The Faerie Blade: Chapter 51

 

 

 

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Author's Note: Here's chapter 51 of The Faerie Blade. Further chapters are available on my Patreon page. ~Amethyst.
 

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Chapter 51: Kaelyn’s Magical Night

It was indeed a very nice afternoon for a swim. The cool water was very refreshing in the afternoon heat, and it was nice to be able to relax and have fun after how hard I had been training lately. Korine also took the opportunity to try to teach me and Kalara how to swim.

I knew how to swim, or at least I thought I did, but that assertion was swiftly proven to be wrong. Not only had my limited experience with swimming been self-taught, but my body was now very different from when I had been living alone in the forest. I was taller now, my limbs were longer, my womanly assets were more pronounced, and now I had my wings to complicate things as well.

I ended up having to get Korine to give Kalara a one-on-one lesson while letting Sharai coach me and occasionally take control of my body so I could learn to do it properly. The water made my wings feel heavy, and I had to keep them tucked close to my back so they would not get in the way or slow my movements in the water. Thankfully, I wasn’t the only one whose wings made swimming difficult.

Vesha’s wings were much larger and heavier than mine, and with her tail, they made her very heavy and unbalanced in the water. She did not even attempt to swim since she had done so several times before, and while she could do it if she had to, she did not enjoy it. Instead, she lounged in the water up to her neck and just relaxed.

At least she could still use her wings if they were wet. If mine were too wet, I would not be able to fly until they had fully dried out or I had expelled enough of the water to make them useful again. That took a lot of working my wings once I decided that I had enough swimming for the day, but thankfully, between the rapid movement and the heat they generated around me when moving them fast enough for flight, both they and the rest of me were soon comfortably dry.

Korine had fun teaching Kalara, who enjoyed playing and splashing in the water more than the actual swimming, and she said that after a few more lessons, my daughter would probably be a passable swimmer. I was already fully dressed by the time that the others got out of the water to join me, all of them dripping wet. Vesha quickly rectified that, though, by generating an aura of hot air around herself and then using her wings to blow it toward Kalara and Korine so they were all at least mostly dry when they got dressed, we gathered the fruits of the day’s labor, and headed back toward camp.

Our Bardic Master was still fishing when we found her along the shoreline. It looked like she had been having a good time of it, too, since there was a bucket filled with fish sitting beside her. “I gather we will be having fish for dinner tonight?” I asked with a teasing smile as we approached.

Fish was not something that I ate often when I was trying to survive on my own in the forest, so it had always been something of a treat for me. The stream near my hunting shack that I got my water from was little more than a brook, and it was not often that I found fish there worth catching. That was why I survived on what vegetables I could grow and what I could hunt.

Master Nirlyn’s feline ears turned toward the sound of my voice before the rest of her head followed suit, and her eyes locked on us. “Did ya ‘ave a good swim, lasses?” she asked as she grinned at us.

“What? I…” I started to protest.

“Yer ‘air is still damp,” she pointed out helpfully. “Relax, lasses, tha’s what this day was for after all. An’ aye, plenty o’ fish fer dinner tonight, an’ Joak is already smokin’ a fair bit fer our travels too. The fishin’s been good ‘ere.”

Well, that explained the unfamiliar smoky scent I was picking up from the camp. I sniffed at the air as I tried to place it, and thankfully, Vesha asked, “Is that hickory wood I smell burning?”

“Aye, Mara found a grove o’ hickory not far from camp this mornin’. Plenty o’ nuts t’ harvest, an’ entire tree worth o’ deadwood from a lightnin’ strike. Joak said there’s no better wood fer smokin’ an’ jumped on it,” Master Nirlyn explained before pulling in her fishing line. Then she picked up her bucket of fish and led the way back to camp as she told us, “We still ‘ave a couple o’ hours afore dinner, let’s go work on those instruments, girls.”

Until the evening meal, Master Niryln made Kalara’s pipes for her while Korine, Vesha, and I followed her example to make our own. What we were making were Voyager pipes, a variation on the traditional Fae Flute, that our ancestors started using when they let people think the Changelings were extinct and started playing the role of mysterious travelers from a faraway land. While Fae Flutes usually consist of fourteen pipes for different notes, the Voyager pipes have sixteen.

