Shem the Penman
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Originally published in Tales from the Asylum.
Our Land was in the southern part of what eventually, thirty thousand or so years later, would be known as France, and occasionally by other names that need not concern us. The people who lived there didn't know that, though. To them it was just Our Land. Just like the river was Our River, the forest was Our Forest, and the mountains on the far horizon were The Mountains -- beyond which the world ended. They themselves were Us, or The Humans. If you had said "Cro-Magnon" to one, he would just have stared at you uncomprehendingly, and then either tried to hit you or run away, because whatever you were, you clearly weren't one of The Humans.
So when Kel found a woman in Our Swamp, he was immediately sure she wasn't human. Our Swamp was a place with a bad reputation, full of shifting islands, strange creatures, and evil spirits that made people sick, so it's not surprising Kel decided she must be an evil spirit intending to lure him to his doom. Not that she was doing a lot of luring at the moment. She lay facedown on a mud bank, not moving. Her skin and hair were heavily caked with mud and filth, but Kel could see that her skin was strangely pale and her hair was the color of the bad time when the sun went away (to you and me, black). None of The Humans had skin or hair like that, which only made Kel more suspicious.
But Kel was also curious. He had been going into Our Swamp all his life, hunting for edible plants, fish, frogs (after all, this would be France some day), and such, and he'd never seen anything like this. He poled his raft closer. The woman, or whatever she was, still didn't move. She was breathing, though, he could see. She wore the remnants of a hide dress, which would barely have been enough to conceal her modesty if modesty hadn't been a concept that the human race was still working on at that time. And despite the mud and the fact that she wasn't human, she was very beautiful and well-formed.
The next thing Kel knew, he was taking her wrists and pulling her onto the raft. Maybe she wasn't human, but among The Humans, a man who gathered stuff out of the swamp wasn't anywhere near as important as the hunters, who had the best-looking women hanging off them. Kel wasn't sure what he was going to do with her, but he just couldn't bring himself to leave her there. He did have enough sense to use his rope to tie her wrists and ankles to each other in case she woke up, turned into a monster, and tried to eat his face.
He poled his way back home, which was a hut on the edge of Our Swamp where he'd lived with his father, until the evil spirits took him, and his mother, until a pack of wolves passed through the area. The other Humans lived not far away, but Kel had always liked a bit of solitude. Carrying the woman, or whatever she was, with him, he entered the hut and set her down on the heap of grass and skins he used as a bed. Then he sat down and stared at her, wondering what he was going to do.
After a while, she started to move. Her eyes fluttered open -- black eyes, another thing none of The Humans had. She stared around the hut, then at Kel, trying to figure out what he was. Then, as she realized she was tied, her eyes snapped fully open.
Her name was Atai. She was from a completely different tribe that lived on the other side of The Mountains (contrary to what The Humans thought, there WAS an other side). She and her father had been made to leave their tribe -- which, confusingly enough, also called themselves The Humans -- when her father was caught stealing food. With no other place to go, they had crossed The Mountains, and they had been walking alongside The River when a bank crumbled under Atai's feet, dropping her into the swift current. She was carried helplessly downstream all the way to The Swamp, where, exhausted and battered, she had managed to haul herself up on the mud bank and fall into an almost comatose sleep. She had not expected to wake up in a hut, let alone tied up and with a weird creature who looked nothing like any of The Humans, HER Humans, staring at her. "What are you?" she asked fearfully.
Kel, of course, understood not a word, and hearing her speak some unknown language only deepened her conviction that whatever she was, she was dangerous. He flinched away, and at last Atai fell silent, seeing that he did not understand. She tested the bonds, but Kel had tied well. They just stared at each other for a space. Atai was nearly helpless and still confused, and Kel simply had no idea what he was going to do now.
Kel looked at the pattern the dirt streaks made on her face, at the splotches of mud that clotted her hair. And then, somehow, a new idea snuck warily into the untrodden terrain of Kel's mind. She might look peculiar, and speak nothing but gibberish, but she also was clearly, unequivocally, almost overwhelmingly female. Maybe, Kel reasoned, if such a term can be applied to the workings of a Paleolithic man's mind, the right thing to do was treat her like a woman. Untie her? He rejected the idea immediately, not wanting to have his face eaten in case the idea was wrong. What, then? What did the females like, besides hunters with big muscles? Pretty things, babies, flowers -- he didn't have any of those, any more than he had big muscles. Kel racked his brain, and then another idea joined the second like settlers in a strange land. Females liked being clean. Yes, he could do that! Grabbing a stone bowl, he ran out, filled it with water from a clean stream, and came back in. Squatting down beside Atai, he carefully began wiping the mud off her.
