IsabellaRose

Lara woke to soft grey morning light and the feel of fingers idly sliding through her hair. She stretched and found her body changed in a way that had nothing to do with magic and everything to do with the night before. She felt loose, limber, awake in every limb, and when she opened her eyes to find four pairs of black ones watching her with fond, proprietary amusement, she didn't flinch or reach to cover herself. She only smiled. "Good morning," Ysolde said with a smile. "Our half-blood, properly bloomed. How do you feel?" "Like myself," Lara said, and was surprised to find it the simple truth. "Finally." Ysolde's smile sharpened, pleased, then turned to business. She sat up, luminous in the dawn, and the other three drew round in a loose circle. The air shifted, just slightly. The warmth stayed, but beneath it Lara felt the old weight of fae dealing settle into place. "The bargain." Ysolde tilted her head. "We promised you food, shelter, and safe passage past goblin and troll. The food you've had. The shelter you've slept in. The safe-guiding is the last of it, and that is what you'll owe for." "You said the price was waking my blood," Lara said, frowning. "I thought..." "That was the price of the waking, and you paid it gladly, the whole night through." A few of them giggled. "But the guiding, half-blood, walking you safe through three days of wood that would gladly swallow a girl like you whole? That's a separate matter. Fae deal in pieces. Always read the whole bargain before you thank us for the first part of it." Lara's stomach tightened, but Ysolde raised a calming hand. "Peace. We're feeling generous. You please us, and we don't often say so." She leaned in. "Here is what we ask. A small thing. A fae thing." Her black eyes glittered. "When you reach the village and live your new life, and you will live it, half-blood, hungrily, even... you'll carry our mark, and now and again, when the moon is full and the wood calls, you'll come back to us. It won't be forced, nor will you be bound against your will, you'll simply want to return, and return you will. That's the price of safe passage: a piece of you that stays ours, and returns to us when we call." She let that hang in the air between them for a silent moment, and then smiled. "Agree, and we send you off well-kept. Better than you came." Lara couldn't see much of a downside. Her fae blood had been awakened, she had experienced a sexual awakening that likely eclipsed any other sexual experience any other person had ever had, and they wanted her to return for the same once a month? It sounded like she was winning in every sense of the word. "Stand," Ysolde said, and Lara did, the cloak slipping from her shoulders to pool at her feet. The four fairies circled her, and their hands rose, and the honeyed light gathered between their fingers the way it had at that first touch on the path. They worked together, weaving, and out of the morning air and the gold of their magic they spun something onto her. It settled over her skin like warm water before it took shape. It was a dress, but no farm-girl's linen this time. It was deep forest green, the color of the canopy at dusk, shot through with silvery threads that caught the light like dew. It clung where it should and bared where it dared. The neckline plunged low between her breasts and the dress laced loosely up the sides with cord that looked like braided ivy, leaving teasing strips of bare flesh along her ribs and hips. The skirt fell long but split high up both thighs, made for a body that wanted to be seen. It was the dress of a creature halfway between woman and wild thing... exactly what she now was. "It mends itself," one fairy said, smoothing the fabric over Lara's hip. "Tear it, stain it, lose it in the grass during a tumble... it'll find its way back, clean and whole, by morning." "And it won't let you be cold," said another. "Nor too warm. The wood's weather can't touch you in it." Then Ysolde stepped close and pressed something small and cool into Lara's palm. It was a pendant, a single drop of amber on a fine green-gold chain, and suspended within the amber, impossibly, a tiny living spark of light that pulsed slow as a heartbeat. "A piece of fae-fire," Ysolde said. "Our gift, and our mark. It glows warm when one of our kind is near, brighter the closer they come. It'll warn you of the wild things in these woods... and it'll guide you back to us, when the call comes and you find you want to answer it." Her thumb brushed Lara's cheek. "It will also tell you, half-blood, what others can't hide. Press it to your heart and ask after someone's true nature, and the fire will answer... warm for kin, cold for foe, bright for those who desire you. You'll find that last one glows near constant, now." She fastened it round Lara's throat, the amber settling into the hollow there, the very spot where the first touch had woken her. "So." Ysolde stepped back, and all four regarded their work with open satisfaction. "A girl walked into our wood and a half-fae walks out... dressed for what she is, marked as ours, and warm wherever she goes." Her grin returned, full and sharp and fond. "Do we have your yes, Lara?" It was the first time any of them had used her real name. "Oh, yes! Absolutely yes." Lara's hand flew to the amber at her throat, holding it like something precious. "Thank you, Ysolde. Thank you all." The moment the yes left her lips, the amber pulsed warm against her skin, a single bright throb, like a second heartbeat answering her own, and Lara felt something settle into place deep inside her. It was neither a chain nor a cage, just a thread, fine and golden and unbreakable, running from somewhere beneath her ribs back into the heart of the wood, a way home she hadn't had yesterday. "Witnessed," Ysolde said softly, and the other three echoed it in their chiming voices. "Struck and sealed. You're ours now, half-blood... gently, gladly, and only ever when you wish it." Her smile turned wicked. "Though I think you'll find you wish it more often than you expect." The four of them began to shrink, their woman-sized forms folding back down toward sprite-small, the dawn light catching their wings as they rose into the air around her. Ysolde lingered last and largest, drifting close to press one final kiss to Lara's lips, slow and warm, a promise more than a farewell. "East," she murmured against Lara's mouth. "Follow the path east, and the wood will let you pass. The goblins will smell our mark on you and keep their distance. The troll sleeps by day and if you stick to the path, you'll be past the foothills before he wakes. Three days, and you'll see the village smoke." She drew back, dwindling, her voice going small and silvery again. "But the moon turns full in a fortnight, Lara. Don't be surprised by what you feel when it does." Then she was sprite-small once more, a darting mote of green-gold light, and the four of them spun once around Lara's head in a glittering farewell spiral before streaking off into the deep green dark of the wood. The hollow was suddenly quiet. Lara stood alone in the dawn, but she was not the same girl who'd stumbled in the day before. She looked down at herself: the impossible green dress hugging her body, the high splits baring her thighs, the amber glowing soft and warm at her throat. She felt the wood around her differently now. It was less of a threat and more of a thing she belonged to. She shouldered her old pack, patched linen and a skinning knife, relics of a life that felt a hundred years gone, and stepped out of the hollow onto the path. She would head east, toward the village, toward whatever this new, awakened life had waiting for her. The amber at her throat pulsed once, warm and reassuring, as the first shaft of true morning sun broke through the canopy ahead.

