attached to a string that disappears down into the floor. A much simpler version of the crank mechanism existed in the car itself but was clearly intended as a backup. 

On the wall, a great axe and a massive shield, both clean but unused for some time, boasted of the home of a retired adventurer of immense size and strength. Beside the display were two headless, wooden tailor’s mannequins: one of a massive, brute of a physique, over nine feet that wore and impressive suit of steel and leather armor. The other was of an impossibly bosomed woman with a small cutout for a tail. That one was for Anya and currently wore half of a black dress, a work in progress.

	“Anya, come back. We’re not done with your lesson,” a gravely voice interrupted her wistful moment. She’d forgotten she was not alone after all and she with some despair back to the aged and greying, womanly mink who sat at a giant harp near the center of the room. “You’re supposed to be practicing. Wilhelm is going to want you to perform a song when he gets home.”

	“All I ever do is practice!” she spun around, giving her dress an angry twirl before she stomps away from the window, her long braid swinging behind her. She stepped into the torchlit center of the room towards the greying weasel woman, who could never get used to the girl’s outbursts. It was a lot for the frail, older woman to see so much vixen in motion at once. Anya was very nearly a woman and a ripe one at that, threaten to burst free of her dress at any provocation. “Practice, practice, practice.You want a song, Madam Muskov? Here’s a song for you:” 

	“Every morning I wake up almost an hour before the sun
	I make myself pretty for master then I get my chores done
I cook all our meals for the day	
	A laborer who gets no pay
	With no time for myself and no chance to ever have some fun.

	And when he leaves, my tudors will resume my education
	Cooking, cleaning, entertaining, singing out with elation! 
	You’ve all made sure that my whole life
	Was spent becoming a perfect wife
Seventeen years preparing for a submissive vocation.”

Madam Muskov laughed and smiled at the teen fox’s song, clapping along. Anya was far from finished and gave a tiny sneer of disapproval.

“I could weave and stitch a dress from scratch when i was just age eight
I was a world class cook by age twelve for his hunger to sate
A trained massuese, his nurse sometimes
I've painted this whole house five times
I’m the perfect prodigy homemaker, of that there’s no debate.

Between all this training, I exercise to keep my tummy flat
He wants a wife strong like like a horse but as agile as a cat
While he lays like a sack on the couch
In my regiment I must not slouch
Because my bosom is the only part of me he wants fat.”

Anya paraded around the room, twirling and strutting before flopping down onto the second, over-stuffed chair next to Madam Muskov. She slumps and the mink gives a small, relieved smile. “Well Anya, I’d say that’s quite a lovely song. But improvisation is artform for peasants.”

	“Oh Madam Muskov, I know Wilhelm pays you to train me but can you really buy off a woman’s sense for a creep?” she laughed in disbelief, slapping her hands down on the armrests of the chair and throwing herself out of it. She launched herself to the bedpost, everything cozy and quaint in the their treehouse build for two residents and one rotating guest, these past few months a mink vocal couch and harpist. Madam Muskov gave an innocent shrug.

	“Sure he calls me his Princess and in not much time be his Queen
	But I’m the sap who mops the floors and has to keep his underwear clean
	I’m a bird locked up in a cage
	Lucky for me, I’m still teenage
	Because things will get worse for me as soon as I turn eighteen.”

	“Oh Anya, womanhood is nothing to fear! Every girl takes a husband and raises a family,” Miss Muskov smiled and gave a dismissive wave. Anya stopped, looking at her in disbelief.
	
	“Who said anything about fearing womanhood? I think I’m pretty damn womanly already!” she says, slapping her palms into her breasts. “I’m talking about indentured servitude and arranged marriage to a man who disgusts me. I’m amazed he’s managed to keep his hands off me as long as he has because he sure wasn’t kept his eyes off me since I started to develop.”

	“You’re a special girl, Anya. You were born to be a wife and mother, clearly. Look at you!” Anya twisted her head away in a pout and gave whip of her dress as she spun away.

“It’s true that Master Wilhelm can’t keep his eyes of my chest!
He says they’re the biggest in the world, like somehow that’s the best
He says they’re why I cant go outdoors 
What in the world are they good for
If they’re why I am stuck here then I’m clearly cursed not blessed.”

