Tales of MU

In Which Mackenzie Doesn’t Masturbate

I left the bathroom much earlier than I actually needed to be up, but I figured sooner or later the other girls would start getting ready for classes, and I didn’t need them all thinking I was weird… or like Feejee, assuming I’d had a fight with a girlfriend I didn’t have.

I’d decided to chance a quick nap in the comfort of my own bed… after a fairly restless night of sleeping in the tub, interrupted twice by nightmares, I was too tired even to dream. So much so, I hadn’t even realized I’d fallen asleep when a sound like hail rattling a roof shook the door and woke me.

“Puddy says get up, get up, get up!” someone yelled.

The shrill, hyper-chipper voice belonged to Mariel the sylph. That explained the banging… she had four tiny little hands, each of which moved with blinding speed and precision. She was Puddy’s girlfriend, or at least, she was having sex with Puddy on a nightly basis. I figured that was enough to qualify the two as a couple.

I wasn’t sure if they saw it the same way.

I was pretty sure that Puddy at least didn’t… but I was grateful that Mariel was there to keep her occupied, anyway. I liked Puddy. I really did. I wasn’t very eager to be alone with her, though, especially when she’d been drinking… and if the first weekend had been any real indication, she was always drinking. She’d brought a fridge full of pudding pops and a couple crates of wine bottles, and flat out refused to partake of anything else.

You know how when you were a kid, and you’d say something like, “When I grow up, I’m going to eat nothing but ice cream?” It’s like she was that kid (though, with pudding pops), and she stuck to her wands when she did grow up.

Actually, now that I think about it, that’s kind of her in a nutshell. She does what she wants to… anything she wants to, and only what she wants to. She could act pretty outrageously, too, and in ways that seemed kind of funny… on the surface. Watching her shout out her vulgar come-ons at shy, apparently straight girls was kind of amusing, if I could ignore how uncomfortable some of them looked… and if I could stop thinking about how uncomfortable it made me when she turned her attention in my direction.

“Mack, if you’re in there, open up!” Mariel said, still hammering on the door like a family of hasted woodpeckers. Seeing very little alternative, I went over and opened the door. It was either that or let her drill through it.

“Good morning, Mariel,” I said.

“You need to get dressed,” she said. “Puddy already went over to the dining hall… I’m supposed to do your make-up before we join them.”

She held up her absurdly large kit bag.

“You’re not going to do this every day, are you?” I asked.

“No, of course not!” she said. “I’m sure that sooner or later, you’ll pick up enough to do it for yourself. Now, hurry up and get changed, unless you plan to keep wearing the same ratty t-shirt that you wore all weekend…”

It didn’t take a whole lot more cajoling… Mariel had been fairly nice to me, all things considered. She was a little bit too fixated on my appearance, maybe, but I don’t think that was personal. She was just plain fixated on appearance. And she kept Puddy happy… so I could bend a little and keep her happy.

Over at the dining hall, I expected to be reminded that I’d just used up my last meal for the week when we presented our cards to the cashier. When that didn’t happen, I asked him how many I had and he told me I actually had two left. That was when I remembered that the week officially started on Sunday. I’d only eaten–or rather, only used two meals–on Sunday. I didn’t actually eat that often. My physiology couldn’t handle human food very well, as much as I enjoyed it.

When I did run out of meals, that would mean a confrontation with Puddy. Puddy felt it was important that I continue to show up for every meal served in the dining hall, as resisting the school’s efforts to marginalize non-human students by providing separate meals and separate study facilities had accidentally become the cornerstone of my equally accidental campaign for student senate.

I understood why some of the others found the situation troubling, but I honestly would have been just fine keeping to myself in Harlowe Hall.

Puddy was hoping to turn these little mealtime demonstrations into a bigger thing, but so far she seemed to be having mixed results. She had Celia the nagakin, Barley the nymph, and Belinda the half-human ogress with her… Celia was the one who insisted on sitting in a corner instead of out in the open. She insisted on having a wall to put her back to. This time, she’d taken a chair and turned it sideways to accomplish this. Barley had taken the actual corner seat, on the end of the bench that ran almost the length of the wall. Puddy sat beside her, one arm wrapped around her and openly running her fingertips over Barley’s right breast.

“There you are… now I got all my bitches,” Puddy said, laughing, as we approached.

