Today’s prompt selection was: Remote control, High protocol, Fire play. I went for fire play because I had a great scene in mind – honestly not 100% certain everyone’ll count it? But uh, it counts to me.
I dunno, read it and tell me your opinion in the comments?
I wrote this whole thing in about three hours. No edits, I literally haven’t even read the entirety of it start to finish yet, so…y’know. Be kind.
This scene takes place in the magical land of Arellan!
Iolanda is a PLAD – Person of Lower Astral Descent – a.k.a. a person who has some hellish ancestry. This means she has horns, a tail, is highly resilient to heat, and a few other things. She’s pink, very curvy, cheery and sweet, and has recently discovered that sex is a lot of fun – and, as a paladin, has plenty of spells, magic, and immunity to disease which means she really doesn’t need to worry about a damn thing about it.
(Seriously folks talk about slutty bards? Y’all. Slutty paladins is where it’s at)
Hanrick is a dwarf, a smith, and a trans-man in a specific way that went poorly: dwarven society actually has many aspects of gender recognition with over a dozen distinct genders recognized, and blends and inter-spaces of them, and dwarven children are born genderless. They associate themselves with a gender as part of their procession into adulthood; some of these genders include malleability. Hanrick’s did not, and so the fact that he later “changed” it (brief sidenote: trans people are not changing their gender, they are realizing their gender) ended up being a bit of an issue for him. Overall, he’s pretty happy, though, though he has kind of doubled down on the “I’m a dude man bro” side of things as a sort of defence of his position. He’s not really a toxic man so much as he seems like one, though, and at the core of it all he’s quite vulnerable (in fact, that’s the cause of some of the issues).
Anyway, in this scene, Hanrick has just completed a request for Iolanda: she asked for a ring that would let her swap genders. She’s been dancing for his work crew (she’s a semi-professional stripper) as well as doing various other helpful and/or sexy things to encourage them and also pay for the work.
She’s very happy to get the ring, and after having dinner together, Hanrick rails her hard against the side of the forge, and Iolanda really leans into the heat of it. Given that she’s heat-resistant, she can take…quite a bit of heat, as she’s taking quite a bit of other things too.
POV swaps between the two of them, indicated by a horizontal line. Rail, get railed, whatever you like!
If that sounds like fun, keep reading! If not, do whatever you want!
After the break, things heat up (eventually. First there’s a dinner – but dessert is cock and pussy).
A big night.
Hanrick glanced around the space, the forge’s light not quite flickering but neither precisely steady. The smithy’s usual trappings sat in the dimness of the distance by and large: racks of hammers, chisels, tongs, punches, sets, and more, not exactly set away but not entirely out and open, either.
Iolanda’s face, when she walked in, took on a wash of surprise as she looked around.
He’d given her a key so she could let herself in, and her gorgeous all-gold eyes blinked as she spun in a small circle – as if the others might be hiding behind her. Hanrick chuckled, his eyes dropping to the skirt she wore (halfway to her knee at a stretch, and rising in the back from her tail as it curved away from her) while she spun.
“Ain’t nobody else here?” Iolanda looked back to him with a confused blink.
Some people filled in their own bullshit when they didn’t know what the answer was, but Iolanda didn’t tend to do that. Hanrick let out another chuckle, one that trailed to a sigh as the trepidation in his chest tightened – he let his eyes start at the top of her, trailing from the tips of her horns down over her bright fuchsia hair, teased up and curled as it was; down over her wide gold eyes and soft pink cheeks, the substantial curves of her chest below the tight shirt she wore, the equal contenders of the curves of her hips making her short pleated skirt flare out to the sides of her powerful thighs.
He hoped it wasn’t the last time he would see her. See her properly, not just laying eyes on from a distance; not just see her, but really get to interact.
“Not comin’.” He cleared his throat a little, gesturing to one of the anvils. The others had all been hauled out of the way by the chain hoist that ran on its rails, hung from the ceiling of the circular space – set up as all the Greatforges were with the forge central to the rest.
One anvil, though, which he thought of as the Head, had been dressed up in a tablecloth with dishes set and wine poured. No candles, the forge providing light as it provided everything else.
Iolanda nodded softly, but he could see that she still didn’t understand. Didn’t understand but was willing to accept it – glancing around for the other workers, the enchanter, the stage, something, but she stepped over to the anvil and its chairs with a smile and took a seat.
He followed, hoping it wouldn’t be the last time. Maybe the last meal – although he’d prefer not that, either – but not the last interaction, certainly.
Iolanda’s high-heeled shoes clicked lightly on the cobblestones, and she smiled at the people she passed. Some of them smiled back!
Some didn’t.
A few of them even went as far as to flash sigils in her direction with their hands; to avert their eyes, and one even spat in her general direction which she frowned at softly. She understood that people thought folk like her – folk who had a devil or a demon or something like that, somewhere up in the branches of their family tree – were bad luck, or were evil, or were whatever else. The hand signs were supposed to ward that off, along with some charms or muttered words or whatever else.
Spitting seemed silly, though.
“Somethin’s evil and gon’ hurt ya, prob’ly ain’t a good plan to spit at it,” Iolanda muttered to herself as she frowned thoughtfully, her feet easily following the path to Hanrick’s. Anson and Sons Forge, was what the sign said, but she didn’t think of it that way.
Mostly because it was a lot more words, and she wasn’t certain how many of those could fit in her mind before they’d start spilling out. “Hanrick’s” seemed better because it was fewer words. Took up less space.
Another thought struck her as she pulled the key out of her purse, and she tipped her head to one side with a considerate hum. “Trees ain’t work that way, anyway. They go roots first, then branches later – but then, with family trees, they start up at the branches an’-”
With a soft huff, she waved a hand as if banishing the thought from her head, once more uncertain as to how many she could manage at any given time and not wanting speculation over the growth of family trees to distract her from dancing.
When the door opened, though, it was dimmer than she thought it would be. Her eyes had always been good in the dark (which some people said was because she was from Hell, but she’d never been to the Hells as far as she was certain – and as a child, she’d thought that would make her less good at seeing in the dark anyway, since the Hells were full of fire so they’d always be bright, but Zxzk had informed her that much of the fire in the Hells actually burned dark. He’d declined to explain what that meant, though, which left her as confused as she’d been to begin with) but they took a moment to adjust sometimes.
