Sablesword
TMF Master
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2001
- Messages
- 806
- Points
- 18
Otholl laughed. He couldn’t keep from laughing as his soles received a wet scrubbing from Peltenne. It tickled! Just as it always did.
He wasn’t in the usual stocks, however. He wasn’t under the spreading tree where the centaurs normally tickled human visitors to their Land. He was in a stable belonging to the family of Peltenne Reedarms, helping the centauress practice her tickle-skills. Lais Darkhoof stood next to her, having come to act as a tutor, although she hadn’t said anything yet.
Instead of sitting in a set of stocks, he was belted in place on a wooden bench, looking down at the stable floor. To either side, his arms were strapped to a cross-piece. His bent knees raised his bare feet, and his ankles and big toes were secured to a curving iron bracket. Otholl could squirm, but not by much, and both the dark-skinned tops of his feet and his pale soles were completely exposed and vulnerable.
Otholl kept laughing as the preliminary scrubbing of his soles continued. He knew that Peltenne wasn’t drawing it out; it just felt like she was.
This wasn’t the first time Otholl had agreed to help Peltenne practice her tickle-skills. They were friends, the well-muscled human from Mag’lle in the sunburnt South and the centauress who still looked coltishly gawky despite being well into her twenties. They traded favors, and this was one of them. Besides, Otholl could almost admit to enjoying these practice tickles, something he’d never do when it came to the merciless tickling called for by the Prophesy.
The scrubbing stopped. Otholl took a deep breath and waited for either Peltenne or Lais to tell him that it hadn’t been a real tickle, but only a cleansing before the real tickling began.
Instead Lais said, “It’s traditional to chide your flatfooter friend about the initial scrub. We’ll skip that today, however. Instead, before you put the brush down, I want you to try some of the tickling scrub-strokes we talked about earlier.”
Lais would sometimes show up as a tutor for these practice sessions and sometimes not. She was an older, matronly centauress who knew the tickle-secrets of human feet in general and of Otholl’s feet in particular. Today she had shown up, and was passing on those tickle-secrets to Peltenne.
Otholl could both hear and feel the brush pause brush pause on his side-by-side soles. He squeaked and giggled at each brush. Each of those strokes tickled, and most of them tickled more than the initial scrub did. Peltenne was practicing, and she was learning. Her stiff-bristled tickle strokes worked up from Otholl’s heels to his toes and back down again. And each stroke tickled.
“This is strictly a sole-tickle, isn’t it?” Peltenne asked as she continued to apply the brush-pause brush-pause.
“That’s right,” Lais said. “This is too stiff for the tops, or for most skin for that matter.”
Otholl imagined Lais nodding as she spoke. He couldn’t see her, given how he was strapped down. After the final tickling brush stroke he heard her go on. “You should practice this technique again later; you won’t need me to look over your shoulder as you polish it. Let’s see now what you can do with a vos-hawk feather. No, just one feather; one in each hand is something to show me later.”
“All right,” Peltenne said. Then, “Tickle tickle Otholl!”
Otholl felt the feather touch the tops of his feet, running in a line across them, just above his toes. Back and forth it went, lightly teasing as it traced its path. Then the feather-tip moved to his soles and spiraled. Every inch it touched was a tease, making him squirm and making him laugh.
He felt the tickling feather run across the insides of his toes, and then up and down each sole in turn. Again and again. “Tickle tickle Otholl!” Peltenne said again. “Tickle tickle tickle!”
“Heehee hahahaha!” Otholl answered
Most centaurs considered the wing feathers of the vos hawk to be the best ones for tickling. Peltenne did. Lais did. And Otholl was in no position to deny it as he felt the tickling feather-tip seek out the secrets of his tickle spots.
The feathering moved back to the tops of Otholl’s feet. He felt the light touch move across his toes, and then back and forth, and up and down his dark skin there, keeping him laughing and squirming. He struggled hard but he could not struggle effectively. The centaurs had long experience in keeping humans secured for the tickle. But he had to struggle. Just as he had to laugh.
Otholl heard Lais say something, but he was laughing too hard to make out the words. Then he felt fingers join the vos hawk feather. Peltenne’s fingers, applying their own style of tickle to Otholl soles, while the feather continued to touch and stroke to tops of his feet.
Peltenne’s tickle-touch still lacked the elegance and subtlety of an expert, to say nothing of a grand-mistress like Lais, but she wasn’t a novice, either. She could tickle, and her technique tickled more than it had in her previous practice sessions. On top of that, she did have a knack for drawing things out, for repeated touches and strokes that kept tickling. And once Otholl stopped laughing, he could admit, if only to himself, that he preferred this competent tickle to her earlier inept ones.
