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Dusk came to the Aurosa Valley the way it always did, where the light bled from gold to violet through the high branches, and the pale star-freckles on his own blue hands seemed to brighten with the coming dark, as if the night were already calling them home.
He had not meant to interrupt the prayer.
Or perhaps, if he was being honest with himself, and honesty was a currency he dealt in sparingly, even within the quiet vault of his own mind, he had. There was a restlessness in him lately, a needling impulse to move toward others instead of away. It was a dangerous thing for a Farewisher, this new hunger for company.
The purest heart of freshness demanded solitude, demanded the careful absence of attachment.
And yet here he was, lingering at the edge of the clearing where Sieyeda knelt before the distant statue of The Wishing One, watching the way the sprite's worn rags caught the fading light.
Sieyeda's posture was perfect. The line of his spine curved with a reverence so practiced it looked like breathing. His white hair hung over his eyes in a pale curtain, and as he lifted his face toward the statue, Eltinada could see the faint sheen of starlight caught in the strands. The Master of Praise, they called him. It fit. There was something almost unbearable in the sight of him, so small beneath the vast canopy, so entirely given over to a god who could no longer hear him.
Eltinada waited. He knew better than to speak during the prayer, but his presence alone was an interruption, much like a stone dropped into still water. The ripples were subtle: a slight tension in Sieyeda's shoulders, a hitch in the rhythmic murmur of his praise. The words were in the old tongue, the cadence soft and falling like snowmelt. Eltinada didn't understand all of it, his own work lay at the other end of the Wishing One's dominion, with the dead rather than the divine, but he understood enough to know when the prayer had been cut short.
"You again." Sieyeda said, not turning around.
His voice was warm, musical in the way of the Choir of Wishes, but there was an edge to it now, frayed at the end like a rope left too long in the wind. He rose slowly, brushing bits of moss from the knees of his rags. The fabric was thin, mended in places with stitches so fine they might have been spun from moonlight. Eltinada found himself following the line of those stitches, the way they pulled the worn cloth taut across Sieyeda's narrow frame.
"I… didn't mean to disturb you."
"You never mean to." Sieyeda turned then, and Eltinada caught the gleam of deep violet beneath the pale fringe of hair. "And yet here you are. Again. During dusk prayers. Again."
The repetition landed with a soft, pointed weight, one of Sieyeda’s large ears twitching in what was clearly annoyance he couldn’t hide.
"The… prayer was nearly done." Eltinada offered.
"It was not."
This time Eltinada did shift, just slightly, the hem of his robes whispering against the ferns. "I was worried about you."
The words came out too soft, and too careful. He heard them land and wanted to take them back. Worry was a kind of bond. Worry was the first thread in a net that could drown a Farewisher, and he had spent centuries learning not to weave it.
Sieyeda tilted his head. The motion made his hair shift, revealing the sharp curve of one pale eyebrow, the delicate line of his jaw. His freckles glowed faintly in the deepening dusk, a scatter of tiny stars across blue skin.
"Worried." He said the word like it tasted unfamiliar. "About me."
"You work too hard. You're always here before dusk, and I've seen you after moonrise, still at the statue, still-"
"So you've been watching me."
The interruption was quick, a knife slipped between the ribs of Eltinada's careful speech. He felt the heat rise to his face, a warmth that had nothing to do with the dying sun. "Not… watching. I've simply noticed. As anyone would. As anyone could."
"Most anyone would have the sense to keep their noticing to themselves." Sieyeda folded his arms across his chest. "You should concentrate on your own work, Farewisher. The dead do not like to be kept waiting, I hear."
"I know how to wait." Eltinada said. "It's all I do."
The words were out before he could stop them, and he watched Sieyeda's expression shift, the sharp edge of his annoyance softening into something more complicated. The silence that followed felt heavy, freighted with things neither of them had quite said yet.
"You don't have to stand so far away…" Sieyeda muttered, turning back toward the statue. His voice had lost its bite, but not its tension. The air between them hummed with it, low and persistent, like the sound of insects just before a storm. "If you're going to interrupt, you might as well be useful. I was nearly finished. You can come with me after."
