Just Another Tickle Session

“And now we begin,” said Rodas Silverhoof.

Adoria sensed rather than saw the grins of the two younger centaurs, and felt the touch of a vos-hawk feather as Kratos brushed it lightly over her soles. She giggled, unable to do anything else. She’d been bound facing a smooth-polished wooden post, kneeling on a fleece, her wrists tied on the post’s far side. Behind her, her ankles had been strapped down, along with her two large toes and the fourth toe of each foot as well. Her bare feet could not possibly escape the feather’s touch, and the wing feather of the vos-hawk was the most effective tickling feather that the centaurs knew of.

The centaurs used other tickle-implements as well: Brushes, various wood and leather implements, and of course their own fingers. Adoria heard the laughter of the two other human women, restrained in devices of their own, and tried to guess what was provoking their laughter. Old Rodas favored broad, soft-bristled brushes for the initial tickling. Timon the Younger preferred to start with a wooden spoon, applied with a light, scraping touch. Then Adoria lost her train of though as Kratos applied his fingers as well as his feather to her soles.

Adoria laughed and laughed as the tickle-sensations poured into her feet. She knew that this was only the beginning, that Kratos would eventually switch to a different set of implements, and that Timon and Rodas would take their own turns tickling her vulnerable soles. Tickling them without mercy, but also without malice. Alja Kentaros mor kental velator velex bartaros mel Uru, nor Kentaros yonvel morkap i patalos ran the Prophesy. “If the Kentaros should ever fail to visit merciless torment on foreigners who enter the Land, then will the Kentaros suffer betrayal and ruination.” Thus it was an unbending law among the centaurs that they would tickle any humans - “flatfooters” - who entered their Land.

Nandi squirmed and giggled as Rodas applied a soft brush to her soles, alternating between quick short strokes and long slow ones. She was a sorceress from the distant South, but tickling made sorcery impossible. For the next hour or so she was just another tickle victim, albeit an exotic-looking one, with dark dark skin, curly hair like black coral, and a merry round face. She lay face down on a fleece-covered bench, her legs bent and the knees and her ankles locked into place. Her large and fourth toes were locked down as well, leaving her creamy soles - so unlike the rest of her skin in color - perfectly positioned for the centaurs’ expert tickling.

Nandi felt Rodas switch again from quick strokes with his brush to long slow ones, first down the length of her feet from her toes to her heels, and back again. More slow strokes followed, across her heels, across her insteps, and across the balls of her feet. Soft, insistently tickling strokes that she could neither avoid nor ignore.

Then Nandi shrieked as Rodas launched a sudden tickle-assault with a horn comb. A new and sharper tickle-sensation sank into her feet as the comb ran from heels to toes, from heels to toes. Then reversed, from toes to heels. A pause, followed by two more light, tickling scrapes. Another pause, shorter this time, and Nandi felt more teasing touches being applied to her soles, here and there, with varying tempo that couldn’t be anticipated.

Lady Hisolda, the amazon’s ambassador to the Centaurs, watched as Timon approached her bare feet with a wooden spoon. She sat on a wooden bench with her wrists bound to a post behind her back and her ankles locked in front of her in a set of wooden stocks, holding her feet perfectly helpless for the tickling to come.

The spoon came closer and closer to her vulnerable soles, and Hisolda squirmed. She knew exactly how much that spoon would tickle once Timon began to apply it. All three of the human women did: Even an official ambassador like Lady Hisolda, or a long-term resident with many centaur friends like Adoria or Nandi, were still considered ‘strangers’ under the centaur Law and thus subject to regular sessions of tickle-torment.

Now Timon applied his spoon, and Hisolda began to giggle. He gave it a few expert twists and strokes and her giggles turned into laughter. A wooden spoon didn’t look like much of a tickle-implement, but Timon was an expert at making it feel like one to Hisolda’s trapped soles. It touched lightly and stroked smoothly, here and there. On wrinkled insteps, on smooth tough-skinned heels, and on the balls of her feet. On the pads of her toes. Sometimes the touch was short and quick, and sometimes long and lazy. Sometimes the centaur used the edge of the spoon, and sometimes the bowl. Yet each touch sent bright ticklings into Hisolda’s bare feet. Ticklings that radiated out, and sunk in. Ticklings that made Hisolda laugh and squirm and giggle and shriek.