She didn’t see the stage. “Stage,” such as it was – the wood platform which was set in place overtop of two of the anvils, for her to entertain the workers as they worked on her project. A simultaneous bit of payment and encouragement, as they all worked hard – and they did work hard – on making a magical ring for her.
It had been a good idea, and it had gone well so far. Creativity wasn’t always her strongest suit, but she seemed capable of it when it came to things people would find fun, or sexy. Sexy was especially easy, sometimes that one happened by accident – and it had been fun for her, too, coming up with new ideas to excite and entertain the workers, the enchanter, and of course Hanrick too, as they all worked at the forge.
Had been fun for the past few weeks, dancing for them – alone, or with a friend or two. It had convinced them all very thoroughly that the tickets she’d managed to get them for the upcoming play at Kalbarro were worth a lot, as well: a few of them had grumbled at the start that they didn’t like the theatre.
After she’d taken her clothes off a couple of times, they developed a lot more interest in it. Especially after she told them all how many times she had to take them off in the play – which, admittedly, took her a minute to count, but they all seemed quite happy to listen and watch as she sat on one edge of the stage, naked, legs crossed at the knee, listing all the ways in which she would get naked during the production and all the people who would undress her as she tallied them all up on her fingers.
She couldn’t remember what the number actually was. She’d written it down somewhere so she didn’t need to remember it, but she did remember that as excited as they’d been to hear about the nudity, they’d been ten times as excited to hear about all the people she would have sex with during the play.
Sometimes that was a good way to entertain them all too.
Now, though, as she looked around, she didn’t see any workers. Glancing into the corners of the forge (although there weren’t any corners in the round room, but she thought of the far reaches as corners at least and peered into them with eyes more than capable of piercing the gloom) and even going so far as to look behind herself to see if they’d just been hiding behind the edges of the doorframe (like she’d seen happen in the one or two surprise parties she’d been delighted to partake in), she couldn’t see a single one of them: none of the half-dozen or so forgeworkers who had been brought in to help with the project, not the enchanter, nobody except for Hanrick.
He stood there with a small smile on his thicker lips, running a hand through his slicked hair. Looked tense, the muscles in his thick arms standing out a little bit – he wasn’t wearing what he usually did to work the forge. Just a linen shirt that went about to his elbows, a brown vest, black slacks. They looked nice on his shorter, broader Dwarven frame, and Iolanda smiled at him, but she wasn’t sure what was happening.
“Ain’t nobody else here?”
Hanrick shook his head a little. “Not comin’, no. Not tonight.”
He gestured her over toward the table – which she knew wasn’t actually a table, it was an anvil which had a tablecloth and plates and cutlery and all the things one would expect of a table (except for food, at least as of yet) set upon it, but it seemed strongly table-like and she’d never been a carpenter or anything else to do with furniture and so didn’t really feel qualified to state what was or wasn’t a table.
She went, though, with a smile, and sat.
“Been a minute since we had dinner like this jus’ you an’ me,” Iolanda giggled softly as Hanrick stepped over to the forge. He grabbed at a pair of handles and went to tug them out, but then withdrew with a soft hiss.
They were hotter than he thought they would be.
Forge had been burning colder for a while now, something which Hanrick bitterly ascribed to the loss of a line in the deepest darknesses of thoughts which he rarely let himself fully process; Anson and Sons Forge, it said, and the sons had all passed.
At least, so his father would’ve said.
He was the last one, but his father had never accepted that; never said son nor daughter of course, only speaking Dwarvish until the end, but never acknowledged that Hanrick was a man regardless of what he might’ve chosen at the ceremony which had marked his graduation from childhood into adulthood.
Elves changed their minds, their souls, their bodies later on, so why shouldn’t he be able to as well?
Admittedly, mentioning Elves positively had probably been doomed to fail with his dad from the start.
Hanrick turned around, to get a glove – he’d been nervous, cooking, and had stuck the pots in early to give them plenty of time to cook – and had left them in probably too long. The heat had snuck up their handles the way heat does, and it was hardly the first burn he’d gotten from the forge.
Iolanda was already there though, right at his elbow. Her hands glowed a little as she reached out for his hand, pulling it up to inspect it and then press her lips to it in a kiss – and her lips glowed a little too as the burn just faded right away. Perks of dating someone with healing magic.
Dating, or whatever.
Hanrick felt the smile on his lips, and it didn’t waver at all as the thought struck him; they’d had a conversation about it that he’d intended to make everything very clear. Or in fact if he was being entirely honest what he’d intended was to draw up a menu of things and how much money they’d knock off the final price of the ring – and in fact they even had drawn up a bit of one, but it had all ended up going somehow very differently.
Whatever he had with her, though, he liked it. Present tense, past tense – hell, future tense if he could get it, but if not? The other two could never be taken away.
“Thanks, doll,” he chuckled through his grin which only widened as she leaned down – a good three-quarters of a foot taller than him, and when you only have four and a half of those (plus an inch or so), that adds up to a fair difference – and pressed a kiss to his lips that deepened, their tongues intertwining as he slipped one hand up into her curled hair and the other back to squeeze at her bottom.
She gasped and giggled, then reached out and picked up the handles he’d been reaching for previously. Instinctively he shot out a hand and started to warn her off due to the heat, but she was fine.
“Easy to forget how good you c’n take the heat sometimes,” he chuckled, gesturing her back over toward the table.
Hot, but not too hot. Not for her, at least.
Like her eyes in the dark – like the horns on her head or the tail that curled behind her – she knew where it came from, and as long as she (and others) were careful and knew about it, it was no problem.
The only issues came when you went to drink tea and other people thought it was ready, then started screaming because it was just ten seconds off of boiling.
She’d tried waiting until other people said it was cool enough to drink, but it just seemed kinda cold by that point.
Hanrick directed her over to the table and told her to set down the two things she’d pulled out of the forge. They looked like metal pears, kind of, at the end of a metal pole about two or three hands long – the pear part had been buried in the coals of the forge.
