[Silvia]
Three long days had passed since that night, three days of constant, nerve-wracking silence. All that time was spent just sitting near the entrance, listening to every little sound coming from outside, barely stepping out of their little burrow except when absolutely necessary: to get more food from the buried sled in the snow nearby, or to relieve themselves. Even then, they tried to go outside only at night.
It was awful and incredibly exhausting, even though they were hardly doing anything at all, just sitting there, trembling from fear. Yet, their small family of three managed without a single complaint, taking turns to keep watch. Their mother slept during the day and took the night shift, while Aster and Silvia rested through the night and kept an eye on the entrance during the day.
But they couldn't stay there doing that forever, no matter how safe that small, cozy hut of theirs made them feel. Their food supply wasn't endless, and there was no lake nearby to fish in, not anymore. They had to move, even though it made their stomachs all tight and twisty just to think about it.
And so they did first thing in the morning, pulling their clumsy sled through the deep snow once more, to the east, wherever that would lead them. Only this time, there was no playful banter, no snowball fights, just three nervous, quiet people moving as quietly and carefully as they could.
The first hour or two of their walk was the worst. Every gust of wind sent their heads snapping around, every creak of a tree made them freeze and listen for long minutes, hardly breathing. Nivalis used her Blessing almost constantly, scanning the world around them again and again, so often that by the afternoon, it became dizzying just to look at her. But not once did she puke or even stumble, as for someone who was pregnant twice, dizziness was probably the last thing that would take her off her feet.
Slowly but surely, they pushed on like they always did in times of hardship, one tired step after another. Through the deep snow, they moved, always listening, their eyes darting between the shadows of the trees. With Aster at the back of the line, pulling the heavy sled, Silvia in the middle, trembling from cold like she always does, and their mother in the front, making a path for her children to follow with those grown-up legs of hers, ever-vigilant. Everyone had a makeshift spear in hand, just a long stick with a deadly-sharp, icy tip on each one. In case something went horribly wrong.
With their clothes being little more than rags that could only flutter against the harsh winter, they had to make stops quite often to warm up. In fact, they were probably warming up more than they were walking, and judging by how her little butt cheeks had gone completely numb from the cold, Silvia knew it wasn't long before they'd have to stop again.
"Alright, let's... rest a bit," came a soft command from the front of their little line, just a few tired breaths later. Nivalis turned around and looked at her children's weary faces.
'Foretelling butcheeks! They never lie,' the girl thought with a silly smile, her trembling hands instantly raising to her mouth to breathe warmth into them. She did a few quick jumps, rewarding the soft flesh of her behind with a delicate jiggle to get the blood flowing there. Her thin cloak completely concealed it, except for perhaps a faint outline.
They found themselves a decent spot to sit down and relax, a small clearing with fewer trees around it, making it harder for someone to sneak up on them without being seen. If someone does show up, she and her little doofus would have plenty of time to launch something nasty before they even get close. "Alrighty..." the said doofus huffed as he dropped the rope of the sled with a loud sigh, "...go sit, I'll take care of everything."
Like two grateful little ducklings, the girls waddled their way toward a big old pine that had a bunch of jugged roots sticking out of the snow and sat down on a particularly big one. Nivalis plopped first and pulled her trembling daughter onto her soft lap right after, then wrapped her arms around her as tightly as she could to protect her from the cold, despite not faring much better herself.
Together they watched as their little man rushed around the clearing, gathering all the necessary wood for a fire, clumsily adjusting his totally-not-skirt every few seconds. "He really needs to get that fastened," Silvia murmured to her mother without looking away from him, wiping at her runny nose with the back of her hand.
With her chin resting on her daughter's head, Nivalis just hummed at her words, her gaze just as fixed on Aster as hers. The boy, after gathering enough wood to last them for about half an hour, returned to them and dropped the pile right by their feet. The very next second, a small flame appeared in the palm of his scarred hand, which he then carefully dipped into the pile.
The wood caught it almost instantly, a cheerful crackle filling the quiet forest around them as the flames began to dance higher and higher. "Good job, honey," Nivalis said with a tired smile, beckoning him to come closer. When he did, she leaned in a bit and reached for the knot at the side of his hip, tugging at it until it came loose. With the tip of her tongue sticking out of her lips, she unwrapped her baby boy and looked at what was hidden beneath that half-cloak of his.