Eltinada's heart did something unfamiliar; a skip, a stutter, a small betrayal of his own carefully tended stillness. "I'd like that."
"Don't sound so surprised."
The light continued its slow bleed into darkness, and the first true stars began to appear through the canopy, points of cold fire in a sky the color of old bruises. Eltinada watched Sieyeda bow his head again, the last lines of the prayer falling from his lips like water over stone.
It was beautiful, he thought. The devotion. The way Sieyeda offered himself so completely to the Wishing One. And it was terrifying, too, because Eltinada understood exactly what that kind of devotion could cost.
When Sieyeda finished, he did not rise immediately. His shoulders dropped, the weariness visible in the slight curve of his spine, and Eltinada had to fist his hands at his sides to keep from reaching for him.
"You should rest…" Eltinada said instead.
"You should stop telling me what to do."
"I only meant-"
"I know what you meant." Sieyeda stood, turning to face him fully. In the near-dark, his hair seemed to hold its own light, a pale halo that made his face look younger, softer, the sharp lines of irritation smoothed into something almost gentle. "You're worrying again."
"I'm not."
"You are. I can feel it from here." Sieyeda moved closer, and stopped just short of touching. "You think I don't notice? You think I don't see the way you linger at the edge of the trees, pretending you just happened to be passing through? You never used to come here at all."
Eltinada swallowed. "You noticed."
"For someone who's supposed to be the greatest Farewisher in all Miraland, you're not very good at hiding."
"It's not… something I've had much practice with."
Sieyeda let out a short breath, not quite a laugh, not quite a sigh. "No. I don't suppose you have." He lifted a hand, then let it fall back to his side, as if he'd thought better of reaching out. "What is it, Eltinada? What do you want from me?"
Eltinada opened his mouth. Closed it. Felt the shape of all the words he shouldn't say pressing against his teeth.
"Nothing you want to hear…" He said finally.
Sieyeda was silent for a moment. Then he shook his head, the motion sending his hair swaying, and Eltinada caught a glimpse of his eyes through the pale strands; deep, dark violet, the color of the sky just after the stars come out.
"Tell me about your work." Sieyeda said. "Since you came all this way. The Farewish ceremonies. Are they... different now? Without your father?"
The question was softer than it had any right to be.
"Duty is always the same, the ceremony changes little… sometimes. What changes is the weight of it." He paused, his gaze drifting toward the statue that watched over them all, its stone face softened by shadow. "But you know this. You carry your own weight, every dusk and dawn."
The corner of Sieyeda's mouth twitched- not a smile, quite, but something like the memory of one. "I know the weight of devotion, yes."
"And grief."
And Sieyeda went very still.
"What do you mean?"
"With Chigda." Eltinada said quietly. "I know you haven't been allowed to see him. I don't know the full shape of it, but I know the Paladins keep you apart. And I know that after all these centuries, that has to weigh on you. Devotion and grief, they're not so different, are they? They both ask for everything. Because I think, somewhere deep inside of you, you know Chigda is lost. And you keep praying anyway, because you are too afraid to face what he has become "
The change in the air was immediate. Sieyeda's body went rigid, his hands curling into fists at his sides. The pale glow of his freckles seemed to intensify, and when he spoke again, his voice was thin and cold.
"Don't pretend to understand my family."
"I'm not pretending anything, I just thought-"
"You thought what? That I'd be grateful for your pity? That I'd spill my heart out to the sprite who spent his whole life hiding from everyone?"
Eltinada moved back. "I didn't meant to-"
"You never mean to." The words came sharp now, each one a flaying thing. "You drift in here with your robes and your silence and your sad eyes, and you think you can see into me because you saw me kneel. But you don't know anything, Farewisher. You don't know what it's like to lose someone and keep losing them, every day, from a distance, while sprites in white and gold tell you it's for your own good."
The fury in Sieyeda's voice was raw, and Eltinada stood in the blast, the soft moss beneath his feet crumbling to dust.
“You think I do not know what he has become?” He whispered. “I know better than anyone. But he is still my brother. The last thing I have left of anything that ever felt like family, and I will not abandon him the way your father abandoned your mother’s soul to buy his grief.”
