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Sigil, Preludes of the Great Wheel	By : CrimsonLotus Category: +A through F > Dungeons & Dragons Views: 4454 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Dungeons & Dragons, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Sigil, Preludes of the Great Wheel
- 1
Sigil, Preludes Part I

Well met traveller - this is Sigil: crossroads of the Planes. But you no doubt already knew this. Who does not know of our great Wheel-City as it plies slowly upon itself, hoisted on the Spire which is the backbone of all reality? For Sigil is like an oval band suspended over the Outlands from which all Planes emanate. From a fixed location within the city, one can see the curvature of the structure as a whole as it folds into itself.
But to know Sigil, one has to live Sigil. To enter amidst the din and chaos of the city streets, to savour the planning (what planning?) of the single most untidy urban project this side of Xaos. If horizontal space is lacking, build up. If vertical space is lacking build between. Between dimensions, that is, for Sigil is the city of gateways. Gateways to all sorts of ripples and wrinkles in reality. Gateway to the Planes, to be sure, but gateway to all manner of unexpected places that haunt the dreams of sentients. So it is, Sigil the melting pot - no, the foundry of nations. No sentient race that has plied the streams of reality lacks a healthy representation here. But I get ahead of myself. To know life in Sigil, you have to live Sigil. This also means its inhabitants.
So traveller - prepare for a tiny, infinitesimal slice of what Sigil has to offer. Yet, I suppose it would in many ways be satisfactory. This is a city of incommensurable beings. Beings (I dare not say people) who live, hope, dream and love (often too much). A caricature perhaps? Perhaps, but in Sigil even caricatures have a cosmopolitan, fantastic quality. So allow yourself to be guided into the beating pulse at the centre of our humble burgh. I warn you now - if you have come for some depressing, long-drawn disquisition on the conditions of the working classes in the Hive you shall be disappointed. The Revolutionary League headquarters are not too hard to find should you be so inclined.
If you have come to read of picaresque exploits of heroes and plane-hoppers - I suspect you will only be partially disappointed. There are heroes here, yes, but heroes whose time has yet to come, will never come or would have come, circumstances permitting. Confusing? No doubt. But times change. Even Sigil changes for the wheel of time is everyone's master, even Sigil's. But enough fatalism, allow me to lead you through one of innumerable microcosms.
- the Archivist, your narrator

"...she swore by grass, she swore by corn

her true love had never been born..."
"Marséna, you are covering me, aren't you?" Virginia shouted as she gave the wooden door a third, hard kick. Splinters flew as the rusted joints gave way.
"Right behind you, oh ye of little faith," Marséna called out as she parried an incoming thrust with her longsword. Fighting in the cramped stairwell of a slum tenement in the Hive was never pleasant. Especially when the stairwell was under assault by half a dozen Anarchist thugs. In principle, they rejected all political and intellectual authority. In reality, the pecuniary demands of running a revolutionary faction imposed unsavoury activities: prostitution, racketeering, trafficking of persons and restricted substances.
The Civic Security Department, too underfunded to deal with so-called petty crime turned a blind eye to paramilitary organisations which volunteered to share the workload. Thus, the Order of the Radiant Path of the Vigilant Maiden, called, as stipulated in its Founding Axioms, to defend the honour and integrity of victimised, now found themselves in a decidedly tight spot.
"They're in here." Virginia called out, briefly catching in her field of vision the ragged vestiges of soulless women held in blackened manacles, before turning back towards the stairwell. Marséna, as reliable as ever, had already struck one dark-leather clad assailant down and stepped over him as the man lay clutching the welling lifeblood that fell from his body.
"Looks like you don't need the help," Virginia said grimly as she set herself at her companion's side, her sword wailing as it cut into an Anarchist's shoulder. The tightness of the stairwell gave both paladins of the Radiant Path the tactical advantage. Pressed shoulder to shoulder against each other, assuming a defensive posture that reduced the target for their enemies, they relied on the disorganised indignation of the Anarchists. Their indignation was great enough to throw caution to the wind, striking out at the armoured women with practised but ineffectual lunges that were soon blunted by patient, calm swordplay, and opening themselves for that final, cutting riposte that sent them reeling and then tumbling down the stairs. By the time Marséna had felled her second, the remainder of the Anarchist cell had decided that prolonged resistance would result in - at best - a Pyrrhic victory and withdrew, boots sliding frantically, into the lower reaches of the building before disappearing, in all haste, into the Hive Ward. Untraceable, to be sure, but they would certainly lie low for a while.
"No," Marséna said, recovering her breath, as she leant back on the wooden wall of the stairwell to take stock of the situation, "I probably didn't." She smiled wryly at Virginia, "But it's always a pleasure to have you by my side, superfluous or not."
"I'm flattered," Virginia replied, with irony but no malice. Marséna had matured into one of the most impressively effective - and elegant - fencers she had known. Her days as an insecure novice were quite evidently behind her. She now carried herself with enviable poise: her body was lean, athletic, with olive skin, lustrous, long corvine-black hair, and immersive, expressive brown eyes which some poets would have said betrayed the secrets of the depths of her soul. Her features were delicate; lips full and wine red, breasts and hips in the parsimonious generosity of a Classical sculpture - a visage which, in other worlds, would have been called a paean to the Mediterranean. Virginia knew they made a strikingly complementary team.
While Marséna had been born in the province of Overnha on the sun-kissed world of Mareterra, Virginia's ancestors hailed from the cool, misty lands of Ortho. Her complexion, pale as pearl, was testament to this. Her body was leaner still than Marséna's, more masculine, perhaps, but no less elegant. Fervid, green eyes were framed by perfectly blonde hair which had been succinctly arranged, in the manner of a page boy. Though Virginia's features were sharper, there was a richness to them in the symmetrical beauty of her face, still blessed with the freshness of very late adolescence which bridges into womanhood, and the inviting firmness of her body.
Both paladins wore the engraved breastplate of their order. This was forged out of silvery steel and adorned with a stylised star placed at the centre of a two concentric circles. Herein lay the symbolic summary of the doctrine of the Vigilant Maiden: the purity of the inner soul that reunites holds body and intellect into a single, inseparable whole. Honour, dignity and compassion had to be adequately represented in all three spheres to truly walk the Radiant Path of Salvation. Such was the principle; in that moment, however, all Virginia wanted was a warm bath and some silence, or at least some pleasingly inane banter with Marséna, just to remind herself that the world did not rest at the end of a blade.
"All done?" A melodious voice called from lowed down the stairwell.
"Goddess, Friyya, you took your time." Virginia snapped back. Combat situations were not something to be pursued if it could at all be avoided, even the notoriously sanguine Isobel, their unit vice-commander, had said, albeit grudgingly, something to that effect, "Get up here, let the prisoners out and bring them to the hospice. We'll have a look at the mezzanine."
"Coming, coming..." Friyya grumbled.
"Once you've caught your breath we can take a look downstairs," Virginia said, turning to Marséna.
"Anytime, then you can make me dinner." Marséna answered, irreverent as always.
Virginia nodded almost gratefully before descending the stair, Marséna close behind her. Friyya met them halfway down to the mezzanine: "I absolutely hate running in armour." she said, causing Marséna to sigh in irritation and Virginia to ask herself how she'd put up with Friyya for over five years of training in the same novice detachment. Friyya loved to poke, provoke, gossip and complain. She was also, as far as Virginia and quite a few others were concerned, impossibly beautiful with light, auburn hair, an elfin face graced by melt-water blue eyes, and an elegantly feminine body which not even her breastplate, greaves and gauntlets could much diminish. If she stared long enough, Virginia was certain that she could get lost in the pale silkiness of but a section of Friyya's thighs, bare and enframed between her boots and the breastplate's kirtle.
Then again, Virginia had begun to think the same of the maddening sensuality of Marséna's iodine skin against the silvery whiteness of her armour. It had been too long, Virginia resolved, since she had been given the opportunity for a truly unhurried amorous encounter. The new responsibilities of being a Consecrated Paladin, however, took precedence. This much, even in the rambling chaos of the Hive Ward with its shattered, misshapen, mismatched buildings from a thousand ages and drawn from a thousand schools of architecture, was certain.
"We're down to the mezzanine, there cold be some residual hostile activity there," Marséna specified, letting Friyya through to reach the upstairs prison chambers, "where's Syf?"
"Downstairs, holding the entrance, just in case the Rebs change their minds and come back for more." Friyya said curtly as she passed by.
"Typical, Goddess knows where you'd be without her," Marséna muttered: there was definitely an uneven distribution of duties between those two, and, she suspected, not only in field operations, "we'll meet at the building entrance when we're done."
The mezzanine was an abandoned storage facility, built as a communal warehouse for the inhabitants of the tenement who, in centuries past when that part of Sigil was still civil and functioning, had been the scions of a highly egalitarian culture from some distant part of the Multiverse. They were gone, but their narrow, space-efficient buildings, all clustered onto one another, were testament to a culture which placed society above privacy or individualism. There, in the musty pitch-darkness, Marséna and Virginia found nothing but disused, dusty fabric and silence.
"Virg, Light." Marséna said softly, her sword at the ready.
Virginia obeyed, intoning a soft prayer and allowing the light of her soul to expand outwards and fill the mezzanine chamber with a dull, lambet glow. Something stirred, deep in the fabric which, upon illumination, was nothing of the sort, but appeared to be a form of spiderweb, extending to every floor and wall of the chamber.
"Who goes there?" Marséna inquired, as the light allowed nothing but the most perfunctory identification of form or motion, "We mean no harm lest you mean harm to us." There were times in which Marséna's one-liners irritated Virginia to no end, especially when they incongruously popped up in tense situations which required less talking and more thinking.
"Far right, behind the web curtain," Virginia said, her keen sense of intuition suggesting that the rustling had come from that direction, "brush it aside, I'm behind you."
Marséna complied, stepping forward gingerly, the tip of blade reflecting the flickering Light spell as it shifted the silky material aside, revealing a niche in the corner. There lay a form, crouched low as if ready to pounce, clad only in a light shift woven of fabric that could have been a starless midnight.
"Pericla en set zel!" Marséna growled, "Dark elf!"
"Calm down, don't provoke her," Virginia said, surprised, but not thrown as she contemplated the figure before her, its visage obscured by a wild mane of thick hair, white as snow, "and, for future reference, cut down on the oaths - in any language." Marséna smirked in response, relieved, more than anything, that it was unlikely that the drow, in such a tattered state, posed any threat. Virginia, Marséna thought, no doubt sometimes envied Syf's doctrinaire, clean-living, clean-fighting, self-sacrifice approach. All fine and well for a paladin, but, then again, there were always Lathander and Tyr to worship should the Radiant Path strike anyone as too lax.
Turning to the drow, Virginia asked, "Do you understand me?" The dark elf girl was clearly startled, yet there was a self-possessed confidence about her demeanour, as if she were defiant, even in the face of overwhelming odds.
"Do you understand our language?" Virginia repeated, approaching slightly.
"Virg, it doesn't, let's get out of here before things have a chance to go wrong..." Marséna interjected, somewhat nervous at the development of standoff that should never have been.
"I...understand." Said the drow, very softly, her voice accented surprisingly lightly by her native tongue, "I like to think that I've managed to pick a few things up." Though not the most poetic of languages, Sigil's lingua franca had the advantage of drawing on a number of disparate linguistic stems, facilitating its learning by virtually anyone familiar with the major linguistic traditions of the Multiverse.
Now, for the first time, the dark elf looked up, her long mane of silvery hair parting, revealing a youthful, noble elven face, full lips like lavender, onyx-black skin drawn perfectly onto delicate, high cheekbones, her eyes glowing violet like embers in some alien fire. The drow stirred slightly, her strength had been much sapped by her sojourn on the surface of plane far removed from her own. Maybe her time had come to descend into the Demonweb Pits.
"Are you here for my life?" The dark elf inquired, almost wearily. Had she possessed the strength, she would have struck out with a blade or incantations, but only animals fought in her condition.
"Not if you do not wish it." Marséna said. "Stand up and keep your hands within our sight."
The dark elf complied, rising slowly, unsteadily to her feet, raising and extending her arms out to her sides. Virginia looked on, her heart still beating from the adrenaline of battle, her training told her never to drop her guard, to always prepare for the worst possible situation - particularly when dealing with untrustworthy races. Very few could be classified as more untrustworthy than dark elves. But there was something about the quiet dignity of the girl's demeanour that struck Virginia, that and the enticingly full breasts, larger than any she had seen on a surface elf, which were only marginally obscured by the gauziness of the charcoal black shift. Despite herself Virginia took a pause to swallow. It really had been too long.
"What, may we ask, are you doing here?" Virginia said, placing her hand on Marséna's sword arm, indicating that it would be best to assume a less threatening approach, "You must be far from your kin." Not that this was always a bad thing, Virginia thought.
"Close or far, my situation is one of constant fear for my life," the drow said with almost palpable rancour, "if you were to kill me now, I who am already dead, at least I would fear no more." If drow humour existed, it was gallows humour.
"We mean no ill will, look, my companion has set aside her sword," Virginia said, her tone immediately more conciliatory.
The dark elf took a glance at Marséna's reluctantly lowered arm and allowed herself a wan, sardonic smile, before stumbling suddenly to her knees as her strength failed her. Virginia caught her in her arms on her way down. There the drow lay for several long moments, breathing in the metallic scent of Virginia's armour, the softer smell of the skin beneath it mingled with the saline residue of sweat. It was almost surreal, like being encased protectively in metal. At once, she hated herself for showing herself in such a weakened state.
"Virg, she could have knife..."Marséna said, utterly surprised at the turn the situation had taken.
"She's tired." That was the only answer Virginia could muster. She had experienced her full share of surreal events for the day, but that instant was to the paladin like contact with an alien world: hesitant, fearful, but strangely full of promise. Virginia gently helped the drow to her feet.
"I could have a knife," the dark elf whispered as she clutched Virginia's leather gauntleted hand in her own, "but if I kill you, she kills me. What kind of deranged arithmetic is that?" She smiled again, enigmatically.
"I sense no violence in your intentions," Virginia gambled, she certainly had no inclination to be drawn into a dark elf mind game, she had to regain the initiative, "would you trust me for something to eat?"
"Not for food, but for the boldness of your opening." This paladin, the drow thought, has mettle, even if she is foolish - it would have been, admittedly, very easy to simply run her through.
"Then come with us." Virginia said, finally exhaling with relief.
"Are you insane?" Marséna protested, completely indifferent to the drow's presence, "Isobel will have our heads on a skewer! There's now way we can bring her back to Quarters."
"It's on my head, you can always tell Isobel it was my idea." Virginia retorted, as she moved to exit the room.
"If I'm complicit, I get tossed out too, you know..."
"Nobody asked for your complicity, just say you knew nothing about it and I won't object."
Marséna was taken aback. Not for the first time, of course - Virginia was an expert at making her feel guilty, especially since she knew that that Virginia knew that they would follow one another up through the gates of the Ninth Pit of Hell.