Aster didn't protest and just let her do her thing, with only a blush and a small, embarrassed smile on his face to show how he felt about it. Nivalis just sighed softly as she saw his frost-covered bits, not a single hair there to protect them from the cold. Like a good mother that she was, she cupped them in her warm palm and gave them plenty of gentle, motherly squeezes until the frost melted away and they returned to their usual pink and cute selves. "There you go," she then breathed, wrapping him back up and adjusting and retying his half-cloak until it sat snugly around his small waist.
Silvia watched it all from her mother's cozy lap, giving Aster a teasing look the entire time that he completely ignored and just mumbled a shy, "Th... thanks, Mom." For a moment, he just eyed the fire with a frown on his blushing face before turning to them and asking, "Can I... practice my thing for a bit? I have a bit of mana to spare. Should warm me up as well."
After a moment of pondering, Nivalis gave him a slow, hesitant nod. "Sure, sweetie," she then answered, her arms returning to where they were before, around her daughter's small waist as she added, "Just be careful and don't overdo it. We need you to have some mana in case of emergency," to which the boy just hummed and nodded in response before sprinting away to a more open part of the clearing. There, he stood for a moment, looking around in search of a perfect target to launch his proto-fireball at.
Silvia and Nivalis both watched him as he did so, their shoulders slumping a little now that they had the warmth of the fire to enjoy. Their hands were held close to the flames, right next to each other's, occasionally rubbing them together briskly to get rid of the numbness that had settled in their fingers. When the first oily droplet appeared in front of Aster's scarred palm, the girls tensed up a bit, even though it was directed away from them.
It looked as dangerous as ever, a golden-red drop of liquid fire suspended in the air, bubbling and wobbling like it was about to burst in every direction. The very air around it wavered from the intense heat it radiated, making his fingers look all weird and distorted. When it suddenly shot forward and hit the trunk of a large dead tree, that's when they finally breathed out in relief. Though the way it made no sound at all upon impact was still very unsettling. "He's getting better at it," Nivalis murmured, watching the rotten wood darken and smoke where the drop landed.
Nodding against her mother's chin, Silvia kept her eyes on her brother for a moment longer before she tilted her head back until it hit the softness of her breast. "How are you feeling?" she then whispered, her golden eyes studying that dizzy face above, upside-down.
With a small smile, Nivalis just leaned in and pressed her lips against her daughter's forehead in a soft, lingering kiss. "I'm okay, my love. Nothing a little rest can't fix," she answered, her fingers finding their way into the girl's messy, silver locks and beginning to brush through them gently.
The girl closed her eyes at that, content with the way her mother's fingers worked through her hair. For a while, she didn't say a thing, just focused on the gentle touch, on the warmth of the fire and her mother's body against hers, on the distant grunts of her little brother as he kept practicing his spell. "The last time you were this dizzy..." Silvia eventually mumbled up at her, a playful smile on her pink, puffy lips, "...Asty was born. When were you planning to share the good news?" One eye cracked open, and her smile grew just a little wider.
"Oh, gods no. No," Nivalis answered with a shake of her head, then another, and another, as if trying to shake off the very idea itself. Despite knowing perfectly well there wasn't a single chance for that to happen, her hand still moved down under her tunic to check whether or not she was showing any signs of a new life in her. Every little humping session she did with her boy flashed through her mind as she did that.
Only when her fingers found the familiar flatness of her stomach, slightly wrinkled from sitting, did she finally let out a relieved sigh. "Why did I even check? It's just my Blessing," she mumbled to herself, pulling her hand back and wrapping her arms around her daughter again; another shake of her head followed.
The girl giggled quietly at her reaction, earning herself a soft pinch on the tip of her cute little nose, along with a few playful tugs. "Ew. No. Don't even joke about that. Ever," the woman added, her gaze shifting to her son for a brief moment before returning to her daughter's upside-down face; her nose was now all red, making her look like a reindeer.
