by Aaron Crash
That was why she had wanted to be Locked when she lived with her family. And yet, being Locked had been terrible. She recalled long nights where she couldn’t sleep, and she couldn’t take off her essess. She could only lay there, lost in memories that felt gray since that vibrant part of her was shut off.
This was before she’d found Jayla Jereenn and the Cult of Chaos and Desire. She’d been living at home, in her father’s palace in Greenhome. There were rooms at the tops of the trees, and rooms built in the middle of the great Nineenee River, with the water beautifully channeled through elegant white stone walls. Lillee lived with her mothers and her sisters—there were no boys, and that disappointed her father greatly. The Ohlyrran Council would choose the next king, and another family would take over. It might be a Nehenna princess if they married a man who wanted to rule. Even if that didn’t happen, once King Cebor Nehenna passed, his wives and offspring would always have power, money, and status. And given their long lives, and how peaceful the world was, Cebor would be king for another six hundred years.
Locked, Lillee tried to focus on the epic she was working on about a crippled girl who would rule the world. She had a thousand pages of text, a hundred sketches of the characters, and a full dozen songs, written for specific scenes. There was always another page to write. Always another picture to draw. And she wanted fifty songs to accompany the project. She called it The Crippled Cicada.
Locked, Lillee tried to help her mothers with the new babies, who wouldn’t be babies for long. To think, elves were children for the same amount of time as humans, and yet, they’d live hundreds of more years. Babies were special to the Ohlyrra because such precious time would pass in the blink of an eye.
Locked, Lillee tried to be like her sisters, who worked on their art, who went on long journeys through the Ohlyrran Forest to the Green Water Sea to the east. Who cooked, and laughed, and camped, and reveled in life and not lust. Lust, they could easily forget about, and would only consider once it was time for children. Her sisters were happy in their celibacy.
Not Lillee. Never Lillee. She felt her mind being torn to pieces.
When Jayla Jereenn was marked as Sullied, when rumors surfaced of the Cult of Chaos and Desire, Lillee told her mother she needed help with a passage of poetry for her epic. Everyone knew that Jayla had a gift for rhyme and meter. Lillee went to her, and it was Jayla who helped her find a magic key to unlock her essess.
And it was Jayla who kissed her, who touched her, who stroked her oheesy and suckled on her nipples. Jayla introduced Lillee to the Cult, to all the women, to the few men, and Lillee, a princess of Greenhome, let the forbidden desires consume her.
It was only a matter of time before the Cult was infiltrated. A woman, Hydee Lennay, turned them in.
The warriors came on April 15. Lillee would never forget the date. They’d gone to the rocky hills outside of Greenhome, to a rocky top where ruins lay, old stone from the Akkridor Empire, which had stretched from ocean to ocean by the time Aegel was through.
There, they lit fires, and drank wine, and howled at the three moons in the sky. Even among the Cult of Chaos and Desire, Lillee was wilder than most. Only Jayla could keep up with her, and they did everything together, using the men, casting them aside, and looking for another hard uht to fuck them in whatever hole was closest. There wasn’t a word for “orgy” in Ohlyrran. They used the Gruul word “ttoog” for their delights. A ttoog was a pile of bodies, gleaming with sweat, and their cries of pleasure.
The soldiers knew where they were because Hydee Lennay had told them. Sometimes, Lillee blamed the bonfires in the ruins, sometimes she blamed herself, but, no, it was Hydee Lennay, a righteous woman. Yet, how righteous could she have been? Without her essess on, she’d been as devilish as the rest of them. Hydee liked to come on her knees, with a woman behind her cruelly twisting her nipples and viciously finger-fucking her aching wet sex.
Everyone was arrested. The next night, in the big Temple of the Tree at the center of Greenhome, the perverts were taken for the rituals.
Thousands watched as Lillee Nehenna was marked with the “S,” sola, Sullied. She was disgraced. Her family was disgraced. And her father could hardly look at her.
That pain was awful. Worse was watching Jayla Jereenn being marked with the “K” for kenarra.
Jayla, standing up at the alter with the other Sullied, had given Lillee one last look. The silver-haired woman mouthed the words, “I love you. Never forget.” And then who she was, her vibrant sexual being, was ripped away from her as the priestess cast the magic to ink her temple and castrate her soul.