"Goddess, Virg, you know I'd never leave you." Marséna said with quiet regret. Of all the stupid things they had done together, and there had been many, this misguided act of compassion was almost certainly on top of the list.
"Then lead her out," Virginia called back, "and don't tell Friyya or we'll all be in for a long day."
Complying almost in exasperation with her friend's request, Marséna prompted the drow forward with nudge on the shoulder, her sword still drawn and ready by her side, "Come on then," she told the dark elf, as they exited the mezzanine chamber, "no funny games, alright?" It was more a request than an order.
They took the long way back to the Quarters which were situated in the slightly more congenial surroundings of the Temple District. Foremost amongst Virginia's concerns was to avoid Friyya and Syf - not that they were less trustworthy than Marséna, but the situation would, under present circumstances, have taken too long to explain. The drow did not seem to take too poorly to the dim light of day afforded by the overcast sky of Sigil. In other worlds, Virginia had read that dark elves would be incapacitated by the rays of one or more suns and that their clothing and weaponry, though infused with might incantations, would dissolve into dust and nothingness when it came into contact with the first rays of dawn. Sigil, however, had no Sun. Night and day were determined by varying shades of grey, the hours called by the great Bell Tower at the Hall of Records.
The Quarters of the paladins of the Order of the Radiant Path had been carved out of fair roseate marble imported from Elysium and, although the inner living chambers were spartan, the edifice had an air of dignified taste to it, so much so that it stood in relief when compared to its surroundings of highly ornate towers and impossible architectural follies dreamt up by the priests of more ostentatious gods. It proved relatively simple for the party to sneak into the Quarters through the stables and into the rear service stairway which led to the upper floors. Novices were confined to the bottom floors and limited to communal accommodation, Consecrated Paladins were entitled to more spacious lodgings, with shared bathing and cooking facilities and separate bedchambers. Silence filled the living area in that late afternoon, most novices were in the courtyard for drills or in the Temple for lessons. Virginia desperately hoped she did not run into any senior knight on her way up.
"It's strange," the dark elf said quite suddenly as Virginia unlocked the door to her apartment, "you bring me to a temple for what you believe is compassion. It's a little like a sacrifice, if you think about it."
"Quiet," Marséna growled, "this wasn't my idea."
"Easy," Virginia said, eager to ensure that Marséna did not cause the drow to feel cornered, "is Shesayne going to be home soon?"
"Possibly, but I'll speak to her." Shesayne had been Marséna's lover for the last six months. An impish, slightly eccentric half-elf who worked for a private organisation specialised in the retrieval of potentially hazardous enchanted objects, she had first caught Marséna's eye during a joint operation between her company and the Radiant Path. Despite Virginia's expectations, a touching understanding of both minds and sentiment had developed between the two, to the extent that Marséna had obtained appropriate dispensation to house Shesayne in Quarters. Considering the property prices in overcrowded Sigil, Shesayne had leapt at the opportunity, even if it meant sharing her living with a militant order of a religious nature.
"Here we are, then," Virginia said as she allowed Marséna to usher the dark elf into the communal kitchen, "I'll draw some hot water for you to freshen up and then prepare something warm. Please, wait here." The paladin carefully removed and hung up her breastplate, gauntlets, boots and greaves on her armour stand before proceeding, wordlessly, into the bath chamber.
Marséna followed her in, "You're losing it, Virg. She's not an honoured guest: there's a dark elf in our living quarters whom you met her less than an hour ago and now it's as if the High Priestess was visiting."
Virginia ignored Marséna for a moment as she heated some charcoal in a stove with a large cast-iron pail of water on top. "I thought charity was one of the Founding Axioms." She finally said, testing the water with a finger and, finding it suitably warm, poured it into the circular cedarwood bathing tub.
"It is. But I'm not stupid, Virg. This isn't charity. I know your eyes because you are a sister to me. Oelhos trayous, you can't fool me."
"That's the problem with both of us. We're so transparent. That's why we are paladins and not saleswomen. Bear with me on this, because I know I felt something when I held her. Something which could be a germinating seed. Give me time and, if need be, I'll tell Friyya and I'm sure Syf will understand. I know you know me, so you understand that I see things differently. Even when we first met, I took the unconventional view." Marséna knew this was Virginia's trump card: most of the novices had been of Ortho stock and a Mareterran amongst them certainly stood out. The two weeks before Virginia had befriended her, had unequivocally been the most unpleasant of Marséna's life.
"So, will you help me out?" Virginia inquired, breaking Marséna's brief recollection.
"Sure. We'll see how this turns out, me trigo." Marséna sighed.
"Good girl. Take off your armour, I'll run you a bath later."
"Will you join me?"
"Shesayne will be jealous." Virginia chided gently.
"I don't think she cares."
"Maybe, then." Virginia smiled as she leaned forward to kiss Marséna softly on the lips, "Now let me attend to this."
Virginia returned to the living area, and found the dark elf alone and bemused, contemplating her surroundings with an air of quiet perplexity which can only be found in those who have just been plunged into a fundamentally different existence. Her drow instincts told her to deceive, inveigle, fight covertly, to run and betray.
But there was an essential break in that logic. She was clever enough to know that what had been pertinent in the Underdark of a distant world would not be the most effective means of preservation on another. Existence, after all, was the imperative of all beings. She had fought to live so far, there was no reason to succumb to her more natural inclinations now. Not when salvation appeared in reach.
"If you wish, there's a bath ready for you," Virginia said, and the dark elf turned and nodded slightly, as if even that gesture of acknowledgement had to be forced from the inherently arrogant mindset of her race, "I understand you're tired, take your time."
"I'll be in my room if you need me," Marséna called as she tugged her boots off, before finally retreating behind the door of her bedchamber, "If Shesayne comes send her straight to me and I'll talk her through it." Marséna made herself sound weary to communicate her anxiety to Virginia, although it occurred to her that Shesayne would be just what she required at this juncture.
Virginia set to work on the kitchen counter, her hands setting to the task of slicing root vegetables with grim determination. There was something she found therapeutic in cooking, a process of creation which compensated for the destruction which inevitably accompanied the more brutal aspects of her work. Over time, she had developed quite a reputation and her fellow residents had grown to appreciate the great skill with which she turned the fairly mundane selection of ingredient presented as rations by the Order into ever-changing repasts. Above all, cooking gave Virginia time to think and in that moment, her thoughts were fevered, concerned only with the objective irrationality of her choice and with the burning compulsion that had overwhelmed her in that derelict tenement in the Hive. Perhaps Marséna had been right, Virginia thought, perhaps it was a form of madness.
In the bath chamber, the dark elf had gratefully discarded her thin shift, the last remnant of her patrimony from a noble house in the great and decadent drow city of Ille-Athalath. Since antiquity, her house had been known for the maddening brilliance of its spidersilk patterns which, in their disordered chaos, challenged the aesthetic mind more than any rational design. Now, that single black negligee was the last testament to a world which had disappeared, it was the last hated remnant of grandeur. There was, after all, no greater misfortune than that of once having been happy.
She now stood, naked, before the bath of steaming water, the charcoal stove filling the room with hypnotically stifling heat. She eased herself in the bath one foot at the time, absorbing the revitalising warmth of the water, the forgetful steam that now began to drift across the chamber. Revenge for having been found in such a weakened, pitiful state could wait. Anything could wait for this. Now all the drow needed was silence to realise that her body could once again be at peace with her mind and not the dull, throbbing, humiliating pain at the back of her head. Finally the restored mastery of her intellect would restore harmony to her being. Or so it appeared until the door opened.
"You don't mind, do you?" Virginia asked tentatively as she stepped in. The drow turned back to face her in bemused irritation.
"Depends on what you had in mind." The dark elf replied sharply.
Virginia entered all the same and knelt by the side of the tub, placing her hands on the drow's shoulders, holding her down gently near the level of the steaming water, "Nothing you would object to." The paladin replied, taking a washcloth from a small chest with numerous drawers, originally conceived to hold herbal medicines, at the side of the bathtub. She poured a small quantity of sweet scented, amber liquid from a small vial onto the coarse cloth, before gently beginning to wash the drow's shoulders in a slow, circular pattern. Virginia's hands were firm and knowing, seeking out every nexus of tension and slowly relieving it with precise and expert movements.
"Do you find my weakness appealing? Does it assuage your insecurity to treat me as a doll?" The dark elf asked softly, now conscious that Virginia's was scrubbing lower, her hands moving in a soporific, wave like motion down he breasts, over her belly, between her thighs and lower still to her calves. Each motion was partially obscured by the copious steam generated by the stove, but there was no demanding quality to the paladin's actions and certainly no invasiveness. It was if it were all a matter of fact exercise, like something she would do for a comrade in arms or a friend.
"No, not a doll," Virginia corrected as she set the washcloth aside and poured some of the same amber liquid onto the dark elf's hair, "I would treat you as a fellow sister." She began to massage the drow's scalp gently, revealing the elegantly pointed tips of the dark elf's ears. Virginia, however, could not help but notice that she stood before a most perfect example of female plenitude. Nipples pert and bright on her onyx skin like lavender crowned stunningly firm, full breasts, hips flaring naturally like the curvature of the softest hills of Elysium, this was an elf, yes, but one that was breathtakingly feminine - physically, at least.
Despite herself, the dark elf had begun to enter into the rhythm of Virginia's ministrations, allowing herself to be sublimated into the warmth of the room and the expert gentleness of her host's touch. "I hope you are duly impressed by my form. No surface elf knows the ascendancy of femininity as we do. You are all soft here, reliant on males."
"How many males did it take to pull you out of your hideout?" Virginia retorted as she rinsed the dark elf's hair with cupped hands, "Most importantly, is there a name by which I can call you. I don't like using 'you' all the time, you know."
"Talilissa...," the drow replied and paused, there was no sense in adding her house's name now, "my house's fortress lies in ruins at the bottom of a sunless sea and its inhabitants with this exception are scattered dust and wind, so Talilissa is all. I shall not concede the honour of memory to those who were so weak as to be utterly annihilated."
"Talilissa." Virginia rehearsed softly.
"Lily." The dark elf replied a sardonic grin on her lips. Not only gallows humour in my repertoire, paladin - she thought - we'll see how you take to bad puns.
"I'm Virginia."

****
Half an hour later, Lily sat eating voraciously at the table in the living hall. The root vegetable stew turned out to be a resounding success as it satisfied the dark elf's hunger in a way no meagre surface food she had managed to secure so far had done. Now, dressed in one of Virginia's simple evening tunics, she tore a hunk of fresh bread, almost grateful that it communicated to her skin the same reviving warmth she had felt in the bath. In Marséna's room, the war council had convened. Syf had compelled Friyya to silence her hyperbolic whining with a single stern gaze and the raven haired paladin now sat on the far side of Marséna's bed, immersed in thought.

Though her features were not as soft as Friyya's, Syf was no less striking; tall, aristocratic and distinguished, with charcoal black hair cut halfway to the soulder and skin like polished ivory, she had a stern, aloof beauty about her which belied her youth. Like Virginia, her frame was taut, with high, compact breasts and slender, muscular limbs.
"Virginia, I trust your judgement," Syf said finally, her piercing blue eyes gazing into her sisters in arms one at the time, "if you claim that she is no threat, then this reassures me. However, should there be unforeseen consequences to your choice, the weight of responsibility should fall upon you."
The others almost always formed a consensus after Syf's pronouncements. She spoke little, but what she said was the product of much considerate thought, "Virg," Syf continued, her tone softer and more affectionate, "I cannot pretend that I would bear for you to suffer punishment beneath my eyes. You know this. I love you more than my life itself, but I love all my sisters present here equally and I cannot allow you to endanger their wellbeing merely on the basis of your intuition. But, as I have said, I trust you, so I shall remain vigilant, but I say that there be nothing to prevent your guest from staying."
"Are we all in agreement, then?" Marséna asked.
"Sure, dying young is romantic, isn't it?" Friyya replied sarcastically, "Shouldn't you check with Shesayne, too?"
"When she comes back she'll stick with our decision. She too is a guest, I suppose." Marséna said, nodding her head in support at Virginia. Now that she thought of it, Syf and Friyya were a perfect match. Without one another, they would be but lost souls, but together they had a certain harmony. When Syf decided, Friyya fell in line because, put simply, Syf had never disappointed. Order and joie de vivre, a perfect syzygy which needed no male; the Vigilant Maiden was no doubt well pleased.
"So it is decided." Syf concluded as she rose to her feet and offered a hand to Friyya, "My beloved, allow me to show my appreciation of your patience. Sisters, with your permission we take our leave." Friyya blushed slightly, and placed her hand in Syf's, as the latter immediately swept forward to kiss the upturned palm. The dark haired paladin drew her beloved inexorably out of Marséna's chamber into their own, the sound of the door closing followed soon after.
"Thanks...thanks for the support." Virginia said gratefully now that she was alone with Marséna,
"If Shesayne won't be back till late, I'll run us that bath, just give me a moment for now."

Virginia rose and stepped into the living area where Lily was intent on consuming her fourth bowl of stew.
"I'm happy you like it."
"I wish to sleep now." The dark elf said abruptly; the weight of sleepless, paranoid nights alone in the darkness with sinister, incomprehensible mutterings in the background had taken its toll.
"Please, use my room." Virginia said as she opened the door to her bedchamber. Although simple the room was small and functional, Lily was compelled to withhold a gasp of pleasure as a bed with a mattress, and blankets had been something which she had forgotten in the haze of the fire and ice which overwhelmed her family's stronghold in a past that now seemed impossibly distant.
"This...can work." Lily said as she stepped in; if this odd, if admirably gynarchic, cult was to sacrifice her, they could as well do it here with little objection from her part.
"If you wish to remain tomorrow, I would like to talk to you, a little...to know your story." Virginia felt the words tumble awkwardly out of her mouth. It had been a long day for her as well and as Lily sunk contentedly into a pillow she could only ask herself why this scene did not appear more natural to her.
"Good night, Lily." She whispered, not expecting an answer

*******

"We should do this more often," Marséna sighed contentedly as she lay back into Virginia's damp breasts, feeling reassuring, familiar heartbeats beneath the taut, firm flesh, "bathing together can be so therapeutic after a hard day's work." The raven haired paladin admired the rippling effect of the misty vapours as they rose into the air, the hot water was lugubrious, rolling in long satisfying waves across her body at her slightest movement.
"It's always a pleasure," Virginia said absentmindedly as she ran her fingers through Marséna's hair, playing idly with the charcoal-dark tresses, "speaking of which, I'm sorry I haven't been much conversation, but today is weighing heavily on my mind."
"Thought so," Marséna said, almost indignantly at not having been the centre of attention, "you just figure out what you're going to tell Isobel. Syf says she was already pretty annoyed you didn't report in after the mission. We're not novices anymore you know, it's not ten strokes with the cane and it's over now..."
"Oh Marséna, you and your selective pessimism."
"Try realism, Virg," Marséna retorted.
"That's pessimist's consolation and her delusion." Virginia commented as she leaned forward to plant a soft kiss on Marséna's hair, now fragrant with the essence of Matreterran citrus chjna of which she was so fond, "Now don't spoil the atmosphere."

Marséna stirred slightly just to see the water ripple around her, "Ah, Virg quel varai, but you know I'm at your side, be it in battle or outside. Some trickster god has us cosmically joined at the hip."
"You're going to have to start telling me what you mean sometimes. I haven't the faintest idea of tongues from the human worlds. My mother, may she soon rest in peace, must have spoken Tervingian from Ortho, but I have only the faintest recollection of it. But I was born here, you weren't." Virginia knew Ortho only from books and oral history, Sigil, in all its cosmopolitan grandeur had been the only cultural world she had known. Marséna had however, resided on her homeworld until but a few months before she entered the Temple.
"It means being around you is always a fucking mess." Marséna purred, as she turned briefly to kiss the hollow of Virginia's neck.
"It's not my actions, but your mouth that's going to get one of us kicked out of the Order..." Virginia started before she and Marséna both collapsed into a stifled fit of laughter. Aside from them, after all, the Quarters were sound asleep.

******
Virginia sat at the table mesmerised at the sight of Lily eating a simple breakfast of oats cooked in milk - or chicken food as Marséna contemptuously called it. The dark elf's voracity could only be accounted for by the occasional, potentially arachnid composition of her diet in the slum tenement's mezzanine. But no, there was something else, something more vital and intense so much so that it bordered on the desperate. It was a desire to live to savour this brave new world and all the strange people in it.
It occurred to Virginia that the violent, unstable nature of drow society - such as it had been rendered in her lessons - was all good and fine while you sat on the top of pile, but should fortune commence its wicked dance of reversals, then the pioneer spirit in all sentients would inevitably re-emerge. As for Virginia, the morning hurt: she spent the night on the kitchen floor with only a blanket for warmth and now, with the first smoky air of Sigil's artificial dawn, she felt like ripping her shoulder off. Nevertheless, Lily was, to put it mildly, fascinating.
"I didn't think elves had such appetite." Virginia said inanely, for lack of anything more intelligent to comment upon.
"Drow." Lily growled, "And try living fifty-seven days amongst the cobwebs, yourself, you may find yourself likewise enlightened."

Marséna would have strangled her by now, Virginia thought, but, on the whole, a few barbs here and there were unlikely to offend her.
"So what are your plans?" The paladin inquired, changing the subject.

Lily set down her spoon briefly to centre her haughty, violet gaze into Virginia's eyes, "Would it please you if I stayed?" This was a probing question, impressively phrased by such a novice to Sigil's language, as it should have placed the paladin on the defensive.
"Yes." Virginia answered, without thinking, before catching herself in time to betray no further lapses in judgement.
"Then I suppose I have no choice." Lily said, affecting resignation.
"Great! Now is there anyway I could know my new acquaintance better?" Virginia gambled, hoping on the advantages of an amicable opening.
"The last time we confided with surface dwellers we were cast into the Underdark, no?" Lily said as she resumed her meal, the paladin, in the dark elf's mind, certainly had her mix of good and bad points. On the pro side she was a good patron, clearly powerful and influential in her own little context, on the con, she lacked refinement, wit and detachment. Of course, what could one expect, this was the surface world..
"Now you go around your business, Virginia," Lily continued, her host's name still familiarising itself around her lips, "I would require time to recover my strength."

