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They've finished up with the undead problem and posted up at an inn near, but crucially, not in Dunbridge for a couple of days. They're not really doing much of anything, just enjoying not traveling or being covered in ichor. Egbert's been asleep for most of the time since they got here; the undead really took it out of him, and Merilwen's not above providing a little cosseting for a very exhausted paladin who's been smiting an awful lot of evil lately.
In the midst of all this, three figures arrive, galloping up on great warhorses. Two of them have great warhorses, anyway; the other one is riding pillion. Either way, all of them dismount and walk towards the inn. Merilwen sees all of this, because she and Corazon are sitting near a window in the bar. It must be stated that they've been drinking for, like, a while at this point, though the drinks seem watered down. That might only be because they're past tasting the alcohol.
"The one in the middle, isn't that, uh," Merilwen says. "The paladin inspector."
"Don't like that," Corazon says.
"So, like I said, he's a gold dragonborn," Max is saying, as they lead the other two into the inn. "Big guy, hard to miss. Good with his pamphlets, though."
The other two people are definitely also paladins. They are both tabaxis, and they are both absolute units. Merilwen is used to seeing tabaxis who look roughly like Rust-on-the-Harbour. These two are both gray and pushing seven feet tall, with shiny armor in silver and blue.
Merilwen turns to ask Corazon what he thinks they should do, but he's gone. She's spotted by the paladins before she can figure that mystery out.
"Oh, hey, hail and well met," Max says. "I suppose you'll know where Egbert is."
Something pokes her in the ankle; she's not especially surprised that it's Corazon, hiding under the table in their booth. He motions for her to shush.
"Uh," Merilwen, absolutely the wrong person to leave to talk to the cops, says. "Yeah, you know. He's around and stuff."
"If you do know where he is, we've got a paladin conclave to get to," Max says. "They've asked for- well, all the paladins of all the deities represented by a color and then an animal, basically. Dragon d'Or, La Vache Mauve, that kind of thing. Not looking forward to the Anchoa Azul, if I'm honest. I hate that water temple."
"I'm not sure he'll want to go with you, now that he's gotten married," Merilwen says, even though Corazon stabs her in the leg urgently.
"Oh," Max says, surprised. "It's just he hasn't completed a change of marital status form. Well, no problem, since I'm here I'll just record it. So he has-" They eye Merilwen, obviously putting two and two together. "One new wife?"
"Yep," Merilwen says.
"This is very unfortunate," one of the tabaxis says.
"Oh, absolument," the other one says. "A mark against him, to be sure."
"Yes, quite unseemly, a paladin with a wife," the first tabaxi says.
"Egbert can get married if he wants to," Merilwen says, affronted. "There's no crime in that."
"Yeah, these are paladins of the Blaireau d'Argent," Max says. "That one's Frère Heureux, that one's Frère Joyeux, and quite frankly, I would not advise wasting your time on them."
"They're the ones who can't get married," Merilwen says.
"It is far higher of a calling to serve the Blaireau d'Argent than to waste one's life-" Joyeux starts.
"Bugger me, now you've done it," Max mutters.
"I already regret it," Merilwen assures them, but the good brother is off to the races.
It would probably last much longer, but Egbert comes bounding down the stairs, followed closely by Dob. Merilwen doesn't see Prudence, who's at the top of the stairs holding her action to let out a couple of eldritch blasts. "At last," Heureux says. "This is Egbert of La Vache Mauve?"
"Last time I checked, yeah," Egbert says.
"Bon, then we leave at once," Heureux says.
"Couldn't you at least spare him until the morning?" Merilwen asks.
"What could possibly be so important that it could not wait?" Heureux says.
"Maybe she just wants to give him a fond farewell," Max says.
"She can say her goodbyes here," Heureux insists.
"That doesn't sound very fond," Egbert says dryly.
Heureux glares at Egbert suspiciously. Joyeux takes him by the arm, leading him away and having a hurried private conversation with him. It's supposed to be private, anyway, but Heureux says loudly, "Why would a dragonborn copulate with an elf?!"
Merilwen gives him a thumbs up. "Big rec from me, I think everybody should try it at least once."
"You can't even produce offspring!" Heureux says, like he's personally offended.
"We can't?" Egbert says to Merilwen, clutching his breastplate. "You've lied to me!"
"So like," Dob says to Max. "What's these guys' whole deal?"
"I've been traveling with them for like three weeks now," Max says. "I'm pretty sure the Blaireau d'Argent teaches that having a good time is blasphemous. I didn't think that was going to include sleeping with your own wife, but here we are."
"Is that your kind of thing too?" Dob asks.
Max stares at him patiently. "I have 6 to charisma and it's always my last night in town."
"That is pretty tempting," Dob says, his eyebrows raised. He looks over at a flash of movement. "Corazon, are you stuck under the table?"
