Days go by. Then weeks. Summer swells. Even these damp rocky hills grow green, while in their little garden the beets, the peas, the cabbages and the lettuces flourish. The forests nestled in the high valleys between the hills grow thick with foliage; a dark, earthy, shadowy green that offers welcome respite from the heat rising from the lowlands. Game grows plentiful and fat.
One day the wolf bathes for the first time since he came to the witch's doorstep. Perhaps she sees him heading for the river some morning, leaving without announcement as he always does. He carries empty pails for water with him. He carries a change of clothes with him. Rough, crude things he stitched together himself out of rabbitskins; perhaps a bolt of sackcloth she bartered for at the edges of the village. For hours he's gone; when he comes back the pails are full. His clothes are beaten clean on the river rocks. His beard shaved imperfectly with the edge of a knife; his hair hacked short with that same tool.
One day the wolf discovers a beehive in the forest. Brings it back, at the cost of several stings, where they carve it open and press forth the honey. The witch has wildberries from her bush; mixes the honey with the juice and a little water from the river. She seals the concoction in an earthen jar and buries it. The wolf grumbles that she's wasted it, but a fortnight later they have berry mead and he no longer complains.
One day the wolf comes back with a deer over his shoulders. One of the summer bucks, young, a mere four points to its rack. Slain swiftly with a firm bite to the throat; eviscerated there in the forest, liver already half-devoured by the time he brings it back, as though he could not resist. Wolf is red about the mouth, red down the chin. He works behind the witch's stone house deep into the long summer twilight that night, skinning the kill, carving the meat. Cleaning the intestines and the stomach to make sausages later. Salting all but the finest cuts of meat, to be preserved for the winter in the barrel outside.
The finest, richest cuts they roast over an open fire that night. Eat with their hands, red-tinged juices running down their fingers, swigging down the last of the honey-wine. Perhaps the witch has never tasted venison before. Stags are, after all, the game of kings and princes. Or perhaps this is yet another rule that she has flouted, like so many others.
ÓrfhlaithDays go by, and the witch does not waste them. She never does. There are nights when he can sense that she is still awake in her hut, after the sun has set and the heat has lessened a bit, when he can hear her, murmuring. He has heard this before; it never ceases to be strange. There is a night when the moon is waning that her voice is fierce, repetitive. A night when the moon is completely dark that he hears nothing at all: sees her though, exiting in full shadow, kneeling before a shallow metal bowl he did not know she had, staring into the water it holds. A night as the moon waxes that she is gone for hours in lands even higher than the ones they occupy, walking spiraling paths, gathering white stones. His hut, like hers, becomes wreathed in these white stones at the base of the outer walls, half-hidden by vegetation. If he touches them, they feel warm even at night. They hum with energy, vibrating up his fingertips.
He leaves one day for the river which gives them sweeter water than the lowlanders: they are closer to the spring, closer to the snowmelt that makes it rush. Comes back later almost unrecognizable, by eyes and certainly by scent. She watches him as he comes back, and says nothing. He never knows when she bathes. Never scents her on the wind, regardless.
Scowls at him when he thinks she's wasting honey and berries with some spell; threatens not to share it with him when it ferments, asks him if he thanked the bees, or what he gave them in exchange. You must tell them news. What you have seen, what you hear. They are curious creatures, and if you do not tell them anything, they will not trust you.
The next time they have honey, she is the one who brings it back. She is unstung. She pours the honey on porridge from her cauldron. Licks it form her fingers. A bee hidden in her hair emerges and lands, delicately, on her sticky hand. She watches it, and murmurs: West. The bee lifts from her hand then, heading towards the dying sunlight, back toward its hive.
--
The buck he brings back was killed by a wild animal. She knows this on sight. Stares, though, all the same, when he comes back wearing its blood. She is wary the whole time: she makes him walk the long way around. She makes him go deep into the trees to hang the creature and bleed it, and skin it. She does not come to check on him.
He makes a fire outside, because the wind is low and it is too hot inside her hut for anything. He roasts the meat. He gives her the cut, and they share wine from the same jar. She sits, in one of those shifts that do not pass for clothing for anyone but her. The cloth sticks to her back from sweat. She has her hair braided behind her. She looks half-wild herself, nearly bare and always fearless, licking her lips from the searing hot grease from the cooked meat. As they almost always do, they eat in silence. The fire crackles. Moon waxes overhead. Stars glint in between tendrils of smoke.
ConallThough history will hold that the Church held the wealth of Europe's knowledge during these ages, the truth is the witch is a learned woman. Her kind is kin to alchemists and healers; more distantly, she is kin to scientists, physicians, philosophers. She knows much that others know not. Surely, she knows much that he knows not.
He has no idea what to make of those white stones. Lifts them from the dirt and sniffs them, cautious and perhaps a touch suspicious; ends up setting them back exactly as he found them and leaving them undisturbed henceforth. He stares blankly when she asks him if he thanked the bees, or what he gave in exchange. He sidles a guilty glance at the hive he tore from its moorings and smashed open for honey. The next time she brings back honey -- unstung, with a piece of honeycomb torn gently from the hive -- he watches her silently and curiously.
--
The days grow imperceptibly shorter; ever-so-perceptibly hotter. Those cool mists are rare now, and confined almost exclusively to the early morn. At midday heat rises in a haze from the lowlands, mingled with the smoke of the humans' nascent industry. The nights are clear, cooler on the hills than below, though not by much. They can see the fires of the village, tiny pinpricks amidst moon-flooded darkness.