Hanrick grabbed a couple of those coals up with a pair of tongs in each hand, too, and brought them over to the table. He set them in a candlestick that didn’t have any candles, and the embers cast a soft glow over the table which made her smile.
Then, when he opened up the metal pear-shapes with a tool he pulled out of his pocket, her smile dissolved immediately into a rough groan. “Oh Hanrick that smells good!”
“Don’t mind makin’ you make that kinda noise, doll,” he chuckled, thickly and lustily, and Iolanda giggled as she stroked a hand at his shoulder before they slid back into their seats again.
“Well, you gon’ go feedin’ me some’n’ smells like that, you probably gon’ get more chances,” she giggled again – as if they weren’t already going to, anyway. They had sex pretty much every time she came over, sometimes even with the other forgeworkers watching and cheering them on – both they, and he, seemed to really like that, so Iolanda felt like it was probably a grand idea to keep them all happy and working hard.
She liked it too. Sex, generally, she liked, and had always been a fan of community and gatherings. Combining the two seemed like an easy win, to her, and certainly she’d enjoyed it every time she’d tried!
Good thing, too, given that in just a few nights the play was set to open, and while she’d forgotten the number (though, like with the nudity number, she’d written it down somewhere just in case), she really did have sex with a fair number of the other girls at the playhouse during the course of the play.
The handle and rod came away with one half of the pear, leaving only the other portion resting like a bowl on the table. Hanrick gave the half he was pulling away a twist and a tap over the plate and a selection of roasted vegetables came tumbling out. The bowl half was full of thick, hearty-looking stew that Iolanda sniffed at and couldn’t stop another slow groan from sounding in her chest.
Hanrick watched her with a grin. It was fun watching her enjoy things, and usually pretty sexy too – and not just because of how much she enjoyed sex, although he did of course appreciate that too. It was just the way she went at it: a hundred percent, every time. If she liked it, she’d groan and roll her eyes back in her head, whether it was a hand massage or a sandwich or two thick fingers in her hole.
Admittedly, he did have something of an internal list of priority for those. He liked them all, but that didn’t necessarily mean he liked them all equally nor that he would be unable to place one above the others.
If he was approached by some shadowy magical figure and informed that he had to sacrifice two of the list for every day of the rest of his life, in order to have the third one every day of the rest of his life? Well, he was sure Iolanda’s hands would deal without massages, and there was plenty in life to eat aside from sandwiches.
“Dig in,” he chuckled, and that was all it took; she waited for him to say so, of course, not wanting to be impolite, but as soon as he did she had her spoon in hand nearly as quickly as he’d seen her grab hold of anything and was shoveling stew into her mouth like it was getting her off.
Groaning like it was getting her off too, in fact.
Hanrick swirled his wine and prodded at a chunk of parsnip as Iolanda dove into the food not just with both feet but in fact all but headfirst – the stew was still too hot for him, but after a few seconds and some blowing on it the parsnip was cooled enough to eat, and it was good.
It was quite tasty even, and he thought of himself as a pretty good cook, but there was something more to his enjoyment and appreciation.
A meal cooked in the forge was a big thing. A big deal, kind of.
Technically they were supposed to be relatives. Either born so, or taken in marriage or some other bonding; it felt a little taboo to be sharing the meal with her, but she didn’t know what it meant, and it wasn’t that he meant to sneak it on her or anything. Had no plans whatsoever of pulling out the rug at the end of the meal and claiming they were suddenly married – it didn’t work that way anyway, it wasn’t something one did in order to marry someone, just something one only did with immediate family members. Parents, siblings, children, or closely bonded partners who were absolutely considered part of the family.
Hanrick hadn’t had a meal like this in over a century.
He’d never cooked one, in the whole of his three hundred or so years. Not once.
Something, though – some lingering figment of a dream when he woke – had him thinking of it. Then he saw the Djissaulters, the cooking implements; his family’s had been lost with his youngest brother, but there was a set for sale in a store that looked identical. Previously owned.
Hanrick had been shocked to see his family’s strike on them.
Parrus had been thousands of miles away when the ship he’d chartered passage on had sunk, lost with all hands and all cargo. Hanrick wasn’t sure how the Djissaulters had happened to make the journey back home, but he’d bought them on the instant.
Having them, he felt an urge to use them.
Maybe that had inspired a dream he’d had of sharing such a meal with Iolanda. As he considered it, everything fell into place: the vegetables he was hoping for coming into harvest, and bountiful harvests meaning good quality at a low price; his favourite wine merchant giving him a surplus bottle from their latest batch, very good quality but for free – she’d expected four hundred bottles and had ended out with four hundred one, sixty years after first sealing the casks, and she almost never had errors in her calculations after centuries on the job but had chalked it up to happy accident and thrown the bottle in with Hanrick’s usual order as a thanks for his regular custom.
Everything had fallen perfectly into place. He’d even bumped his head on a shelf in the pantry and knocked the box full of good silver – gone missing some years before – off and to the floor.
For Iolanda, it was just a nice meal. A good meal, maybe even a delicious one, he was sure – and maybe a meal with someone she liked, at the very least obviously a meal with someone she thought was hot enough to go shacking up with time and time again – but to him it meant a lot more.
It felt like family in a way he wasn’t sure he’d really had since changing so much of his life. Not his name: he’d kept that. A rebellion in and of itself, in a way. Hanrick was not traditionally a man’s name, after all.
He wasn’t much for tradition. Not always. That meal with Iolanda, though, was one tradition that made him feel absolutely fulfilled and thrilled.
Heat from the forge; light from the forge; food from the forge. All came from the forge, steel and warmth – his lips murmured silently around words of old sayings and ancient prayers in Dwarvish as he watched Iolanda eat.
It was an important thing, to him.
So was she.
Iolanda was delighted to get at the stew while it was still hot – hot enough its warmth lingered in her throat and her belly even, heavily spiced and delicious with meat, vegetables, and things she wasn’t even certain of the name of.
Tasty, though.
She said as much as she ate – or tried to say, at least, though the words were somewhat muffled by mouthfuls.
Sometimes Hanrick liked when her words were muffled by mouthfuls, though. So did she.
“Gon’ get a different kinda mouthful after this,” she insisted around a thick chunk of roast potato, but the words were surely too smushed up to be understood. She could tell that with her ears, which heard them very much not as what she’d spoken and instead as something closer to “goma gediffa kaimowffa affadish”.
