Monthly story - Non binary Leshy/Leshen x reader (nsfw) (Patreon)

Hello! Here's October's monthly story for you. A Leshy was mentioned on Discord and I ventured that it might be a fun monster for this month - different from all these orcs you've been getting at any rate! 

Here's 3661 words of gender neutral reader and non-binary forest monster. Warnings for injury to the reader at the start. 

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Sounds of the skirmish diminished as you hobbled into the forest, blood seeping through the thick leather of your jerkin. It seemed so ridiculous now to have hoped that it would have defended you against the blades of the raiders who had plagued the coastal towns in the region for months now. This week it had been your own town’s turn, and despite having all that time to prepare, it had been a massacre. 

They’d been nicknamed the ‘Red Raiders’ for the red tides they left in their wake when their sleek, fleet, shallow-drafted ships retreated, and the coastal trading town which bordered the Old Forest had fared no better than any other in the summer raids. You’d done your part, of course you had, but you were no Kingsguard. What had you expected?

The woods swallowed the sound as you staggered further in, clutching the searing wound in your side. It wasn’t deep, but it was bleeding everywhere and the sight of it filled you with blinding terror. The thought that you were going to die alone in the arms of the tangled trees was hardly a comfort. 

Careering heedlessly through brambles and bracken, you eventually toppled over the edge of a small gully and landed, winded and dazed, at the bottom on the gravelly shore of a mountain stream. 

Staring up at the chinks of sky visible through the outstretched branches like fragments of a stained glass window above, you felt hot tears rolling down your cheeks and into your hair. You’d run from the fight on the outskirts of town instead of staying, and now you felt like the worst kind of coward as well. 

Heavy footfalls reached your ears, splashing through the Waite. Some large forest creature - perhaps a stag or even a bear - had come sniffing, drawn by the scent of your blood. 

When you raised your head to look and saw the bare skull of a deer, with antlers adorned with flowering vines, and the slender, bark-like body which supported it, you passed out. 

Pain woke you, though the sharp slash in your side had faded to a dull ache now. An odd tightness around your chest made you gasp and try to sit up, but the moment you did, something reached out from the darkness beside you and pressed you back down into whatever it was you were lying on. Awareness ebbed and flowed, and you allowed yourself to float on the dark tide for a long time. 

When you next stirred to wakefulness, it was at the sound of panting. Something canine lurked in the back of whatever dank cave you were in and set your skin crawling as you tried to look around you. “Where the hell am I?” you mused aloud, and something snuffled behind you, making you yelp and scramble away. 

When you turned around, you were confronted with an enormous wolf, sitting only inches from where you’d been lying, tilting its head curiously, its large, triangular ears pricked forwards. 

“Oh. My. God.”

The dark wolf turned and you followed its gaze to the back of the cave, and the memory of the creature from the gully flashed back across your mind. 

You froze. 

The creature filled the space at the rear of the barrow-like cave and your eyes widened, throat going dry. “What the…?”

Clawed hands with fingers long and gnarled like roots, tips gleaming ivory-pale in the dim light, came up in a gentling gesture, and you swallowed thickly. It made the gesture again, as though trying to calm a frightened animal, and you supposed that in that moment, you were little more than a cornered rabbit.

“What the hell are you?”

Bone glimmered in the shadows as it tilted its head slightly, wood anemones winking softly as they adorned the thick antlers crowing the bare skull. Its body was skinny, wiry and knotted like a twisted vine, though they wore a long, dark cloak of some kind, and they appeared to have a feathery, almost downy collar around their neck. Their limbs were long and lanky, and for a long time, you simply stared. It made no move to attack you and after a long time, you finally dared speak.

“Can you understand me?” you eventually croaked. 

The skull atop the creature nodded very slowly. Was it the creature’s actual head or merely a mask?

“Can you speak?”

Again, the creature nodded, though more reluctantly. “It…” the creature began and you shuddered at the sound of its harsh voice. Like nails on chalkboard, the sound of it grated on the inside of your skull. Your mind was full with its presence. “It is not… pleasant…” the creature continued. “For you, or easy for me.”

“Right.”

“What the hell are you, and where am I?”

“I am… leshy,” they ground out in a voice like shattered glass. It made your vision blurry to hear it. 

“Leshy? Is that your name or what you are?” You glanced around the cave and found three more wolves lounging casually on the packed-earth floor. “And the wolves?”

