The tribe has been struggling.

A run in with the Temple of Fire has cost them their best warriors and mages, and there are mutterings about migrating south and abandoning the White. Yes, the marshes of the Grey are more dangerous, but it's warmer and food will be easier to find.

They have a child with them. One of the dead mages had a daughter, and none of them know which if any of them is her father. She isn't a very interesting child, quiet and with seemingly little interest in anything going on, but she's inherited several supernatural traits from her mage mother and is extremely hardy. That means she's likely to survive the journey, despite her age.

They go slow, fortifying their camp each evening, fending off wolf attacks and giant-worm ambushes, sometimes several nights in a row. They don't want to lose anyone else.

It takes them years, and several false stops, before the find a secure enough corner of less-terrible marshland where their camp can dig in and become a village, but eventually they do. A month without moving on turns into a year, turns into several years. It is a harsh life, but it's theirs.

It is obvious as soon as she hits puberty that Kamryn is going to be the most attractive female entity anyone in the tribe has ever seen. Her mother was the most beautiful woman in the entire territory and it's looking like her daughter will surpass her at half her age.

Her beauty is like a piece of priceless artwork, and the tribesmen dote on her, hoping to protect it. Nevermind that she's harder to damage than even the biggest of the tribes warriors, and so tireless that she can work all day without sweating and keep watch all night without dozing. It starts to chafe, a little, that they treat her like this fragile treasure when she's the least fragile thing in the entire village.

It is also obvious, at least to Kamryn herself, that the reason she never cared about anything before was because she was missing the most important piece of being alive. Everything is colored in a perception she never had before, and its like waking up for real for the first time in her life. Expecting her to keep acting like a half-alive child instead of her awakened self is entirely foolish. Now that she understands sex, everything else makes sense too.

Mostly.

Sometimes the tribesmen look at her like they want to fuck her. She can feel the desire radiating from them like heat. The first few times this happens, she isn't sure of her own senses, so she asks them if she's right. They tell her no. They tell her she's wrong. But they're lying. It's so obvious they're lying.

"We'll find you a strong lad your own age, you just have to be patient," they say, and Kamryn points out that they're alone out here, there's no other tribes to look through.

"You have to think about your value to the tribe," they say, and Kamryn can't even articulate how little the one thing has to do with the other, in her mind.

"It's not how we do things," they say, and Kamryn wants to know if there's a reason.

The adults of her tribe deflect, deny, and ignore her arguments. It goes on for years, and it makes her furious, when she lets herself dwell on it. There's nowhere for that fury to go, though, so she distracts herself. She avoids the issue.

She starts avoiding the village all together.

They try to stop her, of course. They try to tell her it isn't safe. She says she knows that. She isn't an idiot. And she isn't a fragile treasure either. When one of the tribe's warriors bars her way, she challenges him to a fight. He refuses, so she attacks anyway. He's three times her size, stronger, and experienced.

It doesn't matter.

He gets tired. She doesn't.

Her bruises and scrapes heal faster than he can inflict them. His don't.

In the end, he is a broken and battered lump laying on the ground and wheezing like he's about to die.

Kamryn stands over him, not even ruffled.

"I'll be back in a few days," she says to their audience.

And with that, she strides out of the village before anyone else can try to stop her.

The Grey is a dangerous place, even sticking to the dryer paths.

Kamryn is barely out of sight of the village when a giant crawfish lunges up out of the bog and tries to grab her.

Kamryn feels it coming, a heat pressure almost like...

No time to contemplate. She dodges, and the crawfish goes stumbling by. She twists, spots the weak point in its upper body, and wraps her arms around it from behind, the hard chitin digging into her skin but unable to hurt her. She crushes it against her, pinning it where it can't reach her with its limbs.

The heat pressure vanishes as the crawfish starts flailing around, frantically trying to remove the squishy constricting thing on its back. It rolls. It slams Kamryn into the ground, into rocks, into a bit of driftwood. It tries to drown her.

Of course, none of that deters Kamryn one bit. Eventually it's struggles slow, it's chitin cracking more and more under the unrelenting strain. And it dies, at the bottom of the bog.

Kamryn crawls out of the water and grimaces.

Her wolfpelts are soaking wet and all muddy.

Well, there's no one around to give her looks or tell her to cover up if she takes them off. So she takes them off. She strips nude and sets her pelts out on a bit of dry ground. The feel of the air on her skin is freeing, and a relief, like a weight has been lifted off of her.

She's close enough to the village that if she just leaves her pelts behind, someone will probably find them tomorrow. It's more tempting than it should be. So tempting that she's considering actually doing it. After all, what exactly would she need her pelts for, if she's alone out in the marsh? It's not like they do anything to protect her. Her bare skin is enough to keep her warm and safe.