She could tell as well because Hanrick didn’t do that lusty chuckle he always did in reply. Not immediately, at least.
He still did plenty, though, overall – he was Hanrick, after all, and she would have been a little concerned if he hadn’t. Really quite concerned, in fact, because of how much of a departure from his norm it would’ve been.
Thankfully, though, she had no need to be worried.
“Damn, you are goin’ ta town on that food!” Hanrick laughed, slapping a hand at the anvil-table as he did and grinning, his eyes twinkling in the ember-light. “Gonna go to town on you after it’s all done, maybe, eh? Ha!”
Iolanda nodded, throwing in a strenuously affirmative thumbs-up just to make sure that even if her words didn’t come across, her meaning did – and even going as far as to point emphatically down between her legs, to which Hanrick laughed even further.
“Get stuffed with somethin’ other’n roast ‘tatoes,” Iolanda confirmed with a giggle, taking a sip of her wine in a brief break between food and widening her eyes at the glass. “Oh, that’s nice! Ain’t too uh… tanny. Think that’s what Armmina said.”
“Tannins,” Hanrick chuckled with a grin, blowing on a spoonful of stew. “They go well with the fats and all – in the stew, the meat.”
“It’s real good by the way,” Iolanda insisted with a vehement nod. “The stew, the meat, all of it! I just ain’t ate since lunch, and Balles Tawn was confusin’ me about what’s a sandwich? So I cain’t remember if I actually ate much, but anyway.”
She shrugged, Hanrick chuckling as he swept a hand dismissively through the air. “Bah, plenty more to eat than sandwiches, eh doll? Ha!” He broke off for a thick laugh which she joined in on, even if she didn’t quite get the joke, but that happened pretty often. Sometimes there were even jokes that only worked in certain languages, and it seemed to her that there were more of those than she could count – and, given her experience recounting the numbers of both nudity and sex in the play, and while she could not immediately recall those specific numbers, she at least knew they were fairly large, and thus decided that the number she could count up to was surprisingly high by her own estimation.
Sort of like climbing a mountain, it was easier if you went one step at a time. Nobody could climb a mountain all at once, and nobody could count to a hundred all at once – but by going one step at a time, you could get to either one, and Iolanda nodded in satisfaction at the conclusion of her own thoughts.
“Yeah he seems like he’d be uh, generally a confusin’ kinda guy,” Hanrick admitted with a shrug, sweeping one hand over his greased-back hair. “You gotta build up some kinda appetite too, eh doll? Jumping around on stage an’ all.”
“Ain’t too much jumpin’,” Iolanda hummed, tipping her head to one side as she briefly ran through the choreography in her mind. There was some – jumping back in surprise at a few points, one or two times that she was supposedly burned or wounded that she was supposed to recoil from and that was a sort of jumping.
“Mostly, though, it’s the sex,” she pointed out with a one-shouldered shrug as she dug her spoon deep into the stew again and wasted no time delivering it into her mouth. “Really takes it out a girl, y’know.” Then, she giggled around her mouthful and swallowed it. “Takes it out a girl to put it in a girl!”
“I was just gonna say!” Hanrick burst out, clutching at the table’s edge and laughing wide enough that Iolanda could’ve counted his teeth if she’d had any reason to. “Ah, doll, you’re too much sometimes – I love it! Damn, you go buildin’ up that appetite – yowza!”
Iolanda nodded, and she wasn’t entirely sure what yowza was – beyond Hanrick’s favourite word, probably, or at the very least favourite where she was concerned – but she knew it was something good. “I really do,” she sighed, sipping at her wine again. “I forgot how many times I have sex in it ag’in, but I wrote it down somewhere.”
“Probably different in rehearsals too,” Hanrick suggested with a shrug.
It was, too. Sometimes it was just the same piece of the same act of the play, over and over again – sometimes whole acts. Toward the start there had been even more other stuff, things like “just act scared for a minute” (which had been a little difficult for her, as most things weren’t that scary after you’d gone on the road fighting monsters and demons and angels and all kinds of other things like Iolanda had).
They talked, over dinner. More talking and less dinner, as time went on, one gradually giving hand to the other. Iolanda finished off her stew as she went through a bit of how the day’s rehearsal had gone. She finished off her roast vegetables as Hanrick talked about the day’s forgework – which was nothing to do with her project, of course.
It wasn’t technically illegal, making the ring, he’d assured her of that – but it would be considered dangerous. Frowned upon. He hadn’t given it too much explanation, but she trusted him to know stuff like that.
At the end of the day, too, it wasn’t her city, and she wasn’t planning on staying forever.
Probably it was because of the power source. He’d mentioned that – that Blacksand was considered dangerous, and that was what powered her ring.
She couldn’t imagine that it was because of what the ring did, because all it would do was make her into a him, or back again. That was what she’d asked for, at least, and Hanrick had assured her it could be done, and that he could sort it out.
For some reason, though, none of the workers were there. Not the enchanter who rarely spoke but seemed to know Hanrick pretty intently, pretty intimately. Not the forgeworkers who had helped with tempering and heating and whatever else happened in order to make metal at a forge and then to turn that into a ring.
Nobody else.
Iolanda finished off her plate and looked around with a thoughtful hum. “Why ain’t anybody else comin’? Also you gon’ finish that?”
Hanrick chuckled, sliding his plate over to Iolanda and smirking at the way she swiftly started to eat up the last of it. Not the very last, though – he knew she’d offer that to him, she always did, holding it out on a fork with a raised eyebrow.
“Eh, don’t need ‘em actually uh…”
He tugged at his collar a bit as he cleared his throat. Probably – technically – nobody would’ve had an issue with it, but only because Iolanda was leaving. Technically the Guardsmiths shouldn’t’ve had any problem with the ring, because he wasn’t making it for himself he was making it for her, and she was leaving.
At the same time, he knew if he was making it for himself, it would’ve been the worst thing he’d ever done – and given that previous actions had led to him getting ousted from the family, back when he’d first informed them all that him was the proper term for him now, that meant quite a lot.
