Chapter 1

Wendy, Harlen, and Hyandai sat around the table in uncomfortable silence. "So, do you have someone in mind?" asked Wendy, eyeing Hyandai.

"No, beloved, I do not," replied Hyandai. "I simply mention it because it is an elven tradition and we follow many of them."

Harlen thought for a long moment. "No consequences?" he said quietly. "You can sleep with anyone you like?"

The elven maiden, one of his two wives, and wife to Wendy, as well, nodded. "Within certain restrictions," she said. "Usually, it is unacceptable to lie with former lovers."

Wendy chuckled. "I could understand that."

The trio had been married a year and a half now. It was early spring and Hyandai, like all elves, had extreme cabin fever from the long winter.

"If we do this thing, then how do we do it?" asked Harlen.

"Normally, one of the partners leaves the home to the other," answered Hyandai.

Harlen shrugged. "I trust you two," he said. "And I know you both receive plenty of invitations to lie abed with other men."

"Not so many as you think, most men are terrified of you, Harlen," said Wendy, giggling. Hyandai nodded assent.

"We may find willing participants rather hard to locate," agreed Hyandai.

"Easily solved," said Harlen. "We just go to another town, Norboro, for example."

Wendy's eyes widened. "You're honestly thinking about this, aren't you?"

"Well, it is the elven way," said Harlen, shrugging.

Wendy laughed. "Okay, well, if you're both for it, then I'll go along." She stared at Hyandai. "Does it ever damage the relationships?"

"Not that I've ever seen," said Hyandai. "Truth be told, most that practice it claim it revitalizes their sexual appetite for one another."

"I don't need my appetite revitalized, not with you two about," said Wendy. "But, as I said, I'll go along with it if you two like."

Harlen nodded. "It sounds oddly fun, though it does have it's rather alarming features," he said.

"As I said, I only mention it as it is a common tradition," said Hyandai. "I have neither said I do or don't wish to do it."

"Well, do you?" asked Wendy.

Hyandai sat silent for a moment. "Yes," she said quietly.

"Mind if we ask why?" asked Harlen.

She looked at each of them in turn. "It is rather simple, actually," she said. "I have spent my whole year fighting my fey, pushing it back and telling it no." She sighed deeply. "It would be liberating to let it loose one day a year."

Harlen nodded. "Then okay," he said. "We can do it, if Wendy is truly agreeable."

"I never thought about it like that, but okay, I agree, too, though I don't have to sleep with anyone, do I?" she asked.

"No, there's never a requirement in it, nor even an absolute expectation," said Hyandai. "I have heard some just desire a long day of romance from someone they cannot normally do so with."

Wendy giggled. "I don't see that happening with any of us," she said.

Harlen said, "We can go to Norboro tomorrow by horse and that will give us one day there before the careshlan tosked esmivani." He adopted his odd lopsided grin. "That will give us a day to scout out targets."

Wendy's face was a mask of shock. "Scout out targets!" she exclaimed.

"Hey! For me its not so easy as two beautiful women, I need to at least know who I need to chase," he said defensively.

The look on Hyandai's face was dubious. "I don't recall you chasing either of us," she said.

"Yeah, Hyandai just ran into you and, hell, she fetched me to you," said Wendy, agreeing.

Harlen laughed. "I don't expect such stupendous good fortune to befall me a third time."

Wendy pulled back her brown hair and looked at Hyandai. "Is there some sort of 'pre observance' we should follow?"

Hyandai nodded, her emerald eyes flickering. "It is traditional to abstain from sex with your partners for a few days in advance." An odd smile crossed her lips. "It is considered rude to go to a new lover with your old lover's scent still upon you."

The two humans nodded agreement with the wisdom of that sentiment.

Though the three shared the bed, they, at great pains, did not partake of love play that night, and slept only in the great huge bed that dominated their bedroom. Arrangements were made in the morning and Gramma and Tammer would share duties minding Young Tammer and Morlani for a few days. They did not explain the nature of their trip beyond 'business in Norboro'.

The trip was pleasant, though it did rain a bit. Their winter cloaks kept them nicely warm and the horses made the trip in short order, taking only ten hours to ride to Norboro, to which all three had been, but they were not well known there.

The town was smaller than Morrovale, and indeed, was part of the same duchy, though it was a much different place. More sedate, and more learned. Norboro housed the duchy's only institution for higher learning, the Norboro Academy. It also acted as the social capital of the duchy. As such, it sported a lot more inns and taverns than its size alone would justify.

As the three rode into Norboro, Harlen looked about. "Lots of young folk about," he said.

"Like hunting a rabbit in a burlap sack, if you ask me," said Wendy, returning several young lad's gazes as they watched the trio ride by.

