The Tickling of Melody

M’rerallie Clan Chumf dreamed, whiskers twitching. She was in her starfighter again, docking with the Amazon Princess after a successful pirate raid. She pulled off her helmet and preened a moment, then dropped lightly to the deck, a hundred and fifty-two centimeters of female feline. When she landed, her clothing had changed from her flight suit to a stylish outfit of red satin, set off with high black leather boots. Tail swishing, she swaggered over to the hatch leading to the “Iron Box,” the chamber where defeated enemy starfighters were defrosted from stasis.

The hatched opened, reveling the Commonwealth pilot Max Anders standing there barefoot and bare chested. “Melody,” he said as he knelt on the deck. “I am mirlivima.”

Memory-leather appeared on his wrists, pinning his arms behind him. “You are mirlivima.” she answered him, and attached a leash to the collar that had appeared around his neck. She smiled at him, a human-style smile, and he grinned ruefully back.

Melody woke up, and the old-fashioned chains fettering her wrists clinked slightly. She stifled a sigh of regret as she sat up. Once before, she had taken Max Anders as mirlivima in truth, but in their last encounter he had prevailed, hammering her shields with his own autoblasters until her starfighter had gone into stasis. Until the next prisoner exchange between the Commonwealth and the Sagittarian pirates he was the one wearing the boots, and she was the barefoot mirlivima prisoner-pet.

She looked over at her cousin Holly, who was sharing her captivity this time around. Like Melody, Holly sat with close-linked fetters on her wrists, shackles holding her ankles above her bare feet, and slave-thimbles locked on her fingers, preventing her from extending her claws. A light chain also ran from near the tip of her tail to the collar around her neck.

Other than the chains, she was lightly clad in a silken mufda, a costume of narnow origin that somewhat resembled a Terran harem-dancer outfit. At least it wasn’t a Terran bikini, Melody thought. She wouldn’t have minded wearing one, but Holly hated the things, claiming that they made her look flat.

But that at least was spared them: They both wore the mufda, and their chains, sitting in the pilots rec room of Tender 94, awaiting the arrival of Max and Kim Anders, the human brothers who had captured them.

At least the seats were comfortable. Holly was dozing herself, nose twitching as she dreamed her own dream. Melody toyed with her bonds, tugging gently at them as she leaned back in what was currently a chair. Like the pirates, the Commonwealth had members of many different species, and so its furniture needed to be adjustable. It had to fit not just the tail-less humans, or narnow cat-girls like herself and Holly, but also hulking mercaps, spindly juddoians, the lizard-like sarm, and even the miniature-centaur forms of the lyth.

Holly woke up, and Melody saw her ears prick a moment before she heard the small sounds herself. Someone outside the hatch. The hatch opening. Max and Kim walking into the rec-room, followed by a bar-bot floating on its own countergrav, its markings indicating that it dispensed soft drinks only. The two humans each carried a soft duffle, and wore the standard mid-temperature uniform consisting of a short-sleeved shirt matched to long pants and boots. Boots! Melody curled her own uncovered toes in envy. Unlike her hands, her feet had been declawed when she was a kitten, so that she might wear shoes and boots like a civilized narnow. Years of shoe-wearing had left her feet soft and tender. Pink soled, just like she knew Max’s to be, under his boots. Except her feet were bare and chained, exposed and vulnerable. And Holly’s feet were just as soft and vulnerable as her own.

But the humans didn’t take advantage of this, at least not right away. “Hello Melody,” Max said as he sat down beside her. He ran his human-blunt fingers through her fur with confident expertise, and Melody allowed herself to lean against him, drinking in his pleasantly masculine-alien scent. This wasn’t the same as having him as her barefoot captive, but it was a good second-best.

“Max. Mmm,” she purred as she nuzzled against her captor. Kim handed out drinks from the bar-bot, and Max held the bulb for her as she sipped the sweet liquid. Next to her, Holly tossed her head until Kim brushed the hair away from her face: Unlike the lions of old Terra, it was the females among the narnow who had long manes. Max’s clever fingers ran through her own mane and down her back to the base of her tail, making her shiver. She reached up to press her fettered hands against his shirt. She ached to rip it away, to lick the mostly-furless skin beneath, to tease Max gently with her claws, but the slave-thimbles locked on her fingers prevented this.

“If you keep attacking me I’ll have to strap your arms down,” Max gave her a friendly warning. Melody grinned and kept up her futile effort to penetrate his shirt. Beside her, Holly giggled.

“That tickles,” she complained to Kim. He stroked her fur in apology but said:

“That wasn’t tickling. If you want real tickling...” He looked at his brother. “I think it’s time.”

“Yes,” Max agreed. He abandoned Melody for a moment to open his duffle, and she watched in a combination of anxiety and delight as he set various items out on a side table.

A roll of tape, custom made with Max’s “secret synthesizer program” to not stick to skin or fur. Feathers. Brushes and combs. A pair of little knobby wooden balls. And a gravatronic massage-vibrator that had obviously undergone modification.

“You’re... you’re not planning to use all those things. Are you?” Melody asked as Max folded out one of the furniture-pieces into a frame-couch sized for two narnow. Holly yowled in soulful distress, but her ears signaled a joyful eagerness to anyone who could read narnow body language. Kim grin was huge as he lowered her into place. Melody forced her own ears back and down, and fought her chains as she rose to her feet. Max caught her before she fell over and set her beside her cousin. Then the two brothers began pulling off strips of tape.

