A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 36: "dusting"

Author's Note:

A Drow's Dilemma began as a one-on-one roleplaying project and has been converted into a chapter-by-chapter format for weekly posting with the permission and assistance from my partner. It will contain a considerable amount of sexual themes such as femdom, lesbian, straight, 'reverse' rape, BDSM, group sex, romance, and other themes. The main goal of the story, however, is to tell an epic tale of adventures, gods and goddesses, fae, and nymphomaniacs. This episode and every episode to come will be available for free on Literotica for the foreseeable future. All characters that engage in sexual or suggestive situations are mentally and sexually mature: the human equivalent of 18 for their race.

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Episode 36: "Dusting"

While Naliira was off getting supplies for Caleldir, his oaken jailor was ever-vigilant of its ward. The tree refused to let any harm come to Caleldir. He went back to sleep for a few hours, then awoke to wander around the tree, trying to figure out if there was any way that he could escape. There was not. So he tried to find if there was a way that he could scry his friends. There was not. He did not have the right materials to send them a message, either. Well, he could probably have used his runes to create the right tools for that, but the tree was keeping too close attention on him, and smacking him down with extreme prejudice for doing anything clever.

There was neither sight nor sound of the crazed Dryad until very late in the night - only another hour or two, and it would officially be morning. Then the place which she had melded into bubbled outward. Her naked body passed through it with the grace expected of a dryad. Her bundle, however, was more or less spit out of a temporary hole.

"Husband, I'm home!" She said in a sing-song voice and with a playful smile at her lips. Still naked, Naliira laid that package of mouldering cloth out on the table. She opened it up to reveal everything that Caleldir had asked for; paper that was still mostly good to write on, fresh pinion feathers that looked recently plucked (and suspiciously bloodied,) a few ancient copper coins, and some dried ink in a bottle that she figured could be reconstituted with water. She hadn't been sure that he needed the last thing, but she found it with the paper and decided to grab it just in case.

A rather subdued Caleldir greeted Naliira's return. His eyes lit up when he saw the package she brought, though. "Ah-hah! Excellent!" He gave her a pleased kiss on the cheek, which caused a pleased blush to bloom across her cheeks. "Now I can clean up that living room, and we can spend some time in there."

Her eyes grew rather distant. She didn't even seem to acknowledge the living room's existence. But then she snapped out of it and looked toward the room in question. "Yes, I suppose it could use a good cleaning. Dust everywhere, I'm afraid." Her lips turned upward in a smile that didn't touch her eyes. She looked rather tired, in fact, from her short stint away from her home. With a weary sigh, she settled down in a chair at the other side of the table. Clearly she was interested in what Caleldir planned to do with everything she'd gathered. So she looked on with sleepy interest.

Caleldir looked down on the copper coins lying on the table. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He was about to try something that he had never done before - something he did not even know if it was possible - but he had to succeed, impossible or not. If the two drow were not here within a few days, they may not be coming at all. With that in his mind, he summoned up the most titanic telekenitic force that he could muster, and crushed the copper to fine dust. Shockwaves blew out from the center of the room. He smiled. Dust to dust.

Alarm made the tree shudder and branches whip. Neither tree nor dryad expected such strong telekinetic force. But it was over quickly, and wasn't directly harming either one of them. The branches receded with a sort of confused hesitance. Naliira simply looked surprised and impressed. She apparently trusted him to not harm her or their home. "You have learned a lot since we were separated." Naliira commented in the following silence. The smile on her face turned proud.

He turned to the dryad. "See? I told you I could make copper dust if you brought me coins. Now, if I could get some of that water over there..." Reaching out, he brought a floating sphere of water from its container to the pile of dust. Floating the copper up to the fluid, he swirled the metal and the liquid through each other until an orb of a red-green sheen hovered above the table. He forced it into the inkwell. Now that the dramatics were out of the way, he began writing an enormously complex series of intricate runic diagrams on the paper.