When Ysolde crossed the last layer, Lara's whole world went white at the edges. It began as slowly as everything before it with a single fingertip, tracing the heat of her with the same maddening patience, learning the shape of her need before answering it. Lara's breath hitched and held. She'd touched herself before, alone in the dark, hurried and ashamed, always racing to finish before the guilt could catch her. This was nothing like that. This was unhurried. This was someone taking the time to know her, drawing slow lines through the slick heat of her, mapping every place that made her gasp and filing each one carefully away. Oh! Oh, that's... right there... how does she know... "Shh," Ysolde breathed against her throat, feeling her shake. "I have you. There's no rush. Let it build." And it built. The other three had not stopped, their mouths still at her breasts, hands still roaming her thighs and her belly and the small of her back, a constant overlapping tide of sensation that gave Lara nowhere to hide and nothing to do but feel. Ysolde's fingertip circled, slow as the turn of the seasons, pressure blooming where Lara needed it most, and the ache that had been building all this time began, at last, to gather toward something. It's coming. Whatever it is. I can feel it coming and I'm not... I'm not scared... was she though? No... not of this... I want it, I want it, I... Ysolde quickened, just slightly, but it was enough. The slow, measured patience of before began to fray, not lost, but purposeful now, each movement aimed, the long unhurried teasing giving way to something with intent behind it. Lara's hips moved on their own, chasing, and this time Ysolde let her, met her, pressed closer and firmer and surer with every passing breath. "There," Ysolde whispered, dark and pleased, watching Lara's face come apart. "Don't hold it. You've held everything your whole life. Not this. Let go." The tension drew tighter, tighter, an unbearable sweetness coiling low and deep, every nerve in her body pulled taut toward a single bright point and Lara, surrounded and held and adored, alive in a way she had never once been allowed to be, finally, finally stopped holding on. The coil snapped. Pleasure broke over her like a wave breaking over stone, white and roaring and total, wiping every thought from her mind, every word, every year of careful silence. She cried out, a raw unguarded sound she'd never have let herself make before, and the fairies caught it, caught her, holding her up as her whole body shook and clenched and sang with the force of it. This. This is what I am. This is what I always was, she thought, and as the first wave crested and began, slowly, to ebb... Ysolde did not stop. "Again," she whispered against Lara's ear, her hand never slowing. "We're only just beginning, half-blood. You have so much more to learn." "Yes, but..." Lara gasped, even as her legs shook beneath her. "Wait... a breath, just... just let me..." Her chest heaved, the aftershocks still rolling through her, almost too much, the place Ysolde touched gone exquisitely raw. "I can't... it's too..." And then, as Ysolde's fingers gentled but did not stop, as the wave that should have ended kept cresting, Lara heard herself say the opposite of everything she meant: "Gods... don't stop. Don't stop..." Ysolde laughed low and pleased against her throat. "There's the truth of you. Your mouth says one thing and your body sings another. We'll teach you to stop lying to yourself." They gave her no rest after that. Hands and mouths traded places in a slow rotation, each fairy taking her turn, each one different. Where Ysolde had been patient and deliberate, the next was quick and clever, fingers and tongue working in tandem until Lara broke a second time, sobbing the name she didn't know to call her. The third was slow again, agonizingly so, drawing the climax out so long that Lara begged, actually begged for the release the fairy refused her until she thought she'd come apart entirely. The fourth simply held her and watched her face the whole time, those black eyes drinking in every flicker of pleasure as she pushed Lara over the edge once more. How many is that? She wondered. I've lost count. I've lost... everything, I've lost myself and I don't want it back... She came again, and again, until the orgasms blurred into one long unbroken current, until she was nothing but sensation and gratitude and the wet sounds of her own pleasure echoing through the trees. Each peak should have been the last. but none of them were. Her fae blood, woken and singing, only seemed to want more, the recovery that left her gasping and ready again in moments, the hunger that built back the instant it was sated. And then, when she had been wrung out and filled back up more times than she could count, Ysolde tilted Lara's