And incantations - Lily though privately to herself, but discarded the idea for now, Lloth, as far as she was concerned, could still go hang in light of recent times. Prayer would be therapeutic for her, perhaps, but no more. Lloth - the fierce Spider Queen of the drow - had definitely abandoned her.
"As you wish," Virginia conceded and swept the plate from under Lily to place in the washbasin, "just make sure you aren't...bothered."
"From the darkness I came and to the darkness I shall, hopefully, return." the dark elf yawned as she ambled back to Virginia's bedchamber.
Virginia leaned back in her chair pensively, there, was ultimately so much to learn from this strange little subject which had only be taught to her as malignant evil in her Temple education. Yet Lily had shown a vulnerability which she, a proud being if ever there was one, must have found profoundly humiliating. The true nature of any person would require more time to extract from the circumstantial resentment and loathing which had, if possible, exacerbated the typically dark elven hatred and loathing in Lily. Or was it, maybe, a case of the opposite.
"Thanks." Shesayne interrupted, breaking Virginia's reverie.
"What?" Virginia replied, somewhat annoyed as Marséna's lover peered back at her from the side of the chair, the half-elf was wearing another of her controversial outfits, this time succinct leather top and short - very short - leggings made to emulate the colour and scale pattern of a red dragon. Shesayne's delicate, elfin face and big, curious steel-blue eyes scrutinised the paladin, a girlish, crooked half-smile gracing her cherry-red lips; the innocence of her face was deceptive, though, for the girl was a coil of action and energy.
"Thanks for the potentially fatal negligence to which we have been subjected." Shesayne spoke too quickly and had the irritating habit of brushing back her short cropped, dark hair whilst she did so.
"Huh?" Was all Virginia could muster.
"You know, the spider worshipping spawn of the light-averse goddess of the bottommost pits of the Abyss." Shesayne cocked her head slightly, not quite understanding why Virginia would be so startled all of a sudden.
"Yeah, I know, I thought Marséna was supposed to explain it to you." For Virginia it was, frankly, too early in the morning for Shesayne.
"She did, but just because I sleep with her doesn't mean I believe everything she says." Shesayne clarified.
"Can you just bear with this briefly...?" Virginia said, almost in exasperation.
"For you, anything, but take it from an expert in magical item retrieval, the spirits of the vengeful dead are a bitch to deal with." With that the half-elf rose and granted Virginia a conciliatory kiss on the cheek before making her way out, leaving Virginia to ponder whether or not the weight of evidence was stacking up against her.
Later that day, after having cleared out the plates of the evening meal, Virginia made for her bedchamber to check on Lily. To her surprise, she found the dark elf sitting up on her, leaning on a pile of pillows, intent on reading a book of religious doctrine she had left by her bedside stool.
"The words are difficult to read," Lily said softly, much to Virginia's surprise she had actually initiated conversation, "languages are much easier to learn when heard, but I'm making my way through this."
If that was true, Virginia thought, the dark elf had some exceptional visual recognition skills, not to mention a keen intellect. But to survive in drow society that was almost certainly a basic requirement.
"I can help you, if you're interested." Virginia offered.
"No, I think I should be able to handle it myself." Lily said, her tone more diplomatic than it had ever been, "Not too long ago, my House was caught up in the civic strife which makes our cities as glorious as none other in the Underdark. Regrettably, we found ourselves on the side least favoured by our Lady of Spiders. Our holdings were first engulfed in fire then cast into depths of a sunless sea, never to re-emerge. So that I may live, I threw myself into a gate conjured by an ancient scroll I had found in my House's library. Hence, I am here, at the mercy of a human." The dark elf fixed her burning, violet eyes on Virginia with barely contained defiance, as if she had been saying are you happy, now that I cannot humiliate myself anymore?.
Virginia found some reflexive platitude in her head, but decided not to vocalise it. She stare back, meeting and embracing the dark elf's gaze. There was beauty there. A harsh, almost violent beauty to be sure, but Lily was magnificent. Her face, now stern and seemingly emotionless, had a natural elfin elegance, just as her features bore a truly aristocratic delicacy. Her body, like her lips, had an irresistible sensual lushness to it which seemed only to be emphasised by the simple tunic Lily wore moulding itself around her perfect curves.
"Is there something I can get you?" The paladin asked tentatively.
"Food," Lily replied matter-of-factly, "with meat, my cycle is at halfway." She felt that the further loss of blood had weakened her considerably, now at her most fertile she was at her most vulnerable, a sensation she well and truly loathed.
"Understood." Virginia said as she turned to leave the bedchamber.
"I heard you slept on the floor last night." Lily said, probing Virginia for a reaction.
"Yes." The paladin realised that the dark elf required no complex communication, this was a subtle game of information gathering - for both.
"Your bed is large enough for two."
"If...If it doesn't bother you." Damn, Virginia thought, she had slipped.
Lily smiled to herself, "Why should it?"
After Lily had eaten her fill, Virginia found herself in the awkward yet strangely tantalising position of drawing the bedcovers over herself with the drow beside her. Paladin and dark elf, Virginia thought, it sounded like the pretext for some bawdy joke. She lay there, rigid at first in the darkness in which she knew Lily had the advantage. The unspoken longing in her clawed at her soul; Virginia wanted to seize Lily fiercely in her arms and quench her burning lips against the dark elf's, all in the gentle womb of darkness. In the event, all she could manage was a muffled "Good night, Lily."
For her part, the dark elf stirred restlessly even as Virginia had fallen into fitful sleep. Her deep red eyes remained open, glowing gently in the darkness, scrutinising the ceiling she could see perfectly in the pitch blackness, then Virginia sleeping form which, though lacking the unique, bounteous femininity of a drow at least possessed the poise and elegance one would rarely find outside the Underdark. It was not so much the silence that frustrated Lily so much as the lack of energy. Was this woman not a warrior, a priestess and leader? Did she not know what ought to have been hers by virtue of her authority? Foolish or coy - Lily had yet to decide as she stared at the beams of the wooden ceiling and wondered what a strange, brave new world she found herself in.

******
The following evening, after a suitably restorative bath to cleanse the sweat from training, Virginia walked almost nonchalantly to her bedchamber, determined to become accustomed to the new presence within it. She knew that Lily could not live in her room forever. There would have to come a time in which either the dark elf left - permanently - or in which explanations to Isobel would be forthcoming; despite herself, Virginia found the former option by far the most painless. Her mind was still preoccupied with these thought as she carefully ran a bathing cloth over her hair to dry it. To her immense surprise, her room was actually marginally lit with a single mote of violet faerie fire which sparkled like a candle at the side of her bed. Lily stood beside it, wearing only one of Virginia's blouses which was too long at the waist and too tight at the bust, her arms crossed.
"Do you know what you want, paladin?" Lily questioned, as her hands fell to her hips.
"I think so." Virginia had stopped towelling her hair. She now realised she was in an unpredictable situation, far from her sword and breastplate, with only a cotton shift for proection. This was probably another drow mind-game; or something.
"Are you certain?" Lily took a step forward.
"I think so." A certain uncomfortable pressure had begun to build in Virginia's temples.
"Then take what is yours by right." If she doesn't get this, Lily though, I'll run her through myself.
"Wha-" Virginia started, before realising that the drought had ended in the strangest of freak storms, she would only be young, wild and irrational once. She embraced Lily with such passion that even the dark elf felt momentarily transported back to happier times. Virginia's lips were soon searing on Lily's, who needed no prompting but surrendered her mouth to the human girl's frantic kissing, their tongues like twin blades caught in a perfect fencing dance. All the while, in the lambent glow of the violet faerie fire, Virginia's emerald eyes lay open on Lily, testament to a boundless, irrational and unexplainable desire that had seized her, made her blood like molten lava and her skin like wheat fields under a heavy breeze.
"I burn for you." Virginia gasped, as she stripped her shift off and helped Lily out of the blouse, moaning in fevered relief as their damp, naked bodies pressed together for the first time, "I have burned for your since the time I laid eyes on you."
Lily was too busy kissing, her hands clasping the athletic perfection of Virginia's sublime bottom, as her tongue probed the paladin's mouth with expert, questing delicacy, before teasingly retreating so that she could bite down, hard on the human girl's bottom lip, "You're telling me?" Lily inquired playfully, as she eagerly dove into savour more of Virginia's mouth, her obsidian hands now roaming freely across the paladin's pale, burning skin.
"I'm sorry I took so long...repressed surface dwellers and everything..." Virginia almost cried out in pain as Lily bit her lip again, if it was hard enough to draw blood, she did not care, all she wanted was to become a single, cosmic whole with the dark elf, to fulfil all the blazing, yearning fantasies that had clouded the exiled recesses of her mind the last few days.
Virginia was intent on keeping the initiative as she thrust Lily onto the bed, licking in one long stroke down the dark elf's chin, throat, and between her beautifully full breasts, like perfectly half-spherical peaks carved out of onyx.
Now Virginia's questing tongue ran its course in the valley between them, before searching for a painfully erect, lavender nipple, the paladin's lips playing around the sensitive peaks teasing, sucking, before lowering her tongue - gently, gently - onto the aroused tip, circling slowly with all the desire of a lover who wishes the night would never end. Lily could only moan; they obviously knew a few tricks on the surface as well and so far Virginia was not disappointing.
The paladin's tongue roamed lower, alternating between teasing, lavish attention on each tormented nipple, she now slid down the drow's perfectly proportioned belly - like that of a dancer - and onto her hairless sex, already fragrant with the gift of her womanhood. This is surreal, Lily thought, as she contracted involuntarily as Virginia's tongue dived hungrily between the swollen, wet folds of her sex, the human girl's tongue expertly coaxing the nether lips apart, bringing her to spasmodic ecstasy in long, slow, deliberate licks. Lily seized Virginia's head firmly in her hands, her long fingers coursing through the paladin's magnificent, blonde mane, moving lower to tenderly stroke a cheek already damp with the residue dark elf's excitement.
Virginia, on her part, was eager not to disappoint, now that her tongue thrust freely between the impossibly wet, violet folds of Lily's sex, she was free to fully savour the exotic, slightly spicy, bittersweet taste of the drow. It felt as if she had discovered a new world, a new form of vital heat emanating from that velvety wetness like a single, delicate violet growing out of a field of onyx. Virginia could have spent an eternity there, between Lily's thighs, but there was work to be done.
The paladin's travelled briefly upwards, probing slightly before finding the stiffening bud of the drow's clitoris. She spared it not attention, just as Lily cried out, lifting her hips slightly, legs wrapping themselves gratefully around Virginia's neck. The slow, tortuous, licking continued as Virginia slid first her index then her middle finger into the dark elf's sodden sex, feeling the inner muscles contract at the intrusion and, most importantly, seeing Lily rejoice, squirming on the bed, eyelids fluttering.
Lily had never thought she would find such pleasurable solace so far away from home, but now, she could do little but drive herself further onto Virginia's fingers, her breath ever more ragged as the paladin's fingers found that spot deep inside her and began twisting against it in the most agonising manner. The driving motion of Virginia's hand, pressed vigorously against Lily's sex, and the insistent stroking of the paladin's tongue against her stiffened bud bring the drown to a frantic peak, her breath now only a series of laboured gasps, her heart throbbing like a primitive tribal drum.
Virginia continued her work, even after her lover's peak, as she feels the last spasms flow through Lily's body; her face and hand were drenched in Lily's thick essence and it felt absolutely divine.
Not even allowing the dark elf to catch her breath, Virginia drew her up into her arms and kissed her once again. Placing one leg over Lily's thigh, the paladin positioned her own dripping sex against her lover's. Lily can only emit a brief sigh of satisfaction at her lover's eagerness before her mouth was once again overcome by Virginia kissing the breath out of her lungs.
"You're rough against me," Lily moaned, her breath ragged as Virginia lowers her silver-tressed head between her perfectly compact, firm snow-white breasts, "you should shave your sex." Virginia replied by thrusting her golden haired sex against the onyx-carved smoothness of her drow lover, feeling her wet, aching folds finally satisfied by contact with the perfect, sensual beauty of the ark elf.
"That's humans for you, you may as well get used to it." Virginia said as she leaned forward to run her tongue maliciously over Lily's delicately pointed ear.
"Lloth!" Lily cried out as she gave a pained gasp, this human woman was exploiting all her weakness, all her sensibilities. For now, however, she was content with losing herself in the pristine whiteness of Virginia's breasts, so firm, each capped with a pretty pink, stiff nipple like a raspberry still on the thorn. Lily cannot resist tasting each in turn, feeling the hardening flesh beneath her tongue and, at the same time, hearing Virginia's quickening heartbeat as the paladin thrust and ground her sex rhythmically against her drow lover.
The friction between their nether lips was sublime, almost electric, and it was the communion of bodies and minds that Virginia had desired. Now, pressed breast to breast with Lily, their lovemaking measured in hard, eager thrusts, Virginia could only ask herself why she had not met Lily before, not earlier still when all this pleasure could have been hers for longer to savour. But now the, tension building insider her loins, her pink sex thrusting against the violet of Lily's, was all released in a shuddering, spasmodic cry as Virginia bit into Lily's shoulder, her release accompanied by wave after wave of intimate spasms she was all too keen to share with her newfound drow lover.
Lily felt her release a few short moments later and she was sure to let Virginia know by clamping down savagely with her teeth on one of the paladin's nipples for the duration of her ecstasy, drawing immense satisfaction in seeing the human squirm in pain and agonised pleasure.
"Turn around, face the pillow," Lily ordered, not allowing Virginia time to recover, "trust me."
Virginia nodded wordlessly, and leaned forward against the headboard of the bed, only to feel the warm moisture of Lily's tongue lapping down her spine before gracing the tight valley between the firm, tight cheeks of her bottom. Grinning mischievously, the dark elf kissed lower, her tongue gliding between the straining alabaster cheeks before finding the tight, pink star of Virginia's nether portal. Suddenly grateful and intrigued she had trusted her lover, Virginia spread her knees a little to allow Lily better access. The smell of sweat and sex filled the room. It was a combination Virginia thought long overdue. It was all in Lily's hands though and the dark elf was a mistress of pleasure, her curious little tongue now effortlessly probing the inner depths of Virginia's bottom, teasing the tight star of muscle apart as the drow's fingers spread the human girl's nether lips.
Continuing her diligent work on Virginia's bottom, Lily casually inserted a finger into the paladin's sex, probing and teasing in rhythm with the maddening action of her tongue.
"Goddess, Lily..." Virginia began, only to be stifled by an involuntary gasp as Lily grazed the tip of her clitoris with a single, casual swipe of her fingernail. She knew she would not last long. Then Lily unexpectedly withdrew her tongue from Virginia's bottom, only to replace it with two fingers which had been moistened in the fertile recesses of the drow's sex. Virginia sighed sharply at the intrusion and finally surrendered to a shuddering climax as Lily's fingers in her bottom made contact with those in her sex, pressing together against the sensitive membrane that separated them.
When she cried out, she knew the whole apartment, and perhaps all of Quarters, had heard her, but Virginia was beyond caring. All her universe now contracted on Lily's expert fingers and she simultaneously felt the dull, pleasingly uncomfortable pressure in her bottom and the sharp, aching, burning release in her sex. For the first time in months, Virginia slumped back onto the pillows of her bed wild eyed, sweaty and truly satisfied.
"That was indescribable." Virginia said softly, bringing Lily's face to her so that she could kiss those perfect lavender lips, "Come, dispel the faerie fire and let us rest, I don't think I could handle another one tonight."
"Then you're not drow yet, but getting there." Lily conceded, gratefully returning the kiss and dismissing the enchanted lambent, purple glow.
As they both crawled beneath the sheets which neither cared were damp with sweat and sex, Virginia wrapped her arms tightly around Lily's waist, drawing the drow close, so close as to hear her heartbeat, smell her hair, her skin, and feel her breath. Virginia held Lily close, almost desperately, gently kissing the base of the dark elf's neck, languidly stroking her firm belly.
"Virginia...did I not satisfy you tonight?" Lily asked, almost crestfallen, hoping that her efforts had not been for nothing.
"No! I mean, yes..." then the true implication of Lily's question dawned on Virginia, "no, silly, you were brilliant, I just thought you might like a cuddle before going to sleep."
"Why?" Lily asked, even as she surrendered to the gentle sensuality of Virginia's touch - this woman would, she thought, under different circumstances, have made a great matron-mother.
"Doesn't this feel good?" Virginia asked as she kissed Lily's cheek, stroking the dark elf's hair with a languid, soothing rhythm.
"Yes." Lily conceded, despite herself.
"Then that's why."
"You don't have to."
"But I want to, because you're mine." Virginia whispered before placing a playful kiss on Lily's ear. The dark elf shuddered in pleasure, both at the physical stimulation she would have expected a human to be utterly ignorant of and at the thought that this paladin was, at least in some respects, more drow than she would ever have dared imagine.
"Good night, Virginia."

Sigil - Preludes, Part II

The gods must have their hands full. I suppose it's hard enough to keep an eye on a single person's life, but to keep track of every single one of your worshippers, potentially in the millions - now that's divine. Not so much in terms of power - they aren't called gods for no reason, you know - but in terms of sheer patience. I mean, of millions of worshippers, the vast majority must lead singularly uninteresting, uneventful lives. They eat, drink, walk, work, sleep and repeat the process endlessly. Yet, their patron gods are always - hypothetically at least - on the lookout. Perhaps atheism is, itself, a contrivance of some depressed divinity who wished to lessen his workload. But enough of that, there is far too much speculative writing in Sigil as it stands. Now, for the introduction of one whose love of books has brought much speculation and few results. Since we'll re-tread an old cliché, it's worth noting that Sigil is the living embodiment of the principles that opposites attract. You don't need a blustering natural physicist to tell you this when demons and celestials rub shoulders under watchful gaze of Our Suffering Lady of Pain. Yes, the next portal could as easily cast you in Gehenna as raise you into Elysium. It's all a matter of timing, luck and - put crudely - being in the right place at the right time. So it is Planes over, but, as always, ever more so in Sigil.
- The Archivist, your narrator

