Return To Tradition

The very first sensation that came to Silendiel when she woke, before opening her eyes, before thinking any coherent thoughts, was the ache in her throat. The memory of where Neryn had pounded down into her face, and settled in. Another few thrusts, another few moments, and there would have been bruises. She drew in a breath, squinting at the piercing, but thankfully indirect, sunlight lancing through the window from which she had observed the kaldorei while she trained.

What, exactly, had she done? What had some frenzy of emotion led her to do? She lost control, and, for several hours, meticulously planned what would happen once she managed to drag the sentinel Lieutenant back up to her chambers, only to find herself **** that monster of a cock down in the middle of her own garden. At night, thankfully, but nevertheless, they might have been seen or heard by the still waking guards an endless amount of times. Voice choked by that behemoth, it was still not terribly difficult to reason what exactly was happening, when one heard heavy breathing and gagging.

And now, after having been near asphyxiated on that massive, fat cock, she was supposed to get up, to descend, to look her staff in the eyes. To, eventually, look the Lieutenant in the eyes, and, what? Act as if nothing had happened? As if she had not confessed her most closely-guarded, most embarrassing secret to a virtual stranger – a representative of a foreign power, even. Would she ever get out from under that indiscretion? What would they use the knowledge of her shameful, sinful desires for?

Silendiel reached up and gingerly massaged her sore throat. Her lips still ached from how they had been made to stretch to contain that thing, and she tried to convince herself that it had been a terrible mistake, that she had not wanted it, and did not want it now. When, in truth, even feeling the occasional dull hurt from the previous night’s escapade, she still wanted the Lieutenant back in the same place. The same position. Grasping her head, ruling her every movement. She sighed out a breath, shifting to the side to swing her legs out from under the perfect warmth beneath the covers. Raised herself to sit on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing for a few moments.

Without asking any questions, servants bathed her, and dressed her in the kind of long, tight-fitting gown that you could only afford to wear for a full day if you never had to work. They dabbed on makeup, and skillfully covered the reddened areas on her nose, cheeks, chin, and throat, where she had gotten intimately familiar with Neryn’s body the night before. All done so that no one would ever know that she was not, in truth, perfect. Tinged with a note of sorrow, almost – disappointment, certainly – from Silendiel, as she felt uneasy at covering up the sentinel’s work.

At the same time, she ought to take this as a warning sign. She came very close to something ruinously final, to descending down to a place inside herself, in society, in general, from which she did not know if she could ever crawl out. Already now, having stayed for less than a day, scandal was almost assured. The longer Neryn stayed, the deeper it would go. The more damaging it would be.

With care, she reached to the back of her head, where today her hair had been bound into a ponytail. Where the night before, inescapable hands had cradled her skull, and held her firmly in place. Allowed no escape, not that she had wanted it. She wished then to caress those hands, to encourage them, and then, a moment later, caught herself in that maddening emotion and worked to suppress it, to eliminate it.

Breakfast, she resolved, would be eaten in the garden. Staff set out a golden-rimmed, round table made of dark-lacquered wood, and a chair. She had them bring another chair, and they did, without obvious comment, though she well understood the questions that simmered just below the surface. She dismissed them, only to return with the meal, and sat. Waited. The kaldorei were nocturnal, and so, really, what she was inviting Neryn to partake of was something like a nightly snack.

As expected, the Lieutenant looked rather tired when emerging from her tent, where she had shielded herself from the morning sun. Out of courtesy, Silendiel reasoned, the night elf stood, walked over, and found her place in the remaining free chair. A thing made for the comparatively small, delicate physiques of most sin’dorei, and so, one that complained and creaked rather loudly under the weight of Neryn’s chiseled form.

“I’ll never get used to your staying up during all of this,” Neryn said, gesturing vaguely, without lifting her right hand from her knee, up at the endless blue of the sky, interrupted only by the searing white-yellow of the sun.

Anything but what Silendiel expected, and so, she offered a slight smile. At least Neryn was not the type to gloat about her victory, if indeed it had been that. Had it not? Not even a full day and night had passed before she had had the mistress of the house on her knees, cock bottomed out in her face.

“Likewise, with nothing but moonlight, I cannot imagine how you live all your lives at night,” Silendiel said.

A few moments passed between them, Silendiel resting one hand on the table, the other in her lap. Though she made it look slow, controlled, languid, she felt few of those things as her golden gaze moved from the grass, to Neryn’s thigh, to the massive bulge that, though now dormant, brought back memories of the previous night, and its failure.

“I want to apologize,” Neryn said, then. Looking at Silendiel with those piercing, white eyes. “I lost control of myself. It was too much, too quickly.”