The vos hawk feather continued to brush and tease the tops of Otholl’s feet, with occasional forays of the feather tip over his soles. Peltenne’s dancing fingers played over those soles, from toes to arches to heels and back again. Otholl felt those fingertips make occasional excursions to the tops of his feet, while spending most of their time lingering on his tickle-sensitive spots on his soles. “Tickle tickle, Otholl!” she’d say occasionally as she kept the tickles coming and coming and coming.
On and on the feather and the fingers danced over Otholl’s feet: Soles and tops, toes and arches. Over and over again, sometime repeating a pattern exactly and sometimes with a variation of the previous tease. Otholl laughed and squirmed and squirmed and laughed as Peltenne kept tickling and tickling and tickling his feet. He was helpless; he could do nothing but laugh and squirm helplessly. And it was good, this practice-tickle. Oh yes, it was good.
The tickles paused, and Otholl heard Lais instructing Peltenne, pointing out certain particularly ticklish spots. Ticklish spots on his soles. “And sometimes,” Lais said at the end, “it actually helps when our flat-footer friend knows what’s coming. Now let’s see what you can do.”
“Tickle tickle tickle!” Peltenne said, and Otholl felt the fingers of both her hands launch their friendly attack on his vulnerable soles. Those fingers touched and teased and tickled, seeking out those sensitive tickle-spots that Lais had just described. Tickle-places on his toes and between them, on his arches and along the sides where his soles met the tops of his feet. Tickle-places here and there; tickle-places that Otholl hadn’t known were ticklish. And Peltenne kept up tickling, exploiting her gift for drawing things out, for making Otholl squirm and squirm and squirm, and laugh and laugh and laugh, and then making him squirm and laugh even more.
It wasn’t, quite, an unceasing tickle. Peltenne’s fingers would occasionally pause, with Lais dropping a few words of advice and Otholl catching his breath. Then he would feel those fingers return to his feet. His bare and helpless feet. His vulnerable and sensitive feet, exposed to the centauress-tickle. A tickle that now felt like it was soaking into his soles and down his legs.
A longer pause, as Lais declared the finger-tickling to be at an end. Otholl realized that he could ask for the whole session to end. He could. This was a practice session for Peltenne, not the merciless tickle demanded by the Prophecy. But if he did, he would never find out what Lais had planned for Peltenne to practice next. And he wasn’t ready for this tickling to end. Not yet. Not quite yet. He was still having fun.
Not that he would ever admit it. There were humans in the centaur Land who openly admitted to enjoying the regular tickling they received here. But Otholl wasn’t that crazy. Or at least not yet. So he took a swallow from the dipper of water Lais offered him, and waited to see – or rather feel – what Peltenne would do to his helpless feet next.
When Otholl felt the drop of herbed oil being rubbed into his feet, he knew. Even before he heard Lais say, “No, you need to shift your grip on that bullfeather.”
A bullfeather wasn’t actually a feather. It was a leather tickle-implement that was only vaguely shaped like a feather. It required skill, and it rewarded skill. Otholl knew, from repeated personal experience, that Lais could make it tickle even more effectively than a vos hawk feather.
Peltenne was still struggling to master the implement. In past practice-sessions, she’d sometimes made it tickle almost as well as a feather or her fingers, and sometimes she failed to produce more than a mild tease. Now Otholl was about to find out if Peltenne had learned anything from their last session.
Otholl felt the leather touch of the bullfeather, stroking along the tops of his feet and then across his soles. It was just oxhide, just a slight tease as it traced its path. Back beyond his feet, behind Peltenne, Otholl heard Lais make a noise in her throat.
“Like this?” Peltenne asked.
Otholl burst into laughter, unable to control himself. Peltenne had changed something and now the bullfeather tickled. It tickled enormously, in great waves from all the places it touched on his soles.
“Yes, like that,” Lais said, somewhere in the distance.
Otholl’s attention was closer, on his feet and on the tickling of his feet. He felt Peltenne run the bullfeather across his toes, both the tops and underneath. He felt the tickle implement run in circles around the tops and soles, and along the edges where the tops of his feet met his soles. He felt the great and irresistible tickle on his arches and on the balls and heels of his feet.
