Lottie Flocks

--

One might expect wild, brainless things to be rough, even cruel. They were delicate with me—did they know how I ached?

Tentatively they offered little licks from a safe distance, gurgling and burbling to one another. The sewer slimes were often full of floating debris. You're thinking something grotesque but what ended up in their tunnels wasn't bodily waste but garbage. Nori told me wyld ones picked everything up as well but dissolved and devoured it with their bulbous red hearts, which were a delicacy in the city.

The group feeling me out had hearts too but they weren't red. The slimes were red, or reddish orange. A rusty autumn color. While their centers were jet black and pulsing in strange shapes. Leaving me to wonder what they tasted like. If they would be sweet, would swell in me as deliciously as desire or would they simply pop in my teeth and make a mess...

I'd learn soon enough.

As a tendril touched my lips and its slimy little owner burbled high for my tongue teasing it between. I'd never had syrup straight from the tree until Furyn but that's what those slimes tasted of. Raw, sharp and sweet I welcomed more of the testing tendril onto my tongue and down my throat. Didn't move anything else. Didn't want to scare them off.

Not with what that slick, sticky arm was promising.

I had nothing to fear as the things were bold, with another snapping a tendril to swat below my tail and another whipping more at my wrists and ankles. They wouldn't be frightened off, nor did they intend to lose me.

Delectable things, truly.

Naked as I'd remained after my deathly romp with the fauns, there was little in place to stop their tendrils slipping into more of me. All of me. Filling everywhere the one in my throat hadn't touched. I lost count of them as more and more slimy little blobs burbled up to surround me. To absorb me in their delicious reds.

Reds I lapped and begged more of, moaning loud and sharp through the one in my throat. Where it remained, seemingly careful to keep me gagged as the others thrust in and out and in again, twirling within me while I merely sunk...unable to touch back. But I ached to. All the desire so thick and sugary sweet I had to. A bulb, I would aim for a bulb, reaching hands through oscillating bodies to grasp the black orbs within.

A squeaking shiver went through the one I caught, shared with the others and all those tendrils thrust harder, faster, slick and impossible inside me. My gag released to latch my throat and yank me into its owner's slime. To force my lips toward its heart. I couldn't ask, of course, couldn't speak for the gag of it but I moaned ever louder as the rhythm of all inside me quickened the closer I came to the heart.

Bite. It wanted me to bite. To eat.

I felt it. As I felt all its desire and I heeded, stretching my jaw painfully wide to take it all in one I heeded, swallowing what could have been strawberries for how it tasted. How it broke moist and fleshy soft on my tongue.

The slime jiggled and screeched in bliss before melting into the grass and I was given enough time for a single gasp of breath before another fed itself to me.

As I rode their tendrils, bouncing high and slamming deep, wrists and ankles held firm...they fed themselves to me. One after another after another and I burst with the last on my tongue, hot and sudden I spilled onto the tendrils only to watch it seep into their surfaces and suck up into their hearts.

Out of pure curiosity I shifted into my masculine form and found they adored it as much, wrapping tight around what nearly throbbed to literally wring more moans out of me. Harder and harder they took me, pounding and rubbing and tugging every bit of me they could, stretching my ecstasy beyond sensation when I realized in the rhythm, in delectable release after release, they were as endless as I.

They would not stop, not ever, and perhaps...perhaps that was why Nori kept me from them. But she wasn't there to stop me and they were oh so delicious. So much so I...I forgot about my Furyn, forgot my Nori, forgot everything. As meager day became a cold, dark night, I lost myself entirely to hot, heady delights.

Then everything stopped.

I was upside down, hanging in the air, all of me filled with sumptuous tendrils—a black heart wriggling in my teeth—screaming in glorious bliss...

Ogden's hurry to tend the rot meant a rush in his showering, and morning delight meant too much time scrubbing for the sap. He rushed dressing as well, didn't even grab a bite to eat, though he did down a glass—or three—of water. Yet none of his preparation included a mirror. He hadn't even looked at himself in the shower. So he needed other eyes to tell him what he missed.

The first gasp came from what he assumed a tourist—rare in those parts but it happened—as the woman past him.

Didn't brush, he reasoned, must look like a wild man. And he did look...wild. A glimpse given of it in the windows, if muddled and too strange to parse details, told him his hair stuck out oddly and his eyes were a little brighter than they ought to be. Light, he told them, catching weird on the glass.

More gasps suggested otherwise but it wasn't until he ducked into the general store that he bothered to pay them any mind. As another gasp came from the shopkeep, and it was more than a gasp. Morn gaped up at him, clutched his chest and took a painful, ragged breath.

"So I forgot to clean myself up," Ogden dismissed, voice singing in a manner his ears could not hear, "no call for dramatics."

Morn swallowed, narrowed his eyes and asked, "O-Ogden?"

"You're serious?" Throwing his arms up, Ogden scoffed. "I don't even preen all that much on normal days, what's all this ab--" A hand snapped out and pointed at the mirror on sale behind him, followed with rolled eyes and a scoff in his throat. Which was when all that worry caught up and popped in a dull, but definitive, "Huh."

It certainly wasn't a complete alteration of who he was but there were...changes.

Height, for one, as he had at least a foot extra. Then his skin, for another, still as pale and freckled but each freckle seemed to swirl and stretch through what appeared too dry to be skin... cracked, he would say, were it not his own--and feeling quite supple actually. More oddities waited in the eyes too bright, hazel yet, they shimmered in the low light of the shop far too wide, slanted and deeper set. On a face flattening at familiar angles, his nose more a shallow groove, jaw and chin as broad as they had been but covered not in curly red hair but coiled red tendrils. On his head the hair wasn't anymore either. Not quite as thin as the facial mess but decidedly not hair. More tendrils, red as the rest but speckled in pale green leaves and tufts of white.

Morn stared, afraid to speak for the massive creature who claimed itself his friend, but he knew he was. Somewhere in there was Ogden, as the twitch in thicker lips and tilt of plant-covered head were too familiar to be anyone else.

A tilt for the antlers. Not antlers yet, not fully, Ogden found stumps in his forehead growing straight out of the plate it and his nose were fusing into. Hard as all his new skin seemed, thick and rough as... bark. It wasn't the same, precisely; didn't flake or threaten to peel away with careful pinches of fingertips too pointed as the forest's did.

But it was a beginning, a promise.

Of course, he told it, careful not to explain to his audience. He said forever... I can't live forever as a man, so...

His reasoning wasn't perfect but it's what he had.

While Morn had questions, "Did...did you go into the wood? Did it do this?"

"Yes and yes," Ogden answered too easily, spinning on the man and looming with intention to add, "But you'll tell no one." The shudder and nod prompted more, "You'll forget I was here... that I was ever here. Understood?"

"G-got it, kid," Morn tried, as he tried to muster courage to ask more, "What...what did you come here for then?"

"Supplies," Ogden said, finding them with such quick, easy motion he appeared to glide through the store. When he set the bag of mulch on the counter, he dropped more in his cart and offered the aerator to scan.

Morn scanned everything without a word, taking in all it was and deciding a man who looked more like a tree needing mulch made perfect sense. No need to question. No need to scream. If he desperately wanted to scream.

At the door, weighed cart easily held on his shoulder, Ogden reminded, "I wasn't here."

"Ever," Morn finished, finding his breath only when the giant of a thing he could no longer say was his friend ducked out of the store.

Sneering at every set of eyes stuck to him on his way out of the village, and licking the newly discovered sharpness of his teeth, Ogden had questions, concerns, genuine worries for how he hadn't felt any of the changes to his body. Why the forest said nothing of them. If they'd been there in the morning or began on his short walk down the hill... if there would be more.

But Ogden couldn't bother with any of it because his phone was in the pocket of the pants he chose to wear that day. Waiting until he was midway up the hill, where he could see the trees and knew softly glowing eyes waited for him, he answered the phone.

Pointedly not saying anything to his mother.

Who handled this poorly, "I hear ya breathin'!"

"Mornin', mum," he returned.

His song traveled too warm, too strange and his mother gasped for it. "Oggy?"

"Yeah, mum," firmer he spoke but still a song.

And she ignored it for the dismissal, "Fine tone you have after weeks not answerin' my calls!"

"Weeks?" No, it's been days, he assured, assuring her, "You called the other day, what you mean, weeks?"

Her growl set his new teeth on edge. "Meant what I said, been weeks. I near put people on finding you I was so worried."

"Worried of not having anyone to listen to you bitch?" He said it casually, not minding if it hurt, as he watched the trees and hefted his cart to his shoulder to get to them. To the eyes, the soft bark, their promise of forever. While his mother seethed, she hadn't spoken, so he cut in before she could, "Don't call again, don't come lookin' either. Oggy's dead."

Tendrils, verdant green, soft as silk and deliciously moist explored every available strip of him as a song moaned through the windows. Eyes caught his through the closest, massive and burning and he panted for the affection, writhing as more teasing tendrils slid into him to beg it.

Snatching one aiming for a nipple, Ogden fed it to his throat instead and watched for the eyes and the lips joining them in the window so wide and pleased and he wanted more. More than slender swirls of leaf and vine somehow covering his floor, squirming and twitching for every moan they tugged and thrust from him.

“Stop,” he gasped, loosing his treat.

And they did. All at once they stopped, pulling away to lay inert while the forest tilted his head, voice clear through the glass, “Did you not want me to wake you?”

“That’s not it,” he panted as he wriggled from bed and picked through the new carpet for the door, not considering how he had to duck to exit but well aware of his lack of clothing and grinning for the look the forest offered it. But more his position. On his knees the forest presented a unique opportunity to tease back. “I want you,” Ogden explained before kneeling himself and taking a vine he did want in his hands. The swoon was a cool breeze on bare skin and he ached to make it sing, angling to with a firm tongue.

