Beckoning Repose
Part One of Two
By Ordos Tsceri

The Night

Emilie dressed in emeralds for the masked ball.

 

She wanted to make a good impression, and she’d found out that Lady Cassilia Sybil was very fond of emeralds.  That information had cost her most of the coin she’d arrived with, but if it was true it would be more than worthwhile.  Especially since her informers let slip that princess was equally fond of the noblewomen who wore them.

 

Lady Cassilia Sybil was the third daughter of Lord Gwyn Sybil, and although the line of her father had floundered the princess had made a name, fortune, and territory for herself.  Emilie nervously chewed her lip as she ran through all she’d heard about her hostess; Lady Sybil had been spurned from her house, hunted across Arcanus by the agents of her jealous step-mother, that she’d thrown in with a party of adventurers, that she made a fortune plundering the ruins of long-lost civilizations, that she’d been terribly cursed in a pitched battle with ancient monster sworn to forgotten gods… 

 

She shook her head.  There were rumors and there were facts.  Whatever her past, the fact of the matter was that Cassilia Sybil effectively owned the thriving port city of Astyria.  Whether she positioned, maneuvered, and bought her city with her loot and wiles or whether she was gifted the strategic port by her father was irrelevant.  The simple fact of the matter was that Astyria was a thriving and strategic port, and if House Nordburg was going to come out on top of the looming succession crisis back home, then their ships would need Astyria for safe-harbor. 

 

So they sent Emilie.  Technically she was a countess, but the county in question was no longer under Nordburg control, so in practice she was a landless noble with no immediate family and little political heft.  She’d spent more time among the courtesans than her relatives in power growing up, which might be why she’d been chosen for this mission.

 

The Nordburgs were a tad strapped for liquid assets just now, so she’d been sent to seduce Lady Casilia Sybil.  What little money she had to her name went into intelligence and presentation.  Lady Sybil seemed to prefer women.  She didn’t care for race or ethnicity so much as figure, elegant curves and full breasts, and Emilie certainly fit that bill.  With all the influence and favors she could buy she arranged for an invitation to a grand ball being held in Sybil’s palace, a grand and beautiful affair of vine-wreathed stone columns and promenades on a hill overlooking the port and city.  Better still, she’d won an audience with the reclusive Princess of Astyria, as signified by the emerald necklace a servant furtively handed to her when she was making arrangements.

 

The ball passed in a blur.  Emilie tried to remember names, titles, but the jeweled and embellished half-masks all the nobles and notables wore kept her from matching anything to a face, which kept her from having any real conversations.  Still, they were polite, although more than once she caught a gaggle of ladies furtively whispering amongst themselves after they caught site of her… maybe her presence had been revealed ahead of time?  Could they know of her mission?  Well, it wouldn’t be difficult to figure out.  Anyone with a knowledge of the Northern Kingdoms could likely see what was coming, and a single visitor of high birth but nonexistent influence could only have so many interpretations. 

 

“The mistress will see you now.”

 

Emilie turned to the source of the words.  She saw a young servant, just barely a woman, wrapped in a loose-fitting grey dress, high quality but unadorned, save for the interwoven serpents along the hem; Lady Sybil’s personal crest.  The servant had curtsied and held her head low, eyes cast down, waiting for a response.

 

“Marvelous,” Emilie replied, more than a little glad to leave the party full of strangers in strange masks.  “Where shall I be meeting her?”

 

The servant looked up.  She was a pretty thing, large dark eyes, shoulder-length dark hair, still somewhat girlish but with room to grow.  “If you would kindly follow me to the statue garden, the mistress will be with you in a moment.”

 

She started off and Emilie followed, aware of the eyes on her.  And there were more than a few whispers around the ball room, too.  She tried to ignore it, pushing the thoughts out of her head to think about her mission.  Ingratiate herself to the mistress of this city at all costs.  She might become a lover if the rumors were true, a more platonic companion if they were exaggerated.  If she could make herself useful, install herself in the local court somehow, then Astyria might become her new home.  More than likely, she’d find her way back to the Nordburg courts, in higher standing for her service and results.  But it would all depend on Lady Cassilia Sybil and this first impression. 