They don't speak. The witch is half-wild, half-dressed. Bare to the waist and wholly wild himself, the wolf glistens with sweat. He has a cool wet rag draped behind his neck. His fingers leave a stain of grease on the earthen jar they pass to and fro. The wine is sweet and rich; strong enough to make his head feel light. He rarely drinks. He drinks tonight, thirstily, lifting the jug until wine dribbles down his chin.
A lull when he finishes his first hearty cut of venison. He sits on the ground, back against a stout section of unsplit firewood they've taken to using as a stool. For a while he stares into the fire, eyes half-lidded and dreamy while he licks flecks of meat and juice off his fingers. A slow blink and then all of a sudden he's looking at her, making no ruse of it: a steady stare thoroughly free of human modesty. After quite some time he lowers his eyes. Then he plants a hand on the ground, gets up without a word. Comes back with two more bloody chunks of meat, which he spears onto sharpened stakes, props over the fire.
ÓrfhlaithShe eats less than he does, drinks less; she eats meat so rarely, and it is often rabbit or bird, small creatures trapped, their flesh usually dried. Eating fresh flesh like this is luxurious, and she does not understand what possessed him, except that he is an animal. He must not know how to look at the future, conceptualize it, think of the winter.
But he knows how to look at her. She senses this, feels it like prickling energy flowing up the back of her spine, her neck, into her hair. Is still for a moment, though not frozen. Just still. Feels it when it ends. Watches him as he gets up, abrupt, comes back with... yes. More meat.
The sense of that stare is still between them, though.
"What?" she asks, quietly, because fires and darkness are sacred, and because her voice is fuzzed by mead.
ConallSo rarely he looks at her. It's not quite the same thing as shyness, or modesty; carries none of the social mores those would imply. It's something else, baser and more primitive: a sense that a locked stare is tantamount to challenge. He avoids it out of habit, and out of caution.
Even now his eyes barely flick her way. Fat begins to melt and sizzle. He sits again, watching the fire. Shakes his head a time or two. A long silence goes by.
Then, "Only looking."
ÓrfhlaithIt's not the words, but the long silence before them. It's not the stare, but its rarity. It's not the wine, but the truth in it.
And it's how he shakes his head long before he says anything at all.
Witch doesn't prod. She watches him a bit, unabashed, perhaps unwary. And she chews on the meat that remains to her, the small portion she wants to eat. The jar of wine sits in the dirt beside her bare, filthy foot. She closes her eyes slowly, opens them with a drag, hazed by liquor and nightfall and a profoundly full belly and the heat of summer, the heat of the fire.
Eventually she rises, while he's still cooking meat. She stands slowly, taking the lip of the jar and hefting it with her, drinking again. So sweet. Swallows, and walks over, long pale arm draping down as she sets the jar near him. Same arm, same flash of fair skin, lifts: she wipes the back of her wrist across her mouth, sighing.
Walks, driftingly, not to her hut but into the woods. Perhaps to relieve herself, but she doesn't come back for a while. The meat cooks, and smoke curls upward, and she's still gone.
ConallHe takes the jar. His palm supports the base and fingers wrap around; it never touches the ground. This time, anyway. Plenty before: flecks of dirt rubbing onto his hand, off. The wolf's eyes follow her arm until her wrist touches her lips. Then he looks away, tips his head back, drinks.
So sweet.
She disappears into the woods. He sprawls by the fire, drinking the last of the honeywine. When the jar is near empty he upends it over open mouth, greedy for the last drops. Sets it aside when there is truly nothing left.
Stands. Takes seared meat from the fire. Nudges stones closer to bank the burn. His head spins when he straightens, and he tilts his face to the stars, eyes closed. Lets the world sway around him before a moment.
He has the skewers of meat in hand when he follows the witch into the woods. It is no easy thing to track her. She has no scent. It is too dark to see her tracks. Largely adrift, he wanders -- listens for what he might hear.
ÓrfhlaithNo scent wafts into his nostrils but the cooked meat, the woodsmoke, the honey and berries on his lips. The lush growth in the woods: thick grasses matted down only by passing animals, trees heavy with leaves and blossoms alike, blown out in a last gasp of heat and moisture, petals drifting down to earth like sighs. He smells these things, and smells himself, and smells the warning of his own presence in the hills. Does not smell the witch. Cannot hear her bare feet on those thick grasses, or the rustle of her shift against her legs, or even the hum she has sometimes, half-singing to herself. Cannot even hear her breathing, though in his drowsy walk he can almost hear the trees inhaling poison, exhaling air.
So when he finds her, it is not because he heard her, or found her footprints. It's because he almost trips over her. She's lying on the ground, her head on her arm. Rests on her side, her arm limp across her belly, her knees slightly bent and her ankles slightly crossed. He can see her breath rise and fall. And when he's close enough, he can hear it.
Her eyes drift open, but only a little. What little light filters down sparks off of her eyes, showing him where her gaze is. Shows, when they close again after looking at him for a moment.
ConallIt hardly qualifies as finding. Stumbling upon. Tripping over. Such words fit better. He exhales in surprise, and then in something akin to laughter. She can certainly smell him, and the fire-seared meat he carries. Particularly when he holds one of the two skewers out to her.
She takes it or she doesn't. Likely she doesn't: she looks so replete, so rich with summer and wine and meat. After a moment the wolf sits, the earth soft with moss and wildgrass and soil beneath him. After a moment more he lies back, half an armsreach away, tearing lazily into the meat as the stars glimmer through the overhead leaves.
