Hello! This is my debut story, please let me know what you think! I look forward to writing more in the future.
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The cave at first seemed like a godsend. Lyram bolted for it the second she saw its mouth through the darkening air. Getting caught out in the woods on a rainy night like this was asking for trouble, for fall nights in Sellaria came with frost enough to kill wayward travelers. Lyram did not want to find out what night would do to her when she was soaking wet. Any shelter was better than none, and as she took the last frantic steps to the entrance, she could not care less for how little attention she paid her surroundings.
It had been a foolish thing, thinking she could make it to the next town so lightly packed. Barely enough food for the night and morning, only a few warming crystals and her knife in her pack, and she hadn't even bothered to pack a coat. No wonder the other elven rangers all scoffed when she told them she was off with a few hours daylight left and clouds on the horizon. Why they hadn't stopped her was another problem altogether. So what if she was the newest ranger at camp? She was a hundred! She had seen plenty since graduating from the academy a year ago. She could handle anything.
Except, of course, the cold. Her breath hung in clouds before her as she inhaled deep and steadied herself, hand on the freezing stone just inside the cave. Quickly, she undid her pack and rummaged inside for the first of her heating crystals. She dashed it against the side of the cave and watched it spark to life with a warm, artificial glow. Feeling inched back into her fingers. Lyram gave a sigh of relief and slid down with her back to the wall. After a few moments of clutching the crystal close to her chest, she gave a mighty shiver. Warming crystal and shelter or not, her clothes were still soaked.
Lyram sparked two more crystals to life and set them on either side of her, equidistant from the entrance and her pack. She pulled off her boots and stockings first and laid them beside the crystal to her right to dry. Her trousers and ranger's doublet followed and went to her left. Now down to just her single long undergarment, Lyram stuck the first crystal directly before her in a careful triangle with the other two. Thin red lines of light ran between all three and in seconds the air around her grew warm. A perfect bubble of heat and dryness, just large enough for her to stretch out in.
Thunder crackled outside, and Lyram flinched. But the cave seemed sloped, and no water came in. She sighed as she felt herself thawing out. The storm would last the night at most, fall storms were always quick. She wasn't completely out of luck yet. But she didn't feel completely safe.
The light from the stones did not fully illuminate the cave. Her eyes moved about carefully, slowly. There were not really shadows, but there was plenty of darkness. Something nagged at her, stories of rangers lost on the road and never heard from again, not all of them killed. There were plenty of fates worse than that. Plenty of things lurking in the shadows.
Over the sound of the rain, Lyram swore she heard something. It wasn't quite a hiss, and it wasn't quite a whisper, but it had that effect. Something soft and languid, stealthy and quite unlike the first few threats she had thought of being in the cave: wolves and bears and the like. Her pointed ears twitched this way and that, trying to hone in on the sound.
She turned to the source of the rustling and nearly leapt from the warming triangle she'd created.
There was a woman in the cave with her, emerging from the gloom with, of all things, the expression of someone just waking up from a nap. Her eyes were still closed and she was rubbing one with a balled fist. She yawned and stretched, and in the pause created by the long motion Lyram noticed three things at once:
Her fangs, her clothing, and her tail.
She had to focus on one thing at a time, and the tail really was the thing that shocked her the most. The woman did not walk forward, but drifted forward on long, scaly tail of iridescent scales perfectly matching her thin, embroidered green and gold silk halter top. Though Lyram thought herself fit enough, ranger training was nothing if not intense, what part of the woman's body not covered in scales was more perfectly formed than any should could imagine. Tan skin looking temptingly soft in the dim light from the crystals, the serpentine waist drifting flawlessly into breasts just contained by the halter top stretching with another heaving yawn. But Lyram forced herself, though it was not hard, to focus intently on the woman's face. It was framed by her copper hair and though, still muddled with the freshness of her sleep, was striking not only for the fangs just poking out from plush lips below a slightly pointed nose, but also for her suddenly open, vibrant green eyes that were at once wide, and immeasurably deep.
She was in one sense, gorgeous, and in another downright adorable, and somewhat unsettling. A lamia. There were stories, and not all of them bad. A few sounded even...
Lyram shook herself. The eyes, she warned and reminded herself. It was all she could do to avoid the appearance of staring.
"Who's there?" the lamia asked, blinking blearily. Her eyes focused, and widened as she spied the soaking wet, somewhat shivering, elven forest ranger with a raised knife standing in a triangle of softly glowing heating crystals. To Lyram's dismay, her mouth curved slightly in a surprised smile. "Oh! A guest..."
"H-hi," Lyram managed. She cleared her throat, fought the warmth tingling into her cheeks. "I'm, uh, Lyram." She inclined her head a little. "I'm sorry if I'm, uh, intruding."
"Oh not in the slightest." The woman, the lamia Lyram corrected herself, gave another yawn. Lyram's hand went to her mouth as watching the lamia yawn forced her to copy. "This isn't really my home, but when it gets chilly I just get so... sleepy." She smiled again, and held her arms under her breasts in a way that just so pulled Lyram's gaze down. Lyram flushed when the lamia giggled at her. "I'm Shara, by the way."
"Hi," Lyram said, then kicked herself for repeating herself dumbly. Shara really was gorgeous, and she had taken Lyram by surprise, but that was no reason for her to go completely stupid. "It's raining."
"I hear that." Shara raised herself up on her tail and looked past Lyram. "Pretty bad, too. You shouldn't be out in weather like that."
"Hence me being here," Lyram tried.
"Hence..." Shara drew the word out into a long hiss that sent a not entirely unwelcome shiver down Lyram's spine. Down and, Lyram swallowed, further than a shiver and a tingle like that had any reason going. Shara's eyes drifted to the warming crystals. She inched nearer. "Those feel... lovely..."
"They're nice," Lyram said, fighting the urge to step back as the lamia drew nearer still. "Certainly helping dry my clothes."
Shara blinked.
"Not all of them, though," she said, smirking. "That looks rather wet, too."
Lyram looked down and raced to cover some part of her, all of her, with her arms. Her undergarment, her white undergarment, was indeed soaked through as the rest of her clothing.
Shara giggled.
"It's..." again that shivering, tingling hiss, "nothing I haven't seen before."
"T-that doesn't mean I w-want to show it off!" Lyram said, her voice peaking higher than she meant it.
Shara rolled her eyes.
"Why not? You are not an unattractive elf."
Lyram froze.
"Excuse me?"
"Plenty of you come by and hardly notice me in the trees or grass." Shara gave another sleepy yawn, and the sound of it only further relaxed Lyram. She fought another while Shara spoke on, "I like watching you. You are such curious things, faster and quieter than those humans some valleys over. More respectful, too. I always figured that I'd frighten you or something if I tried to speak with you, but here we are." She smiled a little. "This isn't so bad, is it?"
"N-no..." Lyram admitted. "I don't hear entirely bad things about your kind, either."
