To understand the Gai Shift & to review the characters in this story, check out this useful guide: Gai-Shift Encyclopedia of Knowledge
At the mouth of the Mighty Thames where it flows past great mudflats on its final rush to the sea, there lies a small cottage well up in the dunes, its flagpole rattling in the ever-present breeze. It is small and tidy, its exterior wall lined with recovered gear and looped with rope, all pulled from the nearby shore.
She steps out into the early morning breeze, tall and shapely, her bronze skin darker that the frizzy chestnut hair that curls about her round expressive face. Eyes wide and sharp, centered on a button-like, sun-freckled nose, look over the long sands. Her body, slender and modestly shapely, is garbed in a coarse blouse and rough shirt, the latter hitched up to expose her slender shins and mud-hennaed feet.
She looks up and down the shoreline, noting the yellow signal flags flying from the poles her distant fellow beachcombers. After running up her own yellow flag claiming her agreed-upon section of beach, she strolls out across the sands, her footprints long and sensuous behind her. Her eyes track the empty wastes, looking for what fate might have brought her. Often it is gear or cargo lost overboard, things she can patch and sell. Sometimes she finds long loops of cordage, easy to clean and sell to woman of more modest means since everyone in this shifted world needs rope. While not as white and soft as that which ladies of distinction might employ (or command their maids to employ), it is fit and durable for binding up a troublesome neighbor or a wayward daughter (or perhaps a mother who seeks to prevent waywardness).
But sometimes she finds true treasure. Sometimes women are thrown off passing ships, lashed up in floats and ropes, sometimes marked with a strobe. It seems that relationships so new and precious are often tested in the confines of a stateroom. Usually, great liners such as the Lola Montez will shed two or three women before they make the channel. For inbound vessels, it will often be a gambler who has angered fellow passengers, a stowaway, or perhaps a woman lacking a passport. They all wash up here where the beachcombers wait.
What a delight it is to find a rope locked shape laying in the tidal flats, muddy and wave-worn and disorientated. Hannah will stroll over and plant her long muddy feet to either side of her salvage, hunching down to tenderly move a lock of salt-curled hair from the frightened face. "It's all right," she'll coo. "You're safe now." And whether this is a lie, it depends...
She won't remove the bindings from her salvage, not yet of course. Salvage needs to be carefully treated lest it fights back or runs. No, she'll loop a strong finger through a coil and lead the confused possession up the sands, up to her quaint little cottage amongst the dunes. There she'll work the salvage's hands around to her front then hook them to the flagpole line. Her ankles will be secured to a ring at its base. The original bindings will be untied or cut away, down will go the yellow flag, up the arms, leaving the salvage taunt in the breeze, open to Hannah's inspection.
She'll remove whatever jewels and valuables she finds, legally hers now, of course. Once she recovered a carbon-aligned diamond in a nice setting. The ruined clothing will be cut away. With the salvage watching fearfully, arms still locked over her head, Hannah will work the old pump, spraying cold water across the trembling womanflesh, jetting away the sand and mud. The beachcomber always delights in this, listening to their shocked cries, watching their locked-aloft fingers claw and grope, watching their bodies sway and grind in desperation, the jingle of the ankle ring so very jolly. After the pumping, Hannah will slowly walk around her possession, looking at this thing now owned by her, touching this, stroking that, enjoying the serenity of the moment. If the salvage claims its rights, Hannah will recount maritime law, chapter and verse. "You're owned by me and I can sell you or keep you, whatever I decide." Usually this comes with a gentle pat on the cheek. That always makes them blink in confusion. Once they are off-balance, she'll untie their ankles, drop their wrists, take hold of their hands, and drag then inside.
There is a chair she found, a heavy old saloon chair perfect for her needs. It can easily hold a woman bound fast to its seat, her arms locked behind her, her feet cocked up to the back braces, thighs wide. Likely it was manufactured with just this in mind; the anchor-points are perfect. Hannah will tie them like she has tied dozen of woman in the past, a very prefuncuary, very tight bondage. And only then will the salvage realize her peril, that the three most sensitive parts of their body, twat, tits, and feet, are exposed to Hannah's foreplay.
There are always many seagull feathers to be found on the beach.
