A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 28: Stress

Lolth damn it, she hadn't managed to calm herself in time for him not to notice. This was not going as well as she'd hoped. His arms around her were about the last thing that she needed. It would have been better if he'd just ignored it and carried on like he would have done if she hadn't been so bloody... broken. A man's arms around her just made her feel weaker. Selene smacked him before quickly pulling away. "Don't touch me." she spat. Electricity jolted from her fingers mostly on accident, though she did not regret it when she realized what she had done. If anything, she wanted to hurt him more in a decidedly unsexual way. She just wanted to lash out at the world, at his... maleness. Her hands began to gesture and power gathered around her for a bigger spell.

Completely natural vines whipped out from the ground, though this time they captured Selene in their slightly thorny embrace. Ashyr walked out from behind some brush and rocks with a disapproving look on her face. The ranger had seen the murderous intent in her cousin's eyes. "Remember what I said about not hurting him? Killing him counts as well." She walked up until she almost casually stepped in between Selene and Caleldir.

Selene struggled against Ashyr's spell, clear anger in her eyes. But there was something else that sparked in her visage. It was almost a desperate lust, and it was focused on Ashyr.

Caleldir accepted Selene's predictable anger with a stoic acceptance. Of course she would lash out at him. Mad as she was at men, he was the last one able to comfort her. "I am sorry." he said sincerely. He did not attempt to escape her spell. After all, what could it do to him, really? He turned to see Ashyr walking out of the bushes. Huh. So she had seen all that? Predictable. He would needle her about voyeurism later. For now, getting Selene a little less worked up was their priority. "Eh, perhaps one of these days you should just let her kill me." He said neutrally. "Let her get it out of her system." Caleldir was remarkably cavalier about death, after all. It was certainly easier to recover from than was torture.

Ashyr smiled at Caleldir as she absently brushed a hand against his jawline. "I don't think she'll be satisfied until we take care of the true source of her distress: my brothers. Anyway, I don't like watching you die. Even if you do just come back. Guess it's just instinctual."

"All the more reason to hurry our quest. Selene is not gaining rapidly in stability. Quite the contrary, it seems." Caleldir replied. Slipping away from the tied up Drow, he looked at the lust in her eyes as she looked at Ashyr. "I really think that you should give your cousin a little more of your time, Ashyr." he whispered to her. "Heaven knows that I cannot meet her emotional needs. If you think I can be of any help, I will stick around. Otherwise, I will leave you to soothe her Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

The older drow turned back to look at her cousin on contemplation. She had settled down, but it looked like she still needed Ashyr's attention. "You'd better go, I think. It'll probably get sort of violent. Unless I'm mistaken, that's not really your thing." she smirked and ran a hand across his crotch in an affectionate gesture. "I'll meet up with you by the time the sun is at its zenith. If not, then we've probably been eaten by kobolds."

Then she turned back to her younger cousin and cracked her knuckles. A wild, wicked look began to dance in her eyes. Sometimes it was hard to tell Ashyr's ancestry if one looked past her skin. This was not one of those times.

He shuddered in response to her talk of violence. "No, you are right. Violent sex really is not my thing. Then again, until I met you two, sex in general was not really my thing. I will leave you two to... whatever." He shuddered. "Please do not do anything that Althaia or I will need to heal. And I really do not need the details." Finally activating his clothing, he dashed off speedily, not looking back at whatever was going on between those two

Soon, he caught up with Althaia and the little group of refugees. "Let me guess," he asked her. "You did not really need any scouts, did you?"

Althaia smirked. "No, I was just trying to give Selene a chance to blow off some steam." She noticed Caleldir's expression. "Did something go wrong?" Her eyes went down to his still-existent erection.

"A bit." he replied. "But it was of my doing. I seem to have brought back some bad memories for our aggrieved friend. We need to hurry our quest, before she fragments much more."

Around the time that Ashyr indicated, the ranger walked into the line of refugees with Selene draped in her arms. Normally it would be exceedingly difficult for either drow to carry each other, but thankfully there were spells for strengthening ones body. Both drow seemed exhausted, emotionally and physically. They wore heavily hooded clothes that shielded their eyes from the sun's hot rays, and had the added benefit of concealing their tear-ravaged eyes. With a grunt of effort, Ashyr placed her cousin onto one of the already overladen carts and crawled up to sit next to her. She clung to Selene's apparently sleeping form, burying her face in the younger drow's shoulder.

Bard ran as fast as he could from out of the wilderness and straight up to where his mistress and her cousin sat, a blur of blond that streaked through the frontmost part of the small caravan. The animal jumped up upon the wagon to sit next to the two drow. He then proceeded to bare his teeth and snarl at any human who came close to them. It seemed to work well enough on the former prisoners. Both drow fell in an out of light slumber. People learned quickly to stay away, for even the children that had been Bard's playmates for the morning were warded off. Not for the first time, Ashyr was extremely glad she'd met the silly blond wolf even if he was young and pretty useless in a fight. Otherwise she would have had to drive everyone away, and somehow a wolf was far less rude about it than she could be.

Althaia seemed to know when she was not needed, and so, while she walked near enough to the cart that her aura covered it (and the rest of the caravan, for that matter...), she did not attempt to approach.

Neither did Caleldir, for that matter. If it had been someone other than Selene in such obvious emotional distress, he would have immediately approached to see what he could do to be of service, but with the prickly, misandristic Drow involved, he wondered if he would do more harm than good. So he continued regaling the children with his stories. Althaia had begun to tell one, but Caleldir cut her off before she could wander into her usual subject material. The nymph's stories were not all that child appropriate, after all. Not in the tiniest bit. Caleldir's were though, and he had made himself very popular with his mix of folksy humor and madcap adventure.