 

The cool night air greeted her when she and the servant stepped out of the ballroom.  It was invigorating.  The moon was mostly hidden behind low-hanging clouds, but the city with its hundred thousand lamps and hearths lit up the view.  It took a moment for her to notice the rest of the garden, a terraced affair along a good third of the palace’s western wall, stretching down along the hill until the rocks formed a sheer cliff above the harbor.  The gardens had trees, stone pavilions, ponds, and hedges, presumably flowers too, but Emilie could make out little in the poor light. 

 

She followed the servant down a twisting path, under an awning of thin grey stone that shaded a terrace facing the city.  A pathway of unhewed stone lead across a grassy opening, punctuated by the swaying leaves of small shrubs.  Beyond was a gazebo of sorts on a pinnacle overlooking the harbor, and a number of trees grew just beyond the shade of the awning.  It was beautiful in a serene sort of way, peaceful.  Emilie decided that she rather liked this garden.  She could see herself spending time here, if she hit things off with Lady Sybil. 

 

“She’ll be with you in a moment,” the servant said, curtsying again, “she bids you wait here, until she arrives.” 

 

The servant was already scurrying away when Emilie replied, “I’ll be happy to comply.”

 

‘I wonder if she’s hard on her servants’, Emilie asked herself as she gazed out over the night-shrouded city.  It was a dreadfully unbecoming trait, as far as she was concerned, but it was hard to avoid entirely in any family.  She had cousins who ran homes like military barracks (the same cousins who were the driving force behind the looming tribulations, come to think of it), and as dreadful and unpleasant as they could be, they weren’t anything near the worst of the lot. 

 

No, she decided, the servant didn’t seem to have the reflexive fear in her that she’d seen in some of the more abused households.  This girl was nervous, but she was blossoming into womanhood in a place full of nobles, wealthy merchants, guildsmen, and foreign dignitaries.  Likely with a few magicians and elves floating about, and they could make anything dreadfully complicated.

 

Emilie’s heart was racing with her own anticipation.  She stood, her flimsy green silk gown clinging to her hips and chest when the wind whispered its way across the terrace.  She felt her nipples grow hard under the delicate garment, her cheeks flushing as unbidden thoughts of her contact came to mind.  Cassilia liked her privacy, she never appeared in public and was only rarely present in the balls and galas she herself threw, but every source agreed that she was beautiful.  Emilie imagined her, painfully shy, maybe with scars from her adventuring career, lonely and longing.  She couldn’t help but smile, wondering what the mistress would taste like, what sound she would make between the sheets, unbidden thoughts of lips and tongues slipping through her mind. 

 

She heard her coming.  Softly, quietly over the stones.  Emilie blushed; she had aroused herself like a day-dreaming school girl, and her gown would surely betray that fact.  Although, maybe that would work to her benefit. 

 

Slowly, delicately, she took off her ridiculous green-and-violet feathered mask.  She shook her head, freeing her long dark tresses to naturally fall around her shoulders.  She held the mask with her left hand and turned around, a lustful smile on her ruby lips, eyes alight with promise, her right arm extended toward the sound of her hostess, its fingers curved, beckoning.

 

And then she saw Lady Cassilia Sybil.

 

The rumors weren’t wrong about her beauty.  To Emilie’s Nordburg sensibilities, she seemed exotic; dusky skin, almond-shaped amber eyes, and generally striking features combined to form an almost intimidating beauty.  There was no mistaking the touch of royalty in those features either; she had an inherent power about her that permeated every movement.

 

But Emilie only noticed that because she had been trained to pick up clues about breeding and bearing.   Emilie noticed Cassilia’s more striking aspects an instant later.  She was so quiet, not because of careful footsteps, but because she was slithering over the stone walkway with a scaled serpentine tail that began at her hips and stretched over a dozen feet behind her in a waving, swaying pattern.  Her fingers ended in claws that glistened in the were-light, delicate in shape but undoubtedly strong.  Instead of hair, a wreath of snakes writhed about her head, swaying and probing the surroundings with their tongues.

