Chapter Two
The woman knew witchcraft. Most humans around this place didn’t nowadays. They were either too busy worshipping a bastardized sun god from a Mesopotamian cult or avoiding belief all together. They barely even thought of us old gods. Sure, some people still heard our distant echoes in the forest, our stories sketched in stone, or our power in thunder, but those folks were few and far between.
Centuries ago, they’d bothered to drag gods, like me, to the new world, which hadn’t been new, mind you, only to abandon us. There were already gods here on this land. Bringing us with them was the first of many transgressions. Forgetting us, well, wouldn’t be their last.
When I’d first gotten here, they’d carried around a book about a god that didn't love them. Now, they carried around phones, arguing about that same book and men who made laws that hurt mostly their women.
Humans were silly like that.
But this human, hmm, she was going to be problematic. She was impossible to ignore, like a bird at dawn. I’d been resting on a nice patch of moss when she’d strutted into my forest, talking to herself. The feminine lilt of her voice on the wind had ripped me from my reverie.
She had big, doe-like eyes, like the brother deer in my sacred forests. Her blonde hair reminded me of the lightest of flaxen wheat before the autumn harvest. Freckles filled her nose and cheeks like flecks of rich soil sprinkled on the finest flower petal. Her breasts were heavy, jiggling with each step, right along with her flared hips, rounded bottom, and luscious thighs. I’d like to bury my face between those thighs.
Speaking of what magic occurred between her legs, the woman was on her moontime. I could smell the metal tang of moonblood clear across the forest. It made my cock twitch and nostrils flare. She was fertile, this lost maiden. And I was just terrible enough to want to see how fertile she could be with the turn of the next moon, how pink and puffy her cunt would look dripping my seed as a lazy smile lit her face along with the weak winter sun.
And it would be that simple. You see, along with being silly and fickle, humans were also easy to please. One orgasm, meal, or shiny rock would put them in a tailspin. At times, they were simple creatures, really. I’d met badgers with far more complex personalities.
Simple or not, I needed them just the same. So I cloaked myself against a trunk of a pine tree near her cabin to observe her. I wasn’t used to womenfolk. The land up here had been so lonely. People had forgotten me. Left me for dead. Well, as close to death as a god could get. Only the working loggers and occasional outdoorsman would stumble across my forests. Men who smelled like comfortability. Watching humans change over time had been fascinatingly sad. At first, they’d smelled like whiskey and moonshine, then there’d been a jaunt with opium, then pale ale and cigarettes. Now, they smelled like cheap chemicals with meth and McDonalds pumping through their bodies.
Detached from deities and worthy substances, they’d grown fond of watching strangers fuck, not even giving a faun like me the pleasure of joining at the edge of a glen like a proper voyeur. Instead, loggers spent their lunch breaks watching actors have fake sex on the screens of their phones, hastily tugging their cocks in the cabs of their trucks, unknowingly feeding me their sexual energy. If only the god-fearing Yankees knew their sweet releases went to an ancient one. Oh, the tales I could tell.
The lack of worship in modern times was awful. Villages used to hold feasts and orgies in my honor, and now I was left to sulk around the forest, hoping a human came around. As the decades had stacked, my power had waned. Now I was unable to leave.
But this woman, she was something different entirely. From the way she observed the forest in quiet consideration to the way she mumbled to herself, she proved to be unassuming and kind. She had an old-worldly charm about her I hadn’t seen in decades. I was intrigued by how much she used herbs, like the waft of them off her hair and the aroma pluming out of her cabin. She had already taken from my forest. The scent of my pine had filled her lungs. I reveled in that.
I shot a glance at a cardinal that landed on my shoulder. He knew how confusing humans were too. Now that I had a maiden here, I’d have to contrive a plan. Earn her trust. Maybe she’d be brave enough to interact with me on an intimate level. I only engaged in trysts if the mortal was willing and ready. After all, you needed to have courage to bed a god.
Surely, someone who would be out here all on their own had that. Bravery didn’t promise wit, however, so I would have to wait and see if that was also something she had.
I needed to know more about this stunning intruder, like why she was alone and how long she planned to stay.
Most importantly, would she worship me?