Mariel snorted at the greeting as she slid herself onto Puddy’s lap, and Barley cracked up. I gave a weak chuckle. I’d decided it didn’t really matter if Puddy wanted to call me “her bitch”, as she wasn’t expecting anything like sex out of me, but I wasn’t one hundred percent comfortable with it, either. I couldn’t articulate a real reason to object, though, so I figured I should probably get used to it.

With Mariel on Puddy’s lap, there was a very obvious gap beside her. I looked everywhere but at that spot. Technically, there should have been three chairs on the one side of the table, but Belinda was actually sitting on two of them. Finally, Puddy gave the seat beside her a little pat, and I sat down quietly. No need to make a big deal out of it.

“Where’s Amaranth?” I asked. “And Two?”

I had figured Amaranth–my best friend, after Puddy, and the person with whom I’d had the closest thing to sex with… which still weirded me out quite a bit–and Two, the theoretically emancipated golem, would have been there for sure. Along with Celia, who had a kind of radical race-baiting streak, they were the stalwarts of Puddy’s dining hall campaign. Two mostly because she’d do whatever anybody told her to do, but I liked to think I could have a good effect on her by coming up with instructions that were helpful instead of just demanding.

“Couldn’t find Two,” Puddy said. “Nobody knew what room she was in.” She shrugged, as though it didn’t really matter, and went back to fiddling around underneath the hem of Mariel’s dress. Sylph clothing didn’t seem to cover much, though that might have been Mariel’s personal sense of fashion.

“And Amaranth’s taking a shower,” Barley said. “She usually wants one after a night of sex, for some strange reason.”

“Don’t you?” I asked. The nymphs always looked so clean. Considering how they spent their leisure time, I figured they had to be pretty fastidious about those things.

“Um, nope,” Barley said. “Nothing we do actually gets us dirty. She’s just got some… odd notions… about certain things. Me, I only shower recreationally. Which reminds me, there’s a sign posted by the showers that only four people are allowed in at a time… and if you came along, there’d be four of us.”

“Us?” I asked.

“Yeah… you, me, Puddy, and Mariel,” Barley said. “We kind of had a big three-way when I came back from the boys’ side early, and your name came up a couple times.”

I glanced at Mariel, who hadn’t seemed very comfortable about the idea of three-way the first time Puddy had mentioned one, in conjunction with me. She was grinning, but there was an uneasy look behind her eyes. I wondered if she wasn’t getting in deeper than she wanted with her newfound sexual identity.

“Yeah, well, for Mack’s first time, I’m thinking it should be one-on-one,” Puddy said. In case the tone in her voice had left any doubt as to who she thought the other “one” should be, she reached around behind my waist and pulled me in closer. I stiffened, but said nothing. She wasn’t actually making me do anything. She was just talking.

And she apparently didn’t know that I might or might not have already had my “first time”, depending on how you counted it. Amaranth had said she would tell Barley, but if she had, Barley didn’t say anything. For the moment, I was glad. If Puddy wanted to be my “first”, I didn’t really want to contradict her.

“Didn’t you say you weren’t gay, anyway?” I asked Barley, looking for a segue to an easier subject. “When you had all those temporary tattoos from the pride group…”

“Well, I’m not,” she said. “Not really. I guess you could call me bisexual, but I just fuck anybody I like. I don’t think that’s really the same thing. Most actual bisexuals I’ve met agree.”

“What’s the big deal about labels?” Belinda asked. “Everybody fucks around with girls some times. It’s like masturbating. You know you do it, even if you say you don’t.”

“I don’t,” I said, then added, “masturbate, I mean,” though I probably shouldn’t have specified. As far as anybody knew, I didn’t fuck around with girls, either, and I wasn’t exactly certain that would end up being an ongoing thing.

“Yeah, right,” Belinda said.

“I’d believe it. Mack’s so tight about sex, her fingers’d probably come out flat if she did,” Puddy said. She pinched me. I jumped, but bit my lip.

“So, what’d everybody take for their lab this semester?” Barley asked. “I’ve actually got to leave for wind and water spells in a bit.”

“Apportation and conjuration,” Puddy said. “It sounded fun.”

“I’ve got colors and patterns today, and sound manipulation tomorrow,” Celia said.

“I don’t have any lab classes,” Belinda said. “I only need six credit hours of magical theory classes to graduate.”

I bit my tongue. I honestly couldn’t stand jocks, and thought it was travesty that a supposedly magic-centered school would have such lax standards just to get a decent skirmish team, but Puddy had asked me to be nice to Belinda. Well, more like told, but still… why bother going to a wizard college if you’re not going to learn any spells?

