A Big Shiny Blue Marble Ch. 03

We love to trade and haggle with the traders -- wherever they come from. But if a trader or merchant sets his price only a little too high and the buyer feels that it is an affront, any customer would simply kill the merchant out of it.

What I wished to become is free from that -- and Azrael has freed me, though I must live here where the sun is like a burning hunter who hounds me until the nighttime. But I am free and happier for it. Now what I wish to become is loved by someone."

Rachel thought about it, "You said that you and Vadren are distant relations," she said, "Aren't you a --"

"A couple?" Cha'Khah smiled, raising an eyebrow, "No. We care about each other, and we have, ... relations between us sometimes, but that is more out of friendship and mutual need, rather than the deep sort of love that I dream of having one day. Vadren is the same. We care for each other, but we both seek to find someone here to love us as you have -- as Azrael has. You are lucky.

You see, Azrael showed us what might be possible when he led us out of the darkness. For what I would wish, he told me that it could have something in common with fighting in that sometimes one has to make their own luck."

She smiled at Rachel. "But my luck improves, I think, Rachel. Today, I met someone who instantly made me wish for her friendship. Such a thing has never happened to me. Please, try to ignore my hard words at Vadren and my mocking tone at Azrael. I think that they expect it from me, and I must keep up appearances no? I will never take that tone with you. Though I must be a little careful, no matter what Azrael might say, I do still struggle with the language sometimes."

They finished up and Rachel smirked, "There. All done. And now we can begin on dinner."

Cha'Khah laughed, "It is an unending thing, this business of living. Where can we wash this mess off, so that we may begin our next task?"

They walked to the stream and after cleaning their hands, Rachel was startled at how quickly and easily the Drowess was able to manage to get her light armor off.

"I seldom have anyone to help me," she shrugged.

"So you are -- were a fighter?" Rachel asked, noticing that while she was lithe and shapely, Cha'Khah also carried a bit of muscle. It was just not evident unless she moved. Then the long muscles and sinews showed plainly for a moment until she stopped again.

Cha'Khah nodded, "I was a warrior. I still am, I guess. I have learned that I have a slightly rare ability at magic for a female. It seldom happens. Vadren teaches me, as I teach him my own skills. He is a mighty mage, though like me, he was overlooked where we come from."

Rachel looked at Vadren. He was thinner than a human male, but she could see that he was far from bony. There was muscle on that body quite plainly. She supposed that for what he was, he would be considered long and lean. He wore no armor, though his pants were padded in a way.

She mentioned it and Cha'Khah said, "The trousers do carry protection without giving bulk. But there is more there than you see. There are many pockets, large and small. Vadren carries a lot of things for his craft. He wears that open short-sleeved vest under his cloak. The cloak is off now so you can see a little more of his body."

Rachel nodded absently as she looked. Vadren's skin wasn't as dark as Cha'Khah's, though like hers, there was no undertone. When they stood together earlier, Rachel had noticed that next to her friend, Vadren was a very dark gray, though when he stood alone, he appeared black in color. Everywhere that she could see his flesh, he looked to be made of tendons, sinews, arteries -- and muscle. It wasn't the same sort as Azrael carried, it was there all the same though, she thought, as she looked at the bare parts of his chest and abdomen that she could see.

His face was different from Cha'Khah's as well. He looked like the negative of an elven male, with the same sort of features. His nose and his lips were thin and elven in every respect but the color. The ears that she saw protruding through his hair were a little longer than Cha'Khah's, but she liked them. His hair was straight and she saw no ringlets or curls, but gods, it was long.

He parted it in the middle and what there was of it in front hung far down, finally petering out just above where she imagined that his white pubic hair began -- if it weren't covered. When he turned for a second, she saw that his hair at the back reached his bottom. He wasn't beautiful, but altogether he was strikingly attractive.

"What color are his eyes?" Rachel asked, the words seeming to slip out of her mouth by themselves.

"Here in this light," the Drowess said quietly, very aware of Vadren's effect on most females and not wanting to break the spell for Rachel, "they are a very light blue. In the dark, they are red, the same as my own.

So," she smirked as she laid her arm around Rachel's shoulders, "am I to tell my male that you merely find him attractive, or should I tell him that you fancy him?"

Rachel snapped her head around to stare at Cha'Khah, feeling the beginnings of her furious blush, "Fancy him?"

"Or perhaps I could tell him that you lust for him," she sighed playfully, "He would like to hear that far more. I know him well. Many females want him from their first sight of him.

Mostly, he has no interest in human females, but it is a useful thing sometimes when we travel. There are times when we would prefer to have a room at an inn after all and not everyone shuns us. Sometimes, all that it takes is a little quiet conversation, and a woman innkeeper or an innkeeper's wife might find a wish to explore her, ... fascination a little beyond only gazing at him. A little quiet work on his part and we can sometimes stay for free."