ÓrfhlaithShe doesn't take it. She drowses in the grass and the darkness. Somewhere in the woods, flying insects light up, call to each other, blink out again. She feels the earth resonate underneath her when he sits. She hears the grass rustle underneath him when he lies back. Hears him chewing on the venison. Hears branches and leaves trace each other above, in between earth and sky. And though he probably can't, she can hear her own heart, thumping faster, which it only began to do when he came nearer.
ConallFor a while nothing happens. The wolf eats. The witch drowses. The summer night unfurls around them, hot and lazy and long. They smell the richness of the earth. Hear small things moving in the forest. Wind through the trees. Stars rolling overhead.
The wolf finishes one piece of meat. Tosses the stick aside. The other he pulls off its skewer; tears shreds off with his fingers. Eats that too. Offers her shreds a time or two, and if she refuses again, simply devours the rest himself.
When it's gone they're left in silence. His eyes have adjusted; can pick out the shape of trees against the sky. Could probably see her outline too if he looked. The gleam of her eyes.
"Who are you?" he whispers into the dark. Never asked her that. Never asked anyone that, maybe; didn't care about such abstract things as origins, pasts.
ÓrfhlaithOne time, she opens her eyes. Smells meat, closer. He is offering her a torn morsel from his fingers. She opens her mouth, leans her head forward, bites it from the air, only to retreat again, close her eyes, chew slowly. Swallow. She takes a second bite when offered, but refuses the third. Sighs.
Has her eyes open, though, when he looks at her, looks at her long and loose and wondering. She looks half-dreaming. But the answer is simple, and comes easily to her:
"Me."
Conall"You," he echoes, soft.
More time passes. Then the wolf sighs; sits up. Paws a hand over his head, his terribly shorn hair. Pauses as though uncertain -- pulled between tides. Then all at once he pushes to his feet, his balance only slightly impaired. He pulls a deep breath from the air. Releases it,
and without preamble, without warning, without so much as a breath of explanation -- dissolves into the shape of an animal. Long of leg and muzzle and body; coarse fur light with summer. He stands there a beat. Just long enough for her to register, see him as he is. Then he turns, savagely graceful, a light swivel with the balance in the hindquarters. Grass snaps and rustles as he lopes into the darkness.
ÓrfhlaithShe sits up. Dim but not drunken, sleepy but not dreaming, she opens her eyes when he sits up and breathes in when he rises and as he changes, as his form wavers and alters, she sits up. Hip and hand to earth, she lifts the upper part of her body and stares back at him.
Something lances through her, and shows briefly, but cryptically, in her eyes. And he trots away, easy and at home in himself, and in the woods. She breathes in, inhaling wet, rich air. Then she pushes to her own feet, not bothering to brush anything off, and walks the same way he went.
ConallSuddenly the senses are so much sharper. Like mist in the sun, alcohol in the flame, his drunkenness burns away. He can hear her behind him. Can't smell her. Never could. Noticed that about her early. Tracks her now by sound, the snap of branch and the rustle of brush. She makes little enough, but then: his ears are so keen now.
He doesn't pick up his pace. Doesn't run away, fleet as a shadow. Nor does he stop. Pace by pace, stride by stride, he leads her deeper into the woods, farther from the fire. A few times she loses him in shadow, or behind the gnarled trunk of some ancient tree. Always she finds him again, a little farther ahead, knows him by the powerful shape of his head, neck, shoulders; the length of his stride.
Eventually she finds him at a standstill. Standing on a lip of a cliff, treeline giving way to stony bluff. His tail moves slowly, a thoughtful back-and-forth. His ears twitch and swivel to pick up her sounds. He is looking down at the valley where the humans live. The village and its fires.
An opaque pause. Hard to tell what thoughts now turn between those furred ears; behind those yellow eyes. After a while he sits, lowering himself on his haunches, tail thumping a meditative time or two before falling still.
ÓrfhlaithThe witch does not chase him. She walks slowly. He must reveal himself when he hears her, sees her going astray. She sees him with her eyes and not with magic, not with pendulum or prayer. But she never hurries. Never quickens her pace to catch up. He walks, and she follows, and she becomes aware soon that he is not trying to escape her. They do not walk together, either; he stays ahead, pausing to look back occasionally, waiting when he vanishes into the darkness or takes a turn to make sure she finds him again. She never looks worried.
Always she finds him.
She can tell they have gone up; the slope to the ground and the thinness of the air. It tightens her chest. Her breathing is quickened from exertion but not panting with exhaustion. Her heart thuds heavily but steadily. She has been here before. She has been all of these places before, has been walking the length and breadth of these hills since she was a toddling, naked child. He remains in this form that does not speak to her, but which she understands, and she walks to him as unhesitatingly as she has followed him.
Comes to the edge beside him. And lowers herself down beside him, sitting on the rock. Lets her legs dangle off the edge, her feet hanging in the air. She rests her hands in her lap. Looks out at the village, the dying fires, the expansive darkness of the world out there -- around her, beneath her.
And leans against his shoulder, his sleek fur, closing her eyes. Feels the wind through her toes and her own hair. Rubs her head, gently, against the side of his neck.
ConallSince his bath he smells better. In this form the smell isn't even so objectionable. Smells wild. Smells vital, and beating, and alive. She leans into him and he whuffs, giving his head a slow loose shake. Turns and lays his muzzle over her head.
The change, when it comes, comes so gradually it is almost imperceptible at first. A thickening of the muscle under her cheek. A shift in the cadence of his breath. The press of his growing body against hers; and then the other way, shrinking again. Fur becoming skin. Muzzle receding, becoming a face. That implied shelter replaced with another: his hand, large and rough, covering her head for a moment.