Atai flinched at his touch, but there was nothing she could do. He cleaned her face, rinsed the worst of the mud from her hair, then, after a bit of hesitation, continued downward. Her pale shoulders were smooth under his fingers, and Kel found himself enjoying the task, his hands becoming light, almost caressing. He washed mud from her back, feeling the skin shudder slightly under his touch in a pleasant way, then rolled her onto her back. There was a large smear of mud on her stomach, and Kel decided to go after that. He splashed some water onto it and reached out.
Atai gasped at the cold water on her skin, but a second later his fingers touched the skin of her belly, moving lightly. Her body gave a jerk, and a strange sound forced itself out of her throat, a sound something like "Heeheehee!"
Kel was startled, but also, after a moment, pleased. It had been a sweet sound, he thought, prettier even than birdsong. He wondered if she'd make it again. Carefully, he reached out and touched her in the same way. Atai was better prepared this time, but even so she still giggled again. Trying to regain control, she choked off the giggle, but his fingers kept moving over the soft whiteness of her belly, searching, and she couldn't hold it any longer. "Heeheheheheee!" She squirmed, trying to bring her knees up to protect herself, and only then realized that the way she was tied made it difficult, if not impossible, to do that.
Meanwhile, Kel had decided that her squirming was almost as amusing as the giggling, and he wanted to see more of both. Accordingly, he began to tickle her tummy with both hands, and was almost immediately gratified. The feel of her muscles fluttering under his fingertips added yet another dimension to his enjoyment of the scene. Kel pressed his fingers into her belly to feel the delicate trembling more closely and was delighted when that made her laugh, a sound he enjoyed even more than her giggles. "Hahahahahaahaa!" Atai squealed, her feet kicking empty air and her body twisting and curving enticingly. In her awkwardly bound position, Kel had no trouble keeping her on her back and vulnerable to tickling. "Stop!" she demanded in her own language, but even if Kel could have understood, the word was lost amid a storm of giggles when his hands trailed down her smooth sides and then began to tickle around her waist and lower belly, just above the mud-crusted scrap of hide that covered her. "Aaa hahaa hahaha oh! HAAAAAAAAaaaeeeee!" He had just discovered her navel and was investigating the exquisitely sensitive skin around it, as well as its ticklish depths. Her damp dark hair slithered over the ground as she tossed her head and the laughter rushed out of her.
Kel made another discovery not long after when his fingers, exploring at the top of her belly, strayed onto her lower ribs. Atai eeked when he touched the soft, ticklish skin there, and then began to laugh helplessly once more as his fingers spider-walked upward. She pressed her elbows tight to her sides, but Kel still managed to work his fingers under them. Even the slight movement of his trapped fingers against the sides of her ribs drove her into fits of reluctant mirth as she writhed, so he kept them there even after she gave up her attempt at protecting herself, collapsing into laughter with her arms flapping uselessly. "Hahahaa nnnn hahahahaaahahaa! Haahahahahahaa STOPhahahahaha!" she wailed, but all he could understand was the laughter. She bucked and twisted and tried to roll over, but nothing she did could dislodge his steadily tickling fingers from her ribs.
Thoroughly enjoying the feel and spectacle, Kel tickled all over her rib cage until her howls resounded through the hut (and scared away a wolf that was prowling just outside) and tears of laughter cut white tracks through the remaining grime on her face. He lightly trailed his fingers up and down her sides then, so that she mixed giggles in with her gasps for breath, denying her a chance to relax completely. She tensed afresh every time he neared her ribs, her hips, or any of the many sensitive spots in between, and she giggled or squealed out of pure reflex every time he tapped her on one of those spots. “Stop!” she shouted again finally when she’d managed to get enough of her breath back, and even if the word was unknown to him, there was no mistaking her tone. But instead, he only began to scribble his fingernails along her ribs again, and she had just enough time for a desperate “Nooooo!” before the giggles took her voice away again. This time, she had no chance to speak again; he tickled lightly, swiftly, and steadily, keeping her helpless with laughter.
Kel's hands had gotten another idea - why not try for two places at once? So while he tickled first one side of her heaving ribs, then the other, he also sent a hand creeping back down the trembling drumhead of her belly, feeling the skin twitch and shift as his fingers passed. Slowly he approached the soft well of her navel, and her giggling rapidly increased in volume -- and then, as his fingers swirled on the ribcage and around the navel like the feet of a swiftly moving centipede, she burst into helpless laughter once more, unable to deal with the tickling sensations flooding in from all along her torso.
Atai couldn't understand why she couldn't stop laughing. Every time she managed to catch a breath, force her body to stay still, and try to compose herself, he tickled her in a new spot and she dissolved into delirious laughter again, self-control flitting away from her like a butterfly eluding her grasp. All she could think was that he must command some kind of strange magic to make her body do what he wanted rather than what she wanted. And yet there was a seductive sweetness to it too, a little voice in her mind that whispered it wasn't so bad to be helpless, a voice that grew stronger with every fresh peal he wrung out of her....