chin up and looked at her with those bottomless eyes. "You've taken your fill," she murmured. "Now you learn to give. A lover who only receives is no lover at all. Half the gift is in the giving, half-blood... and we mean to teach you all of it." She guided Lara's trembling hand, drew it slowly down the warm luminous curve of her own body, and showed her where to touch, how soft, how slow, reading the fairy's sighs the way Ysolde had read her own. "There," Ysolde breathed, her composure flickering for the first time as Lara's fingers learned her. "There. Quicker now. Feel how I move into your hand? That's me telling you. Listen with your fingers." Lara did. And as the fairy's breath began to hitch under her touch, as she made one of these ancient wanton creatures shiver and arch, something new bloomed in Lara's chest. Pride... power. She wasn't only the one being unwrapped and discovered, she could do the unwrapping too, she could be the reason someone came apart. "Good girl," Ysolde gasped, and this time the praise was breathless, earned, dragged out of her by Lara's own hand. One by one they taught her, and one by one Lara learned them, mouths and hands and the slow generous art of giving until the four of them and the half-blood between them were a tangle of warmth on the forest floor, the dappled light fading toward evening above, the road and the village and the whole frightened life she'd left behind feeling very far away. As the last light bled out of the canopy, Ysolde rose and drew Lara up with her. Lara's legs were unsteady as a new-born colt's, her whole body humming and loose and warm in a way she'd never known a body could be. "Come," Ysolde said softly, lacing their fingers. "You've earned the hollow now. Earned it well." They gathered her scattered things: the cloak, the chemise... but Ysolde only draped the cloak loose around Lara's bare shoulders rather than letting her dress, and Lara found she didn't mind walking the wood half-naked between four luminous creatures, the cool evening air a constant caress against skin that had finally learned what it was for. The fairies glowed faintly in the gathering dark, four soft lights guiding her off the path and down into a sheltered fold of the land where the great roots of an ancient tree arched over a hollow lined with moss soft as goose-down and dry as a hearth. It was warm inside. Warmer than it had any right to be, fae-warm, the air itself thick with that honeyed scent that made Lara's pulse quicken all over again. Berries glistened in a little cleft of root, sweeter than anything she'd ever tasted, and they fed them to her one at a time between slow kisses, the juice on their lips, her appetite for food and for them tangling together until she couldn't tell hunger from hunger... and then the lessons resumed. All through the night, Lara learned. She lost the last of her shyness somewhere in those dark warm hours, learned to ask for what she wanted without the words sticking in her throat, learned to take as boldly as she gave, learned the particular sounds each of her four teachers made and how to chase them. She was tireless in a way that astonished even her; the fae blood in her veins burned bright and hungry, and every time she thought herself spent she found herself wanting again within minutes, reaching, eager, alive. They reveled in her. They told her so, murmured against her skin how rare it was to find one of their watered-down kin so willing to bloom, how most fought the door even after they'd opened it, how Lara had simply walked through with her arms open. She glowed under the praise the way she glowed under their hands. It was only when the first grey hint of dawn crept down into the hollow that the wanting in her finally, gently ebbed, not from exhaustion of the spirit, but the simple need of a mortal body for rest. Lara's eyes grew heavy. Her movements slowed. And Ysolde, reading her the way she'd taught Lara to read others, drew her down into the moss and gathered her close. "Sleep now, half-blood," she breathed against Lara's hair. "You've learned more in one night than most learn in a lifetime. Rest. We'll keep you." The other three settled around her, a nest of warmth, wings folding soft over her like blankets. And as Lara drifted toward sleep, safe, spent, profoundly content, and more herself than she had ever been, she felt their hands continue to move over her, gentle now, idle, possessive, not waking her, just keeping her, as they'd promised. They traced slow lazy lines along her hip, her shoulder, the curve of her waist, as though they could not quite bear to stop touching the thing they'd unlocked. She fell asleep to the feel of it, smiling, the frightened farm girl who'd stepped into the woods entirely gone, and something new and warm and wanton sleeping in her place.