"You are not like them," he murmurs. "Their minds are small and fearful. You are like no one I have known."
ÓrfhlaithFur is oddly comforting to her. Animal and yet not alien. Familiar, but not intimate. She was not lying, and he has seen it: beasts do not harm her. Her goat still eats from her palm sometimes, and does not bite or kick. She has set traps for food before but never coaxes or lures creatures to their deaths with whatever gifts she has with them. The very bees would not sting her, because she told them the news she heard from the land around her and from the village, and she asked politely for their honey, and she she apologized for the actions of Conall, explaining that he is only ignorant, and that she will teach him.
Animals do not make the witch afraid. She drowses calmly when he lays his head over her, and allows herself to rest. To relax into the close, warm companionship that she never seeks. It takes her some effort to ease into that, but when she does, it's still for a moment.
When he shifts back into the shape of a man, she feels it. Senses it in a way that doesn't come from touch or sound. And she opens her eyes, and pulls away, but not quickly, or very far. Looks up at him. He puts his hand on her.
Keeps looking up at him, when he speaks. Does not blink. And says nothing.
ConallIt is not the first time he has touched her. It is near enough, though. It is not the first time she has drawn away either. And as with the last time, his withdrawal is immediate. He does not look at her, and never did since they sat down together. She keeps looking at him. He feels trapped by her stare, pinned down and shot through. Twists physically, a roll of his head on his shoulders.
"I speak without thinking. Forget what I say."
ÓrfhlaithShe knows this feeling: the sweeping, flooding swell of it. This time it rises so quickly in her that she has to remind herself of her mother's voice, telling her not to resist. Magic is like this. It lifts, and the chaos of it swirls, and the civilized human half of her, with no claws or fangs or fur, resists that primordial maelstrom. Fears where it might take her. The first time she felt it she was so scared, felt her very body recoiling from the energy, felt tears coming to her eyes. Still it rose, and her mother did not touch her with comfort or constraint, only threaded out her voice to her daughter like a rope to hold onto:
ride it. ride it.
Non-resistance, release of control: these were lessons that could get her killed in most situations. There were times where that fear, that power, was what survival depended on. But not in this. Not in magic, and not in true power. It has to fill her. She has to let it rise, and when it threatens to swallow her, water closing over her head, she has to permit it. She has to descend into it, let herself flow.
--
This is how it feels, though. Her heart pounding so hard that it makes it hard to take a breath. Her heartbeat fills her entire body. Her skin tingles in waves, always going upward, across her cheeks, into her hair. It feels like an endless touch, a thousand ghostly caresses. The boundary between her own flesh and the night sky dissolves.
And it always rises like this, and she knows that it will leave her if she questions it, and she knows that it will die if she tries to direct it. She can only surrender to it, but that surrender is still the choice she can make. Which she makes. Lets it move through her. Lets herself descend. Lets herself flow
into his lap. Onto him, touching his skin. With hands on his chest, his shoulders, running over his arms. She exhales in a rush at the contact, overwhelming to her, who never touches, is never touched. Presses closer and against him, nuzzling her face against his neck, inhaling forcefully. Rubs their heads together. Elongates her spine, head tipping back, arching over him, feeling him against her in return. A shudder goes through her, and her breath shudders through her.
ConallMaybe he can hear her heart beat. So fast, so loud. Maybe he can hear the promise of what she does in that hectic rhythm. Predict it, see it coming, not be surprised by it.
Or maybe it's just that he's an animal, and this is the first, basest instinct. Survival of the species. Propagation of the genome. Few of those words have even been invented yet, but the concepts are as old as life. As black and deep and fathomless as magic.
All of which is to say:
she climbs into his lap. And he is not surprised. Not long, anyway. Her hands trace him out and his skin is hot, sticky with summer. He smells like smoke and woodland and sweat and himself. His hands grab at her immediately. Grasp her long waist, slender back. Pull at that flimsy, scandalous shift-like dress.
Her breath shudders through her. He thinks of wingbeats. Butterflies; sparrows. Delicate, breakable things. He bites her neck as her head tips back. Clips at the skin with his teeth, grips the flesh of her shoulder.
A sort of tangled, twisted fury fills him. Not true anger; just -- tension. Impatience. He yanks at her dress. Something rips. He turns her under him, her back to the earth, his body a dark hot shadow above. Says nothing as he starts rucking the thin fabric up, baring those legs that he's only stolen glances of; that skin at which he's only chanced glimpses.
ÓrfhlaithCannot stop touching him. Doesn't kiss him, doesn't whimper or moan or anything. Doesn't even know what this is, or why. She does not question, because pausing to question is death. You forget that you cannot breathe water, that you cannot see in darkness, that there are hungry creatures circling you.
Her shift is rough, just plain cloth. But it is short, as such things go, and he can almost always see her ankles, her calves. Those slender arms, bared to summer. Feels it all now, though: knees and thighs, narrow hips. Feels her pounding pulse between his teeth and hears her pant out a breath. They both hear fabric tear as he pulls at her, ferocious in his eagerness.
The ground is hard here, where the soft moss and grasses leave off towards stone. She gasps when he puts her down, climbs over her. Lifts her hips as the shift rucks up, arches her back and pulls it the rest of the way off, reaches for him.
ConallThey are neither of them pausing to question. That would be death. That would be madness. He's not even thinking about tomorrow. Sunrise, daylight; how will he face her then? What will they make of this night? It seems an eternity away. It seems it will never come. He is drunk on wine, drunk on meat, drunk on the sight of her. He's never seen her like this, bare from head to toe, not a scrap, not a shred, not a single clinging wisp of clothing left.
