After Mackenzie’s encounter with Ian kind of turned itself around, I was a little bit worried that I’d lose my reputation as a man-hater. So… here you go.
The village of the sylphs was located in the most highly magical region of an enchanted forest. The trees there grew taller, faster, and stronger than any other trees, and it was in these trees that the air sprites made their homes. Each family had their own tree, multiple generations all living together, albeit each with their own separate house-like enclosure for a room.
In the increasingly modern modern age, it had become the custom for adolescent sylphs to demand and be given their own enclosure, a privilege that had previously been the mark of adulthood. It is to the interior of one such enclosure, a frame of carefully shaped branches in the shape of an inverted acorn, that we now turn our attention.
The furnishings were a mixture of sylphan forest crafts and consumer goods brought from the village of humans on the outskirts of the forest. An old pink TV set decorated with sequins sat atop a low cabinet made from a hollowed stump. Dresses spun from gossamer and moonlight hung in a wardrobe over rows and rows of shoes from the hottest designers. Posters of human rock bands and half-elven models showing the latest fashions hung from the walls between traditional woodcarvings.
Even the bed reflected this odd juxtaposition of taste and cultures… the mattress had been bought from a human manufacturer, and was made with metal springs rather than stuffing. It sat on a frame of elegantly carved wood depicting a forest in relief, with scores of animals and assorted forest folk hiding among the trees.
Atop this bed lay figures entwined in the throes of passion… two figures, though it took a moment for the eye to sort that out, as they had eight arms between them.
When it was over, the male, who was both taller and more slender of limb than his companion, asked “How… how long was that?”
“Seven… seven… and a half minutes,” Mariel the sylph panted. “New record!”
“Happy seventeenth, babe,” he said. He frowned. “Thought it seemed more like eight minutes… at least.”
“Okay, eight,” Mariel said. “Getting closer, anyway.”
“I guess,” Flit said, using both pairs of arms to roll off of her. He laid there, staring at the ceiling in sullen silence for some time.
Mariel turned herself over and propped up her head with one pair of hands folded beneath her chin, with the other pair down by her almost nonexistent hips. She leaned over Flit, smiling what she felt was her sexiest smile.
“Is it even really true that human men can go for fifteen minutes?” Mariel asked.
“Dunno,” Flit said. “It’s what people say… they also say it takes them an hour or two in between times, though.”
“Mmm… fifteen minutes of sex, and then two hours,” Mariel said. “Just long enough to get some sleep, and wake up ready to go again. Sounds perfect.”
“It probably isn’t even true,” Flit said sourly.
“Well, Lalia said…”
“Fuck Lalia,” Flit said. “Lalia couldn’t count to fifteen without using her fingers.”
“You’ve got to know, you’ve gone to their village,” Mariel said. “You’ve been among them.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t exactly banging on the boys,” Flit said. “You know I’m not like that.”
“I don’t know,” she said with a smirk. She gestured to the woven wicker nightstand where she kept her personal items. “You seem to like my purple plastic prick plenty.”
Flit’s body catapulted upright. His hand came up and his face darkened. Mariel flinched and whimpered, but then he lowered the hand.
“We agreed not to call it that, babe,” he reminded her, in a somewhat soothing tone.
“Oh, right,” she said, rolling her eyes. The moment’s fear was already vanishing from her mind. “My ‘Wand of Wonder.'”
“Right,” Flit said, climbing out of the bed and searching on the floor for his loincloth. “And we agreed that the Wand of Wonder doesn’t make me no hen.”
“Okay, but, I was only joking,” Mariel said, getting out of bed as well.
“Some things you don’t joke about,” Flit said. “A man’s manhood is one of them. We talked about that. Remember? At our session with the elder? You weren’t going to take swipes at my balls any more.”
“Yeah, okay, I remember,” Mariel said, wringing all of her hands. “But it was supposed to be mutual… you’re not supposed to make any more cracks about my weight, and you haven’t exactly…”
“Oh, hon, that’s different,” Flit said. “I talk about your size because I love you, just the way you are… but you wouldn’t want me to go around like that dickless waste of breath you dated before me, would you?”
“Wisp is not a waste, and for your information, he’s got a bigger dick than you!” Mariel said, moments before a pair of right hands caught her on the cheek and sent her sprawling sideways.
“See what happens when you don’t pay attention to the elder?” Flit said, standing over her and offering her two hands. “This couples’ counseling dirt isn’t going to work unless you put more effort into it, Mare… we’re supposed to be in this together.”
“I know,” Mariel said, accepting his help to her feet. “But, I… I don’t think you’re supposed to be hitting me.”
“Well, when you say those things to me, it really hurts,” Flit said. “Anybody else talked dirt about me, I’d just laugh it off… but you, you’re the breath of my lungs, the wind on my skin. When you say stuff like that, it… it just gets to me.” He crossed all four hands over the center of his chest. “Right here.”
“You know I don’t mean to,” Mariel said, a little sullenly. She went and sat down in front of the large brass vanity and examined her face in the mirror. Her nose crinkled at the redness on her cheek.
“Do I, though?” Flit asked. “Do I really?”
