Day 8 – Between Two Shores – Part 3
“Swim to the other shore,” Alex ordered.
Watching the massive home of a tree uproot itself in response to his words was still impressive the second time around. It had already been right next to the water, but it still took it about fifteen minutes to get deep enough into the water to be considered swimming. Alex stayed for that time, too interested in how a swimming tree would look. He also harboured some minor doubt that the tree could do it.
That doubt was dispelled swiftly. The Harem Tree of Life had a few tricks up its sleeve, one of which was trapping large bubbles of air underneath the trunk to give it a decent amount of floatation. More stability was provided by larger roots stretching out to the sides like rigid antennas. Even if the weight was unevenly tilting one way or another, those balancing rods and the flexible canopy provided all the equalizing force that was needed. A pair of flat-ish roots at the back paddled, keeping the whole floating base moving forward.
The tree was slow, slower even than it had been walking, but it was moving steadily forwards and that was all that mattered. Through the supernatural connection, Alex received the assurance of the tree that it could complete the journey by the end of the next day. He also received the distaste of the tree for being in saltwater for prolonged periods.
Although the tree was his property, it wouldn’t just take everything he wanted to do with it.
“Alrighty,” Charlotte spoke up. “Any of you ever done long-distance ocean swimming?”
“No,” Alex said.
“Nope,” Tess echoed.
“I’ve swam through a big mountain lake once,” Selana reported. “Don’t think that counts?”
“It does not.” Charlotte put a hand on her hip and raised a finger to wag at them. In her best stern teacher impression, the French tomboy continued. “Listen here, kiddos-”
“Kiddos?” Tess drily remarked.
“-Yes, kiddos! Now, I know none of you are hydrodynamically designed…” Charlotte took the moment to poke Tess and Selana’s boobs, then cupped Alex’s dangly bits. “...but you are lucky! In terms of ocean swimming, this should be a breeze. The water here is warm enough not to cool you down and not so hot that we’ll have to be worried about getting too warm. No strong winds or waves either. In other words, the only thing we have to worry about is the distance. We’ll be swimming slowly. If we get too exhausted, we’ll try to find a shallow spot to stand or we’ll just float for a bit, water should be salty enough for that to be easy.”
“We’ll follow your lead, swimming ace,” Alex assured her.
Charlotte gave him a confident, smug smirk. “As ya should!” she said, fox ears proudly perked. “Alrighty then, after your dear leaderess!”
Alex would have allocated around 6 hours to the distance on an average day. Granted, that was more because he was planning with potential pauses and a slow pace than the distance itself.
They made really good time in the first third of the journey. Charlotte started at a crawling pace for her standards. All of them were athletic, but Charlotte was all around built for swimming. Feeling under-challenged, all of them agreed to take it up a notch. The good breakfast and constant movement of the last couple of days were aiding them tremendously in tackling this challenge. This was also a chance to discover just how superhuman they had all become.
It would have been, anyway, had the second and last third of their journey not been made that much easier by a lucky break. Charlotte, by intuition, experience and keen observation, managed to locate a local current, created by the shape of the seafloor and the tides, that pushed them along to the other shore. They were mostly floating along, adding only to the speed when they felt like it.
For a long-distance swim, it was incredibly relaxing.
Alex soon felt the sand of the shore under his feet. They were still in the water, but, tall as he was, he could stand before everyone else. Exerting himself, he caught up swiftly to Charlotte, dived under her, and then grabbed her by the thighs.
The tomboy squawked in surprise, then laughed when she realized she was made to sit on his shoulders. “Ya surprised me!” she complained and got comfortable. “Man, you really are tall though!”
Alex tilted his head back to smirk at her. His shoulders were barely above the surface. “The height has to be good for some-” He started, then got hit in the face by a wave. Charlotte and Selana laughed at him for almost two minutes.
Carrying the swimmer on his shoulders, Alex rose from the water and stepped onto the beach proper. It was a sandy stretch of land. Hard grasses rose from the loose soil.
“There are those berry bushes again.” Tess pointed at bulbous pink-purple plants in the distance. “This shore is oddly similar to the one we landed at.”
“Urgh, please let that be a coincidence,” Selana complained. “I don’t feel like checking out the same landscapes over and over again… something the matter Alex?”
The man of the island hummed. “Just… a feeling, he told them. “There are new things to find here. I’m certain of that much.”
“Fantastic!” Selana exclaimed and grinned at the distance as if it was just another provider of challenges. “Do you want your cock sucked first or should we go?”
He loved that there was no sarcasm in that question.
“Cock sucking first,” Alex announced.
Selana dropped to her knees instantly. They were still in the early hours of the day and so the sand underneath them was of a pleasant temperature, certainly pleasant enough for the cow-horned woman to stay put there while her Master stepped up to her. “Want me to use these too?” she asked, cupping her fat tits.
“Absolutely.” The confirmation made Selana stretch up. She was a tall woman, so she had little difficulty getting her udders at the height of his crotch. The air was warm but her tits were just heat.
The tip of his cock was all that emerged from her deep cleavage and even that much only because Selana chose not to squeeze her tits together fully. Her tongue stretched out, circling his glans. “Shahlty,” she giggled. She was an image for a Master.
As superhuman as Alex had become over the past week, in many ways he was still just a man. Selana only had to wrap her lips around the head of his cock and suck for him to feel the approaching release. The three-hour break had been enough to reset him fully and his balls yearned for release.
The submissive noticed and moaned encouragingly. Shaking her fat tits rhythmically, she bobbed as much as she could. Granting him swift relief was her purpose as his sex slave.