 

Rather belatedly, she realized that Cassilia was naked.  She had lovely breasts, full and firm looking, and her glistening womanhood was perched just where her skin transitioned to scales, her secret lips neat and inviting.

 

She felt exhilarated, but something was off.  Something troubling.  Cassilia continued her casual approach, gliding at the pace of a peaceful walk, her amber-yellow eyes wide with delight. 

 

Then Emilie realized she hadn’t moved since she first saw those eyes.  She hadn’t even blinked.  She was excited, aroused, and scared, but rather than feel her heart race within her chest her body was perfectly still. 

 

“Sooner than I would have liked,” the serpent woman spoke, a long and flat forked tongue flashing between soft and inviting lips, “but the result is… magnificent.”

 

Emilie’s skin was tingling.  Magic, she realized.  She’d felt the tickle, the soft tingle down her spine when the court magician was showing off his skills.  But back when he was juggling fireballs in the old homeland the feeling was never more than a murmur, a whisper.  This was an orchestra playing across every inch of her skin.

 

She wasn’t breathing.  Her heart wasn’t beating.  But she felt so aroused, so excited, so intense…

 

“Normally,” Cassilia whispered as she approached Emilie, beginning to circle her when she was not quite an arm’s reach away, “this is where I do some posing.  But I can’t improve on this.  Not you.”  She was close enough for Emilie to feel her warmth, feel her energy radiating from her body. 

 

She had just completed a full circle, coiling on-top of her tail as she moved around with eerily serpentine grace, like a viper closing in on a squirrel.    

 

“Thiss part iss… memorable.  Don’t worry… you’ll be ready sssoon.”  She lisping, dragging her ‘s’ with her inhuman tongue.  Her lips parted, her breathing deepened, her forked tongue slipping loose, tasting the air about Emilie.  She reached a claw-fingered hand towards Emilie, but held it out, a few inches far of physical touch. 

Emilie wanted it, wanted that touch, to be held, to feel this woman’s warmth, her wetness, to be ravished by that long tongue, but no part of her body would respond to her urging.  Everything felt so sensitive, so eager…

 

The tingling intensified.  Emilie would have gasped or moaned if she could have pushed the air through her throat.  What had been a delirious, pleasant tickling surged into a powerful, bizarrely sexual pleasure that emanated from parts of her body that had never remotely felt like that before.  The feeling was amazing, erotic unlike anything she’d ever known, wrong, contrary to all her prior experience, but so delicious she couldn’t care.

 

“Yesss…” the serpent woman breathed, moving closer and closer.  Finally, she touched Emilie.  Cassilia’s lips landed on Emilie’s, her tongue licking across the noblewoman’s cheek, then neck.  She stroked and kissed Emilie, every hot and wet embrace sending shocks of pleasure through Emilie’s still form. 

 

Emilie wanted to cry out, to scream her desire, to howl in orgasm, to make all the noise a happy lover could in the throes of passion, but more than that, she wanted more.  She wanted this embrace to go on.  And, praise the gods, Casilia was more than happy to comply with her unspoken urging. 

 

Sensations began to bleed into each-other.    Emilie felt Cassilia’s kisses, her breath, her questing licks.  She felt those claws glide over her breast and shred her fine gown to ribbons.  She felt her clothes fall in tatters to the ground, to be swept away by the evening breeze.  She felt Cassilia’s warm body pressed against her, the serpent-woman’s soft breast yielding as it rubbed against her own.  She heard her lover climax and moan and start again, every touch a greater and greater reverie. 

 

Cassilia left her creation in the early hours of the morning, long before first light.  Emilie wouldn’t realize it until well past noon, so lost was she in her helpless sensation.

                

 

Day One

 

She wanted to take in a deep breath, to still her racing heart and steel her nerves.  But, for the moment, she had none of those.  Only sensation and thought. 

 

So Emilie waited.

 

There wasn’t much else she could do.