Naliira watched idly as Caleldir formed ink out of the copper and began to write those runes. After only a couple minutes she rested her head on her arms but continued to observe. Her foot stretched to rub lightly against his lower leg, but went no further than his knee. Whatever this was, she didn't want to distract him too badly. Neither did she want to be entirely separate from his skin. Once upon a time, Caleldir would have been utterly unable to concentrate on anything - let alone a ritual spell as intricate and intensive as this one - with a naked woman in the same room as him, especially an amorous naked woman intent on rubbing her leg against his. But after traveling with the two Duskhavens and the nymph for the last while, his tolerance for such matters was quite a bit higher.

After about an hour, he had completed one rune set. He held up the paper for Naliira to see, the patterns shimmering green-gold on its surface. "It may not be much, but I think that I can clean up some of the dust on this level with it." He walked over to the rot in the corner, and let the paper float gently down. He intoned a chant for roughly a minute, and the paper burst into a healing cool green flame that smelled of cut grass, rich earth, and roasting nuts. It 'burned' across the fungus, turning the tree healthy where it touched. But after it covered a scant few square feet, it petered out, and vanished.

"That seems like an awful amount of work for just some dust." She commented.

Despite how little the magic accomplished, even less than he had hoped, to be honest, Caleldir still surveyed the room with pride. A few more hours of work, and he could clear out the living space on this level completely, another day and he could purify the room below. Unless... Hmm, perhaps if he was to shift the matrix for efficiency... "A lot of work, I admit." He said. "I am still working out the kinks in the design. But the dust is not just in the room, it is in our minds. We have to clean out the dust in our souls every bit as much as we need to clean out the dust in our surroundings." She clearly thought that he was talking nonsense; he could see in her eyes the sympathetic look of a person who knew that their loved one has gone a bit... wrong in the head, but loved them all the same.

Naliira rose from her spot at the table and swayed over to him. The dryad had forgotten to put her dress back on after she had reentered her home. It was entirely possible that she didn't realize she was naked. Not that it mattered much: the look in her face told him that clothes were a hindrance if she got her way. "Thank you." She said with sincerity. "It feels..." Her face twisted in confusion, like she didn't understand what she was saying or why she said it. "It feels better." Then the confusion drained and it seemed that she promptly forgot it was even there. She reached him, wrapped her arms around him, and gazed up into his face with loving adoration. "I think you should be rewarded." A ghost of a naughty smile pulled at one corner of her mouth. Never mind the fact that the 'reward' she referred to had been outright rejected and forced from him the first couple times it happened.

Caleldir stiffened, in more ways than one, when Naliira embraced him. He looked down into her lovely green eyes, and melted a little. "I think that I need to keep working right now." He said. "We need to heal the tree we live in. Can't you feel how sick it is?" Another thought popped into his head. If Selene was scrying on him, as luck would have it she would likely peer in just when he was having consensual sex, and the paranoid drow would think that he betrayed her. He could not let that happen.

Her arm rose to brush against the side of his face and gently run fingers through his head until her hand rested on the back of his neck. "I think you are working too hard." She told him in almost a whisper. Her eyes lidded slightly, her pupils dilated. It was a look suited for the bedroom, especially coupled with the way her body undulated into him to press breasts against chest and rub lower stomach against manhood. "Take a break, relax with me. It takes repetition to make a family. Then we can have some breakfast and you can get back to work." Her other arm rose to join the first on the other side of his shoulder. Then she moved forward to try to press her lips against his. It was a soft kiss, a tender thing that pleaded rather than demanded. It wasn't the insatiable need for sex that Althaia had, nor was it low-burning horniness that both of the drow perpetually had that drove the dryad. No, it was the desperate want for intimate connection - and, of course the nigh obsession Naliira had with growing their family. Which also stemmed from her loneliness. This was apparent in her eyes, in the way she clung to him, in the words she spoke to him.

