The Dragon and the Fox

“Who had you followed?”

Issac spun, startled by Jennica who was standing there in the moonlight. Startled that he didn't notice her. Unless, was it her whom he sensed? “My... whoever I angered, I suppose.” He was still tense when she took a seat next to him, lit a cigarette, took a drag, then offered it to him. He accepted but it was a long pause before he calmed and smoked it. The exhale was just as long, “It'll be hard to forget my season here. I had fun, Jennica. Really...” in a most respectful elven dialect, “...Thank you.”

“How dare you speak to me so formally,” she giggled, taking the cigarette back to share it, “You talk like we'll never see you again.”

“You won't.” Issac saw that cheerful expression fade out of the corner of his eye. The moonlight had a way of outlining with such sharpness. He wished it didn't amplify this look on her face now. “Must you make goodbye so hard to say? I have to return home, Jennica. I shouldn't have left.”

“Then why did you come?”

“Because--” Exasperated, he looked her full in the face, her beautiful, intelligent face that waiting knowingly for the evident answer. Smoke trickled slowly from her nose. Jennica the dragon. He sighed, disarmed, “Because you told me to.”

She smiled at last, blowing smoke sidewise, “Do you always do what you're told?”

“More or less.” he said with a chuckle, taking back the cigarette.

“So if I tell you to meet us again next summer, you'll do it? I'll even get real wood elf weeds this time. I'll also ask the elves who run rampant in Andruin for the best place to bring an elven noble like yourself. Or we can go to my parent's dockside home, drink some of the dwarven vintage father hides in his study, and you can paint me naked. They won't be home, though, I promise. ”

Did she just say naked? “Stop, Jennica, I can't...” Her face scrunched defiantly. She snatched the cigarette from his mouth and extinguished it in the dewy sod. Issac rolled his eyes, “Don't be petulant.”

“I'll be however I like! Unlike you, I don't always do what I'm told.” she looked at his hand as he grabbed her arm. Did he think she was going to get up and leave? She scoffed and pushed him down upon sod with a free hand, drawing close to him, “I'm not gonna run off to cry like some elfish tart. So don't treat me like one.” When she moved to lean off him he strengthened his grip on her arm. How she smiled at him, dipping into that bumpkin elfish dialect she favored, “I want you, you know. And I wanna see you again. I'm no long lived creature, Issac, I don't have time to cry. You don't wanna see me then say so and leave. But don't lie to me and say you 'can't'. You can if you want. So...” she perked up, straddling his lap, “If I tel—If I ask you to meet me next summer... will you?”

Moving his grip from her arm and resting it on her waist, he smiled up at her. “You're a hard woman to say no to. I guess I'll have to say yes then.” He ran his thumb along the cold material of her thin sleeping gown. Bunching the material into his hands, playing with it, subconsciously pulling it gently down, “When summer arrives, where do I meet you?”

She shrugged the laced straps from her shoulders as he pulled, letting the gown slip down past her chest and fall into her lap. Jennica freed her arms from the gown, her small breasts bare to the moonlight. Certainly a sight more fitting for the silvered sharpness of the evening hue then a miserable face. It was the first time Issac saw her body this way. Not teasing in wet clothes while swimming in the water or clinging in the rain. Honest, soft, and bare from the waist up. Seemed to be the most natural thing in the world to her, she wasn't shy about it. Confident as always, in fact. She threw her long dark hair in front of her breasts to regain his attention, “Can't we meet in your forest again?”