“Perfect,” the forest breathed, tangling branches in the fresh thick tendrils of Ogden’s hair when he took more of him, guiding vine along tongue and into mouth. “Perfect,” he sang for the hunger of his little oak... and changes he hadn't expected and didn't want to question—lest it stop.

Impossible to take but Ogden did his best, choking and gagging but refusing to release the forest, suckling harder and harder instead. Begging him deeper and the forest moaned for the effort, for the heat, the delicious trap of throat as he tugged on hair to guide him back. To give him air.

A grunt was earned, branches fought with rougher skin he didn't notice to force him deeper, hold him tighter. Ogden would have swooned had he breath for it when he was tugged away again only to be shoved closer, vine wriggling further and further down his throat.

There it found a ragged breath and a rough breeze in the forest for attention not offered it. Not in memory. And branches tightened in hair, more reaching to play at the curls on his little oak’s face and chest while another rubbed desperate down stomach to tease lower, to offer something in return, as he slid in and out of him so sweet and hungry over and over and over again.

Words were attempted, to warn, to slow but instead the forest gripped tighter to tendrilous hair and yanked him close to hold him as all that wet tongue and tight throat built so sweetly... burst.

Every slip of bark shivered and tensed—bliss shaking the canopy for its volume—and he tried, truly, with a quick tug of all that oddly leafy, tangled hair he tried to spare him the mess.

Failing miserably... choking coughs through laughter and sticky smiles comforted from a veritable blanket of golden sap. It coated Ogden's face, neck, chest and arms with more dribbling down his stomach and still he laughed. The forest stared down at the man, his little oak...his offering...confused but amused as Ogden began licking up all he’d covered him in. All not contained in his throat, all he could reach.

Entirely oblivious to how odd his skin had become.

“Syrup,” he told the forest's leafy brows, as his own rose with a hard swallow and another for the ache in his throat and strange growing numbness of the sap. “Sweet as I hoped you would be...”

Please be what these changes suggest, the forest begged as that heat in him returned not to thrum or pulse but throb and he snatched his little oak up in all his arms to pepper him in kisses. To declare sweetly soft, “Mine...all mine.”

“I’m guessing no one’s done that before?” Ogden asked through bright and hearty laughter, rasping a bit at the edges if it sang sweeter than it should.

Receiving a shake of too big a head, more kisses, and a taste of tongue stealing back a touch of syrup. That tongue licked down chin and neck to chest and stomach after, before forcing tighter breaths for a sweeter taste of him. A coiled taste too tight.

Angling legs for shoulders, Ogden leaned to welcome it, welcoming as well the move of branches to firm grips of thighs, back and head. Gasping for the tongue, he asked, “R-returning the favor there, delicious?”

A coo was all he’d get as answer, and a faster rhythm of tongue, tugging so sweetly even as its tip teased lower.

“That’s-that’s playing dirty,” he chuckled, deciding to play as dirty by shoving higher onto shoulders to grab for antlers.

They leaned for him, as the tongue retracted enough to welcome him past the forest’s lips, yet still the tip of it teased. Pressing softly into him as an oddly cool mouth took what it could hold. Careful lips certain not to devour the man they so easily could, the forest worked to return all his little oak had given of him...to drink him as deeply.

While Ogden clutched antlers as one might a buoy in a storm, near screaming for the soft firm grip and cooing song breathing so cool on his skin. As that song hitched for his, he snapped hips to mirror the careful rhythm doing its best to suck him dry but didn’t want it to. Not yet.

There were not words or comparison for the position, the hold, the sweetness of the affection—the forever promised in the same.

But bodies are not obedient sorts and his betrayed him.

Sputtering wet and ragged, he more puffed than moaned in release. All smiles yet, giddy and warm and held close still, every drop of him caught and swallowed slow enough to be noticed.

Lower and sweeter, he was shuffled and held against a chest of bark and tendrils.

As the forest swirled his taste on his tongue and swooned for it, “As ripe berries...”

“Never...heard that one,” Ogden puffed into curly tendrils.

Pulled away to watch, to smile at, as the forest asked, “Are you pleased?”

Yes seemed too obvious an answer and he shoved off arms to get at lips. Giggling as he was allowed so many tastes, speaking through the last, “Unbelievable. You’re...unbelievable.”

“And yours,” the forest reminded.

So Ogden added, “As I am yours.” Saccharine as the moment, he did have something to do that day and realized in their closeness he would do nothing if he didn’t do it now. Another kiss and a hand on a cheek not quite dwarfing it, he said as much, “But if I don’t get to the rot soon I fear I’ll get lost in you and it’ll never be done.”

“Mm,” answered a swoon as lips pressed into his forehead, a distant sensation, and held a breath and another before all those arms set his feet on the grass. “You will need to dress then, for the village.” Running a branchtip down Ogden's chest, the forest reminded, firm if breathy, “As all of this is mine.”

Ogden wouldn’t argue, didn’t want anyone else to have him. Instead he asked, “Forever?”

Answered with more kisses, too gentle for their size, and a voice too quiet for its throat, “Forever...”

But Ogden didn't want to leave when he woke in arms so strong, so tenderly cradling him. A position he couldn't recall ever being in. One threatening to leave him as they breached the treeline and he scrambled to hold shoulders, wrapping legs around what he could of that massive chest to see it didn't.

"Goodbye already?" He asked, voice odd and dreamy.

Smiled for, kissed for, the forest's song a swooning treat, "You are mine, little oak...there will be no goodbyes." Pulling arms free of his shoulders, feet free of the grooves of his back, the forest set a pouting man down and chuckled. "But you need sleep, nourishment, and the comfort of your warm wooden home."

"I don't," Ogden argued. The altar proved more comfortable than he expected for the arms holding him, the bark pressed so tight, and he wanted that. Wanted the forest. Blurting without enough thought, "I need you."

Kneeling to hold him, to accept smaller arms snaking through his own, the forest nuzzled bark into furry cheek and wondered of the sap in his eyes. Sap dripping as he pulled away, smile wide and soft. "A precious gift those words, and you mean them?"

Nodding, Ogden aimed lips for rough cheeks, to kiss and lick what looked as tears. "Wouldn't have asked for you if I didn't." Motioning to the break in trees marking the path down the hill, he added, "There's nothing out there for me. No life I want beyond these woods." Returning arms to rub—carefully—at those on him he took one of those impossible hands and kissed their branches. "Beyond you."

The feeling returned, hotter, spreading painfully through the forest's heartwood with the promise of more sap dripped from his eyes and he blinked. Again and again before kissing a forehead of firm, certain wrinkles and standing—though he allowed Ogden to keep hold of his branches. "The rot, little oak," he said slowly, and far too quiet. "I am here when you ache for me, as you will be when I do... but the rot, the wood. Tend me and I will be yours forever."

Rubbing branches in his fingers, Ogden eyed the trees behind and beside and nodded as he asked, "You said to remain in your lands, does that include the village?"

"It does." Smiling, he kept smiling, the feeling burning so sweetly as he noticed his little oak did as well. "But you are mine now, remember... they may not welcome you."

"I need supplies for the rot either way," Ogden dismissed, dismissing as well what should have worried. "Special mulch mostly, something to aerate the soil but--" kissing branched fingers and nibbling the tiny twigs on their tips his smile grew painful for the bitten lip it earned-- "it shouldn't take more than a day to get it all treated or cut out... will—will it hurt you to cut it?"

That sweet worry dropped the forest to his knees so he might taste it on Ogden's lips. "Not enough to concern yourself with... now go eat and sleep before you faint again, little oak." His chuckle was met with more kisses, a begged taste of tongue.

But Ogden obeyed, pulling from the comfort of bark and song. "I'll see you in the morning?"

"Every morning, and afternoon and evening," the forest promised.

Smile yet stuck, Ogden walked with a bounce in his step to his cabin. He should have been tired, should have been dizzy for all the bites the forest took of him—bites aching dimly—yet he could run a marathon if needed. Finding his cart outside and full of nuts and berries was an added treat, and curiosity for later as the distance from heady bark made him evermore aware of how sticky he was.

A shower, a snack and one sleep til forever, he told himself, not entirely sure of the words as he absently brought in the cart and left it in the kitchen, cupping and storing every gift within it. And if death would not find me, as he moaned so sweet... forever could be a very long time.

Which was when he noticed the lights were off.

And he didn't need them.

It may as well have been daylight in his cabin for how well he saw every detail. Freezing for it he heard insects and birds and the wind outside but more—so much more. There was a pulse beneath his feet, a pulse he could feel even through the planks. Familiar in rhythm, in warmth and it built as he noticed it, pulsing faster and faster almost...excited.

"Is it his?" He wondered aloud, dropping to knees to put skin on the wood, pressing his face tight to feel it better.

But it wasn't enough.

Rushing outside he fell to the grass and dug fingers into dirt. No eyes waited in the shadows but he knew the forest watched all the same, could feel him watching...and hear how excited it made him through the meager roots he grasped.

The weight of his exhaustion sudden and draining, Ogden pushed curiosity to when he would be tending the forest and tended to himself instead. Berries and nuts were all he ate but it seemed enough before he stripped and stepped into his shower, swooning for the pulse.

What it meant. How connected he was with the forest, the woods, and wondering what else he'd earned with his offering.

While thoughts sang of possibilities, the heady pulse following to his bed led to a licked and eager hand tending to more of himself. To a hunger for who waited beyond those trunks and what he might give him in the morning... after he’d rid his trees of rot, of course.

Of Ash and Loam

Heavy snows led to wet melts and rotten growths, leaving Ogden a steaming mass of sweat and sinew in very expensive boots. He'd cleared out the bulk of damage to his crops but the treeline of the woods he carved took too great a hit.

His mother's words rang cold and sharp in his skull, "The woods are no place for a man bred on concrete. You, alone out in the wild? You'll go mad and starve."