"se fosse amico il re dell'universo,

noi pregheremmo lui della tua pace,

poi c'hai pieta' del nostro mal perverso."
For the fifth consecutive day Aerylle had waited in the tavern by the Great Canal for something to happen. This evening, the comings and goings of patrons, both new and regular, had been particularly fierce. The firelight blurred their disparate faces, some masked, some clearly demonic or at least inhuman. A great hearth sat in the middle of the tavern's common room, projecting gouts of clear, fragrant smoke into the air.
The flames had been controlled magically to emit warmth and sweet air but consume neither flesh nor wood. Serving maids - and there were some for all tastes - plied the tables with assured expertise, though Aerylle had given up even trying to catch a gaze or two; not her type. Then again what exactly her type was would always have been open to question. If she was to be totally honest with herself, she had no idea. Hence the black chasm of loneliness every time she ascended the stairs back to her lonely, meticulously neat chamber at the far end of Sigil's Clerk's Ward.
Silence and loneliness at home meant being a librarian for all of her waking day and the situation had begun to frustrate Aerylle. Not that there was anything especially lacking in her work. In the first place, it allowed her an acceptable salary and, perhaps most importantly, access to boundless knowledge. But this was not abstract theorising, but the documentation of centuries of experiences by members of the Society of Sensation whose foremost aim in life - by philosophy and by conviction - was to experience the Multiverse, to live it. Living vicarious, however, had its downsides as Aerylle reflected that for all her love of reading of scaling snow-capped Olympus or diving into the infinite depths of Oceanus, her day to day existence dragged on like a grey blur. Her mind's eye had taken far more gratification than their physical counterparts.
Thus, the tavern which Lirai, her colleague and fellow Assistant Librarian in the Archives Section, had recommended as a means of finding kindred spirits. The tavern was animated, all right, with voices buzzing in a multitude of different languages, all echoing cacophonously on the establishment's smooth-polished wooden walls.
This, Aerylle decided, was the last evening: the tavern had been a complete money sink from the beginning - five Sigil Marks for a glass of sweet white wine was extortionate regardless of the quality, she had decided - and it was mind-numbingly noisy. So, Aerylle was beginning to dawn on the fact that perhaps she had been born to be a librarian. It certainly helped that she was a grey elf and had been raised in a culture in which the written word, all rendered in the exquisite calligraphy of her race, was held in the highest esteem. But then, overcome with adolescent wanderlust, she sought knowledge beyond the confines of the mountain city of Imej, abandoning the golden spires which clung to the snow capped domes of the Dawnseeker Mountains in search for something more ineffable, more enigmatic.
She had it now, but now distant from her people she felt out of place, unwell in her skin: the populace of Sigil was, to put it mildly, crude, their language vulgar, their habits unsubtle. Aerylle often thought that she would have been better advised if she had listened to her mother and sisters and remained safely in the welcoming nest of the people she understood. Not that she was xenophobic, that would have lead to madness in Sigil, but rather discerning.
Which led her back to the great quandary of acquiring companionship. Lesser races purchased it when it was lacking, but Aerylle was of the opinion that delayed gratification was better than substandard of impure gratification. This thought led back logically in her scrupulous mind to the single unmitigated disaster of her stay in Sigil so far.
In the hope of finding someone who shared her general approach to romance and bonded life, Aerylle had struck up conversation with a truly delectable blonde paladin of the Order of the Radiant Path who had been patronising the library as part of her last semester of study before acceding to the knighthood.
Virginia - for that was the paladin's name - had given Aerylle a rare glimpse of a sense of duty, commitment and general devotion she had found so rare in Sigil. She had flirted, admittedly only with the coy reserve which was becoming of lady, playfully with Virginia in the dimly lit corridors between the piles of musty of books. The light laughter and aimless banter they shared had come as a welcome relief to the daily routine of stacking, cataloguing and archiving and it had been much to Aerylle's delight when Virginia offered to take her out on her weekly day of leave. Of course, it had only been proper for Virginia to make the first move.
A lady never conceded over-eagerness and it was, indeed, most appropriate for a lady to be courted by such a noble, beautiful paladin. Everything had fallen into place, Aerylle reflected ruefully, the situation appeared to have been perfect. Each week that passed she learned to know Virginia better, each time their courtship deepened and Aerylle had felt profoundly flattered. Each time that Virginia had swept forward to plant the softest kiss on her slender hand, Aerylle had felt her blood quicken and her knees grow unsteady. Thankfully, she had managed to preserve her outward dignity and give no ostentatious indication of her mounting desire.
By their seventh outing, Aerylle had felt that Virginia's courtship ought to be rewarded with its natural conclusion. That evening had been the defining moment of her slow burning passion and Aerylle remembered it as if it had been just yesterday. The sequence of events had, regrettably, been seared into her mind. She had returned early from the library that fateful evening to ensure an adequate preparation for the evening. Aerylle remembered admiring herself in the mirror, hoping fervently that Virginia would find her beautiful.
Her form was pleasing, Aerylle remembered herself thinking, for she had all the delicate, almost fragile grace so typical of grey elves; her skin unblemished, petite conical breasts riding high on her chest capped with pink rosebud nipples. In the fashion of her native city, she had arranged her waist-length hair, golden like clear honey, in two, slender braids amidst free falling tresses, both tied with translucent sky-blue fabric selected to echo the colour of her deep, expressive eyes.
What was there for Virginia not to like, Aerylle remembered thinking to herself as she applied the faintest trace of turquoise powder on her eyelids, admiring the manner in which it exalted the proportions of her elegant, noble features. There had been no trace of undue angularity to her, certainly - heavens forbid - no body hair, and her limbs were slender and supple, but soft as was only proper for a lady of taste, so why had Virginia not seized upon the proffered gift? Even as they had returned home, to cap the humiliation of the evening, Aerylle had taken the risk of being more forward and suggested that Virginia have a look at her "humble abode". It was then that the dreaded conversation had begun:

*************

"Aerylle...I...I don't know." Virginia had stammered awkwardly, the elven librarian was no doubt very pretty, especially in the gauzy rose dress that seemed to be a second skin against her graceful limbs every time she moved, but there was something so strangely odd about her manner. Virginia had no intention of falling out of her depth, committing some obscure faux-pas which would earn the elf maiden's irreversible contempt. Every action of her's had felt judged, not in a malevolent so much as in a constant way, by Aerylle since they had met. To make love to her - or try to - would be to invite almost certain disaster. Provided she wanted to make love, of course, which, given the opacity of the elf's body language could by no means be taken for granted.
"Are you certain, milady Virginia?" Aerylle insisted, subtly shifting a few tresses of hair, golden like a sheaf of ripe wheat, from one of her delicately pointed ears which she normally kept covered for modesty.

- There she goes again - Virginia thought to herself, - I'm not exactly the Abbess and it's "milady this", "milady that". Goddess knows how many times I came across as a crude barbarian. -
"Aerylle...I mean I really like, y..., the pleasure of your company and we should definitely keep seeing each other...but as friends, you know, as opposed to, uhm..." Virginia struggled for the right word - or euphemism - and not finding an appropriate one allowed silence to fall so that Aerylle could, hopefully, fill it and lift the air of straining awkwardness that surrounded them.
"I understand," Aerylle sighed, "please come to the library anytime, I shall always have time for you." She extended her hand for Virginia to kiss in farewell, which the paladin did gratefully, relieved that there had been no further space for humiliation.
Aerylle did not even check if Virginia had waited for her to be well within her building before leaving; she had been building anticipation throughout the night and had even become uncomfortably and embarrassingly damp between her thighs when Virginia had held her waist as they both looked out to see Sigil sprawled before them from the Observation Chamber of the Hall of Speakers. Now all Aerylle felt was hot, dry, itching irritation. This sensation had characterised her mood for well over a month.

***********

Hence the Waterside Inn Tavern, presented as a panacea to all of Aerylle's worries and verging on another embarrassing, and expensive, exercise in failure. A rather brash, and tastelessly attired, serving maid interrupted Aerylle's reverie. The woman's voice was irritating, her lack of modesty and dress sense even more so, "Something else, madam?"
Aerylle reflected that the easy answer would have been a dry "no", followed by her tab and a long, comforting read in bed, under a thick blanket at home. But the wine was acceptable, its flowery perfumes and fresh-cut-grass aroma reminding her of the mountain meadow courtyards of her youth. Pointless nights were like the principle of infinity, no matter what you added or took away, it remained a pointless night, so Aerylle decided to become living evidence that hope springs eternal and flashed the serving maid her most flawless forced smile, "Another glass, if you please. Large."
Hopefully so large I can drown in it, Aerylle thought, as the irritating wench turned back to the bar to fill the order. It was in that instant, as Aerylle's eyes were briefly diverted to the great, multi-tiered bar, glimmering with all manner of cut crystal bottles rendered in some truly weird, grotesque shapes, that she spied the first instance of even vaguely entertaining action she had seen in the last few nights. A heavily armoured, broadly humanoid infernal with viscid green skin and heavy, blackened iron platemail had importuned a young woman whose smooth skin was like marble tinted with agate, a subtle tint of scarlet infused whiteness.
That was striking enough in itself, but the ease with which the strange woman casually waved the fiend's hand away, with a sharp, if understanding, "Sorry, not your night, berk.", was doubly impressive. It took all kinds, Aerylle surmised, to survive in Sigil, but then again, Sigil's cant irritated her. That one, self-confident as she may have been, was definitely not to the grey elf's taste.
"You're a curious one."

Aerylle almost jumped out of her seat, the strange woman had, undetected, sidled up to her table, melding effortlessly and speedily into the shadows so that it appeared that she had crossed the room in one bound.
"I'm sorry?" Aerylle said, nervously, turning slightly to face her interrogator. There was, she decided, something quite otherworldly about this woman: her dark red hair had no trace of brown in it, but was as pure and deep as a live ember from a dying hearth as it hung like a silky curtain over the stranger's visage of which Aerylle could only vaguely detect the delicately slanted, enigmatic eyes, cheekbones so high and perfect that they looked as though they had been carved, and beautifully formed lips which were so organically red one could be certain that no cosmetic had been used. Though her frame was wiry, leanly muscled and elegant like that of a hunting cat, with fine, firm breasts and athletically rounded hips, Aerylle could only object to the strange woman's dress sense; the functional two piece outfit of a short, skintight grey blouse and an equally figure-hugging pair of low riding brown canvas britches which were met at the knee with weathered leather boots.
-Not my type - Aerylle thought as she drained the remnants of her glass, hoping that the returning serving maid would at any time interrupt this uncomfortable meeting.
"You're a curious one. In every sense of the word."
"Really...I don't think..." Aerylle began.
"I thought you'd be clever enough to know that your bone-box ought not be opened 'till you have something meaningful to say." The strange woman finished.

Aerylle was beginning to become uncomfortable, overt violence in public spaces in Sigil was rare, despite the frequent instances of culture clash, nevertheless, she had no intention of becoming the exception that proved the rule.
"Can...can I help you?" Was all the beleaguered librarian could come up with to stall.
"Depends, my contact didn't show up, so I thought some good socialising or suchlike could be on the cards. Mistaken, wasn't I? What are you, on a date...skiving off someone, you're dressed pretty fine, if I'm not fooling myself."
"I...I'll take that as a compliment and no, I am not busy with any particular social event." Aerylle decided to humour the stranger but be on her guard, putting up with eccentrics, she supposed, was all part of the experience of living. The comment on her dress pleased her, though, she had put a lot of effort in selecting a nice, simple dark blue gown that highlighted her pale complexion whilst also being airy to the point of being flimsy around her arms and legs to emphasise the grace of her movements.
"Right, I'm Min, then." The woman said, smiling enigmatically even as she allowed her hair to cast shadows on her face which, in the penumbra of the tavern, kept her shrouded in an aura of uncertainty.
"A pleasure, Aerylle," the grey elf began, instinctively extending her hand before catching herself and hastily withdrawing it to her side, "do you, uh...drink anything?"
"Only to survive," Min replied, her voice was soft, surprisingly melodious and practised too, as if she did not wish to reveal too much at any given time, "since my friend here's buying, we'll take a bottle of Baatorian firewater - double Red Band." Much to Aerylle's intense irritation the serving maid had appeared in exactly that moment, too late to break up the conversation and just in time for Min to order some no doubt undrinkable spirit.
"A wine drinker, I see, we'll change that right quick," Min said devilishly as she took a seat at the table beside Aerylle, "so what're your 'ulterior motives'? Just wasting the time?"
"Cultural tourism." Aerylle answered curtly before taking a long, deep sip from her wine. Its fresh, airy sweetness filled her palate and helped cloud the constant irritation in her mind.
"Hmmm...so here you have it: a tiefling born and bred in Sigil. Don't ask me what my father was 'cause I'll be the last to know and should I know, the first to make sure he's forgotten. So a tourist from where?" Min had made herself comfortable by stretching her legs on the table as she lay back against the chair. Aerylle could not help but admire the taut, perfectly flat midriff the tiefling had exposed, or the long, supple thighs, held only by the slightest layer of fabric.
- No.- Aerylle thought, - Absolutely not my type. -
"A Prime world, nothing too spectacular, but, mind you, I do miss the sight of our two suns cresting behind the peaks at the very break of dawn. Sometimes you lose the days here and you certainly lose track of the seasons." Aerylle said ruefully, she once been so attuned to the natural rhythm of her world that she knew the day in which each flower would blossom, each fruit would ripen and each egg would hatch. Now she was left adrift in the constant indeterminacy of Sigil's weather, tormented by the constant, dirty drizzle which snaked down in wending sheets of lukewarm water from the sunless sky.
"I see..." Min had certainly not sat down to talk about climate, "so how d'you make yourself useful, or otherwise, to society?"
"Books." Aerylle replied, the woman voice was engrossing but her Sigil intonation was grating. Thankfully, and Aerylle never thought she would have genuinely though that herself, the firewater had arrived. Min immediately poured two generous glasses of the clear, evil smelling liquid in fluid, effortless motions.
"I," Min began before draining the glass in a single shot, "as you may have guessed, specialise in dealing with dangerous items. A metaf...er, magical sanitation worker if you will."
"Metaphysical." Aerylle corrected before giving the firewater a sniff. The bouquet reminded her of molten metal and burning sulphur. In the instant it made contact with her lips and tongue, the librarian realised that the substance was more of a poison than a spirit, but curiosity drover her to take a sip, if only for appearance's sake. Her throat was numbed, her belly burned and she could barely restrain the tears from welling up in her eyes.
"You'll get used to it as we hack at the bottle, don't worry." Min smiled again, this time more transparently, and, for the first time, Aerylle could see into those elegantly slanted eyes to the smouldering, crimson irises within. It was as if the fire of the tiefling's soul were spilling out her.
"It's...interesting." Aerylle managed, her throat still reeling. The after effect of the alcohol's attack was smooth, however and not entirely unpleasant.
"It's life." Min replied, pouring herself another glass. Aerylle noted the ruby redness of the tiefling's fingernails. They were certainly not painted.
"So, you work in retrievals, do you happen to know Shesayne?" Aerylle asked, remembering that Virginia's best friend had a lover who was an operative in that field.
"Yeah. Same team. Coincidences make life interesting, don't they?" Min drained her second glass. A distinct advantage in having some fiendish ancestry was the ability to metabolise alcohol with ease. It made socialising all the more entertaining.
Feeling slightly more disinhibited, Aerylle decided to try her luck at pressing the conversation forwards, "So what do you think of Shesayne's choice of lover?"
"Fucking amazing ass. If Shesayne hadn't gotten there first, she'd be biting a pillow with me on top of her right now." Min commented wistfully.
"I'm sorry."
"Oh, yeah, must have had a few," Min calculated it was best not to press the elf maiden's patience, not excessively at least, "but c'mon, cultural tourism, you can at least try to put up with, uh...common speech."
"Vernacular?" Aerylle snapped, "So no, I'm not offended, just a little...taken aback." She lied.
"It's nice to converse with an educated woman from time to time, you know." Min said, her tone warmer now. This was turning out to be an interesting encounter indeed. Aerylle, on the other hand, had progressively drained her glass and, before she could reach for the bottle, had another one promptly poured by Min's deft hands. By the second glass, their conversation had found the mutually agreeable topic of typologies of enchanted items. Aerylle was eager to furnish specialised, historical knowledge where Min was lacking, though the tiefling had far superior experience in interacting with items the librarian had only read of at a scholarly level.
There was, despite her vulgarity, something genuinely interesting in Min's mannerism, in her speech - so unforced - and in her movement - positively flawless, as if everything around her posed no resistance. Then there was the alcohol, but, of course, that was mitigated by the indefatigable good judgement of Aerylle's mind which told her unequivocally that Min was not, in any way shape or form her type.

************************
Hence, well, there was no hence because, at this juncture, there was no logical progression which Aerylle could come up with to fully explain the situation. Situation was decidedly an understatement, as she found herself hungrily devouring Min's smouldering, sensual lips, her tongue more bedevilled by desire than it had ever been exploring the tiefling's mouth with a bold initiative which shocked her even in her inebriated state.
Min had the slender grey elf pressed against the wall of the upper floor of the tavern between two bedchamber doors, one hand under Aerylle's blue dress running passionately between the girl's slim thigh and her inflamingly pert bottom, the other clasping a breast the tiefling had liberated from its gauzy prison. The pink nipple, fresh, taut and ripe as berry stood high and proud between Min's insistent, stroking fingers.
"You're magnificent." Min gasped, breaking the kiss to run her tongue sensually down Aerylle's ear before latching on the lobe at its base and sucking gently, the tiefling's hand simultaneously spreading her lover's thigh, feeling the damp, fragrant warmth within.
Aerylle was too far gone with both drink and passion to care much for what Min was saying, all she could feel was the open wetness of her sex, now exposed to the cool air of the deserted corridor, being probed by the tiefling's artful fingers. Those scarlet fingernails, so cruelly beautiful now scraped with teasing, maddening rhythm, parting her inner flesh and coating Min's hand with the copious fluid of Aerylle's desire.
Aerylle had never felt this disinhibited, this free. She could only feel the dull memory of her previous self in the deep recesses of her mind, but in that moment, she wanted to melt into Min. She thrust herself back wantonly onto Min's probing digits, the elf maiden's own hands now moving to clasp, and finally feel the taut, straining muscles of the tiefling's belly and bottom. The sensation was like electricity: just to touch Min's skin was like stroking something so alive it was burning, to feel the supple muscles ripple beneath that crimson tinted skin was paradise.
Min had begun kissing lower, leaving a long wet trail with her tongue down Aerylle's neck and between her breasts, before engulfing a single, tumescent nipple and much of the breast under it in that heavenly, furnace like mouth. The tiefling's teeth, sharper than Aerylle had expected bit into the tender flesh of her painfully engorged nipple, eliciting a short, sharp cry of pain from the grey elf. The sensation was, however, unbelievable, Aerylle was certain she could feel her own heartbeat finding its rhythm with Min's hot breath now on her navel, the curious, restless tongue lapping lower.
Repositioning herself on her knees, Min effortlessly parted Aerylle's thighs, revealing the delicious, graceful pink flower of her sex and that flowery, elven fragrance which had utterly intoxicated the tiefling's libido, spurring it onwards.
"You're soaked," Min said lasciviously as she moved forward to plant a kiss on the tiny engorged bud at the apex of Aerylle's sex that had just begun to bloom before her eyes, "I best dry you off before you catch something." The shuddering, jarring sensation of her clitoris being kissed briefly jerked Aerylle back to reality.
"Say, Min what are you...ahh, doing down there?" The question was ridiculous, as Aerylle had a perfect enough view of the rich curtain of fire-red hair now draped over her pale thighs to realise exactly what Min's intentions were. But it was enough to briefly break the heat of the moment.
"Diving for fucking oysters, what do you think?" Min snapped back, slightly irritated. She was not over-fond of those who liked to play innocent. Especially not when she had drunk the best part of a bottle of Baatorian firewater.
"Isn't this a little...soon?" Aerylle inquired, her voice sounded to her distorted by the dull throbbing in her head. Her movements and Min's movements all blurred into one white-red impressionistic spray of colour.
"For fu...look, Aerylle it's what girls do together...I thought you elves were supposed to be good hands at this." Min was audibly frustrated, this wasn't the time to be having second thoughts. Every one of the tiefling's movements now caused her inflamed, moist sex to scrape maddeningly against her britches. The sooner she was out of them, preferably with Aerylle diligently at work between her legs, the better.
"Yes, we are...but everything has its time." Aerylle replied, uncertain of her words and unsteady on her legs.
Min paused and looked up into Aerylle's eyes quizzically. Was this some sort of game? Some bizarre elven variant of foreplay she had yet to discover?
"But don't worry, my dear," the grey elf continued, another surge of alcohol making her mind lose itself in another dizzying blur of shimmering lights reflected on dazzling, red hair, "you can do anything you want with me. Tomorrow, I'll forget and no harm done, no bad dreams, no awkward stories to tell...all will be right with the world..." Aerylle's voice drifted off, into a long, contented sigh.
Min paused and then rose to her feet. This wasn't going to be her night. Sleeping with a girl who was a little tipsy was great, but Aerylle quite clearly needed to get her bearings first. Culture shock, Min mused, could be a real bitch, "I can't do this now." She said, her voice almost pained as the words came out, her fantasies reluctantly being pushed back into the corners of her mind.

