Tarri opened her eyes. The bare branches of the trees were stark against the sky. Behind her, the forest trail stretched off into blackness. To one end, it led back to town, and to the other, it led eventually to a running stream.
For a moment, she was calm. Her sex with Rachel and masturbation in the forest had quenched her desire, if only for a little while.
Tarri felt compelled to explore the forest. Rachel did not cross her mind. After all, as Tarri's slave, Rachel would be there when Tarri needed her, and when Tarri didn't, Rachel would simply wait for her to need her again.
As Tarri walked through the rain, she found her clothes to be uncomfortable: cold, damp, and slick against her skin. Without hesitation, she took off her t-shirt, then her shorts, and piled them by a tree. Then she knelt and untied her shoes with fumbling fingers, careful not to sit down in the brush; the idea of putting her bare ass and pussy on sharp pine needles made her wince. Naked in the woods, she felt good again, as she had at the beach. She would not put her clothes back on again.
She padded along the trail, her hands swinging by her sides. The moon was high in the sky, a silver crescent beside swirls of stars. Her bare feet were pricked by needles and sometimes rocks. The path curved deeper and deeper into the woods, and as she walked into the darkness, she began to hear the distant wash of the stream.
Finally she reached the water. The trail led up to the riverbank, and then kept going, curving back around in a circle that eventually led to the town. Usually, that was what Tarri would do: spend a few minutes standing by the water, and then turn back around. But not today. She stood on the riverbank, her toes sinking into the mud, and peered up the stream, where it left the trail and went into the forest. Where did the stream lead? How far did it go?
Without hesitation, she stepped into the water and began to walk against the current, off the trail, into the woods.
Further and further she went, and the further she went, the deeper the stream got. On both sides of the stream were dead trees, sinister in the night, and heavy underbrush covered with leaves and twigs and bugs.
Up ahead, the trees by the side of the stream had been cleared away, and there a dark shape lay. Tarri waded through the water, and when she finally reached the clearing, she stepped up out of the water. She knelt down to examine this shape.
In the clearing lay a dead deer. The deer was utterly still, surrounded by stray tufts of pale fur. Though the remains of a skeleton gave a curvy structure to its upper body, its legs and hindquarters had rotted almost totally. Its ribs were visible through its torn belly, and its face held the silent rictus of a dying scream. Fear rose in Tarri's gut.
Suddenly she wanted to return to her room, take a hot shower, and forget about everything that had happened. She could return to the world. She closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths.
But when she opened her eyes, she realized the deer was moving. Though its legs were folded and broken beneath it, it was somehow propping itself up so as to stand on its two hind legs. Though its corpse was still desiccated, the thing was moving like some kind of puppet, both alive and not. In shock and terror, Tarri backed up out of the clearing, into the river, as this dead animal teetered back and forth on its hooves. Then it looked at her - its eyes were beady and black - and tossed its head, as though it were indicating a direction, and began to walk that way. Tarri decided she would follow this grisly impossibility.
The deer walked awkwardly through the forest, its rotted tail dragging along the leaves, and Tarri followed. The pleasant smell of pine came to her, its fresh and somehow bright aroma, mixed with a slightly rotted stench from the walking corpse. They walked for a long time, until she saw another clearing in the distance, and another shape. Someone was standing there, silhouetted; it was too dark to see.
When the deer reached the edge of the new clearing, it turned creakily around and held up one hoof, as if to stop her. Tarri got the message, stood by the edge, and waited. The deer shuffled up to the dark silhouette, and this person reached out and patted it on the head. Then they bent down to the ground, rummaged around for a moment, and an open flame appeared in the air above. Like a hanging torch, this ball of fire suspended from a tree sent whitish-red light across the clearing; it was so bright that Tarri had to shut her eyes for a moment and look at the circular blur it had left on her vision. At the moment she opened her eyes, someone said, "Well, come here, then."
In the circle stood a young man, dressed all in white. Like Tarri, he was blond, and his hair reached down to his shoulders. On his face was a somewhat bored expression, but apart from that, his face was beautiful; he was clean-shaven, and had pointed, elfin features. His only flaw was a deep scar across his cheek. Beside him stood the dead deer, its face now aimed at the ground. And beside them both was an altar, a flat surface made from black metal that reflected the light so powerfully it hurt to look at.