A ring to turn man into woman, or more; Hanrick hadn’t bothered talking about it too intently with Iolanda, because the common tongue wasn’t well-outfitted for it. He, she, and they, were the only options really, as opposed to in Dwarvish which had words for more than a dozen primary genders – and more beyond that for the blends, the alloys of those base minerals as one could think of it.
Hanrick’s greatest sin in the eyes of his parents (and everyone else) had not been anything to do with being, then, like steel, or iron, or gold; nor had it even been that his metal or alloy had changed, because that was considered fine and well too, as iron might be melted down and alloyed into steel with carbon with ease.
No, Hanrick’s sin had been complex, but had rested both in what gender he’d originally had – a noble, immutable one, like brass, uncorroding – and what it had become, and largely in the fact that he’d consulted with a great number of Elves in order to do so.
Perhaps there even was a way to do it with Dwarven magic. With Dwarven means. Perhaps. Hanrick hadn’t been able to find one, though, with everyone only starting so strongly on shock that he didn’t think they ever would be indicated toward aid instead, and so after decades he’d sought out Elvish aid instead, making for a very great – very complex, very manyfold – sin.
Corroding a noble metal using Elvish magic, not good, even though Hanrick rebelled at the thought because the metal had been his to begin with, had been himself, and he could do with himself what he pleased. What he needed.
He was happier now.
Not all of which – or, indeed, nearly any of which – had been explained to Iolanda. It was too long a tale with too many words which Hanrick couldn’t translate, so when she asked if he would be able to help her make a magical ring which could change her body into a man’s (as she’d stated it) and back again, he simply told her that he knew exactly the person to talk to.
She never asked why exactly she knew exactly the right person to talk to.
Iolanda smiled back at him, beautiful and soft, and he saw for a moment how his own smile used to look. Back before he’d changed – a smile of spite, a smile of hatred, a daring defiance of a smile, a smile that said “fuck you” to any one of a dozen meanings.
Hers wasn’t.
It was just a gorgeous smile,
At the same time, he recognized the look in her eyes. When she talked about wanting to see what it was like, he could see it; behind that, something else that maybe even she wasn’t quite aware of yet, but it wasn’t the same as he’d had.
He’d hated what he had been, and she didn’t. She just also wanted to be something more – not just wanted but needed, even though she only had ever said want, but he could recall the same about himself.
“Just a show,” he’d told his parents as he’d styled his beard like a man’s for the first time; just playing a part, he’d said, wearing a man’s clothes as one of the ‘daughters’ of his house, and he’d genuinely believed it himself, for a while.
Slowly, though, over time, the reality of his needs had become more apparent. Other people said he’d done it out of nowhere, but they hadn’t been there for decades of mornings – thousands of days of looking himself in the mirror, and every time hating what he saw a little bit more until he didn’t bother having mirrors around anymore.
If he could save Iolanda even half an ounce of that pain with the ring, it would be worth every bit of sweat he’d shed over it.
…and the sweat they’d shed together didn’t hurt, either.
Iolanda finished off Hanrick’s veggies as he drifted off in thought for a minute, only coming back to the moment when she held out the last bit of potato – or parsnip, she wasn’t sure because she hadn’t eaten it – to him on the end of her fork. “You want it?”
He chuckled and shook his head, and she popped it into her mouth with a hum.
Parsnip.
Good.
“Is there a…” Iolanda spooned another mouthful of stew and swallowed it swiftly. “Some kinda problem or somethin’?”
It would be fine if there was. There had been a few, cropped up over the past few weeks – some of them had meant her coming out more frequently to entertain the forgeworkers more, because the more she did the lower wage they were willing to work for, as it had been explained to her. Some of the problems had meant sleepless nights on her part, although mostly on the part of Zxzk who had been in charge of sorting out all the sand.
Mostly just because he could see it better than her, but also a little because of pranks he’d played on her when she was little – and when she’d been growing – and when she was an adult – for which she wanted to pay him back at least a little bit.
“No, oh,” Hanrick shook his head with a chuckle and a wave, “no, no problem, doll, nothin’ like that – uh, the opposite, actually. Y’know, you comin’ down here and dancin’ for the hired hammers an’ all, I mean- heh, yowza, you know what I mean? Ah, you know what I mean,” he waved a hand again, and she giggled and nodded.
Even though she wasn’t quite sure she knew what he meant.
She raised an eyebrow, holding out the last spoonful of stew to him in questioning, but he nudged it back toward her with a hand as he shook his head. “Anyway uh, yeah, doll, they all were real excited about the play an’ that’s comin’ up soon, so they pulled a little overtime,” he chuckled, running a hand over his hair. “And uh, yeah, we got done a little early.”
Iolanda stared softly as Hanrick pulled his hand out of his pocket, setting a ring down in the middle of the tablecloth. It was fairly thick, braided metal of five different kinds – she was pretty sure one was gold, and one silver, but then there was a dark one, a greenish one, and a pinkish one that she wasn’t sure of. Fairly thick braids but still intricate, squared-off like she was used to Dwarvish things looking; it sparkled in the light, too, the little speckles of Blacksand embedded into it in some way.
Hanrick had said they’d need a hundred grains, but there looked to be a thousand sparkles in the ring.
“Wow.” Iolanda barely breathed the word, reaching out a hand softly toward it before stopping and looking to him.
It was a small nod that he gave, but an excited one, and she was just as excited as she snatched it up.
“Tested it out myself before you came over,” he chuckled, “just to make sure I wasn’t given’ you a dud, doll – but yeah, it’ll do, eh?”
“It’s beautiful!” Iolanda beamed, holding up the ring to the light and turning it over in her hand before slipping it onto her finger.
“It’s got a certain amount o’ heat before it runs out, but it’ll heat back up at noon every day. Uh, so to speak.” Hanrick spluttered a laugh with a wave. “Obviously not heat but, you know. Magic.”
“How’s it work?” Iolanda gaze slipped away from the ring to find his face instead. “I mean, how do I use it, not how’s it work. I ain’t a wizard or nothin’.”
Hanrick snorted. “Me neither, doll, and I ain’t got a damn clue, ha! But to use it you just gotta focus real hard on it for a minute, and uh… yeah, it’ll change you all around.”