"What...Min, no. I want to, I really want to. Let's start again." Aerylle pleaded desperately as she lunged forward to kiss the tiefling. Min allowed their lips to meet, but her kiss was more reassuring than fiery.
"Another time, I promise." She would be kicking herself in the morning, Min thought, but at least it would marginally preferable than waking up with a traumatised girl in her bed.
"I ruined it, didn't I?" Aerylle whimpered, a knot forming in her throat as she tried to hold back her tears. It was as if all her desire had suddenly been sublimated into regret and self-pity.
"No, no...here." Min said as she took Aerylle into her arms, holding her close. The tiefling felt the tears against her skin, by comparison they were cool, "I'll get us a room. You can't go home like this."

*******************
Min did not sleep well that night. Though the room was well appointed - not that Min was a stickler for such matters, but at least it was cosy -, clean and quiet. Aerylle was not. After crying herself to sleep on Min's breast, she woke up twice to relieve the excesses of the evening, on each occasion waking the tiefling with her clumsy, drunken stirrings in the dark and, on each occasion, solicitously asking whether she had, indeed, woken Min up.

You have now, would have been Min's usual rejoinder, but she decided to be uncharacteristically charitable and feign sleep. By morning, all Min wanted was to go home, change, turn up for work and hope there would be no operations involving her so that she could simply sleep in the employee's common room. For a day or two.
The tiefling knew it was time to go by the distant ringing of the Bell Tower. Rising gently, careful not to stir Aerylle, Min pulled on her leggings and boots, cursing the little slivers of light which had infiltrated themselves between the white fabric of the curtains. This was going to be an agonising day.
"Where are you going?" Aerylle asked groggily, and Min turned around to the unwelcome sight of the grey elf, half awake, her already wide and expectant.
"Duty calls."
"Can't you stay just a little more? I'll buy you breakfast." Aerylle entreated, her voice already sullen from the perceived rejection.
"Sorry I started, last night was a bad idea. But right now, I want to prevent things from all going to fuck more than they already are."
Aerylle winced, her head hurt, her body ached, but her mind was sober, "Please, Min. Just a couple of hours, then we'll be up. I'm sorry that this city has turned me into a wreck, but right now my head hurts and I just need someone to hold me together."

Min could not frankly countenance another emotional upheaval like the one from the previous night. Plus, Aerylle was at least being more transparent and tractable than ever before. Of course, that was not much, but it was a start.
"All right, c'mon shift then." The tiefling said, her tone softer now as she sat on the side of the bed next to Aerylle. Sighing at the stupid things she sometimes forced herself into doing, she pulled off her boots and leggings again, casting them carelessly against the bedside dresser before joining Aerylle under the sheets.
"Thank you." The grey elf mumbled, snuggling close to Min's breast, her honey hair caressing the tiefling's skin.
"Don't mention it." Min replied, staring at the ceiling as she drew Aerylle into a tight embrace. She wouldn't have been especially productive at work anyway. She was certain she could concoct something to justify her absence for the following day. In that moment, though, Aerylle's request for more sleep was something Min could doubtless sympathise with.
"Min..." Aerylle whispered, almost inaudibly.
"What?"
"My head aches, and my body is unsteady, but being with you...right here, makes me happy. Happier than I've ever felt since coming here." That was the confession Aerylle needed, even more than the extra sleep and maybe even more than the affection she had so longed for. To know that she could finally communicate, that the days of heavy silences, frustrated desires and voiceless words were finally coming to an end. That evening had also amended the record: Aerylle had finally rehabilitated Min: the tiefling was, without a shadow of doubt, her type.
Later, at breakfast, Aerylle could hardly eat and Min was not interested in eating. They shared a long silence with a pot of restorative tea, Min picking grimly at a dried fruit pastry, Aerylle staring into her teacup. She felt dirty and sweaty in her clothes despite the comparatively cool air the morning had brought.
The truth was neither could conjure something neutral to say, let alone something constructive. There was something about the previous mind which weighed heavily on their minds. For Aerylle it was the stark realisation that she had been forced out of her shell and for Min it was something perhaps more confusing still: the idea that chance and fate thrust situations which, when examined, were extreme, sudden and deeply unfair. Though Min felt something akin to affection for this troubled, fascinating grey elf, she had no way of expressing it as she would have liked, instead she merely felt obliged to comply with Aerylle's requests. Which meant that nothing good in the long term would come from this relationship.
"I would like to see you again." Aerylle said suddenly, still staring into her teacup. The tavern's dining room was virtually empty. It was that lull time between the breakfast and lunch shifts. Only the soft crackling from the kitchen's oven could be heard over the sound of Min toying with her plate.
"I have to go." The tiefling replied tersely, "Maybe we'll meet another time. Take care." She pronounced her farewell with some regret, but Min's legs were already carrying her out the door before her mind had time to mull things over. Growing up in the Hive Ward ensured that she was a firm believer in the school of instinct: its record was flawless, Min was, after all, still alive.

Aerylle meditated the depths of the teacup until the next sounding of the Bell Tower.
She had to make sure there was no possible way she would run into Min on her way home; Lirai would no doubt cover for her for a couple of hours whilst she gathered herself. She rose, paid the bill and went home to weep soundlessly in a bath of lukewarm water. If only she could feel the cold wind against her skin again, if only she could count the hair's breadth by which the vines had grown, then all of this disappointment could be lost in the understanding that she was not alone, but surrounded by an enormous, organic whole. Now, alienated in an alien city, she just felt like a fleck scattered to the void.

*******************
"What happened this time?" Lirai inquired, returning to the Sensorium catalogue after taking a single glance at Aerylle, "She misunderstood your intentions again, didn't she?"
"Something like that," Aerylle replied between gritted teeth, the lump in her throat was returning with a vengeance; she realised she probably should have spent more time in the bath, "did anything important come our way?"
"No." Lirai said and after completing her latest entry into the catalogue turned back to give Aerylle a good look, "I'm sorry," she began, softening slightly, though not prone to wearing her emotions on a sleeve, Lirai liked Aerylle enough to empathise with her, "some tea?"
"Please." Aerylle replied, taking her seat at the desk next to Lirai's. The library shelves stretched for what looked like an infinite sea before them. Millennia of catalogued experiences, some unique and unrepeatable like the birth of a new world, the demise of a city, or the final taste of the fruit of a plant long destroyed in an age of ice. A vast and beautiful repository it was, but one of memories lived vicariously. Yes, with greater intensity than that of the ordinary book, but nevertheless pale imitations of the experience of truly living.
Lirai briefly took her leave to fill a mug with some tea kept warm by a minor enchantment which had been woven into a bronze pot. She was an air genasi with an enviably statuesque shape, even under the simple white tunic and brown boots she and Aerylle wore as assistant librarians. Shoulder length blue hair, like the sky on a particularly intense day, framed a quiet, reserved expression, her indigo eyes unfathomable depths to a soul which did not readily reveal itself. In terms of character, she was distant from most of the fickle, flighty specimens of her race, all defined by their common ancestry in the elemental beings of the Plane of Air.
Though the genesis of their bloodline was a mystery to many, the elemental influences lived on in the myriad of genasi who populated Sigil. Lirai's skin, pale tinged with a slight hint of azure, fluid movement and soft, dignified features were typical of the air genasi descended from sylphs, elemental spirits of the air. In Lirai, Aerylle saw a kindred spirit: one who also felt out of touch with constant crucible of worlds on the streets and longed for the quiet solitude of the library. To put it more bluntly, Lirai was Aerylle's only true, longstanding friend and the reverse was almost certainly true, though the air genasi had found herself a companion a few weeks earlier. To Aerylle's knowledge, the relationship was difficult but, apparently, rewarding.
"I suppose you just have to keep at it." Lirai said as she presented Aerylle with her tea. The soft vapour from the mug wafted into the grey elf's nostrils and, all of a sudden, she realised she was thirsty. The mint tea turned out to be an excellent restorative and after a couple of mugs, Aerylle began to feel ready to dedicate herself to some serious work and gradually push Min out of her mind. There would have been, of course, no point in dwelling on the situation.
All she could do was move - or drift - on. In her most optimistic thoughts, Aerylle considered trying with Virginia again. The paladin may have been obtuse, but she was dynamic, charming and very pretty. The romantic ideal, Aerylle had decided, was something best left in books, though as a librarian this point often bore reminding.
"There was another Anarchist riot today in the Hive," Lirai began as she annotated a cross-index of sensory reports from the Lower Planes, "Civic Security is struggling just to deal with the most severe cases, I heard that the Harmonium is recruiting new members. I think something rotten this way comes."
"As long as they leave us alone, they can take their political grievances where they will." Aerylle commented, trying to focus on hr cataloguing. Half the time she had spent at her post was dedicated, she felt, to rectifying the errors of her predecessors. How exactly one could come to categorise Fungus, Poisonous under the Bytopia, Sights and Sounds entry was beyond her.
"Until they start banging on the gates. Then we're both in for it. Anarchists or Indeps, either way its another worry."
"Well if they get in, remember our plan." Aerylle bit her lip at the idiocy of another mis-catalogue where opiate-induced experiences had been mis-referenced as out of body experiences. An understandable error, perhaps, but unprofessional nonetheless.
"Yes, but if we're caught storing vials of poison in our desks someone is bound to think we're paranoid."
"Better safe than sorry." Sigil had never failed to surprise Aerylle and she certainly had no intention of being caught unprepared in the worst of circumstances.
Work dragged on as if measured out with coffee spoons. Aerylle volunteered to some overtime in order to allow Lirai out; the poor girl had been forced to do the work for both of them for most of the morning anyway. As Sigil's sky shifted radically and unnaturally from grey to black, Aerylle rose to light a few flameless lamps, specially enchanted to ensure that there was no threat to the endless shelves, stacked high with precious memories.
"So where to, princess?"

Aerylle whipped around from the lamp in an instinctive, startled motion. Min stood there, smiling, leaning casually against a bookcase, her ember-red hair as always enigmatically draped around the sides of her face, wearing red leather leggings and a silvery top so shimmering it almost seemed transparent in the dim light of the twilit library. The grey elf did not know whether to scream, cry, or make love to Min right where she stood, against the bookshelf.
"C'mon, princess, on your toes...where to?" Min teased as Aerylle finally decided to simply take a short, dignified walk to the tiefling and bury her face gratefully between the woman's breasts. Aerylle smelt warm flesh, the faint aroma of burning incense and the sweet leather of Min's leggings. Most importantly, she could feel the tiefling's heartbeat.
"Please, do not call me that," Aerylle said, very softly, as if she were speaking to Min's heart, "you make light of me."
"Nah, you're too high-up for it to be ironic anyway." Min joked, holding Aerylle tight against her, her hands now stroking the elf maiden's blonde tresses.
"How did you find me?" Aerylle still could not believe it, being held in Min's arms was like being complete again, like reliving the brief glimpse of happiness she had seen earlier that morning.
"I've ways - and contacts. Put together, it's a pretty strong case, no? Wasn't too hard to find some cutter who knew you hung 'round this place."
"Thank you for coming." Aerylle said, feeling as though she could spend the rest of the evening in exactly that position, close enough to feel, hear, taste and smell Min.
"Did you ask me to?"
"No."
"Then don't thank me." Min said, kissing Aerylle affectionately on the forehead.
"No, Min...kiss me." Aerylle sighed tentatively, she did not wish to have another crisis of tempo on her hands.
Min was all to eager to comply, her burning, perfect deep crimson lips planted themselves on Aerylle's, her tongue, hot and eager to please given free rein to explore the grey elf's mouth. The kiss was vital, almost desperate, it was the life-breath they both needed, the confirmation that a bridge to temporary happiness could be built with the union of their bodies.
"We must get out of here and I must change," Aerylle declared, breathlessly breaking their kiss,
"I'm hardly presentable."
"No, you're fucking mesmerising." Min said fervently.

The more pedantic side of Aerylle would have commented at that point, but the rest of her passion-fevered mind decided against it.
"Come, will my bedchamber do?"
"There's nowhere else I would rather be right now." Min said as Aerylle took her by the hand and led her out into the library's Great Hall with its high-vaulted, elaborately carved marble ceilings and into the streets of the Clerk's Ward where the last signs of official activity were heralded by the tolling of the Bell Tower. Although they moved slowly and deliberately through the winding mazes of streets that stretched into the great curve of Sigil's wheel, Min had not felt so exhilarated in a long time. Despite herself, her heart beat faster than it had done during many a dangerous retrieval mission. Most importantly it beat not for herself, but for Aerylle.
By the time they arrived in Aerylle's small, yet comfortable and impeccably tidy apartment, Min's heart burnt, though she had not run.
"Please make yourself at home," Aerylle said, closing the door behind her, "have you eaten anything yet?"
"I think I will soon," Min said wryly, taking Aerylle into her arms, "but I want to do this properly...for you."
"Be at ease, then." Aerylle said as she sat on her bed, its heavy, plush sheets and soft mattress easily giving way to even to the grey elf's slight form. She wordlessly took off her ankle boots, and coyly turned her face slightly towards the tiny window at the head of the bed, "I would be honoured to give myself to you tonight, would you give yourself to me?" It was not so much a question as a formality, roughly translated from her native Elven, which was far more nuanced in speaking of love than any other language.
"Yes..." Min could only manage a single word, her throat felt parched.
"Then I am at your leisure." It was not in the least incongruous for Aerylle to use the traditional form of the Elven courtship ritual on the contrary it felt natural. In her society, there was no love nobler than that between two men or two women. It was aesthetic and not reproductive love, it was egalitarian and not possessive, fierce but never violent.
Min did not need a second invitation. She fell upon Aerylle with a searing kiss, scrambling to help the grey elf out of her tunic before casting it aside, the librarian's naked body finally once again revealed to her in a spectacle of gracious perfection. Min undressed herself with consummate ease, with no fumbling and no noise, just her breath against Aerylle's as their lips duelled passionately, breaking only for the tiefling to divest herself of her top.
Finally they were together, skin against skin, and Min was free to feel the exhilarating sensation of that smooth, perfect flesh against her own, the floral smell of Aerylle's perfume, the naturally sweet smell of the elf's hair and sex now wafting in the air. Breast to breast, hardened nipples brushing painfully over breasts already moist with sweat, Min kissed, riding the soft, delicate rolling motion of Aerylle's body as it bucked against her own.
"I did not know there could be such beauty in Sigil." Aerylle sighed as she contemplated Min's firm, youthful breasts, much larger than her own but still elegant and awash with the vitality of the first flushes of full womanhood, peaked with garnet-red nipples that looked almost purple.

Min was not in a talking mood, her lips lunged to latch onto one of Aerylle's nipples, the motion of her mouth gentle and suckling at first, then sharp and insistent as the grey elf's hands continued to discover every curve, every muscle of her new lover.
Aerylle could only gasp at the new world of sensation opened by the tiefling's ministrations. Now Min moved lower, trailing her tongue down to course through the swollen lips of Aerylle's sopping sex. The taste was sublime, an intoxicating combination of the saline, the sweet and the floral. Never in her life had Min imagined the female sex to be so magnificent, so rich and bounteous. Trailing down lower, the tiefling planted small, wet kisses on the insides of Aerylle's thighs, trailing her tongue down to the maddening curve of the grey elf's calves and then turning inwards to tease and tickle the instep of the girl's foot with moist, provocative little licks.
Aerylle giggled softly as Min's expert mouth now wrapped itself around her big toe, suckling lightly, before sweeping back upwards, inexorably towards its moist, fertile target at the juncture of the grey elf's thighs. Almost moved by the bright pink beauty of Aerylle's sex, opened like a tropical flower in full bloom, Min dived forward to kiss it reverently, her tongue tracing the contours of the girl's inner lips, in slow, upward arcs which brought her ever closer to the stiffening bud of Aerylle's clitoris.
For her part, the grey elf breaths came ragged, her chest hammering, rising and falling seemingly in synchronism with each tender, tortuous lick of Min's mischievous tongue.