Otholl laughed. He couldn’t keep from laughing. He squirmed, but the straps kept his squirms to a slight wiggle. And his feet – his feet were helpless. Bare naked and open to Peltenne and her tickling bullfeather. And now that she had found the way, she could keep the tickles coming. She could use her gift for extending a tickle just as well with the bullfeather as she could with her fingers or with the feather of the vos hawk.
“Tickle tickle tickle!” Peltenne would say every so often. “Tickle tickle tickle, Otholl!”
“Hahahahahahaha!” Otholl would answer. “Hahahahahee!”
And still the tickles kept coming. Otholl knew that Peltenne would keep them coming for as long as she could. He could imagine Lais nodding in approval as she kept the tickles coming. As she applied them to his feet. All over his feet. With the bullfeather!
Otholl was laughing so hard now that he was beginning to weep. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything but his own laugher. He couldn’t feel anything but the tickling of his feet. His bare feet that now felt huge – as if they were as big as the rest of his body. Feet that were as helpless as they ever were, and that now had huge tickle-places all over them. Places that Peltenne kept tickling. Otholl felt her tickling them everywhere. And there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing he wanted to do about it. He was tickle-drunk now; he didn’t want Peltenne to stop.
When the tickling did finally stop, it took some time for Otholl to realize it. He found himself sitting on the stable floor, without any memory of being released from the bench. He made little wheezing noises, feeling as limp as a cooked and wilted grape leaf. He tried to stand up. On his second try he succeeded – but only after accepting a drink from the water-dipper and putting his sandals back on.
Otholl looked at Peltenne. Still tickle-drunk, he wondered how her skinny arms had managed to tickle with such endurance. He was able, barely, to stop himself from asking the question aloud.
“We have an appointment with a crater of wine and a platter of bread and cheese,” Peltenne told Otholl. “Well-watered wine, for you,” she added as she moved next to him, letting him drape an arm over her back and lean against her.
“And you need to practice again with the bullfeather tomorrow,” Lais told Peltenne. “Find another flat-footer friend for that; tomorrow’s too soon to impose on Otholl again.”
“No it’s not,” Otholl said.
Peltenne just looked at him. Lais shook her head. “That’s your tickle-drunk talking, Otholl of Mag’lle, and you’re a fool if you insist otherwise. Tomorrow’s too soon for you to volunteer again.”
Otholl grinned. “No it’s not,” he repeated.
(end)
He wasn’t in the usual stocks, however. He wasn’t under the spreading tree where the centaurs normally tickled human visitors to their Land. He was in a stable belonging to the family of Peltenne Reedarms, helping the centauress practice her tickle-skills. Lais Darkhoof stood next to her, having come to act as a tutor, although she hadn’t said anything yet.
Instead of sitting in a set of stocks, he was belted in place on a wooden bench, looking down at the stable floor. To either side, his arms were strapped to a cross-piece. His bent knees raised his bare feet, and his ankles and big toes were secured to a curving iron bracket. Otholl could squirm, but not by much, and both the dark-skinned tops of his feet and his pale soles were completely exposed and vulnerable.
Otholl kept laughing as the preliminary scrubbing of his soles continued. He knew that Peltenne wasn’t drawing it out; it just felt like she was.
This wasn’t the first time Otholl had agreed to help Peltenne practice her tickle-skills. They were friends, the well-muscled human from Mag’lle in the sunburnt South and the centauress who still looked coltishly gawky despite being well into her twenties. They traded favors, and this was one of them. Besides, Otholl could almost admit to enjoying these practice tickles, something he’d never do when it came to the merciless tickling called for by the Prophesy.
The scrubbing stopped. Otholl took a deep breath and waited for either Peltenne or Lais to tell him that it hadn’t been a real tickle, but only a cleansing before the real tickling began.
Instead Lais said, “It’s traditional to chide your flatfooter friend about the initial scrub. We’ll skip that today, however. Instead, before you put the brush down, I want you to try some of the tickling scrub-strokes we talked about earlier.”
Lais would sometimes show up as a tutor for these practice sessions and sometimes not. She was an older, matronly centauress who knew the tickle-secrets of human feet in general and of Otholl’s feet in particular. Today she had shown up, and was passing on those tickle-secrets to Peltenne.
Otholl could both hear and feel the brush pause brush pause on his side-by-side soles. He squeaked and giggled at each brush. Each of those strokes tickled, and most of them tickled more than the initial scrub did. Peltenne was practicing, and she was learning. Her stiff-bristled tickle strokes worked up from Otholl’s heels to his toes and back down again. And each stroke tickled.
