Essence [One-Shot]
Alfred had always been a bit different. From the moment he was born, when his mother held him to her chest for the first time and gazed down into his tear-streaked, panicked young face, his family had known that he would not be like other boys. There was just something about him, a sense of untamed, wild freedom. Touched by the gods, his parents said proudly- cursed by the devils, said the guards who could never seem to keep him inside the city walls.
And so Alfred grew up, from a curious infant to a mischievous child to an adventurous young man. His parents had never made any effort to tame him, much to their credit, but even if they had, it would not likely have done any good. Alfred was simply too free-spirited to be restricted by any mortal means. Not even the most attractive of the young women and men amongst the townsfolk could keep him by their side for long. He was far more interested in the world around him.
One of Alfred’s favorite places to explore was the woods that grew near the borders of the city. It was a small forest, only about as large as the city itself, but somehow Alfred found that he discovered new things every time he ventured into its depths. He had come across such treasures as colorful stones, soft feathers, and gorgeous antlers and horns. For a young man such as Alfred, these things were more wonderful than any of the statues or fountains or pottery that decorated the streets of the city. He took no interest in mosaics depicting gods and cavalry and kings, but rather in the patterns of tree branches and the footprints of animals and the ripples of water in a pool.
And that was exactly why Alfred found himself on the very outskirts of the forest that morning. He had made his way past the guards just as he usually did, followed his well-known trail to the woods. That morning, though, the air felt different, vibrant, almost as if it were even more alive than usual, as though something within it was breathing life into its core. Alfred stood by the edge for a moment, taking in deep gasps of this pure air, before striding beneath the sunlit canopy of the woods.
He wandered. Like most days, he had no destination in mind, merely following where his feet led him, carrying him past strange rock formations that he had never seen before, through a cave hidden beneath a small waterfall, along low-hanging branches. His tunic caught on a twig and tore, but he paid it no mind. In the depths of the forest, such things did not matter.
Hours passed, and then more, and it was not until he noticed the lengthening shadows that he realized it was past midday. Alfred stopped for a brief few seconds. His parents would want him to be home by dinner. If he turned back now, he would make it back through the city gates before sunset. He knew that he should, that it would do no good to wander around in the darkness, but yet… Something drew him forward, deeper into the forest. He could not resist its pull, and followed after it like a drowning man craving sweet air with which to fill his lungs.
It led him through places he would never have dreamed to exist, full of enchantment and beauty, and he could not stop to admire them. His feet picked up their pace. Excitement flowed through his veins, though he did not know what for.
All at once, it stopped. His feet fell still. His heavy breathing softened. His eyes grew wide as the milk saucers his mother laid out for cats.
Alfred was standing at the edge of a clearing, no bigger then twenty steps wide. The trees around it were unlike any in the rest of the woods, their trunks perfectly straight, their branches curved outwards to form a natural shelter, letting only a few beams of sunlight through their interwoven leaves to dapple the ground below. The largest of those sunbeams fell directly upon the center of the clearing, and in that center was a pond, natural and pure and clear, partially surrounded by soft, broad-leafed plants.
But it was none of these things that drew Alfred’s gaze and halted his breath. No, what his eyes fell upon was what, or who, stood within the calm waters of the pool. The creature was like nothing he had ever seen before- a human body, slender and pale, curved and yet flat with the planes of a man. Its hair was tangled and dark with moisture, strewn with beautiful leaves and feathers, glimmering in the sunlight. Through those tangles grew two majestic antlers. Their prongs curled upwards towards the sky, dressed in flowering vines, dripping water down into the pond below. The creature’s back remained towards Alfred as it bathed. He wanted nothing more than to see its front.
Alfred stepped forward, entranced, and his foot caught and snapped a small stick laying upon the ground. The creature in the pool whirled to face him. What little remained of Alfred’s breath shuddered to a stop in his throat. The creature’s eyes were green, green as the trees, green as natural emeralds, green both combined and more. Its face was human, soft but masculine.
“I’m sorry,” Alfred said. His voice sounded breathy and weak. “I did not mean to startle you.”
The creature tilted its head slightly, as a curious dog might. “I could kill you. I could rend you to pieces that not even the most adept hunter could find.” Green eyes glittered in the sunlight. “Tell me why I should not, when you are obviously fool enough to trespass upon my sacred waters.”
A hot wind whistled through the trees, rushing around Alfred’s body and leaving him gasping for even the slightest taste of spring air. “I mean you no harm. I did not intend to trespass. Something summoned me. I could not help it.” The words rung true in his mind, yet sounded foolish as they passed through his lips.
