Free Dockalfar by PL Nunn

cut off his breath.
    The ogre hooked his ax to the saddle and mounted, swinging Alex in front of him. The spriggan was muttering something about stupid bakatus as he mounted his own horse. Neither one listened to Alex’s pleas. Desperately, with no other hope or option Alex twisted his head and yelled out to the unseen assassin.
    “God damn it Dusk, I know you can hear me. You owe me your life! Find her for me and the debt’s even. Understand? Find her!”
    The ogre snarled at him to shut up.
    Followed the command with a vicious tightening of its arm. There was silence in the forest, as if the whole of its inhabitants were shocked quiet. Nothing from the assassin. No sight, no sound. No promises to find Victoria and bring her back, safe and unharmed. But the silence was too complete, almost empty of presence around them. The ogre and the spriggan were nervous because of it. Perhaps that meant something too.
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Part Six
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    She had never been so free. Never had her spirits soared so high or so long.
    The joy burned her soul like blue white fire and sent its flames searing through her limbs. Her mind, mortal thing that it was, could not comprehend the never ending climax. It just accepted. And swayed with the rhythm and the glory of the dance, as did her body.
    She knew them, her dancing partners.
    Lithe, graceful beings who welcomed her with unabashed glee and warmth. She was one of them, irrevocably joined in the chain of their motion. They seemed happier by her presence than they had before she came. She blossomed under that acceptance. They loved her. They wanted her. They cared not a whit about her shortcomings or her unfounded fears, or the regimen of morality and status that had been drilled into her since her conception. She was neither dominant or dominated here. Meek woman nor forceful man.
    She simply was. She sang with them and they praised the sound of her voice and the clarity of her soul. She never wanted to leave. They told her she did not have to. She was comforted by that.
    They had soft, silken hair. Sometimes curling, sometimes straight, sometimes sweeping up and standing on end on their elongated skulls. Their faces were long and elegant. Large eyes and tiny chins.
    Small, pursed mouths that hid pearl white teeth. Their limbs seemed devoid of cumbersome muscle, slender and supple, longer than a human eye found comfortable. But beautiful. The females had small budding breasts, hardly noticeable mounds on smooth, narrow chests. The males, and she found she had no inhibitions at staring, had organs that were tucked up between their legs in a sheath, very much like an animal.
    The moonlight and the sunlight were all the same here. The glade was cool and shadowed and never changing. Eternity could pass here with the none the wiser for its departure. The only sense of change was that the sprites faded to nonexistence when the sun dappled the leaves and did not return until the moon once more smiled down. One hardly noticed.
    She had shed her robe at some point and danced in the silk of her nightgown, her arms and shoulders bared to the cool air. Her skin refused to work up a sweat, which somewhere inside her she found curious. Her feet and legs did not tire. She tingled each time a slender hand brushed her breast, or child soft lips grazed her skin. They, who were as elegant as porcelain sculptures, found her beautiful.
    She shed tears at their kindness, that they found her worthy.
    She whirled into a pair of soft arms, whirled away into the hands of another dancer, then another who put hands on her arms and swung her close and would not let her pass on further down the circle.
    She laughed at the variation and stared into the face, which was conspicuously higher than her own and sufficiently breathtaking for her to forgive the transgression. She laughed and pulled away, but her arm remained trapped and she found herself being led away from the circle. Her body strained to