A Half-Told Tale (closed for Obuzeti)

Caedan's head tilts inquisitively, but the sensation of the graceful elf cupping his balls causes his focus to flicker. He lets out a long, low exhalation and begins to steadily fuck her again. "Dryads," he says, in explanation, as he grinds his hips up against Cerid's firm ass, driving his member hilt-deep in her gripping pussy.

His breath begins to shorten as his own climax approaches, no longer distracted by observation from the consuming pleasure of this elf's cunt. His eyes tighten and lid over as his thrusts grow short and powerful, pounding the last handful of inches into her sex repeatedly. His hands tighten on the lush curve of her hip and breast, and his sac tightens, scrunching upwards as the heavy orbs prepare to spill their load deep inside Cerid's greedily sucking walls, still fluttering from her body-shaking climax only moments before.

The boneless feeling that surged through her body after she came was now being overtaken by the same anxious, needful tightening that had been prelude before, but the heat and vibrations that had taken an hour to produce in gentle thrusts and long kisses, was now back in full. Ready. She let herself milk the prick each time he pulled it from her, actively attempting to draw out the seed roiling in his sac.

“Fill me, Caedan, don't leave a drop back. I need all of it. Can't you feel the way my pussy begs for it? You make my pussy beg for it.” She begins to writhe beneath him again, the breast he hasn't attached his palm to, flopping in mad circles as she takes him again. She draws her legs up once more and hooks them around his waist, digs her heels down into his back, hard enough that he is aware of their blunted presence as she fucks him as hard and as fast as he is fucking her. She pushes against him as if being separate bodies is a sin she must rid herself of.

The near-crowing noise he makes as his cock spills prodigiously against the entrance of her womb matched by the pounding against her clit drives Cerid to cum again, harder this time, without reserve. The nails she'd lightly scratched over his back the first time draw blood now. When he finally draws his cock completely out of her hole, there's a wet smacking noise, followed by an nearly instant waterfall effect as she gushes his thick white seed. She pants and touches herself there, knowing full well where his eyes are.

The little elf binds herself tight about him and Caedan cannot help but surrender himself to her succulent embrace. Her legs and arms wind about him, her cunt pulls hungrily on his throbbing shaft, and her gasping, begging voice wheedles him for his seed - it is all too much, and he gasps as he releases within her, cock jerking in tune with mind-numbing bliss as he spends his get inside Cerid's grip, warm cum filling her sweetly-sucking pussy in jets that fill and run over, dripping from her sex in rivulets as he pants, still sheathed in her gently-milking folds. When he finally draws back and out, eyes lidded with pleasure and exhaustion, she has already begun to spill her prize upon the furs beneath her hips.

He watches Cerid's hands run over her taut belly - over where he has filled her with his essence - and without quite knowing why, covers her hand with his own again, fingers clumsily overlapping hers. He kisses her brow, soft, and then reclines upon the furs to her side, watching the elf with as much awareness as is left to him, though his eyelids flutter with post-coital exhaustion. He can't think of the last time he's so completely spent himself.

" . . . Talented," he offers. "Dryads are worse."

The nymphs of the woods are always ready for a randy experience, but after this, he doesn't know how he'll go back. Her luscious body dances in his thoughts, burned into his eyelids.

She blinks. She'd let a human... The wiser self clicks her tongue, dismayed, appalled, aghast, but dissipates as soon as Cerid turns her sharp glare on her.

Not just any human, a peculiar woodsman who had little use for words...though he had qualities that more than made up for that. She couldn't explain the friction, the pull she felt towards him, she wanted to be ashamed. But here in this room, laying next to him, the hazy resolution of what they had done took her arm and cast her into a deep, dreamless sleep.

When he wakes, she is already standing, dressing herself back into leathers that had dried to the point of comfort. She's cleaned herself with a rag and a bit of water from a pitcher she'd discovered. She pulls a cream-colored undershirt out of her pack and over her breasts and then begins lacing the tight corset-style leathers against her torso.

What mattered, she supposed, was the rain did not chill her bones and King Horis had not slit her throat or blown her up. Somehow, this obvious cottage had not been checked in all this time. It didn't make sense to her. She'd heard them shout how they would scour the woods in all directions. Dead or alive.

