Cultural Exchange Ch. 04

I shrugged my shoulders and winced at the pain I felt from the left one. "I have been told worse things from people who were more important to me. Let's just leave it at that." Errom nodded and as he was turning again to leave the room, I stopped him again, "Father, I have one more favor to ask you, if I am allowed."

He turned his head to answer, "What is it about?"

"Merita, the maid of this house, risked her life to give me the opening I needed to defeat the assassin. I'm mostly sure that she'll be rewarded in some way, but I'd like to ask you to remove her from her actual position to appoint her as my personal maid."

"I could, but this house is for the commodity of very high ranked guests, so I'm not going to do that unless I can find some to carry all of her tasks at least as well as she does." As he turned off the light of the room, Errom spoke in a soft tone I had never expected from him. "Now get as much rest as you can, Son. You have much to learn in order to be prepared for your wedding." That reminded me that I was getting married in a day and a half and I still knew nothing about the ceremony.

I woke up the next morning refreshed but still suffering a little pain. I went down the stairs using a crutch in order to not strain my right leg, and after a copious breakfast the preparations for the great day started. The tailors made the last preparations with my clothes and I was given a rest while I waited for Oner, who had been appointed to be my tutor in the lessons regarding the protocols of the ceremony.

Surprise after surprise, he didn't come alone. His wives were helping Ralya with her preparations for the wedding so he came accompanied by an Elven woman who looked only a little younger than Merita and a boy of around twelve years old. Both of them had dark brown hair, but the woman had dark eyes and the kid's were blue, like Nera's eyes.

Oner looked about to pat my shoulder, but he reconsidered it and just said, "How are you feeling, little brother? Sorry I couldn't arrive before, but I wasn't able to find anyone to take care of the kid, I hope you don't mind. But before anything else, let me introduce you to my mother, Eliniel."

"As the Hierarch of the Mountain Elves First wife, allow me to welcome you into our world, our country and our family." The woman had kept her chin high and spoke to me in a cold, monotone way. In fact, her eyes looked cold as stones. From what I had learned about her from Ralya and the demeanor she was showing, she truly seemed to be an emotionless scientist. "I hope we have the chance to have a chat before I get back to my duties at the University. There are countless things I would like to learn about your world... and you." This time, the glint in her eyes and the tone of her voice did transmit something. She wasn't interested in me as a person, but as a scientific curiosity, like some kind of interesting specimen. It was totally unnerving to be looked at like that, and I was so nervous that I didn't know what to say, but in the end I was saved by the most unexpected person.

"Is it true that you defeated a Chief Orc, one of his guards and a Deyima assassin in the same week despite being just a weak human?" The kid had spoken with sparkling eyes, as if he admired me to some extent even though the words he had chosen were a little hurtful.

Before I could answer, Oner intervened, "Hiol, I have told you many times to choose carefully your words when you speak to your elders." Instead of his usual jokes, this time his tone was serious and authoritative.

The kid lowered his head and his ears, "I'm sorry, father." Then he looked back at me. Somehow, his big blue eyes and his lowered ears made me think of a kitten. "I didn't mean to offend you, Uncle Brandon." That took me by surprise. Not the fact that Oner had a son as much as the fact that he had instructed him to call me "uncle." That moved me in a way I had never experienced before, but it wasn't unpleasant at all. My "nephew" asked me, with his eyes sparkling again, "How did you beat them even... with your difference in strength?"

I copied the tone I had once heard a friend's father to lecture him gently. "Look, Dem'Hiol, physical strength rarely decides all in combat. I beat my enemies by being smarter than them, planning my moves beforehand and taking advantage of their mistakes."

Oner entered our conversation. "You see, son?Thisis why I tell you to take your training seriously." He looked at me recovering a little of his usual behavior to tell me with a chuckling voice, "And you, little brother, I appreciate the gesture, but you don't have to be so formal. We don't use honorifics with children from our own families."

Eliniel coughed to attract our attention and said, "We aren't here for a pleasure visit, we have a task at hand."

