Monthly story - male naiad x reader (light nsfw) (Patreon)

How is it that we're almost at the end of July already! I'll do a run-down of everything that's been posted on here soon, in case you missed anything, but for now, we return to Patreon-only content once again because it's Monday. 

Today, instead of continuing one of the longer-running stories like Winter Solstice, A Door to the Past, or the Ashridge Pack stories, I present your monthly Patreon-exclusive story. Last month's was an enormous two-parter that totalled 14,633 words, and this one is another 8k whopper.  

It's got a slightly different mood from my usual ones, maybe more like a fairytale? Anyway, here's a gender neutral reader again, with a male naiad (river deity/spirit), featuring a big-ass genderfluid forest deity, a feisty little forest fairy with his creepy-af giant dragonfly mount, and a secret world hidden away inside the forest... 

Wordcount: 8098

(the longer-running stories will resume next week with Winter Solstice Chapter 7)

The woods could truly be stiflingly hot and airless at this time of year, despite the dense, verdant canopy overhead. Not a breath of wind lifted the beech leaves on the branches above, and nothing stirred between their enormous trunks. Not even a squirrel ventured out and about. It was as if the whole forest knew what was happening and had tucked itself away out of respect. 

Taking a deep, steadying breath and hefting the basket on your arm, you forged ahead along the path that was hardly wider than a deer track. Mushrooms big as dinner plates sprouted from a toppled tree trunk to your right, the mighty oak long ago felled by a storm and left to moulder among the leaves, and you turned your head to admire the log’s sculptural forms for a moment, you finally glimpsed the movements of another being out in the forest.

The glow of a fairy wing shimmered briefly between the fronds of a clump of thick, acid-green bracken. “I’m here to make the offering,” you whispered at them. 

A slender figure, standing at only about a foot tall, parted the vivid, elegantly-curling leaves of the fern and stepped out. They looked male, as far as you could see around the gold, glowing aura that hugged their slim, fragile looking body and refracted off the flashing, dragonfly wings behind. They looked like a living jewel and you stared blankly for a moment until they grinned at you, revealing a mouthful of tiny, razor sharp, pointed teeth. 

“I can show you the way if you like…” he said in a playfully coy voice that rang with magic and made your skin prickle. 

“For a price, I know,” you said. “I brought this.” And you fished into the basket and drew out a small jar of blueberry jam. Taking out a spoon, you ladled some into half of a walnut shell and knelt down to show him. To give too much would be ostentatious and insulting to them. The balance had to be right, and you prayed you’d found it. Displeasing the forest already would not auger well for you, or for your village.

He fluttered closer in a flurry of rainbow wings, the thrum of their beating movement filling the air like bees. Hovering in the air in front of your hand, he inspected your offering, dipping his fingertip into it and tasting it. His eyelids fluttered and he moaned as the sweetness hit his tongue, and he grinned up at you. “Payment accepted. This way. You can leave it here on this ledge,” he added, flying up to a section of the log that had been minutely carved into a delicate balcony of sorts with no rail or edging. Pausing there, he gave a shrieking whistle that left your ears ringing while you waited. 

To your surprise, a squirrel hopped out along the length of the fallen beach trunk and the fairy turned and barked at it to take the walnut to another fairy without eating any of it. If she did as she was told, she could have a treat. Disgruntled, the squirrel chittered at him but took the walnut shell dish from you with tiny, delicate hands, and hopped off into the log through an opening halfway along. 

“Ready,” the fairy said, flitting back up into your face and then darting off again so quickly you couldn’t hope to follow the movement. “Try to keep up, eh?”

“I’ll try,” you said flatly. The basket on your arm felt heavier and heavier, and with it, your heart. 

The forest had not called for an offering for generations, but the village auger had spoken. The white hart had been seen at the edge of the meadow, its body emaciated, with a carrion crow perched among his branching antlers. The forest was weakening and the offering was called for. Next it would stop providing for them.

With each step, your heart sank lower, your spirits too. The forest could demand whatever it liked, and if your basket full of gifts from the village was deemed insufficiently humble, it could even demand your life. Blood was the oldest and most primal source of magic and strength after all. 

The fairy had already vanished out of sight and you stopped, looking around and straining your ears. Only stillness and the faintest whisper of the leaves answered. “You still there?” you asked the seemingly empty forest. 

With the lethal speed and glitter of a flung throwing knife, you found the fairy in front of your face again, snickering at you. When you just blinked sadly at him though, like a beast at the sacrificial altar, his handsome little face puckered into something sour. “What’s that for?” he asked. “Don’t you want to meet the mother of the forest? It’s a real privilege, you know?”

You shrugged. “I want my village to prosper and I want my people to be safe.” The truth in your words was carefully uttered. I don’t want to die, you added silently to yourself. It was a humble existence, but it was yours and it was all you had. 