Without thinking about it, Silendiel moved her right hand to scratch at her left forearm. Felt a smile half apologetic, half flustered, upon her lips. It was not what she had expected, at all. “It was… what we both wanted, was it not?”

“You deserve more care than what you got,” Neryn said. Serious, but earnest expression settled on her face. “Savage or no, I do have some idea of what you might be struggling with over this.”

“Oh?”

“It’s unseemly, in this city, to be with one of my kind,” Neryn said. “Even more so, as far as I can tell, being with me and indulging in the kind of things we did. It’s ****. Delicate. Am I far off the mark?”

“No, no,” Silendiel said. She breathed in, a blooming but faint warmth lighting in her chest. All the clearer, yet more obviously fragile, for the dismal cold it seemed to dispel but little of. She realized, at once, that she had entirely misjudged Neryn, but also that it did nothing to make her situation any less complicated or compromising. She placed her right hand back on the table, shifting it towards its middle, feeding a little flame of hope that the sentinel would take it, though such an open gesture would itself be almost too scandalous to imagine.

The scrape of a sandal against flagstone made Silendiel withdraw the hand rapidly. Shielded, she hoped, by her own body, such that the servant arriving with a tray of breakfast, would not have seen it. Not that it mattered, as it turned out, the girl unable to hide the fear on her face as she moved across the grass to the table. Her eyes glued not to her mistress, but to the figure out of place – the towering kaldorei, too big for the flimsy garden chair, built out of something seemingly more solid than everything else around her. Dimensions all wrong.

Placing a tray down on the table, the servant tore her eyes from Neryn, at last. Focused on setting out plates, and the various options. Freshly baked buns, already cut in half. Various fine jams, and cheeses, and bowls of dried fruit, nuts, as well as a selection of fresh fruit. All of this was set out immaculately, the only evidence of any worry the slight shake to the girl’s hands, which Silendiel noted easily. She noted, too, the look of concern. Stronger than that, too. Not at Neryn’s presence, but at herself. At the fact that she sat here, with someone who would, until recently, have been an enemy. The girl did not need to haughtily judge, her simple look said all that needed saying, to Silendiel.

“Would you like anything special to drink, mistress?”

The girl focused exclusively on Silendiel with that question, and, for one mad moment, it rankled at her. It was no way to treat guests, however unusual, however recently they might have been an enemy. Rather than reprimand the servant in front of Neryn, however, Silendiel merely took charge, as she might have if another important personage had been visiting.

“Orange juice. Lieutenant, what would you like?”

“Water,” Neryn said. Her voice emotionless, eyes fixated on the servant girl.

Kaldorei have emotions, too, Silendiel reminded herself, and perhaps do not understand, always, their effect on those around them. Neryn, most likely, was only mildly annoyed at having been ignored, but over seven and a half foot of broad, muscled, feral elf made a certain impression when seemingly upset, and focused on someone far more used to dealing with the decidedly non-violent, if sometimes difficult, pique of sin’dorei nobles.

“See to it,” Silendiel said.

She waved the girl off, and, to her surprise, was the subject of another look of both concern and surprise, almost as if the servant wondered if she ought to call the guards. As if her mistress was in danger, sitting peaceably in Neryn’s presence. Looking after the girl, hurrying off to have the drinks made, Silendiel noted the distinct feeling of an icy claw settling around her heart. She breathed in, and sighed it out, and the tingling in her chest did not diminish.

If she did not dismiss Neryn, if she did not cease all contact, or resume her efforts to undermine the embassy, the rumors leaking out would be of an entirely different sort than a few incredulous nobles dismissing the absurd idea that she had entertained two night elves for a meeting. Rather, it would be said that a sentinel had been allowed to spend the night on her land. In a tent in the garden, but regardless, with what the embassy had already begun to prompt, fear of invasion, of women being **** and subdued and somehow brainwashed into willing servants of the kaldorei, the entire scene was ready to believe. Believe what, exactly?

With a slow movement of her hand, Silendiel reached for and found a dried piece of apple in the bowl at the center of the table. They were not interrupted, this time, but her mind drifted, and so she moved slowly. Sluggishly. Something it seemed that Neryn interpreted as an invitation.

A few minutes ago, Silendiel might have been worried at such a forward gesture, wondered if any guard or staff might see them, but what would have risen in her would be a kind of pleasantly **** warmth, a heat in the mind that made it difficult to think of anything, anyone, save that touch. Now, she withdrew her hand instinctively, quickly, as if she had been licked by flame rather than the careful touch of the Lieutenant.

“My apologies,” Silendiel said, a moment later. The dried apple had fallen to the table, skittered along, and come to a stop. She picked it up again, rather than returning her hand to the center of the table for Neryn to grasp. An escape, of a sort. She looked up to the night elf’s eyes, and saw a kind of deep understanding, a practicality hardening into resolve, as if all that was needed for her to understand the complexity of the situation was that solitary gesture. The retreat of a hand.