Our first task was to cut the reeds into sections of the right length to make each note, something that Master Nirlyn was very specific about and watched to make sure we got right, since we only had a limited number of reeds to work with, unless I wanted to search for more. Once those lengths were cut to the right sizes, she had us rub the ends with soft limestone to make them smooth and ensure no splinters or sharp bits remained to annoy us. Fortunately, we had enough reeds left to cut another two lengths each, which would serve as a cross-section to hold the pipes themselves in place.

With the reeds cut and smoothed, our next task was to securely plug one end with clay so that they would make the proper sound when blown on, instead of our breath just passing through. After that came the most difficult part, securing the pipes to the cross sections and one another using a mixture of ashes and the tree sap we had gathered, so the instruments held together properly. The mixture had to be kept hot; it was messy, and we had to be careful not to burn ourselves, to drizzle it only where we wanted it, and place each pipe carefully because once it cooled and set, there would be no removing it. Master Nirlyn called it an exercise in patience.

Before I knew it, my grandmother was knocking on the door of our wagon and calling us for dinner. We had finished the gluing and now had to wait for the glue to set and the clay to dry. Tomorrow, once we were on the road, we would be able to test them and use leather cords to make carrying straps for them. We also planned to personalize them a bit so we could tell which set of pipes belonged to whom.

I had just finished putting Kalara to bed and sending Zaiya out to feed herself when Vesha opened the door to the wagon and peeked inside. “Is she asleep?”

“Aye, I was just about to come back to the fire and join everyone,” I replied with a glance and a smile toward my sleeping daughter. “She had such a busy day with all that walking and swimming, and she had no time for a nap. She will likely sleep until I am done training in the morning.”

“Yes, she did have a bit of an exciting day, didn’t she? It was nice and relaxing, though. It was almost a perfect day, so… I was thinking, maybe it doesn’t need to end quite yet?”

I narrowed my eyes suspiciously, wondering just what she was up to. She was smiling fondly at me, but she seemed nervous too, trembling slightly. It was not from the cold; the evening was getting cool, but I had never known Vesha to get cold in all the time that I knew her. “What do you mean?” I asked.

“Come with me, Sweetheart, there’s something I want to show you,” she replied, motioning me toward the door. “Don’t worry, Mama said that she would keep an eye on Kalara for us.”

After one last look at Kalara, I nodded and joined her at the door. I did not even step fully outside before she swooped me up in her arms in a princess carry and used a wing to close the wagon door behind me as I attempted to stifle a squeal of surprise, so as not to wake the child I had just put to bed. “O…okay, yes. You are very strong, my love, but I already knew that.”

That earned me a laugh and one of those smiles that warmed my heart every time that one graced her beautiful face. The smile morphed into a playful grin as she told me, “That isn’t what I wanted to show you, Sweetheart. Now, close your eyes, and keep them closed until I tell you to open them again. Please?”

It was that final ‘Please’ with those big amber eyes, fluttering eyelashes, and plump, pouting lips that had me capitulate. How was I to refuse her anything reasonable when she was being so cute? Besides, it was nice being held in her arms and feeling the warmth of her body against my own. So, I closed my eyes and said, “There, are you happy now?”

“Very,” she agreed as she snuck a kiss upon my lips, the warm, plump, and ever-so-moist pillows of flesh massaging my own all too briefly before pulling away. I opened my eyes to gaze lovingly at her, but was quickly admonished. “Nuh-uh, I didn’t say to open them yet.”

I closed my eyes once again and attempted to wait patiently for whatever surprise she had in store, and a moment later, I felt something with weight to it being placed in my arms. “Hold on to that tight,” Vesha told me, still not telling me that I could open my eyes. I did as she asked and felt something hard and yet yielding, with inconsistent firmness, perhaps a leather satchel?

No sooner did I have it firmly clutched in my arms than I felt her muscles tense, followed by the movement of her wings, the sound and the motion startling me as she launched into the air with me in her arms. I was not sure where she was taking me, and I could only wonder, “What is she up to?”

