The Virgin Elf-Maid

Kit Fairbourne of the H'Allee Elves was tall and lean, the pride of her mother's house but still young for her age at nineteen summers. Lovely and delicate, Kit nevertheless preferred to run and climb the vast limbs and branches of the Great Oaks, than to practice the delicate arts. Cursed by moon-sickness, by nineteen a shadow had settled over her, and when she was not tending to her studies, to her family, to finding spiritual fulfillment alone among the branches, as many H'Allee and other elf tribes did and had for centuries, Kit was to be found, being lovely and delicate and depressed under the covers of her comfortable sleigh bed, suspended from two mighty branches that ran through her bedroom in her mother's house.

The bed had been tied to the branches with magical elven cord, the secret of the Khar'l'na Elves to the north, who had made unbreakable ropes for eons and were some of the finest sailors among the elves that dared cross waves.

As Kit would flop her long legs onto the bed, the ropen cords would nonetheless allow the bed to sway ever so gently, moving naturally as Kit rolled herself onto the heavy wooden bed, hanging from the branches above as if it were as light as a sailor's hammock.

The Great Oaks stretched for dozens and possibly hundreds of miles, as the humans measured them in those days, or so the humans estimated, as the "Tree Elves" as the other races called them, "did not take kindly to visitors," as the other races would say with a twinkle in their eye, and often a wink, to make sure the hearer knew they were speaking euphemistically.

Kit lived with her mother in the forest on the edges of the Great Grass Desert, and her mother's bedroom was across the hall of their high-aloft house, with a commanding view of the two suns rising each morning in the east, above the rolling expanse of razor grass that made the great grass desert so empty and impassable to all but the most hearty.

Razor grass grows knee-high to a human in long, rolling meadows. Deceptively green, deceptively lush. These are the unwanted parts of the human lands. Prosperity and human cities are only a few days ride, in any direction but West into the elves giant forest. The coastal towns to the east of taste and trade are that same distance, and have been for centuries. But the Great Grass desert remains un-thickly settled, by humans.

And yet, the humans hack out their settlements amid the razor grass. Cursing the sun that is relentless, cursing the heat and the desolation. Raising fruit trees and nut trees for shade and for trade and for food, and cursing the mites and the bugs that even elf magic will not keep away. And, when they cannot be overheard, cursing the elves in their Great Oak Forest to the West, living high up in the branches where heat and storm have little sway, in the great oaks aeons old, as old and as large as mountains.

And where humans are not welcome, and where non-elves are just as rare.

But though the treetop house looks out at the razor grasslands, there is little to see, as any human habitation is far away, beyond the crests of the nearer hills.

The elf-lady and her elf-maid daughter had dwelt in this old elf house for several years, having moved from deeper in the miles-long overgrowth of vast, multilevel oak tree branches upon which the H'Allee Elves had made their civilization, for there was no city to be found, but there was continuous elven habitation, in and among and at one with the several dozen great oaks that gave thousands of elves across many miles, all they needed.

The humans estimated and measured the great oaks of the elves' forest to be five hundred feet above the level of the ground. But these were merely the rest trees standing on the edge of the Great Oak Forest, right along the border with the Great Grass Desert. The humans speculated that deeper into the forest, even taller and older Oaks might stand, older and taller and closer to the center of the H'Allee's forest, were human geographers were certainly unwelcome.

Kit and her mother, along with Kit's two elder brothers, had moved from an ancient elf community, far further down the trees' trunks and closer to one of the many rivers that nourishes the great trees down below at their roots. It was an ancient community, with strong connections to the river and to the roots--elves had excavated into the root balls of the trees centuries ago, and had perfected ways to study the roots, to ensure the roots stayed healthy and fed by the waters of the rivers.

However, despite the vow of the same-flesh, despite strong cultural and religious expectations placed around the vow of the same-flesh, Kit's parents had differing interpretations about the necessity of upholding that particular pair-bond vow.

When Kit's father's hideous infidelities to Kit's mother were revealed among that traditional and proper elf-community where they had dwelt, the breaches of elf etiquette were such to wrench the family asunder. First Kit's mother fled, as was Elf law, which still required an elf-lady to abandon the life-vow if and only if things were so bad she must flee or die or be cursed.