If there was magic at work, though, Kel was as fully enchanted as Atai. To him, his hands had as much a life of their own as her writhing body did to her. They seemed to know every spot on her to tickle already, and how best to tickle them, roaming over her warm skin as they desired in search of untapped reserves of laughter. All he had to do was sit back, let them work, and enjoy the spectacle. What a wonderful gift he had found in Our Swamp today!
Eventually, though, Atai’s laughter slowly began getting less hysterical, and tickles that would have sent her into a squirming frenzy at first only provoked twitches and jerks. Not because of exhaustion, for she was a strong, healthy young woman, but because she was slowly becoming used to the strange sensations, beginning to reestablish control over herself. Kel was surprised and somewhat annoyed at first, but then he realized that he’d barely touched the surface, as it were -- the rest of her body was still to be explored. And with that thought came a sudden, swift desire to tickle every inch of her, to leave not one stone unturned (or, rather, one laugh unlaughed). Rolling her over, Kel traced slowly upward...
But as he worked, his frustration only mounted. He squeezed a few giggles and shudders out of her with teasing touches on her bare shoulders, neck, and ears, but nothing more. Running his nails down her back made her quiver with pleasure, but not laugh. Ignorant of the potential of her underarms, he bypassed them entirely as too hard to get his hands into. Tickling her below the waist turned out to be much more promising -- she squealed with laughter as he slipped his hands under her clothes to tickle her bare bottom, hips, and the backs of her thighs, and the sight and feel of her frantically wriggling buttocks almost made him forget what he was doing. Finally, though, he remembered his determination to test her whole body, and somewhat reluctantly continued working downward.
Her knees, unfortunately, proved non-ticklish, and by the time he got around to exploring the lower legs, Kel was wondering if he should give up and go back to the buttocks, or even the belly and ribs. But he was good at finding food in Our Swamp because he had a certain dogged patience, a willingness to stick closely to a task and see it through to the end where another man might simply rush through and miss an important detail. That served him well now. He ran his fingers idly over the delicate skin on the top of one foot, then touched traced one over the tops of her bare toes. Atai giggled again. But there was something in this giggle, a nervous anticipation, that made Kel look at her closely and run his fingers over the toes again, more slowly. "Heeheheeheee!" They twitched and curled under his touch.
Kel looked at her face, and then slowly smiled at the strain he saw there. No words were necessary this time. They both knew that he was close to a very ticklish spot, and she knew he knew it too. And she also knew there was nothing at all she could do about it. Kel took a firmer grip on her ankle and heard her breath catch in her throat. He had discovered yet another new pleasure in this game -- making her wait, teasing both her and himself with anticipation of what was to come. She had struggled up to a sitting position while he was tickling along her legs, but now he pulled on the ankle, forcing her to roll onto her back again.
Most people of the Paleolithic had feet so thickly callused that they could walk through a heap of thumbtacks (if thumbtacks had been invented) without feeling anything. But Atai, before her trip over The Mountains, had never traveled much, and her feet were still relatively uncallused and thoroughly vulnerable. The little pink furrow under the balls of her toes seemed to Kel to be as tender and inviting to the touch as a newborn baby, and he reached out with a finger.
Atai gasped when his fingertip touched the base of her big toe, and the toes curled sharply down. Kel kept his finger there for a long moment, one that seemed endless to Atai as shudders of expectation racked her frame, and then he moved the finger sideways, fingertip wriggling. Atai would never have noticed the tiny scratching sensation anywhere else on her body, but in that one particular spot it was instantly overwhelming. She yelped and tried to pull her foot away as if it had just touched something red-hot, but Kel had her ankle held firmly, and there was no escape.
From there, it was only a short jump for Kel to go from the concept of one finger tickling one toe to multiple fingers tickling multiple toes. Atai astonished both of them with a huge, convulsive peal of laughter as she felt four fingers moving on the undersides of her toes. “HAAAAaaaa eeeeheheeheeheheeeaaahhh!” She squinched them tight together, but it was useless -- the balls of her toes were just as ticklish as the bases, and impossible to defend; all she could do was throw her head back and let the agonized giggles burst out of her. Kel wasn’t satisfied with that, though. He clamped her ankle under one arm, and with both hands free, began to tickle the tops and undersides of her spasming toes at the same time, four fingers on either side. Atai’s yell of laughter nearly took off the hut’s roof, and she flopped and squirmed on the floor of the hut, her body trying to collapse in abject laughter and yet still fighting to get free at the same time. Unable to think, unable to control herself, she was utterly helpless to stop the unbearable tickling, the tiny little touches on this tiny part of her body that somehow overpowered her completely. The fresh tears that ran down her bright red cheeks now were as much from frustration as laughter.
