"Ain't no one fool enough to come looking for you."
"Great!" Kalya threw her head back, laughing as she turned to go. "All the more reason not to get lost."
***
Kalya wasn't lost, she knew that. The trail she followed was clear enough. She knew this, too, even as she squinted against the growing dark. The Slerian woods were famous for their canopy for a reason--and as the sun set above her, Kalya found it was a lesson she did not enjoy relearning. Even without her bragging to Jorin, this was supposed to be at least a somewhat easy job. But no map and few supplies made it harder than it needed to be. Eventually, when she saw the first stars, Kalya found the base of a large tree to set up camp.
She shrugged off her pack and fiddled with the straps, pulling out a large, comfortable sleeping sack she'd paid for with the few gold coins she'd managed to convince the sirens to give her after they'd had their fun. Her cheeks flushed with the memory, but she couldn't help but smile at it. Easy enough, just like this would be once she found the damn place. After rolling it out, Kalya set about finding her fire crystals. A little whisper of magic and the marble-size gemstone glowed with preternatural heat and light. Not all the comfort of a campfire, but close enough, and easier than trapsing about with flint and steel.
Kalya gripped her stomach. If only she'd thought to pack something more than a bottle of mead and some crusty bread. Breakfast would have to wait until morning. Rationing was another unfortunate side-effect of an adventurer between jobs. But the darkness grew, and Kalya knew sleep would come soon. She settled down on top of her sleeping sack, it was too warm to think about crawling in, and gave a mighty yawn.
Hiking always did tire her out, but it was a pleasant weariness. At almost thirty, Kalya was finding the adventurer lifestyle a little wearier by the year. Catgirls lived longer than humans, but it wasn't like she was getting any younger. Ideally, a job like this would give her some money to live comfortably and settle somewhere better than a nameless town on the edge of the Slerian woods. But ideals were hardly reality.
Kalya's eyes drooped. The stars above her swirled and twinkled. The tree's branches swayed in a gentle breeze above her. There was something so relaxing about it all. The blossoms higher up shined nearly as bright as the stars themselves. Kalya had never seen flowers like those before. She craned her neck a little to get a better look. They were so large, and had so many different colored petals. No, not different colors. Changing colors! That was it. She settled further down with that mystery solved, but couldn't help herself to look closer. Their beauty was... unparalleled.
The petals shifted colors in a steady rhythm--from red to green to blue to black and white and over and over again. Two of the blossoms hung down low from thick green vines, swaying gently in the breeze along with the leaves further up. Each one spun about in a different pattern, the colors moving as one, but not quite. Kalya's eyes bounced between them, unsure of which to follow exactly. They really were very, very pretty. Like gemstones or rippling water. Like rippling water, too, the sight was so relaxing that Kalya didn't mind eventually giving up and letting her eyes go a little unfocused. The better to watch them both, to absorb the lights and the pattern and melt further into the soft, comforting embrace of her sleeping sack.
That she had not actually climbed into the sack hardly seemed to register with her. Kalya's ears twitched, and then her tail. Her tail was free but her arms felt... heavy. Like something was around them. Her legs, too. Something was wrapping around them, wrapping her up. Soft and comfortable as her sack and oh so relaxing when it, or they, tightened and started rubbing up and down her tired legs and arms. Whatever it or they was or were felt warm and comforting, only increasing the overwhelming sense of relaxation flowing from the spiraling, intoxicating, blossoms above her.
Kalya's body was at once massaged and bound, the loops of comforting, blissful something sliding around and around, fixing her in place and keeping her looking up at the pretty, pretty flowers. Then came the most surreal feeling of all--that of at once being weightless and heavy. Her arms and legs felt like weights, limp and loose and the thought of moving them seemed distant and nowhere near the effort. But there was that inkling, a sense of not being on the ground anymore. The flowers grew closer, or else Kalya moved towards them. It would make sense if she was moving towards them, she really did want to get a better look, but then it didn't make sense at once because Kalya knew she wasn't moving.