Sexual humiliation was a significant curse for Kit's father to bring down upon Kit's mother. Under elf-law, her flight was evidence on its face that Kit's father was beyond his vows. To sexually humiliate the mother of one's child was deeply frowned on by elf culture, to say the least. It was well-understood as powerful enough to summon a curse from the deepest darkness, to summon and bring ancient evils even to the holiest trees, even to the brightest canopies, such was the evil power of humiliating a mate through breaking a same-flesh vow.

Kit's father had been one of those elves who goes down into the roots. Root Guardians were a noble and honored calling for elves; it took a long course of Academy and post-Academy study before one was prepared for service in the Rooting Corps.

It required elves to do things that were naturally difficult for elves to do. Going down into the roots meant going down into the darkness, into narrow tunnels, sometimes dug and shored-up though the sacred soils, sometimes long passageways though the roots themselves, through cathedrals of vast size formed by the gigantic roots of the gigantic trees, digging into the ground as powerfully as the branches sought the sky.

The elves had excavated into the roots of their tress for thousands of years, and it was said, had still not reached the bottom tip of the roots, though how deep the elves of the Great Oak Forest had dug was not well-known, and a key component of the elves' religions was the belief that the roots of the Great Oak Forest reached all the way down to the center of All Creation.

Religious dogmas and traditions aside, work in and among the roots meant elves in tight, confined spaces. Often very warm and damp, the root tunnels were warmed by an eternal heat coming from the roots themselves, a living thing in the process of doing all the things they themselves as elves were trying to do, in their own natural way.

In these dark recesses, elves have from time immemorial taken the herb known to elves as Dwarf Trees or Dwarf Grass, and set fire to it in sacred vessels in dark chambers among the spaces between roots in small gathering or solo, and in large gatherings in the cathedral-like spaces shaped in the roots.

Being underground in darkness was already a psychoactive experience for elves; adding the smoke from ground Dwarf Trees took things to an even more spiritual place.

"To elevate from the depths," was the ritual, often practiced by elves Kit's age, and largely condoned by the elves in those traditional towns, and all across the Great Oak Forest.

However, the tight, confined spaces of the roots that got Kit's father in trouble was not because he was using them for mental uplift. But, rather, the fear and excitement that exposure to the roots often produced in elves, also heightened the elves' sexual desires and sexual arousal, and thus Kit's father found himself in tight, confined spaces with comely elf-ladies who yielded in the dark to desire and to the breaking of vows.

Kit's father was neither discreet, nor attentive to Kit's mother, instead sneaking off at all hours to assignations in the tight, confined spaces below the roots.

Going down into the darkness for uplifting the mind was one matter in elvish ways. Yielding to flesh without control, dishonoring one's vow-sharer, dishonoring one's bonded-children..."disgusting," elves would say, condemning behavior like that. "Human-like," they called it.... it cost Kit's father some of the prestige in the town, but he was able to fill a need at another Root Society in the depths below an Oak on the near-side, the east side of the Flintrock River, and he lost his power to object when Kit's mother took herself and their daughter and their two sons as far as she could get easily, to the very edge, right up against the Great Grass Desert.

However, these tumults and adult changes were not lost on Kit as she herself changed into an adult, but still an elf-maid.

Kit's brothers were quickly out of the house, joining the Elf Guards and foregoing Academy training. They volunteered for dangerous assignments on a far frontier, so dangerous they could not specify the wheres and whats and whys, but in their regular letters, they confirmed they remained alive and doing their part for the Glory of Elvish Righteousness, staying on the True Path of True Causes and First Purposes, and stopping the barbarian races from encroaching and endangering those Glories.

Kit changed her name from the far more melodious "Melisandre" whom her mother had lovingly, originally named her, adopted the less-precious, less elegant name of "Kit," hid her growing beauty under skins and cloth, and began dreaming no longer of diplomatic study and travel, but now dreamed of joining the Guards, once she finished her required time at the Val'Tost Academy.