She adjusts the leathers once more and looks down at him, in sharp tones, demanding: “What is this place?”

He rises, soundless, and rolls the tension out from his shoulders and neck. "Home," he says, not certain how to answer the question she's implying but has not spoken. "It is safe. No one can find it."

The fire has burnt to nothing, now, and he stands and moves to relight it, shameless; even in the dark his body is a thing of sculpture, honed free of fat and plenty until all is whipcord, wolven muscle that dances along each step as he shifts more lumber into the firepit, sets it alight with flint, and then moves one corner of the hut where he reaches up and twitches aside the hanging furs that decorate every wall of the cottage.

Bones.

The corners and rafters of the cottage are decorated, enshrined in webways of hunted bone, bird skulls and deer antlers, a wild catacomb of hunter's fetishes that interlock into some kind of dreamweaver that lurks over the entire building's ceiling. It's probably entirely accidental, but that much death - earned, and not worn, personally hunted, consumed, and carved for each - has layered this man and this place with a semblance of death unlike any other. The blood-seekers of the King's mages would scent nothing from him and his but the endless stench of prey ichor, a predator red in tooth and claw. He is so soaked in lifeblood that no spell could discern him from that which he's spilt.

And yet, he stands and watches her - would loom over her in his tremendous height, but the curious bent of his head and the relaxed lines of his body are more reminiscent of some sated big cat, comfortable and curled up, instincts happily satisfied.

She starts to ask whether what he says is this true, but catches herself as he tilts his head at her. Of course it was true.

As little as man knew of the magic of elves, the Ravens had sought material that would teach them of what powers the humans. This ability to obscure location was not amongst them, but she believed him utterly. Looking over the skeletal relics of his hunts, she could feel a dark sanctuary overhead. Looking back at Caedan as she knotted the ties closed on her pack, a thought occurred to her. If he could keep the mages from tracking her here, then perhaps he could do the same for her. And keep any malingerers away from her and her pack. At least to the border, or as far as Fela, where they were known to be kinder with her people than others. He could help keep them both fed, and she...well, despite some half-interpreted pang of guilt, could keep him well-serviced on the way. Find some pockets full of coin she could share. He could come back with his lot greatly improved for having met her.

When she awoke, she'd little intention of putting herself so close to him again, not, not until she knew what exactly it was she intended.

Now, she lay the flat of her hand on his bare chest, feeling him steel himself so as not to flinch. Craning her neck up at him, she smiled. “I want to kiss you. And then, I want breakfast. The rains will stop sooner or later and I have...a proposition. If you wish to hear it.”

The big hunter's lip curls. It is not a friendly expression. Then it smooths out from his face and is gone again, like a ripple through still water, but with it has gone some of that dazed fascination, the enthrallment that has rendered him so placid in their time together so far.

"We will talk," he agrees, and then rises past the elf's touch with the smooth gait of a panther, pacing past her to retrieve some of the deer meat from yesterday where he'd set it on a sheltered ledge, and without elaboration hands it to Cerid. Then, he moves into the cave to retrieve some drinking water from the spring hidden in its depths.

Talking is what he remembers about humans. Talking is the gift they have instead of claws and thick hides and poisons; animals kill each other, but only humans cage each other with words, carve into the spirit wounds that do not bleed. Every human he has ever met has tried to give him words and take something in exchange. The elf now seems little different; sweet and seductive, brightly colored and barbed. He waits now for the sting.

At the spring, he fills two skins with the fresh, cool water and returns to the cottage, offering one for her use and taking a sip of his own, not self-conscious at all of his continued nudity. Instead he settles and begins to eat his own hank of deer leg - oddly exact in his manners, using a bone knife and spur to peel sections off and eat them in clean bites. It matches the exacting cleanliness of the cottage in general, in fact; decorated as it may be with furs, bones, and trophies, it is not cluttered, and the floor over the fur mats is clear and unobstructed. There are no cobwebs or ants, and in the wild that takes some effort.

She takes the meat in one hand and then accepts the skin in the other and holds it for a moment, watching Caedan move about the space in silence, in utter comfort. She would be lying to herself if she didn't acknowledge she was appreciative of her view.