"No," Corazon says, muffled.
"I just sort of assumed he was into that," Max says.
"Look, I need to talk about this with my wife," Egbert says. "All of you stay here."
"This is an outrage," Joyeux says.
"Yeah, it is," Egbert says, and he shuffles Merilwen outside.
Now that the amusement of messing with a couple of stuffy paladins has worn off, Merilwen is starting to get nervous. Being married to Egbert is kind of all she has going on right now; she's got another couple thousand years of it, but she really just got here. She's really not sure whether all newlyweds feel like this, or if you'd only feel this way if you got married to someone by fiat and had to reverse into building a life together. She only learned last week that he can't sleep if he's not the one closest to the door, something anybody else would have known right away.
In fairness, the gundeck doesn't have a door, or she'd have known sooner.
Egbert takes her into the courtyard in the center of the inn. It's quiet, though its position in the building kinda makes their business everyone's business.
"What do you want me to do?" Egbert asks.
"I don't get to say what you can do," Merilwen says.
Egbert frowns. "Yeah, but-"
"I don't like that you would think I'd want to keep you from your goal in life," Merilwen snaps.
"I don't understand why you want to have a fight," Egbert says, looking a little hurt. "I thought this was what was good about having a wife and not living in a paladin order. Somebody you could talk stuff through with and then make decisions as a team, instead of asking fifty other guys, a dragon, and then God."
Merilwen sighs. "I'm sorry, I think I read this whole thing really wrong. It just makes me nervous."
"You don't want me to go, I won't go," Egbert says.
"You know you have to go," Merilwen says. "These guys seem awful, but you're not doing it for them. You're doing it because it's your calling."
"Yeah, unfortunately that's what I thought you'd say," Egbert says. "If I thought there was a way around it, I'd take it."
"It won't be for long," Merilwen says, though she doesn't actually know that.
"It'll be fine," Egbert says, though he sounds unconvinced.
So Egbert rides off with the other paladins to attend to his duties. They've been told not to wait up, so the rest of them travel back to the Joyful Damnation, to make a plan and also because Corazon really hates having to pay hotel fees, even if they're down one room. They have other things to do, probably, though it might just be resupplying the ship and waiting to be accosted by Binbag.
A week has gone by, though not any longer. Merilwen is lying in bed on the gundeck. She's been very tempted to go reclaim her hammock, because without Egbert next to her, sometimes the night air gets bitingly cold. Glenmantle is visiting family, so it could be her and Dob, like old times. Unfortunately, that would require getting out from under the blankets, getting up, and going up the ladder, and that seems like a long, cold trek.
It's bizarre how much she misses him. She'd do anything to have him next to her, his hands on her body. Her stupid elven fingers aren't even a little bit scaly. What's the point?
"Merilwen?" Egbert's voice says softly in her ear. Merilwen startles, but she isn't nearly as surprised as she could be.
Shattershield was the one who actually gave them the earrings of whispers. They're particularly good ones, with a maximized range, but importantly, they're dragonborn-compatible: dragonborn do not have ears with which to wear earrings. Egbert's half of the set presses onto his face, sitting between his eye and the corner of his mouth, then something happens with magic and he can hear it in his head.
Merilwen and Egbert have already agreed that they must be a regift, but neither of them was interested in turning them down.
"Egbert," she says. "Are you alright?"
"Yeah, I'm fine," he says. "We're done for the day. They put me up in this tiny cell."
"A cell?" she says, alarmed.
"A cell like the place a monk sleeps," he says. "They didn't lock me in or anything."
"I guess that's better," she says.
"It's not like there's any night life to get to," he says, and she can hear him shifting. "It's freezing anyway."
"It sounds dreadful," she says. "I wish you could come back."
"There's no easy way to ask you this," Egbert says, and she can hear him wincing.
"What is it?" Merilwen says, alarmed.
"Um," Egbert says. "You up?"
Merilwen frowns in confusion. "I'm talking to you, aren't- Oh."
"It's really lonely here," he says apologetically. "I miss you."
"I'm sorry," she says, trying not to laugh. "What did you have in mind?"
"I've gotten through all the plans that I had already," he says. "Really the whole plan was 'Call Merilwen.' I didn't even know if the earring would work over this distance."
"You know," she says, an idea occurring to her. "If you were lonely, you could scry on me."
"I don't like to abuse it," he says. "You deserve your privacy."
"Yeah, but," she says, not even a little surprised that he's not getting it. "You could, like. Scry. On me. While I am all alone."
There is silence.
"Not if you didn't want to," she hastens to say.
"No, no, I was just trying to remember how to talk," he says. "Are you really alone?"