The first lace gave way, then the second, and the dark-haired fairy looked up over Lara's shoulder and gave the smallest nod. That was all it took. The other three moved and suddenly Lara was surrounded, a warmth on every side, luminous skin and the soft flutter of wings, hands settling on her all at once. She gasped at the sheer overwhelm of it, the impossibility of tracking so many sensations at once, and gave up trying. She simply let it wash over her. A pair of hands found the loosened chemise at her shoulders and drew it down, baring her by slow degrees while another pair smoothed up the length of her spine, fingertips counting each notch of it. A third set traced the dip of her waist, her hips, the soft curve of her belly, learning her like a map they meant to memorize. This touch, Lara thought dizzily as a thumb circled the small of her back. Oh... and that one... Each touch landed like the first touch she'd ever felt. She had no frame of reference for any of it, no memory to compare it to, and so every brush of fingers was pure discovery, a place on her body she'd never known could feel like that, lighting up under a stranger's hand.... the hollow behind her knee, the inside of her wrist where a fairy pressed her lips and Lara's whole arm broke out in shivers, the nape of her neck where someone swept her hair aside and breathed warm against her skin. I didn't know. I didn't know I could feel anything there. I didn't know there was so much of me. The chemise slipped to her waist, then past her hips, then to the forest floor with the cloak, and Lara stood bare in the dappled green light, bare and surrounded and adored, four pairs of hands moving over her in slow overlapping waves. She should have been cold, but she wasn't. The warmth poured off them and into her, and she felt herself swaying, held up by the press of bodies on every side. The dark-haired leader caught her face in both hands and kissed her again, deep, slow, and claiming, while behind her another mouth pressed to the curve of her shoulder, and a third grazed the line of her spine, and somewhere a pair of hands skimmed up her ribs with agonizing patience. This is what I locked away... all of it. How did I live without... how did I ever... She broke the kiss with a gasp, head falling back against the shoulder of the fairy behind her, and the leader smiled and trailed her lips down to Lara's throat. "Ah..." the fairy whispered against Lara's racing pulse. "Every inch of you waking up. Tell us, half-blood, what does it feel like, finally?" Lara's voice came out wrecked and wondering, barely a whisper. "Like... I'm being born." The fairies sighed their pleasure all around her, and their hands began to wander lower and Lara learned the meaning of slow. The dark-haired leader was the first to find her breasts, but 'find' was too plain a word for what she did. Her palms ghosted up Lara's ribs and simply cupped her, no more than that, holding the weight of her without moving, letting Lara feel the warmth of those hands soak in. Lara's breath caught and held, her whole body straining toward something the fairy refused to give yet. Move, she thought desperately. Please, please move... But the fairy didn't. She held, and held, until Lara was trembling with the anticipation alone, and only then, when Lara had nearly broken, did her thumbs begin to drift, tracing slow arcs across skin that had never been touched this way. Outward, inward, circling closer to the peaks that ached for attention and then retreating, again and again, until Lara made a sound of pure wanting and arched into her hands. "Yes," the fairy breathed against her. "Feel how much you want it. That's the whole lesson, half-blood. The wanting." Behind her, hands smoothed around her sides to join the first, and now there were fingers grazing her from every angle, light as moth-wings, maddening, tracing the curve of her without ever giving her the firm touch she craved. One fingertip, at last, brushed across a stiffened peak, and Lara cried out, the sensation lancing straight down through her belly to the heat building between her thighs. Oh gods... just that... just one finger and I... Then mouths joined the hands. The dark-haired fairy bent her head and replaced one fingertip with the warm, wet heat of her lips, slow and reverent, drawing a soft kiss across the very peak of her and Lara's knees gave out entirely. The fairies behind her caught her, bore her weight, held her up like an offering as the leader's mouth worked her with that same unhurried patience, every movement drawn out to its fullest length. A second mouth found her other breast. A third pressed kisses down the center of her chest, the flat of her stomach, mapping the soft plane of her belly. Hands roamed her thighs, her hips, the curve of her backside, fingertips grazing and circling and slowly, slowly drawing inward. Lara had no thoughts left that resembled words. There was only sensation, layered and overlapping, building wave on wave, and a vast astonished gratitude rising up beneath it. I almost died not knowing this. I almost lived my whole life and died never once feeling... The thought dissolved as a hand drifted to the inside of her thigh and stopped there, fingertips a feather's breadth from the heat of her, waiting. The dark-haired fairy lifted her head, lips wet, eyes black and bottomless and kind. "The last layer of all," she said. "We don't cross it until you ask, out loud, by name." Lara, shaking, surrounded, more alive than she had ever been, opened her eyes. Her lips parted, and she realized through the haze of heat and trembling want that she didn't know her name. She had given herself over to these creatures, let them strip away a lifetime of locked-away longing, and she didn't even know what to call the one whose mouth had just unmade her. "I don't..." she gasped. "I don't know your name. Please, tell me. I want to ask you by name. I want to know who's... who's teaching me." Something flickered across the dark-haired fairy's face, a hint of surprise, and then a slow, genuine pleasure, warmer than any of her grins before. Names had weight in the fae world. To ask for one was no small thing. To give one, smaller still. "Clever half-blood," she said, brushing a strand of damp hair from Lara's flushed cheek. "Most never think to ask, they just take what we offer and never wonder who's giving it." Her thumb traced Lara's lower lip. "Ysolde. That's the name I'll wear for you. Hold it gently. Don't go spending it where it isn't wanted." "Ysolde," Lara breathed and the name felt like honey on her tongue, like it belonged there. The fairy Ysolde shivered to hear it in her mouth, and the hand resting high on Lara's inner thigh pressed a fraction closer. "Now," Ysolde said, voice gone low and dark and patient, "ask." Lara swallowed. Her whole body sang with the ache of waiting, every nerve drawn taut, surrounded by warmth and wanting and the strange new freedom of a self she'd never been allowed to meet. She found she wasn't afraid of the words. For the first time in her life, she wanted something openly, fully, with no shame chasing the wanting away. So she said it plainly, looking into those bottomless black eyes. "Ysolde," she whispered, trembling, alight, alive. "Touch me. Please. Don't stop this time. I want to feel all of it. I want you to be the one who shows me." Ysolde smiled, slow and pleased, and devastatingly tender. "As you wish," she said softly, and she crossed the last layer.