Anya arched her back sharply, stomping about on the wooden floor, bouncing unapologetically in the restraint of her dress. She opened her arms wide before mashing her palms and fingers into her own bosom, crassly jiggling them around, threatening their stitches but thankfully, the dresses tailor was a master.

“Is the world outside this place so unaccepting of this rack
Would they just ask how I walk with them and if they hurt my back
Is the world outside so shunning
Of Nice girls not built for running
Or is he just afraid if I go out there that I won’t come back?

You talk like I have a destiny because I’ve got great, big tits
Do they overrule my ambitions, my dreams, my brains and wits?
Just because I was born this way
I’m doomed by my unloved fiance 
To a lifetime of servitude, gross sex and suckling kits.”

“Anya, don’t be vulgar now!” Ms Muskov scolded and Anya just laughed, tossing herself into a dress-flipping cartwheel with joyful enthusiasm, saying things that weren’t allowed. 

	“Which part is vulgar, Madam Muskov? Breasts? Children? Or all of the things Wilhelm is going to do to me once he’s allowed to wed me and consummate our marriage on my eighteenth birthday?” Anya leaned in, speaking slowly, watching her squirm. Her next verse burst out like a cannon shot.

	“Oh he’ll fuck me in this windowsill as we watch the winter pass
He’ll bend me over the dinner table and stick it in my ass
I'll be lucky if he uses lube
I'll constantly have cum on my boobs	
	I’m tied for life to a creep but I’m the one that you call crass?!”

	She pulled out two of the chairs from the dinner table, scraping them across the wooden floor and presented it to the now mortified Madam Muskov. She flopped down into one of them and patted the seat of the other.

	“He’ll be eating his breakfast here, while he makes me eat his cock
Im sure hes going to fuck me until it’s difficult to walk	
	It’ll be no rush to put kits in me
	I know that he prefers me skinny
	How do children even work when he’s a bear and I’m a fox?”

Madam Muskov cleared her throat and straightened herself out in her seat. “Well Anya, as I’m sure you know, normally it doesn’t but you have a special gift.”

“Yes, of course,” she says and presents her large, clawed hands, palms up. “I was born with the paws of a bear because I was destined to cradle cubs, not kits, he says. I’ve heard it a million times. Can you dream of a bigger cartload of bullshit?! Do you even dream, Madam Muskov? Or did that part of you already age to atrophy like your heart, your face and your good sense?” She slapped her big hands on her knees and pushed herself back up to her feet, singing with saccharin fervor.

“Oh what a gift indeed, to be biologically prepared
As vixen to bear the fruit of a one tonne grizzly bear
What if pushing out his progeny
My hips will snap into two or three
It seems unlikely I will survive the birthing of his heir.”

	She turned sharply and paused in a moment of realization but as soon as Madam Muskov’s mouth moved, she continued singing.

“How could Master have known all of this when he adopted me
A vixen who can bear bear cubs, what a curiosity!
That he knew this of a crying kit
I’m not sure that I believe it
And I’m starting to have my doubts about Wilhelm’s honesty.”

Muskov squirmed a little. She knew something and Anya saw it. The fox grinned and stepped closer with a fire in her eyes and the fur of the back of her neck standing up.

“And even if he’s told the truth, then what a truth it is indeed!
An old bear trawling orphanages to raise himself a wife to breed
To seek a innocent to adopt
For a wife, that bear must be stopped
Perhaps it’s finally come the time for this caged bird to be freed?”

Anya was towering over the seated Madam Muskov now, breathing heavily, noses just inches apart, her bosom occupying the space above the mink’s lap. The old woman had shrunken in her chair, speechless for the moment. 

“Perhaps we should adjourn today’s music lesson early, Miss Muskov,” Anya spoke, her voice now deep and loaded with the bass of a growl, her ears flattened back against her hair.

CLANG!

Both of them jumped as the brass bell by the elevator crashed through the tension, being rung from the ground level by a series of strings. Wilhelm had returned.

“Oh, thank the Gods,” Madam Muskov sighed with relief and sat herself back up, straightening her dress and resuming her poise. Anya didn’t move, only exhaled but the intimidation was lost as if Wilhelm had just walked into the room. Anya gave a small smile then righted herself upright.