Jayla was left a shadow of a person. In a very real sense, Jayla Jereenn was killed in that temple, which should’ve been celebrating life.
Hydee Lennay—arms crossed to show her cuff—looked on, nodding in approval.
The Cult of Chaos and Desire was no more. For a while. Then the gossip rose that other elves were taking off their cuffs, were coming together under full moons to delight in their sexuality. And so it had gone for millennia.
Lillee suffered through months of silent fury. Her sisters avoided her. Her mothers were cold to her. And her father stopped speaking to her.
It was then that Lillee decided to go to the Majestrial Collegium Universitas. To start a new life, to flee the quiet rage of her family, and to perhaps finish The Crippled Cicada.
And maybe she’d be able to escape her lust—that had been such self-delusion, she understood that now. Her lust was a part of her. Ymir called it a gift. Jennybelle called her an instant orgy, the Homme word, which Lillee didn’t like as much as the Gruul word. Ttoog.
Lillee stopped sketching Tori, let out a breath, and touched her essess. She focused on her breathing, letting go of the hurtful memories. Those decades were gone. She had magical decades in front of her. It would be foolish not to enjoy them.
She glanced around the feasting hall from her favorite spot, watching the scholars drift in for kaif, or the workers arriving to start dinner. Water streamed down the windows from the ever-present rains. Ymir hadn’t been able to light his fire down on the beach for his weekly ritual. He did it in Lillee’s sea alley cell, with a candle. In the flickering light, he recited the names of his ancestors, living and deceased. It was sad that for the remainder of his life, he’d speak the names of people who loathed him because of his dusza.
Lillee felt bad for him, but she loved the rain. It gave her a cozy feeling, when she was in Jenny’s apartment, in front of the fire, singing. Even in the feasting hall, with the lingering smell of lunch in the air, she liked hearing the wind and the rain while she was warm and dry, a cup of hot kaif near at hand.
Tori sank down next to Lillee. “Whatcha drawing, Lil?”
Lillee moved away to let the dwab see.
“That’s not me, is it?” Tori’s nose wrinkled with the question.
Lillee nodded. “I hope it’s okay.”
Tori frowned and shook her head. “It looks like me. I should know. Bless my stone bits, but I’ve spent too much time in this life in front of the mirror.” She stabbed a thick finger at her visage on the paper. “Look at that...I should have a bigger nose than that. And far bigger ears. Not that your picture is wrong. You got my dumb tiny nose and my stupid tiny ears just right. Gosh me underground, it looks just like me. Which is a shame.” She traced her chin and jawline and didn’t say more.
Lillee felt the change in the little woman. She knew she had to be careful with what she said. Any question might be rude and potentially devastating. “I think you’re beautiful,” Lillee said softly. If she’d been free of her cuff, she might’ve told Tori that she thought of her when she masturbated. Wearing her cuff, that was easy to keep to herself.
“Of course you think I’m beautiful,” Tori said with sudden bitterness. “You elves are nearly hairless, even your men. You don’t appreciate a full beard, long and thick and luscious. A beard you can braid. A beard you can celebrate. A beard so thick you can weave things i
nto the curls. Why, I grew up with a friend, and she could carry tools in her beard. It was like a second pocket.” The hurt on her face was devasting. “Not me, though. Not me.”
Lillee didn’t know what to say. Before she knew it, she let a platitude slip. “Everyone is beautiful in their own way.”
That made the dwab spit out a harsh laugh. “What if you were bald, Lillee? What if you had a beard? What if you were horribly scarred from a fire? Would you be pretty?”
Lillee felt slapped. This was all falling apart around her. She thought of collecting her paper and pencils and fleeing. Then she thought of Ymir. Ymir would stay and fight. He would stand up for himself. And so would his women. Heaven knows, Jennybelle would’ve lashed back and probably made the entire situation much worse.
She turned and looked at Tori. “You and I aren’t scarred from fire. You and I are as different as can be, but still, Ymir looks at both of us with such passion in his eyes. You and I are pretty, if not to ourselves, then to Ymir.”