“Stop it now!” she raged as Kel paused to shift his grip. Though he could not have mistaken the futile anger in her voice, he felt no qualms -- after all, he still wasn’t even sure she was human, and he had never seen a woman react this way when her feet were touched. And this was too much fun to stop! He grabbed up her other foot and, before she could so much as cry out, had both ankles locked between his legs. Grinning, he held up both hands, fingers spread. Atai felt a sudden chill deep inside her. Two hands...two feet...ten fingers...ten toes...torture she could barely dream of. “Don’t,” Atai moaned, cringing just at the imagined feel of those fingers at play on her toes.
“What? You don’t want to be touched, is that it?” Kel asked as he slowly laid a fingertip on one of her smallest toes, then even more slowly trailed it across the width of all ten. Atai’s face crumpled and she made noises in her throat.
“Please,” she gasped, “stop this....” and then he ran his fingers over the soft tops of her feet, and the noises became desperate giggles.
“I’m not done with you yet,” Kel said, and Atai had time for one despairing wail before he began to tickle in earnest. Neither could understand each other’s words, but yet their voices, faces, and touches communicated everything that was needed. Tickling, it seemed, was a great aid to intertribal communication. Not that either of them could appreciate that, not Atai, who was laughing herself breathless, nor Kel, who was fascinated by the way her dark hair whipped when she shook her head frantically and the way her body heaved and bucked as he tickled her.
Atai had been struggling harder than ever as Kel tickled her toes. When he took her by surprise, letting her ankles go, then grabbing one and drawing his nails down the arch of her foot, she shrieked and kicked so hard she nearly pulled her leg from his grasp. He kept a strong grip, though, and the shriek became a tumbling torrent of hysterical laughter as he tickled across the smooth-skinned little valley, then up and down it again. Wrapping both hands around her foot, he buried eight fingertips in the arch, scratching slowly and steadily and hearing her wail like a lost soul behind him. Her other bare foot pushed at his back uselessly, trying to dislodge him, but her strength was completely gone, and it was scarcely even a distraction. Smiling wickedly, Kel dropped the foot he held, reached behind, and seized the other, giving it a ten-fingered tickle all over the sole.
The foot trembled in his grasp like a little animal, warm and soft and struggling to escape. Atai added to this impression, as she had virtually screamed herself hoarse already and could only make tiny trapped-animal squeaks and squeals, though when Kel glanced over his shoulder he could see that her face was frozen into the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed rictus of someone being tortured beyond endurance. For a second, he felt sorry for her....but then he scratched the ball of the foot, and she let out a hoarse scream of laughter and kicked so hard that she actually broke his grip. That moment of frenzy seemed to have drained her, though, for when he picked the foot up again, she didn’t even try to squirm. He raked his fingers down the flexing sole, and though every muscle in her body tensed, and her laughter echoed through the hut, her body only gave a little reflexive wiggle. Even when he lifted both feet into position and tickled across both soles, so that hysterical laughter shook her body with its force, her head still hung loosely. Once again, they were communicating without words, and what she was communicating now was simple: surrender.
Kel found himself responding. His hands on her feet became gentler, lighter, tracing the contours and finding tendernesses so that she sighed and gasped and caught her breath with pleasure amidst the tiny, breathless giggles his touch coaxed from her. Back up her legs he caressed, and higher up, tickling and teasing her nearly nude body delicately. Atai’s body and mind were equally limp and spent. Even if she had had the strength to struggle further, her will was gone and all she could do was submit to his attentions, shivering at the delicious feel of his fingers on her too-sensitive skin. Her world had shrunk to that touch, and despite her helplessness, exhaustion, and humiliation, she wanted it to go on forever.
Finally, Kel set her down, stood, and then began to untie the knots that held her. Freed, she spilled across the floor like the contents of an overturned jar. Her hair fell thickly around her shoulders and face, hiding her expression as she panted for breath. Slowly, she put the palms of her hands on the floor and lifted her head. Her hair fell back, and she looked up at Kel, her eyes wide and bright.
Of this story, there’s little more that needs to be told. Atai and Kel, later that night, proved conclusively to each other that they were both, indeed, human. While Kel never became a hunter, he won great respect among his tribe when he showed them what he had discovered -- and it was soon found out that many of The Humans were just as sensitive as Atai, to the pleasure of those who preferred to do the tickling. And one of Kel and Atai’s sons did become a hunter, who figured out a very interesting thing to do with the feathers of the birds he brought down...but that is another story.
