Scene length:
approx. 600 words
Genre:
Fantasy
Trigger warning(s):
> sexual references
She caressed the green silk of Steli’s sleeve between her thumb and forefinger, the corner of her mouth twitching into a smile. Steli flinched and moved his arm inward, out of her grasp. She then licked her top lip and gestured with her eyes toward the hallway, toward the chamber of the castle in which she was currently taking up residence. He wrinkled his nose and stole away to the other members of his guild, taking a place beside Gharne.
“Steli,” Gharne whispered, “do you know her? She is the youngest of—”
“Duke ven Arwan of Littlyium, yes. I know.”
“And still, you refuse her affections? Are you mad, friend?”
Steli wrinkled his nose again. “What affections did I refuse?”
“Her touch. The slowness of her tongue across her lip.” Gharne shook his head. “Gods, friend, she even led your gaze to her bed chamber!”
Steli snorted. “I thought she was informing me — rather rudely, I might add — that she desired to retire for the evening.”
“She did. With you.”
The youngest daughter of the duke lingered by the doorway. She fixed her eyes on Steli. With a slight movement of her head, she gestured again toward the hallway and smiled.
He frowned. “Oh.”
“Oh, indeed, you daft boy.”
“I am older than you, Gharne.” Steli idly plucked strings on his lute. “I am accustomed to bold offers from women to bed them. Once, when I stayed in a tavern in Morviksten—”
“Your father does not approve of your desire to be a travelling bard. You should reconsider such an aspiration, given that you are the blood of House Furoldyn.”
“In Morviksten,” Steli went on with a grunt, “I fled from a woman who was so taken by my skill, she crept onto the bed while I slept wearing only a chipped silver pendant around her neck.”
“Ah,” Gharne said, “those not of noble blood are far less decorous. Was she not desirable to you?”
Steli scowled at him. “It was a body like any other belonging to the fairer sex. What’s to desire?”
Gharne’s eyes widened. “So, it’s the body of the stronger sex you prefer? Steli, now it makes sense to me.”
“Hmm? No, no.” He cleared his throat and turned his back on the gaze of the duke’s daughter. “Most of our guild — you as well — write many a song about women. Oh, how fair be her smile, or, Oh, how soft be her skin brushing against mine. There’s… feeling in that. Attraction. Longing.” He picked at the skin of his cuticle with his fingernail. “I feel something akin to that when I see the expanse of a forest or the ocean as far as the eye can see. But women, you ask me? Or men, for that matter? I feel nothing exclusive to any of them.”
Gharne nodded, also turning his back to the duke’s daughter. “You have never felt the powerful sting of love, then, friend.”
“I love. There are many whom I love. I love you. I love my father and my mother the same; my sisters; all of those in our guild; a deformed stranger in the street; a child running barefoot in a meadow; Jarnia, the daughter of a viscount whom my father wished me to marry — I grew to love her as I love any other — but this… longing that you, and others like you, sing of? It eludes me and will continue to elude me.”