Various emotions spilled across Tori’s face. She looked mad at one point, then hurt, then happy, then shocked. “What do you mean Ymir looks at me? He doesn’t look at me.” She snorted.
Lillee felt the familiar frustration rise in her. The essess just didn’t stop her from being sexual, it also kept a bit of her passion locked away. She made the reckless decision to slip her cuff off her arm and laid it on the table. “He looks at you, Tori. I look at you. Other people do too, boys and girls. You have such lovely tits. And your ass is so curvy. I don’t know about the aesthetics of your culture, but from what I’ve gathered by watching the Ironcoats, Ibeliah and Brandmunli, and from what you’ve said, beards are obviously important. You don’t have one. I’m sorry. But I still think you’re gorgeous. I know as an elf, what I say doesn’t mean much to you, but I’d strip you down and kiss you all over if you’d let me.”
It was a big confession, and Lillee thought she might regret saying all that, but it had to be said.
A look of utter delight swept over Tori’s face. “Lillee Nehenna, bless my stone bits, but that was a lot to say! And very personal, and, uh, your cuff is on the table. Which I thought meant you’d become a sex maniac. Are you a sex maniac?” The question was innocent and good-natured.
“I probably am,” Lillee admitted. “But we are in public, and I have some self-control.”
With the cuff off, the tension of the day, of this difficult conversation, turned into a knot of lust filling her belly. Yet, being turned on, being near Tori, felt natural. A wave of love and admiration filled her. This poor girl, growing up beardless must’ve been torture. Lillee wanted to hug the dwab to her and caress her fiery hair.
Tori dipped her head closer to Lillee. “I know Ymir and I flirted, but I figured it was just because, you know, he liked to eat.”
“I think he wants to eat you,” Lillee said. Saying that got her heart beating faster.
“Well, bless me,” Tori said. “You know, it would never work. It just wouldn’t. The Morbuskor are...complicated...when it comes to sex. To say the least. Yes, as complicated as you, Lillee.” The girl paused. “You’ve thought about me?”
Lillee knew it was time to rein in her more prurient instincts. She slipped the cuff back on. “I probably shouldn’t have said that. But, yes. I keep saying you are pretty and sexy, and you don’t believe it. I guess I wanted you to believe it.”
Tori plucked at the apron covering her blue dress. “My kitchen garb can be the new lingerie. Sure, don’t put on the teddy, darling, put on the apron. Boiling lard has become the ultimate perfume. Now, I think our boy Ymir wouldn’t mind if his women smelled like bacon. He does like the pork bellies.”
Lillee giggled. “I don’t think he knows it’s called bacon. It’s funny and sweet, the words he doesn’t know.”
Tori put her hand on Lillee’s arm, on her essess. “Lil, thanks for being so honest with me. Leaving home, being out here, it’s been hard. I was kind of invisible in Ruby—that’s what we call Ruby Stonehold. Oh, gosh, but you don’t want to hear about me and my dumb little life.”
“I do,” Lillee protested. “I would.”
“Girl!” Tori said. “We can gossip all we want once we get that xocalati made tonight. We need to concentrate on that. You see, us Morbuskor, like you Ohlyrra, know when it’s time to work, which is most of the time. We work and work, and say what you will, but our races get shit done.” She put a hand to her mouth. “Probably shouldn’t cuss. Only I did. Only I shouldn’t. Anyway, so I got things set for us.”
“Are you afraid they’ll notice the missing cream, vanilla, and beet sprinkles?” Lillee asked.
Tori rolled her eyes. “Francy Ballspferd—that’s the lady running the kitchen and my boss. Francy is many things, but a keen inventoryist she is not.”
Lillee felt the dopey grin on her face. “Inventoryist isn’t a word.”
“Well, Lil, I’m the Knowing Loremaster, what us Morbuskor would call an engineer, not a poet. Sometimes the righter word is the wronger one.”
“Poets are famous for making up words,” Lillee said.
Tori chuckled. “Probably not like I do. Anyway, I’ve been doing some juggling with our inventory, ordering and re-ordering from our suppliers. Math can be so much fun because the more you make it complicated, the more people you can baffle. So, yep, I’ve been fudging the numbers.”
