Author's Note: This story came to my rather quickly. I waited till I had played most of it out in my head before I put the pen to paper. (yeah, I like it old school sometimes) I wanted to do something different with the whole "Elf thing". I only touch on the edges of the magical explanation of what the girl is. Maybe if there is another part I will explore that more. For this site the important thing is the scenario. All the characters are over 18. Even though the elf girl is described as smaller than the guy, this is a mythical creature with a different physiology. As I told the cop who pulled me over at Comic Con: "The elf in my backseat is totally legal, officer." Warning: this story contains a magical transformation. I'm saying this up front to warn off any who won't like that. If you're familiar with some of my other stories then you might get it off the bat. If not there are plenty of hints at it. If you don't like it then I guess you should move on. That's just how the story came to me.
I loved the elf girl from the first moment I saw her. That wasn't supposed to happen. As soldiers we'd all been taught to view the elves with suspicion. They'd been our greatest enemy once. Now we fought our own kind, but we were not allowed to stop distrusting "the pointy ears" as some called them.
She was peering out from the wall of dense vegetation, and seemed to have just appeared from nowhere to look at me with big green eyes. Her simple dress looked home-spun of linen and dyed green somehow. What really stood out was her short, bright red hair which contrasted with her light golden skin. She looked like too fragile of a creature to be on her own out in the wilderness.
We stared at each other for a time. I considered calling out to the others and waking them up, but for some reason I didn't. I just smiled at her like l would any other girl I met along the road. She smiled back at me.
"You like me," she said. "I know you do, but you need to stay away."
There was something so innocent and so sad about her little smile. She was very slender compared to the women that I knew, and was more than a head shorter than me. Yet she wasn't a child. I could seem from her firm body that she was a woman grown just different. I'd heard many stories about elf maids. Many men claimed to have bedded them, but they often recanted when pressed for real details. The priests claimed that mating with an elf would be an affront to God and thus fatal and damnable.
She turned from me, and began to leave. I asked for her name just before she left.
"Elnara," she said, and then she was gone into the trees and all of their oblique greenery.
I was left there on the edge of our camp. It was my watch. Our captain had leave to treat with the elves if necessary, but we common men did not. I was only to keep watch and nothing more. Another war would be coming with the season and we were supposed to be preparing ourselves.
I wanted her though. Couldn't the others understand this once? I had waited outside of a brothel while they had theirs last time because I lost the dice roll. I was entitled to a bite myself wasn't I? I left my fellows to their fitful sleep. None of us ever slept well while out on patrol.
It took every bit of tracking skill that I had, which wasn't much, to barely locate the elf maid's trail. The trees got much thicker together and the underbrush was a kaleidoscope of multi-colored plants yet always giving way to green. It seemed impossible that the girl could have gone this way, and my skills and instincts spoke to that end. All I needed was some venomous spider or snake to prove to me that I was a complete fool to be following her. Thorns from the plants ripped at my leggings, and even left me with some bloody scratches. Nothing too bad though. I hoped there was no plant venom of some kind coursing into me.
Finally after what seemed like hours the undergrowth began to thin, and I even found what had once been a small wall made of stones stuck together with earth. Time and nature had proven to be its better and left it a corpse of itself. I followed it for a time, and around a curve I found the statues. They were carved from a similar rock as the stone wall: gray with what seemed to be an almost bluish haze to them. They were made to resemble two beautiful elf women not unlike the girl named "Elnara." Each was naked and despite the weathering of the stone they were still a sight to behold.
Like Elnara they were shorter than me and had slender frames and short hair. They also had fairly large breasts for such small women. I smiled remembering that while Elnara had been clothed the rise against her simple dress had seemed large. It was a nice difference from some of the women the other men enjoyed, who tended towards the larger side.
And Elnara is no whore, I told myself. She is something wonderful and pure. The priests and all the others who'd been giving me orders all my life would be proven wrong. There was something odd about the statues that I noticed before I continued on the trail. They each bore a sad expression. As if they longed for something forever denied to them. Then I noticed at the base of each was an inscription carved deeply into the stone.
I traced my finger over the strange letter, unable to comprehend them. I could barely read my own tongue let alone an elf one. By some means of elven skill or maybe magic for all I knew it seemed that glass had been melted into the letters to make them stand out more. Each inscription had two large chunks of words, but I was the wrong person to comprehend their meaning, so I went on.
I had a beautiful elf maid to find and didn't care to read.
In time I came to a large clearing at the foot of a glen. A stream trickled down through it. The sound of the water and the birds filled the air, and it was mild and sweet. A different world from the smoke and blood of my soldier life.
I spotted Elnara gathering mushrooms down amongst the rocks near the water. Her small hands moved quickly to examine, reject, and pluck the choicest harvest into her small basket.
"Looking for dinner?" I asked.
She nearly jumped over the water.
"What are you doing here?"
"You said it yourself that I liked you. When a man likes a woman he's bound to follow her."
"Not this time," she said, putting her hands on her slender hips. "You need to leave. This is not a place for you."
"Why not? It doesn't look dangerous, and I don't think that you'd hurt me."
She shook her head adamantly. "You just don't understand."
"Then explain it to me."
I closed the distance to her, and gently touched her shoulder. She was nervous at first, but I could tell that she liked being touched by me.
"You're not running away," I said. "So I can't be that bad."
"I know you're not. I can see your soul and I know."
"They said you elves had magic powers."
"Natural qualities," she corrected. "There are many things about us that you would never understand. Now, please go. I beg you. I might not be able to resist much longer."
There was a slight trembling in her lithe legs.
"Are you well?"
She shook her head. "I've been by myself for so long and meeting you...smelling you...I want you," she said. "That's why you must go."
"Why? Are you worried about getting pregnant?"
There were tears in her big green eyes. "That will never happen to me. I'm a Forever Maiden, so no one can be with me."
"Is that why you're here all alone?"
She nodded. "I'm not meant to be with others."
"You elves are strange. Well, I'm here and I want to stay."
Her eyes took me in for a long time. "Are you sure? If you stay and this happens you won't be able to leave. You'll be like me...bound here."
I thought that she was just being dramatic, and to be honest I was obsessed with the soft, firm flesh beneath her dress. I wanted her so much, and the thought that she was holding back some intense lust of her own made me want to explore it to the fullest.