“Coming dear!” She rushed to the crank  and released the handbrake, allowing the elevator to fall quickly under its own weight, the spool that held it up quickly unraveling. When the car fell through the floor, a separate door that had been sitting atop it, slightly larger than the hole, dropped into place, ensuring the winter cold would stay out while the car was deployed. The spool spun on it’s spindle, dampened once it reached a certain speed so it wouldn’t shatter when it reached the ground.

It stopped after a long descent, the forest floor nearly one hundred yards below them. The rope was almost completely unraveled with the car resting on the snowy, forest floor; built to this exact dimension. After another long moment, the second, larger bell rang with a different pitch and Anya wound up with her whole body before she started to spin the crank. She pushed hard it moved less than expected. She paused a moment, not expecting the amount of resistance before she looked up to Madam Muskov with a chuckle. “I don’t know why I should be surprised. He gets fatter every time he comes back.” She gritted her teeth and put her whole body into getting the crank moving, slowly at first but with an increasing vigor until doubling over at the waist and sending her massive chest into battle against it’s restraints, slapping against the crank handle and nearly to her own face. 

Madam Muskov smiled and folded her hands in her lap as she looked on, letting them fall from her troubled heart. She was far too old and wise to be harassed by a disrespectful teenager who was thankfully back to herself.. 

The cranking went on and Anya was relentless, working up a sweat. “Feels like he went shopping for boulders!” she laughed looked up to Madam Muskov, seeing her smile then grinned broadly herself. The gears were creaking and complaining from her vigor and speed. A stitch popped in the back of her dress, then another, leaving her chest that much less restrained in the violence of her motion. Never had the girl been so eager to see her Master. Madam Muskov froze then and her smile started to soften like wax in the sun.

“What are you doing, Anya?” Madam Muskov trembled before she stood up, clenching her fists and watching.

Anya looked back with fiery glee. “Welcoming home my Master and future husband, of course!” Her braid was coming loose from the violence of her motion and long locks of black hair was falling in her face now but she didn’t bother to correct them. Finally, the lid of the elevator bumped up from the top of the car before Anya released the crank abruptly, letting it fall a few inches before the brake ratcheted into place, causing a violent shudder through the whole mechanism and floor surrounding it.

“What the fuck are you doing, stupid girl?!” a familiar bear’s voice boomed through the crack between the lid and the floor. “Trying to break the whole damn elevator? You want us to be stuck up here forever so we can starve to death?”

Anya froze, her hands still outstretched and open where she’d released the lever, her eyes wide, mouth hanging open and disheveled hair in her face. She was frozen in the moment before she looked only with her eyes, over to the mortified but unmoving, Madam Muskov. A slight rhythm returned in a bobbing of her head before she began to softly sing, quiet enough that Wilhelm, hanging below the treehouse in the winter wind, would not be able to hear.

“Don’t look at me as if you think that I’d ever hurt my master!
I’m so happy to see him I just couldn’t crank it faster
But this rope is old and it has flaws
And careless me has giant claws…”

She stood slowly upright and all was silent and still for a long moment. Anya was the first to move, taking a steps back toward the spool before she whispered the next line of her song:

“...If this elevator were to fail, it’d be quite the disaster.”

“Anya, what’s the bloody hold up!?” Wilhelm barked over the sound of winter. Through the thick wood of the floor, heard her boots make the wood creaking and clopping in slow, deliberate step, toward the spool.

“Odd thing, isn’t it? To be powerless?” Anya mused loud enough now for Wilhelm to hear it. “To not have any control over what’s about to happen in a few years, a few months… even the next few minutes?” With another few steps, she stood at the span where the spool connected to the pulley above the elevator by it’s thick rope. She leaned in and wrapped her hands around it, brandishing her claw-tipped fingers.

“What are you babbling about, Anya?” Wilhelm had lowered his voice somewhat, with alarm at the situation. “Stop messing around and pull me up!”

Anya tightened her grip and dug in her claws with her whole posture. Madam Muskov gasped aloud..

“I’m sorry Wilhelm this relationship isn’t working for me
I dont have the instincts of a mother, wife or other slavery 
I know you love my busting seams
But Im a girl with hopes and dreams
And you’re standing in the way of any chance I have to be free.”

“Why are you singing?!” The bear bellowed from below as the elevator car shook from him shifting inside it. 

Wickedly, Anya laughed. “That should not be your biggest concern right now, Wilhelm!”
She wrenched her hands on the rope and dug in her claws. The rope reacted to the tiniest change in its strength with a creak in protest, as the elevator car lurched.

