A Drow's Dilemma Ep. 34: Corruption

Her hand dropped. But he didn't anymore, did he? The sorrow of it made her pause in her actions. He couldn't even remember her. But she would remind him. He would remember if she kept him there long enough. She'd heard the saying that if you love someone, you should set them free. By keeping him there, she was setting his mind free from whatever influence clouded it.

Caleldir found Naliira's words illuminating. Her description was vague and clearly born of wish-fulfillment. He was not the imagined return of some existent husband, but instead that of a non-existent one, though memories of her long-deceased halfling husband might be mixed up in her mind. Well, at least he did not have the scorned real lover to contend with. Her real husband, the father of Fedwyn, had been dead centuries before his birth. No, her delusion was fixated on him and him alone. How comforting to be the sudden focus of a madwoman's monomania. "So... We fell and love and got married. I think I remember what happened." Not what she suggested had happened, just what happened. "What was our life like back then. Did we have any children? Maybe one good with magic?" Did she even remember Fedwyn?

"No, no children. Not yet: you were taken from me too soon, and before that we were not actively trying. I wasn't sure then if I was ready or not. But I've had a lot of time to think while you were away. Now that you are back, it is time to fill our home with little ones." She smiled dreamily over at the only slightly dusty cradle set up in the comer next to the kitchen as far away as it could have been from the decay.. Her fingers, which had dropped to her stomach, splayed out in loving caress of that flesh as if it already carried life.

Caleldir's eyes followed Naliira's. Huh. So she had the cradle because she wished for a child, rather than because she had had one. And if she wanted a child... Oh. That was an ill-thought out question. He had not intended to give her ideas, only to suss out what she had imagined their life to have been like. Apparently, Naliira was stunningly normal in her desires, but quite mad in the fulfillment of them.

She sat up a little to look him in the eye. Her features bore a look of hope. "If you remember what happened, then surely now you would not mind-" She paused, blushed and looked down as if embarrassed. That shyness must have seemed awfully strange after her almost violent sexual assault not even an hour ago. "-would not mind if we started trying now?" She twisted her upper body toward him as she said this, and rested both arms on his shoulders. Rose red lips parted slightly in anticipation, as if begging to be kissed. Teeth caught the bottom edge of her lip for a moment before releasing in. Her eyes lidded in a look that Caleldir was now very familiar with. Those were bedroom eyes: eyes that wanted to entice, to seduce.

Caleldir swallowed.