As she stands there nude, her mind goes back to the sense of warning she got, right before the crawfish tried to pounce. It hadn't felt like a warning. It had, now that Kamryn has time to examine the memory, felt like the radiance, the feeling she got when one of the tribesmen wanted to fuck her and refused to fucking admit it.

Kamryn freezes in place, a massive suspicion surging into existence within her.

She decides to test her theory, immediately.

She picks a direction and starts walking, paying close attention to her extra sense as she goes. Her pelts remain abandoned on the ground, forgotten.

There's some kind of plant over there with fat leaves, about knee-high and roundish. When she gets close enough, she can feel a flare up of the radiance. The desire.

When she gets even closer, the fat leaves flower open, and a trio of thick purple vines, shiny and slick, lash out at her.

Kamryn forces herself to not dodge.

Her suspicion has only grown.

She holds still and lets the slimy purple vines reach her.

The vines slap against her limbs and curl around to grab her!

They squeeze firmly but not enough to hurt, and they pull her closer. She could probably overpower them and get away if she really tried, but since she isn't trying they bring her to within arm's reach of the fat flower thing, where the vines have more slack to employ in wrapping around her body and rubbing all over her.

One vine finishes looping around her leg and then goes straight for Kamryn's crotch. It finds the center of her hot, slippery hole and plunges in, pumping in and out of her depths with enthusiasm.

She fucking knew it!

Also, ohhhhhh fuck that feels good. It's better than she imagined and it isn't even a real cock.

She lays down next to the molester plant, giving it's thick purple vines even more slack to slither around her and slip and slide over her body.

It fucks her enthusiastically for a while, then shivers as its thick purple vines pulsate and spew a viscous and gooey fluid out of their tips, one of which is pressed up against the entrance to Kamryn's womb.

They pump out their seed-goo for several more minutes, before slithering off of Kamryn's body and slurping back into the fat leafy plant.

In the instant the goo touches her womb, it's like she's grasping something with a hand she didn't know she had. Only its so much more than a feeling. She can sense the potential in the goo, instinctive knowledge that she innately understands.

She can reject the goo, and it will do nothing. Or she can embrace it, contribute a bit of herself in turn, and spark the creation of a new life. Instinctive knowledge about what that life would be like fills her mind: two days to become a baby version of the molester plant that fucked her, an acorn almost, though softer and bigger. Rich in nutrients too.

Hm.

When she returns to her tribe a few days later, she's carrying a handwoven basket full of squishy purple acorns.

She entirely forgets she's nude until she sees the tribesmen's reaction. She counts, and more of them demand to know where her clothes are than tell her they're relieved she's returned unharmed. Kamryn could choose to take this as a complement about her toughness, but they don't mean it that way, she can tell.

She remembers where she left her wolfpelts. Maybe she can find them and wash them. She hands off the handbasket and heads back out to where the crawfish attacked her.

The woman who takes the basket is the one who does most of the cooking, and she looks delighted at the rare and novel... fruit? Really, they look like eggs that came from a plant but that's silly, right?

One lone tribeswoman, stares at the basket and then at Kamryn, in horror. When another asks her what's wrong, she shakes her head and stays tight-lipped.

Out in the bog, Kamryn's muddy wolfpelts are, in fact, still right where she left them.

The pelts are not, however, alone.

What looks like a sleek bush with eyes is sniffing around the wolfpelts, poking them with its vine-tentacles. It's difficult to judge its size, but its leafy body comes up to about Kamryn's thigh.

It perks up, its eyes swiveling around as Kamryn approaches. It shrinks back a little, pulling its vine-tentacles in close to its body in caution as it eyes her nude body.

It starts radiating a soft, muted desire, watching her as it slithers sideways.

Is that a leaf octopus? That's what it looks like.

This is the first time Kamryn has seen one up close, but they're really common, so she recognizes the species. Usually they avoid conflict and keep to themselves, and judging by how skittish its acting, this one is no different. She's seen the little enclaves leaf octopi build, from a distance, sometimes. She wonders if they can talk. It's not like her tribe would've tried to find out.

She can feel that it is looking at her and feeling sexual desire for her. She trusts her extra sense about that now. And nothing she met out in the marshes, that radiated desire like that, tried to hurt her if she let it have its way with her. Her tribe wanted her to think otherwise, but she knew better now.

She lowers herself to her hands and knees, making herself smaller than the skittish leaf octopus, and crawls toward it as she meets its gaze. It looks confused, she thinks, but it doesn't flee. She slowly crawls right up to it and sits on her heels, slowly reaching out a hand.

Two of the creature's vine-tentacles reach back tentatively, setting the tip of one on her palm while the other loops hesitantly around her forearm.

It calms down quickly, when nothing bad happens, and there's almost a readable expression of happiness in its big shiny eyes.

It glances down at Kamryn's exposed breasts and crotch. It tentatively extends a few more of its vine-tentacles toward her hips and chest, seeking to caress her skin.