In the Palace of King Horis, under the all-seeing gaze of the Mage Guard, a clever tongue was life itself. From the bards who sang to the court each night, to the cooks that presented him a daily feast, those that failed to entertain, to play the game of playing games, there was no royal patience. One moved only to climb. Charity, empathetic regard, as anything more than a byproduct of getting your own end would see you fed to the King's pigs.

In some ways, the prior night's interactions felt like removing shackles she had forgotten she wore. Not being required to think of alliance above all else, just...wanting and having, the simplicity of following one's nature, the clarity of requited desire, it was overwhelming. To imagine that Caedan lives this way not on occasion, but always, made her head swim.

She takes a sip, feels the water rush down her gullet, another form of refreshment. Posture alone told her that she had caused some upset to him. That seemed to be her way ever since she left the Elven lands, always taking too much of one world into another. She didn't want him to be displeased with her, but life outside of this bone-framed refuge would demand trouble. In her experience, it was little else but trouble. She tears a hank of flesh off with her teeth and chewed it quietly, appraising and reappraising him before catching his eye and venturing a simple, “Thank you." At his nodding, but non-plussed expression, she continued. "I am...grateful. For my life. For whatever is between us that made...that happen. I...have been so long from home. So much time wandering strange lands and without shared custom, I forget myself."

She pauses, thinks.

"Have you always lived here? In this forest?"

The words mean less than nothing to him. The elf speaks three ways: with her mouth, with her controlled body, and with instinct, and all answer differently. Her voice soothes, inquires; her body aligns towards him in attention; but what she does not seek tells him the truest tale of all. She has not glanced at the window, nor the door; she eats and drinks without checking for poison, though her hand came first to dagger when she woke earlier. Here safety is such a treasured thing that her body relaxes before the mind can catch it, and in that fact he reads a tale of scars.

This he can understand. It is familiar. And though she still talks and excuses, that unconscious trust has him relax and settle again, quiescent. He idly consumes another bite of meat as he considers her question, and then commits to more words than he likes.

"No," he says. "I was raised by a man. He liked to kill. He killed many things. He said many things. Who he was each day changed each time. He taught me to kill things so that he could see his flaws reflected. We went many places and slew many things."

The memories are distant and cool.

"When I was four-and-ten, I slew him instead, when he raised his knife to me. This is his house - I took it from him. I took his bow and his knife, but I buried him and his ways. I listened to the trees and the wind. I learned to hunt that which is necessary and not for pleasure. I learned respect of death, and comfort in it. That was eight-and-ten winters ago. I have been here since."

He gestures to the fireplace, to the complex weaving of antler and bone above it - and indeed, mounted in the crux of two sets of horns, there is a single human skull, polished clean by running water.

She turns to him, her eyebrow arched, but she remained silent. Absorbing his story, the pain he has made into a...home. Cerid might have, in her time, felt desire for humans, but never compassion. Never real empathy. She settles down, in the same cross-legged fashion beside him, sets the waterskin at her side and gently, gingerly, reaches for his arm. She pats it softly, kindly, making it as clear as she can, that she looks at him now with this knowledge and though he does not require it of her, she approves. A voice intones in her mind: A killer of men. A being Death greets as it moves through the trees is not so far from an elf.

“You were good to find your strength when it mattered.” She sees it play out in her mind, some imagined looming, fur-clad figure, Caedan in his youth. A struggle. She remembers the face that belonged to the first throat she cut on the field of Fela as it was those hundred years ago, and the blur of blood and bodies that followed, and that small knot of red that slipped from her the night before she would tell the Eldest Woman it had taken, that she'd been matched. “Would that I had your strength some three nights ago. Would that I knew...”

She waves her hand, before putting it back on his bicep, stroking it lightly.
“You traveled before you took over here. Where did you go?”

He watches the elf, and though he is still wary, the touch is - soothing. It raises the hairs of his forearm when she casually lays hand on him, and though he is still wary, it soothes him in some way he had been ignorant of before these storm-sullen nights. Her fingers are soft against his broad arms and his shoulders orient toward her, eyes flicking down to meet hers again in steady acknowledgement.

"Strength must be found before it is known," he says, and the words itch at him - he does not know why he is talking. She did not ask him this question. "You cannot find shade in the sun. You must walk to find it."

