1992.xx.xx
Could It Be Love in the Air?
By Matthew Sibole
"How do I look?" Edea asked. She had just stepped out from behind a tent on merchant's row in a long silk dress. The color was that of a white pearl and her black hair and blue eyes contrasted so sharply that passers-by couldn't help but linger to stare. All the attention was more than she appreciated.
"Oh my god, Edea you are so beautiful!" Tia squealed. "Yippeeeee! We found one!"
"Hmph," Raina grunted. "I still think she should go with the leather."
"I second that emotion," Sivora agreed. "She's a fighter, not just a lover. You can't set the wrong expectation."
"Oh bullshit," Raven snapped, now tossing her fingers through Edea's short locks trying to find the perfect tussled look. "She's a stunner and it's about time she quit lurking in all those shadows and got some sun on her face."
"I like the shadows," Edea scowled back. She was starting to shoot daggers at the growing crowd with her eyes. "And besides, there is no sun in this cursed country."
"Well, now, I understand that's being worked on, so hush," she said. Raven turned her around to look at the back. "My god, girl, you have no butt at all!"
"Nothing to grab onto," Sivora whispered to Raina, "he's not going to like that."
"He's used to humping wolves," Raina said back, "anything with tits will probably do."
"And where are your tits?" Raven said, "Honey! We've got to get you eating more!"
Sivora and Raina shared a snicker until one of Edea's daggers buried itself into the ground between them. The look they got from Edea was far more dangerous.
"She's as big as me and you tell me that I'm filling out all the time, Rae!" Tia defended. This got an even bigger laugh from the mischievous pair. Tia meant well, but Edea was wishing she didn't need defending from one who most insults flew over like a badly aimed arrow.
"Maybe I should go with the leather," Edea admitted. "That's what he's seen me in. That's what he met me in. And besides, I can strap a couple of bags of sand to my chest and down the back of my pants."
"Baby, feel this," Raven said, taking Edea's hand and placing it directly on her ample breast. "Does that feel like a bag of sand?"
"No," the rogue replied quietly. She never really felt insecure about her femininity because she was rarely in a position to act feminine. Now that she was, she was sure she didn't like it. It made her feel bad about herself. Here she could out fight almost any man she'd ever met, but in this dress, even these strangers held power over her self esteem. She wasn't womanly like Raven and probably never would be, no matter how hard she tried or trained… and that was depressing.
"Aw, come here, baby girl," Raven said, gathering Edea into her arms. "You are gonna knock that man out of his boots. You look stunning. Don't listen to those two weasels over there, they're just jealous. You think all these people would be trying to stare into your dress if you didn't have something to offer? Lord, baby, even the women are looking! Watch…"
Edea looked up at the people walking by and met their gaze. They were friendly and admiring. She didn't try to hurt them with her eyes, just to see what they thought of her and the unanimous answer was approval. A guard walking by that she knew from the garrison gave her a nod and a smile. A woman walking by with her daughter pointed her out and said something to the daughter that must have been "why can't you dress pretty like her". All of the judgment and disapproval she always thought was just behind her back wasn't there. The world actually seemed to approve of her, and she liked it. She stood up straighter and looked in the mirror, smoothing out the dress over her curves.
"I do too have tits," she said to Raven, and the crowd around her. Her sass was starting to come back. Damn it, she looked good.
"You're right, you do sweetie," Raven answered, "and lord if I had those abs!"
"Me too!" Tia joined in. "I'm starting to get soft eating over at Arthur's all the time." She pooched out her belly from under the shirt and poked it. Where a month ago there was nothing there, now there was a little bit thicker layer of flesh. Her face was filling out too, making her look even more cherubic and adorable than before. Newborn puppies and kittens would take one look at the girl and admit that she was the cutest thing they'd ever seen.
"Maybe you're knocked up," Sivora said in between chews, her attention now on some meat on a stick. All their eyes locked onto her as the weight of the statement hit her. "Uh, could be all the wine?"
"Drinking wine's not good for women with child," Raina said in a mock motherly tone. "You should lay off for the next nine months."
Edea started to smile in spite of herself. Raina was mean, but she was funny. She knew the young girl was being attacked when she didn't deserve it, but at least the attention was off of her a while.
"How could I have his baby, we aren't married!" Tia yelled back.
"Well, it could be a little bastard," Raina replied matter-of-factly. "It sure would be a handsome little bastard."
"I'm not having a bastard, Raina, now stop it." Tia warned. Her temper was starting to flare, but there was not a more harmless person that the sorceress had ever come across. She was not about to stop her fun.
