Chance Meeting

Chance Meeting

A pair of tiny, gold-flecked orbs stared at him. The pupils narrowed, vertical feral slits unlike any Ryan had ever seen. He sensed alarm, even panic, and realised these emotions were not his own. They belonged to … whoever was watching.

They resolved as the features of a perfect, delicate face: one which had no page or chapter in any book listing the flora and fauna of the natural world.

A foot in height, female in form: hair the colour of purest gold cascading to her waist and held in place by a coronet plaited from fresh Michaelmas daisies. A glistening green sheath dress clung to her body, tied over her left shoulder. Ryan saw she was barefoot, but decided this was probably from choice. The bow in her hand suggested someone accustomed to hunting, a reason for her right shoulder remaining bare.

. His instincts were to be polite: he made a small formal bow.

“Good day, madam – miss? – milady?”

From such a diminutive creature the genuine, unforced laughter of her response was impossibly loud. It echoed around the forest.

“No lady, Sir! Not by any definition of my people, or yours: not unless customs have changed since last I was so courteously greeted by … ” she paused, as if uncertain whom (or what? Ryan wondered) she was addressing. Unaccountably he felt it was important for him, personally, to win this lady’s favour and approval. Her words were courteous yet he sensed they were delivered with a touch of mockery, as if the speaker considered herself superior to anyone she might chance to meet this perfect summer’s day. Of one thing he was certain. The next step in this dance must come from him, and before the brief silence became an embarrassment.

“Might I have the honour of your name?”

If he could gain a brief advantage, he was determined not to squander it.

“Well spoken, Word Warrior, and softly! I must watch my way with you! Yet you ask, and I must answer. I am Eithne of the Elves. This woods is part of my ward. What name do you go by?”

“My friends call me Ryan. And ‘of the Forestry Commission’, I suppose. They are my employers” he added.

Eithne’s eyes sparkled. Her voice mellowed, losing its formal edge:

“Friend then I name you, Ryan! It seems we both have the best interests of this woods in our hearts. Let us share our thoughts!”

At once Ryan was alongside Eithne in a glade some distance from the stream where they had met. They sat on an ornate bench which appeared to have been woven rather than carved, a comfortable size for two. Before them was a carafe, two glasses and a platter of assorted food appeared. He started involuntarily, and discovered that he was still gripping his lunchtime beer. He offered the bottle, which she took in both hands. The perspective change made it appear oversized, clumsy. She held it for a second under her nose, testing the aroma of its contents, wet her lips with the tiniest of sips and passed it back.

“The taste is different, and I like the way the bubbles tickle my palate, but I prefer wine! Will you join me?”

She poured into both glasses and raised her own to eye level. Ryan sensed an opportunity to regain some control.

“Let us toast our mutual interest in these woods: You referred to it as your ‘ward’. Is it something you have a duty to protect?”

“Oh, you are quick! Tell me, Ryan of the Forestry: will you lead me as merry a dance if I appear to you in another form?”

Instantly she was on her feet. Ryan rose more carefully.

“Eithne, I cannot answer your question without knowing what your ‘other form’ might be: but should we not drink the toast in our present bodies?”

Eithne smiled.

“You show remarkable agility of mind: one step ahead of me, every time! I toast you with an open heart!”

She raised her glass and drank deeply.

 He followed her lead, and had to restrain himself from emptying the glass in a single draught. It contained the taste of every herb ever used to tease the flavour out of a Sunday joint combined with the aroma of every summer flower growing in the fields, enhancing a sunburst of flavours which blossomed in his mouth.

She gestured with her free hand: the food platter floated up to settle within reach. Eithne selected a delicacy, nodding her approval when his hand joined hers on the plate. Was it entirely by chance their fingers touched? Ryan knew it hadn’t been a deliberate act on his part, but Eithne’s eyes suggested a glint of mischief. Was she challenging him, testing his knightly virtues?

Suddenly the ground beneath his feet shuddered. He strove to look away but her eyes had become glowing slits of cold fire, denying him freedom.

“Be not afraid: I mean you no harm!”

Eithne’s lips didn’t move, but her voice was unmistakeable.

“Trust me, Ryan of the Mortals! Eat, drink!”

She crushed the savoury slowly on her tongue, and emptied her glass. As he drained the last of his wine, he felt the glass fall. Too late, he flailed to catch it. Everything was happening in ultra-slow motion: he couldn't close his fingers to make a fist. His eyes bulged in disbelief. His hand no longer ended in fingers and an opposed thumb: it had become a cloven hoof. His upright posture now felt unnatural: completely, utterly wrong. A stag is one of Nature's fleetest fourfooted creations: she demanded his obedience, and he was unable to refuse. Enough Mortal instinct remained in Ryan's new perception of the world to accept this as a gift from Eithne: where she led, he would follow.

