Tellings of the Wheel 02

"...if there is such a thing as perfect human beauty, in face and form, then you--"

"Loial!" Rand shouted. The Ogier's ears stiffened in embarrassment. Rand's own ears were red; Loial's words had been too close to what he himself was thinking.

The woman laughed musically, but the next instant she was all regal formality, like a queen on her throne. "I am called Selene," she said. "You have risked your life, and saved mine. I am yours, Lord Rand al'Thor." And, to Rand's horror, she knelt before him.

__________

Those days spent in that... place, that other world that was a dim reflection of the real world, weighed heavier on Rand than he let on. Sure, it was dreary. Yes, he and his friends almost died. Of course, meeting the most beautiful woman in existence in the most unbelievably coincidental manner imaginable would be enough by itself to addle anyone. Yet, it was none of these things that had him mulling quietly, even sullenly, as they travelled through Cairhien.

It was the dreams.

No, not dreams; nightmares, and not the kind he had, sadly, been growing used to. Ba'alzamon... well, the Dark One was the Dark One. Mortally terrifying, but in a way that was dishearteningly predictable now, all these weeks after leaving Emond's Field. He could deal with them, after a fashion, or at least he'd convinced himself that was the case. What was burning furrows in his mind were nocturnal visions of a different and, in many ways, darker sort.

The first time it'd happened was in that shadow-touched reality where they'd met Selene; in fact, that very night. After a day of being enchanted by the comely stranger, of hearing her tales and marveling at her knowledge, he'd gone to bed that night with a smile; nodding off to the sounds of conversation between the woman who made him think so many inappropriate, yet exciting thoughts, and Loial, his forever-inquisitive Ogier friend. After so long with his nerves frayed to a dozen twisted strands, the comparative normalcy was a welcome balm.

He didn't know how long it was after that when he opened his eyes. Well, when he dreamed that he opened his eyes. It was still dark, but even in the mists of the false reality, there was an ample amount of moonlight bathing the group; more than enough to make out details of shapes and figures, all washed in silver. Figures especially. Especially one figure that was a vision gifted by the Light. Selene, the young Cairhienen noblewoman, disrobed, on her knees, with her back arched and neck bent so that her gorgeous face was oriented to take the silver orb above full-on.

Paralyzed in a way that often happened in a dream, Rand could only stare, wetting dry lips, attempting to do all he could to fix the image in his mind so he would never forget it. He'd thought he knew was perfect was--Egwene, Elayne, Moiraine all came to mind, even Min, the tomboy from Baerlon, had her own kind of unassailable beauty--but he'd been so, so wrong. Selene gave new definition to the word with her flawless body. Her sleek, trim-but-firm midriff was gently swaying, which translated to the hypnotic wobble of a pair of breasts that could only have been duplicated by a master sculptor working with the purest of marble. Even what should have been the less lust-inducing parts of her set him aflame. Her lustrous, ebon hair brushing the small of her bare back, her lush, parted lips sucking in the still night air, her delicate, fluttering lashes that veiled her eyes... it was all a wash of imagery that spawned a maelstrom of emotion in the young wayfarer. The whole thing was so surreal, even the orientation of her body seemed unnatural; she was too high up off the ground, and the movements of her body were too wide to be natural.

It was when Rand forced the dream's shackles to relent a bit, and he shifted on his blanket to get a look at what he knew had to be Selene's mouthwatering rump, that that last mystery was cleared up, and he felt his stomach clench. It was me she was making eyes at!

The young woman who'd suggested such tantalizing things to him was not there alone; underneath her, between her spread knees, Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, lied prone, his own face screwed up and teeth gritted in an expression that could either be pain or ecstasy. Maybe both. In any event, the Ogier's huge, sausage-like fingers were gripping the woman's pale cheeks hard, almost threatening to crush the globes like melons as he pulled her pelvis into his again and again.

"Ahhhh, there's nothing like an Alantin." Selene was humming, her body vibrating as she copied Rand's gesture of seconds before and wet her lips with her tongue. Her undulations never ceased, though, even as her hands came up to caress her breasts, her fingers roughly plying her own nipples like she was punishing herself. "Oh, Oh by the Great Lord... I'd forgotten..." Back still arched, the young woman's spine twisted to-and-fro, helpless as she reached her crest. "Yes! Yesssss..." Her back bent and she hunched over Loial, planting her palms on that broadest of chests, her achingly firm rear flexing and jerking in a silver-limned blur while her black hair brushed the Ogier's own exposed nipples. "Give it to me, you beast man. You aberration! You invader! Give it all to meee!"