"Yeah," she says, pushing back the covers and hurriedly arranging herself into an appealing situation. He's not hugely into artifice, so she just sort of puts her hand behind her head and bends her legs, knees together, feet apart. That'll get her.
"I'm gonna open the line," Egbert says.
Scrying is odd, because sometimes you can feel it and sometimes you can't. Sometimes it prickles in the back of your head, enough so that you could push it away. Much of the time it feels like absolutely nothing, even when you know you're being watched.
"There you are," Egbert says, and it warms her despite the fact she's now absolutely frozen. "I really, really didn't want to have to leave."
"I didn't want you to leave," she says.
"I didn't know it was gonna turn out like this," he says. "I thought for sure you were gonna ask me for an annulment."
"Me too," she admits.
"Why didn't you?" Egbert asks.
"I like you," Merilwen says.
"Oh, go on," Egbert says.
"I might, if you ask nicely," she says. She trails her fingers along her thigh; part of the reason she's been so cold is that she's barely wearing any clothes. She's usually fine, but her seven-foot hot water bottle isn't here. "So what do you want me to do?"
"I thought you could, maybe-" She can't see him, but somehow she can hear him putting his hands over his face, the way he'll put one over his eyes and one on his snout. "This is so embarrassing."
"It's not embarrassing," she says. "I'll do anything you want."
"I thought it would be nice to see you use, um," he says, sounding hopeful and mortified.
"One second," she says, rolling over.
"Couldn't you buy Egbert a strap-on?" Prudence said, on a night shortly after the wedding, several drinks in and working on more. "He's got nothing there, it'd be a nice flat surface."
Merilwen's eyes went wide. "I could buy Egbert a strap-on." The idea of riding him had occurred to her more than once, in a very favorable way, but there was just nothing doing. "Do you, um, know where to buy one?"
Prudence looked over at Corazon, who was shamelessly flirting with the bartender, as instructed. "Of course I know where to buy one."
Putting it around his waist had been mutually unsatisfying; it pressed against his slit in a weird way and the angles were no good. Putting it around his thigh is incredible. All she has to do is straddle him, and he's right there with grabby hands at the ready.
The strap-on is currently taken apart, having been recently cleaned, which is convenient. Merilwen grabs the relevant portion, rolling onto her back again. That's as far as her nerve takes her; she's never done this before, and she doesn't know what's being asked of her.
"What do you want to see?" she asks.
"Uh," he says. "If I'm honest, I thought you'd just know."
"Right," she says.
"Dammit," he sighs. "This went better in my head."
"It's okay," she says. "We're not out of commission."
"I thought it might, um," he says. "I thought it might feel a little more like I was there if you used, um, that thing."
Egbert's actual dick is kind of a pink color, very smooth. The toy, which was in fact labeled "metallic dragonborn", is gold and has carved lines on it that suggest scales. In multiple respects, Merilwen thinks that it's nothing like Egbert being here, but the plaintive way he says it would have her doing absolutely anything.
"Then I better show it a good time," she says, and before she can back out, she kisses the tip of the toy. Egbert makes a noise, audible through the connection, and suddenly not being able to see him is untenable. "I'm gonna open the scrying the other way, alright?"
"Hold on," Egbert says. There's a pause. "Okay, try it now."
Merilwen concentrates, and her vision changes, looking into a small, bare room. It looks cold, and Egbert is sitting on the bed almost entirely still dressed. He has his kilt hiked up, his fingers running up and down his slit.
"Looks like you're enjoying where this is heading," Merilwen says.
"Oh, y'know," Egbert says. "It passes the time." He looks heartsick, lovelorn. "I'd do basically anything to be there right now."
"I wish you could," she says. "But we can take our minds off it, yeah?"
"Yeah," he says.
"Tell me what you'd do if you were here," she says, laying back, and before she can chicken out, she runs the head of the toy up and down her folds.
"I think the real answer is watch you," he says. "You're so pretty."
"That's not very fun," she says.
"Maybe not for you," he says. "I feel like I always feel."
"How is that?" she asks.
"Like I can't decide where to touch first," he says, and it sends a thrill of heat through her. "Whenever you let me anywhere near you, it makes me want to grab everything I can."
"Keep going," she says, because this is really starting to do it for her.
"Okay," he says, sounding pleased. "I like that you're small next to me. I just want to snatch you up and carry you away."
"To where?" she asks.
"Our bed," he says, and she pushes just the head of the toy inside of her, teasing herself with it. "First I'd get all your clothes off, then I'd start at the top and work my way down."
Merilwen is still wearing the thin shift she went to bed in; it barely covers her to mid-thigh, and when she pushes it up, it doesn't cover anything. Egbert makes a noise, just a little groan, and it's worth it.
"Like this?" she says, cupping one of her breasts with her free hand.
"Kinda," he says. "More nipple."