Hyandai noted the prevalence of elven-style cloaks among the young women in the crowd. "Our fashion has certainly caught on here, has it not?" she asked.

Harlen nodded, "I heard the fashion-conscious among the whole of the Western Realms is wearing elven-style clothes of late, though I'm relieved it wasn't dwarven-style that caught on."

The two women giggled at that. "As am I," said Wendy, "you look silly with a beard."

They rode up to an inn with a stable attached and checked their horses into the stable. Upon entering the inn, they stood inside the doorway, rather shocked. Fully a third of the young women in the common room were wearing elven-style outfits as well, almost identical to Hyandai's. She kept her cloak on for now, rather embarrassed to be wearing something so apparently 'common'.

Harlen raised an eyebrow appreciatively. "I must say, I rather like their clothes," he said.

Wendy nudged him in the ribs. "Not till day after tomorrow, you lech," she said.

Despite the ease of the trip and the fact that they rode, they were tired, and after ordering food brought up to their shared room, they retired for the evening.

When Harlen awoke, he sat up and noted Hyandai was gone from the bed. She was an early riser, as he knew. Wendy, however, was still asleep soundly, being rather the opposite.

Wendy's nude back and rump rather attracted Harlen's eye and he moved over to her and kissed her shoulder.

"We're supposed to abstain, remember?" said Wendy, smiling muzzily as she awoke.

Harlen pressed himself against her back and she felt his rising organ. "I know, but you're hard to resist," he said.

She reached around and down and gripped his thick pole at the base. "It's 'rude' to go to another with me on you," she observed.

Harlen reached about her and gently massaged one breast. "We'll take a bath," he said.

Wendy groaned and said, "Done," as she turned over and kissed him. The two tumbled over the bed for a few moments, kissing and cuddling. Finally, though, Wendy wound up on top and sat up. "Will this upset Hyandai?" she asked.

"I doubt it very much," replied Harlen. "She's always concerned that you and I don't make love alone often enough."

She giggled, lifting herself from him and reaching between her long, slim thighs, gripping his cock. "She does, at that, doesn't she?" said Wendy.

Harlen moaned as Wendy sat down, taking him into her in one smooth motion. She was warm and inviting inside, as she always was. She grunted as she came to rest upon him. "Well, that's not a problem at this moment," she said, and began to rock her pelvis against him.

Harlen's strong hands gripped her slim waist and he began to help her speed up the rocking motion. Wendy rather liked the slight manhandling and it helped her to get where she desired, screaming out in climax as she impaled herself on his organ. After that, his grip tightened, and she knew he would come soon.

"You know you want to. Do it," she coaxed. "I want you to."

He rolled his eyes upward, and tightened his grip on her waist. She sighed in expectation. Lifting her up he began to support her whole weight with his arms and she drew in her legs and pulled them up to her chest. He began dropping her onto his pole, then lifting her again. She squealed in delight at the amazingly shocking ride that it was for her.

She managed to climax again even as he grunted and spent himself into her. She unfolded herself and smiled down at him. "You really should get Hyandai to try that," said Wendy.

"Nah," said Harlen, "there should be something special for you and me, too, you know?"

She slipped off his flagging organ and kissed it. "Okay, then, but I still think she'd love it."

"Love what?" asked Hyandai from the doorway, then her face took on a look of mock upset. "You two just made love!" She shut the room door.

"Sorry, we couldn't resist," said Wendy, giggling.

Harlen smiled sheepishly. "It was my fault, I started it," he confessed.

Hyandai shrugged. "No real matter, that part of the tradition is very optional," she said. "But I would advise bathing tonight."

"What have you been up to?" asked Harlen, noting the bundles that Hyandai bore in her arms.

"Buying clothes," said Wendy, looking accusingly at Hyandai. "And she was upset at us?"

"I could not stand all those young women wearing the same outfit as me," she admitted with a broad smile. "So I went to a tailor and had him make me a proper spring outfit." She then smiled sweetly at Wendy. "I had one made for you, too."

Wendy giggled and held out her hands, beckoning with her fingers.

Hyandai dropped the upper of the two parcels onto Wendy's fingertips and jerked her thumb at the door. "Out, male," she ordered.

Laughing, Harlen stood up and put on his pants and tunic, and picked up his boots and went forth to find breakfast.

He managed to browbeat a platter out of the innkeeper, and was walking back up the stairs when Hyandai popped open the door. "Okay, we're dressed," she said.

Harlen, curiosity marking his face stepped into the room and froze. "Wow," he said, eyeing the dresses his wives were wearing. "I think you two are going to start a new fashion trend."