“Anya, I’m three hundred feet over the ground!” Wilhelm protested, starting to realize his peril.

“Gravity has never been on your side Wilhelm but for your part, you’ve done little to resist it,” Anya called back melodiously, sawing away at the rope, one hair width at a time. Madam Muskov was frozen in horror once more. “Tell us about how you went looking through orphanages for a future wife, Wilhelm. Tell us in a way that doesn’t make you the villain here!” she shouted, dragging her claws over the rope without hesitation.

“It was an arranged marriage, Anya! That’s just how they work!” 

“You arranged it by going to the orphanage and picking the baby girl with bear paws you knew would grow up to have huge breasts? That’s quite a story, Wilhelm and I’m not sure I believe you!”

“She’s cutting the rope!” Madam Muskov found the courage to screamed out the obvious, earning a menacing smile from Anya.

“She’s right, Wilhelm!” she confirmed with a cackle before her song continued.

“I’ve been thinking about us, Wilhelm and its time you should know 
	This situation isnt working for me, I’m letting you go!
Your story it just don’t add up
	I get the sense that  I’ve been setup
	My fate waits outside this treehouse and your fate waits down below.”

Anya shivered with a broad smile across her muzzle. “Music is so much fun, Madam Muskov! Thank you for encouraging this wonderful gift!”

“I’ve encourage none of this madness!” Madam Muskov said, shaking her head frantically.

“That’s it Anya, I’m coming up there myself!” the bear roared and the elevator shuddered on it’s own, moving back up an inch. The thick rope ran through the separated lid and through the whole car, to a spool below it’s floor with it’s own hand crank inside the car. Anya had never operated that crank but she recalled it’s what he would use to bring them both up in her childhood, when she was still allowed to join him on the forest floor.  Back then, Wilhelm had still been a musclebound, recently retired adventurer, likely capable of climbing the rope unaided, let alone able to pull himself up with the crank.

Anya snapped back, shrinking away in a frozen moment. She watched for a moment, clutching her hand to her bosom. The elevator car moved again, a tiny lurch, then another but never enough even to catch the next tooth of the ratchet. Madam Muskov watched with eagerness. Slowly, Anya stepped back up to the rope, her fear melting away again.

“What’s the matter, Wilhelm? Does the crank not work? Because I keep it’s maintenance schedule, like you ask me to. Third day of every month, without fail! Inspect the gears, oil the spindles, sand down the spurs. Maybe all these years of pampering made you squishy and weak. Too soft to lift your own weight?” 

He tried again and failed before she reached out and dragged a clawed finger over the fray in the rope.

“You’re right, Anya! I’ve been lying to you!” He barked out gruffly, with a worry that hadn’t been in his voice at any time before in her memory. Anya stopped and wrapped her hands around the now frayed rope, creaking under tension in the silence that followed. “I can…”

“Sing it.”

Wilhelm sighed loud enough to be heard over the howling wind that snuck between the gaps of the elevator car and the floor. “I…purch...”

“I SAID SING IT!!!”

Wilhelm sighed again and collected his thoughts With an evenness of speech and cadence, he spoke flatly.

“I purchased you from a wizard. He wasn’t a lizard.”

“Don’t waste my time with your half-assed attempts. You’re singing for your life, Wilhelm. Make it good.” 

Wilhelm cleared his throat audibly and a long moment of silence followed. Anya and Madam Muskov exchanged curious looks, neither sure what would happen next.  And then, for the first time Anya had ever heard, the big bear sing:

“I was a good axe-for-hire but I was sad and all alone
I never found myself a love in life I could call my own 
And as time passed, the years went on 
I found that my heart and spirit longed 
To have a wife and  children and a place that I can call home.” 

Anya straightened out and lifted her hands from the rope, looking to Madam Muskov who was every bit as surprised. The giant brute of a bear was built to bellow and it turned out he could do so with incredible control of his volume, timbre and tone.  Most unexpected though was that the big brute’s voice was a delicate tenor, sounding like a much younger, much slighter man or even a boy. He continued.

“I spent the whole fortune of a decade of adventuring  
On a made-to-order guarantee of most superb offspring
A designer wife to love
To be a mother for my cubs
With an honor oath not to consummate before you were eighteen.”