She laughs. "Like this?" she says. Her nipples are so hard already from the chill in the air, and it almost hurts a little to run her palm over one of them. This lasts two seconds before it just starts being hot, and it's helped by the look on Egbert's face, so full of longing.
"That's better," he says. "I'd like to spend a very long time on you."
"I wish you would," she says, pushing the toy into her deeper, rocking it in and out.
"What do you want to do to me?" he asks, sounding a little bit coy.
"I want your cock in my mouth," she says, perfectly earnest, and he sucks in a breath. "I love how it feels."
"Hold on," he says, sounding slightly strangled. He groans, pushing on his abdomen; his cock emerges from his slit, hard and ready.
"That's more like it," Merilwen says. By now she's got her toy all the way inside of her, and she grinds against it, wanting more. "I want to touch you more than anything."
"I wish you could," he says. He has this way of handling himself, one hand on the underside to stroke the ridge there, and she really wants to learn. "I miss you so much."
"You have to come home," she says, just a little bit plaintive. "I wish I was riding you right now. I love you so much."
Egbert smiles. "You're perfect," he says. "I'm so blessed that you want to be anywhere near me."
"If I keep going, I'm gonna come," she says.
"Please do," he says. "Please, I love to watch you. I love it when you let me help."
Merilwen is kind of past talking right now. She reaches down with her free hand, rubbing her clit quickly as she works the toy in and out. Egbert isn't actually looking at her; instead she's watching him watch her, and she'd swear she'd never felt like this before, idolized, adored.
"That's it," he says in her ear, like he's near enough to feel his breath. "Do it for me."
She moves a little faster and it's right there. She shakes when she comes, just letting it move through her over and over. It doesn't feel like he's here, but something about it is so good, like the distance couldn't pull them apart.
She relaxes against the bed when it's over, pulling the toy free and putting it to the side, and that's when she realizes she kind of forgot about Egbert. "What can I do for you?" she asks, trying to cover it.
Egbert is still hard, and he makes a noise. It's not a great noise. Sometimes, maybe because of something anatomical that she doesn't really understand, he just can't get over the bridge. Sometimes he just can't get off at all, but Merilwen has been having success with what she has been privately referring to as muscle confusion. If she does something that's the right combination of hot and startling, she can make this work.
She glances over.
"It's okay," she says, picking up the toy. "Don't worry about it. I've got you."
Putting the toy in her mouth feels weird, but isn't that odd in the grand scheme of things; it's not like she's never tasted herself. What matters is that he gasps, shocked, so she continues with her plan. When she's thinking about him, it's not hard at all to want something in her mouth, and the brazenness of the whole thing really does it for her.
"Oh god, Merilwen," he pants. She nods her head and pushes the toy in further, trying to treat it like she'd like to treat him. It's not hard, because he's making noises like he's so close; she just has to give it a little more and he's coming, his cock shooting onto his stomach. She feels pleased with a job well done, taking the toy out of her mouth and dropping it onto the bed.
"I didn't know you were gonna do that," Egbert says.
"Me neither," Merilwen says.
"I love you," he says.
"When can you come home?" she asks, and she really wants to cover up again.
"If they don't let me leave by next week, I'm giving my proxy to Shattershield and they can all pound sand," he says.
"I never thought Shattershield would solve more problems than he causes," she says.
"Me either," he says. "I kind of think he's trying to rebound with Max the inspector? So I imagine he'll stick around."
"Uh," she says. "Okay."
"Believe me, Max isn't gonna stop him," he says.
"I mean," Merilwen says. "I'm not gonna sit here and act like I don't support sleeping with gold dragonborn."
"There you go," Egbert says. She shivers despite herself. "If you wore more clothes to bed, you wouldn't be cold all the time. Some guys get to complain about cold feet. I've got a whole elf."
"Yeah, but if I wore more clothes to bed," she says, pulling her shift down and the bedclothes up, "I'd be wearing more clothes in bed."
"What a terrible dilemma," Egbert says. He yawns despite himself, making a face.
"Get some rest, okay?" Merilwen says. "I want you to get done and come home."
"Yeah," Egbert says. "I want to get home more than anything."
"Love you," she says softly.
"You too," he replies, and she lets the scrying end. She curls up in bed, trying to find some warmth, but her trance eludes her for a while.
You can't feel it when you're being scryed on. That's why Merilwen doesn't realize that he's still there, just watching her as she falls into trance. It makes him feel better, so much less alone, though he'd move heaven and earth to get back to her.
If he can get the Singe Vert and the Neidr Borffor on his side, he can wrap this bullshit up in two days. If not, he's going home if he has to walk. Who thought it was a good idea to declare a conclave of people who maxed out charisma and dumped wisdom, anyway?
That question does contain its own answer, but hopefully he'll be headed home soon either way.