“Um, I’m actually not taking a lab this semester,” Mariel said, giving a fluid double-shrug. “I’ve been doing simple glamours all my life, so I was able to test out of the basic courses.”

I knew that she really could pull off a glamour, but I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t want a lab class, even if she didn’t need to take one. We were here to do magic. In my mind, all the other required classes were just a distraction, except to the extent that they got us ready for actual spell work.

“So, what you got, Mack?” Barley asked.

“Well, I’ve got elemental invocations, and basic enhancements,” I said. “I put both of them on Tuesday-Thursday ’cause I don’t really see an hour as being long enough to really master a new technique. Elem’s not really directly related to my major, but a skilled enchanter needs a lot of spells to draw from, so I just figured, you know, what the hell.”

“You’re doing two labs on the same day?” Mariel asked, sounding amazed. “I wish I had that kind of energy.”

That last part sounded odd, coming from the ball of hyperactivity that was the sylph.

“Man, they told me I was crazy to even take two labs in the same semester,” Celia said. “I think it’d probably kill me doing two in one day.”

“Oh, please, you’re studying illusion,” Puddy said. “Like that takes real power.”

“Hey, don’t you make me bite you,” Celia said.

“I’ll rip those fangs out of your mouth and shove them up your everything hole,” Puddy said. “Anyway, what have you got today, Mack? I should probably know your schedule.”

“Um… I’ve got general thaumatology at 10:15,” I said. “Then my WP class at 12:45, elven history at 2:00, and introduction to logic at 3:15.”

“Oh, wow,” Barley said. “And here I’m done with all my classes by 2:00.”

“Well, I’m not a morning person,” I said. “I almost went with only afternoon classes, but I really need to get that thaumo class out of the way if I want to take anything useful next semester. A.E.’s got so many required spell courses you have to get through, you really need to get the prerequisites out of the way early on if you want to finish in four years.

“What’d you take for WP?” Belinda asked, sounding very interested. “Small blades? Mixed melee?”

“Basic knife,” I said.

Belinda made a choking sound. Barley said, “Really?” in a kind of are-you-serious tone. Celia laughed like she’d just seen a little kid run into a tree.

“What?” I asked.

“Mack, you really are a fuckin’ pussy,” Puddy said disdainfully.

“What’s wrong with basic knife?” I asked.

“You mean ‘bladies for ladies’,” Celia said, still laughing.

“Well, my weapon’s a knife,” I said. “So, it kind of made sense…”

“We got to get you over to the registrar and see if it’s not too late to change that,” Puddy said.

“What is the big deal?”

“The big deal is that I’m not fucking rooming with somebody taking basic fucking knife, that’s why,” Puddy said. “And because if there was anybody in the world who doesn’t need professional wuss lessons, it’s you.”

“Hey, I’m taking basic knife,” Mariel said, sounding a little bit hurt and as perplexed as I was.

“Well, you’re a fucking hairdresser,” Puddy said. “But Mack’s got to worry about her cred… and mine.”

“I’m a stylist!” Mariel said indignantly, but Puddy just shoved her off of her own lap and onto Barley’s. Mariel gave an angry squeal and launched into a tirade, the only intelligible words of which being, “What’s the big idea…” before it became too fast and high-pitched to make out specific words.

“Shut her up, will you?” Puddy said, and Barley immediately threw her arms around Mariel and locked lips with her. Mariel managed to make a couple of angry noises before getting way too into it. “Anyway, Mack, you’ve got to get into mixed melee… that’s probably the best you can manage with your knife, but it’d be a start.”

“Yeah, that’s a class for serious fighters, at least,” Belinda said.

“But I’m not a serious fighter,” I said. “And it’s not like I even like using a knife… or need it.”

“Why didn’t you just take unarmed fighting?” Celia asked.

“Because you can’t count it as a WP credit until you get to the really advanced classes,” I said. “And I don’t even really want one semester of combat classes… I could hurt somebody.”

Belinda snickered.

“I could!” I said. It sounded kind of petulant, even to me. “I’m stronger than I look.”

“Little girl, I’d break you in half if I looked at you hard,” Belinda said.

“Ooh, is that a challenge?” Puddy asked.

“Maybe,” Belinda said.

“Hold on… I’m not going to get into a fight with somebody just to prove I’m stronger than them,” I said.

“Oh, now you’re stronger than me,” Belinda said, getting to her feet. She would have towered over me even if I was standing.