It was the first moment that Madam Muskov and Anya had shared in some time and it left the fur of their arms standing up. His voice cut through the wind and the woods, filling the house with warmth and calm. It was the antithesis of everything she had ever known Wilhelm to be.

Anya finally spoke. “You’ve been able to sing all this time yet never in my life have I heard you do it. Why?”

Wilhelm was silent for a lot moment before answering her. “I only sing when I’m alone. My singing voice… the other adventurers used to say it was a girl’s voice. I was supposed to be this tough guy but people would make fun of me so I stopped.” 

“And.. you spent your whole fortune on a… designer wife? What does that make me? Am I even real?” She stepped back, her entire posture softening. She looked down at herself. “Am I some kind of flesh golem? An automaton? Am I even alive?” She dropped her arms and looked back to the elevator car. “If you had me made, why didn’t you just make me an adult already?”

Wilhelm gave a small laugh from down below. “Don’t be silly, Anya. You’re very much real. Flesh and blood. Good blood. I purchased you from a wizard who specialized in life energy. You might have not been born of conventional means but you were born of conventional materials. With some alterations, anyway. You have a biological mother, who was a fox and a two biological fathers, one a fox and one a bear. Which as you know, normally isn’t possible but with magic…”

“And that’s how I was designed? To be some kind of unnatural half-breed? Why not a proper bear if you wanted children so bad?”

“Quarter breed,” he corrected. “There was no bear that would grow up to be you. The wizard wasn’t selling just any children but a remarkable, royal, vulpine bloodline that would guarantee brains and beauty. By magically combining it with a father of a different species, he made you capable of rearing bear children.” He was quite for a long moment then spoke again, calmly. “Can you please pull me back up now?”

Anya’s expression soured slowly as Wilhelm spoke and Madam Muskov’s momentary reprieve ended visibly.

“It all makes sense now, Wilhelm and I must admit my heart has stirred
But then again that’s the most selfish bullshit that I’ve ever heard
You pine about how lonely you were
While I spend years locked in your tower
You talk about your love without regard of what SHE preferred.”

Wilhelm growled down below. “You’re here for your own safety. The outside world is not kind to girls like you. Girls who look like you do.”

“But you made me look like this!”

“No, I didn’t! Your chest… it’s trait of your mother’s bloodline.”

“So these are completely natural? And you knew this bloodline that would do this to me?”

“It’s… a desirable trait of a wife.”

“This royal bloodline is responsible for these breasts?” Anya asked and a moment later, Madam Muskov gasped, making connections in her head. She clearly had not heard this part of the story before.

“And so there are others out there like me, carrying around these ridiculous things?”

“I suppose so,“ he answered, thoughtlessly.

Anya clenched her fists, slowly boiling over. “Others. In the outside world. Not just surviving without your protection but ruling.”

	“Anya…”

	She snapped back into her song with a fury swelling her bosom.

“You’ve told me quite a revelation and my heart can find some sympathy
 I am quite an expert now on what it means to be lonely
But it makes me somewhat concerned
You believe love is bought not earned
And you’ve kept me here for seventeen years without my free agency.

You act like custom ordering a bride’s a normal thing to do
And Im supposed to pity you for that, by Gods what’s wrong with you?!
You convinced me I’m a helpless teen
When I might be a Duchess or Queen
It’s not just to YOUR standards that I’m allowed to live up to!”

Wilhelm sang back, still trying to sooth the seething vixen.

“Youre my perfect, little darling and you’re only safe with me
The world out there is a dangerous place for a girl to be
You’re skilled in so many ways
But useless with an axe or blade
To be able to fight, in this world is the only life that’s free. 

You mean well but you know nothing of the world, my precious child
It’s full of brigands, bandits, and monsters, dangerous and wild
The foul world that lies down below 
Would eagerly swallow you whole
You wouldn’t last a day out there, you’d be corrupted and defiled.”

“Royal blood, Wilhelm. You said I had royal blood! If there are Queens out there who look like me then I have no place being trapped in here by a simpleton like you.”

Madam Muskov watched, backing away. Anya looked behind the older woman but there was no apparently weapon. She was giving her space, her hands open and out, nonthreatening. Wilhelm sang again, with annoyance in his voice and Anya’s attention turned to back him.

“Royals command armies with thousands of soldiers in their ranks
Royals buy their loyalty with fortunes stashed in guarded banks
The ruling class they know the deal
Blood’s useless without gold and steel
They hide behind fortress walls for they know power lies in strength.

