Don’t read this if you’re too young. Don’t read this if it is illegal where you live. Don’t have sex with little bearded men who live to 180 years of age. Unless you like that sort of thing.

My name is Dalaim, and I mine copper when there are no wars to keep my ax wet. But this story is not about my work, it is about a dream that came true, a dream that called herself Perdita.

Since my adolescence I have been fascinated by Human women. They are so, well, big. Yet, they are so slender, a Human girl of five and a half feet may weigh no more than a Dwarven lass of four foot two. Of course, Elves are also tall, though not so tall as Humans, but Elven women are so thin that they hardly even seem to be there. And, while I despise racial prejudice (having been on the receiving end of it often enough), I must admit that Elves just rub me the wrong way. Some of my best friends have been Elves, but, still...

Several times over the past fifty years of so I have tried to seduce Humans, but to no avail.

Then one evening I stepped outside my cabin to pick some mushrooms to go with the goat rump I had bought the day before. I hoped there were some left; a rat had somehow discovered my patch of morels. The morel is a prince among mushrooms, and I wasn’t about to share the only patch I’d seen in nearly a decade with a damned rat. I’d failed to kill the marauder, or even to see it, but its tracks had been plain enough.

When I got to the little grove of trees where my patch is hidden, the first thing I saw was a three foot long rodent. Drawing my knife, I went into a crouch and moved slowly towards it. Just as I was ready to chance a throw, there was a flash of black and green from behind a tree, and a fierce-looking Human stood in front of me, the furry rodent wriggling between her teeth. A few viscous shakes sent her dark hair flying, and the rat was dead. I’ve seen wolves and bears kill like that, but never a person (Dwarven or otherwise).

“Uh, hello,” I said, in Dramirsi, * “Since you killed it, I guess it’d be alright for you to take a few mushrooms. What’s your name?”

The Human dropped the rat and turned in my direction. Large brown eyes with long, thick lashes, a small nose, and full rich lips were beautifully arranged on an oval face. Her skin was smooth, well-tanned by the sun, her hair black, wavy, falling to just past her shoulders. She looked rather unkempt, though clean. Her shift was green and smudged in several places, in addition to being torn short at the knees. Her figure was all slim curves and graceful, understated power. She wore no jewelry; her feet were bare and an ornate hardwood sheath of obvious Elvish make dangled from a leathern thong tied around her waist.

“Hello,” I repeated, again in Dramirsi.

“Perdita not know that talk,” she said, “You talk like Elf? Perdita know Elf talk.”

Perdita’s (for that was apparently her name) broken speech didn’t surprise me nearly as much as the fact that a Human was speaking to a Dwarf in Elvish but couldn’t make out my fluent Dramirsi! In the past few decades I’d traveled rather extensively, and so knew several languages, including Elvish.

“Yes, I speak Elvish. Thanks for killing that rat; it’s been eating my mushrooms.”

She bent down to pick up the rat, and the top of her shift gapped, showing her breasts, as she wore no bodice. “Are you from civil-i-zation?” she asked, as she stood back up, rat in hand.

At first, I thought she had noticed me looking, and was telling me that a civilized man shouldn’t do such a thing. I wasn’t sure what to say (how to deal with a Human?), but when Perdita asked the question again, I realized that she thought of civilization as a place, like the nearby city of.

“I’ve been to civilization, but I live in a cave around that cliff-face,” and I pointed.

“Do you see Roldagen at civil-i-zation?” she pressed, unfazed.

Damn! I thought, she’s got a lover. And an Elf at that. I’d never really believed that nonsense about Humans and Elves (once a Human girl’s had an Elf, she’ll never go back), but “Roldagen” was as Elvish a name as I’d ever heard, and I’d seen several Half-elves in the nearly one hundred fifty years of my life (I’d never seen any Half-dwarves, if there is such a thing).

I told her, “I don’t see many Elves when I go; just Humans, most of the time.”

She pointed at herself and said, “Perdita.” Then she asked, “Name?” as she pointed to me.

That was easy enough to understand, so I pointed to myself and said, “Dalaim.” She repeated it several times, then smiled.

“Dalaim good name,” she said, “Where is civil-i-zation?”

I wasn’t sure how to explain this. “Um, Perdita,” I started, “there are a lot of cities, and all of them are civilization.”

She sighed. “Zinestrella say that.”

Another Elvish name! “Zinestrella” sounded female, though; it’s hard to tell with some of those Elf names.