She will ask her questions then, smiling sunnily as she plays the feathertips across tender soles, swelling nipples and pouting pussies. She'll run it up and down straining ribs, toying across sensitive inner thighs, as friendly and firm as a sister might be. The salvage can howl all she likes; there is no one about to hear her. And Hannah, who enjoys this part of combing the best, takes her time, her sessions running long into the night. In the end she usually knows everything about the woman she possesses.
Sometimes her salvage is a maid, one who displeased her mistress and was pitched, bound and weeping, from a passing yacht or liner. Hannah enjoys making their acquaintance. Often the girl is thankful (immodestly thankful) and very rewarding in bed. Hannah will keep the girl about her place, harnessed and chained on a long lead, left to dust and tidy her place while she returns to her beach-walking. Sunny days and restricted nights always set these poor maids to dreaming that this will be their new life. Simple captivity and Hannah's loving, inventive demands, interesting ties and relative freedom, so nice. But then comes Thursday, the day Hannah runs up her green flag. The day Miss Haverston comes with her cart to collect servants recovered by the combers, to transport them to the London employment and placement agencies. There they will be retrained and placed in some great woman's house. Hannah will pocket the coins offered by Miss Haverston and return to her beach. Always it is a little lonely after a sunny maid's departure but loneliness is the life of a beachcomber.
Sometimes her salvage is a lady of distinction, perhaps overboarded by a heated rival or cooled lover. These take greater coercion. They are used to being stimulated, to having their orgasms playfully denied. Many of them have been trained to face such tensions. Often the chair is not enough. For salvage such as these, Hannah will roll them in wet Sjefke canvas and peg them out on the sunny grass like some wrappered candy, leaving them for few hours combing her beach. When she returns, the canvas is dried and tight, the woman's bundled shape quite visible in the compression, down to her rising nipples and the line of the pussy lips. Hannah will fetch a feather, fan out her skirt near her captive's milling feet and begin her questioning again. The woman might scream and squeal in her crushing mummification, unable to move an inch, forced to endure the nagging play of Hannah's feathertip. In the end, they always tell their tale.
That night, while the winds howl and the salvage lays in rope-locked captivity at her long, mud-stained feet, Hannah will compose a letter.
Dear Lady Thomasy. I have recovered your daughter and am seeking compensation. Linda is fine but hates tickling, such a shame because I adore it. I shall tickle her, hour by hour and day by day, until the below payment is posted. There is no rush...
Dear Misses Lacy, Tracy and Dacy Smithe. I have recovered your mother. Your access to her wealth is in peril. If you provide the funds listed below, I'll ship her out to the Far East on a tramp freighter. If not, I shall release her...
Her best (and worst) day came when Viking raiders attacked London, smashing up the royal barge. All of the combers recovered noblewomen that day, ones still lashed in their life-straightjackets. They turned out to be quiet a handful, screaming, demanding rights, convinced that Queen Lilla would seek their freedom. Hannah, who usually looked forward to salvage night as a time to playfully try sensuous new things to a restrained new partner, found it unendurable. The hysterics! Finally she'd had enough. One women she trussed up and hung by her heels from the rafters. Another, she left in the chair, her buttocks flat on its unforgiving surface. The third was bound into a pink ball upon her bed. To all of them, she'd pinched their nipples with tight cord bands and looped thick knotted ropes through their crotches. To add to their discomfort, gags of wet Sjefke canvas were banded over their trembling lips. Then she stood in her doorway, glaring at her three mewing captives, telling them she was going out and they could lay in their bondage and reflect on their attitudes.
SLAM!
She left them moaning like it was 'lights out in the convent', which actually got her own juices flowing. But she didn't recant, keeping to the beach road, letting the cool sea breeze clear her head and waft her chestnut curls. Besides, it was rather nice to leave such highborn ladies in such lowborn bondage. Those who were accustomed to ribbons suffer hemp, how fitting. She paused near sundown, watching as an airship thundered downriver in pursuit of the Viking raiders, its phallic flanks adorned with the name Unbound Pleasure.
She met with her fellow beachcombers in their little pub, five windswept, sparkle-eyed women exchanging woes over the recent glut of beached nobility. While nobody wished to buy blue-blood from anyone else, the group concocted various cruel and playful punishments for their troublesome guests. As they drank, the woman came up with more callous and harrowing torments, ones that left a captive bound, stressed, humiliated, assaulted, and sexually denied. Hannah thought of her three guests, thought of the clever torments proposed, felt her nipples rise within her blouse. She purposely remained late, letting them languish in her tight ropes, their tits endlessly agitated, their pussies soaking their crotchropes. Finally she did return, throwing open the door, her wild beer-reeking form backed by the full moon.