“This is strictly a sole-tickle, isn’t it?” Peltenne asked as she continued to apply the brush-pause brush-pause.
“That’s right,” Lais said. “This is too stiff for the tops, or for most skin for that matter.”
Otholl imagined Lais nodding as she spoke. He couldn’t see her, given how he was strapped down. After the final tickling brush stroke he heard her go on. “You should practice this technique again later; you won’t need me to look over your shoulder as you polish it. Let’s see now what you can do with a vos-hawk feather. No, just one feather; one in each hand is something to show me later.”
“All right,” Peltenne said. Then, “Tickle tickle Otholl!”
Otholl felt the feather touch the tops of his feet, running in a line across them, just above his toes. Back and forth it went, lightly teasing as it traced its path. Then the feather-tip moved to his soles and spiraled. Every inch it touched was a tease, making him squirm and making him laugh.
He felt the tickling feather run across the insides of his toes, and then up and down each sole in turn. Again and again. “Tickle tickle Otholl!” Peltenne said again. “Tickle tickle tickle!”
“Heehee hahahaha!” Otholl answered
Most centaurs considered the wing feathers of the vos hawk to be the best ones for tickling. Peltenne did. Lais did. And Otholl was in no position to deny it as he felt the tickling feather-tip seek out the secrets of his tickle spots.
The feathering moved back to the tops of Otholl’s feet. He felt the light touch move across his toes, and then back and forth, and up and down his dark skin there, keeping him laughing and squirming. He struggled hard but he could not struggle effectively. The centaurs had long experience in keeping humans secured for the tickle. But he had to struggle. Just as he had to laugh.
Otholl heard Lais say something, but he was laughing too hard to make out the words. Then he felt fingers join the vos hawk feather. Peltenne’s fingers, applying their own style of tickle to Otholl soles, while the feather continued to touch and stroke to tops of his feet.
Peltenne’s tickle-touch still lacked the elegance and subtlety of an expert, to say nothing of a grand-mistress like Lais, but she wasn’t a novice, either. She could tickle, and her technique tickled more than it had in her previous practice sessions. On top of that, she did have a knack for drawing things out, for repeated touches and strokes that kept tickling. And once Otholl stopped laughing, he could admit, if only to himself, that he preferred this competent tickle to her earlier inept ones.
The vos hawk feather continued to brush and tease the tops of Otholl’s feet, with occasional forays of the feather tip over his soles. Peltenne’s dancing fingers played over those soles, from toes to arches to heels and back again. Otholl felt those fingertips make occasional excursions to the tops of his feet, while spending most of their time lingering on his tickle-sensitive spots on his soles. “Tickle tickle, Otholl!” she’d say occasionally as she kept the tickles coming and coming and coming.
On and on the feather and the fingers danced over Otholl’s feet: Soles and tops, toes and arches. Over and over again, sometime repeating a pattern exactly and sometimes with a variation of the previous tease. Otholl laughed and squirmed and squirmed and laughed as Peltenne kept tickling and tickling and tickling his feet. He was helpless; he could do nothing but laugh and squirm helplessly. And it was good, this practice-tickle. Oh yes, it was good.
The tickles paused, and Otholl heard Lais instructing Peltenne, pointing out certain particularly ticklish spots. Ticklish spots on his soles. “And sometimes,” Lais said at the end, “it actually helps when our flat-footer friend knows what’s coming. Now let’s see what you can do.”
“Tickle tickle tickle!” Peltenne said, and Otholl felt the fingers of both her hands launch their friendly attack on his vulnerable soles. Those fingers touched and teased and tickled, seeking out those sensitive tickle-spots that Lais had just described. Tickle-places on his toes and between them, on his arches and along the sides where his soles met the tops of his feet. Tickle-places here and there; tickle-places that Otholl hadn’t known were ticklish. And Peltenne kept up tickling, exploiting her gift for drawing things out, for making Otholl squirm and squirm and squirm, and laugh and laugh and laugh, and then making him squirm and laugh even more.
It wasn’t, quite, an unceasing tickle. Peltenne’s fingers would occasionally pause, with Lais dropping a few words of advice and Otholl catching his breath. Then he would feel those fingers return to his feet. His bare and helpless feet. His vulnerable and sensitive feet, exposed to the centauress-tickle. A tickle that now felt like it was soaking into his soles and down his legs.