He'd suggested the first would make a fine, fun path to the last and she'd stretched right out of her wheelchair and hit him upside the head.

But he loved the woods, the mountains, the chorus of wild sound and sweet air.

Besides... it's ​not like the city was doing him any favors. 

His mother was the only one who returned his calls after he left his fiance and even she did it to tell him he was making all the wrong choices. But after realizing he made the right one, sparing future heartache, she changed her tune from, "you'll never find a better woman" to "you'll never find a good enough man" which Ogden considered progress.

Turned out it didn't really matter who he was trying to meet though, no one fit. 

He was too fussy, too soft, too sensitive. Needy, they'd called him. Needy and impossible to please. To half the lovers he had caring was a crime and boundaries a death sentence.

Learning he preferred men didn't make it easier. He was a big man, always had been, and learning so late in life made him an older big man without the experience expected. And soft and sensitive wasn't what most men wanted out of him either...he tried to be rougher but it never seemed to fit. 

No, he didn't fit any of the spaces the city had to offer. The mountain was better.

Even spent months with survivalists on some training trip to prepare--the carvings were an old hobby turned career.

It was easier to be alone.

He was happier alone.

A trip to the little village at its base for things he couldn't grow or craft himself, maybe a night or two with the owner of the bookstore with his gentle hands and strong arms for someone warm to hold. Who adored his softness.

Nothing serious but it was nice.

It was an existence, a comfortable one even. He was content. On his third year of content even. His third winter, having kicked the ass of the two before, thank you very much.

But this one was out for blood, it kept him housebound, surviving on canned goods and bread. When the snow finally melted he made his trek down the mountain for supplies and learned his someone warm to hold had moved away.

The bookstore was barely surviving as it was and his business selling carved figures online certainly wasn't going to help his bed warmer keep afloat, barely afforded Ogden supplies every month. 

He knew it was temporary but it stung anyway.

Making the rot seep all the deeper.

"I'll have to dig into all that pretty loam," he told the woods. Ash, mostly, but there were some hawthornes among them twisting strange deeper in. "Cut you back a bit..."

Which is what he planned to do, all sweat and sinew, when he made the mistake of saying so to the grocer.

Who did ask, "How'd the snow hit ya up there, surrounded by all them woods?"

"Hard," Ogden grumped, softening for the laugh it earned, "But I'll manage. After I cull some rot down a little deeper into the forest anyway."

The grocer, Morn, choked and slapped at the counter mid-bagging. "No, no, no-no! You can't cut past the line. No one cuts past the line."

"Why, is the wood bad?"

"The wood, no. The woods. You hurt them woods and they hurt you."

Smiling, Ogden scoffed, "You know, I didn't think we were far enough out for folktales but I'm glad to be proven wrong."

Morn did not smile. "You see how we're tucked in down here, spread out around the mountain but not up it? Why you think that is? Why you think that cabin you got built is all that's up there?"

"Figured it was protected land," Ogden said confidently, but he rubbed the back of his neck as he did. "I had to jump through a lot of hoops to get my square of it, after all."

Shaking his head, Morn sighed. "Not protected. Hungry. You go too deep you don't come out. You've been lucky so far, cutting along the line, but any deeper and you won't have to worry about keeping warm with anyone anymore. You'll be nice and hot in the forest's belly."

Small towns...Ogden half groaned, half sighed as he was all done. "Good pitch, Morn. The tourists will love it."

--

Taking his bags back to a little cart he kept for such things he recalled why it was a cart. Not anything electric or even alive as he pulled it himself.

Most electronics didn't work on the mountain and nothing living not born there would walk the crooked paths up it. He had to use an old Polaroid to take pictures of his carvings and trek downhill with his laptop just to update his site and handle sales.

Something he did once a month...if that.

Maybe there is something off about the mountain, he considered but it was ludicrous so he shook it loose, laughed and pulled his cart up the mountain.

Well, he pulled it along modern asphalt and concrete street to the awkward old cobblestone bumps near and through the village gates, nodding to the scant few people out so early—not that there were many more than that inside—and soon traded wobbly stone for easier dirt.

Dirt which wasn't just then, thanks to the long winter and freezing rain yet drizzling it was more a muddy creek requiring a yank and shuffle and lift to get his little covered bit of wood and steel to the less muddy but still wet clay of the mountain path. Wet or not it held easier, leaving less soggy holes to get stuck in.

It also wound lazily up the mountain—more a hill hugged by a sharp and narrow ridge--with clay brick posts and modern lamps twisted into branch-like shapes topped in copper leaves to shield their bulbs. While solar-powered and night-activated, the lamps lit the path in soft reds refusing to acknowledge daylight for the clouds.

Red wasn't a typical color and when he'd asked he was told there was something about wildlife not seeing it as danger, allowing them to roam unbothered.

Which he found charming.

Less so the chaotic nature of the path, how its natural clay broke up with brick stairs at seemingly random intervals forcing him to carry his cart often. But he enjoyed the quiet of it, and the cool rain and soft breeze playing so sweetly to the creak and tap of his cart on brick. The sights as well, hazel brush with its soft browns and grayed greens and all the wayfarer reds popping through it along the carved ridge were a delight every trip. They led higher and deeper into massive growths of ash and hawthorn but he'd not see those until he crested the hill...

Halfway up the path his phone rang. It didn't work beyond the lamps, which would end as the ridge did, right at the rim of all that warm red clay.

And Ogden wished, just then, it didn't work at all. "Yeah, mum," He answered.

Wrong answer, proved all the huffs so thick and angry before words rang clear, "I call to check on you. I call because my son's made himself a hermit and I worry he's gone mad in the wood and you answer, 'yeah, mum'? Fuck you think you are with that tone?"

Ogden situated his cart on even clay, grateful for the stairs if not their wet as he sat down and resigned himself to this conversation. "I'm halfway up a hill, mum and my cart's not light. Tired is all. Why'd you call?"

"To check on you!" She wailed, sniffling and clearing her throat before speaking calmer, "It's the anniversary...I thought you'd be weeping in a pillow."

Anniversary of what? He considered, racking thoughts for birthdays and weddings, deaths, and finding nothing he cared enough about to weep for.

His mother provided, "Of your divorce."

"I weren't married."

"Well, breakup then. Was years with Lace, yeah? You're not sore?"

Sighing, Ogden stood up and retook his cart. There were precious few lamps left, he'd lose her in the walk. "I did the breakin', mum. Why would I be sore?"

"Lonely then...aren't you lonely up nowhere?" Her voice sang too soft and caring for things she knew he was sick of hearing.

And he sighed again. "No, I'm not. Came to be alone. Would like to be alone now."

"Now, is it?" Something between a huff and a grunt stabbed his ear before she added a few angry breaths. "I'll leave ya to it then, but know your mother is lonely...and misses her wee bear."

"Love ya too, mum," he whispered when the phone died. As he reached the gray dim and soft mist of his new home, in a natural clearing where his modest ashwood cabin waited, he smiled. "But I love it here more." Eyeing the treeline for the stumps left over after said cabin were built...and a few more for art pieces sold to pay for it, Ogden chuckled and added too quietly, "Even if it wants to eat me."

--

Joking aside he hesitated on further cutting, of delving deeper into the forest. 

Instead he spent the day putting away supplies, pulling more rot from his garden and chopping wood already piled beside his cabin to heat home and water. Water needed for the long shower he took, escaping into the wet warmth and doing his best not to think of an anniversary he hadn't considered one until his mother mentioned it. One that continued to dominate thoughts as he fed the stove, set a pot of water and broth on it and chopped vegetables.

But it fell to a flutter at the sight of cubed meat he knew the young man working at the butcher shop cut for him alone. "He's too young," he told other thoughts pulsing hot and hungry, if they were a salve, something to tuck away and chase when he was cold and alone under the sheets.

Thoughts succeeding to push out memories he left the stew to...stew...with a smile plastered on his lips and headed outside to catch a sunset no city apartment could ever give him. One painting even the clouds in brilliant orange and burning pink, framed so beautifully by the canopy of his clearing.

My clearing...in my woods, he mused. Being the only one out there beyond fairly docile wildlife he hardly saw but antlers and tail of it didn't seem too presumptuous a statement.

However, in the cool air of a hardly thawed Spring, his fire pit working to make the shadows of a blanketing night sharper, he learned better. Ogden had watched the woods plenty since his cabin was built, all the whispers of the local carpenters he'd hired made it impossible not to, but that night he really saw it.

More worrying...it saw him.

Fires burned through the thick trunks, all their shadows making them dance and swirl and for a breath Ogden considered fireflies, while whimsy insisted on will o' the wisps...but there were too few for either. Two alone. Bright and round and moving only as much as to follow him as he swayed in their gaze.

Yes, gaze. How could it not be for what they were, had to be.

The forest was watching him and as he realized it those eyes slid higher in the dark, taller, with deeper shadows clutching branches and trunks far too close to the canopy. Immense, its shape suggested, wide and towering as it shivered all the woods around it, scattering birds and shaking freshly bloomed flowers to grass and brush.

Watching still. Ever watching.

But it did not move towards him, did not leave the woods.

Ogden fled.

Quick to slam the lid onto his fire pit he kept eyes on those impossible ones in the woods until he backed into his door. Slapping at it to open and hide inside, he didn't close it. Safe in the warmth and comfort of his cabin walls he didn't close the door.

He watched, as the woods watched.

Without blinking, afraid in some capacity that whatever terrible and exciting thing he was experiencing would end if he did, he tested it with tilts of his head.

Angling to the right, eyes locked tight, he fought panicked laughter as the fires tilted with, scraping more leaves from neighboring trees and filling the clearing with a soft yet roaring whoosh.

To the left, slow, steady...and it mirrored him.

A step, tentative and terrified, but a step out the door and he gasped as something stepped out of the woods. Though not entirely.

