It was an honor to be chosen, of course it was. To be made Queen of the Herd was to be feted and feasted every night for a whole month, given the absolute finest gifts of the harvest in gratitude for the bounty nature would provide over the course of the next year. It meant the esteem of the entire village, reverence and gratitude that lasted long after the celebrations were over and the new Queen's time was spent overseeing her duties. It meant a warm place to sleep every night and plenty of food, which wasn't always a big change but some of the women of the village needed it, and of course it meant that their children would be well taken care of for life.

It was a great honor to be made Queen of the Herd... but that didn't mean Mathilda wasn't desperately wishing it had come to someone else, instead.

It was her last year of eligibility for the crown--this was her twenty-fifth summer, and beyond that it was presumed the King would lose his interest in a woman--and Mathilda had spent much of it looking for a man. Some intuition had told her the eye of fate was upon her, and married women were off-limits for inclusion in the lottery. But every young maiden in town had that same idea, and many of them were prettier and most of them were more willing to offer a sample of their charms to the young men who showed an interest, and when Riley Fletcher glanced her up and down with a sad, knowing stare before giving his head a slow shake Mathilda felt the truth of it. They all knew there was no real choice to be made this year.

So Mathilda spent every summer night, short as they were, lying on her pallet in the loft of the barn and listening to the soft, lowing sounds of the cows below, wondering if she had the nerve to run and knowing deep down inside that she didn't. Not that it would have done much good if she'd tried--Mathilda knew all the stories, she'd heard about the maidens who stole away under cover of darkness with a few precious belongings only to stumble back into the village on Festival Day filthy and emaciated with their names already chosen. The Queen was the Queen, even if they did draw names from the big leather sack in the Mayor's house, and it was best just to accept the honor and be done with it.

Which she did, although Mathilda couldn't deny her eyes were bright with tears every night at the feasts and her lips had the taste of salt on them when she kissed the foreheads of the village's other young women to offer them the blessings of the Herd. They accepted gratefully, of course, but she could see that behind their smiles the true gratitude was not for promised fertility and health in the coming year; it was for taking their place as the bride of the Herd King. She quietly hated them for that look of mingled relief and pity, but there was no point in holding onto it. Not when the last night of the festival was approaching and it was time to take her place among the cows.

Mathilda couldn't repress a shudder when she entered the big barn on the edge of town and saw the occupant of the last stall--only the priests were allowed in here, and she'd never actually seen a Queen of the Herd at the end of her earthly reign until this very moment. The sight of last year's Queen, down on all fours with her breasts swollen and distended and her nipples dripping milk, staring vacantly at nothing with eyes wide and dark while her lips issued moo after long, lowing moo... it carried the dreadful weight of prophecy to it, a sure and certain knowledge that Mathilda was going to see this happen to herself before her next summer ended.

She could already picture it. The bee stings on her chest would blossom into udders, with long, stiff teats that a man could grip and tug each morning to relieve the pressure inside them. Her eyes would go from their usual stormy blue to a rich, deep brown, with wide dark pupils that offered nothing but placid vacuity and docile domestication behind them. Her words would slowly fade, from lips and from mind, leaving behind only the groans of a beast that wanted milking and mounting. That wasn't the worst of it, either... but of course Mathilda would be the only one to know what fate awaited the last year's Queen of the Herd. And she wouldn't be telling anyone.

There wasn't much pain to the piercing; the priests had been at this for more summers than Mathilda had been alive, and their hands were swift and sure as they inserted the nose ring for Mathilda's lead. They put her in the stall, next to the queen Mathilda was replacing--and she hated herself for admitting it, but she couldn't even remember the last woman's name anymore--and then they cleared out less than an hour before sundown. It didn't do to be seen by the Herd King on harvest night, not if they wanted his graces for the coming year. He was very particular about his bargains like that.

So it was only Mathilda, waiting anxiously on all fours with irregular black patches traced on her pale skin in charcoals, who heard the clomping of hooves an hour after the sun set and the barn grew dark. They'd left a torch next to her stall, to guide the Herd King's way to her, and in some ways Mathilda wished they hadn't--it would have been dreadful to imagine what lay behind those noises, but it was somehow more dreadful still when she saw what trod into the firelight and looked her up and down with an approving stare. The sacred barn was the biggest structure in town, with high ceilings almost twenty feet off the ground, and when Mathilda saw the Herd King for the first time she finally understood why.