Come on leafy guy, Kamryn would love to have sex some more.

She spreads her legs and guides one of the vine-tentacles into her, and senses the desire from the leaf octopus surge.

She smiles. He's... there's a lot more him there, than with the molester plants. Getting fucked by a molester plant's vines, it didn't feel like she was having sex with anyone. Here, this guy is present, and experiencing his side of things. There's a being behind those eyes.

Kamryn smiles, and runs her hands over her new leafy friend as it plunges its vine-tentacles into her holes and pleasures her with forethought and intent.

This is Kamryn's life, for the next few years, as she settles into a routine.

She returns to her village one night a week, to sleep for a few hours, before venturing back out again. She finds that she can't stand to wear her wolfpelts for more than a few hours at a time anyway, now that she's used to roaming the marshes in the nude. She always brings a gift. Molester acorns, or a crawfish corpse, most commonly. One time she brings back a sword that she finds on a rotting corpse that somehow gets up and tries to kill her despite being long dead.

Every time she goes out, her leaf octopus friend is there to join her. She names him Vinely, which he seems to approve of. They work out their own private language of gestures and sounds. It's crude, not the sort of thing that allows a real conversation, but it's enough to feel like she has a peer. Vinely was by no means a "strong lad her own age" but Kamryn could not care less what her tribe would think. She and Vinely have sex every day, and she protects him when something dangerous comes along.

For now, this life is all Kamryn knows.

A large, fleshy maw bursts up out of the bog, scattering mud and detritus for hundreds of feet around.

It splits into fours, curling outward into thick, fleshy petals. The petals slam back into the marshland, digging in to hold the maw in place. Then, it's throat opens, revealing a long, slanted tunnel of moist flesh.

A trio of betentacled feminine heads peek out, and look around.

They're in a crag between a pair of ossified trees and sinkhole of deeper water.

Marshland surrounds them. But over that way, there is a small plume of smoke.

And right here, there is a big tubular beast lurching out of the swamp, it's round maw sprouting dozens of tentacles that shoot out and ensnare of the the emerging seducers. It sucks the seducer into its mouth, wrapping her in tentacles oozing a paralytic aphrodisiac.

It looks like a fleshworm, only squat, stubby, and uglier, with tentacles of an odd aqua green shade. Dumber too, from the feel of its slurred mind. But, while it isn't proper kin to the Tentacled, it is familiar. A demitentacled creature they can relate to.

"Stop making noise," the tentacle princess with an excessive number of eyes commands, and the shambling anemone sluggishly obeys, settling down to fuck its captive seducer.

One of the non-captured seducers makes an inquisitive chirrup, and the seducer getting violently stuffed full of green paralytic tentacles purrs a pleasantly-surprised and see-where-this-goes reply.

"There's a village over there," the tentacle princess with tail-pussy tentacles for hair points out.

"Should we make contact?" asks the overly-endowed-with-eyeballs tentacle princess.

"They're not Lovers. They might be hostile," the third tentacle princess, with the leaking mega-boobs and dozen tentacle-girldicks, says.

Talance, still shrunken to a small blob of flesh, pipes up. "I can take a local form and scout for you!"

"...can you take a local form, darling?" the tail-pussy-hair princess challenges gently.

Talance wriggles with gonna-try. The blob that is her roils as she rearranges her flesh, forming into a shape with four limbs and a head. Then joints. Then a face. ...a face. C'mon, face. Bones? No bones either? Drat.

Talance droops. "I can't yet."

"I thought not."

One of Tail-Pussy-Head's head-tails snakes out and latches on to one of Mega-Milk's cocks to suck an orgasm out of the other princess. Mega-Milk's cum always helps her think.

"We need allies, at the least to tell us where we are. We're lucky we even emerged so close to a settlement."

Mega-Milk catches the head-tail as it detaches and stuffs one of her other cocks into it, frowning. "Should we really ask for help from literally the first outlanders we meet?"

"We don't really have a choice," Eyeball-Endowment added. "The outlands aren't like homeflesh. Even if nothing opposes us, a naive journey could leave us starved or worse before we ever begin mustering forces to our cause."

"Hng," Mega-Milk cums repeatedly into Tail-Pussy-Head's head-tail, then turns, one of her massive nipples bulging open as a tentacle pokes out and then shoves itself in Eyeball-Endowment's mouth. "Here, look at this."

Eyeball-Endowment suckles on the milktacle while following Mega-Milk's psychic impression. Her powerful vision clarifies the suspicious dot that Mega-Milk is worried about.

It is actually four dots.

Or more accurately, four big grey fluffy quadrupeds each with a maw full of pointy bones.

The wolf pack had been passing around the twoleg's den, but now they've caught an entirely new scent and they MUST GO AND AGGRESSIVELY GROWL AT IT IMMEDIATELY.

The village is to the west. The wolf pack to the south.