The clearing turned cold. The stars seemed to sharpen overhead, all their soft light becoming needle-fine and cruel. Eltinada felt something inside his chest crack open, an old fissure he had spent centuries sealing shut with silence and solitude. Behind it lay only dust and the memory of a small, young sprite standing in his father’s shadow, already knowing that the Farewisher’s path was no path at all.
It was a cage.
“Do not speak of my father. You did not know him before.”
“And you did not know Chigda before.” Sieyeda’s chest rose and fell, his breath coming harder now. “So do not pretend you understand my grief. Do not pretend you understand why I kneel here every dusk until my knees bleed through my rags. Do not come into my prayer with your soft eyes and your softer words and act as though you have the right to tell me how to mourn.”
Eltinada opened his mouth, then closed it. The wind moved through the clearing, bending the starfall flowers until their pale heads clicked together like gossiping bones. For a long moment, neither of them moved.
Then, slowly, the anger drained out of Eltinada. It left something raw and wounded behind, something that hurt in an entirely different way. He looked at Sieyeda, and saw the truth: a sprite in tattered robes with white hair veiling a face that had not rested in years, a body strung tight with grief and duty and a love so fierce it had nowhere left to go.
“I’m… sorry.” Eltinada said. The words felt too small, too plain. He said them anyway. “That was cruel of me, I didn’t come to argue with you.”
Sieyeda stood there for a long breath, his head bowed, the fall of his hair almost glowing in the gathering dusk. Then something in him loosened- just barely, just enough.
“Nor did I.” He said at last, and his voice was rough, scraped clean of anger. “I… spoke out of turn. Your father’s failure is not yours to carry. And I should not have made it a weapon.”
Another silence, but this one was different. Still heavy, still full of all the words they had said and could not unsay, but no longer sharp. The temperature of it shifted, softening at the edges like the last light dissolving into the trees.
Sieyeda shifted, turning his face toward the statue of the Wishing One. The pale stone seemed to watch them, patient and silent, its expression smoothed by centuries of rain and prayer until it carried no judgment at all.
“I overwork myself because I am afraid…” Sieyeda said quietly, the confession so soft it was almost taken by the wind. “Every time I rest, I dream of him. And the dreams are worse than the prayers.”
Eltinada wanted to reach for him. He did not. Instead, he let the distance between them stand, the space still humming with everything unsaid. “Then… maybe you shouldn’t rest alone. Let someone sit beside you. Even one of the other choir members. Even…” He stopped, offered the smallest, most careful step. “Even me.”
Sieyeda made a sound that might have been a laugh, if laughs could be made of cracked glass. “You? In the prayer grove after dark? The Farewisher, breaking his centuries of blessed solitude to hold vigil with the Master of Praise?”
“I would. If it helped.” The admission came before Eltinada could stop it.
For a long time, Sieyeda did not answer. Then he turned his head, just slightly, and beneath the white veil of his hair Eltinada caught another glimmer of his eyes.
The dusk had almost completely gone now, Sieyeda lowered himself back onto the moss, not kneeling this time, but simply sitting, his legs folded and his ragged clothes pooling around him. He did not ask Eltinada to join him. But he did not send him away, either.
So Eltinada sat down, too.
He could hear Sieyeda breathing. Could hear the slight raggedness that still clung to each exhale, a body too long denied rest, too long wound around a single unrelenting purpose. It was the sound of a creature pulling itself apart from the inside, and Eltinada, who had spent centuries learning to deny his own hungers for the sake of a purer heart, found that hunger roaring back to life now with such force it stole his breath.
“You’re still carrying it…” Eltinada said quietly. His voice had dropped low, the way it did when he spoke the old rites at the threshold of a dying soul. “I can feel it from here. All that tension. All that grief folded up under your skin like live coals.”
Sieyeda said nothing. But he did not move away.
Eltinada shifted on the moss, turning his body toward the other sprite. “Look at me.”
A long pause. Then, slowly, Sieyeda turned his head, that white fall of hair shifting with the movement. The starlight caught the edge of his jaw, the pale column of his throat, the thin line of his collarbones where the worn rags sagged loose from his shoulder.