The fairy narrowed his eyes, and in the light of the trees, you thought the irises looked green, though it was still hard to tell. He was as small as a doll and he twitched and moved like a piece of thistledown on the wind. 

“Well, come on. We mustn’t keep an old god waiting.”

You swallowed. “So it’s true…”

“Mm, probably. At least in some part,” he hummed. A moment later, you found him chattering away to you like a starling. “The deity has many aspects, some female, some male. My kind refer to her as the Lady of the Moon, or the Moon Mother, but the river trolls see him as the Master of the Earth. Whatever aspect she or he takes for you, you’d be wise to be polite.”

“I’ve never seen a river troll,” you mused idly aloud as you followed the fairy down a steep and slippery bank lined with the dark, waxy leaves of harts tongue ferns. “What are they like?”

“They smell like river weed,” the fairy scoffed. “But they’re strong as the earth itself, and they’re not quite as dumb as they look. The dragonflies and damsel flies like them too for some reason, so we get some of our best mounts from their rivers.”

“Mounts?”

“You know… you lot ride horses - we ride dragonflies, among other creatures. But dragons are smart and quick and lethal.”

“Right.” It felt somehow sweet that he called them ‘dragons’, but you supposed that to his kind, they would be. Particularly the monstrous lake dragonflies to the south that could apparently reach a stunning two feet in length and had razor sharp teeth and wings that whipped up the foliage like small hurricanes. Their smaller cousins were more familiar to the humans who lived in less remote areas, but out here, where the wilderness reached back into the villages and dwellings with long-clawed, untamed fingers, things grew big and deadly. 

“You don’t know much about anything, do you?” he laughed and you shrugged. 

“I’ve never had any reason to venture far into the forest,” you said. “I tend to go the other way and drive the team of horses into town. I ferry the clay we dig from the river to the south.”

That idea fascinated him, and he began to ask you why you would dig up the earth and move it around like that. 

“They make fine pottery from it in the workshops in town,” you said. “And while I’m there I buy the things we can’t easily make or grow for ourselves at the village - bolts of cloth, bags of tea, spices, grain, and the like. I also settle our accounts with the bank.”

“Is that why they sent you here then?” he asked, now fluttering along at your side and occasionally doing lazy backwards rolls like a swimmer in a deep pool. “They’re used to sending you to represent their interests…”

“Maybe,” you shrugged. Maybe they’d thought you could drive some kind of bargain, as if bargaining with an ageless forest god was something a mere mortal could do. 

The weight of the collective offerings in the basket was beginning to drag at your shoulder, but you adjusted it and trudged along the small, green gully-walled after the fairy. Eventually, he stopped quizzing you about the human world beyond, apparently equal parts intrigued and terrified by the concept of whole towns and cities full of your kind, and he fell silent. 

After a mile or so of walking through the forest along the low trench in the ground, you began to notice large, smooth stones, deliberately placed here and there along the path on either side, adorned with swirling patterns. 

“We’re getting close,” he said in a new and more sombre tone when he caught you eyeing them. “I’ll leave you at the threshold,” he said, pointing at the mouth of a mossy gorge that sliced back into the hillside ahead. It looked like an old wound in the earth and the sight of it filled you with deep and visceral dread.

“So… I just follow the path until I find… whatever I find…”

“Indeed. For what it’s worth, I’m sure you’ll be fine. I think she’ll like you.”

For some reason, his words bolstered your courage and you smiled at him. “Thank you. I don’t know your name, but… thank you.”

“It’s Thistledown,” he said and you nearly laughed. Perhaps you were more in tune with the magic of the forest than you’d realised. “But friends call me Thistle.”

“Well, thank you, Thistle,” you smiled. “For your company and your conversation.” 

The fairy simply nodded and wheeled away through the trees like a thought on the wind. 

Alone in the entrance to the gorge, it really felt as though you stood on the threshold of another world, another realm. Perhaps you did. Two huge pillars of jagged, splintered, dark rock stood sentinel on either side of the leaf-strewn pathway, and beyond, you could see little more than a slow, lazy, shallow river adorned with rounded, moss-topped stones, and the walls of the canyon’s maw, reaching back into the hillside. 

Taking a breath for courage, you stepped inside. 

The atmosphere was instantly cooler against your skin here, damp and refreshing after the sticky heat of the airless trees, and you found the path dissolving into the pebbles of the riverbed after only a few yards. The whole canyon was flooded, the water barely rippling, and the mirror surface made the walls of rock seem to stretch away forever, engulfing the sky. 

Bringing your eyes back from the over-arching trees above - great oaks with intertwining fingers - you found with a jolt of fear that you were no longer alone. 

Standing in the water perhaps twenty paces away, was the strangest being you’d ever seen. Taller than any creature - larger by far than the biggest carthorse you’d ever seen - the being stood on four legs, the front two like those of a colossal deer, with thick, smoky grey fur and one white hock, and the rear two like those of some kind of reptile, with enormous clawed feet and a thick, lizard-like tail, smooth-scaled and ridged with spines. 