Using one hand to spread the petals of Aerylle's sex open, Min began to apply a soft, lapping pressure on the pink engorged bud before, the fingers of her other hand, now moistened with the elf maiden's abundant nectar, probing between the inner lips and pressing teasingly against the tight, pink star of muscle of her anus. Spurred on by Aerylle's increasingly desperate cries, Min increased her tempo, thrusting her tongue vigorously against the hot, stiffened bud beneath it, inhaling the flowery perfume of her lover's desire.
Aerylle's peak struck her unexpectedly as Min allowed her teeth to graze ever so delicately against the swollen surface of the elf's bud, whilst gently but diligently working her thumb into the girl's tight, but expertly coaxed, nether passage. Grasping the sheets, Aerylle let out a high, melodious gasp, before collecting herself, and steadying her body into a more manageable rhythm to further encourage Min's attentions. Cupping Aerylle's sex in one hand, Min brought the elven girl to face her, planting a tender kiss on her lips, now delicately parted by the throes of sublime pleasure.
"Don't tell me," Min said with a mock sigh of disapproval as her middle finger encountered resistance as it worked itself into Aerylle's sex, "this is actually your first time?" The tiefling accentuated her question by running her tongue down Aerylle's right ear, drawing a deep shudder and a short, sharp gasp from the grey elf.
"No, certainly not." Aerylle protested.
"But..."
"Normally," Aerylle started, hating herself for offering a lecture at such an inopportune moment, "we do not 'breach the flower' when making love to friends. Only lovers have that privilege."
"I...see." Min did not quite know what to make of that, as far as she was concerned, the etiquette of the world Aerylle described as distant to her as the Seventh Heaven of Mount Celestia.
"No..." Aerylle recoiled for a moment and then relented, pressing forward against Min to kiss the tiefling's neck, savouring the salty, spicy tang of the woman's skin, "I want you to take it."

Min nodded, teasing the elf maiden's sensitive ear with her lips as she moved her index and middle fingers into position before the barrier of Aerylle's maidenhead, "This hurts and bleeds a little." Min warned, honoured and at the same time surprised to find herself in this position.
"I know," Aerylle gasped between kisses on Min's neck and collarbone, "it is right that you do it."
Spurred by the elf's words, Min thrust forward, in firm but clean motion, feeling the tissue give way under her fingernails. Aerylle gasped and bit down, hard, on Min's shoulder. The tiefling felt a few teardrops fall on her skin before Aerylle's sharp breaths were replaced by a more regular, sedate rhythm.
Recovering from the initial shock of her deflowering, Aerylle decided to take the opportunity to show Min that an inviolate maidenhead did not necessarily involve any lack of experience. Easing the tiefling down into a comfortable position, Aerylle began her slow, methodical exploration of Min's body, her lips, tongue and fingers all proceeding with a feather-light touch, barely grazing the swollen peaks of her lover's nipples, just tracing the subtle definition of muscles, the taut, athletic curves of breasts and bottom.
The crescendo was maddening, but Min contended herself with stroking the grey elf's fragrant hair, allowing the girl to weave her magic as if it were a slow, ritual dance, no motion inelegant or superfluous, but all part of a continuous organic whole whose logic was dictated not by the mind, but by the fiery passion of her soul.
With her sodden sex exposed to the cool evening air, her dark red inner petals now open at the mercy of Aerylle's teasing, maddening touch, Min felt vulnerable, but pleasantly so. A proud and independent woman, she felt only disgust at the weakness of exposing oneself unnecessarily but in that moment, she felt as if her surrender had been warranted and that by surrendering herself to Aerylle's pleasure, she had discovered a side of herself she had long thought lost.
The elf maiden, for her part, dipped lower, her lips skimming the tart, spicy folds of the tiefling's sex. Although not given to indecision or insecurity, Min found herself praying to whatever powers that be her elven lover, no doubt accustomed to a different taste, found the thought of pleasuring her appealing. The tiefling need not have worried as Aerylle moved in with sinuous grace, her tongue lapping up and down in long, sensuous licks, two delicate fingers stretching Min's passage open as that eager, infernal little tongue began to dance unpredictably across her aching clit.
"Ah...I'm sorry I doubted you." Min groaned as Aerylle found her secret spot, deep inside her sex and began applying an irresistible, tickling pressure on it, her tongue busy as always on the furrow of the tiefling girl's sex which. The rhythmic crescendo of both tongue and fingers continued unabated as Min hooked her legs behind Aerylle's shoulders, allowing her lover better access to the burning surface of her sex. Aerylle was more than happy to concentrate on the feast before her; Min's sex was like a ripe fruit, so red, with its distinctive, spicy perfume, almost like cinnamon. From her vantage point, she could feel and hear all of Min's reactions to the slightest alteration in her movements.
The tiefling's breathing, Aerylle noted, depended on the intensity with which she applied her tongue to Min's clit, or the force with which her fingers brushed, almost innocently, against the bundle of hypersensitive tissue deep inside the sex they so freely explored.
Min came to her peak with a desperate, strangled cry, every muscle in her body tensing, her toes curling against the bedding now damp with sweat and nectar. She thrust herself in long, slow deliberate motions against Aerylle's eager tongue, drawing out the last, tense spasms of her climax before collapsing backwards, her elven lover soon joining her in a tight, frantic embrace.
They made love twice more; first after Aerylle had washed off the last remnants of virginal blood, hard and fast against the bathing chamber's door; then after they had changed the sheets since Min insisted that it would not have been right to sleep in a bed in which they had not previously consummated their passion. This time they coupled face to face, Aerylle staring into the deep well of Min's eyes trying to find at least some context, some past upon which to build a future. The elf knew that, Fates willing, she would discover all she needed to know about Min in due time and contented herself, for the time being, with slow, deliberate thrusts, sex pressed against sex, to bring her closer to her tiefling lover.
Though neither had slept much the previous night, Aerylle had kept Min pleasantly awake with sweet nothings, lying tired but satisfied with her head on the tiefling's breast, the elf's left hand clasped firmly in her lover's right.
"I want us to work." Min said finally, her emotion getting the better of her pride.
"Me too." Aerylle whispered softly, "You're always welcome here. I'll have a key made for you."
"You trust me that much, huh?"
"I may not be the greatest judge of character, but I know you are a good person. I would not lo....I wouldn't be here otherwise." Aerylle sent a silent prayer of thanks to Hanali for having stopped herself before saying something truly stupid.
Min could only nod knowingly, "I owe you at least a couple of dinners since you picked up the tab this morning. How about I make it good to you tomorrow. Somewhere nice."
"Sure," Aerylle said, a satisfied smile on her face, "so maybe I can convince you to wear a skirt or a dress, or something...more ladylike."
"Don't count on it." Min said with a yawn. Aerylle waited until she was certain the tiefling was asleep before murmuring a quiet, almost inaudible "love you" in Elven and surrendering herself to a long overdue rest. Min, of course, heard and did not need to speak Elven to understand.
As Aerylle drifted off, the last words echoing in her mind were those of a new chorus that had sprouted in her subconscious. This was the chorus of the obvious which reminded her dreams to reflect a single, great truth: that Min was, and would always be, her type.

Sigil, Preludes Part III

As our introductions come to an end, it is my pleasure to draw your attention to the last key to the destiny of our narrative. Since no (wo)man is an island, there is no mover of destiny who exists without reference to another and as the whole comedy of the Multiverse spins on, uncaring of those who curse or ignore it, some are drawn onto the top of fortune's wheel, some are cast off it and some others still continue their existence regardless. The lives of this latter segment are not necessarily empty - on the contrary they are often full of the personal things which make a life a good life. On another world it would be the garden folly of Sans-Souci; the desperate search for refuge from responsibility. This isn't so much the quest of the weak as it is the quest of dreamers; those who cannot or will not accept the world as it is, but seek to carve our sanctuaries of tranquillity or illusion in its midst. No (wo)man is an island, though, and the gulf of incomprehension between those who dream of an ideal world and those who simply want a life of ordinary happiness can be a difficult one to bridge. Of course, the Multiverse offers a panoply of ideal worlds, whatever one's tastes are. What truly makes matters doubly complex is when one not only has to find a dream to chase, but also the world (or Plane of existence) in which to chase it.
- The Archivist, your narrator

"Ô vierges, ô démons, ô monstres, ô martyres,

De la réalité grands esprits contempteurs,

Chercheuses d'infini, dévotes et satyres,

Tantôt pleines de cris, tantôt pleines de pleurs,"

Arvandor was resplendent that morning. But in the Dawnlands of Arborea, in the endless, quiet sylvan realm of the Seldarine, dawn was perpetually in the process of breaking. Fixed climactic conditions could endure for centuries - at least in the reckoning of Prime-material Plane based mortals - at a time, all dependent on the whim of some flighty god or goddess whose control over a realm was infinite, infused with the endless possibility of benevolent absolutism. The lay of the land followed the effortless integration of the natural and the created: small shrines, halls and picturesque, weathered statues all covered with overgrown moss alternated with long stretches of pristine forest and of open meadows.
The air lay quiet, perpetually moist and cool, the dew falling in oozing drops down open petals and limp leaves, always just moments from regaining their full vitality. Light seeped down in the rough-hewn rocks of some ruined towers - more specifically, towers which had been built as ruins - and into the myriad of shimmering streams that ran under the protective blanket of the forest cover. In most estimations, it would have been paradise. But it was an artificial one. If only everything were as simple as a divinity willing a realm into existence.
So thought Elyszara to herself as sat on the slope of a grassy hill, contemplating a sweeping valley of snow-white alpine flowers before her. The ceaselessly breaking dawn tinged the flowers with the slightest touch of deep, warm orange. Normally Elyszara would have taken the opportunity to pen a few lines in her journal, perhaps contribute some third rate reflective poetry to her already vast collection. Writing, Elyszara mused, was catharsis and it gave the impression that although one could control this world, others more fantastic still were ripe for the making.
The aasimar - for her mother was a ghaele eladrin, a celestial servant to the divinities of the Elven and Sylvan pantheons and her father had been a mortal -, knew that though half of her soul belonged in the pristine forests of Arborea, the other half knew no home and was infused with a ceaseless need for exploration. It was if Elyszara's mortal side had been crushed by her mother's careful tutelage. Being raised in a country villa on a Plane of existence many mortals took to be a sort of Paradise may well have been an indulgent experience, but there was part of Elyszara which did not belong. So now, her mortal side - that which would cause her too to ultimately wither and die while her mother endured eternal - wanted its part. Adolescence borne out in the limbo of two worlds, even in tolerant Arborea, had not been easy.
Now, with the advent of adulthood came the full promise of travel, an activity which had begun to chip away slowly but methodically at tiny segments of Elyszara's curiosity. She had begun to see the Multiverse in all its multifarious splendour and she liked. It was not so much the location as the denizens of those boundless Planes of existence, of cities bound up in magma and molten bronze or aloft in the eye of a perpetual cyclone. Such endless variety, so little time.
Elyszara leaned forward slightly, hugging her knees, the droplets dew cool and refreshing under her bare feet. The Multiverse is quite a sight, but I'm quite a sight for the Multiverse - Elyszara mused. Modesty was not one of her virtues, but the pure, celestial influence from her mother had certainly given her an enviable allure. Of moderate height, by human standards, Elyszara was nevertheless graced with a slender, harmonious build, with long, graceful limbs, like many a classic sculpture of a nymph, and firm, rounded breasts which perfectly reflected the languid femininity of her proportions. Of clear celestial origin was Elyszara's long, midnight black hair which, under the light, reflected shades of vibrant blue, indigo and silver and her eyes, always possessed with a mischievous twinkle, which were blue, but not in the conventional sense, but intensely and entrancingly so. Chromatic harmony was crucial to Elyszara's aesthetic so she had painted her lips indigo and eyelids sky-blue to stand in relief with the angelic paleness of her elfin face whose peerless features any sculptor would have loved to immortalise in the finest of marble.
But something weighed on the aasimar's mind, for, in the course of her childhood and adolescence she had realised that living in the land of perpetual youth, of ageless gods and their ever-joyous, ever-dancing host, she had youth in the conventional sense. She was born, had grown and would, ultimately die. All that surrounded her would go on existing, changed perhaps for such were the ways of the Planes which resisted order and pattern, but it would continue existing. She, though, would shed her mortal coil and her body would decay like that of all other mortals. In the innocence of childhood, Elyszara had not even reflected on this - time seemed to float on forever, aimlessly and unpredictably like clouds in the sky. But on the day of her first cycle, she had found blood in her bed and blood on her nightgown and it was as if that spreading red tide, tinting the finest silks crimson, had been a reminder of her mortality.

Elyszara's mother had celebrated that day as the moment of her accession into womanhood, but it left a bitter taste in the aasimar's mouth. Were I a celestial, were I an eladrin, then I would not have to become a woman, nor eventually cease to be one. What cruel fate, she thought, to be born to die, what crime against nature for her mother to live on whilst her daughter remained but a marginal interruption in the march of aeons. Perhaps she over-dramatised it a little at the time, but seven years - in the reckoning of many mortal worlds - had passed since then and time had brought no comfort and more uncertainties.
Not that Elyszara bore her mother any resentment, on the contrary she had provided her daughter with all the worldly comforts she required, purchased a spacious attic in a bohemian district of Sigil and generally provided any service that was required of her. So Elyszara had wiled away her days dabbling in poetry, painting, pottery, incantations, swordplay, archery and music, before concluding that life was too short to specialise in one and that the greatest variety of activities pursued would, in the long run, provide the most comprehensive experience of life. Of course this made her dilettante, but Elyszara was convinced that it took a truly depressing person to repeat the same mundane task ad infinitum.
"My beloved, am I interrupting you?" Elyszara was not surprised that Cirily, her lover, had managed to sneak up unnoticed behind her. She often became distracted when immersed deep in thought.
"Another existential crisis, dearest?" Cirily asked softly, kneeling down on the grass and wrapping her arms around Elyszara's waist to draw her close enough to kiss her gently on the lips, "still painting your lips with that depressing colour?"
"You ask too many questions." Elyszara replied and drew Cirily closer into a longer, more intimate kiss.
It occurred to Elyszara that Cirily was quite possibly the only person who had kept her truly happy in all the time she oscillated between hedonism and depression. In a sense, though, they had been meant for each other. In seeking to relieve her daughter's restless boredom and depressive fits, Elyszara's mother had sought out ought some company for her; conveniently, one of her firre subordinates, whose life as an itinerant bard and artist for the greater glory of the divinities of Arborea prevented her from appropriately raising a child, had a daughter of Elyszara's age.
So a bargain was struck and Cirily, feeling rejected but possessed with a boundless affection that needed expression found fulfilment in learning to love, and only later understand, her new friend. Bonding between them had seemed natural enough, they were after all, in a similar position. Like Elyszara, Cirily had been born half mortal, though she had taken to her predicament with more tolerance, concluding that it was better to live a mortal life than not live at all. But then Cirily took from her mother: the firre caste of eladrin were as philosophical and dedicated as the ghaele were fierce and passionate. Even so, many who met them together automatically assumed that Cirily was the wild, passionate one.
Perhaps it was a matter of first impressions: Cirily's eyes burned with lustrous intensity like overheated bronze, her hair, which she always kept cropped short in a naturally wavy mane, reflected a mesmerising array of shades of deep orange and red. Her skin, though pale, was likewise infused with a deep autumn tonality, mirrored by the enticing, sensual redness of her lips, ripe like an apple at harvest time. Where Elyszara's frame was slender, almost girlish, Cirily bore a fuller femininity, as could be evinced by the generous curve of her breasts and the rounded firmness of her hips and belly, gracefully fluid like those of a dancer. She had a beautiful, luminous face, as immediately endearing as Elyszara's was enigmatically playful.
"It's you who don't answer them." Cirily replied huskily, moving one hand under Elyszara's pale violet silk gown, her fingernails just scraping the inner thigh.
"Hmmm...you really know how to wake up from my daydreaming," Elyszara sighed as Cirily began kissing down the length of her delicately pointed ear which, for the eladrin as for elves, was the source of much sensual pleasure, "you're the only one who can make me forget about my troubles."
"I'm glad." Cirily replied, her hand now slowly, deliberately parting the inner lips of Elyszara's sex - she was already damp, "I wish I could contain myself, but before you, I'm powerless."
Turning around to face Cirily, Elyszara lay her lover down on the grass before pulling off her gown in one sharp motion. Cirily lay back and enjoyed the show, all the while unbuttoning her simple white blouse, revealing her proud breasts, larger than Elyszara's but no less firm, her nipples already hard in the cool, open air.
Once she had finished undressing, Elyszara lunged forward, kissing her prone lover, their tongues duelling. Elyszara almost always preferred to seize the initiative and Cirily enjoyed this, it was a form of intimate trust because she was certain that she could always trust her dark-haired lover to attend to her pleasure. Of course, even now, Elyszara did not disappoint, her tongue now busy lapping up the hollow of Cirily's neck, her hands caressing, dancing over the redhead's supple breasts, those mischievous, indigo-painted fingernails scraping ever so slightly against the taut, bright red nipples.
Cirily could only moan now that Elyszara had capped one of her nipples with that eager, hungry mouth, the sensitive bud felt heavy, like lead, and hot in the moist heaven of her lover's tongue. There bodies held no more secrets for one another, Cirily thought, she and Elyszara had made love countless times from the first clumsy, and unfortunately very vivid, efforts in early adolescence to a rhythm that now flowed naturally and did not need any contrivance. Intimacy between them just happened organically, as it should in the wildly passionate air of Arborea.
Elyszara's tongue did not leave much time for contemplation, though as it now danced on Cirily's navel, impudently foreshadowing what was to come. Wordlessly, Elyszara lifted the hem of Cirily's very succinct white and azure patterned skirt and brushed it aside. Cirily spread her thighs slightly in anticipation, her back arching as every second Elyszara withheld her kisses was a second that seemed to been drawn out into infinity. Fortunately she did not have to suffer long, Elyszara's mouth opened Cirily's moist treasure effortlessly. That distinctive taste was as familiar to Elyszara as Cirily's skin, lips, sweat and tears and she lost no time in immersing herself passionately, tongue pointed and firm against the yielding, fevered flesh.
Cirily rolled her hips against Elyszara's face, her muscles already tense, rolled in a dance of passion. The flame-haired aasimar bit down roughly on her lower lip at the unbearably slow motion of Elyszara working two fingers into her dripping sex. Those slim, long fingers had already gone to work deep inside Cirily, thrusting in synchronism with the movements of Elyszara's tongue which now trilled relentlessly against the hard little clitoris before it.
"Lys!" Was all Cirily could gasp out breathlessly as she felt her blood, hot as molten metal, pound through her, her hips filled with electricity as she desperately pressed her eager sex against Elyszara's mouth. Cirily's hips then fell still for a moment for the flame-haired aasimar to catch her breath, breasts rising and falling frantically as her hands reached forward to lovingly stroke Elyszara's magnificent hair, relishing in the soothing silkiness under her fingers.
As Elyszara settled down on top of her to kiss her passionately, Cirily tasted herself on Elyszara's lush, indigo lips, it was a flavour that spoke of her passion for a woman she knew she could not do without. Perhaps, Cirily mused, the roles had been reversed. She was no longer required as Elyszara's saviour, on the contrary, it was Elyszara's turn to be hers.
Taking Cirily into a tight embrace, Elyszara led her lover's hand between her own thighs, pressing the redhead aasimar's palm against her sex before beginning to thrust against it in slow, measured strokes. Cirily needed no cue, though certainly rarely boring, their lovemaking had a certain rehearsed quality to it, as if in each situation each partner knew exactly what her role was to be and how to best fulfil it. Now Cirily buried her head into Elyszara's breast, her hand cupping the other girl's sex, two fingers now sliding in and out of the sodden, pink sex, the heel of her hand pressing firmly against the stiff little bud of Elyszara's clitoris.
"Deeper..." Elyszara sighed as she nuzzled Cirily's hair, her tongue busy lavishing long, artful licks on her lover's ear.
Cirily was quick to comply, increasing the tempo of her thrusts as she bit down softly on Elyszara's right nipple, eliciting the expected gasp. Their bodies thrust, ground and danced together in harmony, a movement by one matched almost perfectly by the reaction of the other. Cirily eagerly felt the excitement that now coated her hand in hot wetness, her palm massaging Elyszara's clitoris with practised expertise, her fingers now working themselves deep into her lover's sex in a sharp, winding motion. Twining her legs around Cirily's in anticipation for her impending climax, Elyszara felt that the whole world began in the multi-hued sea of her lover's hair and ended in her own burning sex. She felt Cirily's sex warm, wet and yielding against her thigh. Then Elyszara's tension found its relief, fiercely at first as she thrashed against Cirily, her mouth whispering soft, inchoate cries into her lover's ear, then in slower, more fluid thrusts to fully savour the final spasms of her climax.
"You're mine." Elyszara crooned into Cirily's ear before kissing it.
"Always." Cirily sighed contentedly, nestling her head in the valley of Elyszara's breasts, feeling the fervid heartbeat of their lovemaking gently subside into a less frantic pounding.
They lay on the grassy slope for some time, both content to be in their lover's proximity.