It wouldn't give him that, yet.

It offered a hoof of thick tangled roots leading to a leg near as wide as the trunk beside it and dappled in puffy green catkins. A hand followed, big enough to wrap the trunk of the ash it gripped, fingers gnarled bark of the same reddish brown as its hoof.

But it was the face that did it for Ogden.

He could rationalize the eyes as fireflies growing fatter in those old woods, the rest as tricks of the shadows and what with his cabin's lights and the moon all that lit the clearing this would have worked. All of it the distinct color of oak and not at all matching the ash or hawthorne visible from his clearing wouldn't have mattered one bit. He could have made the lie work.

If he could rationalize the face.

Which he could not.

Especially for how well its fiery eyes lit it.

So soft those fires, more golden than orange and they brightened as whatever it was peeked from the dark, creating glowing outlines of antlers threatening to overtake the branches above them.

Flat, the face, from where he stood frozen in his doorway it appeared flat. If grooved as any bark, even swirled on cheeks and chin as the light pulsed brighter still. Where a nose would be expected, on a man anyway, sat more bark. Thicker and angled in a sharp plate up and out to spread into those impossible antlers. The fiery eyes hugged that plate, from pits of black they burned there, pulsing somehow knowing as it watched him.

The lips caused him to gasp again, sharper, more of a scoff. It seemed absurd for a thing like that to have lips so full, ones appearing to pout for him, and Ogden's gasp became laughter, high and stuttered...before he fainted.

Which the forest found fascinating.

None ever fainted at so little a peek of him before and the one in the wooden house—something he also found fascinating for how long it took to erect and how the man fawned over it—seemed too sturdy to fall so readily.

Which made him wonder, what else would you do readily...?

Invaders tended to scream when he showed himself, sometimes it took but a shake of the canopy, or a whisper of his voice. But this one, this one had seen and heard all of it...more even, through the years he’d been in the clearing. In his woods. The forest heard him rationalizing all of it away as weather or wildlife, never delving deeper to find a source. Never bothering to question why there were a path up the hill with nothing at the end of it. Too distracted by his cabin, his garden, his solitude.

The forest hadn't minded, accustomed to solitude himself, having been alone since worship of him fell out of favor. It was true he'd grown ravenous and cruel for a time, snatching up any who dared approach without offerings, without reverence...but not in years. And the man there now, well, he came with reverence unbidden. All his whispered apologies and gratitude for every tree felled to build his home, to heat it, had not gone unnoticed. He had compassion for the wood, the land, seemed to adore the hill for what it was with no desire to poison it into something else.

Spring brought evermore interest in the man, for the rot. How he raged over it, tore it from his garden and made promises to clear it from the woods.

Difficult not to find the man fascinating and, well, so long asleep he would admit himself hungry for more than berries and game. Blood sated no matter its source but those who once sought his altar brought more than sacrifice. They brought their warmth, their skin, their moaning bliss and perhaps he wondered what the man in the cabin would bring him. How his ecstasy would sing...would taste.

A wonder urging him to lure the man closer.

Beg him step into deeper brush, braving brambles and twists of cruel roots to find the home of the face he fainted for...by getting the man back into his own. Or, rather, further into it as he was flopped there at the entrance in such an awkward fashion and what better way to stoke the flames of curiosity than to put him to bed.

Granted, the forest was much too large to manage such a task. So he called on smaller things, furred beasts more suited to it, if many were void of the hands which would make it easier.

The stag, doe and faun did do their best to answer the forest’s call as he sang sweetly echoed through the leaves. A song luring a few squirrels and a hare and even a family of otters from the river skirting the hill’s base. All heeded, all obeyed, dragging the heavy human back into its weird cave of sickly-sweet smelling wood and something terribly delicious cooking in a pot.

While the forest watched, and waited, eager eyes bright but distant.

--

Ogden woke in bed, which wasn’t where he expected to wake. He also didn’t expect to be missing half his clothes, or all the tears and scratches and even bites suggested by the lack, but nothing was expected that Spring. Not the weather, not the loss of comfortable arms, not his mother’s insistence he were something he most assuredly was not, and not the fiery fucking eyes in the woods.

“That was real,” he muttered, ignoring torn clothes and small wounds for the smell of burnt stew. Which he found in a puddle with too many wet animal tracks leading from it when he scrambled to his kitchen. “So are those.” Door left open, he could see the gray of morning and the gentle mist often riding it as it rode right into his living room. He didn’t step outside, however, remembered face keeping him in the doorway, if his eyes studied the trees. Asking, “But were you?”

There would be no answer.

Not because the forest hid during daylight hours, or wasn't quietly observing him from a safe distance, but because he preferred to be sought. To be worshiped, specifically, but hairs need not be split just now. The important thing was the fiery-eyed creature of oaken bark beheld on that unkind Spring evening would not be answering any questions the morning after. He would remain hidden to force the man into deeper wood, preferably with an offering, to find where he nested.

Unfortunately, Ogden did not know this.

All Ogden knew was he'd seen something impossible and the excitement of it, whether the torn clothes and animal tracks were proof or not, electrified. Three years—come Summer anyway—on the hill and in that time he'd heard all the songs of the wild around him and believed he'd seen the sights.

But he'd never seen that and that was worth the small fortune—what little money he'd had—to move into lands he'd never known, to a village so old it didn't register on GPS, to break himself building a new home, to scrape and claw and survive. Sure, he loved the solitude, and did not regret his decision to move out there. To leave a life that didn't want him.

It was just...difficult. Everything had been so difficult and in those eyes, that face, he saw opportunity. Not for fame or fortune, those weren't things he cared for, but purpose. Reason.

Something to make it all worthwhile.

"I knew you were special," he told those woods, laughter strange and high through it. Back into the house for fresh clothes, sturdy boots and a hiking pack kept ever-prepared, he tended to his meager scrapes while stealing glances of the trees through windows. Out the door, leaving it open and the mess of stew untouched—for the animals—Ogden sighed at the treeline before trudging toward it. "I just hope you're friendly."

He stalled at the stumps. While having kept shallow, taking but the ash closest to the clearing, Ogden had taken quite a few in his time there. So much so his cabin was surrounded by stumps...which were soaked too dark with wet and rot doing its best to take hold. Those behind his stolen trees—not stolen, he asked and apologized for every one he just didn't wait for an answer—bore more of the wet dark. Some were bored with soggy cavities, others starving fungus grown too thick and spread too far.

"Worse than I thought," he whispered to the rot, eyes high and sudden on the shadows for a terrible crisis of sense and remembered warnings. "But I can fix it, keep it from spreading even...if you don't...eat me."

--

A sentiment held close as he stepped beyond the tree-line and all those pale browns and soft greens burned too red and pink around him painting every ashen root a bone, every bramble a bloodclot.

If that weren't enough strangeness, the sound worked to worsen it. Birdsong he knew, insects as well, but all amplified as he stood gaping for the colors. Near deafening for a stuttered breath and another, hands on his ears until it settled to a lilting, distant hum.

Yet more oddities rose in its place. 

The canopy appeared a splotchy jumble of bare branch and full leaf outside but in...beneath it...light hardly pierced. All was a thick cover of deep greens and soft whites, and still the light burned red. Too red. Midday would not burn so red and it was morning yet, wasn't it...

"How?" He managed before the birdsong rose to torture, one particularly noisy little thing seemingly laughing from a branch above and he eyed it. Blue-black it stood out so bright against all else. A common sight in the area but he'd not seen one since the last Spring. "Are you the welcoming committee?" He asked it, laughing along to its song.

It didn't answer but a soft breeze did, with a question, "What do you seek, invader?"

Bird flitting away, Ogden had nowhere to rest his gaze so he closed his eyes and breathed slow and steady, assuring himself, It was real. This is real. "You," he said aloud, searching meager shadows for fiery eyes. "I seek you. Whoever you are."

"I am everything.Who are you to seek me?"

Name, it wants a name, right? It was rambling but internal, leading to external as he stammered, "Og-Ogden. My name is Ogden. And I'm no invader, I--"

Stronger wind shoved him forward as it sent a firm, "Shh" through the leaves. "Seek my altar, little oak, and we will learn together...what you are."

"Little oak? What does that mean?" Turning around, arms up in a shrug, Ogden sighed for no response, and no clear paths or eyes to chase. Not even the bird. "And which way do I go?"

Giggling answered from everywhere before all the songs returned, gentler, calmer, lulling in their way and Ogden nodded for it.

He was on his own.

So on his own he went, choosing a direction at random and carefully picking through the tangles of thornbush he found. A few pricks were his payment before they ended in soft grass and loam too dry, puffing with his efforts as he shoved aside low hanging branches, spitting cottony pollen from honeysuckle vines draped so thickly around them.

Delectable as the scents, and the lilting song of breeze and bird, after near an hour lost in the motion of pick, shove, spit...Ogden was sweating too much and slapping at bugs who found him delicious to care of how lovely the forest. 

And he realized, in his sweat and panting that it was too hot and red to be Spring.

"An illusion," he muttered. "It must be, if it could change the seasons there'd be no rot." Stopping and pitching his voice higher, head tilted to the canopy, he spoke to the forest, "Why the show? Am I not allowed to see your woods either?"

Chuckling rich and sung tickled leaves and cheeks. "A test for the little oak."

"And?" He huffed, too worn too quick for pleasantries. "Did I pass?"

A cool breeze answered, caressing his skin and mussing his already loose bun, taking his hair-tie and all the hot red of the illusion with it.

Swooning wasn't something he felt he did... but he did, eyes closed and breath easier he swooned for cooler air and dimmer light. Softer light, washing everything in the blue-yellow of afternoon, deepening shadows and popping the reds and purples of berries all around him. Ones he knew better than to eat, if they did tempt for the moist sheen of a gentle rain he'd not felt through the illusion. And that...that was a scent he adored.