Without much more chatter, Oner and his mother started to explain me the workout of the ritual for the ceremony, while little Hiol sat on a corner of the room looking really bored. They started with something I already knew: each and every move of the wedding ritual had an important significance as they composed the structure of a complex Magic spell. We had to do walk at the same pace, move our hands at the same time and even speak in sync because symmetry was an important focal point of the ritual.

Getting the moves right and on their proper timing wasn't as hard as expected, but the real nightmare was about to begin: I had to sing. Maybe you are thinking that I'm exaggerating, but not in the least. When I was in school I tried to join the chorus, and my audition ended in three seconds. When I was in high school, I committed the foolishness of trying to sing a love song to the girl I liked in front of everyone. She fled and I was showered by a rain of paper glasses.

There I was, trying to get the correct tones in their proper timing with my face burning red while Oner and Eliniel tried to contain their laughter. Hiol, being a kid, didn't know delicacy and laughed out loud until his father asked Merita to take him to the backyard and entertain him.

It was deep into the night when, with a sore throat, it was decided that I had improved enough to do my part in the ritual without breaking the delicate structure of the Magic involved in it. Not that I had learned to sing, just that I could barely reach the minimum standard. Just before leaving for the fortress, Eliniel gave me a small flask with an ink-looking liquid inside, telling me to drink it before going to bed to prevent hoarseness during the ceremony. I waited for her to turn around and looked at Oner with an eyebrow raised. He covered his mouth to prevent a snicker and nodded his head. It was good to understand each other at this level. He had noticed my insecurity at being treated like some kind of guinea pig and calmed me down.

That night I didn't have weird dreams with enigmatic entities or lustful assassins, but maybe the idea of forming my own family brought back memories of the other family I had left behind in my world. I woke up sweating and panting near dawn and I resolved to take my time and explain my former life carefully to Ralya and to Silna when she became my Second.

As they say, the moment of the truth arrived. Dressed in my white attire, I walked up the stairs to the chapel with rubbery legs. I'm not sure if that was due more to the lack of use in several days or to the nervousness I was feeling. The great moment had arrived. The music started, the sign that it was my moment to open the door and enter. This was the first trial; my bride and I had to cross the temple to the ceremonial pool without even looking at each other.

We were at the middle of the way when an uproar started behind us, then a woman screamed, "He's dead!" I started to turn around, ready to protect Ralya, but Errom's voice thundered over every other noise, "Continue the ceremony at all costs! Every guard that is not on Honor Guard Duty go look for the intruder, and send someone to get this body out of here! The rest of you,continue!"

I realized some strange, and probably very important, thing was happening behind us. I wanted to know what it was, and I could bet Ralya was like me, but in Ralya's words, we weren't just making pretty gestures. I had been thoroughly taught that we were performing a Magic ritual, and the smallest failure could break its structure. If we stopped now, we would have to wait a full month to try again.

We arrived at the focal point of the church: given that Elves worshiped their creator, the Goddess of Water, all of her temples had a round pool in front of the altar, deep enough to sink in it to the navel. When we made it to this point, both Ralya and I started singing our parts of the spell turning our backs to each other to circle the pool in opposite directions. We walked a quarter of the way around the pool to turn and look at each other for the first time. No painter, poet or writer could ever depict my bride as beautiful as I saw her in that moment, dressed in white and surrounded by a glowing aura because of the spell we were singing. With the right verse of the spell we extended our arms towards each other and started walking again, entering the pool from its stairs and sinking step by step until we joined our hands. The song acquired another rhythm and the water started to ripple around us, moving up and forming a transparent circular wall around us and over our heads. Then the whole chapel became silent to hear us perform our vows, first me and then Ralya. That was the last part they had explained to me, they said the finale was a surprise.