Lara melted, not because the magic made her, she understood that now, in the warm golden clarity blooming through her body. The fae hadn't taken anything from her. They'd given something back. The door they'd opened only led to a room that had always been hers, locked away by a lifetime of cold nights and her mother's careful silences, and standing on the threshold of it now, breathless and flushed and wanting, Lara made her choice with both eyes open. She turned her cheek into the dark-haired fairy's palm and pressed a kiss to the center of it. "Show me," she whispered. "All of it. I'm ready." The fairy's grin softened into something hungrier. "Good girl," she said like a purr, and the words sent a fresh shiver curling down Lara's spine, pooling low and hot in her belly. "She learns." The other three drew in close, a circle of warm luminous skin and fluttering wings, and Lara felt hands settle on her, at her waist, her shoulders, smoothing up the curve of her back. Gentle, patient, teaching hands. "First," the leader murmured, fingers finding the laces of Lara's bodice, "we let you breathe." The cord pulled loose. The constraint that had pressed against her all day eased, and Lara gasped as cool forest air met newly-bared skin, every nerve singing awake under the attention of four sets of bottomless black eyes. "There she is," one breathed reverently. Lara had never in her life been looked at like this, like something wanted, something worth unwrapping slowly, and the strange thing, the wonderful thing, was that she didn't shrink from it. She leaned in. The shame she'd braced for never came, only heat, hunger, and a dizzying sense of finally, finally belonging somewhere. The dark-haired fairy tilted Lara's chin up. "The first lesson," she said, lips a breath from Lara's own, "is that you're allowed to want this. Say it." Lara breathed. "I want this," she said, in a barely audible whisper. "Again." "I want this." Louder this time, firmer. The fairy kissed her then, a soft press of lips against her own, but slowly, tenderly, the kiss deepened, and Lara's whole world narrowed to the press of those lips against hers. Oh. That was the only thought she could form at first, a small, stunned syllable, lost somewhere behind her ribs. Oh, so this is what it's like. She'd kissed exactly one boy in her life, a fumbling thing behind the goat shed when she was sixteen, all clacked teeth and panic. This was nothing like that. This was slow. The dark-haired fairy kissed her the way honey pours, unhurried, inevitable, coating every part of her it touched. There was no rush in her at all, and that patience undid Lara more than any urgency could have. A warm hand cradled the back of her neck, fingers threading up into her hair, holding her just so, and Lara felt herself make a sound she'd never made before, a soft, helpless little hum into the fairy's mouth. I made that sound. That was me. She'd spent her whole life keeping quiet... quiet on the farm, quiet in her grief, quiet in the dark when her own hands wandered and shame chased the pleasure away before it could finish blooming. But here, now, the sound had simply escaped her, and instead of shame there was only the fairy's answering murmur of approval, a low pleased rumble against her lips that told her, yes, more of that, give me more of that. The fairy's tongue traced the seam of her mouth, asking, and Lara opened to her without thinking, and that... yes, that. Heat lanced down through the center of her, throat to belly to the ache between her thighs, and her knees actually buckled. The hand in her hair tightened, holding her up, and the dark-haired fairy laughed softly into the kiss, not cruel, not now, just delighted. "Easy," she breathed against Lara's mouth, pulling back just far enough that their lips still brushed when she spoke. "We have all the time you need. There's no hurry here, half-blood. No one's coming. Nothing to do but feel." The words triggered something deep. Nothing to do but feel. Lara's entire life had been doing... milking, mending, burying, surviving. She had never once in twenty years been told she could simply stop and feel, and that the feeling was allowed. Her eyes stung with something that wasn't quite arousal and wasn't quite grief, and the fairy must have seen it, because she smoothed a thumb across Lara's cheekbone with surprising tenderness. "I know," she murmured. "I know. Let it go. All of it. You don't have to hold anything anymore." And Lara, trembling, let herself be kissed again. This time the fairy's free hand began to move... down