Rain and flowers, crisp and sweet.

He sighed, speaking more to himself, "Who would ever hide all this?" 

Continuing his rhythm of pick, shove, spit, Ogden made it another twenty or thirty minutes—having to change direction three or four times for bushes too thick and walls of ruddy, craggy clay—before he questioned, "Can I get a hint?"

Nothing answered, not the wind or giggles riding it and he groaned.

A few more dead paths and prickles too sharp with bites from clouds of things he couldn't quite name forced another aggravated question, "And if you're everything, could you get the bugs to lay off?"

Laughter lilting and echoed filled the canopy and Ogden shivered for it, taking his next step without looking. An echoed breeze of, "Watch your step." Sang as he fell.

Mouth full of dirt, hands scratched and mood shot, Ogden popped onto hands and knees to snipe at that voice...but stopped. For the face in the dirt. Or, rather, the brick.

Quick to brush it clean he found more faces in clay brick, each bordered by crude depictions of blackthorns and honeysuckle...and the more he brushed away the more he found. They stretched on, as a path.

Laughing he got to his feet and followed it, brushing dirt with his boots to check his position. "Watch your step indeed," he chuckled. "You do want me to find you."

--

The path ended dry of rain but with Ogden dripping sweat and beads of blood from every finger, scratches on arms and legs dried but stinging.

But he found it. The altar... or so he hoped.

He was in a copse overgrown and stuffed with thorny bushes, bright but prickly brambles and hazel too soft and fluffy for the mess of everything else. But Ogden could see the sharp reds of carved clay poking through, twisting with bony antlers in a tangle of vines while more bone rose around it as grand and spiraled columns to steal a breath—distressing for the dried blood smeared along them and the burnt shapes too like skulls at their centers.

Had to be the right place.

"This your altar?" He asked the forest, absently, not expecting an answer. "Seen better days..." More absent words as he began clearing weeds and vines from the clay, aware of eyes watching. "No one care to worship you anymore?"

He knew it had to be something worth such attention, something ancient, maybe powerful. Clearing enough to see the face on the front of the altar confirmed his suspicions. It was the face in the path, the face he saw the night before.

As more and more was yanked free of the altar Ogden worried for how long and wide it stood, as well as the old stains... and the chains, rusted as they were, at each corner.

"...what did you ask for?" He hadn't meant to say it aloud.

Certainty didn't mean to be answered. But he was, by the soft song that had guided and teased through all the pale bright and sharp shadows of the woods.

Only closer, near an ear. "Offerings and sacrifice." Trying to turn earned fingers thick, dry and far too long on his shoulders...and arms. Four hands of rough bark tight to his shirt. And a dry cheek rubbing into his, bark catching on beard before it was pulled free. Chuckled for. "Which are you, little oak?"

"Offering," he blurted, certain sacrifice wasn't the right answer. The giggle was unexpected but swooned for. Until he realized what it might mean. "I—I mean...I don't want to die."

Two of those impossible hands left his shoulders, one sliding down to his belt while the other held his jaw. Another rub of cheek, a deep breath in and the forest purred, "Then offer."

"How?" Ogden puffed, arms yet pinned to his sides as all that dry bark pulled him slowly closer, up against something pillowy pressing into his back.

"My offerings come bare," the forest cooed, running fingers from arm to slip up Ogden's shirt, teasing hair while teeth teased an ear. "They light the altar, present themselves as tribute... and pray I accept."

He could do that. He could follow the hands, the voice... the heat. Could try not thinking about splinters and hope it meant what it seemed. It wanted him already, didn't it?

Him. Definitely a him. "I--" Ogden gasped for exploring fingers. Those too high and glancing sensitive skin, others rubbing above jeans, while more gently gripped his throat. "I'll do...that...then."

All those hands and their heat ended the tease, if the tone in the forest's voice kept him burning, "then offer yourself, little oak...and pray."

With eyes on him, and strong hands refusing to let him look back, Ogden stepped closer to the altar and considered the flames. The lights. 

"How do I--?"

"The skulls, little oak. Feed them fire."

Before sense could argue, Ogden muttered, "And am I to be naked before or after?"

Giggling, so close he could feel the heat of it on his neck. "During."

Gasping, Ogden tried again to turn and was stopped. "Why can't I see you?"

Those twig-like fingers caressed his cheek, song low and echoed answering, "You haven't earned it..."

"And I do that by being naked, lighting the skulls and... praying?"

"Mm...and offering."

"Right," and how do I do that.

At least he knew how to get naked, and after the trek to get there leaving him a sweaty, bloody mess he wasn't too upset to do so. 

Yanking his coat off, with a brief worry of where his pack went, he was halfway through shirt buttons when the forest whimpered.

And firmly sung, "Slower."

"Y-you want a show?" He asked him. When it swooned he added, "Can't see much from there, I could turn around?"

"I see enough... don't stop."

So he didn't, but he went slower, slipping each button with careful fingers to the soft cooing of the forest. Sliding the shirt off shoulders he was sure to shrug and let the fabric cascade more than fall to rest on his belt and forearms.

Back exposed he earned an appreciative swoon and something he hoped a tongue tasting all the sweat and drying blood.

"Keep...going," the forest whispered, tugging gently at the shirt until Ogden pulled his arms out to let him take it.

The forest kept it. A sniff the only reason given...while Ogden kept going.

Fascinating God, he thought, if he is one.

His belt he removed with the same careful speed, pulling it bit by bit to more delighted cooing. Once free of jeans he cracked it, smiling for a gasp behind him before tossing it to the grass. Popping the button quick, he waited for the coo to tend to his zipper.

It wasn't the first time he'd put on a show for someone but usually he was able to see their face. And he wanted. So badly. To see that face again. Trying even, as he wriggled jeans down boxers, stopping at thighs.

As Ogden bent to sneak a peek, firm fingers gripped hair and yanked him to stand, but the tongue returned, to lick his side. "Not yet," the forest drawled.

Swooning for it, he shook jeans to ankles, sure to offer more of a wiggle for his audience. Boots were slid off, one at a time but close to the altar, before he kicked off the jeans and hooked fingers into boxers. Waiting...for the coo. Sliding them off in one quick motion, he savored soft giggles.

And asked, "Did you enjoy the show?"

It had been so long but the forest wouldn't say. Instead he waited, quiet.

While the man found his pack, set against the a nearby trunk by the forest, fished out a lighter and shuffled around for tinder.

He did enjoy the show but more the one playing out after...of the little oak on hands and knees in the cruel thorns digging for dry twigs and leaves to light.

With all of him bare, heavily freckled skin moist for the sweat, red and sweet for his scrapes the forest considered rushing him. Eager to hear so gruffly soft a voice beg his favor.

But no. It was better to take the time, to savor him. How rare it was to have a willing offering. Meek pests were all he'd had before that one built his little house. Hardly sacrifices. No prayer, no reverence, only careless feet and hungry blades in his woods. They stuck in his throat and nourished nothing.

He would savor this one. 

Every... glistening... morsel.

It took a few tries to light the twigs he'd found but Ogden managed a decent fire in each skull, which proximity proved were shaped clay not bone. But as he made to turn a sharp wind spun him back.

"Not yet?" He asked it.

And the forest shivered but said nothing.

So Ogden walked backwards to the front of the altar, hands on it for balance, and studied it for where to...pray.

"Climb on top, little oak," the forest explained in too pleased a tone.

The chains made that command difficult but he heeded, scrambling up high sides to the flat top. Knees angry for the rough texture and solid surface, he ignored the twinge in them and gasped for a hand pressing his face gently to the clay.

"Pray," the forest repeated.

Ogden didn't know how, said as much, "I've...never prayed."

Delicate the fingers as they ran through his hair, petting him as the forest purred, "Speak what you desire, what you're offering for it...and pray I accept."

"A-and if you don't accept?"

The breath was too long, the air suddenly cool as the fingers pulled away. "Pray."

Forehead freezing against the clay, knees screaming for a position they didn't care for on a surface unsuited, Ogden couldn't think of what to ask for. What did he want? He came for...for--"You," he spoke to the clay, and the forest. "I desire you..."

Nibbling his lip, the forest didn't speak, waiting for the man to finish.

"And I—I offer...me?" Did he mean that, was that the right wording? All of him or just his body? What should he have--

Fingers took hold of his hips, pulling him to the edge as more gripped his thighs and the forest set his tongue on every drop of sweat Ogden collected. Tasting every exposed slip of him from thigh to throat, around and down his back, torturous in speed and delicious in pressure as it licked lower still. Slow and tender it cleaned him before rough fingers spread him wide and that warm, wet, sticky tongue slid sweetly into him.

A taste, a tease, earning a low moan before it salaciously left him and a whisper sang close to his ear, "I accept."

There was a second of extra consideration for what all he'd accepted, what all Ogden offered, but it mattered little for how tight the grip on his limbs. Or how the forest joined him on the altar, seen through the shadow of his bulk angling to crouch behind him and his antlers spread wobbled on the trees.

Ogden didn't care in the moment that he'd not seen him, not for the fingers in his hair, more tight to his chest while those on his thighs held tight. For how something too like the tongue but thicker, harder and oddly ridged slid into him. Reaching for the fingers on his chest, he kept his other hand steady on the altar for the gasping breaths it demanded as it shoved in further, remaining so very slow.

But he didn't want slow. Shoving back he begged more and was gifted the song of a moan. Echoed high and lilting before every hand held tighter, beading him red as the forest took some of itself back...as slow, as sweet. Waiting for a whimper to thrust harder, deeper, forcing such delicious breaths and heady moans beneath him.

"Yes," Ogden managed through another and another, holding where he could, shoving harder and harder for more. "G-god yes!"

A giggle through the song as the forest leaned, coiling tighter around him, rhythm heady, if tender. "Is that what I am... your God?"