Together, we intoned the last line. "And I make this Vow in front of my people, with El'Dara as witness." We looked up together... and I saw that the water wall had formed a dome over us, and the inner side of that dome was a beautiful female face that smiled tenderly at us. Ralya kissed me like she never had done before and the water poured on us, making me lose my breath. Not because it was sudden or cold, but because I felt something similar to the Impetus that had been explained to me. Like an invisible hand entering me to grab at my soul and pull it towards Ralya, but together with the feeling of it ripping and being tied with a piece that didn't come from me. Then, with my eyes closed, I felt a glowing sensation in front of me, like a sun that was about to make me cry with happiness. I opened my eyes and I understood thatthatwas how my new sense interpreted my wife's happiness. With my new senses, I saw her as if the first time, and it made me think that I had been half blind until now, to not see all of that beauty in her. I hugged her tightly to me and reveled in the wonderful feeling of togetherness.

After the rite, we went to change into dry clothes and went back to the fortress for our wedding party. I can't recall much of it, mostly because my wife and I were just spellbound by each other. One of the things I remember is when I asked her, "What was that? The water face?"

I knew she was crying with pure joy when she laughed and answered, "The rite we have made together is partial summoning. We have called for a minimal fragment of El'Dara and she has smiled upon our union. She is the one who has tied our souls, making possible that you can stay by my side and live as long as me."

Also, I do recall someone saying that the commotion during the ceremony had been caused by Dodger, the Elf that made trouble at our engagement. It seems that he had tried to attack me but nobody could tell for sure what had happened exactly. In the happy mood we were enjoying at that moment, it didn't seem important.

At certain moment, I noticed a complex feeling emanating from Ralya when she looked at her father's table. Contrary to weddings on the Earth, here the head table of the wedding was just for the Bride and the Groom. This arrangement was needed in order to accommodate the Groom and all of his wives in case he was marrying a Second wife into his Household.

Errom's wives greeted us in a formal way, but they seemed to keep their distance. As Ralya's new husband, I took it to myself to fix things with her family, for the sake of my wife's happiness.

After two or three hours, came the least subtle moment of all the ceremony: tradition dictated that we had to state it openly when we retired from the party to go perform the Binding. You know, as if in an Earthling wedding, the bride and groom stood up and say, "We're leaving the party to go home and make love for the first time as husband and wife."

We arrived for the last time at the guest house I had been living in and we ran upstairs to the main bedroom. Ralya untied a knot at her shoulder to let her dress fall to the floor and came to open my shirt, popping some buttons and almost ripping the fabric. Ralya instantly gave me a guilty look when she saw the fresh scars on my body, but then she hugged me planting her naked breasts on my chest and started French kissing me right away, using her hands to press herself against my body while I did the same grabbing her ass with one hand and caressing her nape with the other.

In this guise, we moved to the bed, then Ralya finished taking off my shirt and started kissing and caressing my chest down to my abdomen and she found herself sitting on the edge of the bed right at the moment she started taking off my trousers and underwear. She pulled down everything together to my knees and opened her mouth to eat hungrily at my manhood, with a passion that made her moan as she moved her head. Every time her jaw got tired, she stopped to lick, kiss or nip my member. One of the times she did so, she looked directly to my eyes and when she knew I was looking back at her, she winked lustily and started swallowing me slowly until almost than three quarters of my shaft where inside her mouth, quite a feat for a beginner. That was the limit she had found herself with, and started bobbing her head with increasing speed while grabbing at my hips with both of her hands. Her rhythm was becoming frantic, and her suckling noises joined with her moans to push me over the limit.

Without having time to warn her, I came in my wife's mouth, pouring the load I had kept for almost four days straight. Ralya wasn't moving, and I was desperately looking for an excuse or an apology when she let my member go and looked up at me to show me her open mouth... empty. She suddenly felt shy and looked aside to say, "I asked the most reliable of my personal maids and she said that men like it when we do this..." Her voice faded as she spoke, as if she wasn't sure what to do or what to say anymore,

I said, "I like it. But more important is..." I took her chin to raise her face and said, "I was still conscious when you arrived after the fight. I heard what you said, and I want to tell you that I love you, too." She hugged my waist and I told her, "I'm going to need some minutes to be ready to go on, so I'm going to dedicate them to you."