“Do you know what you look like when you pray?” Eltinada asked. “I have watched you. Every dusk. The way your mouth moves around the old words. The way your hands shake, just barely, when you think no one is standing close enough to see. The way your whole body goes rigid when you reach the part of the prayer where you beg the Wishing One to return.”
Sieyeda swallowed. The movement was visible even in the dim light, the slow working of his throat above the ragged collar. “I do not beg.”
“You do…” Eltinada said, and there was no cruelty in it, only a terrible gentleness. “And it breaks my heart every time I hear it. You have given so much of yourself to him. To the choir. To your brother. You have poured and poured until there is nothing left in the cup but the shape of where everything used to be.”
He reached out then, slowly, giving Sieyeda every chance to pull away. His fingers found the edge of the other sprite’s ragged robes, the cloth so thin and soft it felt like it might dissolve under his touch.
Sieyeda’s breath caught. A small sound, barely audible, but in the hush of the clearing it was loud as a struck bell.
Eltinada reached up with his other hand and brushed his fingers through the fall of hair covering Sieyeda’s face. It was impossibly soft, cool like silk, and it slid through his fingers like water.
“You can tell me to stop…” Eltinada murmured. “But I do not think you will.”
Sieyeda’s jaw tightened. “You are very sure of yourself, Farewisher.”
“I am sure of what I see.” Eltinada let the tips of his fingers trail down, over the line of that pale jaw, down to the point of Sieyeda’s chin. He tilted the other sprite’s face up, and even though the hair still veiled those deep blue-purple eyes, he could feel the heat of Sieyeda’s gaze like sunlight through a curtain. “And what I see is a creature so wound up that he has forgotten he has a body at all. He uses it to kneel, to carry the weight of his robes and his duties and his love for a brother who cannot even look back at him. But he has forgotten that this body can also feel.”
Then Eltinada settled back against a moss-padded, letting his legs part just slightly, letting his own body speak the invitation his mouth no longer needed to form. The stone was cool through the thin cloth of his garment, and the moss was soft as thistle-down against his back.
“Come here, take off those rags. And then kneel between my legs and let me show you what I mean.”
Something in Sieyeda broke then. Eltinada saw it happen; the last resistance crumbling like an old stone wall after too many winters. The stiffness went out of his spine, and a long, shuddering breath escaped him.
He crossed the small distance between them, the tattered skirts of his ragged garments trailing behind him like the tatters of a flag, until he had reached Eltinada’s open legs and then stopped, his head bowed, his hair spilling forward over his hidden face.
“Look at me.” He said again, softer now.
Sieyeda’s hands rose, trembling slightly, and he reached up to brush the hair back from his face. The motion was slow, almost ceremonial, as though he were drawing aside a veil in some sacred interior where no one else had ever been permitted.
The hair parted, and his eyes were there, deep blue as the heart of a glacier, the pupils dilated wide in the starlight. They were beautiful. Unbearably beautiful. And in them Eltinada saw every year of lost sleep, every dusk of unanswered prayers, every wound that had scarred over and then reopened and scarred again.
“There you are…” Eltinada breathed. “Now take off the rags.”
The garments were little more than serviceable sacks, but they came away with surprising ease, sliding from his thin shoulders and pooling around his narrow hips. Beneath them, his chest was lean, the ribs just visible beneath the pale blue flesh, and the star-freckles marched across his collarbones and down his sternum in bright, scattered clusters, and the faint sheen of sweat that the day’s labor had left on his skin made him gleam like something just risen from a starfall pool.
Eltinada felt his own body respond, a flush of heat that surged downward and pooled between his legs. He shifted, allowing the fabric of his own garment to slide off one shoulder, then the other, so that the smooth fabric fell away and left him bare to the night. The cool air feathered over his exposed skin, tight against his ribs, his hipbones, the place where his half-hardened cock lay curving against the sharp line of his pelvis. He saw Sieyeda’s eyes flick downward, saw the slight widening of those already-dark pupils, and the small, helpless motion of his lips parting around a breath.
“You have seen enough of my watching…” Eltinada said. “Now come and put your mouth on me. Slow. I want to feel how carefully you praise.”