"Yes," too quick he said it. No thought for meaning. "M-my god."

"And you'll worship me, tend to me, st--" a moan stuttered him and the forest gripped closer to pull his offering up and onto his lap, moaning higher as the man took to bouncing so sweetly on his vine. "Stay with me?"

His answer fell with the fingers on his jaw turning his head, the face coiled closer, the eyes so bright, "Yes."

Lips to soft to be bark begged his, a taste alone before the forest collapsed forward again with him squished so sweetly beneath. There it kept every strip of bark rubbing close and tight, sliding hands to take his while more held his hips to keep that vine twisted and tangled deep. If he refused to move it, holding close but still.

Even as Ogden whimpered and writhed.

Fingers left hips to grip chest and cup what ached for their touch as the forest explained, "Share these with none but me, tend to my woods, my wants...remain ever in my woods and sickness will not reach you, time will not find you, and even death will forget you."

Though the hips stopped the vine yet wriggled and with it and the fingers holding him so sweet Ogden shivered and breathed but lost words to the thing too sweet inside him, on him.

"I've watched you in your wooden home," the forest continued, sliding out and in again, fingers tangling to catch all his offering spilled. "And the one you welcomed into it." Faster the rhythm, moaning low and droning for the panting beneath him. "How you wept for his absence." Harder and harder he thrust, keeping so close and tight. "I will never be absent, so long as you remain mine." Lips begged cheeks, buried in hair to kiss his offering again and again as he all but pleaded, "You offered all of you, little oak, but I ache to hear you say it...tell me you are mine."

Though the hips stopped for an answer the vine yet wriggled and with it and the fingers holding him so sweet, the lips too soft, voice too rich, Ogden moaned as he spoke, "I'm yours."

A cooed whimper high and pleased sang before those lips filled him with teeth.

So large the bite it engulfed his shoulder, piercing smooth and painless before it branched hot and hungry through his veins and he screamed. Spent and aching for a rougher rhythm he screamed while the forest drank...and swooned for the taste.

The nourishing syrup of his blood.

Softer his bark, swelling supple and moist as he released the shoulder and carefully, tenderly, licked it clean. Then he turned his little oak around so he might see him, know him as he so desperately craved to.

And Ogden's eyes lit for the sight of remembered fires and fresh ones of verdant vines framing the slender face, all swirled ruddy bark as the rest of him. Bright green leaves and tufts of soft white flowers grew from thin, curled twigs out of broad shoulders and he wondered of their touch, their taste. Would he moan for my teeth?

With hands reaching to hold the face he'd ached for, his breath fell short for the renewed rhythm of what pulsed still inside him but he whispered to the forest, his forest, "Y-you're beautiful."

Pulling him again to his lap the forest begged lips, begged tongue and moaned into an eager throat for how his little oak bounced harder for each. How eager for him, renewed so stiffly sweet to rub against softer bark.

Leaving lips Ogden dug fingers into grooves to climb and nibble twigs, eager to hear the forest moan... to be the cause. "Mine," he confessed through them, earning the deep breaths he sought. "All mine."

Purring, vibrating every trunk and leaf around them, the forest held his offering tight and deep as he shivered, filling him with syrup and seed. Sharing all he was to keep the little oak as he was; healthy and alive for as long as he kept him the same.

The question startled and he swallowed before not answering, "I'll find you a mirror when we get inside."

"No, no, I meant you didn't call me pet." Leaning to look into eyes, Ren waited until they focused on him. "Am I not a pet anymore?"

"Not to me." Another kiss too quick and Frith nodded at the door they'd reached. "Are we going in like this or do you want down?"

"I'm comfortable right where I am," Ren declared rather proudly, snuggling deeper into the grooves of Frith's shoulder.

The words earned a nuzzle and branchtip teasing his lips before softly burning eyes left his to look at the door. A sigh and Frith shoved them open, pointedly not ducking to enter—even his antlers fit through designs in the doorway Ren hadn't noticed previously—and breathing in air that by all rights should have been different.

But it was the same cool mix of seawater, perpetually wet animal and death as the last time he breathed it some...fifty years prior perhaps.

None of which Ren noticed, to him it was floral sprays and a cinnamon candle somewhere. The death he did smell, icy and sudden in the puff of Garret appearing in front of them.

"You're back!" He popped before flitting down the hall.

Exchanging a look, and a careful shrug, Ren and Frith waited for whoever would reach them first. Which was Griff, shedding the fur he wore to do so as he saw them. Well, as he saw Frith, but he didn't shed the snarl.

One asked of as Ren tapped his seat to be set down and waved a hand in front the snarl, "Aren't you happy to see me all whole and alive?"

It settled into a smile and Griff grabbed him far too tight, hugging him close and warm and begging taste after taste of lips no longer skin. Lips he couldn't seem to get enough of. "You came back...and you're glowing."

"Not human, you were right." Accepting a tease of tongue, Ren hopped to wrap legs around a generous waist and hold a thick neck to get another. "Did you miss me?"

"We all did," answered Delmont from behind them. He leaned for his own taste of new lips and rubbed the smooth, glassy chin. "Won't be getting that beard then, hm?" It was a tease before another kiss and a sharp glance at Frith. "And you're not alone."

Everyone seemed to tighten with the words, leaving even a returned Garret to jitter in and out of existence, uncertain what to say.

Ren tried for something but the lure of wolf was too much, keeping him thoroughly distracted while Delmont stepped closer to Frith, leaning to look up at him.

"You said you'd never step foot in these walls again." If anyone had been listening they'd have noted a cool tone unusual of the vampire, but the only two who'd care were rubbing hands under clothes and suckling one another's tongues.

While Garret decided it best to be invisible as Frith's eyes flared and his voice sung low and echoing, "He asked me to escort him."

"And so you have," curt, cold and softened as gruff moans sang behind him. Sighing, Delmont turned on his heels and addressed it, "Can the reunion wait, darlings? We'd plans should our pet return and they do not involve fucking in my hall."

Command obeyed, Ren was beside Griff with both of them staring at the floor until Ren caught the paler hue of Frith's eyes and rushed to grab his arm. To apologize even, "He's just so...comfortable. It didn't upset you, did it?"

"No," he lied, kneeling to welcome a warm face against his cheek. "But I fear I'm not welcome here. You can stay...you don't—don't have to come back with me."

"That wasn't the plan," stern hazel fires insisted.

Nodding, Frith eyed a glaring wolf and had trouble discerning the look on Delmont. "We came for your books," he told it. "He's fae...but I don't know more than that."

"We do," Delmont said simply, And you want more than what he is, he said decidedly less simply as it hurt to speak into the chaos of Frith's mind as it did Ren's. Whom he didn't speak to but prodded before continuing to Frith, aloud, "And you're welcome to stay, to learn with him...the night if you wish. Your room is still here, as you left it."

Ours, you mean, Frith returned with greater ease.

Delmont closed his eyes for it, fighting nostalgic delight. Yes...but it can be yours and his now. If you want to remain with your snack.

Certain to hold back the arms rubbing along his shirt and eyeing him so worriedly, Frith declared to everyone, "Then we'll stay...but he's mine."

This earned him nuzzles from a giggling Ren unaccustomed to such declarations.

"Yet he wants us as much," Delmont stepped forward as he said it, taking Ren's chin in hand and leaning to kiss confused but willing lips. "Don't you, darling?"

"Mm," he got before Ren remembered words. "But..." Looking up he smiled for the arched leaves of Frith's brow. "I want him more. First, if we're discussing a ranking. That is...if I'm allowed, of course. Being I did sign on to be everyone's."

"I can share," Garret said, casual and quiet, flickering when all eyes looked his way.

Griff huffed and closed in, eyeing Frith as he yanked his pet's back to his chest, snaking a hand up Ren's shirt to hold him by his. "If we're sharing with the weed, I need to know it's because our pet wants it and not that voice making him."

"The voice doesn't work on him," Delmont assured, eyes on Ren as the pet looked down and away and shrunk into Griff. "Like mine doesn't...does it?"

"...Not always, no," he told a hairy arm. "You—you wanted me to last...for Griff."

Griff's turn for confused eyes and he released his pet to grab his husband. "What did you tell him?"

"Only that I can't see you break again." A glance up to fiery greens before his sad half-glare landed on fiery hazels. "And they always break you."

"I won't," Ren promised, though he went for bark instead of skin, holding his tree tight to make sure he stayed as something told him he wouldn't otherwise. "But I won't stand for this ludicrous show either. He's here for me, wants me, just as all of you claim to so why don't we work out how this is going to go and I can be what everyone wants."

"Can you, pet," Delmont didn't ask but smiled, misting free of his husband to appear close and tight against Ren. "Can you be everything I want...?" Caressing his cheek, thumb teasing lip, he added for him alone, And everything the starving pit you're holding needs?

"I can." The confidence in the words was met with soft lips, a tangle of tongue and a gentle bite of fangs to keep him a breath longer.

He swooned for it.

As Frith groaned. "You said you knew what he was."

"Yes...reunions later," the cold eyes were kept on Frith as he added to thought alone, Sweat-soaked and screaming. Earning the twitching lips he wanted, Delmont continued aloud, "Lurien is waiting in the library." And waited for Garret and Griff to obey silent orders before speaking again, "Go with them, would you, pet? I'd like to catch up with Frith."

Ren didn't move.

Not until Frith hooked a branchtip under his chin and smiled at him. "Go, sunshine...I'm sure Lurien is weeping rivers for your absence."

Narrow eyes held to Delmont as Ren grabbed the branch to make a show of licking and nibbling it until Frith moaned soft and sweet first... but he left them alone.

Where Frith waited until he was well out of earshot before he fell to his knees and nuzzled into Delmont's waiting forehead to whisper, "He took you and he's going to take him and I can't go through that again."