Has the presence of mind to rear back. Push up on his hands, look at her. Pitch-black hair and those depthless blue eyes. Even in the darkness he thinks he can see their color. Remembers their hue, though he hardly looks her way at all.
She reaches for him. He comes down over her, biceps bunching, arms sliding around her. Between her arching back and the scratching stone. He doesn't kiss her; might have never learned how. Uses his mouth, though, nips at her cheek and her lips, licks her chin, her throat. Rubs his face against the side of her neck. Rubs his body against hers, his chest to her breasts, his abdomen to hers.
Reaches down and the back of his wrist brushes her belly. He yanks and tugs at the rough rope affixing those equally rough trousers to his waist. When the knot comes loose the garment loses what little shape it had and he pushes, shoves, kicks it down. Now he's bare too. Touching her with a coarse, inexpert hand, pawing at her thighs, between her legs. Growls when he finds what he's searching for, touches her where she's soft and wet and hot. Scarcely a breath later he's grinding against her, rubbing his arousal blatantly and shamelessly against her thigh, between her legs.
They've said nothing at all. They've barely made a sound. All there is is the rush of their breathing. Pound of their heartbeats. Scuff of their plain-made clothing against the stone.
Órfhlaithno,
she thinks, and he may hear it, though her lips don't move. When he rears back. Doesn't mean anything to her, makes no sense. She reaches for him, pulls at him, draws him back to her. And might kiss him, but feels him against her body and sighs again, her breath so much lighter than she feels. The way he feels against her breasts. How hot his skin is. His arms around her. She can still smell the mead on his breath as he bites at her, licks her, discovers she has a taste if not a scent. She knows he can feel her shuddering beneath him; she can feel every muscle curl and coil in his body as he moves over her. Rubs against her.
She gasps when he pushes his clothing out of the way. Cannot see him, and doesn't rear back herself, or push him away to look. That would take far too much thinking. His hand searches for her. And she cries out, sudden, with some degree of startlement. Feels her whole body tighten up, squirm, feels -- and hears -- her laughter, erupting out of her like a spring. She clutches at his arms, holds onto them as though they will keep her anchored, and then her hands slip, and she lets go, and rubs herself back on him as he strokes his body, his cock, against her skin.
Did not surprise him, when she climbed onto him. When he felt how hard her heart had been beating -- how had he not heard it at the fire, or when he looked at her, or when he found her drowsing in the grass? How did he lay beside her then and not feel the ache of her very bones? But it did not surprise him when she touched him, so fully and so forcefully.
Does it surprise him now, when she reaches for him, and follows the line of his cock with her hand, and then wraps around him and draws him to her opening? Does it shock him, that she knows? That when she takes him, she does so unhesitatingly, unwarily?
Or does he think: all women must simply know.
ConallShe knows.
She must simply know.
All women --
but that's not what he thinks. Because there are no other women like her. Because there are none like her, and she is not a woman at all but a witch; something no more human than he is. Perhaps a little closer, but not quite.
Breath erupts from him, all in a rush. It's the feel of her. His hands grasp at her skin; then they turn over and he grasps at the earth. Stone. Pebbles slipping against the pads of his fingers, tiny flecks of dirt, debris. She takes him in and he bites her in a silent and all-consuming hunger. Grips her in his teeth and bucks against her, slides in her palm, pushes into her hard and fast.
Lets go a groan that frightens small creatures from their sleep. A sudden scurrying in the undergrowth -- then just the sounds they make again. Moon above, stars above; distant dimming glow of the village below. He feels suspended here, caught between a heaven he knows not of, a hell he doesn't believe in. Enraveled in her and lost suddenly on the taste of her, which is somehow more evocative and intimate than any scent could be. Has her in his teeth as he begins to fuck her, a short, rough, choppy coupling, very much like some sudden storm bursting out of the clear skies of their otherwise quiet and uncomplicated existence together.
ÓrfhlaithIn another mind, when she has her feet on the ground and when she is not letting the beat of her heart or the flow of magic through her body create her reality, she might pause to think that she should tell him what she really is, and how she came to be this way. Where she comes from, and what it all means. Some deep-seated sense of accountability that makes her apologize to honeybees might provoke her to tell him that she is not a woman, and not merely a witch, and that she really is the product of all things inhuman.
But right now she is fucking him. Roughly, without thought of orgasm or even, truly, pleasure. She does feel pleasure, though. Feels it in her body every time he thrusts, strokes. Her hand clutches tightly at his hip, shoves him back, and he feels for the first time just how physically strong she is, how surprising it is coming from that slender body. She might very well be able to throw him off. But that's not how she pushes him. Just pushes -- restrains. Holds back for a moment, then draws him near. Does this over, and over,
til he finds this rhythm, neither choppy nor brutal, one that syncs with her body, like surrendering to the current of a river and letting it carry you.
Eventually her hand leaves him. She wraps her arms around him and begins to kiss him. Kisses his mouth, breathing with him, feeling his heartbeat in his tongue.
ConallThe strength in her startles him twice. Once, that she has any at all, when so often he assumes she -- all the world -- are frail breakable things beside his unnatural might. Twice, that it is enough to hold him back. She can read surprise in him: the tension in his arms, the way he pulls back to look at him. But she doesn't shove him away, scramble out from under him, flee into the woods. She holds him back. She draws him near. She sets a pattern that engraves itself in his bones, until it becomes subconscious.