Our Land was in the southern part of what eventually, thirty thousand or so years later, would be known as France, and occasionally by other names that need not concern us. The people who lived there didn't know that, though. To them it was just Our Land. Just like the river was Our River, the forest was Our Forest, and the mountains on the far horizon were The Mountains -- beyond which the world ended. They themselves were Us, or The Humans. If you had said "Cro-Magnon" to one, he would just have stared at you uncomprehendingly, and then either tried to hit you or run away, because whatever you were, you clearly weren't one of The Humans.
So when Kel found a woman in Our Swamp, he was immediately sure she wasn't human. Our Swamp was a place with a bad reputation, full of shifting islands, strange creatures, and evil spirits that made people sick, so it's not surprising Kel decided she must be an evil spirit intending to lure him to his doom. Not that she was doing a lot of luring at the moment. She lay facedown on a mud bank, not moving. Her skin and hair were heavily caked with mud and filth, but Kel could see that her skin was strangely pale and her hair was the color of the bad time when the sun went away (to you and me, black). None of The Humans had skin or hair like that, which only made Kel more suspicious.
But Kel was also curious. He had been going into Our Swamp all his life, hunting for edible plants, fish, frogs (after all, this would be France some day), and such, and he'd never seen anything like this. He poled his raft closer. The woman, or whatever she was, still didn't move. She was breathing, though, he could see. She wore the remnants of a hide dress, which would barely have been enough to conceal her modesty if modesty hadn't been a concept that the human race was still working on at that time. And despite the mud and the fact that she wasn't human, she was very beautiful and well-formed.
The next thing Kel knew, he was taking her wrists and pulling her onto the raft. Maybe she wasn't human, but among The Humans, a man who gathered stuff out of the swamp wasn't anywhere near as important as the hunters, who had the best-looking women hanging off them. Kel wasn't sure what he was going to do with her, but he just couldn't bring himself to leave her there. He did have enough sense to use his rope to tie her wrists and ankles to each other in case she woke up, turned into a monster, and tried to eat his face.
He poled his way back home, which was a hut on the edge of Our Swamp where he'd lived with his father, until the evil spirits took him, and his mother, until a pack of wolves passed through the area. The other Humans lived not far away, but Kel had always liked a bit of solitude. Carrying the woman, or whatever she was, with him, he entered the hut and set her down on the heap of grass and skins he used as a bed. Then he sat down and stared at her, wondering what he was going to do.
After a while, she started to move. Her eyes fluttered open -- black eyes, another thing none of The Humans had. She stared around the hut, then at Kel, trying to figure out what he was. Then, as she realized she was tied, her eyes snapped fully open.
Her name was Atai. She was from a completely different tribe that lived on the other side of The Mountains (contrary to what The Humans thought, there WAS an other side). She and her father had been made to leave their tribe -- which, confusingly enough, also called themselves The Humans -- when her father was caught stealing food. With no other place to go, they had crossed The Mountains, and they had been walking alongside The River when a bank crumbled under Atai's feet, dropping her into the swift current. She was carried helplessly downstream all the way to The Swamp, where, exhausted and battered, she had managed to haul herself up on the mud bank and fall into an almost comatose sleep. She had not expected to wake up in a hut, let alone tied up and with a weird creature who looked nothing like any of The Humans, HER Humans, staring at her. "What are you?" she asked fearfully.
Kel, of course, understood not a word, and hearing her speak some unknown language only deepened her conviction that whatever she was, she was dangerous. He flinched away, and at last Atai fell silent, seeing that he did not understand. She tested the bonds, but Kel had tied well. They just stared at each other for a space. Atai was nearly helpless and still confused, and Kel simply had no idea what he was going to do now.
Kel looked at the pattern the dirt streaks made on her face, at the splotches of mud that clotted her hair. And then, somehow, a new idea snuck warily into the untrodden terrain of Kel's mind. She might look peculiar, and speak nothing but gibberish, but she also was clearly, unequivocally, almost overwhelmingly female. Maybe, Kel reasoned, if such a term can be applied to the workings of a Paleolithic man's mind, the right thing to do was treat her like a woman. Untie her? He rejected the idea immediately, not wanting to have his face eaten in case the idea was wrong. What, then? What did the females like, besides hunters with big muscles? Pretty things, babies, flowers -- he didn't have any of those, any more than he had big muscles. Kel racked his brain, and then another idea joined the second like settlers in a strange land. Females liked being clean. Yes, he could do that! Grabbing a stone bowl, he ran out, filled it with water from a clean stream, and came back in. Squatting down beside Atai, he carefully began wiping the mud off her.