Soon the two feline cousins were securely fastened to the frame-couch, lying side by side on their bellies. Their chains had been removed - other than the one connecting their tails to their collars - but tape wrapped around their wrists and ankles, and upper arms and thighs, held them in place. Their slave-thimbles had been unlocked and removed as well. Melody could now flex her claws, if only into a pair plastic-foam ball taped to her hands.

Max offered Melody a last drink from the bulb, and then he and Kim inspected their work, moving slowly to the foot of the couch. And the feet of their captives. Melody could hear them sit down, settling in comfortably.

And then the tickling began.

Despite their physical differences, narnow and humans have a few points where they are almost identical. One is their laughter. The giggles of a tickled female cat-person are different from the guffaws of a male human undergoing a foot-feathering, but only because of the difference in sex. In the case of Melody and Holly, any listener could tell that the shrieks of laughter were being forced from two tickle-tortured females, but only one who knew the two cousins personally, and who could recognize their voices, could tell that the two females were cat-girls rather than humans.

The second point is that narnow feet, when declawed and accustomed to wearing shoes and boots, had soles that were just as tender-pink and ticklish as those of humans. Kim was taking full advantage of this fact, and Holly abandoned herself to his tickling. She couldn’t stop herself from squirming and struggling against her bonds, any more than she could keep from giggling. But her giggles and screams were clearly giggles and screams of pleasure.

Melody, however, simply hated to admit how much she enjoyed being tickled. So she resisted. She squirmed helplessly and bit back her giggles as Max gently teased her bare soles with fingers and feather and that knobby little wooden ball. Wonderful unendurable sensations roamed over her feet from heels to insteps to the balls of her feet, around and between her toes, and back down to her insteps and heels. Resistance was futile, and the giggles began to leak out “Ha... hehe... hahahehee... oooh hahahaheheheehahee...” The giggles were contagious: They made Holly react with greater violence to Kim’s use of the brushes and combs, and Holly’s laughter seemed to double or triple Melody’s sensitivity to Max’s efforts.

The brothers continued the tickling with their diabolical human endurance. They stopped - briefly - every few minutes to let their victims recover, and to give them water or juice from drink bulbs, but it was clear that they could continue the tickling for an hour. Or for multiple hours: They could continue long after a narnow tickler had to stop from exhaustion. To say nothing of a narnow tickle-victim.

Nor did the humans limit themselves to tickling the cat-girl’s feet. They also made raids along their legs, and the sides of their ribs. Up their arms. Behind the ears. And along the tail held in place by the light chain, attached to the mirlivima’s collars. It felt wonderful, Melody thought, even though it also forced her do what she could to avoid it. Which was practically nothing, given the skill with which Max had taped her down. And her helpless made it even more quiveringly wonderful.

Not that she cared to admit it. “Admit it,” Max said as he moved back to tickle her feet again. “You’re enjoying this.”

“No no no heehehehe,” she protested, but the angle of her ears said yes yes despite all her best effort to control them.

Holly didn’t have any such compunctions. “Yes yes hahehaheehee,” she said as Kim applied a feather to her soles with one hand and the knobby ball with the other.

It had to end soon, Melody realized with regret. She and Holly were close to exhaustion, despite the rest-breaks they had been given. The tickling stopped, and she sensed that it was one last break before she was given a final tickle that would leave her bonelessly limp. She wished briefly for a human’s endurance. Max, she knew from previous experience, could endure more than twice the tickling she had just... well, not suffered, exactly. She twitched her ears at the thought.

Another drink of sweet juice, and then she felt her tail released from its chain. Then she and her cousin were turned over to lie on their backs and strapped back into place. This let Melody watch as Max brought out the modified gravatronic massager.

One last tickle. Melody thought. And then it will be over. For now. She expected a belly tickling, using the massager in Max’s hands, and she was both right and wrong.

The massager was set by the female narnows’ feet, and turned on. Melody heard Holly howl, and then Melody howled herself as the device sent out insubstantial gravatronic tendrils to apply a rapid machine-tickle the now ultra-sensitive soles. It was horribly, wonderfully horrible. And to make it worse and better, Kim knelt beside Holly, and Max knelt beside her, and the two humans used their fingers to tickle the helplessly exposed feline bellies.

By this time Melody could only produce the weakest of squirms, but laughter poured from her as the mechanical foot-tickling mixed with Max’s tickling of her belly. Max’s fingers were soft and sweet like icing on a cake, but the gravatronic vibrations against her soles sent shards of tickle-pleasure jolting up her legs. The dual tickling continued for endless seconds, with Holly’s laughter beside her as an echo, until with one last futile effort, Melody squirmed.

Utterly exhausted, she fell back, just as helpless as before. The tickling ended. It had been too much, too good, even though as Max released her from her bonds, a tiny corner of her mind regretted that she couldn’t take just a little bit more.

She was vaguely aware of Holly’s faint purring, and of Kim carrying her cousin off. Melody herself clung weakly to Max as he picked her up. “Are you tame yet, mirlivima?” he asked as he headed down the corridor to his quarters.

“Maybe,” she said softly as she let herself be held against him, drinking in his pleasantly alien-masculine scent, luxuriating in his closeness. She would sleep in his bunk tonight, snuggled against him with his arms wrapped around her - a privilege reserved to mirlivima prisoner-pets. And when she dreamed, she might dream of being tied helpless by Max and tickled again, or she might dream of turning the tables and making him the squirming, giggling, barefoot prisoner.

fin