She furrowed her brow at this contradiction, surprised at the sluggishness of her own mind. Her thoughts flowed as molasses, ideas coming slowly and realizations barely registering. How could she think about trying to look around her when the petals flicked from green to blue to yellow to red to... too... And her arms? Did it matter if they were bound beside her when her shoulders, her neck, were being slowly rubbed into limp, delicious bliss? The same for her legs, her feet. She hadn't even remembered taking off her boots, but now there was something running gentle circles over her soles and flexing her toes and it felt so... so good. Everything about this seemed so good. There was even, her breath hitched, now a kind of rubbing between her thighs. She couldn't move away from it, couldn't even move to welcome it. She did want to welcome it though, this gentle, endless rubbing that flowed warmth out from it and loosened her body and her mind further. The steadiness matched the way the somethings held her and the way the petals now nearly at her face flickered and shimmered that made the moment perfectly complete. The goodness of it all, the welcoming relaxation and bliss and sudden, intoxicating warmth. Kalya sighed and found herself beaming into the nearest flower as it slipped closer and closer still to her face. She detected then the faintest sweet, vaguely musky aroma coming from it. Nothing had ever smelled so good, had ever made to want her breathe so deep.
Disappointment bubbled quickly in her throat as the flowers snapped shut and left her for a moment in dazed, confused dark. Then, out of the corner of her vision, Kalya spotted a pair of glowing golden eyes among the stars. They blinked, flashing in and out of existence, and inched nearer. As Kalya's night vision kicked in, she noticed they belonged to the face of a woman, of a creature, of a someone too near her idea of perfect beauty to be believed.
The someone was a little shorter than Kalya, a little smaller overall. She landed on the tree branch before Kalya on dainty, silky-looking bare feet complete with perfectly pedicured toes, painted red. The way she settled implied she weighed nearly nothing, and that landing had merely been for Kalya's sake. Her smooth, bare legs worked up to curvaceous, swaying hips just covered by a short, a very short, skirt made out of swaying willow branches that flowed with the rest of the greenery around her in the ever-present, gentle breeze. Her midriff was bare, revealing a smooth stomach and cute, pierced belly-button. Kalya's eyes drifted higher, to her breasts, bare except for nipples hiding behind tiny green leaves. Kalya swallowed. Okay, so not everything about the newcomer was smaller. Certainly not those breasts... nor those eyes. Kalya's own snapped to them. They still glowed gold from within a round, coquettish face smirking widely at Kalya. It was a gorgeous face--painted red lips and a small, perky nose framed so well by short, black-green hair just reaching pointed ears.
Somewhere in the dim sluggishness of Kalya's still dazzled mind, it registered. Fae. Judging by the green tint to her skin and hair, the casual use of flowers and leaves for clothing... plant fae at that.
All the warnings and all the worry and all the anxiety of what to do in a situation like this roared to the front of Kalya's mind, snapping her almost fully out of whatever spell she'd been under. But when she went to climb to her feet, give a bow or some other greeting beings were due, she found she couldn't. Kalya couldn't move at all. Her entire body, from her ankles up to her waist and arms and shoulders was bound in thick, soft, intoxicatingly fragrant vines. More than that, there were vines running between her thighs, pulsing every now and then in ways that kept her breath caught in her throat and a hum building deep inside her. Others looped about her feet and shoulders, rubbing them gently and soothingly--keeping them limp and keeping Kalya from wanting to move them in the slightest.
It would be, it was, an almost helpless situation, Kalya bound and unable and almost unwilling to resist. But something, the sweetness of the blooming flowers about her, the soft, steady pressure on her body, the coy smile on the fae's face, kept her from thinking of it as dangerous.
It couldn't be... right?
The fae giggled.
"Well," she said, "that's quite a predicament you're in, isn't it?"
"Hu-what?" Kalya tried to parse her thoughts, to clear the fog further from her mind. Then a vine thrummed between her legs and her eyes closed of their own accord. She wanted to writhe, to pull out and away, but she found herself unconsciously tightening and squeezing, pulling more of the pleasure building up inside her from the feeling.
The fae gave her an almost teasing
tsk
. "Oh you're not that bothered by this, are you?"
"N-no," Kalya managed. "I just... oh... am a little surprised."
"I'm surprised, too! Not often I get company all the way out here. You wandered some from the path, didn't you?"
"Did I?"
"Oh yes... But that's okay. I'm more than happy to keep you company through the night. You do seem to be enjoying yourself." The fae got nearer, her feet barely making a sound on the branch as she stepped up and stood over Kalya. "I'm Lareni. Can I have your name?"
Kalya's mind worked furiously. Even with the tightness, the thrumming, something about that question felt... off. She closed her eyes to think, to ward off another rush of vibrations melting her entire body down, and threatening to drag her mind with it.
"No..." she said. "You cannot have my name. But I will tell you what it... what it is."
"Oh darn," Lareni said, folding her arms over her chest in just a way to lift her breasts and strain the leaves covering her nipples. "You've met us before, haven't you?"
"Once or twice," Kalya gasped.
