Tales of MU

In Which The Truth Takes Off Its Pants

Glory had retreated to one of the upstairs lounges, one of the ones that had not been taken over as a bedroom… or at least, not as the bedroom of anyone in particular.

The terms under which she had taken possession—or rather, stewardship—of the building from the university prevented any structural modifications, which meant they were stuck with the same basic layout and the standard dorm room sizes.

Granted buildings built on the institutional plan of Harlowe Hall were fairly generous in that respect, as a relic of the era in which it was built, but still, they were little compared to the opulent and airy rooms to which the middling elves of Treehome were accustomed. Under advice from me, they’d made use of stable extradimensional passages to put non-permanent and portable holes between adjoining rooms in order to create suites.

Still, each floor of the one-time residence hall had a few spaces that were bigger than any dorm room, and on the upper floors these had been reserved for the exclusive use of those important enough within the hierarchy of Glory’s house to so reserve them.

The second floor lounge had not been claimed as anyone’s bedroom, but it had been made over for a particular use in an obvious way.

The door had been removed from the hinges, replaced with translucent curtains that were spelled to keep sounds in or out while still showing fuzzy silhouettes of what happened beyond them with maybe slightly more sharpness than was natural.

The furniture in it was certainly pretty bed-like, as the style among elven women between the ages of 18 and 100 very much ran towards chaise longues, fainting couches, things that looked like giant pillows and a lot of things that looked like oversized footstools and daybeds.

The story the elves of the surface forests told about themselves was that they were less hung up about gender than humans were, but the truth was more that they were hung up in different ways. Those recognized as adults by their society cared less about things like gender and social standing by dint of society having given them other things to care about, but the middling elves basically existed in two parallel worlds living side by side, one male and one female, with rigid social hierarchies for both.

Those who could not fit into one or the other were in for an uncomfortable time, and that included those who experienced attraction across gender lines. The young women who were interested in men mostly did their best to imitate them, binding their usually small breasts and trying to find a way to dress in tight leather outfits while still de-emphasizing their curves.

It occurred to me that I’d never seen how elven middling boys who were interested in women dressed, and I’d realized that they probably dressed however the hell they wanted. Even in their almost 100% gender-segregated society, where women weren’t expected to have anything to do with men, it seemed like women who wanted attention from men were expected to change for them, to come to them, to meet them on their turf rather than having any expectation that the men would bend for them.

The elven women who were interested in women, which below the century mark was most of them, emphasized and embraced their femininity. Silk dresses, gauzy veils and scarves, and poofy plush pillows were the order of the day, every day. The posture and body language was non-threatening, even when they were issuing literal threats.

By most accounts, the elven peoples were eons older than humanity. If we imagined their existence to be static… and maybe that was a mistake… we would have to imagine that humanity in its youth had copied its ideas of masculine and feminine from elves.

Was that right? Or had the ageless elves been fascinated by the roles that early mortal men and women carved out for themselves that they picked it up as a new game to play?

These were the thoughts that popped through my head when Amaranth gently pushed me forward through the door ahead of our little triad, as I saw Glory in all her glory, carefully arrayed on one of the so that her diaphanous sea green gown draped her slender form in a calculated display of casual disarray.

They… weren’t the only thoughts.

“Is there something I can help you with?” Glory asked.

I was about eighty percent certain that she’d heard every word we’d said since she’d left. It was certainly within the capabilities of her elven hearing, and the fact that she’d put on such a display of walking away from me made it likely she’d been interested in my reaction.

Still, it was a feature of elven cultural courtesy that you didn’t acknowledge what didn’t happen right in front of you unless the other party did first, and it was a general good practice, consent-wise, to have conversations out loud and in person even when you were sure that everyone knew.

Those were all the reasons it would have been a good idea for me to explain that the three of us had come up hoping to… you know, show her a good time, collectively, but when I opened up my mouth to speak, all that came out was a noise that was not quite identical to but best textually represented by “Uh…”

“I think what she means to say is, we thought you might be a little lonely,” Amaranth said. “And we’ve come here to offer to keep you company.”

“Is that a fact?” Glory said. She rolled over languidly, liquidly, stretching herself out and arching her back. There was something catlike about the pose, but even more that wasn’t, which was a lucky thing since I’d never really understood the whole cats equal sexy thing. I mean, I knew some cat people and I was sure they could be sexy, but I was pretty sure it was the person bit that made it sexy, not the cat bits. Right?

Random thoughts.

Random thoughts at exactly the wrong moment.

“I’m not sure I want… company,” Glory said, moving into a sitting position. “I mean, I had all the company I could ever want downstairs, didn’t I? Maybe I came up here to be alone,” she chided. “Did you ever think of that?”

“Sorry,” I said, cheeks burning at the reproach. I turned to leave as I mumbled the rest of my reply. “We’ll just let you have some time to yourself.”

“Now, hold on, missy,” she said. “I never said I wanted to be alone by myself. You come over here and sit that ass down next to me.”