For a heartbeat, Sieyeda did not move. Then, slowly, he bent forward, and the fall of his hair brushed against Eltinada’s bare thigh like a benediction. His first breath against Eltinada’s skin was warm and uneven, and then his lips followed at the inside of his knee, soft and dry and scarcely more than a suggestion.
The contact was so light it bordered on torture, and he realized with a sharp, crystalline certainty that Sieyeda was not merely obeying. He was studying. Learning the shape of Eltinada’s body the way he had learned the old hymns, by ear and heart and the slow accumulation of devotion.
His mouth moved up Eltinada’s thigh in small, incremental advances; a brush of lips here, a flick of tongue there, and with every inch, the heat in Eltinada’s core built higher, until his breath was coming in shallow, unsteady pulls and his hands had curled into fists against the moss-padded root behind him.
“You are holding on…” Sieyeda murmured against his skin, and Eltinada felt the words as much as heard them, a vibration that traveled straight to the root of his cock. “The one who promised to teach me how to let go is clenching his hands. Is he finding it difficult?”
The note of challenge in Sieyeda’s voice was unmistakable. It was the same edge he had used in the argument, but now it was wrapped in silk, dipped in honey, and pointed directly at the hollow of Eltinada’s hip. Eltinada’s cock twitched, bobbing against his stomach, leaving a faint smear of wetness against the pale blue skin.
“I am letting you set the pace…” Eltinada managed, though the words came out rougher than he would have liked. “For now.”
Sieyeda shifted his weight, and one of his hands came up to rest on Eltinada’s other thigh, the touch warm and surprisingly steady. His thumb traced a slow circle over the sensitive skin just below the jut of the hipbone, and Eltinada felt the muscles in his belly clench.
Then Sieyeda lowered his head, and his lips finally closed around the tip of Eltinada’s cock.
The sound that escaped Eltinada was raw and unguarded, a low, broken moan that seemed to come from somewhere far deeper than his throat. The wet heat of Sieyeda’s mouth was almost too much after so long untouched, and his hips jerked involuntarily, pushing himself deeper.
But Sieyeda did not pull away. He took the intrusion with a soft, yielding sound, his lips sliding down the shaft inch by slow, agonizing inch. The inside of his mouth was silk and fire, and his tongue moved in small, curious strokes, tracing the vein on the underside, pressing into the small, sensitive notch just below the head.
“Ah- yes-!” Eltinada gasped, his head falling back against the root. The stars above reeled, a wash of cold light behind his closed eyelids.
Sieyeda hummed around his length, and the vibration shot through Eltinada like a bolt of lightning, making his thighs tremble and his fingers tear at the moss beneath him. He was already achingly hard, the pleasure building at the base of his spine with alarming speed. But this was not how he wanted it to end. Not yet.
“Stop.”
Sieyeda pulled off immediately, his lips leaving Eltinada’s cock with a soft, wet sound that echoed obscenely in the hush of the clearing. A thin string of saliva hung between his bottom lip and the flushed head, glowing faintly in the starlight before it broke. His face was soft, lips slick, his hair falling back into his eyes, and he looked utterly debauched already, even though his own body had not yet been touched at all.
“Why did you make me stop?” He asked, and his voice had gone breathy, the confidence from a moment ago flickering.
“Because I want you to be certain…” Eltinada reached down and took himself in hand, slowly, deliberately, letting Sieyeda see the way his fingers wrapped around the slick length, the way the head gleamed as he stroked once, twice, from root to tip. “Discipline, Sieyeda. You understand discipline, think of it now like the postponement of pleasure for the sake of a higher purpose.”
“Yes…” Sieyeda’s eyes locked on the slow movement of Eltinada’s hand, his tongue swept over his own bottom lip, tasting what remained. “I understand.”
This time there was no hesitation.
He bent and took Eltinada’s cock into his mouth again, deeper this time, until Eltinada’s head filled the soft arch of his palate and the rest of him slid along the warm, pulsing channel of Sieyeda’s throat. The sound he made; a small, desperate sigh around the thickness filling him, was one of pure, helpless relief, as though he had finally found something he had not known he was starving for.