"He didn't take me," the words were breathed for the scent of syrup once ached for, a scent he could drown in. "You made me rabid, bade me drench your roots in life, innocents sung into your woods while I--"

Frith sat back on his legs, huffing to cut the diatribe, "They set me on fire."

"After we devoured half their village." While he threw his arms up his voice remained even, calm. "Even my voice wasn't enough to erase all that carnage. They needed a target for their justified rage."

Squeaking so high Griff groaned from halls away, unheard by Frith, of course, as he was busy yelling, "One little uprising and you feed me to peasants and run into the arms of some beast you'd done far worse with!" Leaning, voice lower if sharper, he added, "But you didn't stop there, did you, Del? No, kept me as your shield to ensure the safety of your precious new life with him."

"I--" Delmont growled, breathed measured, quiet, and shook his head. "We discussed it. We agreed I would keep you fed and safe until you were whole again but it was over. We were over. You were to leave, Frith, to flit off and plant your roots elsewhere but you decided to remain and protect this land all on your own." He sighed again for tight lips aimed at him. "What."

"My land, Del. Mine. As this manor is mine, if it wasn't built for me." Without looking from steely gray eyes, he pointed to the nearest table, one made of warm gray bark. "My flesh yet adorns most every room, the size of the halls themselves sing of my presence. You and that beast may have put your names on the lease while I was a withered sprout but it was mine first. Ours first. This is my home. My roots ar--" Huffing again he considered sunshine and breathed slower. "The fact is you left me at my most vulnerable for a pernicious beast now seeking to steal more of what's mine."

"So you devour everything he loves..." Despite the words Delmont tried soothing, reaching a hand to a twitching cheek.

And he was dodged as Frith stood up. "The beast can't keep him, none of you can, he is mine." Scoffing, he tossed more out too casually, "And I don't appreciate this lie that I view you as my fathers. Why you'd ever feed him th--"

Shooting up to stab fingers into lips and grab him by the jaw, all that soothing sweetness dried up as Delmont cut him off and spoke sharp and cold, "All I fed him was your sap to numb any agony you'd gift and warnings of your possessive nature in hopes I wouldn't have another pet returned to me in pieces."

Emphasis came with a rough shove back and an absent lick of the mixed drool and his own blood left on his hand as he returned feet to the floor. A response was not found in Frith so he stood staring, uncertain.

Delmont offered more, after a sigh, "You've gnawed this grudge so long you're chewing yourself. Swallow or spit it out before it devours your sunshine too."

"I--" He did try for a rebuttal to that. An insistence it wasn't he who held the grudge, but as he'd been welcome so easily...after so long...after how he left...

Frith watched the floor, avoiding knowing eyes before they misted and floated down the hall. He would join them, join the warm ball of hungry light he didn't want to leave, but not yet. No, first he would consider his last stay in a home he'd built with the vampire. A home they designed together, a home they used to feed more easily... to have a place to themselves. Together.

One snatched away in a moment of glut. One he watched them rebuild without him.

There'd been none before Delmont and he worried there never would be so he broke their toys again and again in defiance of what they were. What he wanted.

Even tore a particularly precious pet to pieces, leaving just enough for them to watch him die...if all his sap in him meant he didn't leave...and doesn't remember who was responsible.

They burned him for it but he came back.

And they sent more pets to soothe him, to buy his forgiveness perhaps. Allowed him close when he knew how easily they could have sifted through his ashes and tossed his seed to the sea...or fed him to their pet sea monster.

He'd never know if it were his protection or some latent feelings of Delmont's keeping him breathing and close enough to cut but in that hall, alone with memories and guilt, Frith realized he didn't deserve it.

Didn't deserve sunshine so sweet on his bark either.

But he wanted to...

###

When Frith entered the library he was greeted by warm light surrounded by faces he didn't care for. Faces dropping as Ren untangled from arms, legs and tentacles to run at Frith.

"There's my sweet," Ren cooed into a cheek he was caught and lifted to, licking sap someone missed from it and whispering, "Did Del say something?"

Smiling for the concern, Frith kissed it away. "Did I miss it?"

Huffed at for it, but he didn't press. "Griff thinks I'm something that can change shape, like him." Pulling closer, digging feet into the grooves of arms to get to the holes of his ears, he added, "Into a bigger shape..."

Frith hid his excitement poorly, spinning Ren around and ignoring the chuckles from the others.

"I'll teach him," Griff called from the floor, snuggled beside Delmont in front of a wide couch where Lurien lay and Garret floated. "If you think you can live with him spending more time here."

"He can," Delmont answered, patting the spot between him and Griff for Ren to rejoin them.

Groaning, Lurien sat up and scooted to give Frith room but he didn't take it. Instead offering more lips to Ren and whispering, "You go then, learn more."

"You're not le--"

"I'm not much for the group thing, sunshine, but you are so go. Enjoy their company. I'll stay in the manor, close enough to find."

"So I'm your sunshine now..."

"You are. My room is across from Lurien's, I'm guessing you know it."

"I do."

"I'll be there." Setting him down, Frith kissed his forehead and eyed Delmont and Griff before leaving.

And Ren waited until he did before returning to the welcoming arms. "Someone will explain what all this tension is about, right?"

"Probably not," Garret answered.

To chuckles and heady kisses from Delmont and Griff, who were sure to keep hands everywhere they could reach.

Even as more joined from Lurien rubbing down a too open shirt. "I'll explain, pet...when we're alone. For now, the book."

It waited on the floor, a book of faefolk and the legends surrounding them. The sections they'd gone through were on puca, which seemed close but Ren didn't have animal features and trolls, which Ren wasn't too sure fit either but closer. The section they'd stopped on was something similar, that could alter its form and was made of stone. Though it had no name beyond 'faerie', they were all in agreement it looked most promising so, holding it on his lap so all could see, he waited for Lurien to paraphrase in the sweet song of his voice.

"Mm, this is it, pet. Fanciful creatures, attracted to chaos, made of living stone burning in an abundance of life which is known to bring warmth to all who touch them."

"You're certainly that," Garret said with a nudge, passing through Griff to get it.

Delmont chuckled but pointed, "It says here they eat...combustibles?"

Ren did not look at the gray eyes he knew burrowed into his head, nor did he address the narrow ambers on his other side.

Didn't need to, those had words, "Someone been bitin' the weeds?"

"But the picture is wrong," Lurien interrupted, aware as all else what the tree ate and not interested in learning something could eat him back. "You should have a rocky exterior, be hardly a foot high...and have wings."

Pointing to a specific passage, Garret corrected, "Says some of them just look like people with rock for skin unless they want to be something else...and that's close, right?"

"Doesn't explain the glitter," Griff added, kissing an arm as he did.

"Mm," Delmont swooned through kisses of the other, nodding to Lurien and the layer of moisture on him looking especially glittery. "I think that may simply be the nature of the fae, darling."

"But the stone-cover," Lurien repeated with slender hands yet teasing Ren's chest. "All of it points to your having something to cover all this...smooth...crystal."

"I got that one too," Garret offered, pointing to the bottom of the page they left on. "Seems it's earned through hardships or excess damage. Our pet here's lived too easy..."

"I can't argue with that," Ren said through softer breaths for all the attention. "Life hasn't been... comfortable in truth but not difficult either." The consideration of Frith's delectable feast was made but discarded as he didn't see it as damage.

"Well it also says age matters," Garret continued, as everyone else was distracted. "So maybe you're young by faerie standards and it'll come in later?" Far more intrigued by the book than the breath and heat building behind him, he leveraged one of Ren's toes to turn the page and kept reading, "They can all alter shape and size though, more than we thought even. This has a picture of one becoming a deer, a shark, a rock and...a tree."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you, pet?" Griff teased through nibbles of an ear.

While Lurien noticed how very close he and Delmont had gotten to the pet and slid away. "I wouldn't mind seeing you in shark...so work on that, hm? And visit me later?"

Ren nodded but didn't watch him leave, lost in the couple working so hard to keep him between them.

"They keep their crystal though, so I'm not sure how you get back the skin. Or how you got it in the first place. Doesn't mention parents either so...where did you come from?" Garret was talking to himself before trying to clear a throat he didn't have. It didn't work so he huffed icy air on them. "It's not fun to be the fourth when only one of you can really feel me and I don't feel like watching."

Laughing, Delmont misted and tangled into Garret, making him flicker to more of a purple hue before reforming at the door. "Come, pet, let's discover what you can be..."

Lifted and carried by arms suddenly furrier, Ren didn't argue as he was led down halls and up stairs to the masters' bedroom.

###

Where they would drown him in delectable comfort and screaming bliss, taking advantage of how sturdy his skin became. If Delmont spent some of it pouting for how he couldn't bite into him anymore. They still enjoyed his company, his greater heat.

While Griff encouraged him to more by trying to anger him to change shape. It was slight, and Ren ended up enjoying it more than not, but each haggard swat of his furred hands did do... something.

"Again," Delmont breathed for it, keeping Ren trapped deep inside him with vice gripping legs. "Harder, darling. Make him burn."

"Yes, hurt me, Griff," Ren begged, realizing he'd have changed with Frith if pain were enough to. But he enjoyed it anyway, thrusting so rough into one while being swatted so sweet by the other.

Enjoyed more how he was held between them after, spent and sticky. The afterglow he'd wanted. But as breaths became snores and he was still wide awake he realized it wasn't what he wanted.

"If I can be any shape," he told his hands as he wandered through the halls, having wriggled free of sleeping arms. "Why am I this?"

Knowing what he was hadn't given him any clarity. Losing time to bliss in their armswasone thing he wanted, he knew, and keeping Frith as first in that was certain but his being a faerie thing, a thing made of some magic rock, didn't soothe like he hoped.