She patted the couch next to her. I hesitated, not out of any real indecision but more out of the habit of it, and then Steff’s hands were on my backside, pushing me none too gently towards her. I crossed the next several feet under my own power, mostly, while Glory reached down and grabbed the hem of her gown. She stripped it off in one easy motion, as quickly and lightly as if she had simply dropped an illusion to reveal her true form.

There had been nothing on her body beneath it, and there was nothing on her body beneath her neck. A sea green scarf still covered her mouth. In the language of middling couture, it was meant to signal that her mouth was a cock-free zone. Ostensibly, this meant male-free. Again, elves could be as fucked up and blinkered about that shit as humans were.

She unhooked it from behind her ear and slung it at Steff… an invitation as clear as the stop sign the veiled mouth presented. I’d followed the progress of the gauzy projectile through the air, so I was watching as Steff squirmed out of her surely too-tight jeans, watching as the shape of her hard cock sprung out as if it had just popped into existence beneath her lacy panties.

“Mackenzie, I think I told you to sit your ass down,” Glory said, the mocking tone of reproach still in her voice, and now joined by a note of exasperation. “Wait!” she said, when I started to move.

“What?”

“Are you sure those jeans are clean? I know you can be a little… slapdash… when it comes to laundry.”

“Y-yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

My cheeks were red-hot, not because she was wrong but because it wasn’t exactly a shot in the dark. I’d grown better at that sort of thing, and I’d made a particular point to put on clean clothes for the weekend party, but if she’d asked me that any other day of that week, midterms week? There were about even odds I would have just grabbed whatever was handy on my way out the door to my first test or study session.

“She’s your girl, Amaranth,” Glory said. “Should I trust her?”

“She tries her best,” Amaranth said. She took off her glasses and batted her eyes. “But, I have to admit… my toy can be a dirty girl sometimes. Maybe it’s best not to risk it?”

“Alright, then,” Glory said. “Take off those… potentially filthy clothes… and then sit your ass down.”

I complied. I knew it was unfair, knew that everything I was wearing had been freshly folded in the drawer that morning, and that knowledge made the whole thing maddening, and maddeningly hot. As flustered as I was, I had to make all my motions deliberate or I risked stumbling and possibly literally tearing my clothes off… half-demon strength was nothing to mess around with. It turned what might have been a frantic frenzy into a slow striptease.

I knew that’s what was happening. I knew that was what my lovers were doing, why they were doing it to me. But sweet fuck, that knowledge did not make it any less frustrating, or any less hot.

Hot shame suffused every shred of my being, with an emphasis on hot. My eyes were squeezed shut as I stood between three of my lovers, my skin and soul bared.

“Sit down,” Glory said, her hand touching my hip and guiding me down as I obeyed. “Good. You know, I didn’t really expect you to follow me up here, when I walked away like that.”

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“Don’t be,” Glory said. “I didn’t say I didn’t want it. I didn’t say I was disappointed, just surprised… I mean, I’d have been surprised even if it was just you, though I guess I shouldn’t be more surprised. Amaranth does tend to bring out the best in you, and Steff the boldest. That’s not why I came up here, though.”

“Why did you?” I asked.

The question seemed to catch her off-guard. Her face went statue-still while she processed it, then she blinked.

“If I’m honest… and I’m not sure why I wouldn’t be, but I felt a strong impulse not to admit this… it was because of Hazel’s ring,” she said. “It bothered me how much I wanted it, and then it bothered me that she was lying about it…”

“Lying?” I repeated.

“She didn’t find it here,” Glory said. “I’m pretty sure of that. I don’t know why I’m so sure she would have worn it before now if she’d had it before, but I am. I’m even more sure I would have noticed it if she had, and I didn’t.”

“Ergo, it’s new,” Amaranth said. “I have to agree… I’m not sure it’s conclusive that she’s lying, but she’s not really obligated to say where she found it, and thus she’s not obligated to tell us the truth if we ask, but I can’t really fault your logic? I mean, I don’t know that you’re right, but somehow…”

“It has a ring of truth?” Steff said. “Okay, so long story short is: ring’s clearly cursed, but it’s not our business. So, are we all fucking here tonight, or what?”

“Cursed?” Amaranth said. “There’s something going on with it, sure, but I don’t know…”

“Yeah? I do,” Steff said. “Magic ring attracts undue attention, owner is both unnaturally attached to it uncharacteristically evasive about where she got it. Come on, it’s practically the oldest story in the book. Do we really have to stop what we’re doing to go over it right now?”

“…if you think she’s cursed,” Amaranth said, “then shouldn’t we be doing something?”

“I didn’t say she’s cursed, I said the ring is cursed,” Steff said. And obviously someone’s going to have to do something about it at some point, but does it have to be us and does it have to be now? I mean, we’re not curse breakers. We’re not the plucky band of heroes sworn to destroy evil. We’re a bunch of college students age nineteen to… eighty-something… at a party, we’re looking for a good time, and I think we were about to find it.”