Atai flinched at his touch, but there was nothing she could do. He cleaned her face, rinsed the worst of the mud from her hair, then, after a bit of hesitation, continued downward. Her pale shoulders were smooth under his fingers, and Kel found himself enjoying the task, his hands becoming light, almost caressing. He washed mud from her back, feeling the skin shudder slightly under his touch in a pleasant way, then rolled her onto her back. There was a large smear of mud on her stomach, and Kel decided to go after that. He splashed some water onto it and reached out.
Atai gasped at the cold water on her skin, but a second later his fingers touched the skin of her belly, moving lightly. Her body gave a jerk, and a strange sound forced itself out of her throat, a sound something like "Heeheehee!"
Kel was startled, but also, after a moment, pleased. It had been a sweet sound, he thought, prettier even than birdsong. He wondered if she'd make it again. Carefully, he reached out and touched her in the same way. Atai was better prepared this time, but even so she still giggled again. Trying to regain control, she choked off the giggle, but his fingers kept moving over the soft whiteness of her belly, searching, and she couldn't hold it any longer. "Heeheheheheee!" She squirmed, trying to bring her knees up to protect herself, and only then realized that the way she was tied made it difficult, if not impossible, to do that.
Meanwhile, Kel had decided that her squirming was almost as amusing as the giggling, and he wanted to see more of both. Accordingly, he began to tickle her tummy with both hands, and was almost immediately gratified. The feel of her muscles fluttering under his fingertips added yet another dimension to his enjoyment of the scene. Kel pressed his fingers into her belly to feel the delicate trembling more closely and was delighted when that made her laugh, a sound he enjoyed even more than her giggles. "Hahahahahaahaa!" Atai squealed, her feet kicking empty air and her body twisting and curving enticingly. In her awkwardly bound position, Kel had no trouble keeping her on her back and vulnerable to tickling. "Stop!" she demanded in her own language, but even if Kel could have understood, the word was lost amid a storm of giggles when his hands trailed down her smooth sides and then began to tickle around her waist and lower belly, just above the mud-crusted scrap of hide that covered her. "Aaa hahaa hahaha oh! HAAAAAAAAaaaeeeee!" He had just discovered her navel and was investigating the exquisitely sensitive skin around it, as well as its ticklish depths. Her damp dark hair slithered over the ground as she tossed her head and the laughter rushed out of her.
Kel made another discovery not long after when his fingers, exploring at the top of her belly, strayed onto her lower ribs. Atai eeked when he touched the soft, ticklish skin there, and then began to laugh helplessly once more as his fingers spider-walked upward. She pressed her elbows tight to her sides, but Kel still managed to work his fingers under them. Even the slight movement of his trapped fingers against the sides of her ribs drove her into fits of reluctant mirth as she writhed, so he kept them there even after she gave up her attempt at protecting herself, collapsing into laughter with her arms flapping uselessly. "Hahahaa nnnn hahahahaaahahaa! Haahahahahahaa STOPhahahahaha!" she wailed, but all he could understand was the laughter. She bucked and twisted and tried to roll over, but nothing she did could dislodge his steadily tickling fingers from her ribs.
Thoroughly enjoying the feel and spectacle, Kel tickled all over her rib cage until her howls resounded through the hut (and scared away a wolf that was prowling just outside) and tears of laughter cut white tracks through the remaining grime on her face. He lightly trailed his fingers up and down her sides then, so that she mixed giggles in with her gasps for breath, denying her a chance to relax completely. She tensed afresh every time he neared her ribs, her hips, or any of the many sensitive spots in between, and she giggled or squealed out of pure reflex every time he tapped her on one of those spots. “Stop!” she shouted again finally when she’d managed to get enough of her breath back, and even if the word was unknown to him, there was no mistaking her tone. But instead, he only began to scribble his fingernails along her ribs again, and she had just enough time for a desperate “Nooooo!” before the giggles took her voice away again. This time, she had no chance to speak again; he tickled lightly, swiftly, and steadily, keeping her helpless with laughter.
Kel's hands had gotten another idea - why not try for two places at once? So while he tickled first one side of her heaving ribs, then the other, he also sent a hand creeping back down the trembling drumhead of her belly, feeling the skin twitch and shift as his fingers passed. Slowly he approached the soft well of her navel, and her giggling rapidly increased in volume -- and then, as his fingers swirled on the ribcage and around the navel like the feet of a swiftly moving centipede, she burst into helpless laughter once more, unable to deal with the tickling sensations flooding in from all along her torso.
Atai couldn't understand why she couldn't stop laughing. Every time she managed to catch a breath, force her body to stay still, and try to compose herself, he tickled her in a new spot and she dissolved into delirious laughter again, self-control flitting away from her like a butterfly eluding her grasp. All she could think was that he must command some kind of strange magic to make her body do what he wanted rather than what she wanted. And yet there was a seductive sweetness to it too, a little voice in her mind that whispered it wasn't so bad to be helpless, a voice that grew stronger with every fresh peal he wrung out of her....