"Now how do you know? Would you like me to cast a spell to find out?" Raina offered, still playing the role of concerned friend expertly.
"Can you do that?" Tia replied sincerely, taking the bait.
Sivora was biting a hole in her lip trying not to spoil the mood. "Shit, elf, I thought I was mean," she said under her breath. Like everyone else, she admired Raina's physical beauty, but had never gotten to know anything about her personally. She liked her so far today.
"Well, I can try, Tiara," Raina said back. She always addressed her by her full name, just to get under her skin a bit. Tia was just too cute, and Raina liked being the cutest one in a room. "I didn't know I could set fire to a battlefield full of zombies and ghouls either until I tried."
"Well I don't want you getting those two spells crossed!" Tia said back. That made Raven and Sivora lose their cool and start laughing. Edea still managed to keep a straight face, having played the bad cop to Raina's good cop many times before.
"How long ago do you think you might have conceived?" Edea asked. This was where the conversation was headed all along. Raina was such an artist, and Edea loved to join a master at work.
"Well, the only time was the first time and that was right when Valestis came back," Tia reported innocently. The women didn't know they could get her to confirm the rumors, but she just had.
"Good god, you're fucking the Prince!" Sivora shouted in glee. "Hell yeah, baby girl. HELL YEAH!"
"Wait, no we," Tia stammered. The weight of the admission sank her like a stone. "Oh crap. He's going to be so mad at me."
"Oh pup," Raven said, "you didn't."
"It was really sweet," she said. "When Val came back, I was just shocked. But we talked and I really felt good about it and I really thought about how even though he was the man of my dreams that I really loved Arthur and then after dinner I seduced him." At the end of her impromptu explanation, everyone's jaws dropped.
"You seduced him…" Sivora asked. "The prince. The famed leader of the Knights of the Round Table. That's how it went down?"
"Yeah," Tia replied. "After everyone left, we were sitting in front of the fireplace talking and he was being really quiet. I guess he was nervous about Val being back and it was just so sweet so I got into his chair with him and started kissing him and the next thing he knew, I had his pants off, and well, there's only one place to go from there!" At the end of this, she snorted out a laugh which brought a few more chuckles from her audience, but mostly more disbelief.
"You man-raped a prince," Raina repeated, believing now that it was Tia and not her that had been playing a mind-game. "The prince."
"Oh, he was so into it," Tia assured them. "Especially by the time we got to the library."
"Library?"
"Well, yeah," she said, "we couldn't just let anyone walk by and see our asses in the wind! He is a royal you know, there's a certain air of respectability to be kept up."
"Oh, what a queen you will make, pup," Raven chortled. "A real lady of the land."
"Queen?" she puzzled. Since their meeting, she'd never thought of Arthur as Prince Artorious, just as Arthur, her boyfriend. She'd given a little thought to what it was going to be like meeting his parents with all their fame and celebrity, but it hadn't hit her that she might be meeting her in-laws, and her royal predecessors. "Oh shit, Rae! Oh SHIT! RAE!"
"Calm down, baby cakes," Sivora said to her, dropping her bare stick and moving to catch her should she drop. "Just breathe; it's not the first time it's happened for either of you."
Tia's eyes looked up at her in tears. Raina and Edea caught each other's eyes. "What kind of Pandora's Box did you open?" they seemed to ask each other.
"Not your first time, darlin'," Raven said. Tia shook her head.
"NO!" Edea gasped.
Tia nodded.
"Worgshit!" Raina replied. "You are playin' us you little sprite!"
Tia shook her head. Her wide eyes said it all. It was the truth.
"YOU MAN-RAPED A VIRGIN PRINCE!" Raina howled in joy. People stopped what they were doing to look over at the stunning elf who'd become quite famous in the last several days in Belfort. Her voice had hit a nearly incomprehensible pitch, so mostly they were just making sure that fire would not ignite the marketplace. Before she could clarify, Sivora pushed her back down into a sitting position.
"He didn't say until after," Tia said in a quiet hiss. "Do you think he was lying because he thought I was?"
"Probably," Edea replied. "All men are liars, which is why it's smart to lie to them first."
"No," Sivora said. "I'm thinking it's the truth. The details are a little hazy, but I think I heard him and Duncan talking about it." Another thought stopped her cold. "Oh damn, are you pregnant?"
"No," Tia said firmly. "I don't think so… do you really know a spell, Raina?"