Another giggle escaped the girl, this one a bit shyer than the one before. It slowly faded into a comfortable silence that stretched for quite a while, with only the occasional crackling of the fire and the frustrated, distant grunts of a certain boy to break it. Then, a quiet, "Mom...?" came from her again, her eyes fluttering open completely, the playful smile gone now. "I need to tell you something."
The brushing of her hair stopped instantly, and the woman's full attention shifted to her daughter. A slight frown of worry formed on her dizzy face as she looked down at her, her blue eyes darting between the girl's golden ones. "What is it, my love?" Nivalis asked, her voice dropping a little, getting softer.
Taking a small, shaky breath, Silvia shifted in her mother's lap until she was facing her properly, legs to the side, dangling from her big, soft thighs. She then lowered her gaze to their hands in her lap, to the way her small, cold fingers fidgeted with her mother's much warmer ones. "Remember the night... we heard those men?" the girl started, her cheeks slowly getting pinker and pinker with every word she said. "The very first one."
A soft hum came right away, her mother's thumb beginning to rub small circles on the back of her hand to calm her down a little. "And... remember the evening before that? How, you know... Asty came to you to ask... for something he always asks in the evenings?" A much more uncertain hum followed from above, slower too. "Well... in the morning, after you went to sleep... He and I... we stayed up to keep watch. And I noticed... he was still... up." A single finger pointed up between their faces to show what she meant.
"I don't like where you're going with this," Nivalis then whispered, watching her daughter's finger curl and uncurl shyly in front of her before she hid it back in their joined hands.
Silvia grimaced at that, her gaze darting to the boy practicing in the distance, before finding the courage to meet her mother's eyes again. "You were exhausted, Mom—like, really exhausted after staying up all night. Did I mention that?" Her hands twisted nervously in her mother's warm grip. "So I... I..." her throat suddenly went tight, mouth dry.
She swallowed hard, watching her mother's face slowly but surely lose all emotion, a state somehow even worse than anger. "I kinda... used my feet? Rubbed him there a little? To help? Took me a while to convince him and figure out how to do it in a way that wouldn't make you too mad, but..." The words tumbled out in a rush. "I know we promised, but what if those men came back and he couldn't focus because of... you know? It affects his magic." She took a shaky breath, lowering her voice to a barely understandable whisper. "I didn't want to lie about it. We both didn't, from the very start. It is why I'm telling you this. I'm really, really sorry, Mom."
A long, heavy silence followed, so heavy that even the fire was afraid to let out a single crackle. The only sounds that dared to disturb it were the distant, frustrated grunts of a certain boy trying to get his new spell to cast faster. Ever since those men passed by, he became kinda obsessed about it, spending every spare drop of mana to make it better.
"Did he..." Nivalis eventually asked in a strained voice, struggling to find the right words. After a brief, awkward pause, she tried again, "Did the white stuff come out?" A slow, reluctant nod was all her daughter gave her. "Of course it did," Nivalis muttered with a long, heavy sigh that fogged the air in front of her face. "It happened just one time?" Another nod came in response, just as shy as the one before.
Licking her dry lips, Silvia mumbled a quiet, "You took good care of him after that, so..." her shoulders shrugging slightly. "...I didn't have to."
Nivalis closed her eyes for a long, long moment and just breathed through her nose, trying to process all of that while the snowflakes continued to fall around her. The girl kept shifting on her lap the entire time, growing more nervous as time passed without a word from her mother. By the time Nivalis opened her blue eyes, she was greeted by the girl obediently lying across her lap, the back of her cloak pulled up all the way to her shoulders, her skinny thighs and little butt all bare and trembling for the inevitable.
Her mother's hand came down on those little cheeks, covering them almost entirely with her warmth, making the girl flinch and squeeze her eyes shut. But instead of the stinging slap she expected, all she got was a few, very gentle squeezes. "We'll talk about this in the evening," Nivalis eventually said in a quiet, sad tone.
Looking up, the girl watched a weary sigh escape her mother's lips, a look of dizziness and exhaustion all over her face. "I'm in no condition to... have this kind of conversation right now. And certainly not here in the open," Nivalis added, her hand then sliding from Silvia's butt to her milky thighs, gently stroking them as she did so. "We'll talk in the evening. When we have a safe place."