-I would imagine that is supposed to be a surprise, given her efforts so far,- Sharai teased. -She would not do anything to hurt you, so I suggest that you just try to enjoy yourself.-

Sharai was probably right, so I snuggled closer to her to enjoy the ride. Soon, a vaguely familiar floral scent tickled my nose enticingly, and a moment later, Vesha was on the ground once more, where she placed me gently on the ground as well before taking the satchel from my hands. A moment later, my hands were engulfed in hers, and she squeezed them gently. I could hear her smile in her voice as she leaned in close to whisper into my ear, “You can open your eyes now.”

Once I did so, I could only gasp in awe. We were back at the grove of rushwillow trees on the hill, overlooking the river, but at night, it looked so very different. The violet flowers adorning the weeping branches shone in the darkness with a light of their own that was reflected by their silvery leaves. The hilltop was awash with the faint and soothing violet light, and for a moment, the only sounds were our breathing and the flowing water of the river below.

“What…” was all that I could manage to say as I stood there, transfixed.

Vesha gently squeezed my hands with her own, and I found my gaze drawn back to her face, bathed in violet light. She was so beautiful. This place was beautiful too, but its beauty paled in comparison to the face lit up before my eyes.

“The flowers glow at night,” she explained, her voice barely more than a husky whisper. “I figured that you had probably never seen it before, so when we were here earlier… I wanted to be the one to show you for the first time. The flowers are the same color as your hair. When I first saw you without a glamour, I thought of these flowers. Since you joined the troupe, I discovered that you have a lot more in common with them than just the color, though. Just like them, you’re beautiful and vibrant, and a light to help me find my way in the dark times.”

I found myself still trying to formulate a reply when she pulled me close and claimed my lips with her own. When I did reply, it was with my lips, but there were no words. Instead, I poured all the love I felt for her into matching the veracity of the emotion in her kiss. Our lips parted, our tongues engaged in a battle with no losers until finally, we parted, both of us breathless. When I could finally breathe without gasping for air by the lungful, I stared into those gorgeous amber eyes and said, “I love you.”

“I love you too,” she gasped out a moment later, mirroring my words as her eyes seemed to take in every feature of my face. At some point, while we were lost in one another’s eyes, we lost our clothes as well, and her kisses and caresses lit a fire in me. Her touch, her scent, and her very closeness made me shiver, and I could feel rivulets of warm dew from my nethers blazing trails downward along my inner thighs. My chest heaved against hers with every breath and kiss, our soft firmness and hardened tips pressing into each other as she wrapped me in her arms and held me tight.

That night, for the first time, in the ethereal light of the rushwillow trees, Vesha and I made love. We were not in a hurry, and it was a slow, gentle, and somewhat clumsy affair as we explored one another’s bodies and showed our feelings in the pleasure we each tried to give our lover. Neither of us was experienced in the ways of lovemaking, but it did not matter. I was in the arms of the woman I loved, and what we learned that night would only help us later.

I figured that making love was like learning to play an instrument; it would take us both time and practice to become a master, to coax the most beautiful melodies from our lover’s body. Not that we did not try very hard that night. It was a good thing that we were so far from camp because that night, we discovered that while the musical sounds of Vesha’s body during lovemaking were moans and trills much like the woodwind sounds of our new pipes, I was a screamer, more akin to a pair of cymbals.

For a time afterward, we lay there, completely spent, in the light of the flowering trees, and she held me close to the backdrop of the distant flow of the river. The moon was considerably higher in the sky than when we arrived, but I was content to stay in her arms, my body pressed against hers, just to feel her warm flesh against mine as I listened to the sound of her breathing and heartbeat. I pouted mightily and let loose a longing sigh of despair when Vesha eventually broke our embrace.

“Aww… don’t pout like that, you’re breaking my heart here,” she told me as she pouted back at me. “I’d love to keep snuggling all night, too, but we should probably head back to camp soon, and we can snuggle in your cot when we get back.”

Unfortunately, I knew that she was right, on both counts, so I sighed and sat up. “I guess I should get dressed then.”

Vesha smiled, and her eyes drank in the curves of my naked form as she said, “No need to hurry. There’s something else I want to do before we head back. I wanted to do it before, but we got a little… distracted.” Her satisfied smile and breathy giggle caused a smile to bloom on my face as well.