"Perhaps, but not until after tomorrow," said Hyandai, straightening out her hem. The dresses were form-fitting, as almost everything elves wore were. They were, however long, like evening gowns. At the waist, they started touching, front panel to back, but narrowed down their entire length to the floor, where they came to a point. They showed a LOT of leg. The rear panel was slightly larger than the front, but still left a good portion of each lobe of the rump showing around its sides.

The upper half was a complicated weave of cloth strips that managed to cover the breasts, somewhat, but still left most of the skin of the woman's upper body quite visible, especially the back, which only had a single strip running up the center to split below the long hair of both women and go over their shoulders.

Harlen peered closely. "No loincloth?" he asked.

Hyandai shook her head. "Not appropriate with this style of dress," she replied and Wendy giggled.

"What is appropriate with this style of dress?" asked Harlen.

"Men ogling," replied Wendy, attempting to adjust the back panel to cover a bit more of her rump.

Harlen ogled a long moment. "I probably should get me some fancy clothes, to attract a woman, hmm?" he said.

Hyandai smiled generously. "Just let most of these girls about here see your chest and arms, and they shall follow you home like a puppy given table scraps," she declared. "Most of the young men here are skinny little whelps."

Wendy said, "I still can't believe what we're all about to do here."

"Is that to say you don't want to?" asked Harlen.

She shook her head, sending her hair into a wild cascade of many layers. "No, I've convinced myself to want to, and it should be fun, but it is still odd."

Hyandai did not know how to go about this business. Normally, with an elven village, it was a common enough practice that everyone simply accepted it. However, their need for discretion caused them to go where they knew few people, if any. She soon saw several men who were attractive, and spoke to a couple of them, and they seemed nice enough gentlemen.

However, nice and attractive were not the only measures she was seeking to fulfil. This once, she was listening to her fey, and her fey wanted something more. She roamed the shops and simply watched people from time to time. Here would be a well-built man, with his charming wife. She grinned at the thought of seducing both of them, but did not feel up to such a challenge.

She sighed. Perhaps this had been a bad idea. She had not thought of how blindingly difficult it might be to find a partner for one day's abandon. In Morrovale, she knew of at least ten men whom she would willingly bed, and nearly as many women. She turned toward the Academy again, though she had been down that street before.

There was a lad sitting on the stoop of a house there. He looked to be of age, though barely. He was reading a book intently, and enjoying a bit of the waning sun on a cool spring afternoon. The book immediately caught Hyandai's eye, it was penned in elven.

"You read elven?" asked Hyandai, realizing she had, for the first time since leaving Wendy and Harlen, spoken to someone beyond 'excuse me'.

The lad looked up, he was a bookish sort, and wore spectacles, which rather surprised Hyandai, vision ailments were normally easily corrected by most villages hedge-magi or clergy. "Yes, I have been donning it for several centuries now," he replied.

Without thinking, her scribish ways reinforced themselves. "I have been learning it for several years now," she corrected him. "Your elven is very good."

He smiled up at her. "Thank you, yours is bigger, though."

Hyandai giggled at that one. "It should be," she said, lowering her hood. Elves were not yet so common in the duchy that they often passed unnoticed, except at a few of the more popular wayside inns. The lad's eyes widened and he lowered his head in a elven bow, that was credibly executed.

"Your grace honors me," he said, in flawless elven, even the accent was perfect.

Hyandai smiled and clapped her hands together. "Well said," she said, and bowed low, formally. "I am Hyandai of clan Yavanaur," she said, also in formal speech.

He rose and repeated his bow, this time formally, and very well. "I am Kenett, son of Darvan and Sara," he said. "I must say you are incredibly beautiful."

Hyandai blushed slightly and an voice deep inside her said, HIM! For the first time in many months, she simply let it yell for its want, and then said to it, Very well, him. "I thank you, Kenett, and I must say you're a good-looking and studious man yourself."

She then focused herself inward and let her defenses down. Go ahead, she said to her innermost self, but no actions until the morrow. "Would you like to show me about town a little while, if you have the time?" she heard herself ask.

Harlen was even more forlorn than Hyandai. He knew he could easily find a lass in one of the taverns or a tavern wench herself. However, much like his lovely spouse, he knew this was not for such a thing, the person that one spent careshlan tosked esmivani with must be worthy, not just settled upon.

One woman approached him as he drank a beer, steeling himself to search elsewhere. "Hello, ranger," she said. It was Natlee, the wife of one of the other rangers. She peered at him hard. "You look like your looking for something, tracking in town are you?" she asked.

Harlen nodded. "In a manner, yes," he said. Pity you're married, Natlee, you'd do admirably, he thought. She was a pretty woman, tall and statuesque, with long, flowing blonde hair. "You wouldn't have a sister would you?" he quipped.