Caleldir did not move away from the dryad's kiss, accepting it, and even, somewhat reluctantly, returning it. His sudden suspicion that Ashyr and Selene could scry on in him and watch him at any moment was reigning him back in, just after he had decided that resisting the beautiful dryad was pointless. When the dryad broke the kiss, he sighed a little. It hurt him to see the pain in her eyes after his rejections. But it hurt him just as much to betray, or look like he was betraying, the two drow. How could he walk this tightrope? "I... could use a little relaxation." He said uncertainly. "But... I do not know if I am ready..." He wondered if she could sense the conflict within him, the struggle between his urges, bodily and emotionally, and his loyalties. But he was not resisting any more. He did not know if he could.

"Of course you are ready, or will at least be there soon." She said. Her hand lowered to stroke his manhood through the fabric of his robes. Her other hand also moved from his shoulder to the ties at his robe. In the meantime, that sickly color was returning just to the tips of her hair. She didn't look like she was going to go violent quite yet, but there was a hint of it at the edges. As always when they were in the position, Caleldir was treading on eggshells. She wanted it too desperately, and despised even a hint of denial.

Branches came up just enough to brush his feet and ankles in casual warning. They neither grabbed nor pushed, but they could do either in an instant. The tree was grateful for the little bit of help that Caleldir offered, but gratefulness only went so far.

"You love me, don't you?" She asked as a tragic look crossed her features. "You wouldn't want to deny me anymore." The dryad spoke more to herself than to Caleldir, and in a voice more than a little twinged with her own brand of insanity. "You know what happens when you deny me." This was definitely spoken to him, and definitely a warning.

This whole situation was doing wonders for Caleldir's ability to read people. For instance, right now he could tell that Naliira was about to go full-on mad dryad and go back into rape mode. Which would be fine, except for the crash she inevitably had afterwards. That always made him feel unreasonably guilty about the whole situation. "My body is ready..." He said slowly. "But I... well..." He sighed. "It is complicated. My feelings are complicated. We were apart for too long. I do not know if I am ready to be fully your husband again! I mean, my memories are so foggy, it is like I have only just met you. You are beautiful and kind and sweet and sexy, and you give me such pleasure that I am grateful, but I barely know you. I think that we should spend some time together, becomes reacquainted, before we can really be husband and wife again."

A reasonable woman would have listened to his speech. She would have accepted the unfortunate situation and did as she was asked. She would be confident that they could find love again (or for the first time, in this case.) Naliira was not a reasonable woman.

Her eyes narrowed, and not in the lidded, come-to-me-now fashion. Her hands grabbed at the fabric of his robe and pulled it off of him to pool on the ground like her own dress at the corner between floor and trunk. "As I have said before, it takes time to make a child. We can become like we were when I have caught and all we have to do is wait." She said through gritted teeth. The rot across her body was becoming more and more apparent as she spoke. "You continue to defy me, though you know it brings me pain!"

Really, she was agitating herself more than Caleldir's words were. There were whispers of hate in the corners of her consciousness, of not entirely unfounded suspicion, paranoia, and promises of eternal loneliness. Those murmurs clung to each other and gathered like snowball turned to an avalanche. She could be as dangerous as an avalanche as well. One would be unable to stand before the force of her wrath.

As this happened, the tree itself was becoming more distressed. The branches began to curl around and actually take hold of his limbs like a constrictor whose pray realized too late the danger it was in. The tree groaned and clicked as it did this to give voice to its own frustrations and demands.

Naliira's reaction was not unexpected, although that fact did not change the disappointment that he felt that his normally persuasive self was not having any effect. Actually, despite the fact that charismatic pretty-boys like him should be able to make women follow his every whim through his smooth words, it seemed that recently he could not talk women into (or out of) much of anything that they did not already want to to do. And what a lot of them seemed to want to do was -him-. "I do not want to defy you, Naliira!" He pleaded. "I want to help you, to make you happy. Indeed, you are highly attractive, and I would even love to have sex with you. But you want things that will bring you more harm than happiness! Is it love to give someone what they want if that thing will hurt them?"