She started to look around until she found the leather satchel that was half hidden underneath my hastily discarded skirt. Reaching inside, she removed a couple of small, leaf-wrapped packages, a large bottle, and what looked like a very small, white bundle of cloth of some sort. She offered me one of the leaf-wrapped packages, which turned out to be one of the pastries we had enjoyed with our lunch, slightly battered and leaking its sweet innards, but still edible and probably just as delicious.

As hungry as I now was, I was far more interested in watching the pull of her muscles under the skin and scales of her arms as she worked at uncorking the bottle. Somewhere in the back of my mind, Sharai tried to point out that the bottle was not one of the enchanted ones we had gotten, but that did not matter right now. What mattered was the muscular, sexy arms attached to my beautiful and very naked lover.

Vesha caught the direction of my gaze, and the smile on her face and the look in her eyes seemed to say, ‘I love you,’ even as her lips said, “This is caraberry wine. I know how much you liked the juice, so I picked this up before we left Hindra for a special occasion.”

“Well, tonight certainly was special,” I agreed with a contented sigh.

“Yeah,” she agreed with another giggle as the cork released with an audible popping sound, “It was that. It wasn’t exactly what I was planning for, but I’m happy that it happened. What I was planning was… umm…” She seemed to struggle with the words as she set the bottle down on a reasonably flat bit of ground to breathe.

“What you were planning?” I asked. It came out raspy, my mouth suddenly dry as my heart hammered away frantically in my chest from the way Vesha’s muscles seemed to tense. What kind of plan did she have? Was it something good? Or was she about to break my heart and the wine was to soften the blow? “No,” I told myself firmly. I could not see Vesha, my Vesha, ever doing that.

I tried to control my stuttered breathing and not let my nerves take control as Vesha reached for the small white bundle of cloth with a shaking hand and held it out before me, where it promptly unwound in her hand. It was a ribbon, a long, pure white ribbon, the ends falling and unspooling to either side of her clenched and trembling hand. Since I did not grow up among Voyagers and only learned their traditions after joining them, it took me a moment to realize just what she was offering me.

That was what she was offering, right? My eyes were now locked on the dangling, pristine ribbon, highlighted in the violet glow of the flowering trees. For a moment, I could not speak, the words getting stuck in my throat as if by voicing them, whatever illusion I was under would be dispelled. “Is… is that…? Are you…?” I floundered with the words, my hands now trembling to match Vesha’s and my heart pounding so heavily that I thought I could hear the beating of it in the silence that threatened to fall over us.

Vesha took a deep breath, nodding her head before she could find her words, but then the words came as well. “I’m… offering you this ribbon. Would you consent to take it so that we might bind ourselves together by hand, heart, and soul?”

She was asking me to be her mate. If I took the ribbon, it would mean I accepted, and I would have to safeguard it until we could use it to be properly handfasted in front of the troupe. Hot tears stung my eyes, my throat tightening as now it was my turn to try and find the words. With a quivering hand, I haltingly reached forward until finally I clasped the white ribbon where it escaped her hand, our hands brushing together as we both gripped the symbol of the love she had for me. And the love I had for her.

“I…consent, my love. My heart and soul are yours, as is my hand.” I was a blubbering, crying mess by this point, and for a moment, I was worried that she might not have understood until she nearly crushed me in her embrace.

For a while, we stayed there like that, her holding me tightly in her arms while I clutched the ribbon in my hand with equal fervor. We cried happy tears on one another’s shoulders until finally, my mate-to-be released me. The first thing I did when she did so was to place the ribbon gently atop my fallen skirt. I did not want it to get soiled or otherwise damaged before it could fulfill its purpose after all. Only once I was sure it was safely in place did I turn back to kiss her passionately.

Once the fervor of our questing lips and tongues were once again spent, we snuggled together under the moonlight, the shimmering silver leaves, and those radiant flowers while eating our pastries and drinking that wonderful bottle of wine. The trees, the sound of the river, and the scent of the flowers were our only companions aside from each other and there were no barriers between us, save our flesh itself. I almost wished that night could last forever, but then we would never get handfasted properly. Only once the bottle of wine was empty did we finally get dressed and fly back to camp.