“My friends. Please… rest…” the creature said without making a move to come any closer. “You… You are wounded. You need time to heal.” When you showed absolutely no sign of relaxing on your back as if it were a hot summer day at the beach, the creature growled softly, sounding like a panther, and you felt the blood drain from your face. “You are safe here. I am… guardian of these woods. Nothing will hurt you. Rest.”

“Right,” you murmured weakly. “Alright…”

In fact it was easier to lie down than remain sitting while the bandages gripped around your middle, and you lay back thinking that if you died - or perhaps if this were a fever dream - then you could think of worse fates. The raiders and their hacking blades and wild laughter came to mind and you shuddered. 

It took three days for the wound in your stomach to heal. Considering how deep the blade had gone, it was a miracle, and you knew that the strange creature that had rescued you must have employed some kind of forest magic. “Leshy,” you repeated to yourself when you woke alone in the cave with sunlight filtering down through a hole in the ceiling. 

A lone wolf guarded the entrance, but when you sat up, she padded over to you and sat beside you, tame as a lapdog. Everyone in the village knew about the wolves that lived in the forest, but you’d never seen one up close, and had had no idea that they were quite that big. 

“Hey there,” you said softly, and her ears twitched at the sound of your voice. “So, are you keeping me here, or are you keeping other stuff out?”

Of course, the wolf didn’t reply, but when you stood up carefully she cocked her head to one side again and followed you on your heels towards the exit of the den. Outside, sitting by the stream with a rabbit in its lap, was the leshy. 

The moment you emerged, they looked around. 

“Uh… hi?” you said as your eyes met that blank, black, hollow gaze from their empty eye sockets. The deer’s skull wasn’t quite what you’d first taken it for, you realised. The creature had definite canines, and they were big, thick and powerful. A chunk of ice slid through your gut at the realisation that it could very well have devoured you, had it been so inclined. 

They did nod their head, and the rabbit flailed suddenly, trying to get away. The creature released it, and to your surprise, the wolf at your side didn’t run after it. She did watch it with ice blue eyes though. 

“So… Am I free to leave?” you asked. 

The creature nodded. 

“No payment or anything?” you asked, your hand touching the bandages around your middle. 

The creature shook its head. 

“Alright. Well… you think you could point me in the direction of Roaring Rock Bay? This place is a bit of a tangle…”

Silently, the creature lifted an arm and pointed behind you with one of those strange, ivory-tipped fingers. The way its sinuous, bark-like body moved was fascinating, with its narrow waist and long, skinny, root-like legs, but everything felt too much like a dream for you to take in. You wanted to go home, raiders or not. 

Nodding your thanks, you turned and walked away. When you’d cleared the bank and the trees along the gully, you heard a long, low, mournful call, like a red deer stag in autumn. The sound was followed by a chorus of wolf voices from all over that part of the forest, and it send shivers down your spine. 

It was winter before you dared return to the woods. You told no one about your experience, and the community gradually rebuilt, preparing for the raids which would follow in the spring as surely as rain followed snow. 

This time you were gathering berries in the periphery of the forest, but while you’d put a lot of distance between yourself and the strange events of the previous summer, you'd never forgotten the bizarre creature’s kindness towards you. Guilt gnawed at you for the way you’d just left, but you tried tell yourself that you didn’t belong in the woods, and not to go too far from the border. 

As you plucked a remarkably fresh, healthy mushroom from the carpet of pine-needles and placed it in your basket of winter berries, you felt the woods go still and silent around you. 

Rising slowly, you turned and found the creature standing there as if it had always been there. 

“Hello again,” you said, trying to mask your fear behind a smile. 

The creature nodded and then touched its stomach in the place your own wound had been. 

You glanced down at your waist and then smiled. “I’m well, thanks. Listen, you fixed me up back then and I never got to thank you properly…”

The leshy shrugged. It was easily eight foot tall, not including the antlers, but it was so skinny and lanky, with arms that came down to its knees almost, and talons that could have opened up a cave bear if it had put its mind to it. Something told you that with its dominion over the forest, it wouldn’t have needed to do that. The claws were for defence against things from outside the forest, not inside. As the thought crossed your mind, a familiar-looking wolf trotted out from the fiery red bracken and yipped like a tiny puppy in excitement. 

“Hey there,” you chuckled as she loped over to you and stuck her nose into your hands. You crouched down and she nearly bowled you over. “I can’t believe I’m doing this with a wild animal. How have you been?”

The wolf didn’t respond, but she did enjoy being scratched on her neck and chest, and she tried to lick your cheeks. 