The arm Cerid lays hand to reaches out and softly touches along her shoulder, stroking down along her back in a soothing line. His fingers splay and drag along her back, light and warm.

"Many cities," he answers, after consideration. "I do not remember them. I was not permitted to speak. He entered, and he killed, and he left. Many roads. I liked those better. I saw a lake without shore once, in the distance. It was -"

He struggles for a moment. The words come clumsily to his tongue - for him, speech so long a blade pointed at him and not a tool his own, a story cannot be told with ease.

"It was the best of all things," he says, finally. "It changed me. I remember it."

She tilts her head to the side, pulling back some of the loose tendrils of her hair firmly behind the points of her ears, before returning her hand to him. The shadow of this imagined guardian that silenced this beautiful man begins to coalesce in her mind. She can feel some piece of him lingers here. But interrupting that, Cerid sees a noticeable light in Caedan's eyes as he brings himself to speak of seeing the world.

The room is yet again devoid of sound. She strokes his arm and drinks from the waterskin, finishes the meat.

“Would you leave this place for a time and travel with me? ...if you...like...we can visit the shoreless places, the Spire Forest, the City of Moons, the Perfumed City, the City of Glass. Wherever you wish, with as little words as you wish. I'll have stories enough about the Perfumed City for the both of us. It won't be the most direct route, but safer....” She puts her hand on his jaw, caresses it as lightly and tenderly as she'd pressed his arm. “I fear the wrath of King Horis, but I must return to Aelfara. A traveler of your skill would...I would...like to have you at my side.”

She leans back and blinks quickly, trying to give him room to think, to reply. She can feel the anticipation she's expressing, but can't suppress it.

The thought hurts Caedan in a way he had forgotten - opens up the poison, lets it out. That there are such places beyond here, he had known, distantly, but had never cared. He had never looked, hidden in his castle of willow and bone, content to remain master of this land, arbiter of death. No more than an animal.

There is no wrong in that, but he discovers that he can feel the burgeoning need for more with the keenness of a knife. He is changing in days where he has remained static for years upon years, and for a moment he closes his eyes and steadies himself against the currents. He takes stock of himself, and his changed world, views it from within a clear glass.

He wants to go.

He knows not the journey.

The elf wishes to go.

She is willing to aid him.

Her company is pleasant.

The thoughts string together in a crystalline line, and he feels himself reorient around them, the world changing from a small forest and a cottage to a line out beyond the horizon, over lands he cannot see into a future he cannot imagine. It raises something in his chest he does not know the name for, but in the future will recognize as hope.

He takes the elf's hand, nuzzles against it with curious gentleness, taking in her scent of vanilla and orchid, memorizing it. His lips brush her knuckles, at once innocent and breathtakingly sincere.

"I will go with you," he says, as his eyes scour the cottage, taking in what he now knows he will leave behind, with the elf or no. The winds have changed and he now must go, driven as surely as smoke. "I would see these places, and I would have you with me. These things are worthy."

He speaks without doubt, or hesitation, or fear. He speaks from the heart because he knows his own entire, and his thought rises from heartbeat to lips pure as springwater.

“Good. Good. This is...” Cerid feels a sense of relief that surprises her. Her respite between the fire and the frying pan might continue a while longer.rather than completing the thought, she gives in to her impulse and presses her lips against his, sharing his space, overcome with a feeling that's she's overdressed.

“It won't be easy, but I trust that...I trust you.” Another kiss, lighter, half on the corner of his mouth, half on his cheek.

“Now we've only the rain to wait out.” The hand that had so gently assured him, reaches up his shoulder and slides down his bare chest, as she held her eyes in his, until it settles on his upper thigh. There she kneads and massages down to his knee and back up again. “Do you wish to pack your things or shall I further improve on the paltry affections of a dryad?”

Caedan peers down at the elf - and the corner of his mouth curls upward, and his eyes soften. It's not quite a smile, but from a man who doesn't even understand the expression, it stands out. He leans forward and returns the kiss with simple enthusiasm, one hand coming to the back of her neck to hold Cerid steady as he kisses her as he did not understand to before; deep, passionate. He's learned quickly.