Adoria saw Kratos trot off to the sundial to check the gnomen. Then she shrieked as a knobby wooden roller suddenly ran up and down her soles. Rodas had taken over. The young female merchant twisted to the limited extent her bonds allowed, and continued to shriek with laughter as the little wooden knobs teased and tweaked the nerve-endings in her feet. Every so often Rodas would pause, and then the wooden device would roll once more over Adoria’s soles.

Squirming and laughing, Adoria felt Rodas varying the tempo. Sometimes the older centaur would run the roller quickly from Adoria’s heels to her toes, and sometimes the knobs would run slowly and deliberately down her soles and back up again. Sometimes he would apply a single stroke and then pause, allowing Adoria to squirm in anticipation of the next tickling touch. Sometimes he would run the roller twice in succession, or up and down several times, piling the tickle-sensations up on top of each other.

After a particularly brisk application of the roller, Adoria heard it being put aside. But she knew that Rodas wasn’t finished with her and her helpless feet. Even though the tickling had felt like it had lasted forever, she knew that there was more to come.

There was. Adoria felt the leathery kiss of a bullfeather. The device didn’t look like much - just some oddly shaped flaps and scraps fastened together - but in expert hands it could produce the most exquisite tickle-sensations. And Rodas wasn’t just an expert - he was a master. The bullfeather in his hands touched lightly against Adoria’s bare soles. Softly. Patiently. Adoria fiercely hugged the pole to which she was bound as that gentle tickling was applied to her feet. She giggled, and giggled some more. Still the tickling touches came, light touches that teased and fascinated. She realized what Rodas was attempting to do, and felt him succeed: Her feet weren’t really growing to be a yard long, with each fingerbreadth of surface flushed and profoundly sensitive to the tickling it received. It just felt that way.

Nandi glimpsed Rodas moving away and Timon taking his place. She used the pause to catch her breath, then burst into laughter once more as Timon applied his wooden spoon, lightly touching and scraping Nandi’s soles. Another pause, and the sound of Timon snorting. Then Nandi chortled uncontrollably at the deeper, richer tickling being inflicted upon her. Timon had set aside his spoon to apply all ten fingers to the human feet bound and held fast before him. Timon’s fingers worked their way up and down Nandi’s soles, steadily, relentlessly, never varying their tempo or pausing in their tickling touch. Nandi laughed and laughed, enjoying it hugely. Most of the human visitors to the centaur Land had a liking for being tickled, whether or not they admitted it, but Nandi was one of those rare individuals for whom tickling was a pure pleasure rather than a mixed torment. She lay on her fleece, laughing and no longer squirming. This tickling had gone beyond squirming. Nandi felt her feet flush, as if they were trying to match the ebony skin on her legs, and still Timon kept up his finger-tickling. Centaur fingers, not the most expert but expert enough and eager to prove themselves. They continued to touch and tease the human soles beneath them, galloping on, and on, and on, and on.

When she had come down to the stocks that morning, Hisolda had promised herself that it would be the last time. That she would somehow rid herself of this post as Ambassador that she’d been tricked into taking. Of course she had made the same promise to herself last month, and the month before that, and...

But right now Hisolda wasn’t able to consider the promises she had made to herself over the past year. Not with Kratos applying a vos hawk feather to her left sole, and his fingers to her right. All her attention was focused on the tickle-sensations the centaur was inflicting on her. Up and down his fingers ran from heel to toe-tip and back again, matching the soft strokes of the feather on her other helpless foot. Hisolda giggled uncontrollably at the steady march of fingers and feather that made her feet feel more and more vulnerable. More and more sensitive. More and more ticklish.

A pause. Hisolda caught her breath, and then screamed with laughter as the fingers and feather switched places. The long feathering had left her left foot profoundly sensitive to Kratos’ fingers, and the equally long finger-tickling had likewise made her right foot sensitive to the touch of the feather. Hisolda squirmed and laughed, and twisted with an amazon warrior’s strength against restraints that were designed to restrain that strength and more. She continued to laugh as the tickling seemed to soak into her soles and run up her legs. She felt the soles of her feet being tickled - by the Goddess it tickled! But it was her whole body laughing in response. Laughing uncontrollably in response to that wonderfully merciless tickling.

