14. Vireth
Vireth
I shouldn’t have watched.
Gods know I shouldn’t have watched for so many reasons—certainly because it is none of my business what Renard does with his body, and certainly because I should care not one whit about a man’s needs, and most certainly because I don’t know what just happened or why I was atop him, and if that was the reason he needed to depart in a panic.
Yet when he barreled from the room as if the gods themselves were at his heels, I couldn’t help myself—fear and anxiety demanded I keep an eye on him, and then when he started to pleasure himself, I was frozen by breathless curiosity.
Why? Who does he think of in such moments? Is it me—and is that why he seems so angry about it?
Heat climbs up my neck when he catches me watching, but I cannot bring myself to look away—to hide.
Desire tingles between my legs, my sex already soaked from whatever transpired in my sleep.
From here, I watch Renard scowl and stalk off through the darkened streets.
I suspect he will not return for some time.
I make my way back to the bed, the fabric of my shift brushing lightly across my oversensitive nipples. I need sleep—I know I need sleep, especially with the weight of all that has happened and all that has yet to pass.
Sleep eludes me, however. The savory, metallic tang of Renard’s blood lingers in my mouth—along with the salty musk from his skin.
I can still feel the shape of his body beneath mine, the impossibly soft skin of his hard cock…
if only I could remember the rest of it.
I pray I did not take advantage of him, or set us at odds—even more than we usually are.
Seemingly of their own volition, my fingers begin to trail down my body.
They are not Renard’s hands, but something inside me clamors to be touched.
Over the last few years, my desire has become a chaotic thing, barely able to be forestalled on some days—buried in ashes on others.
Since finding Renard, something has awakened in me that sets my heart racing and my sex pulsing.
What I cannot be certain of is whether that has something to do with the absence of leywort, the fledgling Blight Mother, or simply my proximity to a man that is—by even the most ungenerous standard—ferociously handsome.
I shouldn’t have watched, because now I need.
Fingertips skittering down the fine lawn of my shift, I pluck at the tightening puckers of my nipples and feel bright pleasure arcing through my body.
The pillow next to me carries traces of Renard’s scent—salt, leather, apples, and sun-warmed wheat—and I inhale greedily as my other hand hikes up the hem of my shift to caress my sex.
My pussy is slick with desire and overheated, almost too sensitive as I find the tight nub of pleasure and begin to stroke it, imagining it is Renard’s touch that has me coming out of my skin.
The way he sometimes looks at me as if I am mysterious and attractive is intoxicating—even if it is only motivated by curiosity and fear.
It has been a long while since I’ve felt desired, and the thrill is heady.
Faster and faster I circle my fingertips, yearning instead for Renard’s clever fingers, or sharp tongue, or even the tip of his cock, and suddenly I shatter, pleasure fracturing from the tips of my toes to the top of my antlers.
Something deep inside me is soothed by the little death, yet something in my heart feels ever more hollow.
Lust temporarily sated and sulking companion still off in the night, I heave a great sigh and sink deeper into the bed. Dawn must be scant hours away, but finally I am claimed by a thick and dreamless sleep.
I wake to a rose petal sky a few hours later, the space beside me in bed cold.
Renard returned at some point in the night and he sleeps on the floor—stubborn fool—curled atop his cloak near the hearth.
His snores are softer now than they were in the forest, but I still hope for him to gather a few more precious moments of rest before the difficulties ahead of us.
Firstly, discussion of what transpired in the night.
Why can’t I remember anything? How did he speak with the Blight Mother if I don’t recall it?
Then, we must restock our supplies and figure out where to go next.
After that, simply try to find the source of the famine while not turning into a mindless destructive force that wipes out everything within reach.
Perfect. Simple. No trouble at all.
Nibblebones creeps silently down from the rafters where she’s made her den and curls up against my neck. She, too, does not wish to wake Renard any earlier than we must, and her soft warmth is such a comfort to me, I nearly weep.
