The Fertile Grove: Cheeky Chappy (Ciara/Nina) (Chapter 2)
A "Detachable" story
By Devin McTaggart
It sounded so good, didn't it? Beating the Secret Six, having two epic victories under my belt, and six beautiful women scheduled to get married to me, but there were two things I didn't really take into account on the day my win was announced.
First, I still had the rest of the semester to get through.
Second, I had to start integrating my soon-to-be wives, not only into
my
life, but also into dealing with
each other
, and if you think having
one
partner is a pain in the ass, lemme tell you, having six is way more of a challenge.
Thankfully, I had a professor step in and run interference for me at first, mostly because I think the idea of all six women showing up on my doorstep on the same day would've resulted in my death, or at least a complete and total overwhelming. Since I'd just basically become the All Star of the University, it meant that Wedge Deepcopper, yours truly, was now the kind of person they needed to be taking care of, so they were ensuring nothing bad happened to me, otherwise it would've been all the gossip about how sore of losers they were.
The professor who showed up, Professor Harwise Antevestian, was a High Elf whose contempt for me couldn't have run hotter, but he also knew that if he failed to have me prepped, it would reflect poorly on his name and station. Elves and dwarves have never been the best of allies even in the smoothest of times, but I knew that Professor Antevestian was also an Ansuz Hagalaz Othala Fraternity alumni, and apparently during his debriefing, Robér admitted that he had used some of my ideas to defeat the AHO challenge, and that was something the Professor seemed to take personally, the fact that I
could've
beaten his frat, but that I'd been too busy working on pursuits I considered more important. I wouldn't find out how deep his anger ran until far later, but I started to have hints of it even right at our first encounter.
The professor was dressed in his most prestigious clothes, like he somehow thought getting dressed up like a fop would make me somehow listen to his opinion more. I'd never been one all that impressed by wealth and splendor, so to me, it looked more like the git thought he could
buy
my respect with his appearance. I was going to have to disabuse him of that notion right quick, I remember thinking when I first saw him. It wasn't all that hard, but it was a lesson I'd make a point to reinforce each time he came around.
When he showed up to my home off campus that first time, he regarded me with an equal mix of admiration and annoyance, but he also didn't show up alone. In tow, he had Nina Vanderbilt with him, the woman who was scheduled to become my bodyguard, and Ciara O'Murphy, the one of my soon to be wives I was most looking forward to seeing and had put first on my list.
My selection of Nina had caused almost as much fuss as my beating the Kenaz Jera Dagaz Sorority challenge itself had done. She was a human woman of such high and mighty social standards that a couple of members of the college faculty had come to try and talk me out of choosing her, simply because she had been such the debutante. I was shaking the very laurels of their societal underpinnings by picking her, and that made them all more than a little nervous. The upper echelon of society were supposed to be above the ability of lowly folk such as from I interfering with their lives. I remember asking the faculty if they were telling me that I
couldn't
have Nina, to which each of them said that, no, that wasn't what they were saying, but that if I would consider someone else instead, some additional benefits would be extended to me. Benefits, I would ask, greater than having an insanely talented and beautiful witch as my personal bodyguard and fucktoy? They never seemed to have much of an answer to that, which proved I'd made the best choice possible.
Nina and Ciara standing outside my door made a wonderful contrast to each other, and had such different energies, right off the bat.
Nina had dressed like she was trying to set a record for number of layers worn - seven or eight layers of cloth and fabric over every portion of her body except for her exposed face, so it was difficult to get a good idea of what laid underneath those clothes in those earliest moments. The clothes were mostly blacks, grays, and blues, with even her neck covered by a couple of scarves. She smelled expensive, like she picked her perfume based on whatever was in fashion rather than whatever complimented her own natural scent, and it made her stand out even more.
Ciara, on the other hand, looked like she was having a grand old time watching Nina having to swallow her pride and admit defeat. She was dressed in a relatively loose-fitting peasant's blouse, much of her generous cleavage on display, and a skirt that she'd made sure gave me more than a welcome eyeful of exposed legflesh, covered in those all too delicious freckles of hers. If Nina was trying to keep everything buttoned up, Ciara wanted me to know everything she had for me was on open display, eager and willing for me to savor all of it. She smelled akin to a familiar tavern, that warm and inviting mix of scents like good beer, a better meal and just a hint of some perfume that couldn't have cost all that much but was the perfect compliment to everything else about her. She'd also come from a working-class family, and that was one of the many reasons why we've always got along famously.
Each of the women had a bag with them, as if they had realized they would need to move things into my place but didn't want to commit to bringing everything at once, so they'd only packed what they'd thought they would need for the first few weeks. I suspected that Nina's bag was filled with wildly impractical things while Ciara had packed a smart combination of things that were comfortable along with a couple of things she thought she looked sexiest in.
"Mister Deepcopper," the Professor said to me, Ciara staring at me with delight and mischief in her eyes, and Nina looking anywhere but. "May we come in?"
"Don't suppose there's anything to be gained by telling you no, so sure, c'mon and make yourselves at home," I said, stepping into my cottage, leaving the door open for them to move in after me. My place wasn't a mansion by any stretch of the imagination, but it was decent housing for an unaffiliated student in his last year at the College. The majority of students joined one of the fraternities or sororities early on in their schooling, and those that didn't often stayed living in on-campus housing anyway, but I'd chosen the pariah's option and had taken residence in a house that seemed to flip between students every few years after my second year at Eternal Wayfarer College, one which I would sell just a few months later to another student to use during the fall. By then, I would be far and away from the campus, working on bigger and better magics of my own. "Good to see you, Ciara, Nina."