You have no royal family with royal power to transfer
You have but one single soldier for your safety to ensure	
Freedom means having power or skills
To buy and order, hunt or kill
	Born outside castle walls, your blood means nothing but flesh, tits and fur.”

Anya was silent for a long moment, reflecting. She looked over to Madam Muskov, who had backed against a wall and slid down it, seated on the foot. Her eyes were wide with fear. The old mink had never been a threat, with barely spine enough to stand. She looked back to the elevator trap door and reached out to grip the frayed rope once again.“Wilhelm, I think you are underestimating just how much power I have.”

“You have nothing! You are nothing without me!” Wilhelm howled from down below, losing his composure almost entirely. “I bought you! I raised you! I own you! You owe me EVERYTHING!”

Anya’s smiled again and raised a single claw, running it over the rope.

“Your cynicism paints a world where might dictates the narration  
You clearly don’t see power in discourse or negotiation
	Witness the fact you didn’t try
	To budge your stance or even lie
	For me to concede and agree to complete your elevation.
	
You could have offered to bring me along on your next endeavor
You could’ve said ‘I’ll let you go’ then come chain me up forever
I’m not difficult to appease
But to you I’m just some property
And now you’re at the end of your rope that I’m about to sever.”
	
The rope responded to her words, lurching as the load on each, single fiber increased.

“Fine! Anya! I’ll take you with me next time. I’ll let you out into the world” Wilhelm sounded increasingly desperate, feeling the movement of the elevator. The rope was half as thick around under the cut, threaten to snap at any moment.

“A little late for that, Wilhelm. You tipped your hand. This is the only way.”
	
Wilhelm tried desperately to pull himself up once again, shaking the car violently as he called up to her, shouting and snarling his words.

	“I can’t believe your lack of gratitude! You own me everything!”
	“I owe you only for the inspiration of this song to time!”

	“You don’t have the instinct to do this, you’re not the type to kill!”
	“I have no lust for blood like you but I lust to have my free will!”

	“But how will you defend yourself out there? With clever rhymes to sing?”
	“I’ll use my voice to form words because violence can’t solve everything.”

	“You’ll starve up here, Anya. How will you hunt? What will you eat?”
“I’ve got winter stores and I’m about to tenderize a half tonne of meat!”

Madam Muskov gasped at that suggestion but Anya was sawing furiously with the claw at the end of her index finger. The trap door rattled from the thrashing of the heavy bear, trying and failing to pull himself up repeatedly. 

“Stop it, Anya! You mad girl, stop! Stop singing! Stop making every word a rhyme!”
“You won’t have to endure it for much longer, Wilhelm. This rope is now naught but twine!”

Winded and unsuccessful in his struggle to climb, WIlhelm fell still in the elevator car beneath them. “I’m the only one who loves you, Anya! You can’t do this to me!” Wilhelm was frantic, his singing degrading to sobbing.

Anya paused and exhaled loudly and in the silence that followed, the failing rope creaked out a final protest. Her eyes fell to the floor and she took a deep breath.

“Yes, I can.” She hooked her claw around the narrowest part and dragged it back sharply, severing another bundle of the braided rope: the last bunch that was keeping the rope strong enough to support the elevator.

The rope snapped and the trap door dropped back into place with no elevator to support it. To the sturdy treehouse, it made no difference to shed the weight of one massive bear and an elevator car and the thick, winter air made no special accomodations for his scream as he fell away.  Seconds later, even the impact of so much shattering wood and meat, sounded barely more than a dropped snowball from their elevation.

Madam Muskov stared at Anya, mortified, her eyes barely still in her skull, her ears curled down so far they were trying to burrow into her skull. Anya herself was frozen, with a not dissimilar expression.

Both were still, statues of shock when a much more present and immediate noise came from beyond the doors to the balcony. Boot falls and creaking floorboards. Steps towards the door. The fox and the mink’s eyes drifted together for a long moment before moving to the balcony doors. They burst open, snapping Anya and Madam Muskov out of their daze only to enter another when their eyes met one, then two intruders who stepped in.