He pawed the ground and hesitated, a silent statue shuddering with urgent, untested energies. He raised his head to confirm that this shape-shifting was real. As his eyes feasted on her his breath grew short, his throat dry. The sheer, savage joy of unbridled lust filled his senses. This was no longer the puny, brittle framed biped which had been Ryan moments earlier. Stag Ryan planted his forelegs on solid earth where they belonged, a full-grown alpha male of the deer family, in his first rutting season. He roared a full throated challenge, magnified as it caromed off every tree bole, branch, leaf and flower stem before soaring into the distance. His pose could not last forever: as he landed his right hoof struck a shard of flint, raising a shower of sparks as the stone shattered into a dozen fragments.

Eithne had grown from a minute sprite to assume the form of a virginal white doe, perfectly proportioned in every way, utterly desirable. Whatever remained of Ryan had no thought for anything else. He rose once more, consumed by passion, and launched himself gracefully through the air, easily clearing the twenty yards which separated him from his heart’s desire.

The shimmering white doe had been ready, and bounded away before his rear hooves left the ground. An impertinent flash of the miniscule scud which almost covered her rump was all that remained to greet him as he landed. A carillon of teasing laughter gave him a direction to follow: the chase was on, with Ryan the Hunter. His superior size and strength were no advantage against Eithne’s lighter frame and nimble feet, which enabled her to slip easily through gaps and barriers which Ryan had to bully his way through or find a way around. He sensed that she was not distancing herself from him as quickly as she could.

‘Like all women, she wants to be caught’ a tiny voice deep within assured him ‘ … the rest is up to you!’

He was not yet at one with his unfamiliar body, but he was learning fast. The only thing which mattered was to capture and dominate the beautiful creature impudently leading him through a forest which had taken on an added lustre of mystery and magic. As he leapt another impossible thirty yards in a single bound, his male urges heightened another notch. Somehow he found extra reserves of stamina to increase his speed to a flat out gallop. The tiniest detail of every tree, plant and shrub was sharper, clearer, more acute than anything he’d seen in his years as a mere mortal. His enhanced panoramic field of vision registered an impossible number of hues and grades of colour on nature’s palette. The permutations and possibilities of the most prevalent forest colour, green, could not be counted. Like a human fingerprint, the shading and the foliage on every tree and bush was unique, subtly different from even its closest neighbour.

 “Trust me!”

He careered, almost out of control, round one more tight bend. Time no longer had any significant meaning. They had been hurtling through the densest thickets and the trackless forest for an unconscionable time, barely bending each blade of grass, without damaging or even bruising the stem of a single bush or flower. Despite his bulk, and the crashing sound each time his hoofs struck the ground, Ryan felt exhilarated, lighter than thistledown. He could hear the heavy throb of blood coursing through his temples, but his breathing was effortless, his energy boundless. He sensed he could run forever, if need be, to capture his prize.

Eithne careened onto a dusty, grassless track and turned left, heading west. She slowed to a brisk trot, looking over her shoulder to make sure he followed. The track opened out into a meadow of level, trimmed lawn with a magnificent ancient oak in its exact centre. The sublime symmetry of the scene could not be natural. Some unknown expert gardener had planned and sculpted this idyllic lovers’ bower scene as a testament to Nature’s beauty, his tour de force a genuine labour of love.

Eithne stood beneath the single oak, her breathing calm, controlled despite the madcap chase. Ryan dug into the turf, carving out two shallow ruts with his forelegs. Eithne’s flimsy white tail flickered more rapidly than ever across her rump as she stood and gazed at him soulfully. For a moment her eyes became the emerald green they had been in Elvish form, pinning Ryan in mid-stride. He reared to stand erect, perfectly balanced as he bellowed triumphantly to the whole forest, displaying for Eithne his throbbing, glistening shaft, surely too vast to enter her dainty buttocks. Eithne’s eyes changed back to the innocent hazel brown of every doe. She settled on a slightly wider stance of her graceful legs, turned her head once more towards the massive oak and bent her neck in submission.

He slowed to a walk and touched her with his nose: warm and moist. Eithne’s moan resembled a feline purr of pleasure. Seconds passed, and her moans increased in volume and intensity as Ryan mounted her, his full length pulsing rhythmically in the one sweet spot for which it was designed.

A tiny part of Ryan’s faltering thought processes warned him the difference between his massive body and her slender frame was too great for their mating to last long.