"Who's first?" she asked.
It was a long night for her captives. Their tongues, once Hannah was finished with her personal uses of them, were far freer. She got the information she needed and her guests, while still bound ruthlessly hand and foot, were far more manageable.
In the end she sold off two of them, one to her family, the other to a rival's family. As to the third, her family chose not to respond. Hannah had no choice but to raise the green flag that Thursday.
And so it went for Hannah, long walks on the sunny beach, interesting things found, interesting women bound. She enjoyed the casual company of her roped, whimpering salvages. She enjoyed exchanging ideas with her comber friends in the pub, new delights to play against her captive audiences.
And then this day. She'd moved slowly along the tidal pools seeking whatever might be found. And ahead of her something strange and colorful bobbed against the sand. At first, from its purple color, she thought it was some great woman-o-war, some creature washed up. But her feet bore her closer and suddenly she realized that this was a girl buried up to her chin in sand. A girl with brilliant purple hair.
"Can you help me," she gritted, rolling her shoulders, trying to get free. Hannah remained silent, toeing the sandy splashmark that surrounded the girl like a flower pattern. It was as if...
As if she'd fallen from height and landed in the wet sand, driven into it like a nail into a board.
"Wait here," the beachcomber said. The purple-haired girl sighed as if there was something else she might do.
When Hannah returned, she had a rope.
"Good. That's good. You can use it to pull me out."
Hannah knelt behind the girl, her thighs apart, her dress rucked up. She looped the rope into a slipknot. Then she leaned in, pushing it down between the trapped girl and the warm sand, forcing it deeper and deeper. She found modest breasts and gave them a small squeeze, eliciting a moan. When she found elbows she stopped, tucked in the rope, climbed to her feet, placed a warm foot across the purple-haired girl's shoulder, pulled the lariat's end. The cords looped tight. The salvage exhaled in shock and compression, suddenly finding herself not only sandtrapped but bound.
But surprise is easily transferable. Suddenly Hannah found herself slowly falling upwards, her feet going skyward, the world suddenly above her. She grabbed onto the rope lest she float away like a balloon, dangling, her muddy toes dark against the sunny sky.
I'm being magiced, she realized. This girl is a witch!
"I've given you enough of a spell that you'll float out a few hundred yards and drop into the sea," the buried girl commanded. "If you don't let me go, I'll give you enough boost that you'll float all the way to France!"
The beachcomber clung to her literal lifeline which looped down into the sands and around the arms of this strange girl.
"If I let go, you'll stay here. Since I haven't flag-signaled otherwise, nobody else will come along to find you." She left the obvious outcome unspoken.
The girl in the sand paused in her ranting. Then: "Oh."
Hand over hand, Hannah slowly pulled herself down the line, down to the girl she was anchored to. "We're at a bit of an impasse, aren't we. I'm Hannah."
"I'm Kate."
And then Hannah kissed her, warm and inverted, dangling above nothing while Kate stood locked in Mother Earth. When Hannah disengaged, Kate's eyes fluttered. "I've got..." she gasped. "I've got to get back to Sheepish. I've got to find out what Megan's been doing since I've been gone."
Her spell was slowly leaking away. Hannah drifted down to the warm sands, landing in a sitting position, legs folded. She slowly began digging away the sand around the girl's flesh, the rope still tight. "Let's get you out of there and into some warm ropes and a warm bed, then we'll figure out what to do with you."
"Are you going to keep me?"
"Maybe," Hannah responded, helping her to climb out of her hole. The girl's body was as slight as Hannah's, wiry and strong. They would complement each other in bed. But with a mind towards the girl's temperament and power of levitation, Hannah would clip on a lifeline.
More curious was her clothing, muddy yet clearly Arabic, flimsy and filmy and quite revealing. Hannah found herself wishing it was still intact; it would have been fun playing forty thieves with this cupcake.
And with that, the skirted simple-pleasured woman led her lassoed captive up the sands, up to the cottage amongst the dunes.
No yellow flag flew for many days to follow...
The End
03.11.11