The second was a teenage boy, a handsome young fox, a head shorter than Anya with pure white furred face wrapped in heavy winter clothes, one gloved finger wrapped straight in a splint. He was clearly a relation to the other intruder and he closed the double doors behind them, silencing the forest and the season outside once again. It was the first intruded who commanded their attention:

First, a white and ivory-furred vixen stepped in, a spitting, paler image of Anya, shorter, leaner and certainly older.  Her white-furred cloak hung open, revealing leather armor covered in pouches and pockets but it was her gigantic, hard leather breastplate that commanded the most attention, high and round, slightly smaller than Anya but very much enormous and held tightly in restraint of soft flesh that could be seen from a window to her cleavage at the top. The piece had clearly seen combat and repair over the years.

The older vixen slowed to a stop, seemingly just as stunned to be looking at Anya and the room for a moment was frozen in suspense. Finally, the teenage boy stepped up to stand aside but between the both of them.

“Hi I’m Joseph, nice to meet you! I’m your younger brother
This fine lady here is Portia but you can call her your mother!”

Portia reached out to rest her hand on Joseph’s shoulder. “I think we can stop singing now, dear.”

Anya stepped closer to Portia carefully, reaching out a finger to slowly close the distance between them until it mashes against her leather-armored bosom, her finger bending before the breastplate gives. 

The ivory vixen gave a breath of a laugh then. “The chunky bear was right: it runs in the family.” Anya’s eyes darted between her finger and Portia’s emerald eyes before her finger dragged over the dagger handle, tied into a sheath that was stitched to the front of her chest, pointed end up to be able to draw it quickly from below. With her finger still in place, she looked over Portia’s shoulder at the handle of a hatchet running down her back, under her cloak. 

“You’re a warrior?!” Anya finally spoke.

Portia raised her chin and gave an immodest smile. “A damn good one.”

 Anya reached out with both hands, pausing a moment to look for permission. Portia gives a small nod then the brown vixen plants them over the other vixen’s armored breasts, splaying her palms before attempting to move them. The armor refused and Portia waited, standing still. Hands moved underneath them then, her own bosom brushing Portia’s in their closeness, both of them filling what would otherwise be ample space between two bodies. Anya tried to lift them but again, they did not budge. 

Anya’s face erupted in a joyful smile. “Jump up and down?” 

 Veered away from the exchange, Joseph averted his eyes and went over to inspect the complexity of the elevator gears. 

Portia looked down at the floorboards, testing them with her boot but the construction seemed solid enough and she obliged, jumping up and down in place, her weapons and pouches jiggling and jingling like a rattle but her breasts were held in near perfect restraint by the leather breastplate, clearly molded, tailored and engineered to her specific physique.  

She jumped ten times in a row and Anya stood there staring, cupping her muzzle in her hands. Portia reached twenty before stopping, showing no sign of exertion. Anya planted her hands on her mother’s breasts again, feeling the hard leather before stepping around to inspect the stitching and reinforcements.

“My mother… is a warrior!?” She repeated before she lunged in to throw her arms around Portia, an awkward gesture that pulled the both of them closer, arms around the back of her neck, barely past her wrists. Anya’s flesh gave some ground but Portia’s didn’t, pushing the taller, younger vixen’s chest up and over, ballooning into her mother’s face . The elder vixen gave a small laugh and brought her arms up to Anya, resting her hands on her shoulders, not able to reach much past. 

Joseph looked back at the hug and smiled then over to a marveling Madam Muskov, her mouth agape but finding the courage to speak. “Anya, your mother is a Princess.”

Anya shrugged, not breaking the hug. “I don’t care about that. Wilhelm believed anyone could be royalty. But he never believed I could be… this! Mother, I need armor like this!” she said, righting herself, dropping her hands down Portia’s shoulders to take her hands.

“Then we’ll get you some made!” Portia’s smile was being infected by Anya’s joy.

“And a weapon!?” 

“If that’s what you want. A training weapon, to start until you learn to use it safely. A lot of traditional techniques require some… adjustment for our build but I’m certain I’m the most qualified woman in the world to teach you.”

“Mother!” Anya repeated, stepping back and cupping her muzzle again, her eyes welling up with tears. “I… have a mother! And she’s here!? Mother, whatever are you doing here?”