If there was magic at work, though, Kel was as fully enchanted as Atai. To him, his hands had as much a life of their own as her writhing body did to her. They seemed to know every spot on her to tickle already, and how best to tickle them, roaming over her warm skin as they desired in search of untapped reserves of laughter. All he had to do was sit back, let them work, and enjoy the spectacle. What a wonderful gift he had found in Our Swamp today!
Eventually, though, Atai’s laughter slowly began getting less hysterical, and tickles that would have sent her into a squirming frenzy at first only provoked twitches and jerks. Not because of exhaustion, for she was a strong, healthy young woman, but because she was slowly becoming used to the strange sensations, beginning to reestablish control over herself. Kel was surprised and somewhat annoyed at first, but then he realized that he’d barely touched the surface, as it were -- the rest of her body was still to be explored. And with that thought came a sudden, swift desire to tickle every inch of her, to leave not one stone unturned (or, rather, one laugh unlaughed). Rolling her over, Kel traced slowly upward...
But as he worked, his frustration only mounted. He squeezed a few giggles and shudders out of her with teasing touches on her bare shoulders, neck, and ears, but nothing more. Running his nails down her back made her quiver with pleasure, but not laugh. Ignorant of the potential of her underarms, he bypassed them entirely as too hard to get his hands into. Tickling her below the waist turned out to be much more promising -- she squealed with laughter as he slipped his hands under her clothes to tickle her bare bottom, hips, and the backs of her thighs, and the sight and feel of her frantically wriggling buttocks almost made him forget what he was doing. Finally, though, he remembered his determination to test her whole body, and somewhat reluctantly continued working downward.
Her knees, unfortunately, proved non-ticklish, and by the time he got around to exploring the lower legs, Kel was wondering if he should give up and go back to the buttocks, or even the belly and ribs. But he was good at finding food in Our Swamp because he had a certain dogged patience, a willingness to stick closely to a task and see it through to the end where another man might simply rush through and miss an important detail. That served him well now. He ran his fingers idly over the delicate skin on the top of one foot, then touched traced one over the tops of her bare toes. Atai giggled again. But there was something in this giggle, a nervous anticipation, that made Kel look at her closely and run his fingers over the toes again, more slowly. "Heeheheeheee!" They twitched and curled under his touch.
Kel looked at her face, and then slowly smiled at the strain he saw there. No words were necessary this time. They both knew that he was close to a very ticklish spot, and she knew he knew it too. And she also knew there was nothing at all she could do about it. Kel took a firmer grip on her ankle and heard her breath catch in her throat. He had discovered yet another new pleasure in this game -- making her wait, teasing both her and himself with anticipation of what was to come. She had struggled up to a sitting position while he was tickling along her legs, but now he pulled on the ankle, forcing her to roll onto her back again.
Most people of the Paleolithic had feet so thickly callused that they could walk through a heap of thumbtacks (if thumbtacks had been invented) without feeling anything. But Atai, before her trip over The Mountains, had never traveled much, and her feet were still relatively uncallused and thoroughly vulnerable. The little pink furrow under the balls of her toes seemed to Kel to be as tender and inviting to the touch as a newborn baby, and he reached out with a finger.
Atai gasped when his fingertip touched the base of her big toe, and the toes curled sharply down. Kel kept his finger there for a long moment, one that seemed endless to Atai as shudders of expectation racked her frame, and then he moved the finger sideways, fingertip wriggling. Atai would never have noticed the tiny scratching sensation anywhere else on her body, but in that one particular spot it was instantly overwhelming. She yelped and tried to pull her foot away as if it had just touched something red-hot, but Kel had her ankle held firmly, and there was no escape.
From there, it was only a short jump for Kel to go from the concept of one finger tickling one toe to multiple fingers tickling multiple toes. Atai astonished both of them with a huge, convulsive peal of laughter as she felt four fingers moving on the undersides of her toes. “HAAAAaaaa eeeeheheeheeheheeeaaahhh!” She squinched them tight together, but it was useless -- the balls of her toes were just as ticklish as the bases, and impossible to defend; all she could do was throw her head back and let the agonized giggles burst out of her. Kel wasn’t satisfied with that, though. He clamped her ankle under one arm, and with both hands free, began to tickle the tops and undersides of her spasming toes at the same time, four fingers on either side. Atai’s yell of laughter nearly took off the hut’s roof, and she flopped and squirmed on the floor of the hut, her body trying to collapse in abject laughter and yet still fighting to get free at the same time. Unable to think, unable to control herself, she was utterly helpless to stop the unbearable tickling, the tiny little touches on this tiny part of her body that somehow overpowered her completely. The fresh tears that ran down her bright red cheeks now were as much from frustration as laughter.