“Perdita want find civil-i-zation, just civil-i-zation. Perdita not care what city! Find civil-i-zation, Perdita find Roldagen! Perdita need find Roldagen. Roldagen.”

She had a tear in one eye and the last time she said “Roldagen” had sounded like a sob. My heart went out to her. All thoughts of seduction left my mind, and if Perdita had announced that she was going to descend into the Lower Hells to search for this Roldagen, I’d have offered to go with her.

“Hey, hey,” I said, “It’ll be alright. I’ll point out the way to Futomn as soon as it gets light. That’s the biggest city, the biggest chunk of civilization around here. We could make it on foot in a week or less.”

“But, but Dalaim say no Elf in Futoon,” she pouted.

“Hells, Perdita, I just meant I don’t talk to them much. But they have Elves in Futomn, alright. I traveled with an Elf from Futomn for about five years, taught him to fight with an axe. Name was Rillian Merrikician. He’s the one taught me to speak Elvish. That was about a hundred years ago. He went back home to help his parents with a new baby.** Real decent fellow. Oh, yeah, they have Elves in Futomn.”

Perdita smiled at me, and asked if she could stay in my cave until morning. I assured her that she could. She then offered to share her rat with me, unsheathing her knife as she spoke. I was surprised by the beauty and craftsmanship of this blade; this was the sort of knife an Elvish prince might carry, a prince who valued lethality as well as beauty. It’s eight inches of cutting edge didn’t impress me as much as the two inches of wickedly serrated edge on the back of the blade. I’d hate to be cut with a knife like Perdita’s.

After cleaning the rat, Perdita and I walked back to my cave. She was impressed with the iron door, and as I opened it and let her in, I remembered to light a lamp; Humans are blind in total darkness.

Perdita had apparently never seen a furnished cave before, as she just stared around at everything.

“Beautiful!” she breathed, so I told her about how I’d carved most of it myself, looking for copper. I told her the more copper I dig for, the bigger my home gets; the more copper I sell, the better I can furnish my home.

I even told her about the load of copper I was supposed to take to Thormali next week. Perdita wanted to know if our trip to Futomn would interfere with my trip to Thormali. I told her it might, but that helping her was worth it. She looked very thoughtful, took several bites of her rat (raw), and suggested that she go to Futomn by herself. I would go to Thormali as planned, and ask about Roldagen while there. If Perdita did not find him in Futomn, she’d come back to my place and ask if I’d learned anything in Thormali.

I looked at the woman with new respect; it was a good plan, and I should have thought of it myself. I quickly agreed. About this time, some of those thoughts that had left my mind earlier began to come back.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” I asked her.

“Perdita drink little wine.” She turned and smiled. “Dalaim have mead?”

I always have mead. If I have no food, I will have mead. This Human was turning out to be my kind of woman. “Wait here,” I said, walking into the kitchen as she sat down on the couch.

I returned to the living room with two glasses and the bottle. I had grabbed some cheese as well. I put it down on the table in front of the couch and sat down.

“Dalaim nice,” she said, “Perdita not drink mead, not eat cheese long time.”

After a few bites of cheese (and that damned rat) she let out a big yawn, curled up on the couch and sort of nestled her head against my arm. A contented smile appeared on her lips as I daringly began stroking her hair with my other hand. She let out a contented sigh and snuggled into my arm a little more. Thoughts raced through my mind so fast; I could hardly believe it. I had never had things go this far with a Human before. I didn’t quite know what to do. I leaned down and kissed her on the top of her head. She shifted on the couch and looked up at me. I thought to myself, “Uh-oh, that does it, she’s leaving.”

We stared at each other, eye to eye for what seemed like forever. Then we slowly started leaning towards each other until our lips finally met. Her lips were so soft; I felt like I could kiss them forever. We hardly separated before Perdita drew me to her for another. We kissed and hugged for what must have been ten minutes, with her sweet curves pressed tight against me. But it seemed to me that there was too much cloth between us, so I decided to make a bigger bet. I reached down and put my left hand under her knees and put my right hand around her back and scooped her up off of the couch. I was surprised by how much she weighed, about a hundred and thirty pounds; she didn’t look like she’d top a hundred ten. But I am strong, and have carried heftier women of my own race on many occasions. I carried her into the bedroom, out lips still locked together. I imagine I looked rather silly, carrying a woman nearly two feet taller than myself, but I managed to get us to the bedroom without bashing her head into the wall.