The Light of the North
As I dined, my impatience to see Narial again was overwhelming. I didn’t hear much of what my companions were saying, and simply smiled and nodded in reply to their comments - for all I knew they could have been asking me if I was really a spy from Firengard. However dinner was over with fairly quickly, so I went to my room and tidied myself before making my way back to the hall. Narial was sitting by the fire waiting for me, and smiled broadly as I walked over to him.
“I’ve just written to your father, informing him that you’ve arrived safely,” he said, standing up and taking my hand once more, “I’ve asked him to join us as soon as he is able. It will be good to see him again, and I’m sure he’ll be eager to make sure that you’re well.”
Narial was very easy to talk to, once I had managed to keep my thoughts and emotions under control, and I quickly began to feel at home in his palace. We talked of many things as we made our way through the richly decorated rooms, and it took me some time to realise that he was still holding my hand. We were in the library, its walls covered with shelves full of books and manuscripts, its high ceiling a glass dome above our heads. The night sky was free of clouds, and as we gazed silently up at the stars, Narial began to trail his fingers across my palm. I could hear his breath, soft and shallow in my ear; feel his heart beating as he wrapped his arms around me. If I’d wanted to tear myself away it would have been impossible, my willpower had melted as soon as I’d looked into his eyes. My body reacted instinctively as his lips moved slowly down my neck, and I pulled him closer.
“Stay with me,” he breathed, his skin glowing as the moon arced into view ….
Edit/additional info: I posted this, had a cup of tea, then realised that I should probably try to explain how the human and elvish worlds manage to exist - I never explained this when I originally sent the story in for voting, so I suspect that a few people were thinking "Huh?" In simple terms, the elvish world ‘overlays’ the human world. There’s no parallel universe involved, as the worlds occupy exactly the same space and time but co-exist without elves and humans ever meeting. As far as the humans are concerned, elves remain as mythological beings, and when they catch glimpses of them "out of the corners of their eyes" they have no idea what they’ve seen (putting it down to their imagination as it’s over with within a split second and all they see is a blur). Events that happen within the human world - such as wars, the testing of nuclear weapons and global warming - all have an affect on what happens within the elvish world, but things that happen within the elves’ world never have a knock on effect on the human world. Therefore the war between the kingdoms of Galathea, Arborea and Firengard has no impact on the human world.
As for the geography of the elves’ world, Galathea occupies the northenmost reaches of the northern hemisphere (corresponding with our Arctic region and as far south as southern Scandinavia), Arborea covers the region slightly north and south of our Equator (without the tropical temperatures), and Firengard corresponds with our Antarctic but is a land of extremely high temperatures (very unlike the Antarctic).
I have no idea why I thought so much about the worlds in this story as it’s just a one-off, but there you have it 