“I think you’re right,” Glory said.

“Thank you!” Steff said.

“I mean, I think it probably is cursed,” Glory said. “We should tell someone… at the very least, we should tell her.”

“Look, you go telling her that her shiny new toy is cursed and she’ll just think you’re trying to get it away from her,” Steff said. “Back me up here, Mack… remember when you had that clearly cursed pitchfork?”

“Okay, it was cursed, yes, but a curse is really just another form of enchantment, like a blessing, but with opposite polarity,” I said. “It was the fragment of a demonic consciousness that was the problem, really, not the curse, per se. I could have handled it okay if…”

“See? This is what curses do,” Steff said. “The more you try to point out the problem, the more the person under their influence will try to find a way to justify it.”

“That’s not really a function of curses, in and of themselves,” I said.

“Point made, Mack, you can stop illustrating it,” Steff said.

“So you think we should just ignore it?” Amaranth said. “She’s our friend.”

“Uh, canonically, she’s Two’s friend,” Steff said. “She’s more my casual acquaintance, through peripheral friendships. I mean, I like her okay. She’s, you know, spunky and stuff. Of both the shirelings I sort of know, she’s my favorite one, when I can remember which is which. I don’t wish her any harm… which is why I don’t think we should be fucking around with the clearly cursed ring that she picked up somewhere. There are people who do that kind of thing, and it’s not us. It’ll end badly.”

“So now the necromancer is telling us there are some things we shouldn’t be messing with,” Glory said.

“Yeah, which is why you should be listening,” Steff said. “Because I know what I’m talking about. This is not freaking amateur hour, okay? Now I’m sorry I said anything.”

“Why did you say something, if you don’t want to do anything about it?” Glory said.

“I thought we were all on the same page already,” Steff said. “I was just summing it up so we could move on. Now, are we moving on, or should I go find something else to do?”

“I think you’re… off-base… about some things,” I said. “But… you’re not wrong that it’s not something we’re equipped to deal with, and it’s probably not immediately dangerous.”

“You know what’s a shorter way to say ‘not wrong’?” Steff said. “Right.”

“Okay, you’re right,” I said. “We’re not heroes, and every time I or someone in my life decides to try to be one, things just get complicated and horrible. If the ring’s affecting her mind, whether it’s cursed in the classical sense or not, there are people who are qualified to judge the situation and do something about it. I’ve had class with some of them. I can let someone know, but I probably wouldn’t get anywhere in the middle of the night on a Saturday.”

“Well… I guess as long as we’re not just ignoring it, it’s okay,” Amaranth said.

“We’re not, I swear,” Steff said. “I know you’ve got this thing about taking personal responsibility for other people’s well-being, but sometimes the most responsible thing you can do is recognize that you’re not the one who’s responsible for something.”

“Fine,” Glory said. “We’ll do nothing, then.”

“Great. Good. Glad we can all agree now that the mood has been thoroughly and completely trampled to death,” Steff said. “Fuck, what a waste of an evening!”

“Says the woman who couldn’t keep her dick hard through one measly little ethical quandary,” Glory said. “I don’t remember telling anyone to stop.”

That was the moment it hit me that we were all naked, completely naked… except for Steff, who had thus far kept her panties on. The four of us had been hanging around talking about Hazel’s ring in an almost complete state of mutual undress, like it had been nothing. I’d been naked with each of the people in the room before. I’d had sex with each of them. Now we were all hanging out together, like it was nothing… about to have sex in some combination or combinations, like it was nothing…

“So, we are all still up for this?” Steff said, fingertips sliding inside her waistband in preparation for removing that last remaining garment.

“I’m up for it, and I’ve been up for it,” Glory said. “You have no fucking idea how hot it is to have people coming to me, after ages of the ‘queen’ routine… I mean, I could get attention just by asking for it, but I always had to ask. I had to initiate, every time. This is basically my longest-standing fantasy.”

I didn’t have to look at Amaranth to know that she was beaming at hearing this. I did look at her, though, because I tended to when I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do. It wasn’t that I needed her to tell me, but sometimes I needed the reassurance that what I wanted was alright.

“I’m up for anything that anyone else is up for,” Amaranth said. “Categorically… but in this specific case, even more so. Mack, baby, you’re sort of the common vertex here among all of us. Is this still something you want to do?”

I looked from her to Steff, whose pale, slender cock was rapidly firming again beneath her underwear, and from Steff to Glory, who had the sort of hungry look I’d seen more often on her younger sister’s less-disciplined… or maybe less-guarded… face. She really did want this. Maybe she needed it.

That didn’t mean I had to give it to her… but given that I’d enjoy it, knowing she was getting what she needed from me would just give the whole thing an extra charge.

I looked back at Amaranth.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, bowing my head. “Let’s do this.”

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Characters: Amaranth, Glory, Mackenzie, Steff