The Gate - Elvish Has Left

"Let me show you something," Lelu said in his mind, and she reached around Stefan, grabbed Carny's tail, and pulled hard.

"YEEEEEAAAAAHHH!!!" shrieked Carny as scalding jolts of sensations ran from the base of her tail to her pussy. She began thrusting back at Stefan like a madwoman, nearly driving him backwards off the bed. She started chanting with each plunge of his cock "Buck me! Buck me! Buck me!" which caused Stefan and Lelu to start laughing. She shoved back so hard that Stefan landed on his back and Carny was sitting reverse cowgirl, driving herself down on his shaft her breasts flopping crazily, her pussy clenching his cock like a vice as she came again, her orgasm causing her to fall back on Stefan who was now spurting deep into her pussy. Gasping, Lelu lay down with them, enjoying a hands-free orgasm of her own which was fueled by Stefan's shuddering climax.

The three lovers relaxed at the very edge of the mattress, glad that their gyrations didn't throw them on the floor. "Oh shit!" gasped Stefan. "That was... Gods how I love you both."

"You're such a dumbshit, how did a couple of hot gzantaz (untranslatable but always used in a sexy context) like us meet up with a goof like you?" grinned Carny, which caused Lelu to start laughing as she hugged Stefan.

"Wait, what?" Stefan was shocked but Lelu had to cover her mouth, she was laughing so hard.

"I'm yelling Buck me! Buck me! And you're just plodding along like you're reading a book or something." Carny pantomimed reading a book and turning pages which caused Lelu to laugh even harder.

"Buck me?" asked Stefan, "what the hell do you mean by that?"

Lelu's answer entered his mind as Carny looked at him and shook her head sadly. "Honey, she's asking you to be more aggressive when she says that."

"Huh? Seriously? I thought she was new at this and mispronouncing 'fuck me'." Now Stefan was confused.

"No, virgin bunnies know what they want, they don't hide sex in warrior bunny society."

"I didn't know that, now I feel stupid." Stefan turned to Carny and said, "I'm sorry sweetheart, I thought I was doing good..."

Carny looked up from her imaginary book. "I know, I'm just giving you grief Poppa, you did good." She scrambled up next to Stefan and snuggled with him and Lelu. "You're the best I've ever had!" After a pause the three lovers started laughing and as the exhausted Stefan drifted off to sleep, in her mind, Carny wondered who Stefan loved the most.

Now Lelu spoke in Carny's mind, "Carny, is it fair to ask poppa who he loves the most? How would you feel if he asked me that in front of you?"

"You heard that?"

"Yes, now relax and get some rest. The Archchancellor is going to brief us on what happened to us, and why they brought us here later today." Their talking rousted Stefan from his entirely too brief nap.

"I'm sorry," sniffed Carny. "It's just that I love you both so much, if you had left me behind, I don't know what I would have done."

"We wouldn't leave you behind Carny," said Stefan as he hugged her and was surprised to see her starting to cry, "well take you anywhere we go, we're a family."

"She means when we almost died."

"What do you mean almost died?" Stefan demanded. Then he looked at his hands, the skin didn't look as old as it normally does, the wrinkles that accompany your fortieth birthday were gone, so were a few scars, and so was the constant aching in his back and knees. He grabbed Lelu's hand and said silently, "Let me see, please?"

"Ok, but don't freak out..." She looked at Stefan and allowed him to see what she saw, and he didn't see a tired, slightly paunchy, forty something retired marine, he saw the finely muscled young man that he used to be, but with shock white hair on his head, face, chest, and pubis.

"I did die," he gasped, "now I'm Santa Claus."

Epilogue:

"I believe we are all here now? Am I not mistaken?" asked Har Chalktaw, archchancellor of the University of Vinnofri. In the room was himself and a grad student whose name Har never bothered to learn even though that grad student was Har's personal secretary and had been for two years. Also was Carny, Glencove, Jolietta, Layla, and the cage holding Tana and Orla. Tana insisted that her friends Duck Soup and Cocoanut join them, but it appeared that both horses preferred to graze in the park and be petted by the elven children of Vinnofri than to come to this meeting.

