Al'sia Meets Silen

"I only have one knife, so I cut it up for you. Is it small enough?"

"Yes, it's fine, thank you." Al'sia was feeling a bit dazed and accepted the food automatically, sitting cross legged on the grass to eat it. She was so hungry it took a lot of self control to avoid swallowing bites without chewing.

"How long before you are twenty?" Silen hoped he sounded nonchalant as he asked between bites.

"I think a few weeks. What day is it?" She was finding it hard to finish the meat he'd given her, being accustomed to being restricted to small amounts of food. After he told her the date, she stopped to think. "Oh. It's closer than I thought. About ten days." She shrugged, "birthdays never meant much to me."

"Well, it's when you turn adult. Most people have big parties for that." He smiled at her.

"I'm already adult. We talked about this before. For my village, that was at sixteen and no parties." Feeling stuffed, she gave up on the meat and leaned over to dump the remains on Silen's leaf.

Petting her head as she leaned over, Silen smiled at her.

"Your village's rules don't apply to you. You're fae and subject to magic. You're not an adult until you're twenty." Holding her hair he pulled her head to him and kissed her lips. "The only rules you need now are mine. All the rest - well, except the fae - are gone." While she was still off balance he reached out and tugged at her nipple.

Al'sia gasped as he tugged harder than she was getting used to. She fell back to sitting, causing him to lose his grip, but only after enough tension to make tears come to her eyes. Moaning softly, she looked down to see if the nipple were still there. It made her feel strange to realize she had liked the pain. Thinking about it, she realized there were a lot of times pain had caused her to be aroused or at least felt enjoyable.

Watching her face as he finished his meat, Silen could see she was thinking about something and didn't interrupt. He'd talked a lot more since meeting her than he was used to and was finding it pleasant, but a small bit of quiet wasn't unwelcome. Tossing the leaf and remains into the fire, he moved to sit behind Al'sia and pull her onto his lap, her back against his bare chest, and lightly caressed her breasts as she relaxed and slumped against him.

"Now that we've fed you a few nibbles that wouldn't keep a bird alive but seem to be all you'll swallow, we should decide what direction to go and maybe even a purpose." He kissed the top of her head, "although a purpose isn't really required. I usually travel without one."

"How come fae have to wait till somebody is twenty before they're adult?"

"It's not always twenty. It depends on the creature. For nymphs it's as early as one, for dragons it's thirty, or maybe it's thirty five, for others, well, it depends on the way the creature matures." He shrugged, "for your people, it's twenty. Fae people can't, um, well, we'll save the details for later, but they can't because magic enforces the rule. They simply can't do it."

"Why?"

"Because magic. Somebody somewhere decided it was a bad idea to let fae be able to hurt children in that way and made one grandiose spell that has persisted for much longer than any laws ever seem to. That's pretty much how all the rules are. Someone with more magical ability than usual decides something and tries to make a spell to enforce it."

"So there's no laws or punishments? Just magic prevents people from doing it?"

"Yup. It saves a lot of worry about who has authority to do what. Like the king or queen of fairies, I forget which they had at the time, once tried to claim authority over all fae. Lots of fuss and arguing and fighting until Glaster, the big dragon over to the east, ate them."

"That's one way to end an argument." Al'sia giggled. His hands on her chest were making her aroused again, but in a low-level, comfortable way. "It would be nice to live without a lot of rules. It was hard to follow all of them at home. When to wake up, when to go to sleep, chores that had to be done before sleep but sleep still had to be at a specific time, no earlier or later. I like having directions, but that was meaningless stuff."

"You're free of that now. I don't think that's normal even for other not-fae villages." Wrapping his arms around her body, he hugged her tightly, resting his head on top of hers. "I won't be making rules of that sort." Nuzzling her head, he squeezed her lightly.

"What if I wanted to leave? Just run away?" Al'sia pushed her body back against Silen. "I'm not saying I want to, but what if I did? Are there rules about that?"

"No. You are free to go. But as a naked little girl that doesn't know how to use her magic, or even what it is, you might be in a little danger." His arms squeezed a little tighter at the idea that she might leave.

Giggling, she turned her head and tilted it up. "Maybe a lot, when you say it that way!" She kissed his lips when he turned his face to meet hers. "I know it's dumb to make decisions about things really fast, but I'm pretty sure I want to be your little pet nymph girl snack dear thing for a while."

"Even though you don't know what it all means?"

"Especially so." Al'sia squirmed a little as his hands moved to her stomach. "What you did at the village. It was for me."

"It was."

"No one ever did anything for me that was really for me before. So maybe it's dumb to trust you, but the other options are dumber."