the line of her throat, slow as dripping wax, fingertips reading her like something precious. Across the wing of her collarbone... down, over the loosened bodice, to the bare swell of her chest where the laces had fallen open. The touch wasn't grasping. It grazed, feather-light, tracing the upper curve of her breast in a slow half-circle, and Lara's breath stuttered into nothing. Why does that... why does barely anything feel like everything? Her skin had woken, just as they'd promised. Every nerve stood at attention, and the lightest brush of a fingertip sent ripples of sensation cascading outward, overlapping, building. She found herself arching, pressing up into a touch that retreated the instant she chased it, the fairy denying her with a knowing little smile. "Slow," the fairy reminded her, voice like dark silk. "We're not skipping a single page of this lesson. You've waited your whole life. What's a few moments more?" She's right. I've waited my whole life. I can wait. I want to wait. I want to feel every... The fairy's fingertip lingered at the edge of Lara's loosened bodice, and there it stopped. "Patience," she breathed, and withdrew her hand entirely. Lara nearly sobbed at the loss. No... come back, please... she thought, but the dark-haired fairy only smiled and took a slow step back, her black eyes traveling down the length of Lara's body with frank, unhurried appraisal, as if she had all the centuries of the wood to look her fill. "You're going to learn something, half-blood," she said. "The wanting is the gift. The ache before. The waiting. Most rush past it like it's a toll to be paid. We're going to live in it." She circled, slow, a predator with no need to hurry because the prey had already surrendered. Lara felt the heat of the other three at her back, watching, waiting, a warm presence that should have made her shy and instead made her bold. Four sets of eyes on her bare skin, and she didn't cover herself. She let them look. I let them look. And I like that they're looking. Is this who I am? Is this who I've always been, under all of it? Her thoughts were a mix of awe and dawning awareness. "The first layer," the fairy murmured, coming round to face her again, "is already gone." Her gaze dropped to the loosened laces, the bodice gaping open over the chemise beneath. "But there are so many more. Layers of cloth. Layers of you. We'll take them one at a time." She reached out and, with a single finger, hooked the shoulder of Lara's cloak. The heavy wool slid down her arm, slow and deliberate, and pooled at her feet with a soft whump of fabric. It was just her cloak, nothing more, and yet the loss of it left Lara feeling stripped already, the cool forest air finding her bared shoulders, raising gooseflesh that the fairy traced with one fingertip. "There," she purred. "Cold?" Lara nodded, trembling. "Good. The cold makes the warm sweeter." The fairy leaned in and pressed her lips, not to Lara's mouth this time, but to the curve of her bared shoulder, a single kiss, soft and lingering, there and then gone. Lara's breath left her in a shudder. One kiss. One. And I feel it everywhere. The fairy's mouth moved a hair's breadth at a time along the slope of her shoulder toward her throat. Each kiss was its own small eternity, set down with the care of someone painting. Lara's hands hung useless at her sides, then rose, fluttering, unsure, and the fairy caught one without breaking her slow ascent, lacing their fingers together, anchoring her. She's holding my hand. Why does that make my chest ache more than anything else? Because no one had touched her with tenderness in years. Because she had been alone, so completely alone, and now there were warm hands and warm mouths and warm eyes and someone holding on to her like she was worth holding. The pleasure and the loneliness braided together until Lara couldn't tell where one ended and the other began, and she let out a small broken sound that was half a moan and half a sob. The fairy paused at the hollow of her throat. Looked up. Read everything written on Lara's flushed, overwhelmed face. "There," she whispered. "That's the door opening all the way. Don't fight it. Don't hold a single thing back." Her free hand rose to the top lace of the chemise, the last real layer between Lara and the air. "Shall I?" Lara's heart hammered. Her whole body sang with the ache, the waiting, the wanting they'd promised would become a gift. She swallowed hard. "Yes," she breathed. "Please." The fairy's smile was the slowest thing of all as she drew the first lace loose.

