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Scratch, scratch.

Shor Nikodin loved to be scratched. He was a big, burly man, well over six feet, with a thick, cuddly beard. He was a traveling adventurer, and while he wasn't in Blackdawn often, when he did come by he would always "commune" with the priestesses of Athika. What he enjoyed more than any other sensual pleasure was scratching.

Elena had noticed this before. She had a fascinating theory, one which she had shared with the other priestesses, and one with which they had concurred: the bigger, tougher, and more masculine the man, the more he liked back scratching. Or head scratching. Or any scratching, really. Men could be a bit like dogs, sometimes---loyal, yes; charming, surely; and just like dogs, they loved being scratched by a woman's nails.

Given how much time she had spent with Shor Nikodin, Elena considered herself to have a comparably impressive degree of scratching mastery. Her endurance was incredible---she could scratch his back for two hours straight, alternating hands only every so often, as needed. And her technique! She didn't scratch in only one spot like a novice, rather she trailed her fingers all up and down his back, scratching in neat little circles, sometimes in other geometric shapes (Shor really seemed to enjoy the big rhombus with a triangle in it).


So her surprise at the reaction of the street-dwelling man to whom she offered scratching on that strange night was understandable. She had never had someone attempt to assault her before, and certainly not over scratching. Usually they just flopped over and drifted into blissful, scratching-induced sleep.

And before she could quite get a handle on what was happening, while wondering what was wrong with herself tonight (she was just exhausted, she was sure of it), that other big, burly man, Valraukar, who would be really quite handsome if only he would do something about his teeth, split the attacker clean in half, sending blood spraying everywhere into the air and across the street.

Elena was glad that she had avoided the blood---that would have been almost impossible to get out of her silky, slinky robe. But she was truly concerned about her powers of charm; even her skills of scratching had failed her.

She steadied herself and looked at the quivering mass of blood and flesh that had once been a man in need of scratching.

Well, at least he didn't itch anymore.