She giggled. "I do, but you're a married man, Harlen," she said. Then her eyes turned to him at a slight angle. "Or does that matter?"

Harlen shrugged. "Today it does, tomorrow, not so much, if you can keep it from other ears."

She nodded. "Good as my word," she said, "and it doesn't matter tomorrow? How does that work?"

He explained things to her, rather simplistically, but adequately. She smiled more broadly as the conversation went on. "Harlen, my dear man, if you simply need a partner for tomorrow's - festivities, then I happily volunteer. Any man who can keep two women, one of them an elf, satiated is someone I would be eager to discover more of."

"Ah, but you're a married woman," said Harlen, "and I'll not encourage you to break your vows."

"If only," she said, sighing. "However, I may know a young woman you might be interested in speaking to." Natlee pointed over toward the far end of the bar, a girl sat there, wearing a long dress as well, and with long, straw-colored tresses. She was tall, also, like Natlee, and well-built, not skinny.

He looked back at Natlee. "You know her?" he asked, suddenly very interested.

She nodded. "I know her well, we are good friends," she said, "us giant women must stick together." She stood from her stool. "Come, I will introduce you to her."

He could not believe his nervousness as he walked down the bar with Natlee, he felt like a youth at a village dance, preparing to ask a girl for his first dance with her.

The girl noted their approach and turned. "Natlee! It's good to see you here," she said, smiling brightly. Harlen noted a faint row of freckles across her nose and cheeks, very becoming freckles.

Natlee said, "Crissa, I'd like to introduce you to an old friend, Harlen of Morrovale."

The tall woman stood and regarded Harlen. "I have heard his name mentioned before, often, isn't he the ranger who married the elven woman?" she asked.

Harlen shuffled his feet. "That would be me, Crissa," he admitted.

Her smile did not dim in the least. "I have oft wondered what a man can do that would make one of the firstborn fall for him," she said, eyeing him speculatively.

Natlee had conveniently disappeared when Harlen looked over his shoulder.

"Um, well," he stammered. "I suppose it was nothing really." He looked at her again, she was really cute, and her smile just kept getting more stunning by the minute. "I should be straight with you... " he said, and told her everything. By the time he was done, he noted that Crissa was possibly the single most lovely creature he'd ever laid eyes upon, and he wondered how he could have ever thought otherwise.

Her hair shone golden in the lamplight of the tavern, and her teeth flashed white. Her unblemished skin seemed to glow from within, and when she giggled, it was a sound that nearly made him weep with its beauty.

She grinned at him, her smile fading just a touch. "Harlen, did you say that it starts on the morrow?"

He nodded, smiling nervously. "Yes, on the day opposite our anniver... "

The sentence was never completed as Crissa put her arms about his shoulders and kissed him firmly on the lips. She was passionate about it, too, and he felt her long, strong body press to his. She broke the kiss and regarded him. "It's after midnight, my man for a day," she said in a husky voice.

It was nearly midnight, and Wendy, still brooding on her lack of success in finding a potential partner for the morrow was stewing her mind at another tavern, this one called the Twopenny Nail. She sat nursing a tall ale and wondered what she might do now.

Then it happened.

One drunk in the back of the Nail threw a punch at another, and like a wildfire in a dry field, the bar erupted into a war zone. Wendy slowly turned from the bar upon her stool. Yes, this is about right, she thought. Look for a lover and find a fistfight.

The women of the Nail were just as enthusiastic about the brawl as the men, and there did seem to be some rather close involvement of the furniture. She sighed as she ducked and a hurled mug smashed into the pillar next to her. She pointed a finger at the man who had hurled it and he shrugged and smiled sheepishly. That was when some wench wearing an outfit far too revealing for someone who had that much to reveal grabbed her arm.

You'd think she'd never been headbutted before, Wendy thought as the woman slumped to the floor. Now, however, her own blood was beginning to boil, and it was high time someone paid for her frustration for the day. Moving through the crowd of brawling patrons like a silverfish, she blurred through the mass of bodies and flying crockery.

Here some lout would feel his shin mercilessly kicked, there a man would grab for his groin after a moderate kneeing, and she distributed liberally of her favorite, the headbutt.

There were five lads trying to bring down a large red-haired Coghlandish mercenary. The recently discharged soldier in her resented a fellow soldier being harassed and she threw herself into the fracas, passing out elbows and kneecaps to all and sundry.

Finally, after long moments, the crowd realized who had pretty much attacked everyone in the building and they all began to turn upon Wendy. She decided it was time to go, else she would be too sore to enjoy tomorrow, if she found a victim.