 

She was naked, utterly immobile, and still in the inviting, seductive pose she assumed when she turned to meet a prospective lover the night before.  She couldn’t see much of herself, only a few wisps of white-grey hair and her similarly re-colored nose, but she didn’t have to see herself to know what had happened. 

 

From her vantage she could see two other statues entirely, and bits and pieces of four more when the wind blew the leaves the right way.  They were all life-sized women, all nude, at least a couple were in overtly erotic poses.  She didn’t have to guess who the sculptor was.

 

Lady Cassilia Sybil had cast a spell on her.  Of course.  She should have realized that last night.  Her magical studies had been woefully negligible; there simply weren’t many magicians in the Nordburg courts.  They’d hire battle-mages, sure, but the line itself was generally devoid of magical inclination.  Something to do with the north-men invaders who founded the house, six hundred years ago, when they landed on Arcanus.  But, more importantly, she did know about a little about this… there were many spells that could turn a person into stone.  And many of those were reversible.  Lady Sybil probably kept a rotating gallery of her favorite lovers and models here.  She certainly wouldn’t be the only highborn lady with unusual kinks. 

 

But that was what could salvage the whole thing.  The highborn were allowed their eccentricities, but there was a decorum between nobles.  She might add a peasant to her little garden on a long-term basis, but not a noblewoman. 

 

This couldn’t last.  Lady Sybil was a powerful sorceress, whatever her affliction.  She’d have her fun, make a show of her power, and then restore her guest.  She’d be flesh and blood before the week’s end.  She’d share a nervous laugh with her hostess and then leave Astyria has fast as she possibly could. 

 

Maybe last night would be enough to procure those trade rights she was after.  Certainly none of her colleagues or relatives would begrudge her leaving after a night as stone.  Well, on second thought, it would be best if they didn’t know.  Something this embarrassing, they’d hold it over her head for the rest of her life.

 

Her mind ran in circles.  For the moment she was a statue.  At least she had the good fortune to be barefoot when the change happened; they probably didn’t make her slippers to withstand several hundred pounds of stone.  Emilie didn’t want to think about what would happen if they had given way after the spell, if she had toppled over as stone and shattered before Lady Sybil could restore her.

 

But she did anyway.  All she could do was think, and maintaining direction was difficult as nervous as she was.

 

She pushed the thoughts from her heard (or wherever she did her thinking just at the moment).  This was probably a power-play.  Or a highborn lady indulging a fetish.  Likely the latter; Lady Sybil had clearly been afflicted, somehow, in her adventuring days.  It would explain why she kept out of the public view.  She probably avoided visiting her garden during the day, just in case someone in the city below could spy her.  That was why she was still stone; Lady Sybil had run out of night before, and had to retreat out of sight for her rest.  Just as soon as the sun went down, she’d come back, restore her to flesh and blood, and… well, things would be very awkward after that, but Emilie resolved to be polite and diplomatic.  And to get the seven hells out of Astyria as soon as humanly possible afterwards, but politely. 

 

Her thoughts continued along such lines until just before dusk, when the doe-eyed serving girl approached her.  She was wearing a different uniform, grey with entwined serpents, but much less fine that her attire the previous night.  The young woman was certainly pretty, Emilie hadn’t quite noticed that last night, but it was clear now.  She approached the Emilie tentatively, no doubt recognizing her from the night before.

 

And she was carrying a bucket. 

 

Emilie didn’t know what to make of that as the serving girl slowly approached.  She stared at Emilie, wide eyed, and Emilie became acutely aware that she was prone and naked.  The girl stared at her, her shyness slowly overcome by a growing fascination.  Bizarrely, Emilie could feel the serving girl’s gaze on her stone skin… are attention like feathers teasing her, first along her breasts, and then dancing along body, face, and sex, every inch feeling sensual and exquisite. 

 

“The mistress is very pleased with you,” the serving girl said as she put down the bucket.  Emilie heard it slosh with the movement.  “You’re going to be one of the mistress’ favorites.  I… I can see why.  You’re beautiful.”

