But I don’t mind, I don’t mind, yeah.
-Monday Morning, Fleetwood Mac 1975
Books were piled and laid over the table in the back of the old, dusty library. A young woman sipped her coffee and quietly turned the pages, her eyes skimming the yellowed paper with its swirling script until she’d sigh, close the book, and move on to the next.
It was the seventeenth hour of the day. She knew the librarian with the bad eyebrows would come and they’d do their nightly routine of arguing and bribery. She took out a piece of paper and scribbled a particularly dirty note, tucked it into the most recent useless paperback, and added it to the pile she’d placed in a chair to keep them separate.
Elvira had claimed this table. Far away from the front doors and the librarians and far, far, far away from the venomous squid display.
Books of every size, bound in cloth or leather or glue, were shoved into shelves full to bursting. Lowland Oak was made of towering shelves that sprawled three stories and the rolling, polished ladders one could crawl up and pluck out any volume they wished.
Last week, she’d been in goblin territory out east in a murky swamp. A floating shack that houses only a few books, all of them rare and none of them useful in her quest. It had taken her only a day’s time to figure out none of the books had what she was looking for but she’d lost two weeks’ time to Love-Fruit wine and the best tacky luau party she’d ever attended. Roasted pigs and easy men and bottomless goblets. It had taken every bit of self-control she had to mount her horse, Fenrah The Hungry, and ride to the basin of elf country.
After settling Fenrah at a nice enough barn she bribed the stable boys with a few gold coins to bring her fresh apples and carrots, to make sure her water was cool and clean and free of Blight Beetles. Then, she set to work befriending the innkeeper. An old whore by the name of Helene. Had a soft spot for mounds of silver, smooth goblin jazz superstar Speedy Lou, and having her clit slobbered over while she sits at her desk and settles up with customers. Bleary-eyed and tired, Elvira came home to fresh linens and muffins on her table. The sore jaw was worth it. She’d already found and made use of all the snack machines hidden around the small village.
“You eat like a cow,” the librarian, an elf with light blue skin and sharp ears, cast a shadow over her book, his eyes narrowed on the pile of unwrapped chocolate bars next to her.
“Cows eat way better than me,” Elvira said, snapping off a piece of the chocolate and letting it melt in her mouth. “I mean grass is green, ain’t it?”
“We close in an hour.”
“Well, sometimes it’s yellow. If there hasn’t been enough rain. Or too much. Goes sallow and rots at the root, have you been past the marsh? It’s all yellow and squishy underfoot. Total nightmare. Ruined a pair of new boots and by the time I got back to Three Bridges they were sold out and the damn goblin who sold them to me wouldn’t accept my warranty. So, I had to kill him..”
“One hour!” Elvira took pleasure in watching the blue elf turn red.
“You tell me that every night,” she sang.
“You never leave.”
“And I never will.” Elvira smiled pulling her book into her lap and propping her feet up on the table.
“One hour.” The librarian scooped the discarded books from a chair and headed into the maze of bookcases to re-shelve them.
Back to the task at hand, Elvira flipped the page and began to read. “Graymen have lived in the hills of Smoke Mountain since The Silk War. Reports of sudden amnesia are popular throughout the hillside towns.” Elvira perked up, her spine protested against the angle at which she leaned into the book. “Usom Roeth, an orcish shaman, claims his nanna’s banana bread recipe is from a Grayman who Nanna Roeth took as a lover during her centenarian years. While it’s a lovely recipe, there is no proof to this claim. Little is known about Graymen and their customs and their whereabouts are not known.” Little is known. Elvira sank back into her chair, snapped the book close, and frisbeed the book into her pile of growing disappointments.
An hour passed quickly. Two more books were thrown into the pile while Elvira quickly hid the ones she still needed on a dusty shelf.
This old place, with all its stone and wooden add ons, never ended. Elvira ducked into the librarian offices all but abandoned save a few occupied desks. An elderly gnome eyed her with such firmness she almost admitted to misdeeds she hadn’t committed. Well, she hadn’t committed most of them. Some of them. Behind a scratchy quill, an orc read out loud her firm letter to a Mr. Boyd Fry, who was currently thirty-seven seconds late with his library book, Marsh Water Hauntings.
“It’s a good first draft,” said the gnome. “But I’d skip the entire history of hangings in the marsh and go straight to the blackmail. If the book isn’t back by Friday, Mrs. Boyd is going to be missing some fingers. Do we have any of those padded envelopes?”
“Oh, oh,” chimed another small gnome from a back office. “We have specimens from the marsh waters. Black-eyed, biting specimens. I’ll go and fetch one, you can slip it in.”
The orc began revising as Elvira slipped into the shadows and followed the sounds of a groaning elf.
Water trickled down the stone walls. An old bathhouse for the towns-folks, when there were towns-folks in the midlands. Steam rose off the warm water pools every few feet. Three in each row. Petals floated on the water while shimmering stones sat at the bottom. On the far side of a room, the librarian was spread out on a wooden bench, jacking off. Elvira smiled. “Hey, pig.”
“You aren’t allowed back here,” he grunted, his eyes shut tight. His light blue coloring was shifting. Into purple, into a dark velvet blue. He seemed very unmoved by his duty to keep patrons out of the back offices.
“We make a pair you and me. A cow and a pig.”
“I hope you put your things up,” he gasped, leaning against the stone. “We..we’re closing.”
Elvira nodded and stripped. Her body muscled from the adventures and darkened by the sun. “You’re closing right now?”
“It’s been an hour,” he muttered, his fist tight around his cock.