Not even three minutes later, the squishy softness of her tits pushed him over the edge. Cum spurted into Selana’s ready mouth. Every tensing of his cock made her eyelids flutter, the orgasm his taste induced only growing more potent as the haremettes came to expect and crave it.
In the end, he was feeling way better and Selana needed help to get back on her feet. After another thirty seconds, she was back to walking normally.
“We go east,” he told everyone.
For a start, they followed the water. As the day went from noon to afternoon, walking along the beach would become inadvisable. For now, the gentle breezes from the ocean were enough to cool them and the sun was not yet so merciless that they required shade.
Similarly, the berries they saw further inland were not yet attractive to them. It had not been long enough since the hearty breakfast of fish and fruit that they were going to seek out the sweet snack. “Have to watch my figure, you know?” Charlotte joked when asked if she was hungry.
“I can practically hear Kiara applauding your commitment to your image,” Tess remarked.
“I just like to stay hydrodynamic,” Charlotte chirped. “You two were really lucky we got to float most of the way.”
“Honestly, I would have rather swam against the stream.” Selana took a big step over something black in the sand.
‘A mussel,’ Alex reckoned, based on the colour and stayed ahead of everyone. “Swimming against the ocean streams is a quick way to die of exhaustion.”
“Yeah, that’s the challenge,” the adrenaline junkie purred. “By the way, are we going to look for a horse or something?”
The sudden topic change had Alex confused for half a second. “Reckon that Blair misses hers?” he asked. “I thought she was dealing pretty well with not having hers, but she’s not the easiest to read.” Even though he was ahead of any reasonable curve, he did still have to learn a lot about all his haremettes. He would get some things wrong. It was best to listen when his women told him something about themselves and each other.
“I think she’s coping pretty well but she would be happier if she had a partner,” Selana said. “It’s not like me and my bikes. Don’t get me wrong, I really like some of them, but I used all of them expecting them to break one day. Caring for an animal has to be a different thing entirely.”
“She never spoke fondly of her horse, but it's Blaire,” Tess joined in.
“Ya never got her drunk, she did like the thing,” Charlotte reported her experience. “Don’t think it’s a priority for her, but it’s nice to be something you’re the best at in your group, ya know?”
Alex hummed. “Not like having a beast of burden around would be bad for us anyway… not sure if we can be so lucky though. Also, the tree would have to change so it can come along as well.” The man of the island rubbed his chin, lost in thought, then suddenly stopped. “I may have made a mistake.”
“Whaddaya mean?” Charlotte asked while he knelt down.
Very carefully, Alex scooped up some of the sand. He had spotted another bit of black in there and noticed how the sun reflected on its surface. Now that he was taking a closer look, he realized that he was not dealing with mussels at all. Pinching the piece of glistening black between his fingers, he raised it up. The thing was thin, partly translucent, and very sharp. “There’s glass in the sand.”
“Oh shit,” Selana cussed. Everyone stayed put and carefully inspected the ground around them. “What is that, obsidian?”
“Something like it,” Alex confirmed. “I don’t know a lot about the stuff, but this is definitely not normal glass.”
“Right, so we just track back?” Charlotte glanced at the way they came and added. “Probably no less dangerous after we scattered everything about with our footfalls.”
Alex nodded. The density of glass in the sand could not have been that high, but it only took one unlucky footfall to get a nasty cut that would make everything else harder. Few things were worse than a foot injury. It reduced mobility, was practically guaranteed to reopen during walking, and with the amount of dirt they walk on every day it also had a really high chance of infection.
“How do we proceed?” Tess asked.
Alex looked for that first shard that they had spotted and ignored. Measuring distances with his eyes was one of the things he was best at. “That’s 3 to 4 metres from where Charlotte is standing,” he muttered and shifted his weight from left to right. He raised his voice and asked. “What is your standing long jump record?”
The girls got the implication and turned their necks to each run their own estimations. “2 metres 30,” Tess reported.
“2 55,” Selana added.
“2 22,” Charlotte finished off. “You?”
“2 99,” Alex answered, to the collective groaning of the women. “Envious?”
“Yeah, yeah, just boast about being born with testosterone,” the swimmer of the group joked. “Anyway, I don’t think we can make that?”
“I think we can,” Alex disagreed. “Unless I am the only one who feels like he has gotten considerably stronger since we landed here?”
The question was met with universal ponder. Charlotte, being the tail end of the group, would have to jump first. Selana, Tess, and then Alex could step into the apparent safe spots where the others were and jump from there.
“I don’t think it's worth it,” Selana gave her opinion. “Too much of a risk. I may be an adrenaline junkie, but I don’t want to make the jump too short and drive some spike into my foot.”
“...You are right,” Alex agreed. He was certain enough that he could make the jump, but that was only a third of the equation. “Alright then. I’ll walk very carefully. Follow in my footsteps.”
Concentrating on the path ahead of him, Alex scanned for any bits of black he saw among the white sand. When he had things mapped out to a satisfying degree, he took a half step forward onto a spot where the sand looked most secure. The grains crunched under his weight but remained mostly put. He tried to keep it that way when he took his next step. As long as he did not disturb the sand behind him too much, that same ground would remain safe for his women.
Alex relied on his eyes and intuition. Both served him well. After less than five minutes, they were out of the dangerous area and could walk normally again. “Seriously though, why was there glass?” Charlotte wanted to know.
“I think we have come to the conclusion that these islands have details that do not make a lick of sense,” Tess said.
Selana crossed her arms. “Yes but actually no? There’s some supernatural sense to these things usually, right? We don’t understand most of the motivations yet, but we’re fairly certain that there’s parties interested in us thriving and something that’s keeping us from having children, yeah?”
“Mhm… I surrender the point,” the angelic goth said with a boob-bouncing shrug.