 

The servant girl bent down, and when she returned to Emilie’s field of view she was holding a sponge, wet and lathered with soapy suds.  She inched closer to Emilie, each step accompanied by the sound of dripping.  Emilie wanted to twinge, to back away, to shake off this eerie advance and that… intense gaze, but her stone body remained still, waiting. 

 

“I never told you my name… noble women don’t care, but… I’m Bethany.”  The serving girl, Bethany, said, moving around Emilie’s beckoning hand until she was inches away from her marble face.  She stared into Emilie’s unblinking eyes, blushing.  While Emilie was desperately trying to figure out what to make of this girl’s forwardness, she closed the distance and kissed her.  Softly, on her unyielding lips. 

 

The sensation was incredible.  Not orgasmic, nothing so focused.  It was pleasurable, erotically so, with a warmth that seemed to permeate through her cold stone body, touching her very essence.

 

Bethany smiled, blushing like a guilty schoolgirl sneaking away between lessons.  She bit her lip and smiled before breaking her gaze, casting her eyes downward as she brought her wet sponge to Emilie’s face.

 

The kiss was soft, enticing, and beautiful in its pleasure, like a whispered promise between the sheets.  The feeling of the wash-sponge was more like a hard-and-fast fucking.  If she could, she would have gasped and howled and moaned and rocked with thrusting motions… but none of that was possible.  Instead, she let the sensation wash over her, drowning out conscious thought in waves of raw pleasure and glorious sensation. 

 

Bethany was practiced and thorough.  She washed Emilie from head to toes, lathering the space between her legs a deal more thoroughly than could have strictly been necessary.  It was all too much. 

 

To Emilie’s astonishment, horror, and delight she didn’t climax.  There was no release from her mounting pleasure, her statue-body unable to rock her hips, contract her secret recesses, or cum in a howling explosion of satisfaction.  Instead, the pleasure reverberated in her, washing away her worry and fretting until her mind was afloat in a glorious euphoria.

 

She didn’t realize when Bethany stopped.  She heard the girl say her goodbies, but the words passed without recognition.  One phrase, however, pierced the cloud of erotic passion; “the mistress said she’d see you again tonight.”

 

Emilie couldn’t wait.  If it was anything last the previous night… maybe she would restore her after a little intimate time… 

 

Day Five

 

Much to her chagrin, Sybil’s statue garden wasn’t as private as it was personal.

 

At least seven people had seen her, prone and naked in marble since the masked ball.  At the very least.  She’d seen six of them, Lady Sybil, four separate servants, and two advisors she met with during the evening.  There might have been more, from the sound of things, but she couldn’t turn her head to check or confirm.  All she had was her field of vision, what she was looking at when she turned to greet Lady Sybil. 

 

There were other senses she was becoming, unfortunately, familiar with.  Her stone skin was hyper-sensitive, magically enchanted, or something…  Physical touch was exhilarating, and a sexual touch was almost torturously pleasurable.  But even something as slight at a person’s gaze, their eyes gazing on her nude form… at first she thought she’d been imagining it, but by day three she was absolutely certain that it was true.  It felt good, more teasing and titillating than overtly erotic… it could have been pleasurable if it wasn’t such a drastic reminder that she couldn’t move an inch.  Like a lover’s playful tickling, only she couldn’t laugh, swat away their taunting feathers, or push them onto the cushions to carry their play to the next level.  All she could do was feel it.  And from the feel of things, quite a few eyes had appraised her form as a statue.

 

At least they seemed to like her ass.  Quite a few eyes had spent a good amount of time there when Lady Sybil held a meeting in the gardens last night.  She’d always wondered if lords and ladies fancied her butt, if it was too skinny or too plump.  Evidently, it was quite to the tastes of Astyrian nobles.  That was something comforting to know.  She’d have to remember arranging her next dress back in the Nordlands. 

 

She was assembling quite the list of things to do once she was mobile again. 

 

Lady Sybil would restore her any day now.  Well, the week after next was beginning to sound more likely than any other specific day; from what she could remember of the conversation there would be a meeting with some dignitaries from Qin-Tao in the East.  The Qintinese respected magic and its users, and having some living statuary on hand would likely be a boon to those negotiations.  She’d probably serve as an inanimate conversation piece and proverbial feather in Lady Sybil’s hat, earn her a bit of weight in the negotiations, and that little advantage would help Emilie and her own agenda, tit-for-tat.