“I see.” The creature watched him a moment longer. Its bare chest rose and fell, rose and fell. “Come here, human.”
Alfred did not hesitate. His legs carried him forward, and he felt no fear, only a faint tremor of the excitement that had thrummed within him earlier. When he stood by the very edge of the pool, the creature beckoned him to halt. He did. “Are you a god?”
The creature smiled, its teeth both sharp and flat at the same instant. “No, not quite. I am the forest itself, every leaf, every fruit, every heartbeat.” It, he, reached up to run its fingers along the ridge of Alfred’s cheekbone. “I recognize you.”
“I come here often.” To you, into you, his mind continued, but he could not find the breath to speak it. The creature’s touch was soft, at once pale skin and solid hoof and deadly claw.
“I know.” The creature’s finger trailed down to Alfred’s lips and slid between them. “You are the one they call gods-touched. I can feel it in you. The wilderness beneath your skin. I can see what you truly wish, what you truly are.” His, its, finger twisted and stroked the inside of Alfred’s mouth, before it stepped away. The water rippled around its body. “Come, join me.”
The words were not a request, but a command, and for once Alfred had no misgivings about obeying. The air around the pool felt warm, too warm. He needed to move into the water.
Yet the creature merely laughed, high and fluted and low and rumbling. “Do you intend to bathe in your clothes, human?”
Alfred looked down upon himself, and noted to his amazement that he was indeed wearing garments atop his body. They felt strange, unnatural, and he wasted no time in discarding them. Breeches, tunic, and boots lay in a pile beside one of the broad-leafed plants. Alfred stepped into the water. It rose up to meet him, deep and cool and sweetly scented, but it did nothing to aid the burning heat that continued to grow within him. He moved forward, silent in the pool, towards the slender form of the creature across from him. “What is your name? What can I call you?”
The creature shook its head. “My name is not for human ears.” But it stepped forward as well, running its hands down from Alfred’s shoulders to elbows to waist. “This is the edge of no return, human. Choose wisely. There will be no second chances.”
Alfred did not know to what the creature referred, and he did not need the knowledge. His decision had been made long ago. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
“Then for now,” said the creature, “you may call me Arthur.” Its hands slid back up to smooth along the sides of Alfred’s neck, and as they went, he felt as though his skin was being cleansed, as though the bonds and chains of his body were falling away, releasing him into the freedom of the wild. Arthur moved forward once more, until there was nothing between their bodies, not even the water.
Their mouths met. Alfred touched fangs and bark and teeth and tongue, and he lifted his own hands to tangle into Arthur’s hair, stroking along the base of his antlers. They sank further into the water, though their knees did not bend. Scales rippled beneath Alfred’s fingers, became fur, and then flesh, and then feathers. He lost his body within Arthur’s mouth, and his spirit entwined with the land around them. Heat raged within him, spilled out into the air, into the water, into Arthur and the forest, and they were one and the same.
The pool boiled, steam rising between them. Arthur’s lips and muzzle and beak and leaves slid down Alfred’s neck, and Alfred gasped into the burning air. Claws dug into his skin, flower petals brushed against his ear. The water rose further around them. And then Arthur’s hand hoof talons branches fin paw moved down between his thighs, across the hardness it found there, and beyond, to the secret place that some men whispered about in the darkness. Alfred drew in a breath of fire, breathed again and swallowed water, choked as fingers moved inside him and around him.
“Tell me,” Arthur commanded, voice like grinding rocks and softest winds. “Tell me your name.”
Alfred cried out, and his voice broke and howled. “Alfred, my name is Alfred!”
“No, it is not.” Arthur’s fingers, twigs, claws twisted inside. The air was on fire. “Tell me your name!”
“Alfred!” But it was wrong. That was not his name- that was not his name, but then who was he? Alfred forced his eyes open, stared down into the forest that blossomed within Arthur’s gaze, felt the heat coil within his very essence, and knew. He leaned forward and whispered it into Arthur’s ear, his lips brushing across hair and skin and fur, and he knew.
Arthur laughed, and Alfred loved it. “Yes.”
They did not fall, did not bend, did not move, and the water surged up around them, and they sank below it, and they did not drown. Alfred dug his claws nails roots into Arthur’s back. Arthur pulled out his hand hoof talon, and held Alfred’s hips, and slid inside his body. Howls broke through the water. The pool burst with fountains of steam and wind and flames. Seasons passed, leaves flooding with red and orange and then falling with snow, being reborn with the first of the flowers, growing in the sunlight until autumn came again. Trees birthed and died around them, pups lived to old age, fledgling birds took flight and plummeted to earth once more, and the water writhed and foamed, and Alfred buried himself in the grass and bloomed as Arthur moved within him. The sounds of life deafened him, and he laughed along with it.