Rachel's mouth fell open for a moment and then she laughed, "And if the innkeeper is a man? Is that when you spring to the fore?"

Her companion shook her head. "Perhaps it says something bad about me, I cannot say, but there is no human male that I have seen yet that I would lie with. If such an innkeeper presses me, he soon finds that he was mistaken, and sometimes he finds that he is dying.

But we were not talking about me. I was making sport over the way that you looked hungry when you gazed at Vadren and I enjoyed the look of small shock when I called him my male."

"You said that you weren't a couple," Rachel grinned good-naturedly, "and besides, it doesn't cost anything to look, does it?"

Cha'Khah threw her head back and laughed for a moment, "True, very true, my friend. We are not a pair. We are only close, and he is likely as close to being my male as I will ever get to having one for me here on the surface. We are as good as wed anyway, and to listen to us bicker, you would think nothing else. We do love each other, I suppose, and he is a good male.

In this business that we are in, there are a lot of times when there is a little, ... tension in the doing of it. There can be the occasional close call, I think that you would say. Between us, when it is over, we sometimes feel glad to have lived through whatever we braved to obtain what we came for. Afterwards, it is good to let off the tension with a good meal, a bit of drink, and a little fucking. It keeps us close, though there is not much love in it. Well, not the sort that I would want if I had my heart's wish."

"How do you mean?" her companion asked.

"Well there is the sort of loving that happens out of lust, and the sort that happens out of love. Then there is the soft and quiet sort that happens not because one needs to be quiet, but because a pair wants to give to each other. I think that most couples who are in love have all three."

Cha'Khah looked at Rachel and slowly removed her arm, "I have only had the first kind, my friend. It is nice and I feel better afterward, but it is a long way from the sort of loving that I would want from a male that I could call my own. Or do I think wrongly here, never having had this for myself?"

At that instant, Rachel could feel exactly what the Drowess sought for herself. She put her hands on Cha'Khah's shoulders, "No. You think quite rightly, Cha'Khah. I had Azrael's love a long time ago, but we fell apart. I won't go into the reasons because none of them matter. He wasn't my first, and after him there were a few others for a month or so. I was pregnant with Azrael's son but I didn't know it then. Long after it was too late, I came to realize that he was the one. I even knew it before, but right then was when I felt it the worst because we'd lost each other.

By whatever wonder it took to bring him here where I had come back to live and raise our son by myself, he came last week and found me dying. That bear opened my arm and I was so sick." She held up her arm, "There was meat gone from here, and all that's left are these lines now. He healed me and the flesh grew back in one night.

I don't know how he did it and I don't care. All that matters to me is that he came back and we fell for each other all over again. I know what you mean. We do it all three ways, but though I love how hard we can do it for so long, I need the kind that you're talking about the most.

That's when he says everything without one word. That's how I know that I'm his and he's mine and that we belong together. If that's what you're searching for Cha'Khah, then you just have to keep looking, because that's what you need, isn't it?"

She kept her hands on the other one's shoulders, but she pushed herself back a little to look at her. "I understand you better now. I've never had many friends, the way that I grew up, but if you want one, I'd say that you've got one now in me. I'll be your friend; I know exactly the way that you feel, ... my friend."

The Drowess smiled softly, "I have no words for this, because our speech assumes only others like ourselves. You are noble to me for only your words and how you show your heart to me."

She put her hands on Rachel's arms and shook them gently once for emphasis, "It sounds a little wrong to say it that way in this speech, that you are a noble Drow, but that is the way that the thought comes to me. Thank you.

So," Cha'Khah smiled, "We are friends, Rachel. You will never regret this friendship with me. I promise it."

As they washed, they noticed Vadren speaking to Sariel as Azrael looked on. Rachel saw an impish grin spread across her new friend's face after a moment.

Cha'Khah took a handful of water and passing her other hand over it; she created a sparkling ball and leapt high into the air. At the apex, she hung there for only a moment before she threw the ball of water at Vadren. She landed on her feet in the stream with a splash and ducked as low as she could, seeking to hide behind the grass at the shore.

"I must hide now," she giggled quietly just as Rachel heard the Drow's surprised gasp when the cold projectile hit him in the lower back.

Rachel was already turning around to study something off in the distance in another direction. "You can fly!" she hissed over her shoulder in amazement.

"No," Cha'Khah chuckled as she whispered, "I cannot fly like you. I have no wings. But I can float. Most of us can. I only used this to get higher and to stay long enough to choose my moment to attack. This fades in us the longer that we are on the surface. But I live under a mountain, and I have only been gone a little while. What is Vadren doing now?"

Rachel risked a look. "He's talking to my son and Azrael again."

