After a lengthy and not altogether boring apprenticeship, I chose to travel the Great Route, as most of you did when first you could stand and answer to the name “minstrel”, in order to see something of what the world had to offer for such a talented young man as myself. I had travelled this route from Padya to Sintiria to Amia to Militilva and back to Padya again for some two years (or was it perhaps three?) before settling down, for as long as my interest might last, in the highlands of southern Tierma, running messages and gossip up and down the foothills of the Zannick Mountains. I had been there not three months before word came to my ears (ever attuned are they to such news) of a certain young nymph who lived near Sil, and what I heard was more than enough to thoroughly whet my appetite for some firsthand knowledge.

The next time I passed through Sil, after a period of waiting which narrowly escaped exceeding the limits of my patience, I discovered, with very little difficulty, where I could find the maid for whom I sought. She lived in a little inn built of stone, halfway up a hill to the west of Sil, which was kept by her father, her sister, and herself. When first my eyes bathed in her vision (ah, with what cruelness that moment ended!), I resolved to spend the night there, and not without companionship, if her young heart, or at least her passion, could be swayed.

Her name was Iana. Her sister’s name was Wana, and they were twins, but not, I regretted most painfully, of even remotely equal beauty. Their feet, which they wore naked in the warmer seasons, seemed never to have known shoes; to cramp such lovely, graceful feet in clogs or boots would have seemed a sacrilege. Their legs were slender and well muscled and, like their feet, slightly browned by the sun. When presented with a view of their backs, I could perceive, beneath each skirt, generous swells that suggested pumpkins. When they turned about, my eyes wandered among four small mountain peaks which I longed to climb and explore. But above their shoulders, fate had dealt its cards most unfairly. Iana’s face was pretty, although not extraordinarily so, with small ears, brown eyes which sparkled when the light struck them, and light brown hair that hung, as straight as water falls, down to her shoulders. But Wana’s face was ugly, with large, misshapen ears, grey lifeless eyes that seemed to have been filled with mud from a river bank, and thin, stringy hair cut in a mockery of her sister’s. I must confess that I might have passed the night with Wana, out of compassion for the unfortunate maiden (for surely, I thought, she must be a maiden), were it not for the availability of far more comely game.

To cut straight to the heart of the situation, and spare you the lengthy conversation with which I swayed the fair Iana to my will, she agreed to receive me in her room when the moon had set. Ah, the impatience with which I watched that fat crescent descend behind the hills! When there was but a sliver left to view, it seemed to hang their for hours, mocking me, before the last silvery tip disappeared. At last I made my way to the door beyond which lay the subject of my desire. As I pushed it open slowly, the light from my candle cast an ever-widening wedge of light on the foot-smoothed wooden floor, an arrow which pierced the shadows and pointed the way to my delight. As it touched the foot of the bed, before it could illuminate what lay therein, she called in a whisper, “Put out the candle, and come to me.” Hesitating nary an instant, I did as she bade me, closing the heavy oaken door behind me. There was a window next to the bed, but with the moon gone the stars cast only enough light to reveal the dark shadows of the bed and something moving upon it. Letting my robe flow silently off my back onto the floor, I felt my way beneath the heavy blanket which shielded Iana’s body from the evening’s chill.

When her naked body pressed against mine, her skin felt like the smoothest silk compared with the coarseness of the blanket. Her hot breath tickled in my ear as her mouth sought my own. My tongue bathed her lips, then ran along her teeth, then slipped between them to find her tongue which, far from being reticent, fought gently with mine, now forcing its way into my mouth, now withdrawing. My hand, while this oral battle was being waged which could only end with both of us the victor, had run its course from her shoulder down to her breast, a swell of flesh so soft and yielding that it felt almost liquid, then on to her hip and down her leg to her slightly bent knee, then up the inside of the same leg, proceeding ever more slowly. As I felt the warmth from the junction of her thighs waft against my hand, her leg retreated from my fingers, widening the path to the capital of her passion. At last I felt the tickle of little curly hairs, and I moved my palm onto her mossy hill, feeling it move with each breath she drew. My longest finger pressed downward, and the base of that hill split apart to admit it. Her heated burrow hungrily accepted my finger and bathed it with a sticky balm; she sighed against my teeth as her arms reached out to pull me on top of her. Rather than deny a lady’s request, albeit unspoken, I withdrew my hand and replaced it with my own loins. Her hand moved down to grasp my chief contribution to our mutual pleasure, and stroked the throbbing shaft for a few precious moments before guiding it to the humid cave which my fingers had so recently and so reluctantly abandoned.

So wet was she, and so yielding, that I nearly buried myself altogether on the first stroke, and then did so completely on the second. Iana let a moan escape her lips, and I must confess that I returned in kind. Her cavern was rather loose around me (and I must tell you in all candor, if not modesty, that I am not undersized in that respect), but on the third sweet thrust her nether mouth closed tightly about me, and had it teeth, I swear she would have made a eunuch of me! I cannot adequately describe the ecstasy I shared with her that night, her sheath grasping now so delicately that we seemed barely to touch, now so tight that I even reached down with my hand to prove to myself that it was indeed the larger of her two crevices into which I bore. I caused her to expire twice before I could put off my own crisis no longer. When she felt the end approaching, she pushed urgently on my shoulders and whispered, “Here love, in my mouth.” With much reluctance, and more than a little frustration, I withdrew, upon which she pushed me upright with a strength that surprised me and, like a striking snake, snapped her head down and swallowed my enraged organ before the first drop could be lost. I thrust my hips against her head, unable to control my orgasm, ignoring in my lust the danger of choking the poor girl. But she gulped it all down, right to the roots, her tongue stroking the entire length of it, and she gripped my buttocks fiercely as I pumped my milk down her throat. Then slowly, a finger’s breadth at a time, she drew her head away, coaxing out the last drops that remained. My flesh passed her lips at last with a faint pop and she lay back, pulling me down atop her panting chest. Before I grew limp I slid back into the softness of her womanhood, and there I fell asleep as her inner hand squeezed and released, squeezed and released.

When I awoke, Iana was gone. Disappointed at not finding her beside me, and at not having a second chance to make love with her, I arose and dressed, and then went to find her. But alas, the wind of fate turned ill, for she and her sister had left at dawn to attend to some business of their father’s in Sil, and I left without bidding Iana farewell. That would be the end of my tale, had I not met up with another minstrel who left the inn at the same time as I. His path paralleled mine for a while, and we exchanged stories of our entertainments of the previous night. By chance I told my tale first, the one which I have just related to you. More than once my fellow traveller seemed as if he would interrupt me, and his face wrinkled first in confusion and later in amusement, but never spoke until I had finished my tale and he commenced his own. Now, my friends, imagine, if you can, my consternation upon hearing that my companion, too, had kept a rendezvous with Iana that same night, right at moonset.