Loial roared then and bucked his hips up, driving himself into her in a way that Rand imagined should have been maiming for Selene, if not physically impossible. It's good that this is a dream. Rand was barely aware of the sentiment as he kept watching, riveted, the hair on his arms standing rigid, as Loial drove himself up again and again, harder and harder, seeking to empty himself completely into her. Selene, for her part, looked to be experiencing nothing but bliss, and matched her mate hammer-blow for hammer-blow. After a surprisingly long time, though, the pair had exhausted their lusts on each other and relented; Loial dropping fully back to earth, and Selene draping herself across him, looking like a child being held in her father's arms. The pristine stillness was only broken by her soft susurrations.

"Talented young Alantin, aren't you?" She shakily pulled a few inches off him, her full breasts making pools of pale skin on his chest, and stroked his beardless cheek. "And so eager. I barely had to do a thing. You're primed for humans in a way, I think." At a rumbling murmur from him, she put a finger on his broad lips to shush him. "No, don't speak. It would be inane anyway. Just let me enjoy this." She placed her head softy back down on his sternum. "It's been so long, and you're such a good distraction. Should I let you remember something of this, I wonder? You'll never have a woman like me, especially a human one. You're too gentle, and without... preparation, we're too delicate. Perhaps..."

Her eyes drifted closed then. "I'm not unkind. I'll give you access to my domain and let you have dreams of our time together, for as long as you can enjoy them. For now, sleep. We have a long way to go, and I have a long time to make up for."

__________

That had only been the first. If his insane dreaming had begun and ended there, Rand would have chalked the whole thing up to Grolms and Portal Stones muddling his head, especially since both Selene and Loial dealt with him just as they always had after that night; companionable on his part, pure sultry temptation on hers. Light, at one point, when she put his shirt on to clean her dress, Rand almost saw all of the woman's legs! There was a good chance that she did it on purpose because she was interested in him. Maybe even wanted to marry him.

But that night was not the end. Even when they found their way back to their own world, the nightmares continued, and Rand grew increasingly sure that the madness of Saidin was taking him.

In the inn called the Nine Rings, their first stop in Cairhien, he was given a piece of advice by the innkeeper after an argument with Selene; go to her room and make up. If the hint behind the words put pure flame to Rand's cheeks, well, he at least agreed with the spirit of the notion... or he had thought he did. He must have been more exhausted than he knew, though, but he obviously fell asleep first, and only dreamed that he went to her room. Must have.

In the dream, the door to Selene's chambers had been unlocked, which he took as both a sign and an invitation, and he'd opened it with an apology ready to spill off his tongue. Instead, it got caught in his throat, while his tongue cleaved right to the roof of his mouth. On top of a bed that looked like a child's comparatively, Loial was on his knees, elbows bent and forearms braced on the flattened mattress, issuing grunts so deep that Rand was surprised that the floor wasn't vibrating. As it was, every patron in the building must have been wondering if the innkeeper was having some construction work done that accounted for the tremors they were feeling. Selene, for her part, was experiencing her own tremors, and though the origin was the same, the results were decidedly not.

The woman, improbably stuffed once again with the tree trunk that the Ogier bore, was a trembling, twitching, gyrating mess under him. So eager to commence, she wasn't even fully nude this time; her signature silver dress was bunched at her waist, exposing only her silky, creamy legs, both of which were wrapped around Loial's waist to the extent nature allowed, while her heels dug in hard on his driving hips, just above where his haphazardly undone trousers sloped down at this mammoth thighs. Neither cared if they weren't presentable for the activity, they both were lost in an absolute fog of animalistic rutting; mating with each other without a care for the world beneath.

"Hnngh! Gaah!" Selene's whines and exhalations were breathier, more helpless than the previous that Rand had heard from her. "Tree boy, you... Ungh!" Her eyes went wide and she was barely able to wriggle her deceptively-delicate body free from the borderline crushing it was undertaking so she could bury her face in Loial's shoulder... where she bit down. Hard.