The Fairbournes were building and healing elves, primarily carpentry, but it would be mis-telling to say they were descended from the finest Elf craftsmen, and then even worse to go on to make some banal comment about the elvish skill with wood crafts, but there were and are plenty of elves who were and are merely mediocre and sufficient for wood crafts, and the Fairbournes were those. Her father's blundering into root-magic was an outlier from the past generations of the house Fairbourne. Under elf-law, though Kit might change her given name, the name of that family was stamped on her unless and until she was dead and resurrected, which was still in those days, not a common occurrence for elves and not available on demand.

Kit studied healing arts and philosophies at the Academy, but she often came home to the house of her mother, and to the creaky, and actually expertly-crafted by actual expert-elf carpenters and woodmagicians three or four hundred years ago, floors and rooms of this house among the treetops.

The house, partly closed, partly open to the leafy canopy of many-pointed oak leaves amongst which the house had nestled, the house settling into the tree and the great ancient oak settling around it, kept drawing Kit back on her breaks and holidays from the Academy, down far below at ground level, where what the "Tree Elves" called the "Wood Elves" had built a slightly different type of elven civilization on the forest floor, still in harmony with the trees and with their higher-dwelling cousins.

"School was dark and dreary," she told her mother on these surprise trips home, "I needed to get up among the light again."

Kit's mother spent most of her days going about the branches of the oaks, to the various elf-homes and elf-communities, in and among the high-growing, long-limbed oaks. Her mother took inventories and spread words, finding out if any one in the homes might be sick, or cursed, or if they needed a healer or a wizard dispatched. Most of the time, they needed a long chat about something that magicks and elf-ways could not cure, but Kit's mother was often able to talk that spiritual poison out of them.

The years had passed and now Kit's father lived far to the West, far past the western edge of the forest on the other side of the Flintrock River in the Amabala Plains, dwelling in a human city and no longer an elf root-mage. He had promised Kit's mother that he would not cross the Flintrock River, following the Ceremonial Cutting of Their Marriage Cord in the Temple of Dischord, but to spite them, the rascally elf crossed it none the less and brought his elfin knowledge to the human city there, where elf magics and elf secrets were highly sought after and one who knew them could have luxuries indeed.

Luxuries, including the greatest luxury, especially when it had been denied for so long: human women.

And for years, had Kit's mother lived without the touch of elf and her bed was chaste and empty, but always open to her daughter, who might crawl into it following a nightmare, or a heartbreak and need consoling.

But then, one summer as Kit returned from the Academy, she discovered that her mother's bed was no longer a lonely place.

Fitzroy Gamble was a beardless dwarf from the Twin Capitals far to the north, many days' journey. And, though there was a considerable height difference between Kit's mother and this dwarf, with the fine elf-lady fairly towering over him, there was no doubt to Kit as to who was in charge of their nouveau pairing. Fitzroy, though shorter than both Kit and her mother, was equally as thick and stout alone as the pair of elf-maid-and-matron combined; he was as strong as he was short; he had an easy confidence of one who had achieved much, young, and survived many difficult scraps and scrapes and battles; a ready wit that Kit enjoyed as much if not more than her mother did; and a physical affection that had melted Kit's mother's icy exterior as Kit could see that her mother literally hung on his every word, so many so sweetly complimentary, just as she physically hung onto him whenever Kit saw them together. Hand in hand, arm in arm, she had never seen her mother so constantly, physically close and touchy with anyone, let alone a male of any race, not even with Kit's father before the troubles came.

And it was not only at night, when Kit could count on hearing her mother's muffled moans of pleasures and the dwarf's moans of joy, and their shared releases behind the heavy oaken door of her mother's bedchamber.

Not only at night, for as one morning began, Kit wakening in her sleigh bed to the slight vibration--a slow, steady beat, really--rolling across the floor from her mother's bedroom and through the branches and trunks on which the house itself was built and resided. A vibration. From her mother's bed. Kit could hear it. Thump. A pause. Thump again, but slowly, with a slow windup then a Thump. And then a pause and then:

Thump. "Oh, Fitzroy." Her mother's muffled voice.

Thump. "Fitzroy, shhh, be quiet," her mother's voice, trying to be quiet.

Thump, slightly muffled. Then another thump, slightly muffled. Then another. Then her mother's wordless moan, not-so-muffled.