 

Under normal circumstances she’d be furious to be used like this.  Bad enough that so many had seen her nude and vulnerable like this… but she’d been a pawn in a large political game coming here, and now the metaphor was a tad more literal.  But there was a clear purpose, and once that purpose had been satisfied Lady Sybil would have no reason to keep her here. 

 

Just two weeks.  She could manage that.  She didn’t exactly have any choice in the matter, but she could manage it.

 

She felt them coming before she heard them, a pair of feathery caresses tracing the curve of her stone hips before settling on her round ass.  There were at least three of them, one was only glancing at her occasionally, another was moving up and down her flanks and tracing the curves of her hips and breasts, and the last was definitely lingering on her posterior. 

 

The rush of emotion was growing distressingly familiar.  Emilie was ashamed to be on display like some dancing harlot, embarrassed to have her private, intimate display shown to all, frustrated by her inability to wriggle under the delightful teasing of her audience, and growing arousal.  They were growing harder to distinguish, the frustrated lack of mobility and shame of her exhibition had begun to feed into her arousal, offering a guilty pleasure that made even more ashamed. 

 

Emilie struggled to pull her mind away from the sensation.  She was pretty sure she knew these three.  Two specialized advisors and the captain of Sybil’s personal guard (the captain being the one rather enamored of her butt).  She couldn’t see them yet, but she knew they’d be wearing colorful silken robes that could breathe in the pleasant heat.  They’d be wearing half-masks, similar to the ones at the ball, only these were attached to silly-looking three-sided hats.  It had taken her a couple days to realize that the hats were supports for veils that blocked direct vision.  It forced the eyes down or to the sides, not quite blinding the wearer but preventing them from looking directly at, say, a point about person-high that could turn them into stone with a glance.  It seemed entirely sensible.  Emilie rather wished she had been wearing one of those funny hats at the ball.

 

The three would be discussing some routine manner of city governance.  Emilie tried to eavesdrop, but couldn’t make out enough words.  It sounded like they were discussing a problem with palace plumbing.  Emilie idly wondered if one of them would touch her as they passed.

 

The idea shocked her.  That it would come so easily… and that it sounded so appealing.  She found herself disappointed when they passed her by with only a few sideways glances.  Fortunately, Bethany would be by to wash her tomorrow and…

 

Emilie forced the thought from her head.  Two weeks.  She just had to handle two more weeks…

              

                

 

Week Ten 

 

‘Any day now.  Any day now.  Any day now.  I’m a noble of House Nordburg.  I’m not a stone decoration.  She’ll restore me any day now.  Any day now.’

 

She repeated her mantra silently, a thousand times a day.  Forcing herself to believe it. 

 

There was a pattern.  Bethany would wash her every three days, or immediately after a session with Lady Sybil.  The amorous serpent would slither by most nights, admiring her garden, but which statue she chose to lavish her affections on was subject to her own capricious whims.  Sometimes she’d just talk aloud, or hold one-sided conversations with the stone beauties. 

 

Emilie tried not to pay attention.  She might test her, to see if she remembered anything pertinent or sensitive when she turned her back.  So she did her best to focus on something, anything else.  Any day now. 

 

Casillia and Bethany were the two peaks of her existence.  Being touched so passionately, so powerfully, could send her in an erotic haze that would take the better part of a day to recover from.  It was the only time she broke the mantra. 

 

Any day now.  Any day now.  Any day now.  I’m a noble of House Nordburg.  I’m not a stone decoration.  She’ll restore me any day now.  Any day now.

 

There were other events.  The rise and fall of the sun.  An irregular stream of advisors, councilors, servants, and visitors came through the garden.  Hardly any of them ever touched them, although plenty would spare a glance.  The saving grace of all of this was that none of them likely knew her before the ball, and few would see her after she was changed back.

 

Any day now…