"Hungh. Hungh. Hungh." Her throaty, staccato grunts went on for nearly a minute as she clung to her Ogier lover for dear life, and all the while Loial kept thrusting into her like he was possessed, knowing nothing other than his drive to seed the creature within which he was fully sheathed. Finally, with a roar so very alien coming from such a gentle creature, Loial slammed his roiling partner up against the headboard, forcing her back to arch nearly double as his emptied himself utterly into her.

He's trying to drown her from within. The mad thought stuck in Rand's mind as he saw the Ogier's copious seed spew from Selene's tremulous mound around his furious spear. Judging by the sounds she made, though, she was not only surviving the attempt, but relishing it.

"Oh. My. Lord!" Selene shouted her proclamation as her body convulsed, before her strength gave out and she relinquished her hold on Loial, who himself, as if acting on a prompt, let her go and extracted himself from her to roll over onto the floor next to the bed. As he lied there, breathing like he'd run a league, Selene just laughed at the ceiling.

"I am not too proud to admit that this age bears its own wonders." The torn bodice of her dress heaved as she attempted to speak while catching her breath. Her sweat-sheened skin was still a vision, even as her wildly mussed hair looked like she just endured a hurricane. "No Alantin has ever done this to me. You have some very unique proclivities, my young lover. I'm giving serious consideration to keeping you once my time has come. You can scratch a different itch than he will."

Her lids drooped then as her smile grew languid, and she began rubbing a hand on her stomach idly. "So warm... I wonder if Ishar Morrad can be returned to work his miracles." She giggled. "How depraved would that be? I'm sure he'd be all for it though, the letch. After all, look at how his other pets carry on. Have you ever seen what Myrddraal do to women? Even I don't want to know what happens to the pretty ones when they're done."

If he hadn't been sure before, the girl's nonsensical rambling convinced Rand that this was a dream, and it was past time for him to wake up. Conceding that, for some reason, he needed to be in his bed to do so, he made his way back to his room, seeking an escape from this other version of a false reality, and leaving his phantasmal imaginings behind him, where he prayed they'd stay.

And still, that wasn't the end.

__________

I should have known that insanity wouldn't be predictable.

Not predictable, not even remotely sensible... as shown by what he came up on when he and his friends were hiding from the Trollocs in the Illuminators' chapter house. Selene had found them after she had disappeared from the Nine Rings, the inexplicable coincidences surrounding her being almost expected at that point, and had, as per usual, filled Rand's head with all sorts of notions. Then his back was turned for a few minutes while he made sure things were safe and decided what actions to take. Just a few minutes. When he returned, there they were. Again.

This time Selene was bent over a table bearing all sorts of Illuminator oddities, her white skirts already thrown up over her pert rear, but now her face showed far more surprise than anything else as Loial held her down with one hand while he pawed at his belt buckle. "This... I didn't make you..." She stammered, trying to crane her neck back to look at the rumbling Ogier. "I may be out of practice at fine tuni--" Her mouth formed into a yawning O of shock as Loial finally succeeded and slammed himself home. "Not that one!"

Rand wasn't sure what she meant by that, but the crazed Ogier didn't seem to care a whit as he smothered her tiny-seeming body with his hulking mass, gripping the edge of the table past her head for leverage as he plowed her again, and again, and again, and again; seemingly lost in his own madness.

Even in the grip of his delusion, Rand was concerned for Selene; no human could withstand the kind of raw hunger and fury that Loial was foisting on her, but his twisted perceptions were wrong. She was absolutely loving it.

"Aaaargh!" The bellow from her delicate throat was outrage and rapture conjoined, just as she was with Loial. "I never even let him..." Selene stretched herself out on the table and held on to Loial's wrists, her small hands not even covering half of them, and used them as a base so she could rock her body back, meeting his forward thrusts with a voracity of her own. "Have... have to keep drawing more... ung! More and more... just to keep from... from... oh. Oh. OH. Ooooooo..."

The wail streamed from between her parched lips in a long, rising crescendo, even as her eyes actually rolled back into her head, and she hunched under her ravisher while her entire body clenched and relaxed, clenched and relaxed, in a cavalcade of climax. On top, Loial's brows wrinkled with concentration, like he was attempting to figure out just what more he could do to lay claim to the creature gleefully impaled on his... uh... ogierhood, until the path ahead was chosen for him, and he filled her once more with a flood of his passion.

