Excerpt: Misplaced Maiden

It was most likely the swaying motion that first brought Thrud crawling toward consciousness again. Her wrists and ankles hurt, and there was a strange, unnerving emptiness below her body. She simply seemed to sway with the rhythm of...walking?

She also became aware of voices speaking in a rough and guttural tone. It was so rough, in fact, that at first she couldn't understand a word they were saying, which only made her that much more uneasy. Okay, so it made her frightened, but then, who wouldn't be frightened when they had been attacked and knocked out, then woke up...with their hands and feet tied to a long pole like an animal being retrieved from a hunt, she suddenly realized.

That really made the adrenaline soar through her system, and she struggled to keep her breathing controlled. She didn't want her captors - whoever they were - to know she'd woken up just yet.

"Why'd we have to get this one?" she heard one of them say, slowly translating the Jotun inflection as she forced herself to calm, "This one isn't nearly as busty as that other one we saw."

"You and your fixation," another voice said, "we had to get this one cause this is the one Surt wants. Said she's worth more than the others, although you're right, obviously not for the chest."

Thrud frowned, then hoped the change of expression wasn't obvious when she realized she was doing it. She liked her chest just fine, thank you, and it wasn't as though she didn't fill out her dresses! Just because she didn't have breasts bigger than her head, like some of the Van girls... and some of the Valkyrie... Well anyway just because she was proportional! Men are such pigs, she thought to herself.