Then those long thin arms wrap around him. Then they're moving together, and it's not him fucking her; it's the two of them together. It's all his strength and bulk reined to the rhythm she sets. And then she kisses him, and a third time she startles him, makes him rear back in surprise. He grunts into her mouth. Turns away at first, so foreign and unexpected the sensation, but her hands are on his back, her hands are in his hair, and he turns back.
Her mouth is waiting. His mouth opens to hers. He kisses her as roughly and inexpertly as anything, and as hungrily: eats at her mouth, grows ardent, fervent, slams into her harder and harder until she pushes him, holds him back again.
That's when the first word in an age escapes him. It's her name, or his best approximation of it. Serrated, ragged-edged, panted out with a growl: "Orla." His hand presses roughly over her brow, into her hair. He kisses her again, so fiercely he pushes her back.
ÓrfhlaithMakes her heart pound. When he kisses her, and she feels the way that kissing her makes him feel -- the way he fucks her then, pants at her, growls. Makes her heart pound, and makes her cunt wet. She quickens their pace, knowing -- perhaps just hoping -- it will drive him wild. Her hands run up and down his sweating sides. He snarls her name like that and she moans: the only answer she can give. He kisses her, hard like that, and she rolls her head on her shoulders, out from under his pressing hand, his force, only to kiss him again. Softer, but deeper.
It doesn't last. She pulls away to breathe, and where she clutches at his back her nails dig in. She buries another outcry in his flesh, her mouth opening against his shoulder until her teeth set in him. Her legs slide higher, wrap more tightly around him. Something builds in her, the same heart-thudding, swelling rise of power she felt before she touched him. ride it, ride it. She does. She closes her eyes, groaning against his flesh, her legs and her hands urging him faster, harder now.
He feels hair on his forearms -- the ones folded under her. Feels air on his knees -- the ones pressed into the ground. He still feels the earth beneath him, or something like it: leverage to push against. Something holding him up. But he does not feel stone. Does not feel any of it. Only her, beneath him. Only her body, taking his. Only air, a handspan of it at least, between her soft back and the ground they were lying on.
And the heat of her, all-encompassing, world-destroying, mind-melting. The way she sounds, crying out on every thrust that he gives her.
ConallShe is teaching him softness. Tenderness. Perhaps she does not realize it, but she is. Every time she holds him back from such brutal, mindless force. Every time she moves out from his gripping, crushing, restraining strength. Every time she kisses him deeper, and softer, and more unforgettably. He has never known softness before. There was no room for it in his life, which has been an unforgiving, dangerous one. She still doesn't know what it was that mauled him so badly the night they met. One tries not to think: all his strength, all his survivability, and evidently it still paled in comparison.
There are monsters in the night. He is one of them, but not the worst.
She is not one of them, but she is not mundane either. Look: there's her savagery. She bites him. He snarls. Her legs wrap tighter and it drives him a little insane. It did not shock him that she knew, but only because she is a witch, a weaver of magic, a creature only loosely governed by all the natural laws and instincts that he must obey. She is moaning now. Crying out, and he never knew anyone could make such sounds. Still they trigger something in him, and something in him recognizes and is inflamed.
He grabs at her. He kisses; he bites. She is so hot, she rises like heat itself. He feels himself leave the earth and he hasn't the presence of mind to be shocked. He wraps his arms around her. She rides him. He lights up, some coiled tension inside him suddenly snapping -- an incandescent, obliterating sort of pleasure that outstrips whatever fumbling release he may or may not have found out in that shambling lean-to of his. His embrace is so tight, then. The force of those thrusts so utter, so firm, so unwavering, even as the heavy musculature of his body shudders, jolts, slips entirely from his conscious control.
ÓrfhlaithIt's possible she doesn't even know what is happening. It's possible -- it's probable. When she cries out against him she's already so far gone, so lit up that her skin nearly glows. She can't breathe; she breathes anyway, and each breath is a miracle. She uses his body and gives him hers. She enjoys this beyond quite thinking of it as a this, or thinking at all. Feels it, though.
Feels him. Feels him in her arms and inside of her. Feels how hot his cock is, how firm. Feels the strength of his arms, and the roughness of his skin. Feels scars. Feels all of him, and knows him, though she does not even know his real name. This does not matter now. She knows him. She feels it with as much unquestioning, thoughtless certainty as people feel air in their lungs.
He has no words for what is happening to him, or what he feels happening to her. She uses no words to describe it, or warn him of it. She just arches, her hair hanging down, sweeping rock. Her body slides against his, threatens to slip away if he doesn't hold to her. She tightens, and quivers, and small flames as blue as her eyes lick out from her very fingernails, lashing hungrily at the air, at his flesh, as though she could consume him not just with her lust but with her magic, with whatever force it is in her that holds her aloft, that gives her such strength, that exorcises demons, that makes him hear her voice in his mind, calling to him namelessly, wordlessly,
calling to him nonetheless.
They coil, and snap, and obliviate. They clutch at each other. They lose themselves, minds unfurling.
Slowly they lower again. Gently. As she is trembling, and catching her breath, and as her cunt is quivering around him, tightening on him in waves still. They are set down, ever so carefully, while she is still panting for air.
ConallShe lifts them both, but uses not an ounce of strength.
She burns, but leaves him unharmed.
She sets him alight. She takes him where he never thought to go. And now, in the aftermath, as they drift gently back to earth -- he opens his eyes. Finds himself looking out over the edge of the bluff. The distant horizon. The stars turning so slowly over the earth.
Her cunt squeezes and releases, squeezes and releases. It is a language for which he has no vocabulary; no understanding beyond the most basic, the deepest. His body replies, like to like. Shiver down the spine. Quick-clenching jerk of his cock. He turns his face to her skin, rubs against her neck, her shoulder. Lays himself out over her with a sigh, covering her still.