Eithne slowed and gazed at Ryan, imploring his patience. She took the most delicate of steps forward and placed her forelegs against the trunk of the oak.

Ryan’s broad shoulders made it easy for him to place his forelegs on either side. Now it was possible to push just a centimetre deeper into her wanton, receptive flesh. When their moment of simultaneous ecstasy arrived it engulfed them, passing with a speed which left them unable to stand. They lay spent on their bellies, nuzzling, touching noses as they sought to force breath into air-starved lungs. Ryan sensed they were safe from discovery by any member of the Natural, Mortal or Faerie worlds.

The sun had reached its zenith, and Ryan could feel the gentle warmth of the summer day dappling on his back through the protective canopy of foliage above them. All his senses were preternaturally alert, alive and vibrating. A thousand and one minute sounds wafted from all parts of the forest as nature’s orchestra rested from their matinee performance and settled to drowse through the warmest hours of the day, preparing for an afternoon encore. One by one, the individual performers of the morning’s magnificent orchestral manœvres in the park faded into a comfortable, peaceful hour or three of well-earned rest and recovery.

He must have dozed for a while, along with every other plant, animal and elemental in the forest. Ryan opened eyes he hadn’t intended to close. It required a conscious effort to raise his head from the tussock he had used as the softest imaginable pillow and take stock of his surroundings.

Nothing had changed, yet everything seemed different. The scents of the flowers and the rich, loamy earth thrilled his supersensitive nostrils, satisfying him in ways no mortal had a right to experience or enjoy. His ears caught the love song chirruped by a grasshopper too far away to be visible, and could even identify the moment it paused and was answered by its mate in a slightly more reedy, feminine-sounding lilt. The infinitesimal nuance of difference between the two was something no human ear could possibly hope to discern, but for him it felt so right, so natural …

He relaxed and stretched, luxuriating in the heat of the sun’s rays which recharged him as they caressed every inch of his body. His eyes drooped. He was close to dozing once more when he suddenly realised why the soporific beauty of the forest glade felt different.

The full spectrum of forest favours, greens and golds, sable and silver, the shimmering subdivisions of shade which defied description in mundane mortal words were still everywhere he chose to look, but his enhanced stag’s field of panoramic vision had somehow altered: shrunken, restricted to something closer to that which he had known before his transformation. He felt a pang of loss and regret, deprived of the extra dimension of enhanced vision he had so briefly possessed. Reluctantly he forced himself to postpone his study of his surroundings and concentrate on a close examination of his body. He could sense he had undergone further subtle changes: a waspish inner voice snickered he might not be grateful to discover what they were.

The reason for his altered vision was immediately clear. He was no longer the powerful muscled package of full grown stag, crowned with superb branching antlers. 

He lay on his left flank, basking in the afternoon’s warm glow, and had resumed a human form – of sorts, he corrected himself. He wore no clothing, nor was there any sign of the garments he had been wearing prior to his shapeshifting and madcap pursuit through the forest.

Human in form, but now reduced in stature roughly to Eithne’s height. His skin colour had also altered subtly and now matched hers: a smooth, creamy hazelnut-brown. This wasn’t a wild guess. She had also reverted to her earlier form and lay curled in sleep within a comfortable arm’s stretch: a sumptuous feast for his eyes, though they had lost the extra depth and clarity he had been temporarily granted while Monarch of the Forest. Like him she was completely unclothed, but there was no sense of lewdness, immodesty or moral judgement in their exclusive, private world.

Ryan gazed at her with joy and with wonder: with love, perhaps? He hesitated to use such a powerful word to describe how he felt after one brief chance meeting, but there was one thing about which he could be certain. Baser terms suggesting any hint of desire, lust or selfish personal gratification had no place in his thoughts.

Eithne reached out for him, chanting in a silky, seductive whisper. There was an odd, hungry look in her eyes, which had reverted to feral golden slits.

Her hands touched and caressed his face, his neck, his shoulders: he found it impossible to speak. He attempted to pull back, free himself from her entwining arms, but was unable to move.

Eithne’s voice came to him again. There was a subtle alteration in the timbre of her words, percolating to him slowly, glutinously, reaching his ears in the rising sap of a plant: perhaps the lifeblood of the ancient oak which towered above them.

“This time will be on my terms, Ryan of the Mortals. Rest easy! Elves, like oak trees, are renowned for their longevity even amongst other Faery folk. We will be together now for a term you would only understand as Forever …”

Trussed securely within Eithne’s stiffening limbs, Ryan had a final moment’s glimpse of daylight before the gaping wound in the bole of the giant oak snapped closed,.

“And I’m never going Out with you again“ she whispered as she drew him closer … tighter deeper into the tree.

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