For one moment, a brief second a thousand lifetimes, everything fell silent. Arthur leaned forward, pressing his mouth to the side of Alfred’s head, and whispered into his ear. The word was not a word at all, but a sound of wind and earth and water and fire. Alfred smiled. It was a name, because Arthur was not Arthur at all, but something far more, something far older and wiser and deadlier and more caring, and Alfred was as well.
The water drew back into itself, thrumming with pressure and abandon. Alfred sank his teeth fangs beak into Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur howled roared hissed shrieked towards the sky, and the pool exploded with color and sound and silence. They lay within its embrace, wound around one another, and Arthur stroked the antlers that curved out of the wet tangles of Alfred’s hair.
Alfred did not return to the city for dinner that night, or the next day, or the one after that. Though the finest of hunters were sent out to find him, they came back empty-handed. There was nothing there, they would say, nothing at all to suggest that a young man had even passed through the land. It was not until days later that one hunter came running through the gates of the city, clutching a ripped tunic and a pair of breeches and boots to his chest. Alfred’s parents took them but did not mourn for long, for Alfred had always been a bit different, and in some ways, they had expected the land that he so loved to take him back someday.
Sometimes, when people ventured out into the forest after that, they claimed to see things, strange things. A pair of golden stags, or two massive silver wolves, or powerful hawks that flew wingtip to wingtip, or even giant trees that curled around one another. And sometimes, only sometimes, others claimed to have seen two young men, bare as the day they were born, with great antlers growing out of their hair, laughing and dancing in the shadows.
The forest was never given a name. It already had one, a name comprised of two words that humans could never speak nor understand, and it was beautiful.
**
A/N- Okay, Semebay, I think I utterly mutilated your prompt. This seriously has to be one of the weirdest things I have ever written. I mean… What the hell. Seriously.
I don’t even have any words to say here. Uh… I guess this was based off a prompt given to me by Semebay, for kind of using the legend of Artemis and the hunter who she turned into a deer, and changing it to have a happy ending. I just kind of flipped it over and turned it inside out and made it into something really strange. Oh, and I guess this is my first UKUS.
Um. Hope you enjoy? And thanks for the prompt, Seme, even if I did ruin it.
Also, the title sucks. Please feel free to suggest another one.
And so Alfred grew up, from a curious infant to a mischievous child to an adventurous young man. His parents had never made any effort to tame him, much to their credit, but even if they had, it would not likely have done any good. Alfred was simply too free-spirited to be restricted by any mortal means. Not even the most attractive of the young women and men amongst the townsfolk could keep him by their side for long. He was far more interested in the world around him.
One of Alfred’s favorite places to explore was the woods that grew near the borders of the city. It was a small forest, only about as large as the city itself, but somehow Alfred found that he discovered new things every time he ventured into its depths. He had come across such treasures as colorful stones, soft feathers, and gorgeous antlers and horns. For a young man such as Alfred, these things were more wonderful than any of the statues or fountains or pottery that decorated the streets of the city. He took no interest in mosaics depicting gods and cavalry and kings, but rather in the patterns of tree branches and the footprints of animals and the ripples of water in a pool.
And that was exactly why Alfred found himself on the very outskirts of the forest that morning. He had made his way past the guards just as he usually did, followed his well-known trail to the woods. That morning, though, the air felt different, vibrant, almost as if it were even more alive than usual, as though something within it was breathing life into its core. Alfred stood by the edge for a moment, taking in deep gasps of this pure air, before striding beneath the sunlit canopy of the woods.
He wandered. Like most days, he had no destination in mind, merely following where his feet led him, carrying him past strange rock formations that he had never seen before, through a cave hidden beneath a small waterfall, along low-hanging branches. His tunic caught on a twig and tore, but he paid it no mind. In the depths of the forest, such things did not matter.
Hours passed, and then more, and it was not until he noticed the lengthening shadows that he realized it was past midday. Alfred stopped for a brief few seconds. His parents would want him to be home by dinner. If he turned back now, he would make it back through the city gates before sunset. He knew that he should, that it would do no good to wander around in the darkness, but yet… Something drew him forward, deeper into the forest. He could not resist its pull, and followed after it like a drowning man craving sweet air with which to fill his lungs.
It led him through places he would never have dreamed to exist, full of enchantment and beauty, and he could not stop to admire them. His feet picked up their pace. Excitement flowed through his veins, though he did not know what for.