Adoria suddenly realized that Timon was now tickling her. Her feet had been oiled, and now she felt the third centaur applying his spoon, seeking out new tickle forms in the slippery oil. Seeking them, and finding them. Slip, dash, slide; every motion a stream of tickling. Tickling that could not be contained within her, that forced its way out in a fountain of laughter. Merciless tickling, the torment demanded by the Prophesy, and yet as sweet as honey. Tickling that ran between her toes, and over her heels, and along her insteps, and across the balls of her feet, and in that especially ticklish spot. And now all of both feet were that especially ticklish spot.

Adoria clutched the pole she had been bound to. Behind her she felt Timon change the tempo. Now the oil-slick tickling of her helpless soles came faster and faster. Her world became full of nothing but forced laughter and those unbearable delicious tickle-torments. Tears of mirth ran down her face as she struggled to escape. She had to escape. She couldn’t escape. And yet despite her desperate, futile efforts to avoid this final stretch of tickle-torment she craved more, and more, and more.

Nandi sighed with anticipation as she felt the oil being applied to her feet, then giggled with helpless merriment as Kratos took up the task of tickling her. The centaur was using a pair of river-smoothed pebbles, applying a different sort of tickle-stroke than that provided by Timon’s fingers. Around and around they went, in spiraling patterns over the helpless soles of the young sorceress.

Nandi began to squirm again. Little squirms, which was all she had the energy for. She couldn’t help it. Even though she purely enjoyed being tickled she couldn’t make herself hold still for a proper centaur tickling. No one could, not without being bound in one of the wooden devices that the centaurs used to restrain their human victims.

The renewed squirming made Nandi feel more vulnerable, more sensitive... more ticklish. She continued to laugh as the twin pebbles ran slickly up and down her soles, and as Kratos reached in with his fingers to tickle the spaces between her toes. The patterns kept changing, impossible to anticipate, and impossible to resist. Patterns written on the oil-coated surface of her helpless soles. Patterns of touch that appeared and disappeared, stroking lightly here and there and just where she didn’t expect it. Patterns that focused on her feet, but that sent laughter bubbling through her entire body.

On and on it went, the last part of a tickle-torment session that was all the more merciless for its utter lack of agony.

As Hisolda watched Rodas apply oil to her feet, she knew she was going mad. How else to explain the shiver of eager anticipation that ran through her, or the pang of disappointment at the thought that this would be the last lap of her tickling session?

Rodas grinned at her. “No mercy,” he said with a glint in his eyes and a note of irony in his voice, revealing that he had guessed Hisolda’s thoughts. He held up the last device: A bow-like frame of wood with a silken ribbon stretched taut between the ends. Then he began to play it against her feet.

Short strokes against Hisolda’s heels made her squirm and giggle as if her tickle session were just beginning. Longer strokes across her vulnerable insteps made her giggle some more. Running the ribbon slowly between her toes made her with laughter. Hisolda couldn’t resist it. She couldn’t stand this tickling, and she was deeply grateful for the stocks that held her helpless. Only the stocks could make her sit for the way Rodas drew the ribbon between her third and fourth toes, tormenting the sensitive space between them with an agonizing delight. Only the stocks kept her in place as Rodas expertly tickled the vulnerable balls of her feet, teaching her that there was still more sweet torture to draw from them. Only the stocks made possible the quick-slow-quick teasing that aroused her outraged feet for one last romp, that turned the entire surface of both her soles into the one most ticklish spot on her soles. That caused tears to run down her cheeks as laughter poured from her like a fountain, or a river.

It was a wild river, in full spring flood. The delicate sawing of the silken bow made Hisolda’s feet the wellspring, the source of that river, and its teasing sent trickles and echoes of tickle-sensation all through Hisolda’s body. She couldn’t stand it and it was absolutely delightful and it was an eternal torment and she wanted it to go on forever and it was so pleasant and stronger than just pleasant and and and...

“And now it ends,” said Rodas Silverhoof. The shadow on the sundial had reached the gnomen. The centaurs stopped their tickling. The three human females continued to giggle for a bit, and then stopped. And sighed, all three at once.

Their tickling session for the month was over.