Eltinada’s whole body shuddered. He could feel Sieyeda’s hands gripping his hips now, not pinning him, but holding on, bracing himself as he began to move with a rhythm that was somehow both clumsy and devastatingly effective. He did not have the polished technique of years of experience, but what he lacked in skill he more than made up for in passion, the way his tongue pressed and curled, the way his lips sealed and slid, the way he made those soft, panting moans around every stroke, as though the taste and weight of Eltinada were undoing him as completely as any touch could.
“Yes. Ah, that’s- hah- that’s very good...” Eltinada’s voice was breaking, his thighs quivering, his stomach tightening. The pleasure was a rising tide, warm and inexorable, lapping at the edges of his resolve. He felt the familiar coiling at the base of his spine, the tautening of every muscle, the gathering rush that promised release.
“Sieyeda. Stop. Now.”
Sieyeda whimpered, a thin, broken sound, but he obeyed. He pulled off with a wet gasp, his chest heaving, spit shining on his chin and lips, his bright eyes glassy and dazed. He looked wrecked and they had barely begun. A violent tremor ran through his body, and Eltinada could see the way his cock strained against the remnants of fabric still pooling low on his hips, an unmistakable outline of need.
“Good…” Eltinada praised, and his voice had gone low and rough as tree bark. He reached out and cupped Sieyeda’s jaw with a hand that was not quite steady. “That was very good.” He ran his thumb over Sieyeda’s slick bottom lip, pressing lightly against the softness, and Sieyeda’s eyes fluttered half-shut as he nuzzled into the touch.
Eltinada then pushed himself up from the boulder with some effort, his body still trembling with thwarted arousal. He moved onto his knees in the moss until they were face to face, both of them kneeling, their bare chests almost touching.
The heat of Sieyeda’s skin radiated across the small space between them, and the scent of him; sweat and crushed greenery and the faintest edge of something musky and warm, filled Eltinada’s lungs.
He reached around Sieyeda’s thin waist and began to work at the last of the garments still clinging to his hips. The cloth gave way easily, already loosened by movement and sweat, and soon it fell away completely, leaving Sieyeda totally bare in the starlight.
His cock rose from between his thighs, flushed a darker blue shade than the rest of his skin, and already leaking a clear, glittering fluid that gleamed like dew at the tip. Every muscle in Sieyeda’s lean body was drawn taut, and his breath came in shallow, shivering bursts, his hands hovering in the air as though unsure where to land.
“You have not touched me…” Sieyeda observed, and there was a note of almost pained curiosity in his voice. “Not once.”
“No.” Eltinada agreed. “Discipline. It cuts both ways.” He leaned in and pressed his lips to the corner of Sieyeda’s mouth, the barest brush of contact, and felt the other sprite’s entire body jerk in response. “Turn around and put your hands against the rock.”
Sieyeda shuddered, a full-bodied quake that seemed to pass through him like a wave. But he moved without argument, turning on his knees and placing his palms against the broad, moss-covered root where Eltinada had been leaning moments before. The position thrust his narrow hips back, opening the pale curves of his rear, the hidden places still glazed with shadow. His spine curved like the arch of a bow, and his head hung forward, that waterfall of white hair spilling over his shoulders and hiding his face from view once more.
Eltinada allowed himself a moment to look. To memorize the sight: Sieyeda braced and waiting, his body open and offered, his breath coming in audible hitches, his cock flushed and dripping between his thighs. It was the most beautiful thing Eltinada had ever seen, more beautiful than any ritual, more sacred than any stone.
“You are exquisite…” Eltinada said, and the words came out with an almost religious intensity. He settled behind Sieyeda, his knees bracketing the other sprite’s thighs, and ran his hands up the pale expanse of that trembling back.
The skin was warm and smooth, faintly damp, and the star-freckles seemed to pulse under his touch. He traced the knobs of Sieyeda’s spine one by one, from the small of his back to the nape of his neck, and when his fingers found the base of Sieyeda’s skull, he wrapped them gently in the white hair and drew the other sprite’s head back, exposing the line of his throat.
The cry that broke from Sieyeda was small and sharp, and his back arched even more, pressing his rear against Eltinada’s trapped cock with a want that left no room for pretense.