All at once, it stopped. His feet fell still. His heavy breathing softened. His eyes grew wide as the milk saucers his mother laid out for cats.
Alfred was standing at the edge of a clearing, no bigger then twenty steps wide. The trees around it were unlike any in the rest of the woods, their trunks perfectly straight, their branches curved outwards to form a natural shelter, letting only a few beams of sunlight through their interwoven leaves to dapple the ground below. The largest of those sunbeams fell directly upon the center of the clearing, and in that center was a pond, natural and pure and clear, partially surrounded by soft, broad-leafed plants.
But it was none of these things that drew Alfred’s gaze and halted his breath. No, what his eyes fell upon was what, or who, stood within the calm waters of the pool. The creature was like nothing he had ever seen before- a human body, slender and pale, curved and yet flat with the planes of a man. Its hair was tangled and dark with moisture, strewn with beautiful leaves and feathers, glimmering in the sunlight. Through those tangles grew two majestic antlers. Their prongs curled upwards towards the sky, dressed in flowering vines, dripping water down into the pond below. The creature’s back remained towards Alfred as it bathed. He wanted nothing more than to see its front.
Alfred stepped forward, entranced, and his foot caught and snapped a small stick laying upon the ground. The creature in the pool whirled to face him. What little remained of Alfred’s breath shuddered to a stop in his throat. The creature’s eyes were green, green as the trees, green as natural emeralds, green both combined and more. Its face was human, soft but masculine.
“I’m sorry,” Alfred said. His voice sounded breathy and weak. “I did not mean to startle you.”
The creature tilted its head slightly, as a curious dog might. “I could kill you. I could rend you to pieces that not even the most adept hunter could find.” Green eyes glittered in the sunlight. “Tell me why I should not, when you are obviously fool enough to trespass upon my sacred waters.”
A hot wind whistled through the trees, rushing around Alfred’s body and leaving him gasping for even the slightest taste of spring air. “I mean you no harm. I did not intend to trespass. Something summoned me. I could not help it.” The words rung true in his mind, yet sounded foolish as they passed through his lips.
“I see.” The creature watched him a moment longer. Its bare chest rose and fell, rose and fell. “Come here, human.”
Alfred did not hesitate. His legs carried him forward, and he felt no fear, only a faint tremor of the excitement that had thrummed within him earlier. When he stood by the very edge of the pool, the creature beckoned him to halt. He did. “Are you a god?”
The creature smiled, its teeth both sharp and flat at the same instant. “No, not quite. I am the forest itself, every leaf, every fruit, every heartbeat.” It, he, reached up to run its fingers along the ridge of Alfred’s cheekbone. “I recognize you.”
“I come here often.” To you, into you, his mind continued, but he could not find the breath to speak it. The creature’s touch was soft, at once pale skin and solid hoof and deadly claw.
“I know.” The creature’s finger trailed down to Alfred’s lips and slid between them. “You are the one they call gods-touched. I can feel it in you. The wilderness beneath your skin. I can see what you truly wish, what you truly are.” His, its, finger twisted and stroked the inside of Alfred’s mouth, before it stepped away. The water rippled around its body. “Come, join me.”
The words were not a request, but a command, and for once Alfred had no misgivings about obeying. The air around the pool felt warm, too warm. He needed to move into the water.
Yet the creature merely laughed, high and fluted and low and rumbling. “Do you intend to bathe in your clothes, human?”
Alfred looked down upon himself, and noted to his amazement that he was indeed wearing garments atop his body. They felt strange, unnatural, and he wasted no time in discarding them. Breeches, tunic, and boots lay in a pile beside one of the broad-leafed plants. Alfred stepped into the water. It rose up to meet him, deep and cool and sweetly scented, but it did nothing to aid the burning heat that continued to grow within him. He moved forward, silent in the pool, towards the slender form of the creature across from him. “What is your name? What can I call you?”
The creature shook its head. “My name is not for human ears.” But it stepped forward as well, running its hands down from Alfred’s shoulders to elbows to waist. “This is the edge of no return, human. Choose wisely. There will be no second chances.”
Alfred did not know to what the creature referred, and he did not need the knowledge. His decision had been made long ago. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I do.”
“Then for now,” said the creature, “you may call me Arthur.” Its hands slid back up to smooth along the sides of Alfred’s neck, and as they went, he felt as though his skin was being cleansed, as though the bonds and chains of his body were falling away, releasing him into the freedom of the wild. Arthur moved forward once more, until there was nothing between their bodies, not even the water.