"You are always desirable," he answers, as always say many things with few words. His hands slide down his companions lithe sides to cup her ass, lifting her up against his hard chest and sliding in the gap between her top and riding leathers to gently grope the firm globes. "You know many things. Show me."

He's learned quickly - a flex of his wrists drops her leathers to just below the curve of her ass, and he sets to groping and fondling her thighs and glutes, warming the juncture of her thighs with proximity and simple adoration.

She shakes her head and wriggles out of his embrace only to settle on her knees on the floor next to him. From there, she reaches out and takes hold of his cock with both hands, one atop the other, and a lithe, dextrous bend brings her lips down but a few inches from its tip. He can hardly see through the oxblood of her curls, but for a quick noise, and then he sees a wet spattering of her spittle gliding down his thickness. Then she turns her neck to look askance at him, pulling her loose tresses out of her eyes to check his opinion, as she works her spittle along his cock, gentle at first and then, much more tightly than he expects, using her hands to mimic the gifts of her cunt.

He closes and opens his eyes. He closes and opens them again and with a self-amused smile, she spreads her mouth open and sinks her hot breath, her saucy, dancing tongue over his shaft. Cerid is pleased that even given how big as it is, his head swells even further under the effects of her tongue.

Caedan groans and his head falls back - dryads were lithe and tireless, but had none of Cerid's curves, nor her imagination. The plant-women rutted as flowers, endless but without variation, rowdy and simplistic, always hungry for more seed. This - sex for pleasure alone - is something they could never duplicate.

The sensation of wetness and her delicate hands is unique enough, but then the elf's mouth covers his fat head and he has to restrain himself from jerking at the sensation. It is hot and soaked, different entirely from the elf's cunt in how alive it is, how easily it seeks his weakness. A flexible tongue teases along the underside of his glans and makes Caedan's thighs tremble.

He cannot simply sit and endure - he focuses instead on sliding a hand around Cerid and spreading her folds with his fingers. She is not yet wet, not as she was before, so he rubs, gentle and circular, over the delicate lips as he tries to not immediate spill his seed in Cerid's mouth.

Her elf blood and a few hours of rest have eased most of the residual soreness from Caedan's steady use of her cunt last night, what remains is a tenderness, a heightened awareness of his touch as he fingers her. Cerid finds herself groaning in response as she laps and sucks and otherwise provokes him with her mouth. It feels incredibly good to suck his cock, but for now, without some careful practice, it is unlikely that she could press him much more deeply down her throat. Instead, she concentrates on flicking the opening notched into the top of his swollen head, slurping at the juice that is arising there, clearing to make room for his seed. She can feel him move involuntarily, pull himself out of the hot, pink o formed by her lips.

Cerid rubs her forearm across her lips to clean herself up, runs her tongue along the outside of his cock, kissing it appreciatively. Then she stands over his outstretched thighs, peeling off her leathers, before squatting down over his erection, using her hand to guide it into the first few inches of her wet, happy flesh.

Caedan focuses, tries not to buck his hips up into the wet mouth and tongue working its best on his cock - their sizes are too different, and though while he's on top he can control himself easily, letting her take the lead is proving far more grating on his self-control. His knuckles pop, he swallows, and the muscles in his thighs tense . . . but she draws back, wiping her mouth off with a smile, and instead settles into his lap herself, taking his shaft between a different pair of lips.

Still seated, he has little to do but appreciate the curvaceous bounty set out before him, and the hunter does so with gusto - cupping one heavy tit with his hand, he brought the stiffened nub atop it to his lips, and suckled as some half-remembered instinct implored him to do so, and half in response to Cerid's own oral antics.

Meanwhile, his hips slowly work that broad cock deeper into the elf's pussy - allowing her to accept an inch at a time, slowly, not as slow as the last time now that she's loosened some, but still a patient slip down his towering rod, sliding in and between her wettening folds.

She pushes herself a bit harder this time, the muscles of her thighs after many a long night taking watch in corridors with little clearance, skulking after her own brand of prey, find little difficulty in holding her steady as she breathes through the first uncertain twinges of this position. Her pauses fewer and many of those shortened by his thrusts, eventually, his beast of a cock is hers again.