"How? How will the thing that I want do anything but make me happy? Make us happy? It is you who are the unreasonable one." She growled at him. Quickly she was becoming the evil, demanding Naliira very different from her natural, untainted self. It wasn't his fault. Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew this. Unfortunately, that part of herself could not act. It could only watch in horror as she became more violent and demanding. As one, the dryad lowered herself and the branches forced Caleldir back to his knees, much like the first time she had forcefully taken him. Naliira always seemed more in tune with her tree when she had gone a little mad. "This would go so much better for you if you would just give in to me." She told him. Of course, in this instance, he hadn't really been given a chance. Her hand went to his manhood to fondle and stroke him. "I give you one more chance to come with me to the bedroom and make love to me. Otherwise I'll take it from you. You know I will."

So, the more corrupted she became, the more like a proper dryad she was, Caleldir found himself contemplating. That had some interesting implications as to the nature of her corruption, and that of her split personality. It seemed that the 'wood elf' persona was her way of psychologically separating the corruption in the tree from the rest of her body. Which would mean that she herself was fine: it was purely the tree that was diseased. Possibly.

But now was not the time to think through that. In that moment, Caleldir wanted to give into Naliira, he really did, but he could not with the niggling at the back of his head that Selene and Ashyr could be watching, not to mention all the other considerations. Well, he could, perhaps... He closed his eyes, groaning against her touch. "I am yours then, Naliira. I can't resist you. I do not even want to resist you. But, though I hate making you do this, you will still have to force me. I am sorry."

"You wretched creature!" She near screamed at him in heartbroken frustration. She shoved at his shoulders with inhuman strength just as vine-like branches erupted from the floor to grab and yank Caleldir to his back - both with little care for his comfort. Naliira was on him in an instant. The length of her body pressed against the length of him. Breasts rubbed against chest and slick womanhood played at the tip of his cock. Her teeth and mouth nipped at his neck hard enough to mark him if he had been elf or human. Beyond that, she did not savor her power as the drow would have done. This was not what she wanted, and not how things should be. Naliira wanted professions of love whispered in her ear. She wanted to both give and receive pleasure, not tear it from his unwilling body. But it was either this or nothing at all. For a woman who felt as if she was dying of that thirst for intimacy, the choice was obvious. He'd forgive her, like he had those couple other times. Then, eventually, he wouldn't have to be forced. Then she could have what she had been longing for for literal centuries.

Despite Caleldir's liking for being forced, not that he really wanted to have such a liking (still Selene's fault...), the way that the dryad mixed desperation, loneliness, and madness, made the whole situation quite pathetic. Perhaps he should just give the woman what she wanted without any fuss. It would certainly be less stressful than this constant useless denial of a sad woman that he did not want to deny in the first place. Plus, although he did not mind the rough stuff as much as he thought that he would, it was still rather uncomfortable to be forced around like this. But though the position that he found his body being forced into was positively unnatural, that feeling was swiftly eclipsed by that of the dryad's flesh against his own. He did not know whether he wanted to plead, protest, apologize, submit, or simply whisper affectations into her ear more, so he was simply silent, letting out his usual ragged breaths of stimulation and arousal as the dryad began nibbling at his neck.

Naliira near shoved herself back onto him, impaling herself fully onto him. Then, as all the other times, she used the aid of her tree to fuck him. Unlike the other times, her pace on the outset was hard, fast, and demanding. The hardness of her nipples rubbed against his chest as she did so, in contrast with the softness of her breasts. It was a pace she could not keep up for very long. She stilled her own motions with a frustrated groan and pressed her forehead against Caleldir's. This time, however, the tree took a more active role and began moving his hips up into her as if Caleldir was actually participating. That motion seemed more to the dryad's liking. Her eyes lidded for a moment as she moaned. Then those crazed eyes were open again, and staring down into Caleldir's. They were pleading, angry, loving; sometimes they flashed through each emotion in mere seconds.

Caleldir did not resist the tree's movements, but found his attempts at moving with it a bit hampered by how tightly he was held. Thrusting up into her, he met her eyes; the vacillating emotions in her emerald spheres matched the confusion in his sapphire ones. He wanted to say something loving to her, but the situation was such that he could not find the words. Instead, he simply allowed his face to show the pleasure that he was feeling as he felt his orgasm rising up.