"We need a bath." Elyszara said suddenly, stroking Cirily's hair as the flame-haired aasimar planted soft, absentminded kisses on her breasts.
"Home, then?" Cirily inquired virtually half asleep.
"Yeah, home."
It was a short walk up the hill and down a secluded glade which surrounded a small, glistening waterfall, its waters sweet and fragrant from the water lilies that covered the surface of the pool, seemingly unperturbed by the constantly trickling water. The grass, moss and stone were cool under Elyszara's bare feet, as was the air which had already begun to dry her gown of the dew, sweat and sex which covered it. After traversing the glade, the two finally came upon the country villa in which they had been raised. A low edifice of rough hewn stone, it looked like but another ruin, one like many other scattered across the endless Arborean idyll. But this was the fief and residence of a great ghaele knight and, interwoven with powerful incantations, the stone themselves housed a large and comfortable residence, all furnished in bare stone and hardy coniferous wood.
Passing the fountain, crowned by moss-covered sculptures of nymphs dancing to some soundless tune, Elyszara and Cirily crossed the threshold of the residence into the main hall, a wide and quiet chamber of grey stone - coursed by traces of gold and roseate agate - where a small internal orchard of vines and fruit trees had been planted directly under a single shaft of magical light which emanated from the high ceiling. It was not so much a question of the villa containing life, but of the villa living. Even the rock upon which it had been built was often infiltrated by roots and vines, co-existing in perfect structural harmony with the building.
Elyszara's mother, the ghaele whose name to mortals was Nerissa, was there to welcome them. She disliked wearing her ceremonial armour at home, preferring to appear in nothing more than a shimmering, low cut dress that swept down to her knees. Though her features resembled Elyszara's, there was nothing of the mortal about her.
Nerissa carried herself with all the perfection of a celestial being, her features regal and angelic. Though they were but the flicker of a candle in cosmic terms, Nerissa was certain that she loved Elyszara and Cirily in a manner which defied accurate description and which could almost certainly never be repeated. She knew of Elyszara's existential frustrations and did her utmost to be tolerant in the extreme of them. It had, after all, been her choice to explore the experience of motherhood and not her daughter's. Nevertheless there were times in which she, proud defender of the courts of the Seelie and the Seldarine, too worried for a daughter's well being.
"Welcome back, my daughters." Nerissa said, her voice dignified and invested with immense presence and authority.
"Mother..." Elyszara began distractedly, making her way downstairs to the bathing hall.
"Esteemed mother." Cirily chimed with a quick bow.
"Stop being so obsequious," Elyszara reprimanded disdainfully - it was bad enough that her mother demanded outward shows of respect and even worse that Cirily seemed to eager to provide them, "c'mon Cirily, bathtime." The aasimar said as she disappeared down the stairs.
"I must apologise for her, esteemed mother..." Cirily began before Nerissa interrupted her with a gently raised hand.
"Stop apologising for Elyszara and come kiss me." Nerissa said, smiling softly. Cirily had

become as much her daughter as Elyszara.

Cirily was happy to comply, pressing her lips softly against the cool surface of the ghaele's mouth. It was like touching something otherworldly and the experience always sent shivers down Cirily's spine and almost made her hair stand on end.
"I trust you had a good outing." Nerissa said knowingly as she placed two graceful fingers on Cirily's lips.

Blushing slightly, the tint of her pale skin becoming almost coppery, Cirily managed a wan smile.

Nerissa's kind laughter, clean like water from a spring echoed lightly around the great entrance hall, "There is no need to be embarrassed, child, there are no secrets between us, correct?"
"Yes, esteemed mother." Cirily replied obediently.
"I hear that Elyszara will be taking you to Sigil." Nerissa began, her hand now lovingly stroking Cirily's cheek, tracing the lines and contours which brought down to the aasimar's breasts.
"Yes, esteemed mother, she has told me that she grows tired of Arborea. She wants to return to the bustle of Sigil."
"And what do you think?" Nerissa asked, her fingers lightly cupping Cirily's chin to tilt it upwards so that they could see eye to eye.
"I like it. Lys has this love of adventure which is always fascinating. I live a more interesting and beautiful life because of her." Cirily believed this fervently. From the very beginning, she knew that Elyszara would be a universe to her. Not the only one perhaps, but certainly the sun around which she would eagerly revolve.
"I am proud of both of you. But you and I both know that you are the wiser one. I would beg you to ensure that Elyszara does not overstep the limits she does not know exist. I can only protect you so far. The Multiverse and all its wonders can be yours, but Arborea is but a small part of it. Remember that and that my love is always with you both." With that Nerissa leaned forward slightly to kiss Cirily's lips once more, "I wish you the best of journeys, the portal for Sigil should be opened soon in the library. Now, I believe Elyszara awaits the pleasure of your company."
Cirily nodded, bowed again and hurried down the stairs.

****************
Elyszara reclined in the great granite tub of the bathing chamber. The high dome of the bath was covered in moss and on the walls of the circular chamber were carved exquisite friezes of a bawdy bacchanalia, with prancing nymphs, naiads, satyrs and gods and goddesses all carved into the living stone with sublime craftsmanship. This ranked high on the list of Elyszara's favourite places, an island of solace where she could be alone with only the sound of the slow lapping of the water, or the soft breathing of Cirily lying beneath her. Now as the lukewarm water, infused with restorative mineral salts flowed in little eddies around her breasts, Elyszara's trancelike state of relaxation was broken by the sound of Cirily's approaching footfalls.
"Mother and daughter, have you no shame?" Elyszara taunted as Cirily quickly undressed to dive into the pool next to her lover.
"That's why I love you," Cirily replied, wading to Elyszara's side and playfully squeezing the dark-haired aasimar's firm bottom, "you're so witty and original."
"Hmm...sharp tongue too...who in the Multiverse is ever going to marry you?"
"Only a masochist like you." Cirily snapped back jokingly, embracing Elyszara from behind and holding her close, chin planted on her beloved's shoulder.
"Is it fate that made us for one another?" Elyszara mused arching her head backwards to allow better access as Cirily ran wet, searching hands across her breasts and belly.
"I don't know, but I remember my first day here as if it were yesterday."
"As do I." Elyszara replied, her breath already short as Cirily began to kiss down her delicately pointed ears, trailing her tongue down towards the dark-haired aasimar's neck.

**********
"Elyszara, dearest, there is someone I would like you to meet." Her mother's voice called out to her across the garden, but Elyszara had no interest. She had been vexed recently. Vexed by the incomprehension of her mother, whose immortal mindset could not stoop to even consider her petty mortal, frustrations. Vexed by the servants because they secretly thought her some sort of invalid and treated her as such. Vexed by her own body, which now insisted on bleeding disgustingly every lunar cycle and forcing ever larger breasts which ruined the streamlined perfection of her body.
"I'm sorry, Cirily, she is a little sullen nowadays." Elyszara heard her mother sigh and, seized by curiosity, she looked down from the tree in which she had been hiding to see a girl, about her age, hand firmly clasped in her mother's. She has beautiful eyes, Elyszara thought, but she's an intruder nonetheless and certainly not worth my time of day.
"Come down this instant!"

Elyszara cursed herself. That moment of distraction had allowed her mother to detect movement in the lower branches of the pine tree in which she had concealed herself.
"I am happy to see that you have practised your levitation enchantment, but I will not stand for you being this rude. Now come down and introduce yourself." Knowing that refusal would eventually result any one of the humiliating little 'didactic' punishments her mother could devise, Elyszara reluctantly allowed herself down from her refuge.
"This is Cirily." Her mother said, arms crossed at the irritation of having to retrieve her daughter when there were more important matters that required attention.
Upon closer inspection, Elyszara reflected, the girl was pretty indeed, with that lustrous, nuanced red hair and wide, expectant eyes.
"Elyszara." The sullen aasimar conceded stepping forward to plant the lightest of possible kisses on the newcomer's cheek.
"Cirily, a pleasure to meet you, miss." The stranger said shyly, almost inaudibly.

Elyszara heard her mother chuckle softly, "She is to be your friend and sister, not your employer, now embrace her as she has you. Elyszara, I must go now, but I trust you to show Cirily around. Make her feel at home."
Elyszara nodded miserably, her irritation compounded when she felt the strange girl's lips on her cheek. Pretty or not, no one should touch her unless absolutely necessary. Her irritation notwithstanding, Elyszara spent the day sharing her acerbic take on life, mortality and the pointlessness of learning or discipline with Cirily. She listened attentively at first, but at the first occasion, whilst Elyszara was busy preparing her third hallucinogenic-moss infused tablet, Cirily allowed herself to interject.
"It's not that bad here, really." She said hesitantly watching Elyszara grind up the dried purple moss with the tiny basalt mortar and pestle she kept under her mattress.
"Like fuck it isn't. Did you choose to be born the only mortal in a plane of endless rejoicing?"
"You can always live the life you have." Cirily said. She was sitting stiffly on the very corner of Elyszara's bed, still fearful of taking too many liberties.
"Why? Just one reason why..." Elyszara snapped back before tasting a tiny sample of the moss. It needed more grinding and the effect of the previous tablet was wearing off. A world of shimmering lights and ultra-vivid colours was fading back into dull, everyday reality.
"Not for yourself, but for someone else. You can choose to allow yourself to live for someone else and that person will live for you. Then you needn't be alone. That person will always take part of your pain."
"As you'll have to take part of theirs." Elyszara growled.
Cirily shook her head, "The burden is lighter when there are two." Of this much she was certain.
Elyszara snorted and returned to her work, "Are you hungry?" She asked curtly.
"Yes."
"How does honey puff-pastry sound to you?" Elyszara had finally put down her pestle.
"Wonderful." It was the first time that Cirily smiled since arriving.
Later that day, Elyszara sat on her bed, contemplating Cirily, gracious and slender, standing at the threshold of her bedchamber door in her thin nightgown. In the candlelight of her room the term 'pretty' seemed reductive. The bronze and red tonalities of Cirily's skin and hair were highlighted in the room's dim glow, as was the perpetual brilliance of the girl's eyes.
"Where are you going?" Elyszara asked, her tone still blunt.
"To bed." Cirily replied, softer and more demure.
"So what are you doing in the doorway? Get under the covers because you're holding me up." Elyszara said, blowing out the candles on her bedside table, the curtains of the room already drawn to block out Arborea's endless light.
"Are you sure...I mean, I have been assigned my own room." Cirily began before hearing Elyszara's groan.
"What? Are you going to trek down there when there's a perfectly good bed here? My mother really know how to pick them."

Cirily complied gratefully, sliding under the sheets and taking up the smallest amount of space possible on the furthest side of the bed, curling up against the very edge of the mattress. To her surprise she then felt a firm hand against her arm, drawing her towards the centre of the bed.
"If my mother ever hears of this, I'll cut your wrists while you sleep." Elyszara snarled, her arm draped around Cirily's waist.
"Right...Understood." Both smiled, knowing the other was in no position to see.

*************
"You still haven't kicked the Paradise Moss, have you?" Cirily said with mock accusation as Elyszara basked in the afterglow of her memories and the short, sharp orgasm Cirily's industrious fingers had obliged her with.

"No, but now I'm more of a Dreamsmoke girl." Elyszara purred, turning around to allow Cirily to cradle her head between those soft, inviting breasts.
"What are we going to do in Sigil?" Cirily asked expectantly. She delegated all planning and preparations, such as they were, to Elyszara who was, after all, a consummate traveller.
"Meet up with the Radiant Path girls, see what the library has to offer, check out the bazaar....you know, the usual."
"You and your knight in shining armour fetish." Cirily joked, leaning forward to give Elyszara a quick kiss.
"Well, my mother is technically in the service of the Vigilant Maiden...only on another Plane. It seems only logical for me to socialise with my family's natural allies." Elyszara replied, somewhat defensively.
"Don't worry, silly," Cirily said soothingly, "I trust you, we wouldn't be here if I didn't."

The truth of the matter, Cirily reflected, was that, from the first time Elyszara held her, she had felt safe, appreciated and, ultimately, loved. These were sensations and feelings of contentment she would have given her life ten times over to have. It was this feeling of complicity, of unity and profound intimacy which made them part of an exemplar pair which even Nerissa, with her experience of centuries, had declared to be, in good faith, singularly impressive. Of course, each had occasionally given free rein to a burning rage or to a fit of jealousy, but in the impulsive, passionate air of Arborea all that was understandable, if not normal.
After finally deciding to leave the bath, Elyszara and Cirily dried each other off and proceeded to the bedroom they had shared since that first fateful night. Cirily, as always, insisted on over-packing, fretting over every possible contingency and finally arriving at some half-baked compromise which satisfied neither, but at least stopped the pointless argument over the number of pillows to replace in their Sigil residence dead in its tracks. Travelling made Cirily as nervous as it excited Elyszara, so they settled down into their usual routine with Elyszara facing the great wall mirror in her room and Cirily behind her, kneeling on the bed, focusing all her attention on brushing her lover's hair into acceptable order.
"Are you sure the other dress wasn't more appropriate?" Elyszara queried, plaintive in her indecision.
"You're too vain for your own good." Cirily retorted, trying to think less about what should and should not have been packed and more about the steady motion of her hand over Elyszara's shimmering hair, the pure white bristles of the gold-framed brush generating a soothing, whispering sound.
"I'm afraid this one could be made dull by the rain." Elyszara moaned. The silver dress she wore had tiny enchanted motes woven into its airy fabric designed to reflect light at a number of angles and therefore produce a constantly shifting pattern effect. It was low cut, placing appropriate emphasis on Elyszara's compact, noble breasts, virtually sleeveless, with the hem stopping at mid-thigh and a deep blue sash to tie it at the waist.
"You'll be lovely." Cirily said. If reason did not soothe Elyszara's anxiety, platitudes would do the trick.
"Are we ready to go then?" Elyszara asked, turning her head slightly to either side to evaluate the fruits of Cirily's efforts.
"Ready when you are."