Eventually, the creature turned to leave and you looked up. “Wait?” you asked softly. 

The eerie figure paused and turned back towards you. 

“What are you?” you asked. “I know you said you’re a leshy, but I don’t know what that means?”

For a moment, they didn’t speak. Turning their palm up as if to inspect it, they stared at it for a while and then finally said, “I am… the forest. I keep… it safe.” 

You smiled. “The flowers on your antlers are gone,” you remarked, and they quirked their skull at an angle. “You had wood anemones on them last time. Is it because it’s winter now?”

That hand went up as if to check their antlers were still there, and then they barked a rough laugh. “You… remember?”

“Meeting something like you isn’t something you just forget…” you said. 

“True. I… I do not show myself… often.”

That took you by surprise. “You don’t need to defend the woods much then?”

They shrugged. “Sometimes your kind come in here with axes and fire, but the trees take care of themselves…”

“Right,” you said, eyeing the old oak to your right as if it were a scorpion about to strike. 

Once more the creature chuckled, a sound like crunching autumn leaves. 

“Listen, I want to thank you. You probably saved my life, and I acted like a dick. I’m not going to lie, I’ve never met anything like you before, but you don’t seem like the type to hurt others. How can I thank you?”

They shook their head in a broad gesture. 

“Seriously?” 

Pausing, they looked down at their feet. “Would… Would you like to stay a while?” they said in that harsh, guttural voice, like granite boulders scraping together. 

“Stay? With you?” 

They nodded. 

With a sly grin, you added, “With the pups be there too?” and you nodded at one of the wolves who was currently snuffling around your basket of berries, looking rather disappointed that it didn't contain a hunk of meat. That didn’t stop her delicately scoffing a few though before guiltily looking up at you, baring her teeth, and then skittering away to snap at falling snowflakes. 

The skull-headed creature stared at you before nodding slowly. “If… If you would like… they will… join us.”

You followed the leshy back through the frost-rimed grass, your breath billowing in the air around you, and now with a wolf on each side. They flitted in and out like shadows amongst the trees, and you marvelled at their playfulness. Nothing else was so happy or so well fed at this time of year. 

They led you in silence to the gully where you’d first met the creature, and then to the den. It was warm and dry, and almost cosy, though it lacked a fire pit. You didn’t suppose a creature made of living wood was all that keen on flames though. Bunches of herbs hung from roots that formed a thatch-like network of rafters above you, and a tiny fennec fox nestled at the back, its leg in a split. 

“You really do care for the forest, don’t you?” you said when you saw your female wolf trot over to the fox and nuzzle it as though it were her own pup. 

The leshy sank down to the floor, sitting cross legged, and nodded once. “It is… what I am.”

“You cared for me, but I’m not part of the forest…”

They shrugged. “You could be.”

Their words struck you as odd. “What do you mean?”

“You could live here.”

“With you?”

Another shrug. 

“It’s kind of cold,” you laughed. 

At that, the creature turned and fetched a blanket from behind them, woven together from strands of fluffy fibres. “Here,” they murmured. 

As you took it from them, your fingertips brushed theirs and they gasped. Their breath rattled like the wind in an empty canyon, and you paused. “You’ve got all these animals, but do they talk to you?”

“In their own way,” they murmured. 

“Yeah, but…?”

With a tilt of their head that spoke of a smile, though their blank, bone face gave nothing away, they said, “No. Not like you.”

“How about I come back and talk to you then,” you said. 

“I… I would like that. Will… you tell me of your world? The world beyond the forest?”

“Sure,” you said, huddling down into the blanket. It smelled like sun-warmed moss and you inhaled deeply before beginning to describe the fishing boats in the harbour and the bustling market stalls with wares from all over the kingdom. 

The leshy sat there, fascinated, motionless except for when a young male wolf trotted over and unceremoniously curled up between their folded legs. The long cloak they’d worn back in summer - despite the warmth then - was nowhere to be seen now, though thick moss covered the bark of their back. 

Since trade and business was slow in the town over the winter, you took many trips back into the forest to see the leshy. You stopped seeing the empty eyes in the bare skull as unnerving, and began to find comfort in the dark shadows of their face, in the blank, expressionless canvas of the white bone. They were patient, quiet, interested, and most of all, they were gentle. 

They informed you that they had no name, and scoffed when you suggested calling them Antlers or Deerskull. So you settled on ‘Leshy’ and left it at that, though you did shorten it to ‘Lesh’ which made them snort amusedly. 