The little woman waited for a reaction.
Lillee was perplexed. “What?”
“Fudging the numbers. We’re making xocalati. Fudge is a kind of xocalati.” Tori laughed. “Oh, that’s right, you overtoppers are new to the xoca bean. Well, that’ll change.”
Lillee liked Tori’s language for them: overtoppers, bigguns, uppergrounders.
“Still, what if Francy catches you?” the elf girl asked.
The fire-haired dwab shrugged. “I’d get in trouble, probably get fired, but I don’t need the job, don’t need the money, and here’s the thing. The Princept wouldn’t expel me. Not me and my special status out in the world with you bigguns. But that is another story for another time. Suffice to say, I’m in this for the xocalati, I’m in this for the excitement, and I like you, Lil, and that big dumb barbarian of yours.” She patted Lillee’s hand and went to stand.
Before Tori could leave, someone joined them. This new woman walked over from the kaif urn, a steaming mug in her hand. It was one of the new professors vying for the Moons Studia Dux job. She was tall, graceful, with slightly pointed ears and such interesting hair. It appeared black at first but deepened to scarlet the longer you looked. Her dark eyes were similar, deepening to a dark violet. She wore a delicate white gown under her Moons robes.
“Ladies,” the new professor said, “I saw you over here chatting. Do you mind if I sit and ask you a question? I’m Hayleesia Heenn. I know I’m supposed to be Professor Heenn, but I feel more like a Haylee, to tell you the truth. I know Toriah from the imprudens Moons class she’s taking.”
“Still can’t believe they stuck me in Moons and not Form.” Tori shrugged. “I like that lightning stuff, though. We’ve done some sparking, but not nearly enough. I can’t wait until we really get the current going.”
“We start slow for a reason, Ms. Welldeep,” Haylee said.
Tori nodded, smiling. All that pain, the little bit of anger, seemed gone, lost in her irrepressible cheer.
Lillee felt a sudden fear. She didn’t see this woman by her first name. She saw her as Professor Heenn, and a threat. She was half-elven, probably, and that normally meant a certain amount of tolerance but wasn’t always the case. The professor wasn’t wearing her essess. That could mean any number of things. Lillee was curious, but she didn’t feel free enough to ask.
“Actually,” Professor Heenn said, “I have a question for you, Lillee. You’re Jennybelle’s friend. Is that correct?”
Lillee nodded, turning her head so the professor couldn’t see her tattoo.
“Is she all right?” the professor asked. “
I’m worried for her. I spent some time in the Swamp Coast queendoms, in several Josentown counties. We’ve heard that Jennybelle might be breaking from her family. That could be dangerous for her.”
Tori stopped smiling, a look of concern on her face.
Lillee didn’t like the intrusion, and she didn’t like the question. It seemed too forward. “Jennybelle is fine. We’re fine. We’re together, and yes, we’re with Ymir. He didn’t want to become a king.” Had she said too much? Jenny was the one who could lie and play games. Lillee found most conversations difficult. She’d rather write dialogue since then she could control both sides.
The professor frowned. “I came to you because I know Jennybelle has a princess’s pride. I couldn’t go to Ymir, not with what happened before. That left you. I know this is strange, Lillee, I do, but I want to help if I can. I do, and the other new professor, Linnylynn Albatross, does as well. She has some experience with the Swamp Coast as well. She’s from Williminaville, like Mimilynn Banette in your class.”
Lillee wasn’t sure what to say. Tori was quiet, but the elf girl was glad her new friend was there.
“I guess I wanted to listen if Jennybelle wanted to talk, or maybe offer some help if she thinks her life is in danger.” Professor Heenn stood. “Can you just pass that along?”
“I can,” Lillee murmured.
The half-elven professor nodded. “Very good. See you in class, Toriah.”
“See you then, Haylee,” the dwab said enthusiastically.
When the professor left, Tori winced. “That was uncomfortable. Do I want to know what kind of trouble Jennybelle might be in?”
Lillee shook her head.
The little woman laughed merrily. “Ah, more secrets. We all got ’em. Kinda scary. Kinda fun. You know, Lillee, you might learn one of my secrets here soon. I might need a favor.”