"The guests of honor are not here, chancellor," moaned an extremely bored Layla.

The archchancellor adjusted his spectacles and began to read from some notes as he said, "At their request I locked them into my office and again I locked the door to this room thus preventing their..." he was interrupted by the soft "PAMPH!" of several million air molecules being shoved out of the way by the sudden arrival of Stefan and Lelu. "Ah, I believe they are with us now, but you are wrong Ms. Hanover, I did detect some magic, so we'll have to continue research on your remarkable mode of travel. Good show, shall we begin?"

"I want to know what happened to us," demanded Stefan as he and Lelu sat down next to each other. "Did I die, or what?"

"Or what?" asked Har unfamiliar with American forms of speech.

"Exactly," said Stefan.

Har was confused but he slogged right along, he has given several freshman orientations, so he was used to this. Universities are new in the elven world, they never really taught before, and Archchancellor Chalktaw believes that freshmen are the reason. "I assume that you would like to know why you are still alive?" Stefan nodded and Har Chalktaw continued, "In the matter of the assumed death..."

Stefan interrupted "In Quenya please."

Har felt even better about this, rather than slogging about looking for vaporous syllables in the lingua franca of Falmart to hide the painful truth. He must be honest when speaking in Quenya, but since hardly anyone, including a green man, speaks Quenya anymore, no one would be the wiser. "Very well then, Esse i erma O i faire O Stefan ni polE eques i so trulime dyd fírima. Are there any more questions? If not, then we'll..."

"Ok, I died," said Stefan, "I get it, then why am I here breathing and talking and shit."

Seeing the shocked look on the Archchancellor's face, Lelu added, "I'm sure you know of our father, Dayv Jowns? He's fond of Quenya. My lover learned it to make daddy happy." Both Stefan and Lelu made a fist and bumped them together without taking their eyes off the Archchancellor who is well acquainted with the works of Dayv Jowns, the foremost scholar on the Quenyan language in Falmart and a major donor to the university. Dr. Jowns probably did more to get this university open and put Har Chalktaw in the Arch Chancellor's seat than anyone else. The archchancellor realized that when dealing with the daughters of Dayv Jowns, honesty is the best policy, even though it's not part of University policy.

Archchancellor Chalktaw began to explain, "what happened when you bonded was part of several different functions of the bonding process. Couples that bond rarely go through all of them as rapidly as you did. You both mentioned the smell of the other person, how it mingled with your own scent, this is called the Tak Marhon physical attraction caused by a mingling of complimentary odiferous potions created by your own bodies." Har Chalktaw was nervous because this was deep stuff, his postgrads got slogged down on this.

"We call the potions pheromones," said Stefan.

"Good term!" said Har, "Quite scientific sounding, may we use it?"

"Uh, yeah, go ahead. It's not copyrighted."

The archchancellor wrote down the concepts of pheromones and copyrighting then continued. "Next you experienced the ability to see what was driving each other's emotions, this was the Khid Marhon The viewing of the heart."

"That's when I knew if I killed him, he wouldn't hold it against me personally," said Lelu.

"That's right, you were following a lawful order," said the marine as their eyes found each other. "And I knew how much you really wanted to, at first."

"You were so brave to let me," she said, losing herself in his eyes.

"You were so beautiful," he was starting to get misty with the memory, "how could I not?"

That really stunned the Archchancellor, but he pressed on. He sounded like an embarrassed parent giving their child the birds and the bees speech. "Then comes the big one, where your thoughts and feelings mingle, where you know each other's minds so completely that you lose yourself into a wonderful stew of something called "us," when that happens, you're going to really..."

"Oh, we know! The Dzig Marhon The hearing of the soul, the combining of feeling and thoughts," said Lelu. "I still remember when it happened," and she turned shyly to her human and gave him that smile.

"Our lips met, and I suddenly realized that I wasn't alone in the world," said Stefan as his eyes met Lelu's and they drew closer.

"I knew that there was someone who would let me share my pain and my joy with them," said Lelu as their lips grew closer and closer.