Sticky, sweaty, and glowing in a way that gave him goosebumps as she reveled in what had been done to her, Selene, for the first time that Rand could remember, turned her face upward and planted a long, affectionate kiss on Loial's broad, panting mouth. "Oh, I will definitely be keeping you, lover."

As if pulled on strings, Loial rose then, and his long extraction from her elicited a fresh gasp and warm smile. Straightening herself up hastily as the situation they were in finally dawned on her, Selene looked around. She didn't see Rand, of course, because they were all in a dream, and that would have been crazy. "The Trollocs are nearing." She sighed regretfully, casting one last look at Loial. "We must be about our business."

Wake up, wake up, wake up... Rand shook his head as he walked back around the corner. After a moment, when Selene and Loial reappeared, neither looking anything like they'd seemed a minute earlier, he knew he was all right again. For now. Please, Light, don't let this happen again. Not like this.

Of course, men wish and the Creator laughs.

__________

"...fear."

Rand was in a bed, he could tell that much. Someone was there with him, oddly, and he could hear voices. His memory was a jumble though, shards of images of fighting the Seanchan and Ba'alzamon, and it was impossible to keep a coherent track on what was happening around him.

"Tend him well for me until I come for him."

Selene? The shaky thought couldn't be correct. Selene had run off again, and though it was only days for him, he knew it had to be months for her, not to mention the fact that nearly the entire width of the continent should be separating them. Light, it's finally happened. I'm fully insane.

When he felt the comfortable, warm body next to his shift and leave his side, Rand, perhaps to confirm, perhaps to punish himself, conjured up the greatest act of will he'd ever undertaken and forced his eyes open as far as they could go. It wasn't much, really, but it was enough. Enough to tell him that, yes, he had indeed finally gone mad.

Selene was there, in her ever-present, clinging white gown, but, impossibly, so was Min, that young woman he'd met briefly in Baerlon months ago. Her hair's a bit longer. He swallowed. She's... beautiful. I never really noticed before. Not the flawless, otherworldly beauty possessed by Selene, but utterly compelling, nonetheless.

Apparently, he wasn't the only one compelled. As Min stood straight before the taller woman, looking up into the Cairhienen noble's dark eyes, Selene brazenly reached up and cupped her more than full breast, freely massaging it through the wool dress, forcing a gasp from her. "Wha... mmm, what are you doing to me?"

"You are no true rival, but you can be useful. Keep him wanting. Primed and ready for my return. It's a service you'll provide, and I do reward faithful service." Selene leaned in and gripped the back of Min's head with fingers that laced through her short hair, holding it in place as she planted her lips on the other woman's. The act was tender, generous even, and Min responded well, humming contentedly as she reciprocated, looping her arms around Selene's narrow waist and pressing her body close to the other woman.

They continued this way for a bit, growing more and more animated as they felt each other out. Selene's tongue wrestled with Min's, coming into view in flashes as the two women rotated their heads, saliva smearing each other's lips. Selene was steadily moving the other woman back, and soon Min was pressed against a wall, though she seemed oblivious to it, being lost in what was happening to her and giving a series of small, high mewls of satisfaction.

Selene took advantage of that and inched one knee between Min's, subtly spreading them, pulling Min's skirts taut, until she was able to wedge her thigh in and lift it up. Selene pressed it tight, then began a series of bobs, putting pressure on Min's womanhood in a rhythm that had the young, ripe thing gasping in surprise. Min, wide-eyed and adoring, finally pulled her face from Selene's so she could stare lovingly into her eyes, and proceeded to grab firmly onto the other woman's shoulders and ride like she was astride a bucking steed.

"Ugh. Ugh. Light. Oh. LIGHT." The choppy words made it sound like Min really was on a horse, one that threatened to throw her, if her grip on Selene was any indication, and one that she absolutely meant to stay atop. She lifted her own leg and hooked it around Selene's waist, the wool stocking and the thigh it sheathed making an appearance as the skirt was pushed away. Pushed away, then ripped away by some unseen force as Selene decided that things needed to be moved along. Skirt... dress... every little bit that kept what little remained of Min's chastity in place. Now only in those stockings, the tomboy was lifted by that same unseen force and deposited on the bed next to Rand with a moan of despair at having her fun interrupted.