“Stop it now!” she raged as Kel paused to shift his grip. Though he could not have mistaken the futile anger in her voice, he felt no qualms -- after all, he still wasn’t even sure she was human, and he had never seen a woman react this way when her feet were touched. And this was too much fun to stop! He grabbed up her other foot and, before she could so much as cry out, had both ankles locked between his legs. Grinning, he held up both hands, fingers spread. Atai felt a sudden chill deep inside her. Two hands...two feet...ten fingers...ten toes...torture she could barely dream of. “Don’t,” Atai moaned, cringing just at the imagined feel of those fingers at play on her toes.
“What? You don’t want to be touched, is that it?” Kel asked as he slowly laid a fingertip on one of her smallest toes, then even more slowly trailed it across the width of all ten. Atai’s face crumpled and she made noises in her throat.
“Please,” she gasped, “stop this....” and then he ran his fingers over the soft tops of her feet, and the noises became desperate giggles.
“I’m not done with you yet,” Kel said, and Atai had time for one despairing wail before he began to tickle in earnest. Neither could understand each other’s words, but yet their voices, faces, and touches communicated everything that was needed. Tickling, it seemed, was a great aid to intertribal communication. Not that either of them could appreciate that, not Atai, who was laughing herself breathless, nor Kel, who was fascinated by the way her dark hair whipped when she shook her head frantically and the way her body heaved and bucked as he tickled her.
Atai had been struggling harder than ever as Kel tickled her toes. When he took her by surprise, letting her ankles go, then grabbing one and drawing his nails down the arch of her foot, she shrieked and kicked so hard she nearly pulled her leg from his grasp. He kept a strong grip, though, and the shriek became a tumbling torrent of hysterical laughter as he tickled across the smooth-skinned little valley, then up and down it again. Wrapping both hands around her foot, he buried eight fingertips in the arch, scratching slowly and steadily and hearing her wail like a lost soul behind him. Her other bare foot pushed at his back uselessly, trying to dislodge him, but her strength was completely gone, and it was scarcely even a distraction. Smiling wickedly, Kel dropped the foot he held, reached behind, and seized the other, giving it a ten-fingered tickle all over the sole.
The foot trembled in his grasp like a little animal, warm and soft and struggling to escape. Atai added to this impression, as she had virtually screamed herself hoarse already and could only make tiny trapped-animal squeaks and squeals, though when Kel glanced over his shoulder he could see that her face was frozen into the wide-eyed, wide-mouthed rictus of someone being tortured beyond endurance. For a second, he felt sorry for her....but then he scratched the ball of the foot, and she let out a hoarse scream of laughter and kicked so hard that she actually broke his grip. That moment of frenzy seemed to have drained her, though, for when he picked the foot up again, she didn’t even try to squirm. He raked his fingers down the flexing sole, and though every muscle in her body tensed, and her laughter echoed through the hut, her body only gave a little reflexive wiggle. Even when he lifted both feet into position and tickled across both soles, so that hysterical laughter shook her body with its force, her head still hung loosely. Once again, they were communicating without words, and what she was communicating now was simple: surrender.
Kel found himself responding. His hands on her feet became gentler, lighter, tracing the contours and finding tendernesses so that she sighed and gasped and caught her breath with pleasure amidst the tiny, breathless giggles his touch coaxed from her. Back up her legs he caressed, and higher up, tickling and teasing her nearly nude body delicately. Atai’s body and mind were equally limp and spent. Even if she had had the strength to struggle further, her will was gone and all she could do was submit to his attentions, shivering at the delicious feel of his fingers on her too-sensitive skin. Her world had shrunk to that touch, and despite her helplessness, exhaustion, and humiliation, she wanted it to go on forever.
Finally, Kel set her down, stood, and then began to untie the knots that held her. Freed, she spilled across the floor like the contents of an overturned jar. Her hair fell thickly around her shoulders and face, hiding her expression as she panted for breath. Slowly, she put the palms of her hands on the floor and lifted her head. Her hair fell back, and she looked up at Kel, her eyes wide and bright.
Of this story, there’s little more that needs to be told. Atai and Kel, later that night, proved conclusively to each other that they were both, indeed, human. While Kel never became a hunter, he won great respect among his tribe when he showed them what he had discovered -- and it was soon found out that many of The Humans were just as sensitive as Atai, to the pleasure of those who preferred to do the tickling. And one of Kel and Atai’s sons did become a hunter, who figured out a very interesting thing to do with the feathers of the birds he brought down...but that is another story.
i couldnt take if he would have touched my ribs
