Chapter 2 Bigail

PRINCE VAUGHN

"Don't come!"

"What?" I ask my girlfriend.

"Don't bloody come," she repeats herself.

There she goes again. Don't come? Don't bloody come? It's almost as if sex is her food. We're both naked in the bathroom and she's bent over the bathtub, holding on tightly to its brim as I stand behind her pumping away. We've been at this doggie thing for an hour plus now. But Bigail, my fox girlfriend, is asking me not to come.

"I'm cooommmmming!"

"Fck you, Vaughn," she says.

But I go ahead anyway. I quickly withdraw my unnaturally long blubber from her pu*sy and direct it towards the bathroom tiles, watching with heightened pleasure as a fat load of cream bursts forth from me, as if an angry teenager has squashed out toothpaste from a toothpaste tube.

Exhausted, I drop into the water in the bathtub and Bigail stands erect with her hands on her waist, watching with utter displeasure as I take laboured breaths beneath her in the tub. "Is it work stress?" she finally asks, her nip.ples pointing down at me, as if accusing me. "You usually aren't this weak."

"Weak?" It's funny. Of all the adjectives available to describe me. Weak? I'm a powerful fox with powerful arms and ripped abs, six foot eight tall, as athletic as they come. I am not "weak". It's just that Bigail's monstrosity during sex is simply scary. She shakes her head and steps into the bathtub too, sitting gently between my thighs in the water and resting her back on my chest, so that the back of her head is now on my shoulder.

"So," she says, running her fingers on the surface of the water as if playing on a piano. "You won't be visiting the field today, right?"

My continued silence answers her question. I'll be visiting the field.

She sits up, turns her neck around and stares at me. "You promised you won't be there. You said today is meant for us both."

"A construction complication came up," I explain.

"A construction complication always comes up!" Bigail slaps the water surface, creating a little splash. "It's why you've got slaves and taskmasters and fox engineers. They're there to handle construction complications. Not you."

"You didn't have to repeat construction complications that much though," I say, massaging her redhead to calm her down. She rests her head once again on my shoulder. "It's okay, baby," I whisper in her ear. "Today will still be for us. I only need to check the workers. In less than thirty minutes, I'm back here at the palace to you."

We are building a wall around our nine mountains.

It's the most grandiose wall the world will ever see. It will go round and round and will shield us from our prime enemies. The werewolves.

The werewolves are our existential threat, and I won't rest until that wall, which we've been building for over a year now, is complete. Currently the wolves give birth in large numbers like fowls, an obvious strategy to someday conquer our realm. Their teeming population keeps shifting the frontiers of their territory, threatening year by year to encroach into ours.

But that won't happen on my watch.

My name is Prince Vaughn Dal Saar, son of the Fox Queen Saar, heir to the throne of the spirit fox mountains.

I kiss Bigail on her slim neck and grab a soapy sponge, beginning to bathe us both, starting from her shoulders to the base of her breasts. When we're done, we towel our bodies and I ogle at her long hair falling over her shoulders like wet grass. Her best features are her legs, which currently stick out from her towel like they belong to the greek goddess Venus. We step out of the bathroom into my royal crib that is as spacious as half the size of a battle arena.

It has chandeliers, wardrobes and doorknobs made of gold. Bigail, with her towel still tied around her chest downwards, falls like a log on the king-size bed while I slip into my royal attire, preparing to step out.

"Don't be long," she says, her face pressed on a pillow.

"You have my word," I say and punch my left chest to assure her. Two fox guards as huge as palm trees suddenly walk towards me like toy soldiers. The flank me and stand at attention. Then I swagger out of the room, with them following closely behind.

The sun outside is preternaturally bright.

It burns my eyelashes until one of the soldiers brings out an umbrella and flaps it open above my head.

I can see the worksite in the distance, with the workers still as small as ants. I wonder what it would mean being a slave working under this scorching temperature. Yet when I reconsider that the slaves aren't actually foxes but are witches and elves and ogres and neanderthals, I am fine.

Perfectly fine.

People say we are savages. Our gut is annoying. But it's funny because we foxes are realists, one of the few species in the universe who have accepted that life is brutal, and only the cunniest survive.

We go to war, capture these lowlives and bring them back as spoils.

Few metres away from the worksite, my presence gets noticed. Foxes start to shout and chant my name. Prince Vaughn, Prince Vaughn. My head swells. I raise my right hand and begin to wave.

I practically have to do nothing on the field actually. My presence simply inspires bravery and loyalty. I just stroll around and fox taskmasters and engineers, and even the slaves, all get the adrenaline rush. And perhaps if I decide to be naughty, to practically murder someone with excitement, I just approach and touch the person. One fox once shouted from a scaffolding that he hasn't washed his right hand ever since I last shook him.

Then the excitement dies down and everyone resumes working.

I'm offered a royal seat under a short tree, and I know I'll be here for only a while before returning to Bigail.

In few minutes, pandemonium arises several feet away from me.

An old witch, who is wielding a hammer, falls to the ground from exhaustion. Nobody wants to attend to her, not even her fellow slaves. Then a girl with long, brown disheveled hair approaches the witch to help her up, offering her a pouch of water to drink from. I know that girl.

She's a werewolf.

There are thousands of slaves in the fox realm. Yet among them, she's the only werewolf.

How lonely that must feel.

Our paths once crossed around the palace, when I was walking along its monstrously wide corridor and noticed how dirty she was, like someone who hadn't bathed in decades. It was nauseating, to say the least. After she had passed, I called upon a house mistress, asking her to come over. "Go wash that girl up."

"My prince," the mistress said. "The girl is a slave."

"Look around you," I replied "Where are we?"

"The palace, sir."

"Good. Now slaves in the palace shouldn't look that way. The girl deserves some dignity. Go wash her up right now."

"Your highness." The mistress bowed and left.

Now I admire her bravery on the field. No slave would help their fellow slave up in the presence of a taskmaster.

The taskmaster, a bulky fox, is obviously displeased. He orders the girl to stand, and he brings out his whip. He tries to strike the old witch first, but the girl steps in-between them, receiving the lash instead.

Her scream pierces my eardrums, even if she isn't that close. I stand from my seat under the tree and ask the taskmaster to stop.

Then I approach the girl and ask her to stand up.

But she just lies there crying, her body arched over the witch as if protecting her.

"I said stand," I repeat myself. The taskmaster is about going to force he up when I hold up my hand, motioning for him stop

The girl stands up on her own and looks at me.

Just like the last time, I see it. The bloody beauty beneath all those dirt.

Her eyes are grass-green, too unnatural, too piercing when she stares at you. And her hair is brown. Shoulders are angular from her daily labour. In my four hundred years as a fox, I have never seen anyone, neither fox nor pixie or wolf or human, as pretty as she is.

But she's a slave. A werewolf too. A girl from the clan of our number one enemies. It's a miracle she's survived this long.

And certainly there'll surely be foxes currently plotting to take her out.

I know this.