*************************
Although situated in the pleasant Lady's Ward, Elyszara found her attic residence in poor repair. The razorvine had crept up until it nearly reached the window. The blasted parasitic plant had leaves and stems so sharp they could cut through most chainmail, making their extermination an intense bother. She would have to fetch a fire mage in the morning to burn it off. Conversely, the apartment itself had been kept in more than decent shape.
The bed which she and Cirily normally shared lay in a detached, upper floor, but beneath was a very ample living area with a small library, a kitchen, and a bathing chamber complete with a steam-bath facility. In a rare show of petulance, Cirily had demanded that the latter be installed on the grounds that it helped keep her skin and muscle tone in optimal condition. When Elyszara had queried her bemusedly on this assumption, Cirily had merely snapped back that she did not accept criticism on the subject from someone who would remain whip-thin if she ate a horse.
"I'll start making the bed," Cirily began, a little preoccupied with the task of unpacking and hoping that Elyszara would let herself out for a coupe of hours to give her the time to organise things in peace, "why don't you take a walk and bring something to eat back."
"Good idea, I heard the Peryroyal Bakery has some really groundbreaking new stuff."
"How can you call cakes groundbreaking?" Cirily replied incredulously as she began to unfurl a sheet from the travelling chest. Of course, she knew the answer because she had never seen Elyszara eat anything which was not tooth-meltingly sweet without a grimace.
"I know it's hard for you to understand, but it's a matter of taste." Elyszara chided, taking her leave. It was always best to leave Cirily in peace when she was in the process of organising.
"No cakes!" Cirily called as the door shut.

*******************
"That will suffice for today." Syf declared as she sheathed her sword and placed it on the bare earth of the open air fencing ground. Some of the more eager novices briefly crowded around her for advice, but the bulk of them dispersed quickly and gratefully into the communal pools to cool off. It had been a good day's practise, though it had been, as always, up to Syf as swordplay Instructor to slap a few elbows and knees into the correct position. Posture was everything in combat, whether it was making oneself smaller as a target or exploiting a weakness in the enemy's stance.
The same, as far as Syf was concerned, could be said of virtually any activity in life. Everything could be solved by discipline, composure and the right approach.
As the training ground cleared, Syf took a moment to scrutinise her surroundings, ensuring that everything had been left in presentable order. Though the paladin had an air of sternness about her, with raven-black hair whose tips only barely graced her shoulders, and searing blue eyes which betrayed her Ortho parentage. Those who called her figure boyish within earshot could expect a sharp slap or two, preferably with her leather gauntlet on, those who called it distinguished or elegantly sculpted could have a second hearing. Of course, Syf thought, she had nothing to prove. Not only was she the most promising swordmistress of the Radiant Path, but she had also wooed its most sought after prize, the haughty and temperamental, but exquisitely beautiful Friyya. Of course, Syf was not the sort to crow about it, but if asked...
Of course, there were those recalcitrant novices who took objection to prolonged fencing drills, or the punishing physical training regime Syf had imposed. But there was something immensely satisfying in smirking back at all those resentful eyes. Were she a pettier person, Syf would have no doubt added to her usual statement of the obvious - you'll thank me when you have to use your sword against someone or something who actually wants to kill you -, the more gloating affirmation : and by the way, I get to undress Friyya tonight, slowly and at my leisure, while it's clumsy fumbling under the covers for the rest of you. Syf was not, however, a petty person.
"So how's my fair lady-knight?"
Syf swallowed, that voice was the last thing she wanted at that point. She had been wishing for a sedate day, a nice dinner with her roommates and then a quiet evening with Friyya exchanging light banter, a good rubdown to get the ache in her right shoulder to subside and finally some serious, stress dispelling intimacy. Elyszara, however, was never good news.
"Are you mad?" Syf growled as the aasimar skipped towards her with barely concealed eagerness.
"Is that anyway to greet me?" Elyszara sounded hurt.
"Oh...alright, come here," Syf conceded as she stooped forward slightly to kiss the shorter girl on the lips.
"Is this not a good time?" Elyszara said, cocking her head slightly. Syf had that noble, dignified air about her even in that dull green one-piece training vest that swept down to her knees. Pity, Elyszara thought, because Syf had long, beautiful thighs.
"It wouldn't be...appropriate for us to be seen here." Syf corrected as she turned to leave. The sooner this crisis was defused the better.
"Well, you didn't mind the first time...don't you find me beautiful?" Elyszara provoked.

Syf turned abruptly, a slow-burning anger filling her eyes, "I was weak once, does that mean you will never leave me in peace?" Elyszara, the paladin reflected, was, if possible, even more beautiful than the last time she had seen her. There was a part of Syf that wanted to tear that cursed silvery dress off and take Elyszara savagely on the dusty earth of the fencing ground.
"Fine then. If you don't want me anymore, cast me aside like your rag doll. But I wore this for you, you know. I thought you'd like it." The aasimar turned her head slightly, as if offended.

Syf took a long, deep breath, "You're as stunning as ever." She conceded.

And you make this all too easy. Elyszara thought wickedly to herself.
"As are you, my lady knight..." Elyszara began, throwing herself into Syf's arms, "but now duty calls...you have a princess who needs to be rescued." Elyszara's lips followed, hot and moist on Syf's and it was like drinking after a week in the desert.
"We can't do this here." Syf said, her voice choked by Elyszara's insistent lips.
"The armoury." Was the aasimar's matter-of-fact reply.
Syf pushed Elyszara into a side door of the training courtyard and shut the door behind her, turning the heavy cast-iron key in its lock. The armoury was a silent rank of pikes, swords - short, broad and long -, breastplates shields and helms all arranged neatly on wooden frames. Only a few scattered shards of sunlight penetrated through the thatched ceiling and the tiny cracks in the cool stone. The smell of leather, stone, dust and metal filled the air.
Finally resigning herself to taking the initiative, Syf seized Elyszara's waist in one hand, the other roughly pulling back the aasimar's hair so that her throat would be bared for the paladin's eager kisses.
"Ahhh...my lady knight, your many valiant quests must have roughened your manners."

Syf, frankly, hated Elyszara's little role-plays. As well as the stupidity of the girl's comments: did she expect wedding bells and silver shells treatment after inviting a knight-at-arms into armoury to make love after weapons training? Some people, Syf concluded, truly did live on another Plane.
"Quiet down, someone will hear!" Syf snarled as she roughly undid the sash to Elyszara's dress, before pulling the whole garment off the aasimar's pale, graceful frame in one brisk motion.
"Face the post." Syf ordered, pointing towards the main wooden pillar at the centre of the armoury which helped support the roof. The paladin was busy unbuckling and casting aside her training tunic.

Elyszara was all too happy to comply. Syf could command her like no other. The thrill of being the object of the paladin's stern command had already turned her sex into a roiling, molten furnace. Whatever Syf had planned, Elyszara decided, it was going to be good.
Syf now thrust herself against Elyszara's back, her mouth kissing the aasimar's ears, neck and throat frantically, her fingers roughly spreading the shorter girl's sex. The paladin wished she had a surrogate, an object which she was not normally too keen on using personally, but there was something welling deep inside her that wanted to hurt Elyszara, or at least teach her a lesson. One of Syf's hands now cupped one of Elyszara's breasts, the thumb and forefinger ruthlessly seizing upon a nipple and tugging on it, while the other probed the soft, yielding reaches of the aasimar's nether lips, moistening the digits with the copious nectar therein.
Elyszara hugged the musty wood of the post, she could feel Syf's engorged nipples against her back, the paladin's small, delicately curved breasts moving rhythmically with her breathing. This striving, this desperation this was life, Elyszara thought elatedly as Syf bit down on her shoulder. Elyszara spread her legs wider, standing on tiptoe to allow Syf a better exploration of her drooling sex, its blooming petals now exposed and vulnerable to impatient hunger of the human girl's fingers.
Syf smelt Elyszara, she smelt the exotic, inflaming Arborean perfume the aasimar always wore, she smelt the beads of sweat, she smelt the wood and dust that had gathered in the air. There was little the paladin could do, the experience was irresistible and Elyszara had to be punished for it. Moving one hand down Elyszara's belly to stimulate the aasimar's sex, Syf withdrew the hand which had previously found purchase there and ran a middle finger up the tight valley of the girl's athletically firm bottom.
Elyszara could only gasp and grit her teeth as she felt Syf's middle and index fingers work their way, not at all gently, into the tight, moist recesses of her nether portal. Slightly surprised, but intrigued, Elyszara spurned Syf on, hoping that the hand on her sex would soon spring into action to complement the fingers now thrusting into her bottom. She did not have to wait long. Syf's thumb found her engorged clitoris as two fingers wended their way into her sodden sex.
Pinning the aasimar down against the post with her body, Syf began to work a third moistened finger into Elyszara's bottom, before suddenly flaring all three fingers outwards in order to accommodate the additional intrusion of her thumb. Elyszara gasped, she felt so vulnerable, so open, but the pain and humiliation had been transmogrified into pleasure by the sheer transgression of this encounter. Syf saw Elyszara's grimace and spied a couple of tears running down the aasimar's snow-white cheek. The sight pleased her.
Now concentrating on the two fingers in Elyszara's sex and the four in her bottom, the paladin began to thrust in unison, compressing the two hands together in each thrust, the heel of her left hand grinding into the aasimar's clitoris. It did not take long for Elyszara to emit a pained, strangled cry, her muscles contracting simultaneously and painfully on Syf's intruding fingers. Syf did not withdraw until well after Elyszara's climax was over.
Realising that since she had started the process she may as well finish, Syf spun Elyszara around to face her before kissing her hungrily, but not as violently as she would have wanted. She did, after all desire, Elyszara like few other things. The aasimar was a vision of celestial beauty which had charmed Syf beyond all reason, but now the paladin felt manipulated, vulnerable and, above all, guilty.
Elyszara, though, knew exactly what was expected of her as she eagerly returned the kiss before sinking to her knees between Syf's legs, her tongue running down the paladin's lightly muscled, perfectly flat belly into the neat thatch of midnight-black hair on her sex. Pre-empting Elyszara, Syf thrust her hips forward, her sex grinding rhythmically against the aasimar's eager lips. Syf settled back a little, leaning her hands on a weapons rack for support, legs spread wide, as Elyszara continued her diligent work, tongue exploring the inner depths of the human girl's sex, the abundant nectar mixing with the residue of the tears on Elyszara's cheeks.
Supplementing her tongue with two fingers planted deep against the most sensitive spot of Syf's sex, Elyszara began to feel the first contractions of the paladin's peak. Biting down sharply on her lip, Syf allowed herself only a long, relieved exhalation. A climax that was too vocal was unbecoming, Syf thought, though she was more than happy when Friyya cried out her name - or even when Elyszara did, for that matter.
Somewhat exhausted and still a little stunned, Elyszara picked herself up and fell limply into Syf's embrace. It then dawned upon the paladin that she may have gone too far. Elyszara - Syf knew for a fact - was well disposed towards trying new things; indeed, she would have been hard pressed to name something Elyszara had not tried. But she realised that in the heat of passion, her own actions may have come across differently.
"Did I hurt you? I'm sorry if it was too hard for you..." Syf asked softly, her tone much more tender as she clasped Elyszara's slight, trembling frame against herself.
"No, Syf, it was lovely." The aasimar said, truthfully, as she nuzzled the hollow of Syf's neck.
"I'm happy to see you again," Syf whispered, "but we have to stop. It's not fair to Friyya...or to Cirily."
"You only have one life." Was Elyszara's bitter reply.
Deciding further conversation was counterproductive, Syf simply held Elyszara in her embrace until she knew it was time to prepare for the evening meal. Elyszara stayed on a little longer, pondering the rows of weapons in front of her as she gathered up her dress. Death, she resolved, was generally always the same thing, so that weapons are produced in a myriad of shapes and sizes for the sole purpose of expediting it - but what was the weaponry of life?

******************
"You're quiet tonight." Friyya said, a little concerned, as she close the bedchamber door.
"I always am." Syf replied, her tone sharper than she would have liked.

Knowing her lover's moods well, Friyya approached Syf, placing a gentle hand on her right shoulder, "It must hurt again, after all that training."
"A little." Syf conceded. Had her encounter with Elyszara not weighed so heavily on her mind, she would have been more affectionate. For all her petulant shortcomings, Friyya was devoted. And beautiful; even then, a part of Syf's unconscious wanted to dive into those perfect, auburn tresses, feel the flawless milk-white skin against her hand, kiss her way down those haughty, aristocratic cheekbones before becoming one with the sensual universe of her soft, pouting lips. Syf's libido was, however, still in the process of readjusting itself.
"Come, lie down." Friyya invited.

Syf complied, shrugging off her nightgown and lying face down on the bed, her face contentedly buried in the soft pillow. Although she did not like to admit it, Syf quite enjoyed these little comforts as a counterpoint to her otherwise rigid schedule.
"Your problem, my treasure, is that you're always so tense." Friyya complained as she too undressed before climbing onto the bed at Syf's side, "You and your sword," the auburn-haired paladin continued as she poured some soothing, herbal oil onto her hand and began to rub Syf's aching right should in a slow, deep, hypnotic pattern, "you always used to neglect your studies. It's a wonder you passed the doctrinal tests."
"I never had a mind for books." Syf said, vainly hoping that would stop the conversation she knew was coming.
"So one wonders how you managed to get by..." Friyya began, her fingers soothing and healing against Syf's skin, the sustained pressure unravelling any tense or knotted muscle it found.
"You copied off me." Syf mimicked sarcastically.
"No need to be rude about it when you should be grateful. And my voice is not that high." Friyya reprimanded as she began work on Syf's bicep, her hands gliding expertly over the supple muscle, "We are a complementary pair after all. You know, the whole concept of one complete soul sharing two bodies."
"Of course." Syf lied. She turned her head slightly from the pillow so she could admire Friyya at work beside her. Just watching the gentle, rhythmic swaying of Friyya's breasts, taut, ripe and symmetrical like pears picked from an Elysian garden, was captivating. Her life, Syf decided, needed prioritising - and quickly. If Elyszara really did intend to stick around Sigil, there would be only so much of the aasimar Syf could take. Some sort of solution would be required: a firm, conclusive agreement by which they both resolved to remain friends - good friends, close friends, whatever - but quite specifically not intimate friends.
"You know, Syf, I find that the level of common ignorance in this year's novices shocking, just today..." Friyya had begun her habitual complaint about how reading appeared to have fallen out of fashion, it was an excuse for Syf to drift out for a while. She knew that particular gripe well enough to be able to successfully pretend to listen.
"All done." Friyya said, interrupting Syf's brief doze. The tension in her shoulder was gone, for now, and her whole right arm was now infused with a mildly pleasant, medicinal burning.
"Don't I get a kiss?" Friyya asked, pouting in mock irritation.
"You get more than that." Syf growled, her original plan for the day was back on track, she thought, as she pulled Friyya under her, silencing any commentary with determined lips which were now kissing the breath out of Friyya's lungs.
Syf's practised, dextrous fingers easily parted the lips of Friyya's sex, moving in and out of tight canal in slow, unhurried strokes. Now their bodies melt in a symphony of breathing and movement, Syf's hand as precise and lethal between the pink folds of Friyya's sex as it was in swordplay.
That night Syf drifted in and out of sleep, Friyya resting happily at her breast, smiling and sound asleep. Syf cast her mind back to what Friyya had said as they held each other to catch their breath after the exhaustion of a long night of pleasure.

***********
"You're special." Friyya said, kissing the shallow valley between Syf's breasts.
"Oh?" Syf had not predicted that opening.
"I think you must have been virtually the only one who didn't court me. But now you have me."
"I'm honoured." Syf said truthfully. She stroked Friyya's free flowing tresses; they were like burnished, aged gold.
"I want this to continue...you know, long term." Friyya was hesitant, afraid she had picked the wrong moment. It just happened that she had.
"Friyya, we're still young.." Syf sighed. Not that it mattered since Friyya was sometimes, for all intents and purposes, what Syf imagined a middle aged married schoolmistress to be. But that, in retrospect had been a cruel thought.
"Yes, I suppose we are...but whatever you do, don't leave me." There was heartfelt passion in Friyya's voice and even Syf, generally sceptical of over-effusive romance, was touched.
"I would never do that to you."
"I know. If there is anyone whom I can trust, it's you." Friyya said, snuggling closer.

****************

And that, Syf concluded, according to the unwritten law of the Multiverse, would definitely come back to haunt her. Friyya stirred softly in her arms as if immersed in a languid, happy dream. Syf tried once more - unsuccessfully - to sleep.

*****************
Unperturbed by any but the most flighty of dreamworld considerations, Elyszara slept deeply. Had she been a light sleeper, she would have noticed Cirily rising from the bed to satisfy a certain curiosity which had been troubling her since the time Elyszara had returned and declared that she needed to bathe before dinner.
Now, standing in the dim light of a faerie fire lamp, Cirily had her initial impression confirmed. The silvery dress had a slight tear in it near the hemline of the skirt, as if it had been seized and jerked all of a sudden. Cirily mulled the situation over in her mind, the dress on the kitchen table, her mind furiously at work.
She only returned to bed after three strikes of the Bell Tower to give Elyszara the impression that she had never left.
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Sigil, Preludes of the Great Wheel