The thick, high withers sloped like those of a moose, the slate grey fur fading to a hue as pale as moonlight the further up it went. Two long, humanoid arms hung from distinct shoulders, like a centaur’s, but where a human head might have sat, an enormous, cervine skull stared with glowing, silver eyes. Your heart stopped and you nearly dropped the basket into the water at your feet. The antlers were adorned with lichen and dripping vines, and the arms hung limply at their sides near the shoulder portion of their animal lower half. Those arms ended in onyx-taloned fingers.

One hand rose slowly and beckoned you closer. For a moment you couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, fear rooting you to the spot as if you’d grown out of the ground, never to move again. 

“Please…” you hissed, terror constricting your throat until nothing but a tiny croak could escape. A trembling swept up your body and you stood there like a quivering rabbit before an approaching hawk. The sheer, raw power that this being emanated was enough to reduce to you to tears. 

The creature waited with the eternal patience of stone, hand outstretched towards you in a gesture of welcome. 

“I don’t want to die…” you whispered, unable to move besides the violent shaking all over.

The strange god, or whatever she was, tilted that skull head and you saw darker markings on the white forehead like the tattoos that the village wise woman bore. Then her body softened a little, and she turned away, hooves and clawed feet splashing in the sparkling stream. 

When you made no move to follow, she paused and turned, beckoning to you only once before she resumed her passage up the river. 

The water rippled and shifted nearby, and you turned your gaze from the enormous god to find a second creature rising from the water. This one appeared to have a body made of living stone, adorned with moss, and wet, green hair hung down almost to the backs of their knees. The body appeared male, completely naked, and you turned away, embarrassed and unsure whether looking would cause offence. 

At a tiny, earthy chuckle, like a handful of gravel, you looked back at him. 

“Go on,” he said in a musical tenor. His torso looked like polished grey marble with the hues and tones of a cloudy, autumn sky, and moss covered almost his entire left side and leg. He was pretty tall too, at six feet or so, and, broad at the shoulder and narrow at the waist and hips, he moved with the grace of a willow. “Why are you so frightened?” he asked, clearly baffled and stepping closer but halting as you shrank back. 

“I’ve never…” you began, voice cracking. “I don’t…” You stared wildly around at the gorge and briefly at the disappearing figure of the deity at the far end who had paused, apparently to watch your interaction. “This is all so strange… I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do for the offering - if I’ll even see my home again? And now I’m talking to someone made of stone?”

He laughed and turned more to face you. His right arm, to your astonishment, seemed to be made of glass, but as he raised it to brush a strand of his long, weed-green hair out of his carved, marble eyes, you realised that was not glass but water. 

“What are you?” you breathed, momentarily heedless of how disrespectful a question like that might have been to an unknown entity. 

He didn’t seem to take it amiss, however, and said, “I’m what many of your kind might call a naiad. My name is Acheron.” When that didn’t clear all that much up for you, he laughed again. “I’m a river spirit. This river is my home, to be precise. But please, we should get moving. We shouldn’t keep him waiting.”

“Him?”

“Her, him, them, all, one…” Acheron said in a singsong voice. “The deity. For me, he’s male, but for you…? Who knows? That’s up to him. Let’s go, hmm?”

You blinked and remembered what Thistledown had said. It would be wise to be polite. 

Rallying your courage, you inhaled deeply and stepped after the vanishing god, your boots sloshing in the water, the stones slippery beneath your soles. 

A hand touched you lightly at the small of your back and you jerked to find Acheron walking beside you. The touch was only fleeting, but it grounded you somehow. He just bowed, his green hair sliding into his face again, and this time he left it as he walked beside you after the goddess. 

How you knew that the being was feminine for you, you weren’t sure, and you got the feeling from what the naiad had said that they were much, much more than you could ever hope to comprehend, but as you trailed after her like a lost moon calf, you discovered a comforting presence in the air like a lingering wake. Whether it was Acheron’s steadying company or something else, with a jolt of surprise, you realised it was like the feeling you had when you guided the team of horses around the final bend before the village. 

It was like coming home. 

And with that thought, you forgot to be afraid. 

Acheron guided you up the river, the water sloshing in your boots and rather pleasantly cooling you down after your journey to get there. Your heel was rubbing too, so the sensation was particularly pleasant. The moment you noticed that, Acheron paused. “You’re hurt?” he asked. 

“Blister,” you said. “It’s nothing.”