“Of course she’s stronger than you,” Puddy said. “She’s a demon… you don’t fuck around with something like that.”

“Puddy, please!” I said, wincing at the mention of my heritage.

“Shut your hole,” Puddy hissed at me. “So, how about it, Belinda? You ready to fight a demon?”

“I don’t know much about demons, but I know a whiny little bitch when I see one,” Belinda said.

“So, is that a yes, or what?” Puddy asked her. “If we’re going to do this thing, we should set some terms.”

“Oh, I’ll fight, but not in some lame, stupid duel,” Belinda said. “We’re going to do this ogre-style.” She jabbed a thick, stubby finger at me. “You’re mine. When I want you, I’ll take you.”

She picked up her tray and stalked away.

“Oh, this is going to be fucking awesome,” Puddy said as Belinda left. “I wish she’d let me set a time, though… I just hope I’m there to see it.”

“What’d you do that for?” I asked.

“Don’t get all snippy with me,” Puddy said, a hint of danger in her voice. “At least now people won’t think you’re a wuss. That is, if you kick her ass. Which you’re going to do.”

“You said I should be nice to Belinda,” I said. “Don’t you want me to get her vote for senate?” I didn’t personally care about getting votes, but I knew Puddy did.

“She’s an ogre,” Puddy said. “You kick her through a wall and she’ll pretty much have to vote for you. Actually, she might even if she did, for some reason, win… as long as you put out for her after.”

“I think she should try to avoid fighting, if she can,” Barley said, pushing Mariel back enough to break the seeming seal between their faces. “Why don’t you just put out first?”

“Wouldn’t work,” Puddy said. “Belinda’s an ogre, she’ll want to beat the shit out of her first… I mean, what’s sex without foreplay?”

“You mammals are all fucked in the head. It’s got to be the hot blood,” Celia said. She stood. “Anyway, I’ve got to get going… I’ve got to figure out where my class is meeting. I’ll catch you hairballs later.”

“You know, I should probably think about heading to my first class, too,” Barley said as Celia headed up to return her tray. She slid Mariel sideways back onto Puddy’s lap and squeezed her way out between the table and the wall. “Bye, Puddy… bye, Mack.”

“Will people quit doing that!” Mariel said. “I am not a toy!”

“Fine,” Puddy said, pushing her onto the bench where Barley had been sitting… and then pulling me up onto her thigh. I went bright red. “If you don’t want to sit here, Mack doesn’t mind taking your place.”

Mariel’s mouth opened and closed a few times. She’d turned very pale. Finally, after a few extremely long and extremely awkward moments, she got up and left without a word.

“She’s getting a little uppity for me,” Puddy said. “And clingy. If she didn’t have such a tight little body, I’d have dropped her already… but I’ll put up with her for a little longer, for your sake. Just so that you don’t have to worry about coming across, just yet.”

I squirmed uncomfortably on her lap.

“Puddy,” I said carefully. “I… don’t be mad, but I really don’t want to…”

“Shh,” Puddy whispered, stroking the back of my head. “You don’t know what you want.”

That I couldn’t completely argue with, but all the same, I was pretty sure about a few things that I didn’t want.

“When you’re ready, I’m going to fuck you… so… hard,” she whispered, her hand slipping under my shirt. It surprised me, how cold her skin felt against mine. “But not before you really want it… which will be soon.” I gave a little whimper as her hand squeezed one cup of my bra.

She kissed the back of my neck.

“I’ve got to get ready for classes,” she said. “You think about how soon you’re going to be ready for me.”

With that, she let go of my breast and slid me–rather more gently than she had Mariel–back onto the bench.

“Think about it,” she said again, and left.

I sat there in a kind of shock… what would I do if Puddy tried to force me into sex with her? She’d pointed out–rightly–that there really was nothing she could do to me that I couldn’t stop, but if it came to that, would it be better to do so, or just let it happen?

And, then… she’d also said she wouldn’t do anything unless I wanted it. I decided I’d have to trust that. In the mean time, letting her grope at me a little didn’t hurt anything. I’d been doing my best to avoid giving her a reason be angry, and it seemed to be working.

I’d just keep doing what I was doing and everything would be fine.

“Oh, there you are!” Amaranth said, shaking me out of my daze. “I was looking for the group… did I miss everybody else?”

---

Tales of MU is now on Patreon! Help keep the story going!

Or if you particularly enjoyed this chapter, leave a tip!

---