Whoever had wandered in wouldn't find their way out - not before I found them.
Today's work was the best kind of work.
Today I hunted.
I fell to all fours and moved through the forest, my footsteps falling silent as if I had grown from the soil rather than stepped on it. My body felt good, so I began to move, taking long strides through the forest, each root a familiar knot beneath the underside of my paws. The birds and animals went silent as I passed. I was the Lord of this forest and even as I sustained it, I fed on it, from it. They could sense when I was the safe caretaker, wandering through to admire their lives and their work. Today I was the hunter, and that meant they treated me as they did every other predator, with respectful silence designed to avoid my attention.
I felt the warmth of sunbeams on my back as I passed through their rays.
I smelled my prey before I saw her.
Her.
I found her on the very edge of the forest, just inside the barrier that hid my land from discovery. Her scent was thick in the air - the scent of a female, ripe with life and something farmore precious to me. I breathed in the smell. Heat flared in my loins, a stiffening I wasn't expecting, one I'd heard about but never experienced, disrupting my intention to hunt and kill and changing it to hunt, observe, and capture - changing my purpose to something else.
This human was not for feeding the forest.
She was for claiming.
I adjusted, my body changed as my front paws shifted into long fingers. I reached up to grab a low branch. I swiftly climbed up into the canopy, letting the new shape of my tail wrap around branches to help me keep my balance as I moved swiftly from one old-growth branch to another until I was above the source of that intoxicating scent. I could feel the hounds on the other side of the barrier, pacing as they waited to see if she would re-emerge. They knew that to cross the boundary was to enter my domain, and any that entered would feed the roots of my trees.
The mundane human was wearing the garments of the school, the vivid red that marked her as easy prey at the bottom of the unnatural hierarchy there. The flimsy skirt exposed the thick roundness of her thighs as she sat in a pile of crushed ferns, bent down from the weight of her body falling into them. She was leaning forward, examining a turquoise bell flower, her eyes wide as the joy on her face radiated onto the flower, just as potent as sunshine. I could see the flower drinking it in, moving too subtly for a human to notice as it practically shimmered with happiness.
"You are so beautiful," the human said as she brushed a strand of long brown hair behind her ear. She reached out and gently stroked the edge of the petal, and the bellflower sang out.
Then all the flowers around it began to sing with it, delighted at the attention.
"Oh shit!" the human straightened, lurching up to her feet as she clasped both her hands over her mouth for a moment. "No no no, shuuuush!"
She looked all around her, her entire body tense as she waited for something to jump out at her.
It wasn't going to me, not yet.
"Where did the hounds go?" she whispered.
A lump on her shoulder shifted, a spritekin, draconian-shaped. It was emerald green, and the mohawk of spice leaves growing from its spine labeled it in my mind as a Saffrill, a type of spritekin that lived for a long time if they managed to evade capture by the Aos sí, who valued them for only what they could use them for. The one on her shoulder was fully grown, which meant it was older than even I was. Since it was with a mundane human, it must have entered into a familiar bond with her. Humans were useful for feeding their familiars, or any creature that feasted on them, with magical power.
The Saffrill was likely mind-speaking to its human, given the shifts in the human's facial expression from fear to relief. Then the Saffrill lifted her claw, pointed directly at me without even so much as glancing at me. I smiled as the human looked in my direction, her eyes roaming over the leaves that obscured me from her view. I felt a part of me change, as I let out a thick aroma, my body reacting in kind to the scent of the human.
"Why do I have to be polite to a tree?" the human asked. "Also, why does it smell so good?"
The Saffrill opened and closed her wings rapidly, slapping the leathery skin against the human's cheek.
The human rolled her eyes. "Ok fine."
She walked over to the base of my tree, grabbed the edges of her skirt, and put one foot behind the other. She bent at her knees, pulling her skirt out as she dipped lower for abrief moment. She looked at the Saffrill on her shoulder again. "Servant? Really?"
The Saffrill nodded.
The human took a big breath, then spoke out, staring at the trunk of the tree I perched in. "Oh great Lord of the Forest, please forgive our intrusion and grant us life within your lands. I am the... servant and bearer of the great and wonderful Veveron who seeks a land worthy of her eggs."
The human lowered her voice. "I didn't know you laid eggs."
That explained why the Saffrill had chosen the human. When it came time for them, they would wander for great distances until they found the perfect nesting place. This one must not have found any worthy of her in the Mundane and decided to try her luck by hitching a ride to the magic realm. However, there was a complication in my accepting their plea.
"You, human, smell like a mate," I said, letting my voice rumble, enhanced by the trees that carried the depths of its vibrations.
The human startled as she looked all around, seeking the origin of my voice. I would let her see me soon, but not as I was. I climbed down the back of the tree so she wouldn't see me, then let my body shift, following the pathways of my intentions, changing to meet the need that I had.