Acheron’s ethereal face darkened for a moment and he stopped, grabbing your wrist with his left hand and halting your progress along the river channel. His fingers were cold stone, hard and unyielding, and for a horrible moment you thought that you would now no longer be deemed ‘worthy’ of the deity or something because they knew you bore an injury. No sooner had the silly thought flitted through your brain than Acheron had guided a small swirl of water around your right ankle, using that glass-like right hand of his. After a flash, cold as ice, around the joint, you gasped. The stabbing pain from the blister had gone. 

“There,” he smiled. “Come on.”

He walked away and you trailed behind. “Handy,” you murmured to yourself, but the river spirit ignored you. 

After a tiring half mile of trudging up the shallow riverbed, you found the bizarre deity waiting for you at a point in the river where it spilled over a short ledge, creating a shimmering, rippling rapid. She nodded slowly at Acheron, who bowed low and then turned to you. “I take my leave. I hope to see you soon though,” he smiled, raising your hand to his lips and pressing a cool, dry kiss against your knuckles. 

His lips were firm and cold, but there was a warmth to his expression that encouraged you and you managed a tiny, anxious smile. 

Your heart fluttered strangely at his touch, but as you blinked, he dove sideways like a seal off a rock into the ocean, and vanished completely into a sparkling spray water, leaving no trace of himself in the river. A trout flashed away between the pebbles, and you stared at the spot where he’d been standing not a moment before. 

Alone, taking a deep breath, you turned back to face the god.

Nothing happened. When they made no movements and spoke no words, you drew on your last reserves of courage, and said, “I… I have come at the urging of our wise woman, who saw the hart on the forest’s edge. The village chose me to represent them, and to bring you what offerings we have, to beg for your continued protection and to contribute to the continuing strength of the forest.”

The deity pondered your words, and finally, a voice sounded. It took another few moments to realise that it was coming from inside your own head. “And what do you want, human?” it said in a polyphonous, scraping chant, like birdsong and distant rockslides. 

“For my village to live,” you said honestly. 

“And?”

“And… I’m hoping I don’t need to die for that to happen…”

“…and if you did…?” the creature asked. “Would you spill your blood upon my altar to keep their bodies nourished and their souls intact?” 

You hesitated. In theory, you would, but the deity had just stepped to one side to reveal a huge, stone altar standing between two ancient rowan trees, their branches laden with berries bright as blood. Staring death in the face, you stood there, heart pounding. “If… If you asked it for their sake,” you faltered, “I think I would.”

The voice didn’t speak immediately and for the longest time you thought you’d answered wrongly. “You speak honestly,” the deity said in your mind. You supposed that with an empty skull for a head, speech wouldn’t have been physically possible without magic. “And you are curious too,” they added, apparently detecting your wandering intrigue. 

“I’m sorry,” you blurted. 

“Do not be,” the voice chuckled. “You must remain here for one full cycle of the moon, and then I will release you back to your people, unharmed. Do you agree?”

“They’ll continue to be provided for by the forest?” you asked. “And kept safe?”

“As best and safe as I can manage,” the creature said, aloud this time, and your eyebrows rose. The voice was distinctly female now, if harsh and guttural still. “I strive to keep all my children safe.”

“Your children?”

She chuckled, turning her back on you and gesturing towards the altar with one of those grey-limbed arms. “You may place your gifts there, child. And you may take anything from this table that you need to feed yourself during your stay. Anything, save for the gifts which you yourself have brought, of course.”

Understanding, you nodded, and placed your basket in the centre. As you did, baskets of forest fruits rippled into life on one side, and a small plate of cheeses and nuts on the other. You were not going to go hungry here during your month at least. 

“Acheron,” the deity rumbled, and in a swirling spout of water, the now-familiar figure of the naiad appeared upstream in the direction the trout had darted. “Show our guest around.”

“Yes, master,” the water spirit said with a low bow before turning to you with a decidedly cheeky expression on his beautiful face. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” you muttered, mind spinning and body drained and shaky.

“That’s the spirit!” he grinned, holding out his stone hand to you. 

You let him lead you towards a small cave in the rockface just upstream of the altar. The front of the cave had been filled in with smooth blocks of neatly masoned stone, and a window glinted in the front, framed and glazed as neatly as any townhouse. A dense rose bush grew right up the front of it, rambling wildly over and up onto the cliff beyond, releasing a heady fragrance into the air as the flowers gleamed in the slanting sunlight. 

“It’s like a dream,” you said as you stared at it, awestruck. “Is any of this real?”

“Can you feel my hand?” he asked, squeezing his fingers around yours.

“Yes…”

“Then it’s real. Come,” and he ushered you inside, unsatisfied by his answer. After all, dreams feel real until you wake.

The cottage in the rock was anything but gloomy and damp. Sunlight streamed in through the window, and bathed a small, scrubbed wooden table with a bright, silvery glow. 

“This will be your home,” Acheron said from the doorway. 

“You… want to come in?” you asked, turning in a tight circle to face him again. 

He tilted his head, green hair sliding forwards over one slim, strong shoulder. “None of you has ever asked me that before.”