“It’ll make me a boy?” Iolanda’s eyes flicked back to the ring again. Little carvings and filigree covered it, and there was a vaguely humanoid figure etched into it; one side looked more feminine, one side more masculine.
“It’ll make you whatever you like, doll,” Hanrick chuckled. “And I mean, as long as we’re on the subject ain’t nothin’ off-limits for me, you know what I’m sayin’? Whatever you got down there I’ll be happy to take it for a spin,” he chuckled again, more intently, before drifting off into a sigh as his eyes came to rest on her chest.
“Damn I’ll miss those, though,” he murmured, propping up his chin on one fist.
With a giggle, Iolanda squeezed her arms together on either side of her bosom, grinning at how it made Hanrick’s cheeks flush with colour. “Well, the ring can bring ‘em back, right? But- wait,” she shook her head slightly, “what d’you mean ‘whatever’? What other options are there?”
As her lips asked it, though, she thought of people she knew – Bridget, for instance, who she’d met since commissioning the ring in the first place. Bridget, who had breasts and a dick, and a vagina as well, as Iolanda had found out to both surprise and delight.
“I guess there is other options,” she murmured, staring at the ring in excitement and joy.
Not only for what it meant for her, but what it could mean for others. She remembered back in Labsallidas, a young man by the name of Carrim – they’d met by happenstance, and he’d been a sweet man, and Iolanda had been confused to find out that his body didn’t quite match up. She’d helped him find a place in town, a sex shop that had a relic which made people’s bodies swap around, and she’d even paid for him to be able to use it.
He’d been so happy, and she’d felt her heart near about to leap out of her chest, and now holding the ring she was feeling both of those at once.
If she met someone else like Carrim, she could just help them out, easy. Plus, the more time she spent thinking about it herself, the more curious she was to try other things. Other bodies. Other ways of doing things, of being.
On top of which, she knew that some of her partners would enjoy it, and so would she – the idea of getting to squeeze at Erris’ boobs when he didn’t normally have any, or getting to suck on Wyrria’s not-normally-there dick and hear her raspy voice hitching in her throat.
To try it for herself, to try it with others, to be able to help others – it was perfect.
She looked forward to trying it out, too, but it felt a little rude to do that right here and now. Like taking a bite of an apple before buying it – she trusted Hanrick if he said it worked, and if for some reason it stopped or it didn’t work for her or something like that, she knew where he lived and could easily see to having the issue dealt with.
At the moment, though, that thought barely even entered her mind. It was far too busy swirling with possibilities, with excitement, and with thanks, and they all focused in on one thing.
Hanrick watched as Iolanda stood up from her chair, and he expected her to give it a try. Like giving a sword a swing before you buy it, or trying on a shirt – gotta make sure the merchandise is worth the price.
Took a breath to coach her through it, too, although “imagine a dick between your legs” probably didn’t require much more explanation than that, really, but he never got a chance anyway – Iolanda’s mouth was on his, still warm from stew and sweetened with wine, her tongue seeking his out as hungrily as it had chased down the food.
She groaned something to the tune of “thanks” into his mouth as her hands gripped at the front of his vest; he moaned something along the lines of “don’t mention it, doll,” into hers as his fingers clutched at her glorious breasts and gave them a squeeze, and he didn’t give a damn if fifty other people got to do it too up on stage – in fact, he was sort of looking forward to seeing it.
They were all lookers, all the gals down at Kalbarro.
Iolanda’s mouth found his ear in its predictable location, taking a few moments to chew lovingly on his earlobe as her fingers undid the ties of his vest and he struggled to formulate the words “just tear the fuckin’ thing off me, doll,” but didn’t manage to succeed. He gripped at her hair instead, drawing a rough chuckle of an affirmative groan from her throat to muffle into the crook of his neck.
His other hand tugged at her shirt, something tight and somewhat stretchy, and she threw her arms up to let it peel off as if she was worried about taking her hands off of him for too long. He chuckled at that, the sound growing sharper and rougher at once as Iolanda’s lips returned to his neck. “Good dinner, doll?”
“Time for dessert,” she huffed against his neck, one hand plunging down into his trousers and forcing a rough laugh to leap straight up from his chest – she didn’t rush to it, though, taking time kissing down over his chest through the thick forest of curly hair there, across scars that he wasn’t sure she knew the provenance of because Elven magic is made for Elves after all and it wasn’t through that alone that Hanrick ended up with the body he needed. An irony he’d never seen fit to share with his father, and then, had no longer had time to.
Hanrick’s hands fell automatically to Iolanda’s horns as they both shuffled his chair back a bit with an ear-splitting squeak against the floor; she liked and so did he, and who was he to deny them both? His fingers gripped tight – the horns couldn’t feel being squeezed, and as she always said they were very firmly attached – as she tugged at the drawstrings and belt of his slacks.
“Oh fuck, doll!” Hanrick threw his head back for a rough shout as his hands followed her head down, adding just a little extra pressure, not forcing but pressing and he knew Iolanda was plenty strong – not to mention the magic and all.
It was nice being with someone he didn’t have to feel like he had to hold back around. Nice to not tiptoe around things, because sure he had a strong hand – had been holding a forge hammer long enough, that was for sure – and sometimes he worried it was getting too strong. Sometimes other folks told him that it was, and of course he always took ‘no’ for an answer.
When people actually said it, that is. Even when they didn’t, as long as he caught on, but sometimes he worried over those other times because they snuck through the cracks. He had a strong hand, naturally and through further training; some people wouldn’t say not because they were frightened of what he might do, and that was never fun.
Iolanda, though, was nowhere near afraid, and was very, very fun.
“D-yeah just like that,” Hanrick grunted through gritted teeth, his knuckles standing out white against the pale pink of Iolanda’s horns. She raised her head and he pulled it back down, the two of them working together to plunge his hard cock repeatedly into her mouth as she moaned and occasionally squealed around it, breaking into a giggle every now and then, before he pulled it up sharply and to his mouth with a gasp to plunge his tongue into her mouth instead.
“Gettin’ close?” She giggled as she withdrew, licking at her lower lip, and he couldn’t resist that – he groaned and caught it between his teeth immediately to chew on it, growling at the high-pitched and happy hum she let out when he did.