"A-HEM!" The Archchancellor restored his position of leadership. "These do not always happen in this order, nor do they often happen close together. The bonding of a couple can take decades, I remember when your father and mother bonded, it took nine years.

"I think it took us nine minutes," said Lelu.

"Just you and me under that tree...," said Stefan.

"Sharing our hidden dreams and feelings...," said Lelu.

"Getting closer to each other with every heartbeat..." said Stefan as their lips grew closer.

"A-HEM!" Har Chalktaw was starting to consider retirement. "Now we come to the Psak Marhon The merging of the bodies -- the bodies of the couple..." He was interrupted by uncontrollable giggling from the fairy cage. "Do you two MIND?" roared the professor.

"He said, "the bodies of the couple," said Tana with a snerk.

"Merging of the bodies," giggled Orla who then made gasping noises to simulate sex. The fairies tried to stifle themselves but that only made their laughing worse. Eventually Carny took off her cloak, folded it up and covered the fairy cage with it and soon their giggling was replaced with snoring.

"It's the only way I can get sleep some nights," said Carny.

The archchancellor took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then returned to his lecture. "The bonding process tries to even the physical attributes of the two... participants." He held his left hand up high and his right hand down low. "Where Lelu's natural elven strength is up here, and your human strength is down here..." he brought his right hand up to the level of the left hand, "the bonding process is now bringing your strength up to here."

"And that's what killed me?" asked Stefan.

"Ummm, no. It was when the process tried to even out your ages that it hit a snag." He held his hands the same as before, left high, right low. He shook his left hand. "Here's Lelu, two hundred fifty-seven years old..."

"Two hundred twenty-six!" shouted Lelu and Layla.

"Correct," continued the archchancellor, "two hundred twenty-six years old, just entering the prime of her life, and here's you down here at forty-two years of life, middle age, preparing to head into your senior years. The process tried to bring you up and bring her down to about the same level to even out the two bodies life expectancy." He brought up his right hand until it was halfway to the left hand. "When you reach what we estimate is the equivalent of one hundred four years old the process hits a snag."

"What was that snag?" Stefan asked.

The archchancellor sat down and sipped his tea. "You died."

"I DIED?" Stefan's eyes were big around as dinner plates.

"Well not died - dead, more like died - not living anymore." The archchancellor took a deep breath and nodded. "Believe me, it wasn't easy trying to determine what the bonding process was doing while Rory Mercury was there the whole time demanding your soul and swinging around that great battle axe at anyone that entered the room. It was a terrible mess. Terrible." He shook his head at the memory causing his jowls to flap.

He took out his pipe, struck a match and puffed thoughtfully. He puffed out a smoke ring, then puffed out a smoke arrow which soared through the center of the smoke ring. "In the end we believe that the process tried another tactic and instead of trying to equate your ages, it evened out your physical characteristics. We used various forms of magic to keep you from rotting away until the process brought you back around, say wot."

"So, am I still not alive?" asked Stefan.

"Don't know."

"Am I forty-two years old and just look twenty? Or am I two hundred twenty-six and just look twenty?" asked Stefan.

"No idea."

"Will I live as long as Lelu?" asked Stefan.

"Can't say."

"Am I still human?" Stefan asked.

"Not a clue."

"I'm not an elf, why is this happening?"

"Not sure."

"What do you know?" Stefan was on the edge of hysterics.

"It's starting to happen to Carny too." This caused Carny to pat her fists together silently in joyful excitement. "She's already described the Tak Marhon, that fairy moan thing that you mentioned."

"Pheromone," Stefan corrected.

"Right. Like I said."

"So, how old am I now?" demanded Stefan.

The archchancellor shook his head, "Like I said, two hundred twenty-six."

"I'm a human, we don't get that old."

The archchancellor puffed his pipe and blew out a perfect smoke cube. "I guess you do now. Can we get on to the primary matter for discussion?" He looked around the room and seeing no objection said, "fine. Our primary purpose in bringing you here is to prepare you to release prisoners held by the dethroned rebel prince Zorzal El Caesar. Naturally, if any of you are captured this university and city will disavow you..."