“Really? Wait, none of whom?”

He smiled. “The previous ‘sacrifices’…” The way he said that last word made it very clear that he was being sarcastic. “You’re really not afraid of us, are you?”

“Honestly,” you snorted, “This is all so much to take in. I saw my first fairy today, and now I’m talking with a river spirit. I’ve just met an elder god who, it turns out, does not want to drain me of blood and hang me from a tree like a flayed deer the way the people in the village seemed to think they might. Right now, I’m not sure what to feel.”

Acheron smiled sadly and nodded. “I’ll leave you to settle then,” he said. “If you need me… step outside and touch the water and hold me in your thoughts. I’ll sense it and I’ll come to you.”

And with that, he vanished into the water with another swirl, like water down a drain, and your knees went out from under you. You sank, trembling, onto a chair behind you. How long you sat there, you couldn’t have said.

That first week was one of the strangest of your life. 

You slept late on your first day there, your dreams carrying your exhausted body long into the afternoon, but after that, you settled into a more regular pattern. Each morning, you went to the stone altar to see what feast had been laid out for you, and each day you selected only the tiniest fraction of what was there. Save for the twittering sparrows in the shrubs and trees, you didn’t see anyone at all for the first two days, let alone the deity, and you found yourself drifting aimlessly. There were no books in the cottage, and you’d never learned anything like wood whittling or reed-weaving, so you had nothing with which to occupy yourself. 

Stepping outside in the evening, you eyed the cool water, perhaps only three inches deep where it ran past the cave house, and sighed. You crouched and trailed your fingertips through it, watching the light play on the surface, and you thought of Acheron. “Are you there?”

Perhaps a minute later, you saw him walking up the gorge towards you and you rose from your crouch by the river. He was naked again, unabashedly so, and his lithe body really did look like living rock in the evening light. His long hair loose trailed over his chest, sticking to the damp moss that adorned his pecs and ribs and hip bone on his left hand side. When he saw you watching his approach, he raised his glittering, translucent hand and the smile he offered you lit up his whole face. 

“How are you?” he asked when he was near enough not to have to shout over the splash of his feet in the water. 

You shrugged. “Caught my breath back at last, I think,” you said. “I don’t think I’ve ever slept as well as I do here either.”

“Have you eaten yet tonight?” 

You shook your head. It was still a little early yet for supper, but you let him lead you back to the altar, and he offered you a plate. You took it with a smile and he stepped gracefully back to let you choose. 

“You don’t eat?” you asked awkwardly as you turned with your plate of beautiful food. 

Acheron made a side-to-side motion with his head, sending sparkling droplets of water raining down gently onto the dry, warm stone beneath his bare feet. “I can, but I don’t need to.”

“I see.” 

You opted not to eat right in front of the large altar, taking your meal to a boulder near the river instead. 

“May I sit with you?” Acheron asked, still standing just beside you as you settled yourself down on the flat top of the rock. 

“Of course!”

He perched elegantly on the edge, dangling his toes in the water. “This must be so strange for you,” he said after a while. 

“ ‘Strange’ doesn’t even begin to cover it,” you admitted. “But if I only have to stay here for a month, then that’s hardly much of a sacrifice really, is it?”

“I suppose not, but you are separated from your family, your friends, your life beyond this place…”

You twitched one shoulder. “It’s not so bad. It’s nice to be in one place for more than a day or two,” you went on. 

Acheron turned to look at you, his young, almost boyish face alight with curiosity. “What do you mean? You live like a swallow? Always on the wing from one place to another? I thought you were your village’s greatest treasure?”

At that, you choked on a piece of bread and he had to clap you on the back to dislodge it. When that only eased the spluttering to a ragged wheeze, he picked up a large rounded pebble from the river and drew his finger and thumb over it like a potter raising a beaker of wet clay from a fresh lump, and it reshaped itself for you into a smooth, stone beaker of sweet, fresh water. “Thank you. Greatest treasure?” you scoffed, voice hoarse and throat sore from coughing. “Hardly. I barely know them really. I spend most of my time on the road. The horses are the ones I know best!” 

He frowned. “But why else would the wise woman have chosen you? I suppose you represent their connection to the rest of your species… without you —”

“— someone else would ferry goods back and forth. It’s no big deal,” you said. 

“That’s a lot of trust to put in one person,” he said evenly. “A lot of responsibility.”

You’d never really looked at it that way. True, people were always grateful when you brought the waggon back, and when you settled in the winter - when the snows got too deep and the air too cold for the horses - you were always provided for and taken care of, the same as anyone else in the community. “I suppose,” you admitted. 

“Look,” Acheron said a moment later with a child-like giggle, pointing at a spot out in the shallow stream. 

“What?” you asked. With the evening rays flashing off the smooth pebbles and trickling water, it was hard to see anything at all. 