Lara was insatiably curious. Could it be true? Was she part fae? She knew fairies were tricksters, knew they took more than they gave, and what they gave was never what you thought you were getting, but... She spoke before thinking, words spinning directly out into the world. "What will it… feel like? What will it do to me?" She was breathless and excited, hopeful but frightened. She remembered all the stories of fairies... but still... The fairy's black eyes softened, and her voice dropped to something almost tender... almost... as the golden light hovered warm against Lara's throat. "What will it feel like?" she echoed, and the other three sighed in unison, a sound like wind through reeds. "Like the first warm day after a long winter. Like sinking into a bath drawn just right. It starts here..." the fingertip drifted, not quite touching, tracing the air down the line of Lara's throat to the swell of her chest. "It starts as heat, blooming slow, spreading out through every part of you that's been cold and asleep." "Your skin will wake up," another whispered, circling behind her. "Every inch of it. You'll feel the breeze like a lover's breath. The brush of your own dress will make you shiver." Lara's breath hitched. She could already feel it, or imagined she could, a flush crawling up from her collar, a tightness low in her belly she had no name for, an ache she'd only ever felt in the dark, alone, half-ashamed. "What will it do?" The leader smiled, sweet and terrible. "It will unlock what you already are, underneath. It strips away the fear, the shame, all that human knotting-up. You'll want things, pretty thing. You'll want them openly, and the wanting won't frighten you anymore... it'll feel like coming home." "It won't change your face," one promised. "Won't change your healing," said another. "Only opens the door," the leader breathed, "to the part of you that blooms. The part that draws every eye... and welcomes it." She paused, and a flicker of that cruelty glinted through. "The stories are true, half-blood. Fae bargains always cost. This one will make you... hungrier... than you've ever been. Hungry for touch... for more. Some would call that the price. You might call it the gift." Her grin returned, full and sharp. "We won't lie and say you'll be the same after. You won't. But you'll be happy. And you'll be warm. And you'll be fed." The light pulsed, patient, a hairsbreadth from her skin. "So. Knowing all of it now... do you still say yes?" Lara thought about it. If it was just going to make her more... her... then what could she lose? "If it’s my true nature… if you’re not lying about that, then... yes. But you must stay with me until it’s over. Be my teacher, show me what it means, how it works." She’d heard stories of fae growing to human size and taking human lovers… if they were going to awaken what it seems like they intended to awaken, she wanted them to show her how to... be like that. What to do. The fairy's grin turned radiant, triumphant, even, and the golden light flared bright between them. "Yes," she breathed, and all four chorused it, a shivering harmony that seemed to ripple through the trees themselves. "She says yes!" "And asks us to stay," another marveled, delighted. "To teach her. Oh, she's a clever one..." "A greedy one," purred the third, and it sounded like the highest praise. "Then it's struck," the leader declared. "Witnessed by root and branch and the old dark between. A teacher you asked for, and a teacher you'll have." She pressed her glowing fingertip to the hollow of Lara's throat. The touch was tiny, no larger than a raindrop, but the heat that poured from it was anything but. It sank beneath her skin like sunlight through water, spreading down her chest, blooming outward in slow golden waves. Lara gasped, her knees going soft, her hands flying out to catch herself against the nearest tree as warmth unfurled through every cold and sleeping part of her. It was exactly as they'd promised. Her skin woke. The brush of her cloak against her shoulders sent a shiver racing down her spine. The breeze found the bare skin of her throat and she felt it like fingertips. Her bodice suddenly seemed too tight, the laces an unbearable constraint against a chest that rose and fell faster with every breath. ...and the fairies were growing. It happened the way frost melts, slowly at first, gradual, then all at once. The little glittering shapes stretched and unfolded, gossamer wings widening, tiny limbs lengthening, until four lithe figures stood in the dappled light where the sprites had hovered. They were woman-shaped now, woman-sized, their skin faintly luminous and dusted with that same gold, their black eyes bottomless, their grins unchanged. The leader was the tallest, dark-haired, wild, and beautiful in a way that made Lara's breath stutter. She reached out with a full-sized hand now and cupped Lara's flushed cheek. "Easy, half-blood," she murmured, voice low and rich where before it had been a sparrow's chirp. "The door is open. Feel it? That ache? That's the truth of you, waking up at last." Her thumb traced Lara's lower lip. "Now. Let your teachers show you what it's for." ...and Lara melted.