Placing that single slice of dried apple down on her plate, the only attempt at eating breakfast she had managed so far, Silendiel stood. Rose in a single, sharp movement, smoothing down her front, offering only a clipped nod in Neryn’s direction before mumbling apologetic nothings, striding away. Back towards the interior of the mansion, where she might be left alone. Thankfully, Neryn did not speak, did not rise, did not follow. Silendiel only felt the imagined, tactile weight of piercing white, luminous eyes on her back. On the back of her head, where the night before, strong hands had rested. Been welcome. She hurried inside, snapping at the servant girl bringing the drinks to take hers, and a plate of something, to her chambers.

When she arrived up there, she closed the door and leaned against it. Gathered the courage necessary to go to the wide window and look out at the garden. A shard of glass pierced her heart as she saw Neryn moved from the table to sit, cross-legged, before her tent. No training, no preparations to sleep, just waiting. The prisoner’s wait before sentencing.

Silendiel set her jaw, and waited for her breakfast. She ate it in silence, hoping against hope that it would settle the tumult in her heart. The sharp pain remained, but the claw around her heart did not melt away, it grew colder still, making her sneer at the last few bites of bun, jam smeared in a perfectly even layer upon it by careful, experienced hands. The equilibrium of home was always there, always waited. Was it just that, boredom, the desire for something new to happen, that had made her accept the imposition of the priestess? That had stopped her from having the Lieutenant removed from her property at the first given opportunity? A warm, comfortable hearth grows boring, eventually, after too many quiet evenings at home.

Somehow, this reasoning did not lessen the pain, did not stop the steel wire rash developing just beneath her ribs, piercing, shifting, grinding.

In much the same manner as she had suddenly marched off from the table in the garden, she stood from the one in her chambers and began the journey back down. Jaw set, mind failing to solidify into the stony silence and resolve she needed. Urged it to produce. Rather, it was but a thin film, a kind of shield, a glass bridge over a churning abyss, that gave her the strength of will to go out into the garden. To stand before Neryn, who looked up at her without emotion, and begin to speak.

“You must go,” Silendiel said.

That is what she heard herself say, as if she had stepped out of her own body, observing the situation from an unseen dimension right next to herself. A place not impartial, precisely, but one where she could judge herself without it affecting what happened. What had to happen.

“I do not want you here,” she said. “You must go. Now.”

From that vantage a little to the right, Silendiel saw her hands gathering before herself, saw herself clasp them, then begin to wring them. Self-soothing behavior, though it made her look a worrying, pathetic sort of woman. Perhaps that was just in her head. She could not actually see how she looked, of course, merely translate the feelings whirling in her mind, the movements her senses told her she was making, into a kind of hallucinatory idea of what was happening.

“You cannot stay,” Silendiel said. And, though she had, at some point, promised herself not to elaborate, she nevertheless found herself doing so. “The cost is too high. I turn into someone else in your presence, someone I cannot be.”

Silence stretched between them for uncountable seconds. Hours? But a single heartbeat? An eternity. Silendiel continued to wring her hands, something, not quite fire, perhaps an icicle so cold as to burn, turned forward, feeling as if it was in the process of being pressed through her sternum, soon to break the skin and protrude from just below her collarbone.

“This is what you want?”

Neryn’s words were brief. Devoid of all emotion, save the smallest, almost unnoticeable movement. Wavering? Did towering night elves truly allow themselves to show a hint of hurt? Did she actually hurt after less than a day in Silendiel’s company? Questions piled up, pushed on the one in front, crawled up and turned into an unruly pile from which she could pick not a single, identifiable one, and so she nodded. Said the one word she had promised herself to say to this question.

“Yes.”

The sentinel breathed once, chest rising slightly, then falling again. Let a few seconds pass, in silence. Then rose, and set to packing her things in silence. It proved to be easy, as she had perhaps expected having to leave on short notice. Or, possibly, the campaigning soldier’s transient life sat deep in her. Either way, it took but a few minutes, then Neryn’s belongings stood in a stuffed bag, and the tent had been torn down. Rolled up. Strapped to the top of the backpack, which the Lieutenant swung onto her back.

She looked at Silendiel again, for a long while, and then removed her gaze with finality. A gate shut, in that moment, their association over, done. Neryn marched towards the mansion, and, Silendiel assumed, through it to the main entrance. Down the stairs, to the gate, where she was let out onto the streets of the city. Not bustling, exactly, generations would pass until recovery from the Scourge was even a credible thought, but busy enough.

Neryn was gone.