Their mouths met. Alfred touched fangs and bark and teeth and tongue, and he lifted his own hands to tangle into Arthur’s hair, stroking along the base of his antlers. They sank further into the water, though their knees did not bend. Scales rippled beneath Alfred’s fingers, became fur, and then flesh, and then feathers. He lost his body within Arthur’s mouth, and his spirit entwined with the land around them. Heat raged within him, spilled out into the air, into the water, into Arthur and the forest, and they were one and the same.
The pool boiled, steam rising between them. Arthur’s lips and muzzle and beak and leaves slid down Alfred’s neck, and Alfred gasped into the burning air. Claws dug into his skin, flower petals brushed against his ear. The water rose further around them. And then Arthur’s hand hoof talons branches fin paw moved down between his thighs, across the hardness it found there, and beyond, to the secret place that some men whispered about in the darkness. Alfred drew in a breath of fire, breathed again and swallowed water, choked as fingers moved inside him and around him.
“Tell me,” Arthur commanded, voice like grinding rocks and softest winds. “Tell me your name.”
Alfred cried out, and his voice broke and howled. “Alfred, my name is Alfred!”
“No, it is not.” Arthur’s fingers, twigs, claws twisted inside. The air was on fire. “Tell me your name!”
“Alfred!” But it was wrong. That was not his name- that was not his name, but then who was he? Alfred forced his eyes open, stared down into the forest that blossomed within Arthur’s gaze, felt the heat coil within his very essence, and knew. He leaned forward and whispered it into Arthur’s ear, his lips brushing across hair and skin and fur, and he knew.
Arthur laughed, and Alfred loved it. “Yes.”
They did not fall, did not bend, did not move, and the water surged up around them, and they sank below it, and they did not drown. Alfred dug his claws nails roots into Arthur’s back. Arthur pulled out his hand hoof talon, and held Alfred’s hips, and slid inside his body. Howls broke through the water. The pool burst with fountains of steam and wind and flames. Seasons passed, leaves flooding with red and orange and then falling with snow, being reborn with the first of the flowers, growing in the sunlight until autumn came again. Trees birthed and died around them, pups lived to old age, fledgling birds took flight and plummeted to earth once more, and the water writhed and foamed, and Alfred buried himself in the grass and bloomed as Arthur moved within him. The sounds of life deafened him, and he laughed along with it.
For one moment, a brief second a thousand lifetimes, everything fell silent. Arthur leaned forward, pressing his mouth to the side of Alfred’s head, and whispered into his ear. The word was not a word at all, but a sound of wind and earth and water and fire. Alfred smiled. It was a name, because Arthur was not Arthur at all, but something far more, something far older and wiser and deadlier and more caring, and Alfred was as well.
The water drew back into itself, thrumming with pressure and abandon. Alfred sank his teeth fangs beak into Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur howled roared hissed shrieked towards the sky, and the pool exploded with color and sound and silence. They lay within its embrace, wound around one another, and Arthur stroked the antlers that curved out of the wet tangles of Alfred’s hair.
Alfred did not return to the city for dinner that night, or the next day, or the one after that. Though the finest of hunters were sent out to find him, they came back empty-handed. There was nothing there, they would say, nothing at all to suggest that a young man had even passed through the land. It was not until days later that one hunter came running through the gates of the city, clutching a ripped tunic and a pair of breeches and boots to his chest. Alfred’s parents took them but did not mourn for long, for Alfred had always been a bit different, and in some ways, they had expected the land that he so loved to take him back someday.
Sometimes, when people ventured out into the forest after that, they claimed to see things, strange things. A pair of golden stags, or two massive silver wolves, or powerful hawks that flew wingtip to wingtip, or even giant trees that curled around one another. And sometimes, only sometimes, others claimed to have seen two young men, bare as the day they were born, with great antlers growing out of their hair, laughing and dancing in the shadows.
The forest was never given a name. It already had one, a name comprised of two words that humans could never speak nor understand, and it was beautiful.
**
A/N- Okay, Semebay, I think I utterly mutilated your prompt. This seriously has to be one of the weirdest things I have ever written. I mean… What the hell. Seriously.
I don’t even have any words to say here. Uh… I guess this was based off a prompt given to me by Semebay, for kind of using the legend of Artemis and the hunter who she turned into a deer, and changing it to have a happy ending. I just kind of flipped it over and turned it inside out and made it into something really strange. Oh, and I guess this is my first UKUS.
Um. Hope you enjoy? And thanks for the prompt, Seme, even if I did ruin it.
Also, the title sucks. Please feel free to suggest another one.