“Do you want it?” Eltinada murmured, his lips ghosting over the shell of Sieyeda’s ear. He kept his grip in the hair firm, just this side of pain, and felt a full-body shiver run through the smaller sprite. “Do you want me inside you?”
“Yes,” Sieyeda gasped. “Yes, Eltinada, please-”
The raw desperation in his voice was like a drug. Eltinada felt his own cock kick violently against the cleft of Sieyeda’s rear, smearing hot pre-cum over the cool blue skin. He was achingly hard again, the earlier denial having only sharpened the edge of his need.
But he forced himself to breathe, to move slowly, to maintain the control he had promised.
He released Sieyeda’s hair and brought both hands down to the globe of that slender rear, cupping and parting it with reverent care. At the first press of his finger against Sieyeda’s entrance, the other sprite jolted and whimpered, but he did not pull away. If anything, he pushed back, and the soft, breathy sound he made as Eltinada’s fingertip breached the ring of muscle was the purest, most desperate note of pleasure Eltinada had ever heard.
“There…” Eltinada soothed, working his index finger inside with careful slowness. The heat there was astonishing, tight and slick with nothing but the sweat of their arousal, and Eltinada felt the walls clench around him as Sieyeda’s body struggled to accommodate the intrusion.
He pressed again, slower this time, crooking his finger in a come-hither motion that made Sieyeda sob and squirm. “Discipline, remember? If you are going to come apart, you are going to do it exactly when I tell you to, and not one breath before.”
“You enjoy this too much, Farewisher.”
“Oh, I do.” Eltinada worked a second finger in beside the first, and Sieyeda keened. The sound echoed off the trees, a bright, desperate cry that scattered a few night birds into the darkness. Eltinada moved his fingers slowly, twisting and scissoring, stretching the tight ring of muscle with painstaking patience.
Every time his fingertips brushed over that hidden spot, Sieyeda’s whole body jerked, and a fresh rush of slick heat would flood Eltinada’s hand, making the slide easier. By the time he added a third finger, Sieyeda was openly moaning, his hips rolling back to meet every thrust, his hands fisted in the moss, and a puddle of pre-cum had begun to drip from the tip of his neglected cock onto the grass below.
Eltinada leaned forward, pressing his chest against the arch of Sieyeda’s back, and let his lips find the delicate point of one large ear. “You want me inside you? You want my cock splitting you open under the stars, filling you until you forget every prayer but the sound of my name?”
“Yes!” Sieyeda sobbed, and the raw need in his voice went straight to Eltinada’s groin. “Yes, yes, please, Eltinada, please!”
And Eltinada pushed in.
The first breach was a tight, burning pressure that made Sieyeda cry out, his back bowing, his fingers tearing at the moss. Eltinada felt the head of his cock slip past the resisting ring and then deeper, into a tightness that clutched at him. He paused, trembling with the effort of holding still, letting Sieyeda’s body adjust to the sudden fullness.
Eltinada then withdrew slowly, until just the head of him remained inside, and then pushed forward again, deeper this time, until their bodies came together with a soft, wet sound. Sieyeda cried out at the fullness of it, a high, keening note that seemed to hang in the air, and Eltinada felt the taut muscles of his inner walls ripple around him. It was too good, too much, and he had to bite down on the inside of his cheek to keep from spending right there.
But he had made a promise, and he intended to keep it.
“Remember what I said…” He gritted out, his hips beginning a slow, rolling rhythm. “You do not cum until I tell you. You hold it, Master of Praise. You hold it until I say you have earned your release.”
Sieyeda sobbed something incoherent, his fingers clawing at the moss, his body rocking back to meet each thrust with an urgency that bordered on desperation. The angle was perfect; every forward slide of Eltinada’s cock pressed against the sweet spot deep inside him, and the sound he made when Eltinada found it was enough to make the entire forest hold its breath.
“There?” Eltinada grit out, and he angled his hips again, aiming for the same spot with every subsequent thrust. “Do you feel it? Do you feel how close you are?”
“Yes- yes! I feel it! It’s- so much, Eltinada! I can’t-!”