Now that they are quiet, the small sounds of the forest begin to return. Insects and night-flying bats. An owl snatching some rodent from the ground. And the wind, and the trees, breathing around them like giants.
After some time he withdraws from her. Rolls aside. Sits up slowly, the very marrow of his bones molten. What little light there is gleams off his back, the lee of his shoulder. He looks over the lowlands, those distant and dimming fires wavering in the lingering heat.
Says nothing. Doesn't try to quantify or explain what just happened. Doesn't want to break the moment.
ÓrfhlaithThe strength she has in her cannot be seen: the strength to push him back when he's on top of her can't be seen in her slender arms. It is the same strength that lets her lift them from the earth without even realizing it's happening. She flies, though tonight not so far, and not so high, and all the while she's kissing him, moaning into his mouth when they come, when her body tightens around his and his hips flex hard, ferocious, between her legs. The witch forgets that she can call the elements, and fire licks from her fingertips as though as eager to consume him as she is. When they settle back to the stone, her mind soars over the landscape.
She does not feel him withdraw from her. Does not sense it when he rolls aside from her. She is seeing far, far from here: castles on hills, colors she has never imagined, people in other lands so different from her own they seem like other worlds entirely. Her mind unspools in all directions: she sees distant past, immediate future. She breathes deeply, dreamily, her eyes closed and her mind lost to an endless sky.
So it goes. For some time, until she begins to be drawn back to her body. She knows she cannot resist this, either, or she will die. Her soul will leave, only to wander, and she will never find her way back. So when her body tugs at her spirit, longing for her return, the witch gently surrenders. She sinks back into flesh, and feels that the wolf has left her cunt but not her side. Smells him nearby, feels the pleasant burn and ache between her thighs where he once was. She blinks a few times, slowly, and breathes in deeply, as though waking.
Turns her head to look at him, lying there beside her. And rolls to him, against his side. Her leg hooks over his leg. Her arm covers his middle. She rests her chin on his pectoral muscle, looking with him out at the villages nearby, watching the fires go out.
ConallHe doesn't know where she's gone. Possibly he is unaware she has even departed her body, this time. This place. Perhaps that's why her scentlessness is so constant, so pervasive: perhaps her soul is tethered so loosely to her body that she exudes no smell of her own.
He is aware, however, of her silence. And he thinks perhaps he has offended her. Perhaps she is waking to herself; to the madness they have perpetuated. Perhaps she will get up and run away, and if she does, he thinks to himself he will disappear into the woods. He will leave her be. He will not return again to her humble home on the hills, nor to his own shabby den that he built beside it.
But she does not get up. She does not flee, disgusted and horrified. She breathes as though waking, and then she rolls against him. Threads her limbs over his; puts her head on his chest. Narrow bones, narrow face, everything about her slender and fragile-seeming. He doesn't move for a moment. Then he wraps an arm uncertainly, unfamiliarly around her.
It is warm, and the air is heavy with summer moisture. He is unafraid to stay here; unwilling to move.
ÓrfhlaithThe witch says nothing of her own. She drowses against stone that is still warm from the summer day, and his body, which is always warm. Her fingers draw patterns on his chest, mindlessly swirling, lightly scratching. His arm comes around her and she does not tense, or startle. She just breathes, tipping her head to lie against him, cradled between body and arm. He smells. In the night air, with fresh sweat, when it has not been so long since his last bath, he does not reek terribly. But he smells. She does not mind. Nestles down there, as though to sleep.
ConallAnd so they do sleep. The wolf's arm grows heavy and lax around the witch. His breathing evens. He sleeps, and so does she: there on the edge of those cliffs, with the subtly spicy scent of summer wildgrass in their nostrils.
The night deepens. The temperature drops at last; a wind rises, descending from the mountain peaks, bringing moisture and mist. When they wake, it's from the cold. Where their skin was exposed -- which is much of it -- they are chilled. A grey false dawn spreads along the sky. Below, the village is still, the last of the fires long burnt to ash.
The wolf sits up. Dirt-smudged, rumpled. He rubs his face and then he reaches for his clothes. Begins to dress, saying nothing, passing the witch her shift-like dress when he finds it.
ÓrfhlaithIt is cold when they wake. She shivers awake, night dew falling on her and the air growing frigid in the hills. She at first tries to burrow against him, conceal herself from the chill beneath his limbs, but it does no good. She wakes, and her wriggling is waking him. She is searching in the dark, half-blind, for her shift. It comes to her from his hands, nearly invisible in the dark. She slips it on over her head as he scoots into his breeches, but she still sinks to his side, tucking her face against his shoulder. Still she says nothing. She has said nothing... for hours. Nothing since he asked her who she is, only to be told:
me.
Perhaps he knows a little more of what that means, now. But she does not break the silence she has held for so long. She tucks against him, soaking up his warmth, one of her hands resting on his shoulder. Perhaps he lifts her, when he stands. Or perhaps, more likely, they walk together. She keeps her hand in his, walking back through the woods. She cannot see quite as well as he does in the dark. She does not try.
The fire, banked before he left it, is cold and dark now. The goat is sleeping. They walk, and when they approach her hut, the witch pauses, but only for a moment. And then she leads him in with her.
ConallOne wonders if the goat was confused when her mistress did not return. More likely this is hardly the first time Órfhlaith has wandered from the fire, lost herself in the wilds. To be sure, the goat does not wake as they sneak back in the chilly pre-dawn. They held hands in the shadowy woods, gripping harder when one or the other stumbled over something they could not see. They hold hands still as they cross the edge of the garden. Pass the chopping block.