How am I to save a world that’s only ever sought to shun me—to push me to the outer edges because of the way I was born? More importantly, why should I bother?
Renard may have honor, but he also has the entitlement and privilege of a man who exists in a world he expects to bend to his whims. As is the belief of many humans—and nearly all men.
I am not lesser because I am a woman. I am not lesser because I possess certain abilities or lack others.
I simply am—through no fault or triumph of anyone, save the gods.
If Renard’s regent in Valehar is a man whose impetus is to send a single, ill-equipped exile into a foreign land while he schemes to drag his neighbors into the starving curse he cannot privilege his way out of… well. Perhaps the world does need a rebalancing, after all.
Something dark and seductive thrills in me at that, rearing up like a snake about to strike.
My magic itches beneath my skin, frustrated being tethered in the bounds of this civilized village.
I shall take inspiration from my confusing companion, and sneak out for a breath of air and some respite from such heavy expectations.
Creeping silently out of bed, I snag my cloak from the wall and make my way downstairs.
Already the kitchen in the back of the inn is bustling with preparations for a morning meal, and I inhale the familiar comforting smells of baking bread, oat porridge, and frying bacon.
Though we ate reasonably well yesterday—better than we had in days—my stomach seems to believe otherwise, and gives a ravenous growl.
Throughout this journey, I have apparently become a woman obsessed by my appetites—hunger, lust, hope, despair, rage.
Everything in me seems to be yearning for some kind of release.
The streets outside are slick with mud and piles of dingy, melting snow.
Villagers are beginning to leave their homes for their early chores—feeding livestock, fetching water, collecting firewood.
I try to tug the hood of my cloak over my antlers, but at some point in the night they grew again, and now they are too tall to be hidden by hood or by hair.
Strangely, most I pass on the street avert their eyes after an alarmed, cursory glance.
I reach the back of our inn, which butts up against the alpine forest between the mountain pass, and continue on.
I walk through the towering pines that creak as they sway in the breeze, until the shadows deepen and the village disappears between the encroaching growth. At last, I feel like I can breathe.
Stripping off my cloak and tossing it over a fallen log nearby, I sink to my knees and plunge my fingers into the dirt.
Rot-hungry life explodes out of me with scarcely a thought, clamoring deeper and deeper in the soil until I feel the very earth quicken with an abundance of mushrooms, insects, molds, and lichens.
Worms and larvae writhe from below—awakened from unnatural slumber.
Why do you sleep? I ask them. It is not yet the season for that.
Winter has yet to come, even here in the mountains.
They do not answer, but they heed my call.
Fields of mushrooms—every variety I know and many I don’t—erupt from the filaments that branch out from my fingertips.
I sigh with the pleasure of it, of this unfettered exercise of my power, and marvel at how much broader I can reach, how much more I can sense from the land, and the satisfaction that settles in when it feels like some small part of this world has bent to my will and returned to its cycle.
Perhaps this is it—this is my calling. Perhaps this is how I can end the famine.
I close my eyes and reach out with my senses again, looking for the root of the corruption here.
Kneeling beneath a stand of pine and fir, I press my hands deeper into the damp forest floor and allow my breathing to settle into the slow rhythm the work requires.
Immediately, the forest answers. Not like a command or a summoning, and not because it knows me or loves me any more than it loves the beetles chewing through a rotted stump nearby or the mushrooms pushing through last year's leaf litter. Nature has never struck me as particularly sentimental. Rather, it recognizes me in the same way one river recognizes another when they eventually converge. We belong to the same cycle—we speak the same language. It’s a language I’ve spoken since my powers bloomed, and one that my family has never understood.
What comes back to me isn’t formed of words, but of sensations—moisture gathered beneath moss, the delicate lacework of fungal threads stretching through the dark beneath my palms. Roots drinking greedily from underground streams swollen by mountain snowmelt.
Tiny lives moving through the rich black loam in numbers so vast they become impossible to separate into individual creatures.
Everywhere I look there is life and death, hunger and satisfaction, and always transformation.