“You can.” Eltinada’s voice was iron, even as his own body careened toward the edge. He reached around and wrapped his fingers around the base of Sieyeda’s cock, squeezing hard enough to stave off the other sprite’s release. Sieyeda gave out a sound that was part pleasure and part agony, and his whole body convulsed around Eltinada’s length.
“You can hold it because I told you to. And you are going to wait until I am ready. Until I have filled you so full that you cannot remember a time before my cock was inside you.”
He moved his hand from Sieyeda’s cock to his hip, gripping the sharp bone there as leverage, and began to fuck him in earnest.
The sound of their bodies meeting echoed through the clearing, wet and obscene, and it mixed with the breathless, broken cries that streamed from Sieyeda’s lips in an unbroken torrent. Unintelligible pleas and half-formed words, fragments of prayers and curses and Eltinada’s name all tangled together like the threads of an unfinished hymn.
“Please- please, I-!, Eltinada, please let me- let me please, I will do anything!”
The desperation in Sieyeda’s voice was the sweetest sound Eltinada had ever heard. It was the sound of every wall dismantled, every pretense stripped away, nothing left in those deep blue eyes but blind, all-consuming want.
“Ask me…” Eltinada growled, his thrusts becoming erratic, his climax an inevitable wave rolling up from the base of his spine. “Ask me nicely, Master of Praise. Beg for what you need.”
“Please!” Sieyeda wailed, and there were tears in his voice now, tears and a wild, broken joy that cracked through every syllable. “Please, Eltinada, I am begging you-! Please, please, oh Wishing One above, please-!”
The wave crested.
“Cum for me.” Eltinada commanded.
And Sieyeda screamed.
It was a raw, unguarded scream, torn from the very core of him, and it echoed through the Wishing Woods like a shot. His body seized, every muscle locking down, and Eltinada felt the hot pulse of Sieyeda’s climax splash across the back of his own hand and the moss below. The tight channel around his cock convulsed in waves, squeezing and milking him with a ferocity that stole the last of his control.
And with a final, shuddering snap of his hips, Eltinada buried himself to the hilt and let go.
His own climax tore through him like a river breaking a dam, hot and blinding, spilling deep inside the clenching heat of Sieyeda’s body. He cried out, some word that might have been Sieyeda’s name or might have been pure, shapeless sound, and collapsed forward, his chest pressed to Sieyeda’s back, his cock still twitching inside the other sprite as wave after wave of pleasure ripped through him as the world went white and silent.
For a long moment, neither of them moved. Eltinada could feel his own heartbeat hammering against Sieyeda’s spine, could feel the tiny aftershocks of pleasure still running through both their bodies, could feel the slow, soft drip of his own release beginning to slide from the place where they were still joined.
Then, with a small, broken sigh, Sieyeda’s knees gave out, and they tipped sideways together into the moss, Eltinada’s body draped over the smaller sprite like a living blanket. He felt his softened cock slip free of the still-clenching heat of Sieyeda’s body, and the loss of contact made them both gasp.
For a while, there was only the sound of their breathing, ragged and slowing, and the distant whisper of the Wishing Woods resuming its night song around them. The stars, which had seemed so cold before, now looked almost warm, their light soft as new snow on the naked curves of their bodies.
Eltinada was the first to move. He propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at Sieyeda, who lay sprawled in the moss with his white hair fanned out beneath his head like a halo, his eyes closed, his lips parted and still slick. The flush had not yet left his cheeks, and the faint blue of his skin seemed to glow from within, lit by more than starlight.
“I have never…” Sieyeda began, and then stopped, as though the words were too small. He swallowed, and a faint, dazed smile curved his lips. “I have never felt anything like that. I did not know a body could feel that much and not burn to ash.”
Eltinada bent and pressed a kiss to the corner of that smile, soft and lingering. “Now you know.” He shifted carefully, easing down to lie beside Sieyeda in the moss, and after a moment’s hesitation, he reached out and drew the other sprite into the curve of his arm.
They lay like that for a long time, tangled together on the forest floor, two sprites who had both spent centuries running from connection, now holding onto it with both hands. The starfall flowers around the statue’s base glowed faintly, and the pale stone of the Wishing One watched over them with its patient, eroded smile.
And for the first time in longer than either could remember, the silence did not feel empty at all.