The next day I walked out into the fresh morning air and saw a tent that hadn’t been there before. I recognized the yurt-like construction as being in the orc style. Since I was the only person in my household awake, I went to investigate for myself.

I opened the flap, and immediately saw green flesh. Very naked green flesh. I backed away. “Sorry!” I said.

“Sorry!” they yelled back. “We’re ready! Please, Mistress, enter!”

They’d gotten dressed in a hurry, I suppose. I walked into the tent.

They were not dressed. Instead, they were kneeling, backs arched, boobs thrust forward, knees spread so as to hide nothing. Their heads were bowed, their long dark green hair flowing down, and it was impossible to see their faces. The rest of them was very well-formed.

“We are your humble employees,” they said in unison, as if they’d been practicing, although the word ‘employees’ clearly did not come naturally to them.

“Uh, you can look up,” I said.

“Yes, boss,” they said together, looking up at me. Cute faces, too. They didn’t say any more, just waited.

I looked around. There were some furs on the floor, for lying on, but they didn’t seem to have anything else with them.

“Where are your clothes?” I asked.

They started to speak at once.

“Maybe appoint one of you to be the spokeswoman?” I suggested.

That seemed to throw them for a loop, but one of them recovered first. “I’ll do it,” she said. “It is the custom in our tribe for slaves to burn their clothing before submitting, so that we hide nothing and make our whole selves available to our new owner. Er, boss. Our tribe owes you a great debt and our lives are yours.”

My cock was twitching and trying to get hard, but I didn’t want it to. Yeah, three beautiful women displaying and offering themselves. Super hot. And the last thing I wanted to do was insult them. “Thank you,” I managed. “And what’s your name? You can call me Abby.”

“Thank you, Orc-savior Abby. This employee’s name is Shta. Is this position pleasing to you? Or do you prefer that we wait for you face down, so that you may take us from behind in the hole of your choosing? We are all quite fertile.”

I guess everyone in Amaranth now knew I had a dick. “I’m, um, sure you are. You can wait here. No need to do anything but lounge around naked for a bit, actually, until I have something for you to do. No special greeting position needed. I’ll be back in a bit.”

I ducked out, took a deep breath. Yes, hot and willing orc girls. But I had one of those at home.

I walked back, thinking. If more women like this were on their way, I needed to figure out how I was going to deal with it. For that, I needed help.

I woke up Kendala.

“Hmm?” she said sleepily. “Oh. Abby!” She sprang out of bed, giving me another vision of naked orc loveliness. Then she started to sway.

I caught her, feeling her body against mine and trying not to be distracted. “You don’t have to get up like that so quickly if you’re just going to feel woozy.”

“Sorry, Abby.”

“It’s okay. Find something quick to eat, get something for me, too, and I’ll go wake up Jill.”

“She’s going to be cranky,” Kendala said. “Besides, I think she’s got Talos over tonight.”

“Kathy might do,” I said. “And that means she’s free.”

I walked across the way to Kathy and Talos’s place, and knocked. Kathy answered the door after ten minutes or so. “Oh. Abby. What is it?”

I explained, but she didn’t know how to do what I needed, and told me I was sexist for thinking she would. I apologized and tried again with Jill. After all, she’d bought the thing.

Reluctantly, she nodded. “Yeah. Okay. I’m no expert, but I can help explain the basics. Let me eat first.”

I went back to Kendala. “Kendala, would you do me the favor of being in charge of these women who the other tribes are sending?”

“You need a harem mistress?” Kendala said, her eyes shining. “Do I get a whip?”

“I take it that’s a yes, and no, I don’t think a whip is needed.”

“But it’s traditional. They won’t respect me if I don’t have a whip. It’s like a badge of office.”

“Can you have it and not use it?”

Kendala shook her head. “You’re very strange, Abby.”

“No using the whip.”

“Okay, okay.”

Nearly an hour later I walked back to the tent with Kendala and Jill.

“Good morning, ladies.” I said.

Despite my earlier direction, they scrambled to kneel and display themselves to me.

“Why do you call us ladies?” Shta asked. “Are we supposed to pretend to be something we are not, as part of a sex play?”

I took the umpteenth deep breath of the morning. “No. This is Kendala. She’s in charge of this division of my operations.” I wanted to keep it on a business footing.

The three women nodded without giving me any impression that they understood.

“I’m the harem mistress,” Kendala explained.

“Where is your whip, mistress?” Shta asked.

“We’re working on that. In the meantime, I’ve got this.” Kendala held up her hand. “Don’t get out of line.”

“No hitting them,” I muttered to Kendala. Then, in a louder voice, I said, “This is Jill. She’s going to show you how to use some simple machines, which we are going to bring in here, and you’re going to do some work for me. One of them is called a loom, and the other is a sewing machine. To learn how to use them, you can make yourself some clothes.”

“Clothes?” Shta asked. “Do you not like the way we look?”