"As though nothing happened?" the Drowess asked, "Oh, that means that his retribution will be worse whenever it comes." She stood up and hid behind Rachel, peeking around her a little now and then.

"I give Vadren trouble holding your son's attention now," she smirked, "he saw me and now tries to see more of me because of my skin."

"He's used to seeing me," Rachel nodded, "I guess --"

"I do not mind," Cha'Khah smiled, "We are different to most surfacers, Vadren and I. I expect it, and from one so young, I take no insult, Rachel. It is natural and to be expected. The boy is not being rude. You should have seen how half of the city stopped when Azrael first arrived. He looked just as he is now when he came, wearing nothing and looking like a demon, but carrying a bag of gold and gems for the matron of the house.

No one was afraid, since we are used to seeing all manner of creatures there, but we had not seen his like before -- not like you are when you are like this. Drowlings came and stared quietly along with everyone else. The adult females were the worst, of course."

"Why?" asked Rachel.

Cha'Khah shrugged with a small smirk, "Because they think like adults. The higher females might look, but they are better able not to stare out of their sense of place. Oh, they think the same as anyone else, my friend, perhaps worse," she chuckled, "but though they might send a servant to make their hopeful solicitations on their behalf -- once they'd seen him a few times, they would never lower themselves to open invitations out in the street. A good thing," she scowled, "because they would only seek to use him as a slave and a novelty.

You do know that he is very fine to look at, no?"

"Oh, trust me," Rachel grinned, "I know."

"You make a very attractive family," the Drowess smiled, "You are all three so beautiful to our eyes."

"Thank you," the other smiled, looking at Cha'Khah and marveling at the color of the gleaming black skin before her. There was no other tone to it, she noticed again in the sunlight. If there was any hint of anything else, it would have been an almost black grayness.

"Coming from one as lovely as you are, Cha'Khah, I take that as high praise."

"As it was meant," Cha'Khah smiled genuinely as she tossed her long white hair with a shake of her head.

Her lilac eyes opened and she filled her lungs in a deep gasp as a gallon of icy cold water hit her bare backside from behind her.

A very wide variety of sounds came from Cha'Khah then as what Rachel thought must have been curses that she heard escaping through Cha'Khah's clenched teeth as she turned, her hands already forming the faerie fireballs to throw at Vadren who ran laughing in the other direction.

Rachel wasn't sure what she'd heard, not knowing the language, but it sure sounded as though there was murder in it somewhere. The rest was lost in many more unintelligible curses as her friend ran off in pursuit.

Rachel watched as Ch'Khah managed to close the gap and she hurled the fireballs with what Rachel could see was deadly accuracy, but while Vadren had expected this sort of response and mouthed his dispellment for them, she was already preparing her next attack.

A few moments later, he hung helplessly ensnared in green tendrils which had sprung out of the ground to seize him. She walked up to him and they had a quiet conversation which ended in her long and forceful kiss before Cha'Khah came walking back to the stream with a small grin. The combination of her dark skin and her brilliantly white hair was a very striking one to Rachel. She was sure that her friend was the most beautiful female that she'd ever seen.

"Are you just going to leave him there?" She asked the Drowess.

"Only for a little while longer," Cha'Khah smiled with satisfaction. "You may as well know now, Rachel. Between Drow, everything is about bargaining. I threatened to leave him there until tomorrow or whenever he calms down enough to think of a counter to my enchantment. But this would really only set off another round of it. I told him that we are guests here and that we should not allow this to escalate into one of our feuds and he agreed. So I told him that I would release him in a little while, but, ..."

She looked down and smiled a little shyly. "We are not much ashamed of ourselves, Rachel. I do not know how it is with you, so I am a little reluctant to say."

Rachel smirked, "I remind you that aside from Vadren, none of us are wearing a thing, Cha'Khah. We're not shy either, so let's hear it."

The Drowess laughed, "It is no punishment to him at all, but I told him that he had to fill me in the night and then he had to remove his seed afterward."

Rachel thought about it, "How does he do that, with a spell or something?"

"No," Cha'Khah said as she picked up her armor and began to walk back to start on the evening meal. She looked back after a few steps, "He must do it the hard way until I tell him that his efforts are sufficient."

"Oh," Rachel smiled as she followed.

"Forgive me if I don't really understand what you meant," she said after a moment.

Cha'Khah laughed in her quiet and delighted way as she waited for Rachel to catch up.

"There is nothing to forgive," she smiled as she transferred her armor to one hand in an obviously well-practiced sort of way. She put her free arm over her friend's shoulders and moved her head in to whisper in a conspiratorial manner, "I will fuck with him, and afterwards, he must lie on his back and I will hold myself above him until he licks his seed out -- though it will take some time for him to do that to my satisfaction," she said as they walked grinning.

"I will be very demanding of his efforts," she smirked with a happy little sigh, "I always am."