“The minnows,” he said. “They’re showing off for you.”

“The fish are showing off?” you asked flatly, and the water spirit laughed like a spring, the sound clear and joyous. 

“They don’t have a new audience very often, I suppose,” he said. 

That thought prompted a question in you, and you set your empty plate down beside you on the day-warmed rock. “How many ‘sacrifices’ have there been before me? Certainly none in my generation…”

Acheron turned thoughtful and said, “The frequency varies. In total, though, I couldn’t tell you. I’m old by your standards, but not that old. The forest is as old as the earth itself, as is the deity who provides for us all, so I suppose there are countless people whose magic has been used to protect this place.”

“Magic?” you asked. “I’m not magic…”

“Everyone’s magic,” Acheron laughed, leaning back on his hands and tilting his face to the sliver of sky that was just visible through the tangle of trees and the reaching rocks above you. “In one way or another.”

You fell silent again before venturing another question. “So… all I have to do is stay here? And that’s enough?”

“Probably,” he said. “I don’t get to decide what’s enough. I just look after the river; make sure she stays healthy, look after the creatures who depend on her, clear any debris away… that kind of thing.”

“‘Her’… you mused aloud. 

“Mmm,” he said. “My river’s a fickle lady. You think she’s calm now, but you should feel her in the winter when she’s in a rage. The water she hurls down these channels is immense when she’s angry or excited, and the debris she can fling up can be…” he paused an pointed at an oak tree, twisting out of the rock about halfway up the cliff of the gorge, stubborn as the earth itself. “See that oak? Last winter he got a load of flotsam tangled up in his branches when she flung it all about in a tantrum. Took weeks to get it all out!”

Fascinated by the way he spoke of the place, you encouraged him to talk more while the sun sank below the trees and the stars blinked to life above. 

Every evening for the rest of that first week, you listened to Acheron prattle on about his river like she was his lover, and perhaps she was for all that you knew about the machinations of beings like him. Acheron showed up at your door and led you down to the altar for supper each night, and while you ate, he told you about his world. Sometimes he showed up during the day as well, with a frog in his hands or a dragonfly adorning his hair like a pin, and the two of you would walk the length of the river gorge and back, right up to the spring where he drew his power from the earth, or down to where his river slipped away under the rocks to join another river, underground.

Gradually, as the days melted into weeks, you grew to feel like you knew the place too. Not as well as he did, but a little piece of it lodged itself in your heart and you knew you’d never want to remove it, even after you left. 

On the evening of your last night, Acheron was quiet - almost silent. 

You picked at your food without tasting any of it, and then looked up at him. To your shock, you found tears rolling down his cheeks. “Acheron?” you asked, horrified at the sight of the usually cheery spirit looking so miserable. The tears rolled over his polished, marble skin and dripped off his jawline. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve grown… terribly fond of you,” he said with a watery smile. “I’m going to miss you, that’s all.”

It was no hardship to admit that you would miss his company too, and he took your hand in his stone one and interlaced your fingers. His body was cool and smooth, like a pebble pulled from the river and turned over in the hand. He fitted so perfectly against you that you ached. The thought gave you an idea. “Acheron, can I ask you something?”

“Anything,” he smiled, voice rough and ragged as shattered stone. 

“Could I take a tiny stone from your river to keep with me? I’d like to put it in my pocket. That way… That way… there’ll always be a part of this place with me when I’m on the road.”

The tears spilled anew down his face and for a horrible moment you thought you’d offended him, but he nodded vehemently the moment he saw your face fall. “Yes, of course,” he gushed, reaching to touch your arm gently with his left hand and steady himself. “Will you let me choose one for you?”

“Sure,” you said and he hopped off the rock where you’d come to share your meals almost every evening. When the weather was less kind, he stepped willingly enough into the cave house and joined you there. Once, he’d even brought you a plate of food straight to the cottage, protected from the torrential, thunderous downpour by a tiny shield of magic. 

Acheron hopped about like a dipper, bobbing up and down, inspecting and discarding what felt like half a hundred stones until he was finally happy with the choice. Nodding privately to himself, he brought it to his lips and kissed it, whispering a few words over it that you didn’t catch. Goosebumps rose along your arms, however, and a rustling breeze swept down the gorge, picking up dry leaves from the lea of the cliff and making fine particles of sand dance along the rugged edges of the twisting canyon. 

“Here,” he said, standing in front of you and extending his hand towards you.

In the centre of his glassy palm sat a small, smooth, jet black pebble, perfectly round, and with a ribbon of white quartz twisting through it in the exact shape of the river itself, as if the pebble were a map seen by a bird from above. 

“It’s beautiful,” you murmured, reaching out for it and picking it up to inspect it between middle finger and thumb. “Thank you. It’s… perfect.” It fitted in your hand just-so, and when you slid it into your pocket, the weight of it nudged against your side. You could already feel how the motion of the rolling waggon would keep it tapping against you like kissing waves on the shore. 