“You don’t have to wear them if you don’t want to,” I said.

“Our will is your will,” Shta replied.

“My will is that you learn how to make clothing,” I said. “And that you choose whether or not to wear it, so that I can gain a, um, deep insight into your psychology by having you make choices for yourselves and observing the results.” I thought that was pretty clever.

“Why does our psychology matter,” Shta asked, “When it is our duty to serve?”

I didn’t know how to reply, but Kendala spoke up. “You question the great Queen Abby, Uber Archfiendess and Orc-Savior? If she wants you to make choices, you make choices! Got it?”

Shta quailed. “Yes! We will make choices!”

Call me a chicken, but I walked out and let Kendala and Jill take care of them. Kendala knew how to boss them around in the way they expected, and if I knew Jill she’d be doing her best to get them to organize a labor union or something so they could demand higher pay and a forty-hour work week. Getting this right was going to take time, but I’d had at least a little experience doing this with Inka, Kendala, and Gruush, and on the whole that had turned out okay.

They’d need permanent housing, but that required some thought, and right now the work crew needed shovels. I made a few before heading out, but I had something important to do that only I could do: Visit Xyla.

As I biked into the forest, I was struck with how peaceful and green everything was. For a while, I had taken both for granted, but now I was amazed all over again. Blowhaven wasn’t like an Earth city, but it was definitely beginning to bustle, with Jill teaching classes and the work crews using it as a base for storing gear, two sets of guards, incoming orcs, and my ever-expanding chosen family.

“Boo,” Xyla said, jumping out at me from a tree. I nearly fell off my bike, but I braked it safely and avoided swerving into a tree.

Then she jumped again, tackle-hugging me, and the bike fell over at that point.

“I’m glad to see you, too!” I said, ignoring the way the spokes had skinned my knee.

“Yay!” she said. “It’s been a while.” She let me disentangle myself from the bicycle, and then gave me another hug. Her nearly naked body felt lovely against me, and I took advantage of the chance to cup her pert bottom.

“I’m sorry about that,” I said. “It’s been very busy lately. I wish I could tell you that it was going to get less busy, but there’s so much stuff that needs me.”

She took my hand. “Tell me about it while we walk together.”

So I told her about the gnomes, and their skills. About how Boom had ended up in my bed, but that Shizuka hadn’t, yet. About how I could now duplicate things myself, if they were simple enough.

She picked up an acorn. “Like this?”

I gave it a try, and then shook my head. “Life is really complicated,” I said. “Even just potential life.”

She nodded. “Yes. We’re kind of in a what you and Jill were, when I met you. A long-distance relationship?”

“It’s not that far,” I said.

“It is, when you’re too busy to visit. And no, it’s not all you. I like being in my forest too much to come visit you very often, either. We’re growing apart.”

I wanted to deny it. “I love you, Xyla. That hasn’t changed.”

“I love you, too, Abby. But I think it’s time to move on.”

I blinked. “Uh, you do?”

She nodded. “Yes, Abby. It’s time for me to become a mother, and that means months and months of hibernation in the soil of the forest. But don’t worry, when I come out I’ll still love you.”

I didn’t know whether to breathe a sigh of relief or to worry all over again, just differently. “Um, I’ll miss you.”

Xyla grinned. “I’ll miss you, too. Although I understand that I’ll only be semi-sentient for a bit.”

“I’ll protect your forest, while you’re, um, hibernating.”

Xyla smiled. “Oh, just because I’m in the earth doesn’t mean I can’t protect it myself. Dryads have strong instincts, and when I’m in that state I’ll be able to reach anywhere in the forest. In a very real sense, I will be the forest.”

“Oh. Wow.”

“You’ve protected me, and you’ve protected my forest from the day I met you. Even when you needed wood for building things, you’ve kept your promises to me. It would have been easy to just make the trolls happy, or the orcs happy, but you’ve kept your word. You’ve been faithful to me.”

“Well,” I said, to cover up my embarrassment. “A few lovers here and there.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about, and you know it. Faithful isn’t about who you have sex with, or even who you love. It’s about keeping promises. Yes, they’ve probably drawn you away a bit, all the way to Blowhaven. And that’s changed us.”

“I’m sorry.”

Xyla shook her head. “No, Abby. Change is life. It’s the essence of life. When things stop changing, they die. Even in death, life changes the remains to enrich the soil, to create new life. We change, we grow. That is the nature of things. Nothing gets frozen in time.” She smiled.

“I’ll always love you.”

“And I you.”

I sighed. “There’s a saying in polyamory. Love is infinite. Time is not.”

“Yes.” We reached the clearing where Xyla and I first made love, and I saw that it was once again strewn with bright flowers, in brilliant yellows, pinks, oranges, and reds. “Come create new life with me, Abby. And perhaps, when I and our daughters emerge from the earth, things will have settled down a bit.”

I took my dress off, and she removed her leaves. Then we lay down amongst the soft and beautiful flowers and made love.