It was then that Aster decided to return to them, looking proud and accomplished, with a wide, goofy grin on his face that was all flushed from exertion. It quickly disappeared the very instant he saw his sister lying face-down across their mother's lap, her bare little bottom all up in the air, still trembling slightly. A look of pure, unadulterated panic spread across his face. "I think I have a few more spells left in me..." he mumbled in a shaky voice, doing a little circle around their small fire and walking back to where he had come from, whistling nervously as he did so.
That made both girls look at each other, their gazes meeting for a brief, silent moment. A small, almost invisible smile touched the corners of their lips before vanishing as quickly as it came. With a sigh, Nivalis gently pulled her daughter's cloak back down to cover her smooth legs and helped her sit up properly, wrapping her arms tightly around the guilty-looking girl. Their eyes then went back to the boy, who looked incredibly busy with his practice, occasionally throwing a worried glance their way.
...
The rest of their day was just as tiring and nerve-wracking as the morning had been, if not even more so. The entire time, Nivalis kept her silence unless there was something truly necessary to say, which made it clear that she was not happy with what her little troublemakers had done. Because of it, Aster and Silvia didn't dare to exchange a single word either, not wanting to anger her any further.
So they just walked, and walked, and walked, one heavy step after another through the deep snow until the sun began to set behind the trees.
Their shelter for the night was built in the same hasty, quiet manner, with not a single word being spoken between the three of them. The same went for their dinner, which they ate in a heavy, suffocating silence, the only sounds being the quiet sizzling of their fish and their soft chewing. Silvia hoped the meal would lighten the mood a little, but it did nothing of the sort.
It was only after the quick snow bath that made their silver hair all curly and wet that their mother finally spoke, when they were sitting around the fire and quietly drinking the pine tea from the same makeshift bark cup. "Tell me everything," she said, her voice quiet and tired, looking from one child to the other. "Not the why, but how. How it all happened exactly. And I want you to be honest, both of you."
The kids shared a quick, nervous look, the boy's hand moving to the girl's, a bit smaller yet much softer one, giving her a gentle squeeze for reassurance. Taking a deep breath, Silvia decided to take the lead, speaking softly over the crackling of the fire. "It wasn't that naughty as it sounds, Mom. I swear," she started, her golden eyes shifting from her mother's face to her brother's and back again.
The entire time, their hands were joined as if glued together. It gave Silvia just enough courage to keep talking. "He was just sitting there, watching the entrance, and I just, you know..." she muttered, untucking her legs from under her to raise them into the air and shyly rubbing her feet together to show her mother exactly how she did it. "...did it like this. We didn't even kiss or anything like that. Tell her, Asty," she added, looking at her brother for help.
Aster nodded, his gaze fixed on his sister's small feet wiggling by the fire's dancing flames with a longing look on his face. The girl nudged him with her shoulder and gave him the look that promised a lot of trouble later on if he didn't snap out of it. That did the trick. "Yep," he quickly mumbled as he looked away from her feet to their mother's face. "No kissing at all, no... anything else. Just her..." he pointed at her feet, now shyly getting buried in the pine needles. "She was really worried that you would be angry with her—" he tried to say, but got cut off by his mother.
"If she was so worried, why didn't she wake me up?" Nivalis asked, her blue eyes drilling into the girl's guilty face, failing to find the gold in hers looking back. "Hm?" The girl just shrank a little, her shoulders slumping even more as she kept looking down at her knees.
With a sigh, Aster directed that burning gaze on himself, muttering a small, "It was actually the very first thing she suggested. I said no." Just before Nivalis opened her mouth to snap something at him, he quickly continued, "Mom. You're forgetting how quickly you fell asleep, and how exhausted you were after a day of walking AND a night without sleep. I'd say the same thing all over again. Let you rest, I mean."
That made their mother's gaze soften, just slightly, though it was hard to notice behind that nauseous frown of hers. She didn't say anything for a while, occasionally rubbing at her forehead and temples, her gaze shifting from one guilty face to the other, golden to golden.
Crossing her arms under her breasts to lift them slightly, she eventually spoke, "Are you sure you're telling me everything? I find it hard to believe you finished with just a little rubbing, Asty," she eventually said, directing the question at the boy. "Remember how you tried to hump my leg? Plenty of times, and... it never worked. Yet you want me to believe you liked some rubbing with... feet?"