Near her hut he makes a small motion toward his lean-to. She pauses. Then she keeps her hold on his hand and leads him in.
He has not been inside her home since the day he built his lean-to. It has never felt like anything but her home, and hers alone; even when he slept within. Even then, he always slept on the dirt floor, near the fire. He stands in the center of the hut now, looking about. Things are as he remembered. Herbs hung from the ceiling. A firepit which serves as stove and heat both -- cold now. A bed, far from luxurious, but perhaps moderately more comfortable than his heap of furs and straw.
Here, surrounded by the trappings of what passes as civilization for them, he seems to have found his words again. One at least, quietly: "Why?"
And after a moment, a few more: "Was it curiosity?"
ÓrfhlaithIt's dark in here. No fire in the pit, no bright starlight or sunshine from the openings. Things are the same as they were when she exorcised... something... from that woman, Beatrice. The witch does not let go of him as she leads him to the spare 'bed', which -- truth be told -- is little different from his heap of furs and straw. It is narrow and set against a wall. Her feet in the dust know the way, nevermind the dark, and she heads for it, still weary. Her bones ache for rest. She walks, and he whispers why.
Feels her turn, more in the twist of her hand in his hand than anything else. Maybe sees what little light they have glint off her eyes, when he asks her again -- when he tells her what he means.
Maybe he can see the curve of her mouth, when she smiles. The wry curl at one corner. Hears the shake of her head: hair dusting her shoulders.
"No," she whispers back. "I knew what I wanted."
ConallRarely does the wolf smile, but he smiles now. Corner of his mouth rises as though to meet hers. Then his mouth does meet hers: he steps forward, raises his free hand to her face. Touches her jaw carefully, delicately, as he kisses her in kind.
She does not need to bid him to lie down. He does so himself, climbing onto her low and narrow bed. It is crowded with the two of them. He keeps his back to the cold wall; wraps his arm around her when she lies down as well.
ÓrfhlaithDoes not expect his response to be so tender. Does not ever expect him to be tender. Perhaps: does not expect tenderness from anyone.
But that's how he kisses her. Still imperfectly, but she rises to it, closing her eyes, sharing it far more secretly than anything on the stone bluff. Her hand brushes his abdomen, the backs of her knuckles stroking his skin. She does not need to bid him anywhere, but they are still standing, still close, when their mouths part, and she whispers:
"Again?"
ConallSo he doesn't go to bed.
So he doesn't lie down and wrap her in his arm and go to sleep.
So his eyes flicker in the dark; gleam. And his mouth moves again; a suggestion, at least, of a smile. He puts his hands around her waist. He didn't need to be taught last night -- guided, but not taught -- and he doesn't need to be now, either. He lifts her, biceps bunching; sits on her bed with her astride his lap.
There's a rip on her dress where his impatience tore something loose. It's mendable. His fingers skim the flaw, curious but unrepentant, before he starts undressing her again.
ÓrfhlaithThis is different. Her heart's pounding doesn't drown out all other sound, all sense and reason, all awareness of anything but that driving drumbeat. She can hear him, and feel him, just as she did before, but it's still different. She knows where she is. She remembers her name. There is less magic in this, but it only leaves room for something else.
Her eyes catch the reactions on his face, the subtle flickers of delight, of desire, of comfort. She sees him smile and it makes her laugh. The sound is bright and breaks through the darkness a bit, startling. She doesn't apologize for it, or hush herself. She is lifted up, and this arouses her, just as touching him aroused her, just as his kiss aroused her. Just as the simple fact of having him in her hut aroused her -- has been arousing her since she first put him to sleep here, his wounds bandaged and his breathing ragged.
As before, they begin with her sitting astride him. She kisses him, hands on his face, while he touches her shift, touches the tear he made in his haste. The first feeling of fabric rucking up her thigh makes her pause, drawing back, lifting it off and away as she did before. Sits on his lap naked then, kissing him again, as hungrily as she did last night in her madness. Hungrier, perhaps, tipping his head back with it, giving a soft snarl into his mouth.
They work together to get his breeches off this time. She's impatient in a way she wasn't before, leaning over him as he sheds his clothes until he's lying on his back. Takes him just as surely, just as easily, as she did before. This time, though, she's riding him, her hands on his body, running up his abdomen, his chest, caressing his neck and his face until she can't bear it anymore and leans over him, goes on kissing him. No woman, not a single goddamn one in the village below or many villages beside, would do this without prodding. Christianity is new, but alive and well, and everyone knows its fresh mythology: this was how the first wife of Adam was damned, and became a monster. This is against nature, what the witch does with his body.
His body knows better. His body knows what nature really is. Feels it, inside of her, and beneath her, and in the thudding of her heart when his hand cups her breast, lifts it, feels that pounding behind her ribs.
It's warmer, in here. They sweat. She's slick with it by the time she comes, crying out more loudly than she did on the bluff, folding over him with these aching, vibrant sounds from her throat. Collapses on top of him when she's done, languid and unresisting if he rolls her over, smirking with pleasure and laziness if he holds her on top of him while he thrusts, snarls, comes inside of her again. Licks sweat from his throat as he comes down from it, as shameless and affectionate as an animal. Doesn't move to cover herself any more than she did out on the rocks; doesn't see the need.
Sleeps, right there on top of him, until drowsiness turns to dozing turns to true deep dreams, which shows her sliding off of him, rolling, her back to him, his arm and leg covering her, blanketing her in what little warmth she needs.
Sleeps, for hours, well past dawn.
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