And knowing Frith would never be comfortable in that house, or truly comfortable with his being with the others, boiled in him. Aside from the delight of sitting with them in the library he couldn't think of a moment shared that wasn't linked to sex in some way. Even if he was openly flirting and aching for it. Even if he adored every second of it...he wanted more. Falling asleep together wasn't more. Promises of lessons wasn't more.

He wanted to know them, to understand them, as he had Frith and when his thoughts were done running through memories he found himself where he wanted to be.

At a door leading to the only one who enjoyed him for more.

And when Ren opened it he did so from considerably higher off the ground. If still shining as bright, he was thicker and taller and didn't quite notice until Frith rushed for him and they saw eye to eye.

"I--" Ren tried, looking down at himself, at feet that weren't, as they appeared gathered as roots in the way Frith's were. "I didn't feel anything--"

Grabbing his cheeks Frith fed him his tongue in a way he'd not been able to previously. A tongue accepted, coiled into by a hotter one as Ren pressed closer, held him back—arms able to close around him. And he was more than comfortable, more than titillated, more than anything he'd been... he was home.

Pulling free of what felt a first kiss, Ren smiled for such green eyes brightening at him and looking too high. So he followed with hands and found them shaped more like branches, if still crystal, touching and testing he discovered antlers as well and gasped. "I don't know how I did this but... it's perfect, isn't it?"

Nodding, Frith begged more kisses. "You're perfect. No matter your shape."

"Mm," Ren giggled for arms so glad to hold him. "But you prefer this one."

"Maybe." Stopping the sweet onslaught if not the syrup, Frith cupped a cheek so beautifully fit for it and asked, "But how do you like it?"

"I love it."

"Home then, or are we to remain here?"

"Would you begrudge me visits?"

"No. I see what they are to you and you can have them...so long as this remains mine," he said it with a branched hand firm on the glow of Ren's chest.

Earning more lips for it. "All yours. Only yours." Eyeing the bed and sputtering for hunger, too aware of it reflected in Frith's eyes, Ren decided, "Let's go home...and eat."

This was met with a hum low and sweet in Frith's throat before he proved he could still pick his sunshine up. They didn't even make it out the door, opting for vines on the windows and the roots they tangled in to catch them and ferry them home.

###

Ren would learn to shift easier, and into more shapes, with Griff's help. Finding his skin again through it and learning he didn't much care for it anymore. With a diet consisting largely of wood, and a preference for Frith in particular, Ren had begun absently snacking on clothing when he was especially hungry when staying indoors with the others. This led to new lessons with Delmont on controlling ones appetite...

Each lesson was held between sessions of delicious bliss with both of them. Sessions he chose skin for to welcome claws and fangs into it, but never could grow the hair Delmont wanted on him—losing the ability to grow new hair at all. They'd end in delectable tangles of arms and legs before enjoying a bath and discussions over coffee in the dining hall or sitting room, something adored.

He even swam with Lurien as a crystal seabeast of similar shape, exploring the oceans and terrifying sailors before returning to dry out and explore one another—smaller but similarly shaped—on the waterbed.

Garret learned his ectoplasm couldn't sap anything from Ren so long as he kept to crystal, and when near him long enough he had more substance. They took advantage often, between readings of books Garret couldn't touch or find on tape. Readings curled together on the library couch or walking the grounds together, once or twice braving a boat in the lake and hoping someone didn't tip them just to snatch Ren back up.

In the following years spent in Mystim Manor, the comforting quiet Ren longed for was found with each of them, learning of those 'multitudes' Griff spoke of even—largely a never-ending slew of hobbies picked up over his many extra years.

Yet most of his time would be spent in the forest.

In a size and shape he perfected and preferred above all others. One appearing carved of crystalline bark, slender and deeply grooved, with antlers branching high but not near as large as Frith's.

It would be hours for all he could count without sunlight, filled so full with thick sticky sap it seeped out of him to soak the bed...when everything finally stopped.

He was down an arm and both legs but Ren couldn't seem to care. Giggling, giddy and hot, he smiled as Frith coiled up beside him, giggling as high and delirious.

"F—Full?" He asked the mountain of bark and leaf.

Who laughed and shoved a branched finger in Ren's mouth, "Y-your turn."

Licking it first, he swooned for the lemony rosewater of it. Those fruits are just you, aren't they? He wanted to ask, and would, after hunger had its fill as he found in that taste he was starving. So he bit, savoring it and the sharp breath for it before gripping the branch-like finger in his only hand and tearing the tip off. Fruit leather, he considered, giggling as he chewed and swallowed and bit again and again and again.

While Frith fought moans for it. Never, not once, had anything ever eaten him...let alone back. It was a singular experience he enjoyed more than he expected. Aware, in every eager bite, that he would heal quickly. Plenty had taken limbs, after all, even burnt him up once or twice but he always grew back. He hoped the pet would too...suddenly concerned he might not get to keep him.

But Ren was healing already. Every swallow set crystal climbing and knitting to fill ragged sockets with fresh limbs until he held Frith's hand in both of his and lapped at the empty space the finger had been.

Feeling his toes curl, Ren pulled away from the delicious bark and sap and licked more off his lips before asking no one, "Doesn't...take much, does it?" Lidded eyes waited when he looked for them and he smiled for the green flames before noticing how much paler they burned. Rolling onto his knees, he held the face and kissed its cheek, asking through more of them, "Did...did I hurt you?"

Frith had him against his chest in the space of a breath, carefully returning each kiss with a gentleness he'd never offered anything. "Stay," he managed through them.

Leaning to welcome more gentle tastes of his crystal, closing his eyes and breathing in sweet syrup, Ren didn't want to leave. But he had questions, more than he asked, "For the night or...?"

"Always." Laying down, keeping his pet on him, Frith toyed with crystal curls and smiled as he was snuggled on—Ren wiggling into the grooves of his chest. "You can return to the manor if you wish, live with them and have them again and again I don't care but...stay with us."

"With you," Ren corrected, kissing his chin. It wiggled as Frith nodded. "It is...comfortable here." Understating, and he knew he was, but they all seemed so eager to keep him and as eager to shove him off to the next so he wasn't too sure how to answer.

"The night, here. If not lost in the mess we've made of my bed, I have books, a radio somewhere." Kissing fingers offered for it, he couldn't lose the smile. "There's even a television, if you enjoy old films."

"So," Ren drawled, tracing the spiraled grooves he laid on. "A day devouring eachother and a night curled up watching movies or reading?"

"If you stay." He'd spent quiet moments with other pets, but for their nature he could never know if it was desire or enchantment keeping them there. The idea of intimate moments with someone who wanted them. Frith couldn't get more words out, if he did have a few, and couldn't admit what pooled in his eyes wasn't wayward sap from their fun.

Not given a chance to as Ren climbed to wipe it away, licking it as it stuck to his fingers. "I don't want to be anywhere else...but we are a mess."

Laughter would follow them to a hot spring buried deep under the gargantuan tree, where chaste and tender they cleaned every sticky drop of perhaps too-eager fun off.

Afterward Ren helped remake the bed with clean sheets—ones he was assured were cotton and purchased and not at all made of lost villagers. There were plans to find the library Frith told him he had, to curl up in borrowed gauzy clothes and listen to that windy song read to him.

But they didn't get that far. All they lost and healed and lost again curled them up into the freshly made bed with sudden and unavoidable exhaustion. Where Ren got his afterglow, warm and cozy in the arms of a living tree he felt desperately attached to for all he'd learned of himself through him.

It was the next day, after waking to the delicious sensation of a vine begging entry—getting it for longer than he could gauge—that they snuggled in an intricately carved, two story library just off the path to the bedroom.

Where Ren learned Garret visited with relative frequency, if unable to touch Frith as he was unable to anything else.

"Why me then?" Ren had asked, turning the page of a large book on dryads and not asking of the bitemarks along their edges.

Frith sighed, not for the question but the moment, the closeness and caressed a cheek before answering, "This delectable crystal isn't. You're not made of anything I know, pet...perhaps the rules of life and death do not apply."

It didn't sound like an answer but it was good enough for the moment. "Have you ever done this with other pets?"

"Mm, yes." Closing the book, Frith set it down and snatched his pet up, turning him around to watch him wriggle in irritation. Laughing for it. "And no." A kiss, deep as he could manage, and he hugged him close. "None like this."

"Your size is going to be a problem if you keep doing that." It sounded irritated in his head but the words fell with giggles so it wasn't entirely believed.

Nor was it true.

Not for any of the days he spent in the forest—he didn't count—did the sheer size of Frith become any real issue for Ren, who quite enjoyed being picked up and set down. He adored riding on his shoulder for walks through the trees even, learning they moved with so little as a nod from Frith. A slice of river cutting through them brought questions but he was informed that no, Lurien did not visit his forest.

Not anymore, anyhow.

"We tried to... couple once," Frith told an already giggling Ren, who was kicking his feet on his shoulder and had to be stopped with a firm hand on his legs. "It ended poorly and he's not bothered to visit since. Nor do I visit the lake, though we can if you wish. It isn't far." Quietly, he added, "They're sure to be worried for you."

Kissing the cheek so perfectly close, Ren smiled for the swoon and shrugged for the suggestion. "I'm happy here."

"Mm, you should still check in...before Delmont rages in here threatening flames." He sighed and rolled the flames of his eyes. "Again."

"Did he come already and I missed it?"

"Not for you, not yet...but he has before."

"I guess I should check in then." Another kiss to smooth deepened grooves and he whispered, "They'll want to know I'm staying."

Something assumed for how long he was with him, but not spoken and Frith found himself overcome with joy for it. So much so he snatched him from his shoulder and hugged him tight, twirling around a few times to the sounds of his laughter.

While Ren considered what it would be like to return to the manor as he was. Not human, no longer even flesh and blood. Would they still want him? Would he be welcomed as another monster of the manor or remain the live-in pet he was hired to be?