He walked on two feet like a man, although 'feet' was the wrong term for the massive cloven hooves that came into view, and his whole body was covered in short russet fur that smelled faintly of wet hay. He had the burly, muscular frame of a blacksmith or a farrier, and looking between his legs Mathilda suddenly realized the symbolism of the large leather sack made from the hides of a dozen bulls the Mayor drew from every summer. No wonder all his lovers wound up pregnant from just one night of sex; there had to be an absolute torrent of spunk stored up inside those balls.

He had two horns, short compared to his own body but still probably as long as Mathilda's forearm, and he tilted his head from left to right and right to left as he did his best to take her in with eyes that rested on either side of his long snouted face. He finally gave a huffing snort of approval that both thrilled and terrified Mathilda--she didn't want this, not any of it, but at the same time when she looked at those heavy balls and that big swinging prick she couldn't help feeling the quiet stirrings of anticipation between her legs. Like a bride on her wedding night, Mathilda was finally going to see what all the fuss was about... and in many ways, a bride on her wedding night was exactly what she was.

The King entered her stall, casually stepping over a gate that came up nearly to Mathilda's shoulders, and he greeted last year's queen with a gentle nuzzle and a lick that rocked her head to one side with the strength of it. She responded with a delighted moo, and even though the domesticated idiocy behind it utterly petrified Mathilda she couldn't help feeling a faint yearning that seemed to float into the back of her mind unbidden. The old queen just sounded so contented. So happy. Mathilda found herself wondering what it would be like to be happy like that herself.

She didn't have long to wonder. The Herd King went around behind her, his prick already seeming to defy gravity as it rose impossibly long and thick to jut out from between his legs almost as far as the distance from Mathilda's cunt to her collarbone. It seemed both ludicrous and horrifying to imagine taking a cock like that, she felt certain it would split her in two, but when he clambered around to press the tip of it against her soaking folds something seemed to shift inside her and she finally grasped the truth of what she'd been taught all those years and never fully believed.

The King of the Herd was a god, even if he did take mortal shape one night a year. And gods could do whatever they wanted.

So when he pushed his way inside her, resting his body weight on hers and cramming his gigantic prick into her pussy until she could feel his heavy balls smacking the entrance to her cunt, Mathilda didn't even feel any pain. She only felt the force of his thrust, so vast and overwhelming it was like being a toy in the hands of a giant, and even though he went up and up and up inside her there was never a moment where she felt like she couldn't take any more of him. The power of the divine stretched her to accommodate his potency, and if some thoughts fell out of her head to make room then that was simply the price she paid to be fucked by a god.

She heard herself starting to groan, her human moans gradually fading into the harsh lowing sound of a cow in heat, but by then Mathilda's mind was already losing its capacity for reason and she couldn't really make sense of the noises she was making. She only knew she wanted to grind her hips back against the powerful masculine intrusion, take as much of him as she could and clench around the Herd King's big cock until he spurted inside her. Mathilda didn't know exactly how babies were made, not beyond the rude mechanics of it all, but she could tell intuitively that as deep as he was in her cunt there was no way his seed wouldn't find purchase.

Her tits began to grow in that very instant, swelling underneath her from delicate curves to hanging mounds to lush, swaying udders the size of summer melons. The long teats brushed against her bedding, tickling her and adding to the intense throb between her legs, and Mathilda's jaw went slack as the pleasure finally overpowered any ability to think. Mathilda came so hard she'd spent the whole next year reverberating with the echo of it, and like all the queens before her she learned in that instant why the Herd King's brides had nothing else in their empty heads. But the knowledge fell away as soon as it was gained.

He fucked her good and hard that night, fucked her until the torch burned out and her cunt was messy with the frothy residue of her lust, and when he came inside her it gushed out around his shaft like Mathilda's quim was an old leaky bucket. Then he sated himself again with the old queen, reuniting himself with his last lover and plowing her with a seemingly inexhaustible potency, and he still had time to fill up Mathilda's snatch with his prick again before the darkness outside the barn gave way to the deep blue light that came just before dawn.

He took the old bride's lead in one powerful fist, opening the gate to the stall and guiding her out before carefully, reverently closing it again, and he let out another huff as he walked into the forest to return to the herd. Mathilda watched him go, her mindless mind still lost in the sensation of being filled by that enormous prick... and she knew, with a sense of profound and glorious delight, that she only had to wait a year before he would come back and claim her forever.

THE END