Now the ultimate ass of her own joke, Raina had to reply no. The disappointment on Tia's face was hard to take. "I was just looking for some juicy stories, chick, I didn't know you really did him."
"Well, I did," Tia said with no joy in her tone. "And now I'm probably going to be locked in a tower when his mom finds out."
"I didn't know they put throne rooms in towers," Edea said in an absent-minded tone. She did it on purpose, and the reaction was as she thought it would be.
"You really think he would marry someone like me?" Tia asked, scared to death of the answer because Edea was so often setting her up to look stupid.
"Babe, if I'm standing here dressed like this to try and impress a man," she said with her arms sweeping down over her dress, "then you are a shoo-in to be the next princess of Belois." She smiled at Tia who rushed over to hug her. Edea slipped trying to backpedal and stepped on the train of the dress, shredding the stitching and exposing briefly the very milky white skin on her rear end. The agility of the rogue managed to keep herself and the girl from falling and also covering herself with a very floppy hat from a nearby stand. She looked sheepishly at the seamstress who'd excused herself to let them talk.
"I think I'll keep looking," Edea shouted across the square. "Right after I buy this one!"
All five women began to laugh in earnest and rushed to help their friend out of her very expensive dust rag.
------
"Would you like it better if I wore more dresses?" Sivora asked as Duncan lay in the tub. She liked to ask questions that she didn't already know the answer to when he was in the tub. It kept him vulnerable and also let him know that she was looking for a serious answer.
"I love your nightdress," he replied. "What's left of it."
She leaned in to kiss him quickly. "Well who can blame you for being excited, dear?"
"But, really, what if I dressed like Tia?"
"You'd never fit in her clothes, she's half your size."
Sivora smacked him on the back of the head. Now she was being serious.
"Well, I think you'd look great, Red," Duncan said honestly. "I think you are the strongest, bravest person I've ever shared a battlefield with, but you are also the sexiest woman I've ever known. Why not try something new?"
"Well, I will start buying dresses if you start shaving and cutting your hair," she shot back.
"When did this become about me?" Duncan replied. "I was just answering your question."
"Just because you bathe all the time like a woman doesn't mean you are all that pretty, my boy," she replied. "You could use some more flattering fashions to show off that bod. All this righteous killing has made you a bit broader through the shoulders. Ever since the cave…"
They hadn't really talked much about his experience in the cave. She'd wanted so badly to follow him, to protect him, but he had to go in alone. She was more afraid of losing him at that moment then at any other of the potentially fatal moments they'd shared. When he appeared, she knew he was changed forever.
"I am different, Siv," he said back. "Everything has changed."
"I know," she said, looking at her feet. She hated her big feet. "I think that I knew when I saw you. I figured this talk was coming."
He rose out of the water and covered himself with a thick cloth robe. He sat down on the edge of the steel basin and took her hand.
"I spent my youth waiting," he started, "I was waiting to hear the call and become a paladin. I wanted so desperately for Heironeous to make me one of his soldiers. I knew I had the ability, the natural strength, the ability to lead, I was far ahead of many others that were hearing his call to become paladins… but it never came."
"I tried to fake it, going to my father and godfather to start my training, but soon it was obvious that I was not yet touched by my lord and I was expelled. Father tried to send me to the Stormcloud Monks, thinking that my physical ability was to be used in a more natural way, but I didn't have the discipline of mind or body to pass the trials, and it nearly killed me. You know that's how I got this…"
Duncan pushed back the robe to reveal the scar that perfectly circled his right bicep; a thick pink mass of skin that reminded him always of the day it was cleaved from his body and lay apart from him on the floor. Sivora reached over and lightly brushed the rough skin as she'd done a hundred times. Before it had turned her on, fantasizing about how the rough warrior had earned such a medal of honor, but now the real story was a sad one.
"So I failed my father, my god, my king, and most of all, myself. I nearly wished for death, but I knew that was a greater sin than all the lies I'd told. Then a priestess came, a friend of my father's, who healed me. We spoke for days. She told me that I was extremely strong, but eventually that I'd have to believe in myself to accomplish my dreams. She also said that I was right to go out and force my destiny to show itself. I couldn't wait around for life to find me like Gun; I had to pursue it, even if I didn't know the path."
"So, I moved to Rimule and studied under Shandall. I learned to heal and fight and was in everyone's eyes but my own everything that they expected me to become. I followed my heart, but still lingered with the question, why wasn't I as special as everyone else thought I was? Even with you, I wondered over and over how to tell you that I wasn't good enough for you, but I didn't want to lose you…"