In the earliest part of the year, when the winter was coldest and harshest, your visits became less frequent. The creatures who needed Lesh’s help multiplied, and you found yourself bringing scraps of dried meat for the carnivores and dried seeds from your own cellar for the birds and rodents they collected. It was quite the family by the time the Beltane rites drew near. 

Lesh began to change around that time. They frequently weren’t at the den when you called, though you left a little basket of goodies whenever you stopped by, and when you did find them there, they refused to speak and dismissed you quickly. 

“Lesh?” you asked on the eve of the Beltane celebrations when you should probably have been helping out in the town. Instead, you'd come looking for the monster who brought you comfort with their towering, quiet presence and kindness. 

They nodded, sitting on a rock beside their secluded stream, letting the water play over the roots of their toes. 

“Would you rather I stopped coming to visit you?”

At that, they snapped their head round so quickly you thought you heard their bark crack. 

“Why… Why do you say that?” they faltered, and it was the first time you’d heard their dreadful voice in weeks. In fact, you’d come to love the strange scraping of it, the way it set your skin to goosebumps and filled your head with static.

With a twitch of one shoulder, you said, “I dunno. You’ve been acting weird lately. I just wondered if you’d got fed up with me after all these months…”

A tiny shake of the head was all you got in response. 

Going closer, you laid a hand on their cool shoulder and they shuddered beneath your touch. Everything rattled like a stack of firewood, and they laughed, embarrassed. “Lesh?”

“Spring is… coming…” they said, as if that explained everything. 

“Yeah…?”

They turned their head and you gazed right into those empty eyes. Bravely, you brought your fingertips up to touch their face and ran them round the ridges of their eye socket and down to their muzzle. Their teeth gnashed suddenly and they flinched away with another violent tremor. A rasping breath like the wind in the bare branches shivered through them. 

“Lesh? What’s really going on?”

“The forest is… coming alive, and… and I with it. I have… grown fond of you… human.” They shot you a sidelong look and added, “Too fond.”

“Oh. Oohhhh…” you said, and then involuntarily let your gaze drop to their lap where their gnarled, long-fingered hands were carefully placed. 

Hesitantly, you placed your fingers under their jaw and turned their eyes back to you. “What do you need?”

Their skeletal jaw opened slightly and they rasped, “You.”

“What if I said yes?”

Flowers erupted all down their spine at that, and you laughed. 

“Expressive, for someone with a deer skull for a face,” you said, and they growled softly. “Deer skull; wolf heart…” you amended, which only made the growling deeper. 

They surged upright then, towering over you, and you felt your mouth go dry and all the blood rush south. Yes, you’d imagined this moment before, but only in the privacy of your own thoughts. You’d never dreamed it might actually happen. 

Their jaw fell open and a long, thick, snaking black tongue that you’d never noticed before snaked out, tasting the air. 

“You… You want this?” they said, astonished, and you nodded. 

The leshy laid you back on the soft gravel of the river bank, and worked your clothes off with surprising dexterity given the size of their hands. Their head tilted sideways and that tongue slid out, tasting the skin on your hips and you bucked wildly at the searing wake it left. They were messy, leaving trails of thick saliva in the wake of the writhing tongue, and it cooled in the air, making you shiver. 

Your nerves came alive and they devoured you joyously. 

Their jaw opened far too wide to be natural, but you didn’t care as they coiled their tongue around you, savouring your taste, delighting in the way your body rocked and bucked beneath their attention. You cried out harshly at the rough, surging pleasure of it. Their hands pinned you to the ground, and while it was uncomfortably rough and cold on your bare skin, it was the perfect counterpoint to the pleasure of their wet, hot mouth on you. Their canines raked over your hips, drawing broken gasps and moans from you. You felt like the forest itself was devouring you.

Flushed and hot and trembling, you craved release, but Lesh took their time with you. Their tongue was long and thick, exploring every part of you that it could reach, until your breath caught and heat coiled inside you and you came with a yell around the pressure of their tongue. 

“Perfect,” they crooned, with their jawbone pressed against your thigh while you still twitched and whimpered in the aftermath of your orgasm. “You’re perfect,” you heard them repeat and you opened your eyes to find that their eye sockets were no longer empty. Two tiny pinpricks of red flickered in their depths. 

“Lesh?”

They growled and lowered their mouth to you. “Again,” they rumbled. “Let me do that again.”

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