Settled for the moment on his lap, as fully embedded as a tent stake hammered flat into the earth, she feels the bright, intense twinge from his mouth suckling on her tit running through her, turning the dusky pink bud a raw, gleaming crimson. She twists slightly to remind him she owned a second one and as he takes it between his lips, Cerid begins to let her hips swivel to the right, to the left, not lifting her ass from his thighs, just shifting him against her walls. The movements are minute, but she mewls desperately like some sort of newly born animal with each circle.

She leans down towards him, her mouth open slightly, presses her forehead against his.

The grinding motion is maddening - little bits of friction against his cock, trapped deep within the wet and tight of the elf's body. It doesn't satisfy him the way a full-on thrust deep into her cunt would, but it holds his attention, fills his brain with warm fuzz. He lets it pass for the moment, instead nibbling gently on Cerid's other nipple before the hunter's head rises to trade delicate, open-mouthed kisses with her, breath heavy and affectionate as they simply press together.

Instead, his hands wander and explore: over her naked back, tracing the dip of her navel, over legs too smooth and soft to be compared to anything he'd known before. All the while he holds himself still as Cerid rides him, slow and steady, keeping him rock-stiff inside of herself and inching towards her own readiness.

Cerid raises her arms in a stretch over her head, squeezing Caedan inside her as she does so. When she lets them down, she sets each palm down on the hardened muscle of his shoulders for support and begins to draw herself up and down his shaft. Slowly, at first, as if convincing herself she could comfortably re-admit it. Then, her confidence builds and she begins to bounce on his cock at an ever increasing rate, impaling herself on it with abandon.

On one such downward thrust, she takes his free hand and brings it to her clit and she rocks against his touch. She looks into his eyes, her expression wanton, heated, but held somewhere in the middle distances as she is transfixed by the feeling between her legs. Her kisses grow a bit more frantic and fragile.

Cerid leads his hand to a flesh-pearl seated just above her folds - his fingers upon it set her to writhing in his lap, rising and falling upon his cock as she begins to work herself towards her summit. The hunter makes prompt use of this knowledge and continues to fondle and stroke that nerve-nub as she rides his thick shaft, his other hand taking hold of her firm ass and driving her down into each rising stroke of his hips. Their combined force begins to cause a wet smack of flesh as they fuck.

The elf's eyes are clouded with lust, even though she tries to keep his gaze; gently, he moves his lips against hers, even though his grip and their mating grows ever more fierce, nearly splitting her upon his full rod. Her rigid nipples rub against the broad muscle of his pectorals as the heat of their bodies draws sweat from them both, coating them as they glisten in the firelight.

For as many times as she'd been bedded in her one hundred and twenty years, she was unaware of this quality of union, the way it could make her leave her mind and body behind and travel to some other plane. One that transcended all her petty thoughts, all her worries, the pain inherent in finding her way to such a place. Where all became a light that consumed all. She could see Caedan below her, watching her, coaxing her, encouraging her to satisfy herself on his cock, but if she tries to focus, he blurs slightly.

She can feel the rough pads of his fingers pressing, pinching, tugging at her clit. He is, she intuits, learning quickly, if he didn't natively understand, exactly how to make her cum.

Losing all sense of control, she doubles her speed, forcing herself down and against his thighs, concentration on that horizon she was racing towards converts all her moans and howls into a single steady stream of yes. The motion leaves the soft, full mounds of her tits to rise and fall independently in front of him, until she quivers wildly, feeling her climax begin to overtake her.

Noting some similarities, Caedan dips his head to take one bouncing nipple into his mouth again, and syncs the rhythm of his tongue and fingers as he teases and fondles both in syncopation with the wild beat of Cerid's hips as she rides his shaft furiously, the caressing wetness overtaking him quite without realizing. Distraction is not the same thing as immunity - he seizes, grunts and bucks as his orgasm hits him with shocking abruptness, the sheer sensuality of this sexual creature riding him as hard as she can striking him. Each surge of his cock matches a boiling jet of cum that fills the elf, and when his climax ceases the hunter pushes down on her hips and grinds their union together, working them side to side again until he's gone completely soft inside his companion.

He exhales and releases the reddened nipple from his mouth, rising up to peck the elf on the lips in an absent gesture he still doesn't fully understand.

"Many things," he murmurs, leaning his forehead against Cerid's. "To learn, and to see; to feel. You are a thing of wonder."