He looked up at you where you still sat on the rock, and you felt your throat constrict. The last rays of sunlight struck his right cheek so stunningly that it stole your breath, and your lips parted slightly as you stared openly at him. He still bore teardrops on his stone skin, and they flashed and glinted like diamonds.  

Acheron murmured your name and moved closer. At the sound of his voice, your whole body ignited with lust in a way that it hadn’t in years, and the reaction was so unexpected that you gasped and bit your lip, blood rushing south, eyes widening with desire. “Acheron…” you exhaled. 

Silently, he closed the distance between you, brought his stone fingertips to your chin, tilted it just a little, and kissed you.

Your eyes rolled shut and stars flashed across your vision as he deepened the kiss. His skin was cool and firm, but supple in a way you’d not expected. He tasted like fresh spring water, sweet and full of life, and as the blood seared through your veins, you bucked weakly up against his solid body. 

All your inhibitions slid away and he began to undress you, his fingers hesitant at your clothes. The way he pleasured you, the way he took his time, made you feel like the deity and he the supplicant. You lost track of time and sensation, drowning in the pleasure he offered you, and when you finally lay back, gasping and spent and covered in the combined release of the two of you, it was full dark and fireflies winked and flashed above the river behind him. 

“Acheron…” you whispered, a heaviness descending on your limbs. 

“Shh,” he smiled, and you let yourself drift. 

When dawn came, you expected to feel stiff and cold, but the magic of the place had kept you as cosy as if you’d spent the night in the finest royal bed. You were also dressed again, which you didn’t remember doing for yourself. Acheron’s sleeping figure lay curled on his side atop the large, flat rock beside you, his green hair falling into his face, his body like a carved statue. 

You nearly woke him, and had just reached for him when a soft splash in the water beside you made you jump. Downstream, not five paces from you, stood the terrifying and otherworldly deity. She appeared exactly as she had before, with her mix of various animal features, and she regarded you with a stance that exuded amusement and fondness, though you couldn’t have said exactly how. 

With one of those human hands, however, she beckoned you over. 

An ache lurched through your chest and you turned to regard Acheron one last time. He slept on, undisturbed by the new arrival. You sensed that perhaps her magic was at play here, and you resisted the urge to touch him, one last time. 

Mute, numb, and a little dizzy, you followed the deity out of the gorge, pausing at the twin pillars of rock to glance back over your shoulder at that hidden, secret world. “Goodbye, Acheron,” you whispered and the breeze took your words and wafted them gently towards where the sleeping water spirit lay, embedded on the rock in sleep as if he’d lived his whole life there, carved from the very boulder itself. 

Perhaps leaving him behind was the real sacrifice that the magic of this place demanded. He’d made you feel cherished and unique, not for what you could bring him, but for who you are, and tears tracked unbidden down your cheeks as you left. When you turned back to face the deity, who was standing patiently beside the nearest, jagged pillar, you dared to voice a question. “Was this enough?” you croaked. “Was I enough?”

Bowing their head, the deity nodded once. 

“Will I ever see him again?” you ventured, shooting another stolen glance at Acheron. 

In answer, the goddess tilted her head to one side, oddly like a dog, and then huffed something low and inarticulate at you. 

“Sorry. I shouldn’t ask… Thank you,” you added. “For treating me so well and letting me… you know… live…”

Another scoffing chuff of a laugh emanated from the empty skull, silver eyes blazing, and she jabbed her head in the direction of the world beyond her sanctuary. 

“Fine, alright, I’m going,” you laughed, the sound choked and anxious. 

Without daring to look back, you walked along the river gully and scrambled up the slippery bank. The first blushes of autumn had begun to touch the trees now, the vibrant green warming to copper in the beeches above you. 

Before too long, a familiar, fluttering buzz filled the air, intense and thrumming, and you looked up and squinted. Ahead, with a flash of wings, was Thistledown, sitting astride one of those colossal lake dragonflies. The creature itself gave you the shivers, but Thistle waved merrily at you and guided the hideous thing over to you. 

“You made it then. Told you she’d like you,” he grinned. 

“Care to show me back home?” you asked. “I don’t have anything for you though…”

“Ah, that’s alright,” he said. “Maybe you can find me a hen’s egg or something and bring it to me another time.”

“A hen’s egg?” you asked. “Bit big for you, isn’t it?”

“Big for one, but I’ve got a family to feed,” he grinned. “Hungry little sister. She eats like a squirrel in autumn.”

You allowed his lively spirits to brighten your own, but he didn’t miss the sadness lingering in your eyes. 

“Ahh, you fell in love with the place, didn’t you?” he crooned as you entered a more familiar stretch of the forest at last. 

“Not just the place,” you admitted. 

