"Roji! Come in here!"
Roji sighed. He'd heard Thiri's hoofbeats returning, followed a few moments later by the master climbing the stairs, and a clatter as equipment hit the floor. The sudden noise had disturbed Pfarth, the sholo, who had been flopped across the back of the couch. He looked up interestedly, and scampered into the lab.
Roji had known even before the call that it would once more fall to him to clean it up. He just hoped the niffle boxes hadn't been upset again. The master didn't seem to realize how difficult it was to get all the various genders separated, into their individual compartments. It wasn't so much that the niffles fought and wiggled, it was that so many of the genders looked so much alike, and they all had to be separated, because any one of them out of place could cause another population explosion.
The last time that happened, when Roji was still new, and hadn't learned how to tell the niffles apart yet, they'd still had a poiji colony to feed them to. But the poiji had all caught something nasty last winter and died. That was unfortunate, because that meant the hubbers had had to go on short rations for a while, until the next litter of deenx were born. But that was all Tiska's problem, not his.
Sighing, Roji heaved his gangly frame to his feet. His towering head was topped by short, unruly, sand-colored hair, with wide-set hazel eyes just beneath. He hadn't grown any more vertically in several years, and was beginning to wonder if he was ever going to fill out.
The cat that had been sleeping next to him on the couch stretched and yawned, annoyed, as he laid the book down on the cushion he had just vacated. It was the latest silly thing the master wanted him to study up on. He would expect a report in a day or two, quizzing him offhandedly, and sending him back to read other books if he couldn't answer promptly and confidently. This time it was on the mating habits of ogres, and potential interbreeding with other related races. And he would expect Roji not just to know about their possible biological fertility, but also whether or not they would recognize each other as potential mates, and whether their courtship rituals are similar enough that they would be able to proceed to anything else.
He shuffled to the doorway into the main lab room, dreading what he would find. As he scanned the room, he was pleasantly surprised. All of the niffles were still safe and sound in their boxes.
The rest of the room was in its usual state of disarray, so it took him a moment to recognize what was out of place. The irregularly angled walls were lined with shelves filled with books, reagents, equipment, and various types of plants and animals. Some were living, some dead, and some in between. Some were stuffed and mounted, some hanging, and some merely hanging around. A tightly wound scroll had been stuck into a pot and tied to a sickly-looking kingsfoil plant, in order to hold it up. There were trinkets, some enchanted, some not, being used as placeholders between pages of books, and others being used as placeholders between books on the various shelves. Piles of books elsewhere mingled with, and occasionally became, fodder for various animals.
Pfarth was still bouncing around and chittering excitedly. The seppim, which had been circling irritably around the room, returned to its perch, tucked its head back under its wing, and tried to go back to sleep. The table in the center of the room was large, taking up an enormous amount of space, and tall, above even Roji's waist, a comfortable height to work at while standing. It was chronically cluttered, though there was now a relatively clear patch, which the old man was standing in front of, with his new book open. Immediately next to the bare spot was a taller mound that looked ready to crash back onto the book. It probably would in the near future, with Pfarth's help. Beyond the mound, on the floor, were the fresh casualties: a couple books and a pile of scrolls, none the worse for the fall, a slightly disheveled rebik which crawled slowly away, and a dirty alembic, which hadn't broken into too many pieces.
"Yes, master?" Roji asked, descending the few steps into the lab and already moving to start replacing the dropped items.
"Get to work," the wizard grunted, pointing under the table, without taking his eyes away from his new book, now open in front of him.
Roji saw what the old man meant. He walked right past the pile of papers and broken glass on the floor and crawled under the table. There was a pillow on the floor under the table, which he placed in front of his master. The front of his robe was bulging, and by the time Roji got himself positioned and opened it, there was already a drop of fluid seeping out of the tip.
Or was that just leftovers? As the robe parted, Roji got a whiff of Tiska's tang as well. That book must be something really special, Roji thought. The master had had it off with Tiska on the way up to the lab, and needed servicing again already? If the book was doing that to him, he'd probably just bent Tiska over a stall door down in the stable, and laid the book out on her back, to read while he pounded her.
The thought got Roji hard as well, but he would deal with that later. Right now, he had to take care of the master.
He set to work, licking the dribbles from the tip of the old man's wand, and then running his tongue all the way up and down the shaft, caressing it all over, including the ring around the tip of the foreskin, which he knew the master liked especially. The taste of Tiska's warm, wet pocket lingered, and Roji couldn't help reaching into his own robe to stroke himself as well.
Above him, Roji could hear the wizard muttering and turning pages occasionally, paying him no attention. A little at a time, Roji began sliding his master's tool into his mouth, flattening his tongue against the underside, and flicking at the notch on the underside of the head.
The old man's stature had shrunk and stooped slightly as he had aged, but his wand did not seem to have waned similarly. Roji had only been an apprentice for a few years, so he couldn't speak from personal experience, but it was still large, solid, and powerful, and he had trouble taking all of it in as it was. Roji could only imagine what it might have been like when the old man was in his prime.
Roji wasn't entirely sure of Sezithorum's age, but he was an old man by any standard. How old he appeared to be varied, depending on the lighting and his mood at the time, ranging from a little over half a century to a little short of dead. His hair and beard were both long and grey. His body hair was also gray, but still thick.
Between Roji's own saliva and Tiska's leftovers, the wizard's rod was very slick, and Roji wrapped his other hand around the base of the shaft, pressing his lips up against his fingers, and sliding his fist back and forth in concert with the stroking of his head. The murmurs from above were getting louder and more frequent, although no more intelligible. Roji strained to hear, to pick out anything that would give him a clue as to what it was that had his master so wound up, but the words that he was able to hear made no sense to him.
As Roji worked, he thought about how such an old man could remain so virile. Wizards were famous for their virility, so it must have something to do with the amount of charm that they channeled on such a regular basis. Even so, this book must be spectacular, as Roji had never seen him so thoroughly incensed that he needed to be relieved twice in such quick succession. Well, there had been that one one ritual they'd had to do, but that was when he was actively working. All he was doing now was reading the tome!
