Teri McLaren
Drooling, he lunged into the brackish waves after the creature. The otter playfully slipped through Yob's claws, tossed its stone aside, and bellied up to the shore. Yob made another swipe at it, but this time he found himself with an eyeful of sand and armful of rock hard muscle. The razor-sharp clamshell pricked at his throat.
"Be nice." A woman's deep, sultry voice breathed into his ear. "Let me go, or the sharks will be gathering for an early dinner when the riptide takes your body out to sea, and you'll never see that daughter of yours again." Yob relaxed his grip on the woman's arm. She slithered behind him. "Thank you. Now don't turn around until I tell you."
Yob was in no condition to argue. Half-drowned and suddenly very lonesome, he did as he was told. The hunger had subsided, too. He gingerly touched the little cut on his neck. Hardly more than an orcish lovebite, but the pain was growing intolerable. He wondered if the shell had been poisoned. There was a rustle of fabric at his back. He craned his head as far as he could without causing more pain, but could see nothing of the woman.
"All right. I'm dressed now. Turn around slowly. What's your story?" the sultry voice demanded.
Yob scooted around in the sand to face a small woman clad in iridescent brown ghoma skin, razor-clam shell still in hand. She blinked slowly at him, her eyes silver and huge, her face and body dark as night. Her hair lay in slick curls down her neck and danced at her broad forehead. Yob couldn't quite place what was so very strange about her until he noticed her ears: tiny, flat against her head, and pointed like a mouse's. Or like an otter's. At the lobe of the left one, affixed to a golden earring, there dangled a glittering gem the colors of fresh, deep water.
"I am Yob," he said. "I don't remember my story. Who are you?"
"Can you not guess? I thought you greenskins were