This time, she lay on the bed and I moved over her to start kissing her lips again while I caressed her breasts. They were firm, soft and warm, with her hard rosy nipples swollen of excitement. I turned my head to kiss, nip and lick her neck, making her moan and shudder when I also pinched her nipples. I didn't take too long to open my mouth and lick at the full extension of her mounds, nibbling her breasts and sucking her nipples. I moved my hand down to untie her underwear and, passing my fingers over the moistened pubic hair, I started to explore the wet and hot petals of her flower of love. She arched her back in pleasure and spread her legs instinctively to allow me better access to her innermost places.

As I found and rubbed the hard nub between her lower lips, making her shudder and convulse, she opened her eyes and mouth, but no sound came out of it. My mouth went down kissing and licking her belly and navel until I found myself with my nose between her pubic hair. The light of the room was lit, and I had to contain a chuckle because it let me see that her hair color was natural. The orange was a darker tone than her head, making it almost red, but it also had a diagonal strand of dark blonde.

Seeing what I was up to, Ralya raised her head and tried to close her legs, totally embarrassed and saying, "Don't, it's dirty."

I winked up at her and retorted with a naughty smile, "Who is the one that said 'It is not dirty if it is for love?' tell me." She closed her eyes and relaxed her legs, what I took as a sign of surrender, and took a first taste of my wife's womanhood. It was sweet. I'm not using a euphemism, she wasn't sweet as candy, but the kind of complex sweetness you can find in a fruit. I reveled in Ralya's taste; sucking, nibbling and licking her lips and lashing at her clitoris with my tongue to make her shudder and contort in pleasure, her hands grabbing my hair and her throat letting out endless moans and screams of pleasure.

I think she was on the brink of orgasm when she stopped me to tell me, "Raise over me, my love. The wedding has made me your wife, but now I want you to make me your woman. I want you to love me with all you've got."

We kissed passionately while I directed my member to her entrance. She flinched when my manhood started to open her, but her thighs tightened at my sides and her hands grabbed my sides urging me to not stop. I entered her as slowly as my desire left me, with a pained expression on my face at the sight of my wife biting her lower lip to withstand the pain. Her moistened heat engulfed my shaft slowly until I found a resistance that popped after increasing my strength. Ralya moaned in pain, with her nails carving into my sides. I felt the heat increasing. I felt it increase to abnormal levels and spread throughout my whole body, to the point that it didn't let me breathe during a moment that I sensed as eternal.

After the strange feeling subsided, Ralya relaxed and I finally could enter to the end. "Have you felt that? The Binding is complete now. From this moment onward we belong to each other in body and soul. There's nothing that can make me betray you now."

With a smile, I answered, "Do you feel this? I'm completely inside you."

Even though she was already flushed, she turned bright red, with ears down sticking to her head and answered, "Why do you tell me something like that?"

I retorted, "You asked me to love you with all I've got."

Instead of saying anything else, she just moved her hips to invite me, and I accepted. Very slowly at the beginning, gaining speed in very small increments to give her the least pain possible. Soon the passion started to overcome the pain and she increased our rhythm on her own. The noises of wet flesh colliding joined with those of our moans, sighs and grunts to fill the room with the symphony of two people in love who each only thought of their partner's pleasure.

My body moving in and out of Ralya's at top speed and her tightening grip on my member marked the beginning of the end for our first encounter. We kissed profusely and passionately, moaning in the mouth of each other, and then she tightened so much that I thought for a second that she was going to pull me out. In the end, I was able to push myself into her to the end and implant her with my seed. We stayed immobile for some minutes, just breathing into the neck of each other and pecking kisses to the lips, necks or shoulders. I was about to move aside to rid her of my weight when she hugged me hard and said, "No! Don't move out yet, I want to keep feeling you inside me a little more."

We stayed like that, connected and contented to be in the arms of each other, until some time later she started nipping and kissing my neck again, bringing my little soldier back to attention. This time we made love slowly, enjoying each second and every sensation our bodies transmitted to the other. I don't really know how long it took us to reach orgasm, but I consider it the most intimately romantic and sensual experience in my whole life. Just before falling asleep, I felt Ralya kissing soundly my chest and saying, "I love you."