A moment’s concentration and she was able to grab on to the color and texture from the other cheek, mentally flip it, and place it over the offending spot. She smiled at her handiwork. She was getting so good at that.
“So, you still think you’re going to go to that human school in the fall?” Flit asked.
“If I make it in,” Mariel said, picking up a large brush and working it through her long hair. “It isn’t for sure yet.”
“Four years,” he said. “Sixteen seasons. It takes sixteen seasons to get through it… and they take classes six days in a row.”
“Five, actually,” Mariel said.
“Yeah, but five days,” Flit said. “You’ll have to live like a human. Did yoouu knoooow thaaaaat theeeeey taaaaaalk liiiiiiiiiiike thiiiiiiiiiiiiiis?”
Mariel snorted at that.
“They do not!” she said, laughing.
“Do so… and you’ll have to talk like that, too, if you ever want to be understood,” Flit said. “And that’s not all. You’ll have to learn to sleep once a day, eat once a day…”
“Oh, actually, they eat three times a day, and I figure I could just…” Mariel began excitedly.
“Will you quit interrupting me?” Flit asked. “Sucking sky, Mare, are you trying to tell me I’m stupid?”
“Nooooooo, I’m not!” Mariel said quickly. “But…”
“Then quit correcting me all the time,” he said. “Anyway, what the mud can they possibly teach you that takes four years to learn?”
Mariel shrugged.
“I like the idea of taking it slow for a while,” she said. “And you shouldn’t swear like that. The elder said it only feeds your temper.”
“Hey, if I don’t blow off some hot air by swearing every once in a while, it’s only going to build up and come out some other way,” Flit said. “Right?”
“I guess so,” Mariel said.
“You know so,” Flit said. He came over to stand behind her, putting a pair of hands on her shoulders and groping at her bare breasts with the other. He leaned down and kissed her on the top of the head. “Anyway, I know why you really want to go to human school.”
“Why?” Mariel asked, confused and a little uneasy.
“Because the women there are all as fat as you,” he said. “You’ll fit right in. Ground, you may even be the skinniest one there.”
“I guess,” Mariel said, forcing a weak smile. “Anyway, even if it’s four years, there’s a whole season off every year, and it’s always the summer. You’d think they’d space break out over a year or something… but I’m not going to complain. That means it’s more like twelve seasons, and after three seasons we get three whole months we can spend together… right, honey?”
“Only I’ll be in my senior season of school when you come home on your first break,” Flit said. “You didn’t really think of that, did you?”
“Okay, yeah, but you’ll be able to come home to me every cycle after class,” she said. “It’ll be like practice, for when I’m done with school and we’re handfasted.”
“Sixteen seasons,” Flit said again. “A lot can happen in that time… a lot. Maybe we should, I don’t know… keep our options open?”
“You mean… you don’t want to get fasted?” Mariel asked. “But… after we’ve… and I let you…”
“Hey, don’t lose your breath,” Flit said. “Nobody said anything about that. I’m just saying, if you’re going to be away for like months and months at a time, I might have needs in the mean time. Am I supposed to feel guilty about that?”
“Well, I guess not, but I don’t…”
“And, hey,” Flit said. “We’ll make it mutual. If you think you’ve found somebody who cares about you as much as I do, you can date him, too.”
“But I don’t want anybody else!” Mariel said.
“Well, if you don’t want to, that’s your decision,” Flit said. “But we both have the same choice, so it’s fair… am I right?”
“I guess you are, yeah,” Mariel said, chuckling.
“Of course I am,” Flit said. “Anyway, why are we wasting our time talking about this when it’s not even for sure yet? Chances are you probably won’t even make it… you’ve never been much of a scholar. Anyway, I think it’s time to break out the Wand… only this time, make sure you use more lube.”
“Okay, but when you do it to me, you say it’s supposed to hurt,” Mariel said.
“Of course, and that’s how we know that we really love each other, that we’re willing to take that kind of suffering for each other,” Flit said. “And it does hurt me, even with the lube… but you have to realize the plastic needs more lubricating than flesh does, that a man’s prick has its own natural lubrication.”
“Okay, but…”
Flit clapped two hands over her mouth.
“No more ‘buts’,” he said. “Sometimes I wonder if you know how lucky you are… how lucky we both are, to have found each other. You love me, and I love you. How many people do you know that find this kind of connection before they’re even eighteen seasons old?”
“Not many, I guess,” Mariel said, as she let herself be led over to the bed.
“You got that right,” Flit said, stripping off his loincloth once again. “You think about that while you’re waiting to hear back from MU… and remember, a lot can happen in sixteen seasons… a lot.”
Wow. I may actually hate this guy more than one guy i used to go to school with
A.E. I love how each bonus page is individually crafted. Each bonus story adding a measure of breadth and depth and complexity to this entire opus.
Third time reading from the beginning… Just caught on that sylph swear words are “ground” and “sky.”
cute.
Wait, “man-hater”? Dammit, that’s a female insult – I had you pegged as a guy because Ian was so damn realistic. Ah well.
Sylphs live four times faster than humans, then? That expains the “that time of the week” line from before…
You hate men? That’s… troubling.