He nearly fell off the dragonfly at that. “Oh? Do tell…”

With a wry smirk, you told him about Acheron, hoping you didn’t sound like you had a childish crush. No doubt humans were like mayflies to entities like him - here one moment and nothing but a memory the next. 

“Interesting,” Thistle finally hummed when you’d finished waxing lyrical about the gentle water spirit. 

Shooting him a look, you scowled. “What’s interesting?”

“I know of Acheron. He usually keeps to himself and his precious river. I said you were special, didn’t I? Well, nothing to be done about it now, I suppose. You know where you’re going from here?”

“Yeah,” you sighed. It was under half a mile to the humble collection of huts. “Thank you. I’ll leave a hen’s egg on that stump there if I can find one for you.”

“Appreciate it,” he said, wheeling the dragonfly away through the air with a quick wave. “Take care now! And blessings of the Moon Mother upon you!”

“And on you,” you murmured as he vanished with a fae flash of light into the trees. 

It was hard to settle back into village life after your experiences in the forest. People looked at you as if you were touched somehow; different and not exactly human anymore. You felt the same, though a splinter of that place had lodged itself firmly in your heart, you were sure of that. In your pocket, the river stone remained a gentle weight against your body, always warm somehow, as if it had been basking in the sun, regardless of the actual temperature. Your fingers grew to know its every surface, and could trace the meandering line of quartz through the black stone without looking. 

Months later, you took the last load of clay from the deposit in the woods into town, and on your journey back the first snow began to fall. 

Tiny flakes danced and spiralled down out of the silver sky above, and the horses snorted and whickered, eager to be home with a trough full of hay and hot bran mash, and a cosy straw stall to bed down in. Rubbing your hands together, you blew into them to encourage the embers of warmth back into them, and urged the team to keep moving. The cart full of sacks of grain and winter provisions rattled and rumbled behind you, the bed covered by a thick, protective canvas, and the trees scrolled by in an endless bare-branched stream, their leaves long strewn across the frost-laced ground. 

At last, with your squinting eyes prickling from the tiredness and the worsening flurries of snow, the houses drew into view and the lead mare whinnied her excitement, drawing the attention of the few villagers still out and about as dusk settled itself contentedly beneath the eaves of the modest, thatched houses. 

In the hubbub of your return, and the frenzy of getting the horses properly rubbed down, watered, and fed, you almost missed the soft sound of water flowing. 

Going still, you strained your ears. 

The stream was too far from the large barn, where the animals overwintered, for you to hear flowing water, and you twitched your head from side to side like a March hare in an open field. 

Had one of the large barrels burst? Was a gutter leaking somewhere?

Stepping out into the half light of the evening, you gasped. Standing at the edge of the trees was what appeared at first to be a statue, but you knew immediately who it was. 

Your feet were running through the inch of snow that had blanketed the ground before you’d registered what was happening, and you were in his arms in a heartbeat. 

“I missed you,” Acheron said, tucking his nose against your neck and inhaling. 

“What are you doing here?” you breathed. “Gods, you’re cold…” 

Frost now rimed the moss that covered his chest and hips, and his hair had turned white with the winter, but his skin still looked like the smoke of an autumn bonfire, a clouded myriad of swirling hues of grey and white. His watery right arm had frozen over too, from the looks of it, but it still moved the way the rest of his body did. 

“I missed you so much,” he whispered into your ear. “I couldn’t feel you anymore. You went so far away, but… whenever you touched the token I gave you, I could sense you again… just barely.”

“I touched that pebble a lot,” you said. And you had. In idle moments on the road you’d slid your hand into your pocket and turned the stone over and over in your fingers like a talisman. It was always warm, no matter how cold the temperatures got. 

“I can feel it,” he said, cupping your jaw in his hands and making you gasp at the chill.

You kissed him, and he laughed, backing up against a tree as you pursued him voraciously. “Stay?” you whispered between snatched and nipping kisses. 

“Mmmph,” he grunted, smiling, even has his hands found their way to your hips and he held you there while he kissed you again. 

“Come to my home,” you said, tugging him by the fingers. 

No one saw you disappearing into your tiny hut at the edge of the village, and no one heard the sounds the two of you made for much of the night. 

Acheron stayed for three days in your home before he had to return to check on the river, but later in the winter, when the river truly slept after her fitful storms of autumn, he stayed much longer. He often lay curled in your bed during the day, and sometimes you spent the whole day there with him, tucked up against his stony side. 

Sometimes his hands would wander, but more often than not, he slept too. Safe and contented, it seemed that the water spirit had found something of a haven in your arms, and you were more than happy to give that to him. 

Come spring, you knew he would have to go back, to tend to the river and get her ready for the spring, but the village prospered - perhaps now more than it ever had before - and whenever you returned from the long journey into town, Acheron would be there, waiting in the trees for you, with open arms, and a smile on his face. 

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