The trail wasn’t smooth.
It was jagged…
… around more.
Raised bumps lurking beneath the surface. A lattice, dozens of them lying flush and uniform. Following the natural lines of tendons and bone. Arranged in a perfect geometry too neat to be the result of chaotic fucking.
A whisper escaped her lips, and with a breathy, repeated, “No, no,nooo,” she began to scrub anew. Fists full of sand, scouring her own skin, she scrubbed. Efforts redoubled, fueled by panic and denial, until she was chafed and raw from the elbows down. Rubbing hard enough to leave ribbons of red etched into her skin.
It didn’t work.
Because the scales weren’t foreign bodies embedded by vigorous rutting.
They weren’t morbid souvenirs won beneath the pummelling weight of a demi-god.
They were hers.
A tight, spiraling pattern scrawled across the backs of her fingers, curled over the ridge of her wrist. Trailing in a shimmering arc from elbow to bicep and beyond. Tiny,translucent plates—each shining with the shades of a stunning sunrise—speckled her body.
Itching were they promised to break through into the light.
The more she scrubbed, the more obvious they became. Shining against the reddened, angry shade of flushed skin.
A pattern.
Hers.
Screaming, giving life to the panic bubbling in her chest, Kore scrambled back from the poisonous lure of cool waters and quiet, lapping waves. Breath choppy. Belly distended and sloshing, her balance betrayed her, sending her crashing into the beach.
The sun caught the glimmer of emerging scales and forced her to look.
Below the surface, more color. Tiny speckles curled around her nipples, delicate fans spiraling across her sternum in dainty patterns. Ridges of skin glossed with pressure pressing up from below.
Her fingers brushed lower, then. Tracing the swell of her enormous belly. Where she’d been inflated and marked.
More scales. Bigger ones, making the skin of her outer hips rough. Textured. A clear trail she couldn’t help but follow.
Cautious, her fingers wandered in. Tracing the curve of her thigh, she touched what had once been given in service to the divine. The skin there had always been soft. Sacred. A place marked for the gods and priests who served them.
Now?
She moaned, and it was a fragile, terrified thing.
What she found was tight.
Slick.
And the soft brush of downy hair?
It sloughed off in clumps that clung to her fingers, in its place… something sharp.
Smooth and hard.
Tiny ridges where there should have been nothing but the divine feminine.
A sob chattered through her teeth.
She shouldn’t have touched herself.
