Elsa looked slightly embarrassed, and I could spot a blush creeping up her cheeks in real time. "I need to... express my appreciation for the meal in a manner that would be undignified in company."
"You... what?" I raised an eyebrow.
"I need to belch," she admitted, fluttering her eyelashes shyly. "Rather badly. And while I’m not typically concerned with human etiquette, it seems gauche to do so directly in your face in such a small room."
I fought back a laugh and nodded, smirking to myself. "Alright. I’ll step out. Let me know when you’re done expressing your appreciation."
I closed the door behind me and leaned against the wall in the hallway with the empty plate in hand, grinning like an idiot.
A few seconds later, I heard an impressive, sustained high-pitched belch from within the room. It was immediately followed by a delicate, prim, sing-song: "You may return now, Sir Grey."
When I re-entered the room, I froze in the doorway.
My brain temporarily lost connection with the rest of my body, you see, because in the brief time I’d been gone.
Elsa had removed my t-shirt and was now standing in the middle of the room wearing only her silken undergarments—the same ones she’d worn beneath her armor the night before. And she was stretching.
Not casual, reach-for-the-sky stretching, but full-on, Olympic gymnast, contortionist-level stretching.
She had one leg extended straight up, her knee nearly touching her ear as her body formed an almost perfect vertical split.
All this while she remained standing on one leg like it was the easiest thing in the world.
"Uh," I said eloquently. My vocabulary was reduced to caveman grunts.
"Welcome back, Sir Grey," Elsa said casually, as if there was nothing unusual about the situation. "I always perform my morning flexibility routine after breaking my fast."
I knew I should probably look away or at least say something, anything at all, but I found myself rooted to the spot, watching as she flowed from one impressive pose to another with ease.
Her lithe, tight body moved in a supernaturally fluid way, with muscles flexing subtly beneath her pale skin.
I don’t think Else’s world was the same one I transmigrated too, for one no one there was as beautiful as her—not that I’d particularly remember as I was always on the forefront.
But also because she was so indiscriminately strange, like our basic etiquette wasn’t the same as hers, and I finally had to say something.
"Is everyone in your world so... comfortable with displaying their bodies to their butler?" I finally managed to ask. "Not that I’m your butler."
Elsa paused mid-stretch, her leg still impossibly high, suddenly seeming to realize the effect she was having. A blush crept up her cheeks and spread to the tips of her pointed ears. "Oh! I apologize. I didn’t think..."
She lowered her leg, looking genuinely embarrassed. "Among the royal court, I’m accustomed to stretching like this in the presence of courtiers and eunuchs. I suppose I didn’t consider that you are..." She trailed off suddenly as her blush only got more pronounced.
"That I’m what?" I prompted, unable to help myself.
"Well, the direct opposite of a eunuch," she said, glancing briefly but pointedly downward before meeting my eyes again.
That was an odd way to phrase things.
Whether or not one was a eunuch always seemed like a binary thing to me, with the only variable being if you had one, two, or the exceedingly rare but apparently possible three nuts.
"And what exactly constitutes the opposite of a eunuch?" I asked.
"I suppose it’s not so much the largeness of your—well, I mean, not that I know for a fact, but I suspect—" She stopped herself, clearing her throat. "Never mind."
An awkward silence fell between us. Elsa decided to resume her stretching, though with noticeably more modest movements now. It didn’t matter. Even the modest stretches were hot.
"You know," I said in an attempt to change the subject to something else, "you’ve got a really impressive physique."
Elsa barely glanced at me as she bent forward, touching her palms flat to the floor with her legs straight, a move that would have sent me to the emergency room if I’d attempted it before monsters started showing up almost every night.
"Of course you admire my beauty and grace," she said matter-of-factly. "I am an elf of natural elegance, a well-schooled princess, and a warrior trained since childhood. Even among my kind, I am renowned for my beauty and grace. The bards of Elfhaven have composed seventeen sonnets about my lower back dimples alone."
"I’m sure they have," I said dryly as she turned and bent over to show them off. My penis twitched once in my pants like a trapped eagle in a burlap sack that hadn’t yet accepted its fate.
But I decided to turn the tables for a moment, just to test something. "You might be pretty, but it’s kind of offset by how tiny you are."
Elsa stopped mid-stretch, slowly straightening up to stare at me as if I’d just suggested we cook and eat her pet unicorn—which she probably had at some point, for all I knew. "Excuse me? Are you criticizing my stature?" Her voice had dropped about twenty degrees in temperature.
You know the rule; don’t call a fat? Now it extended to don’t call an elven princess tiny.
"Not criticizing, per se," I said, feigning casualness while mentally kicking myself for poking the proverbial bear. "Just pointing out that where I’m from, female models tend to be on the taller side. You’re not that. I could literally seat your ass right on my shoulder, I bet."
The look she gave me could have melted steel beams. Jesus, if they had her on board one of those planes on 9-11, there wouldn’t be so many truthers out there to this day.