"I mean..." the boy started, his cheeks flushing a pretty pink under his mother's gaze. Giving his silver head a little scratch, he added, "Her feet are very pretty? And... soft? And she wiggled her toes a lot..." before trailing off. Both Nivalis and Aster found themselves glancing down at the girl's feet, which peeked shyly from between the green needles. They wiggled slightly in response before hiding further in.
When Silvia's hand squeezed his with all the strength those delicate fingers could muster, Aster suddenly remembered that he wasn't supposed to like them at all, to save her from more spanking. Not showing any pain on his face, he quickly added, "They were a bit cold, though." Her grip lessened at that, but not by much. His left eye twitched slightly. "What I'm trying to say is it was a lot different than humping a knee. It wasn't great, but I kinda... cheated. To make it feel better," he eventually blurted out.
Both girls looked at him in confusion at that. "Cheated? How?" Nivalis asked, her eyebrows furrowing slightly.
Aster shrugged ever-so-slightly, this time with a tiny, guilty smile on his face. "While I was looking at the entrance... you know, keeping watch and stuff..." he mumbled, then stopped for a second, trying to find the right words... or rather, to come up with something that explains both how he didn't like it yet somehow finished all over her feet. "I just... imagined it was you who was doing it, Mom. The way you always do it with your hand. And then it just..." he tried to show little spurts by wiggling his fingers above his pale thighs, "happened."
Nivalis covered her face with both her hands at that, letting out a long, shaky breath through her fingers. "Gods," was all she mumbled before letting them slide down her face. For a long while, she didn't say much, just stared at the two of them with a strange look in her blue eyes. "Alright," she eventually said with a heavy sigh that seemed to drain the last of her energy. "Alright. I believe you."
Her gaze then settled on her daughter's hopeful face, catching the way her lips began to curve into a shy smile. "Can't say I'm happy about it, though. Not at all," she added, and that smile instantly disappeared, and Aster's shoulders drooped noticeably beside her. "But we were in real danger out there. And what you did... wrong as it was... it was something I should've taken care of myself. I forgot."
Her gaze shifted back to her son, to his skinny thighs where his hairless boy bits were hidden between them, for some reason. "It could've ended badly if you hadn't done it, if those men were to return. If there's someone to blame here, it's me, I guess. And..." Both Silvia and Aster tried to say something, but she shushed them with a quiet, "Let me finish."
When they went silent again, she continued, "...the fact that you told me about it at all, despite knowing you'd get in trouble... that says something. You could've easily kept it a secret like two sneaky little foxes, and I would've never found out. And you tried to do it in a way that was less... naughty. I appreciate that."
She then held out her hands towards them, a silent invitation. Without hesitation, they both moved closer, letting her wrap her arms around their small shoulders and pull them against her sides, their heads bumping into the sides of her heavy breasts. "So... no punishment?" came a muffled question from her left, Aster's face peeking out from under her armpit. "Or we can spank you, if you want. That will teach you," he then added with a cheeky smile, making both his mother and sister laugh for the first time this evening, the tension finally breaking.
Nivalis looked at her boy with a cheeky smile of her own, giving his nose a little tweak with her thumb and forefinger. That earned her a muffled giggle against her armpit that made her giggle, too. "It's no one's fault, dummy," came a shy mumble from her right, Silvia's face coming out from under the other side of her breast, the same pair of golden eyes staring up at her. "Right, Mom? It was just an emergency, and that's it."
"Right," Nivalis answered, pulling them even closer until her breasts squished against each other, pink nipples kissing. A few more moments of comfortable silence passed, with only the crackling of the fire and the distant howling of the wind to be heard. "No one is getting spanked tonight," her voice eventually broke it for just a moment, quiet and gentle, her fingers starting to stroke their messy, curly hair, waving all the way down to their young butts, almost indistinguishable from one another.
For a good while, she held them like that, kissing their heads every now and then, just enjoying the quiet moment, occasionally giving the said butts a nice, motherly squeeze instead of the dreaded spanks they were expecting.
...