Portia stepped up to her, offering her arms again, which Anya fell into again, this time her hands taking her mother by her slimmer waist and hunching down to rest her head on the shelf of her bosom. “We came to rescue you from the creep who bought you but you didn’t need our help after all. Maybe you can use our help with whatever comes next?” Anya was silent for a long moment but for her sniffles and Portia rested her muzzle atop her daughter’s ebony head of hair, petting over the back of her crying child. “I would have been here many years ago but I just recently discovered I had any children at all!”

“Wilhelm said something about a wizard?”

“There is a wizard,” Portia nodded, rubbing Anya’s back. “I think you had him singing the truth at the end there. But it’s a long story and those are best saved for the long roads ahead of us. Assuming you want to leave this place and come with us?”

Anya stood upright again and laughed. “Literally anywhere but here, Mother.”

“Great,” Portia moved her hands to clamp down on Anya’s shoulders. “Joseph!” He ran over to her attention. “Help your sister pack and grab all the roadworthy food. Anya, pack only what you need for cold weather and several days on the road. Dry rations, warm clothes and something to wear for nicer weather. You’re our first and last stop in The Pale Lands. We’re getting off this shithole island.”

“You’re the heiress to this shithole island, Princess Portia Vasiljev,” Madam Muskov cleared her throat but her eyes were nervously averted. Joseph and Anya hurried off to pack, excitedly exchanging words and a hug while Portia stepped over to the aged mink, her smile fading as she closed the distance between them until they were sharing breath.

“I don’t know who you think you are or what you think you’re doing but the official story is that I’m dead. I didn’t fake my own death: I ran away. And my Mother, the Queen certainly knows this. So that leads me to believe she decided she’d rather me be remembered as a dead daughter than a bad one. She lied to everyone. So if you want to be the one who runs back to town with a story that calls the Queen of this land a liar, be my guest. But you didn’t have any spine five minutes ago when my daughter killed your employer. I suggest you don’t find it now.”

Madam Muskov was flattened against the wall by then, the growling vixen’s bared teeth mere inches from the mink’s muzzle. She remained there for long moment before righting herself and her demeanor.

“Now, I assume you live in the village of Letvyka since there’s nowhere else reasonably close to here. We’ll get you home safely. Whether you stay safe after that is entirely up to you.” 

Anya and Joseph exchanged disbelieving, silent laughs before straightening out as their mother turned to face them, letting the menace easily leave her voice. “I guess you’re not used to leaving the house, Anya so try your best to pack light. You need to slide down that rope with everything you bring and as you know, it’s a long way down.”

Within fifteen minutes, the treehouse was ransacked for useful supplies and rations but most of the bear’s weapons, clothing and tools were too big to be of use for any of them. Anya was in an elegant, fur cloak, perfectly fitted to her with deep sleeves and a high collar to protect against the wind, an aspirational, tailoring project she’d made while longing for the world outside. A matching, short, cylindrical fur hat contained her loosened hair and promised to warm her head in the cold outside and below.

As they gathered around the elevator hatch, Anya stopped then turned with a swoosh of her cloak, unwittingly whipping Joseph in the process. She hurried to a cabinet and fetched a prybar, then rushed back to the center of the room, scanning the floorboards. “Wilhelm said out floor heater was originally used for throwing fireballs. That sounds useful,” she knelt down and begin prying at a board.

“That sounds… terrifying,” Portia flatly mused to Joseph before Anya popped the board free. She tossed aside the prybar then and reached in, brandishing a ring between her thumb and index finger. She slipped it on then hurried to her feet yo join them. “Careful with that, okay?”

Joseph went down the rope first, then Anya and finally Portia, with Madam Muskov tied to her back. Upon reaching the ground, they found Anya over the broken body of Wilhelm, her head hung low. 

Portia exhaled a deep, visible breath before stepping over to her side, in the crunching, blood-splattered snow. At Anya’s side, she guided her head to rest against and atop hers then wrapped an arm around her waist. “I heard the whole exchange, Anya. You gave him every opportunity to recognize you as a person. Even with his very life in your hands, he refused to slacken his stranglehold. He refused to see the potential you have.”

Anya nodded slowly, wiping her eyes with the cuff of her cloak, the finest dressed of the four of them. “Let’s go.”

Portia released her and started away from the base of the massive tree that supported the house, in a forest of trees so old that such a tree was nothing uncommon. The cruel wind and relentless snow hid the treehouse, the wreckage and the body behind them quickly enough as they walked onward and away.

“Anya?”

“Yes Mother?”

“What was with all the singing?”

FIN