A longer pause, as Lais declared the finger-tickling to be at an end. Otholl realized that he could ask for the whole session to end. He could. This was a practice session for Peltenne, not the merciless tickle demanded by the Prophecy. But if he did, he would never find out what Lais had planned for Peltenne to practice next. And he wasn’t ready for this tickling to end. Not yet. Not quite yet. He was still having fun.
Not that he would ever admit it. There were humans in the centaur Land who openly admitted to enjoying the regular tickling they received here. But Otholl wasn’t that crazy. Or at least not yet. So he took a swallow from the dipper of water Lais offered him, and waited to see – or rather feel – what Peltenne would do to his helpless feet next.
When Otholl felt the drop of herbed oil being rubbed into his feet, he knew. Even before he heard Lais say, “No, you need to shift your grip on that bullfeather.”
A bullfeather wasn’t actually a feather. It was a leather tickle-implement that was only vaguely shaped like a feather. It required skill, and it rewarded skill. Otholl knew, from repeated personal experience, that Lais could make it tickle even more effectively than a vos hawk feather.
Peltenne was still struggling to master the implement. In past practice-sessions, she’d sometimes made it tickle almost as well as a feather or her fingers, and sometimes she failed to produce more than a mild tease. Now Otholl was about to find out if Peltenne had learned anything from their last session.
Otholl felt the leather touch of the bullfeather, stroking along the tops of his feet and then across his soles. It was just oxhide, just a slight tease as it traced its path. Back beyond his feet, behind Peltenne, Otholl heard Lais make a noise in her throat.
“Like this?” Peltenne asked.
Otholl burst into laughter, unable to control himself. Peltenne had changed something and now the bullfeather tickled. It tickled enormously, in great waves from all the places it touched on his soles.
“Yes, like that,” Lais said, somewhere in the distance.
Otholl’s attention was closer, on his feet and on the tickling of his feet. He felt Peltenne run the bullfeather across his toes, both the tops and underneath. He felt the tickle implement run in circles around the tops and soles, and along the edges where the tops of his feet met his soles. He felt the great and irresistible tickle on his arches and on the balls and heels of his feet.
Otholl laughed. He couldn’t keep from laughing. He squirmed, but the straps kept his squirms to a slight wiggle. And his feet – his feet were helpless. Bare naked and open to Peltenne and her tickling bullfeather. And now that she had found the way, she could keep the tickles coming. She could use her gift for extending a tickle just as well with the bullfeather as she could with her fingers or with the feather of the vos hawk.
“Tickle tickle tickle!” Peltenne would say every so often. “Tickle tickle tickle, Otholl!”
“Hahahahahahaha!” Otholl would answer. “Hahahahahee!”
And still the tickles kept coming. Otholl knew that Peltenne would keep them coming for as long as she could. He could imagine Lais nodding in approval as she kept the tickles coming. As she applied them to his feet. All over his feet. With the bullfeather!
Otholl was laughing so hard now that he was beginning to weep. He couldn’t see anything. He couldn’t hear anything but his own laugher. He couldn’t feel anything but the tickling of his feet. His bare feet that now felt huge – as if they were as big as the rest of his body. Feet that were as helpless as they ever were, and that now had huge tickle-places all over them. Places that Peltenne kept tickling. Otholl felt her tickling them everywhere. And there was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing he wanted to do about it. He was tickle-drunk now; he didn’t want Peltenne to stop.
When the tickling did finally stop, it took some time for Otholl to realize it. He found himself sitting on the stable floor, without any memory of being released from the bench. He made little wheezing noises, feeling as limp as a cooked and wilted grape leaf. He tried to stand up. On his second try he succeeded – but only after accepting a drink from the water-dipper and putting his sandals back on.
Otholl looked at Peltenne. Still tickle-drunk, he wondered how her skinny arms had managed to tickle with such endurance. He was able, barely, to stop himself from asking the question aloud.
“We have an appointment with a crater of wine and a platter of bread and cheese,” Peltenne told Otholl. “Well-watered wine, for you,” she added as she moved next to him, letting him drape an arm over her back and lean against her.
“And you need to practice again with the bullfeather tomorrow,” Lais told Peltenne. “Find another flat-footer friend for that; tomorrow’s too soon to impose on Otholl again.”
“No it’s not,” Otholl said.
Peltenne just looked at him. Lais shook her head. “That’s your tickle-drunk talking, Otholl of Mag’lle, and you’re a fool if you insist otherwise. Tomorrow’s too soon for you to volunteer again.”
Otholl grinned. “No it’s not,” he repeated.
(end)