Author's Note: This is some really derivative stuff I'm writing right now, trying to make the words cooperate with my intent. I'm trying to make it sexy in an interesting way, but I don't know how it's going to turn out. So... read at your own risk, I guess. - - - - - - - - - - - The morning Lara left, the sky was the color of old bruises with grey clouds bleeding into the pale promise of dawn. She'd buried her mother beneath the crooked oak three weeks past, and the last of the goats had died two days ago, its body slick with the same black-veined sickness that had taken the rest. Nothing held her to the farm now but ghosts. She shouldered the worn leather pack that contained everything she owned in the world: a change of clothes, her mother's silver hand mirror, half a loaf of bread, some dried apples, a waterskin, and the small skinning knife strapped to her thigh beneath her skirt. It wasn't much against three days of wilderness, but she was strong from a life of labor, and she healed fast. She'd always healed fast. Cuts closed in hours, bruises faded by morning. Her mother had called it a blessing and never explained it further. The dirt road wound east, swallowed quickly by the treeline. The forest stood waiting... ancient, dense, and far too quiet. Lara pulled her cloak tighter over her simple linen dress, the bodice laced snug over a chest that strained the fabric no matter how she dressed it down. She'd learned long ago that there was no hiding the way she was made. Even alone, the woods seemed to notice her. She swallowed her fear, whispered a prayer to gods she wasn't sure listened, and stepped beneath the canopy. The light dimmed. The road narrowed to a footpath. She walked into the shade of the forest, the sunlight pastures soon only a memory beyond the constant green and tree trunks. She went on for at least an hour, her nerves easing as the birds sang all around and small things scurried through undergrowth. But then, somewhere deeper in, a branch snapped. It was too deliberate to be the wind, too heavy to have been made by a chipmunk or squirrel. Lara forced her legs to keep moving, one laced boot after another, telling herself it was a deer... just a deer. They spooked easy and crashed off through the underbrush. That was all this was. But the forest didn't return to its rustling calm. It stayed quiet, the wrong kind of quiet, where the birds have gone silent because something larger has entered their world. Her senses strained. Every snap of a twig beneath her own feet made her flinch. From the corner of her eye she caught movement, low to the ground, off to her right, keeping pace just beyond the ferns. Then it was gone. Then it was to her left. Whatever it was, there was more than one, and they were circling. A giggle drifted through the trees, high, light, and almost musical, but with a cruel edge underneath it, like children who'd learned a game that wasn't kind. Then a voice, no bigger than a sparrow's, sing-songed from somewhere above her... "Pretty thing, pretty thing, walking all alone... smells like flowers and spring, smells like fae bone." A tiny shape darted across the path ahead. It was no taller than her forearm, with gossamer wings that caught the dim light in flashes of green and gold... a fairy. But not the gentle storybook kind her mother had hummed about. Its grin was too wide, its eyes too black, and three more flickered into view behind it, hovering at the height of her face, studying her the way a cat studies a wounded bird. "She's one of ours, almost," one buzzed, drifting close enough that Lara could feel the flutter of its wings against her cheek. "Half-blood. Watered down. But oh, she'll bloom if we play with her right..." The path ahead was blocked by their dancing little bodies. The path behind felt suddenly very far away. Panic gripped Lara's heart like a fist of ice, but the words of the fairy made a question form in her mind. She planted her feet, summoning more courage than she felt, and fixed the nearest fairy with a hard stare. "What do you mean, half-blood? I'm human." Her voice wavered only a little. "And I've no time to play games, so unless you've food and shelter for me, I'll be on my way." The fairies erupted into peals of laughter, tumbling through the air like windblown petals, clutching their tiny sides. "*Human!*" one shrieked with delight, spinning a loop. "She thinks she's human!" "Smells the truth right off her skin," another buzzed, darting in to hover beneath her jaw, inhaling deep through a button nose. "Fae in the blood, fae in the marrow. Diluted, oh yes, three or four generations down... but it's there. It's why you heal, isn't it, pretty thing? Cut yourself and watch it close? Mother never told you why?" Lara was surprised by that. How could they know that? Her hand drifted unconsciously toward the faint, long-faded scar on her forearm, a gash from a scythe at twelve that should have crippled her, gone by supper. The first fairy, the boldest, alighted on a low branch at eye level and folded her gossamer wings prim against her back. Her grin sharpened. "Food and shelter, she says. Bold thing. Demanding thing." She tilted her head. "We've both, as it happens. A warm hollow, dry and soft, and berries sweeter than anything that grows in your dull dirt. We'll guide you there, safe from the goblins that prowl these paths and the troll that haunts the foothills." The other three giggled behind their hands. "But fae don't give gifts, little half-blood," she purred. "We trade. Everything in these woods has a price. You'll want to hear ours before you take a single berry from our hands." She leaned forward, black eyes glittering. "Shall we name it?" "Aye," Lara said, matter of fact. "Name your price, fairy." The fairy's grin split wider, far too wide for so small a face, revealing a row of tiny needle-sharp teeth. "Oh, she's eager," she sang, and her three sisters drifted closer, ringing Lara in a slow, lazy orbit. "Brave half-blood. Hungry half-blood. Listen well, then, and we'll deal fair. Fae always deal fair, even when we deal cruel." She rose from the branch and hovered before Lara's nose, close enough that the heat of her tiny body warmed the tip of it. "The hollow, the berries, safe-guiding you past goblins and troll... these are all yours. And in trade..." A long, theatrical pause. The forest seemed to lean in to listen. "...you let us wake what's sleeping in your blood. Just a touch. Just a taste. A little fae magic, drawn up to the surface where it belongs, instead of buried under all that dull human clay." "It won't hurt," another purred from behind her ear. "It'll feel good. Better than good. You've never felt anything like it, locked up tight on that lonely little farm. We'll open you up like a flower in the sun." "You'll be warmer," the third whispered. "Softer," breathed the fourth. "More yourself," the leader finished, eyes glittering black. "The self your mother was so afraid of she never spoke its name." A bead of golden light gathered at the fairy's fingertip, pulsing, sweet-smelling, like honey and warm skin and something headier underneath that made Lara's breath go shallow and her cheeks flush without her permission. "One touch," the fairy coaxed, drifting that glowing fingertip toward the bare skin of Lara's throat, the hollow above her laced bodice. "And the bargain is struck. Say yes, pretty thing." The light hovered a hairsbreadth from her skin, waiting. Lara held her breath. Dare she trust these fairies?

ground control

infected toe

big game

high praise

listens to crickets

pull back the covers and make a little invitation motion to join me in bed

Why so serious... in my pants?

Granted, but it includes hugs, sex, and any human touch... you will never feel another human touch. I wish to be able to make the best waffles in the world.

I would not push the button... those decisions are the original authors, regardless of my personal feelings. Push the button to be able to heal anyone with a touch, but you slowly become more hideous each time you do so.