Work Text:
The air was cool within the little glen. The sun was burning bright and hot above, but the wide branches of the apple tree blocked the harshest of rays to dapple the clearing with shadow. A faint wind wove through the wood, sending light ripples across the surface of the brook that wound by it and whispers through the apple tree’s leaves.
The tree kept shivering even after the wind had passed, as if it were chilled by the mid-fall temperatures. Its apples were ripening and already beginning to tumble down to land on the mossy earth, but curiously, none of the forest creatures had dared to touch them. They could feel it in the air when they approached the tree, a sort of warping and flowing within themselves that they had no word for but knew as other. And creatures, though they lack sense in some regards, are almost always wise enough to leave things alone when something other is involved.
So it was to an empty clearing that the woman revealed herself, stepping out of her tree as seamlessly as you or I would walk through a breath of steam. Her hair, the rich brown of leaf-loam, curled with abandon around delicate features and bright green eyes. Her gaze swept across the glen once, expectantly, before settling on the stream’s glossy surface. So she waited, fixated upon it, so still that a human would easily have missed her if they had happened to stroll by.
But this was a sacred forest, a special forest, and no human had trodden upon its earth for hundreds of years. For the lady of the wood was not human. Nor was the lady of the stream, who slipped from the shallows to stand upon its stony banks before her. Her hair was as sleek and dark as the deepest of river currents, and her eyes held the wildness and danger of a whirlpool. But her hand was gentle as she reached out to touch the other woman’s face, her fingers soft as they lingered on her cheekbone.
They were dryad and naiad, forest and river, and they fell upon each other with a fervor that could rend the earth. They were sturdy trunk and sapling bough, raging falls and tranquil pool. They would kill or be felled by true flame, but together, they burned brighter than the stars.
When it was over, in the aftermath of sighs and quiet kisses, they regretfully broke apart. Slipping back into their separate worlds, flesh ran to water and fused into wood as the two women vanished.
Above the clearing, the yellow wedge of sun dipped beneath the horizon. The forest quieted as the stars pricked into existence. Far below the earth, tree roots wound into the depths of a river and tangled there like a promise.