Maybe she was right, too.
“Wish I’d bought more of those tonics,” he huffed against the skin of her chin as one of her hands teasingly stroked at him a few times.
Wish I’d bought more, he said, because he wasn’t even willing to bring himself to think the alternative, which was wish I hadn’t used them all up on you already, because that would mean wanting to take back what they’d led to.
Vigor tonics, a mixture of medicine and magic – or so had said the salesman – and they let Hanrick keep it up and keep it hard for an hour, no matter what else happened, orgasms or no.
Admittedly, he had been advised not to take too many of them back-to-back, but it had been well worth the side effects.
…even if it meant he didn’t currently have one to drink down, because the salesman’s route wasn’t going to bring him back to town for another month or two yet.
“Maybe I should have a little dessert, eh doll?” Hanrick ducked his head to catch one of Iolanda’s nipples in his mouth, sucking on it to draw a gasp from her lip and make her free hand catch the back of his head, and she just whined an affirmative noise and stood.
Iolanda turned to clear the table – to make space for herself – but didn’t want to break any of the plates, and couldn’t really fully wrangle her mind into any concept other than sweeping the whole damn lot off to the side in order to get Hanrick’s head (or whatever else, probably a few things in a line) in between her thighs, so instead her eyes darted around for other options.
The chair was a little too low; they’d tried that before but it made Hanrick’s knees sore, and that seemed to stick in his knees more than it did in hers, because sometimes hers got a bit sore but it wore off fast. For him, he might be walking funny for a couple of days.
Her eyes lighted on a clear spot at a good height – a perfect height, in fact, and she grabbed one of Hanrick’s hands and tugged him over toward the forge.
“Whoah- might be a little hot,” he cautioned as she pulled off her skirt, which had gotten wrapped up a little like a thick belt around her midriff anyway, off and threw it carelessly to the side.
“I never minded a little heat,” Iolanda purred, hopping up and plopping her butt down on the stone rim around the forge. It wasn’t perfectly even, varying between about a couple hands thick and maybe two feet, so she picked a spot that was more like two feet.
It was hot though.
With a gasp she pulled her tail around and curled it protectively in against her belly; the stone under her ass was so hot it tingled, nearly even stinging – a bit like a spank but constant, consistent, never-ending.
She did like a good spank…
“Oh yeah,” Iolanda sighed as Hanrick, seemingly mollified or at least not debating her any further, leaned forward and she spread her legs to let him in. He only had to bend over a little, the rim at about belly height for him, which put her legs at a perfect height to wrap around behind him as he began to lick.
“Hanrick, yeah, jus’ like that,” she whimpered, whispered, shouted, moaned; every way she knew how to say his name, she said it, and he greeted most of them with a moan or a groan or a shift of his own – one of his hands stretched up to squeeze at her breast while the other found a good partnership with his tongue, slipping a finger into her and making her throw her head back for a rough groan.
The heat of the forge redoubled against her back when she did, forcing the groan slightly toward a scream, but a good one. It was hot, it was very hot, but she had always been a bit resilient when it came to heat, and had always loved a bit of hot breath down the back of her neck.
This was more like a dragon behind her, breathing down her whole back, but more of something good could only be better.
Iolanda’s fingers wrapped tightly in Hanrick’s oiled hair as his tongue flicked over her clit, and as he pulled his finger out of her a soft and sad whimper flew out of her nose after it. A moment later, though, she let out a triumphant laugh instead as his now-slick finger pressed its way in between her cheeks and a different one took its place underneath Hanrick’s thick, strong tongue.
She repositioned to let him in more easily, the stinging on her butt cheeks abating like a hundred spanks at once and giving rise to a little rush of sensation that rippled up through her body like a wave; underneath the skin, raising little goosebumps as it went, and at the same time it was replaced by a new stinging tingle as she leaned further backward – giving him easier access to press his fingers in deeper to both of her holes – and the stone pressed against the back of her ass rather than the bottom of it.
“Fuck yes, Han- Hanrick!” Iolanda’s free hand flew behind her as she felt herself nearly overbalancing backward, but the edge of the stone was far too hot and it flew free immediately of its own volition – unharmed, or at least seemingly so, catapulting to Hanrick’s shoulder instead to dig in nails to skin in a bid to keep herself upright even as her bucking hips seemed determined to displace her.
Once she’d regained the bodily control to let her thighs slack up a little, Hanrick emerged with a chuckle and a grin, wiping at his damp chin. “Hot damn doll, you know you are just-”
“I know it,” she giggled, slipping off of the stone and pulling him in tightly to her for a deep kiss tinted with the taste of herself still fresh in his mouth and making a new groan birth itself from her chest. “Mm, you c’n still say it though.”
“Oh I do,” he chuckled half-breathlessly, and then let out a long and wistful sigh that Iolanda could barely hear over the crackling of the forge as she turned around and leaned forward.
It was gorgeous.
Fire was pretty to look at, everyone knew that. The way it flickered and moved, the brightness of it – any kid (or adult) around a campfire could tell you that it was fun to watch. You could spend forever watching it, probably.
The forge wasn’t so different.
No real flames, but the heat and the glow were there, and the way the embers glowed – brightness shifting and rippling through them – it was very like fire itself.
Iolanda leaned forward against the stone ledge, feeling the heat that had soaked into it tingling against her belly when it brushed the edge. With a gasp, she withdrew the sensitive flesh at first, but then gradually let it settle forward again, giggling softly at the unfamiliar but pleasant sensation; it felt a little bit like holding a lover as they drifted off to sleep, maybe, spooning as it was called – or holding one in close in front of her after they’d come, if they’d been doing it face-to-face.
Hanrick gasped his breaths wherever he could, and the forge trained a lot of resilience. Physical stamina, resilience to heat and sweat or at least familiarity with it. Plenty of breath, too, either for blowing as was needed from time to time to fuel heat in the forge, or just because some things were very bad to breathe in around the forge.
Still, Iolanda nearly pushed him to the limit.
He did love how she was, though. Not insatiable, because she was fairly easy to sate, in fact; it wasn’t that she was always hungry for more, but much like with the food, she would gladly take more if it was offered. Never ask for more – and always be happy with what she’d got – but take more if the opportunity arose.
