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A Long Lost Love

Fyrn

A beetle clicks and buzzes past me in a tumbling flight, and the musk wafting off its dark carapace tells me more than an average conversation would.

Something large and heavy is headed this way.

The beetle isn’t scared.

It’s merely antisocial.

It knows our visitor.

I do too.

My face creaks as long unused lips form into a smile.

Few creatures venture this far.

The so-called Queen’s Forest has safer paths than the ones that cut through my glade—my home.

Before a lost soul wandered this deep, they would encounter enough peril to send them back to the safer road.

But the leaves twitch with yet more bugs chittering at the unusual presence.

Unusual, but not unwanted.

Even the birds titter and chirp, letting each other know.

She’s coming.

My tiny neighbors aren’t afraid of her.

Even if she wasn’t familiar, they know I won’t let anyone or thing hurt them in my part of these ancient woods.

I have sat in one position for too long.

As I stretch out my creaking joints, tiny roots snap from the soil beneath me and splinters fly as I pull away from the tree that had cradled me.

I form myself into a bipedal shape and run newly formed hands over arms and legs that look too human.

My legs fill with vines, twisting into the mimicry of muscles as I arrange myself into the version of myself she is most used to.

The flowers overhead have unfurled a little further than usual.

They turn toward her, even though she’s still too far away.

They like her.

They have always liked her.

I pet the trumpet bloom and whisper, “Me too.”

The leaves flutter despite the lack of a breeze.

My forest is alive.

The so-called Queen can keep the patches stolen when other dryads were captured or killed.

As long as she doesn’t try to do the same to me or any of the rest of us left, I won’t argue her stewardship.

If she takes issue with me claiming one of her citizens, though …

Tana is mine, no matter how rarely I am able to claim her.

And she’s back.

Finally .

And I don’t want to wait anymore.

Climbing into the canopy, I follow a path made for me by my friends.

Their branches twine together, holding hands as their leaves move out of my way.

I can smell the leather long before I see her.

I don’t have to go too far to find her.

Tana walks slowly along the path.

Saddlebags lay over her back and she hums as she hops over a moss-covered log.

The branches sag and bounce as all four of her hooves hit the ground.

She is so pretty when she jumps.

I sit on a branch, swinging my new legs, and watch her wander toward me.

She’s shaved the sides of her hair short again, but what’s left on top of her head and flowing down her back are the same vibrant pink as her tail, her barrel is dappled pink and white, like a soft patch of flowers, even though her legs and hooves are a dark, dark gray.

She is so much the same, even though time always changes her.

Her arms are still covered in the tattooed flowers I wish I could make real.

I want to reach out and make them bloom.

I watch and wait and want …

And the very instant she would have passed beneath me, I slip from the branches, holding on with one hand and growing another as I fall.

Dropping down from above, I catch her up, caging her with vines and twigs grown from my own body.

“What’s this? A centaur caught off guard?” I wrap around her more tightly, sprouting twigs to twist into the straps of the harness that holds a piece of moss green cloth over the front of her torso with its leather straps.

It is so easy to pull her up off her front hooves.

“How should I punish her for such complacency?”

Smiling, Tana turns her face toward me.

“Am I complacent if I know that the dryad who keeps this glade safe will keep me safe as well?”

Tana’s hand rises, taking hold of mine, pressed over her heart.

“You’re supposed to play along,” I whisper.

She tips her head to the side, braided necklace sliding on her skin, a smile on her petal soft lips.

“Now that you’ve caught me, what forfeit do I owe?” Her gaze drops to my lips and I change them for her, softening the hard wood before I kiss her.

“I’ve missed you,” she whispers against my mouth.

“I have missed you, too.”

Lingering here, holding her like I’ve caught her in a trap, I kiss her again.

Our time together is always too short.

I don’t plan to waste any of it.

I want to turn that smile into the scowl of bliss.

I want her sighs to turn to whimpers and then screams.

I want my glade to echo with the sounds of her pleasure and the very air to be filled with the magic of her ecstasy.

Fingers slipping into her mane of hair, I hold her even closer to me as I stretch and grow, making myself into the shape I know will allow me to do all the things I want to.

It’s grotesque in the name of function and I distract her from the extra appendages sprouting from me by slipping one of them beneath that soft fabric held in place by her harness.

Plucking it away, I let the fabric flutter to the ground and slide her bags off as well.

In the years I have known her, her breasts have ripened from firm unmalleable flesh to these beautiful, soft fruits …

I fondle them, pinching the bud of her nipples and smile as she flinches away

“What happened to hello?” She chuckles, shivering against my touch, and I catch up her hands.

“We never have enough time for hello.” All I ever get are long goodbyes.

I coil my hand, turning it into a knotted club, and Tana stamps one foot when I slide it along her soft and swollen pussy.

Soon.

Soon I’ll make her whimper and whinny.