Elvira straddled the elf, his hands moving to her waist, sliding down to the dimples on her ass. Her lips brushed against his throat. “I’m sure I could stay just a few more hours.”
“I already let you stay late, too many times..”
Elvira wiggled her hips, letting her ass jiggle against his legs. “And it was so nice of you. I want to be nice to you too.”
His cock, long and thin like his body, pressed into her until it was deeply embedded inside her warm, wet cunt. Those delicate fingers of his dug into her ass. Jerking her forward and grumbling out a plea. Elvira grabbed hold of his knees and began to bounce, the soft skin of her tits bumping against his sharp chin.
“Humans get so wet, so fast,” he grunted.
“Might just be a particular talent of mine.” Elvira grabbed his shoulders, held firm, and ground into him. Over and over until her eyes rolled up and her toes curled against his legs. The elf felt that talented wetness spread from her muscled thighs to the tops of his. The sound alone made him grab ahold of her and buck up into her.
He rolled them to the tile floor and grabbed ahold of the back of her knees to spread her legs wide. His fingers roamed over her fleshy thighs. They paused, only once, on a burn. A mark. Before she grabbed at his hands, slipped his finger into her mouth with a moan. “Are you gonna fiddle or are you gonna fuck me?”
He bared his teeth, shoved her legs as far apart as they would go, and mounted her. His slim cock sunk inside her warm cunt as it clenched around him. “I’m going to fuck you speechless with any luck,” he said.
And then he tried.
“Two and a half hours oughta do me,” Elvira said. She stretched, grabbed a far-flung sock. “This place is beautiful. The bathhouses in the Emerald Court are so fancy and fun, but there’s this intricately built goblin bathhouse that’s all green and reds. Built so long ago. I stayed there till I pruned. I don’t think goblins can prune, do you?”
“You’re an oath-breaker,” he said, wiping himself off with the towel, he faced away from her. His eyes no longer met hers. “There is a scar on your thigh.”
“It’s a burn.” Elvira stretched and yawned. “And I had my reasons.”
“Do you have trouble following you?” He asked.
“Since I was born.” More yawns. There’d be a warm, fat cinnamon roll waiting for her back at the inn, maybe a cold glass of milk to accompany it. An early night might be good.
The elf reached out, her long fingers grasping her chin. “Your business is your own, human, but you will not bring trouble down upon this library. I’ve seen places more magnificent than this burned to the ground in a blink of an eye because those who slipped through the gallows grasp hid within.”
Elvira sucked one of his fingers into her mouth, laughing around him as his brow furrowed. He pulled away. “Are there any collections here older than that stick up your ass?”
He was gathering his things, sullen as a toad when Elvira grabbed his wrist and pushed him onto the wooden bench. She propped her foot up beside him, revealing the dark circle on her thigh, burned there long ago. “Do you know what they do to philosophers in the emerald court? Do you know what they asked of me?”
“We all hear rumors.” His soft blue coloring darkened like a storm.
“The oath wasn’t my own, but my mother’s. She gave me to them when I was young and they raised me in silence.”
The librarian shifted, smiling only a bit. “Well, they have no tongues. Is that true then?”
She got so close he could smell the chocolate and the mint and the syrup and salt from his own body on her breath. “They leave you deep in the haunting woods below Mount Frevell past witches’ cemeteries and shaman fertility grounds. Deep, deep in the greenest part of the forest. So green that it is pitch black. You see nothing, but you feel everything, and the cold bites at every inch of your skin, and the first thing to go besides the baby fat and a few toenails, if you are lucky, is your mind. There is so much to say and nobody to tell it to. You find your way back or you don’t and for some, it takes a few weeks and others years and for many more never at all. They die deep in that forest. They rot and grow into great trees that blot out the sun and stare over the philosophers fighting their way out of the forest’s deep, dark womb.
“When you arrive back you are given honey wine and the sweetest sweets. Sugared apples, all bright and crisp and cooked. Chocolates that gush cream or more chocolate or ground almonds or whatever you like. They will find, gather, prepare. Pork shoulders will be cooked and caramelized and served. It’s a high party. Nobody throws a party like Emerald Court elves and the whole place stinks of smoke and drink and sex. If the forest births you, the party lowers you into your grave. After the party, they come. With their cloaks and their torches and their honorable intentions and they lead you down stone halls until you hear a dripping you can’t place and you panic, deep in your stomach, that they’re taking you back into the forest, but it couldn’t be.” Elvira’s breath turned panicked and ragged for one moment, she paused, smiled, ran her finger along the elf’s bushy brow. So strange for an elf, she thought, Emerald Court elves were so polished. “It couldn’t be because you are so far below the Emerald Court. Deep in the mountains. You’d drown in water before you’d ever be in the forest and besides, there’s stone under your feet. Flames are bouncing off gray, endless gray. Stone. Until you arrive at a chair with a single bottle of honey wine by your side. You drink. Even though you’ve spent a blur of days in a stupor, taking and drinking the best of the whole kingdom, of the realm, of the world, of the cosmos.. but this wine is the best thing you’ve ever drunk and you are only allowed a sip before they clutch your tongue and press a blazing red hot iron to it, burning it away.” Elvira let go and grabbed her pants off the floor, she heaved them quickly over her wide hips. “And I’m so good with my tongue.”
She plucked a particularly beautiful stone from a bath, slipped it into her pocket. “And I’m hiding from no one.”
Elvira made her way back into the deserted, empty library. Past darkened gas lamps and deep shadows. She lit a single candle on her table and pulled the next of her books, splaying it wide and began to read. Searching for the secret of the gray men.