Personally, though, he liked aiming for a little more than just happy.
One finger tight in underneath her tail and another in underneath his tongue, both curling back toward himself; sometimes having had that anatomy himself, at one point, could be handy, and he still remembered some things that were pretty damn fun, and Iolanda certainly seemed to like them too. Had the other times, and did then and there, too.
A lot.
“Fuck! Hanrick!” Her hand clutched at his shoulder like she was trying to rip it off, and he didn’t flinch from that; forge trained you not to freak out every time there was a little pain, either, that was important.
Pretty decent all-around training for sex, actually, even if he’d never really expected it to have quite that much crossover.
“Hot damn doll you are just-” he gasped as she slipped off of the stone ledge, and she kissed him deeply.
“I know it,” she purred before giggling and tapping him on the nose. “You c’n still say it though!”
“Oh I do,” he sighed, watching as she turned away – turned around, setting her palms against the stone, and he’d known she was good at taking the heat. She’d shown it off before, had used it to help around the forge a little, but seeing the embers’ glow dancing off of her skin sparkling with sweat, he hadn’t realized just how hot that was.
Her tail flicked a little off to one side and he stepped forward, stroking a hand up her back, and she sighed – sighed and leaned forward a little more, arching her back, and his other hand gently encouraged the tail off to the side before dropping to line himself up and slide forward into her nearly-dripping pussy.
They both took in long gasps as he did, a single smooth motion until he was buried as deeply as he could be; she shifted, angling her hips back and arching her back further, bending her knees to lower herself closer to his level in order to let him press in even deeper – their gasps sharpened upward to plaintive whines instead, as his hands grasped at her hips.
The forge gave him pretty good training.
Iolanda let out a noise she couldn’t even name as Hanrick started to thrust, her body reflexively lowering; the heat of the stone against her palms and forearms, and the much greater heat of the forge past it grew closer, grew more intense, licking up her chest and her neck like a lustful lover’s tongue, and she loved it.
“Yes- yes harder please!” Iolanda didn’t just say the word, she carried the action to its full extent. She pled, her knees shivering as Hanrick listened and thrust harder, his hips audibly slapping against her ass and sending a little ripple of sensation through her – primed by the heat as her cheeks had been, like the warmth had woken them from some winter’s hibernative slumber, and now they reacted so much more strongly.
It left her wondering how the rest of her would be.
Hanrick’s hands tightened their grip at her hips and a groan worked its slow way out of her throat as she leaned forward instinctively. His hips slapped against hers rhythmically, like a hammer against the anvil although she’d never liked watching smithing as much as that – he buried deep in her with every thrust, and every one also sent her slightly lurching forward.
Forward, toward the forge. Toward the fire. Toward the heat.
Every thrust from Hanrick behind her brought, a moment later, a redoubling in the heat that rushed up her chest and neck and face: her nipples stood as firmly at attention as they ever had, as excited by heat as they were by cold it seemed, and Iolanda began to shout her ecstasy directly into the forge instead.
Fuelling the embers with her moans, her shrieks, her ululations – and with every one, the embers seemed to glow brighter as if they knew her, as if they answered her back. As if they reached out to caress her with tingling heat, ten thousand tiny hands of heat at once gripping and grasping and caressing at her ribs, her belly, her breasts, her nipples, her throat, her jaw, her cheeks, her ears.
She could barely comprehend it, the totality of the sensation and the detail of it at once: everything was hot, but there were thousands of tiny pinpricks of sensation within it, sparkling and dancing all over her skin as if she were the embers of the forge rippling in their unknowable patterns.
Drops of sweat flew from her brow, from her nose, dripped down her breasts to fly from her nipples – they sizzled as they flew into the forge, and she only shouted all the louder for it, leaning over more heavily and gutturally swearing as the heat stung her skin and Hanrick picked up the pace, his hips slapping firmly against her ass.
She could barely hear his voice over the crackling of the forge but she called back to him like they were on the edge of a precipice – they echoed each other’s ecstatic shouts without fear because nobody would hear anything happening in the forge, and she at least didn’t give half a damn if they did.
Heat without and heat within; Iolanda rolled through waves of it like she was the glow within the embers, orgasm and afterglow and aftershock and tension’s rise to the next interblending and intermingling like individual flames on a fire – she shrieked every bit of breath in her lungs out as Hanrick’s thrusts grew erratic and then stuttered and then stopped, him burying himself deep into the heat of the core of her with one final thrust like he was plunging one of his blades into the forge, and Iolanda’s shaking hands gripped at the stone as her head hung and she heaved breaths that made her very lungs sting inside of her with their heat.
Slowly, Hanrick encouraged her backward, and she blinked a few times in shock as she shook the brightness from her system. Ringing in her ears, bright colours behind her eyelids, all of the things she was used to but all so much more for how much the forge had stoked them up.
“Heh- hey well that was pretty hot,” Hanrick chuckled, then frowned slightly as he swept a thumb over her cheek. “Uh, doll? You might wanna use some of that healin’ on yourself here, uh-”
Iolanda nodded as the stinging didn’t subside, not from her skin and not from her throat. Not really her lungs either. It was easy to get a little caught up in the middle of things, easy to maybe go a little far.
She tried to say something, but found her voice momentarily missing and only a croaky crackle emerging instead, but the healing worked its very much literal magic over a moment or two and she felt the overstimulation subside from her system.
Slightly a shame, though.
“Mm, that was fun,” Iolanda shivered, then, giggling, pressed a kiss to Hanrick’s cheek and then one to his lips. “Thanks!”
“Just bent you over my forge and pounded you halfway to missin’ your damn eyebrows and you’re thankin’ me?” Hanrick threw his head back for a guffaw. “I must be hotter’n I thought! Ah, just kiddin’ – no problem, doll, and thank you too! I mean, yowza!”
“Yowza’s right,” Iolanda agreed with a giggle and a grin, shooting a glance back over her shoulder to the flame, and as she did it seemed to brighten a little at her attention. At her notice.
A little shiver rippled down her spine as she looked away, back to Hanrick and then to the ring he’d made her, and she was looking forward to all the new things she’d get to try with it.
Trying new things often worked out pretty well for her…
Leave a Reply