Kit rolls over in her bed, the bed swaying angrily, but never with any possibility of becoming unbalanced. Kit's face, her eyes, her nose, her mouth, all in the scrunched position of a full-on huff; full of the rage that only the daughter of a single mother can feel towards her mother.

Thump. Thump. Thump. Faster now. "Ugh," Kit thinks, "waking me up with their fucking." Kit finds herself arch and sophisticated; though not delicate in tastes Kit is extremely well-read and doing extremely well at the Academy, though not in subjects the Guards prefer.

"How can neither one of you be human, and yet you're both as uncontrollable as one!" Kit imagines herself venting to her one good friend in these branches, the elf-maid Wren, a student at another elf Academy two trees away.

Kit takes her pillow and puts it over her head, trying to muffle the sounds of her mother and her dwarf lover. Firmly laying on her side, her thighs are close and tight under her loose sleeping clothes, the only area where she dresses with some delicacy and loveliness.

Kit feels that feeling as her thighs press together, and with eyes closed and trying not to register any sounds of vibration in the house, of love making in the house, of fucking in the house, Kit touches her soaking wet elfish pussy, and immediately her body rewards her so sublimely for touching herself there, for making those oh-so-necessary slow circles right there. And Kit closes her eyes and keeps touching herself and tries, oh she tries, to think about that one she-elf in her Methods class, the one with the amazing nose-piercing that matches her eyes, and she tries to think of her and not of:

"Fitzroy! Fitzroy! Fitzroy!" whose name is being half-moaned, half-whispered in the early light of dawn in the house by her very hard-to-please mother, and who by his answering moans is sounding very pleased with his dwarf self and her elf-self.

The beauty of Kit's orgasm that morning, was that it made the delicate, lovely elf-maid drowsy enough to go back to sleep.

When she woke, her mother and her mother's dwarf had sated their human-like lust, and were lounging over toasted breads and jams in the kitchen, wearing each other's robes with obviously nothing on underneath, and feeding each other the sweet preserved fruits on the perfectly toasted breads.

The dwarf was wrapped entirely by his lover's spun-fabric robe, but his robe on Kit's mother made for the sauciest miniature dress Kit had ever seen her mother in. She had never dressed like this for her father, bastard though he be, had never been this happy and touchy and grabby and smiley and laughy with--

"Kit, what are you wearing!" Kit's mother yelled at her, seeing her. Kit wore naught but the overlong tunic that she could have been sleeping in--she hadn't slept in it, but she could have--but the tunic was so elegant and sophisticated and arch, and showed off how slender and fine Kit's legs were--and how long, how very long, too. And as Kit strode onto the dining porch, where her mother and her mother's dwarf were already settled, the homey scent of that human coffee brewing, every step Kit took showed exactly how long her legs were, how her legs went right up to the most darling of hips, and it was clear that because the tunic technically covered anything indelicate that a strange male might see, the sides were cut deep to go right up to leave her hips bare, and the bareness of Kit's hips made it perfectly clear that her loin wrap under her tunic had been neglected. After all, it was a casual morning on a day of general rest.

And these are are adults here. If her mother was going to be sophisticated, and flaunt her lover in the open, then Kit would be sophisticated, too.

But when her mother yelled at her to "go upstairs and dress appropriately, this is not your Academy, and I certainly hope you don't do that there," Kit thought to herself, maybe if I did I would have more friends, but Kit did not say it, only made some face-saving noises to avoid feeling utterly, totally, completely and crushingly embarrassed in front of her mother's dwarf, but back to her room she went, and when she returned, she was in soft-woven pantaloons and boyish tops, her usual self-protective armor in elf-life.

Nothing further was said on the topic, and Kit was poured a cup of the human coffee--the rare human thing irresistible to elves--and allowed into the merry discussion of the world, its politics and its arts.

Although she burned with secret embarrassment, Fitzroy Gamble was witty, and kind, and told her and her mother stories about his adventures and his battles and the many things he had done before diplomacy for the Friendly Nations. "I used to live in the desert, the real desert, not something easy and full of water like the great grass desert. And in the desert, I used to be afraid of scorpios. And I stayed scared of scorpions, until one night, I saw a mouse kill a scorpion. Now, I'm scared of mice," and the dwarf smiled and the elf-maid and her elf-mother both laughed.