Cora found the dryad's lair more easily than she expected: the entrance was within a massive tree, and the path around it was lined with enormous flowers, their faces all turned up to catch the sun that drifted through the thick forest. She paused outside the dark hole that was woven into the tree's exposed roots, wiggling her little tail anxiously.
Her mother had always warned her not to make deals with dryads, but she needed money, and the posted advertisements had said that the dryad needed the assistance of a satyr girl especially. Besides, Cora was nearly twenty-one, plenty old enough to make her own decisions; she hadn't even told her mother where she was going, because she didn't want to argue about it.
But the entrance to the lair did look...frightening, somehow, despite the beautiful flowers surrounding it.
Cora stood there and worried, her sheep's tail wagging nervously as she thought about her options. She would feel so silly if she turned back after walking all this way and had nothing to show for a full day's journey, and then how would she get the money for the cute dress she wanted? There were no jobs left for her at home--at least, none that would hire her; the man who ran the tavern where she'd worked for a while as a barmaid had tossed her out after she'd slept with one too many of the customers.
Well, it hadn't necessarily been her sleeping with the men that was the problem. She made them a little bit mad by telling them all how poorly-endowed they were compared to satyr men. But what was she supposed to do, lie to them?
Before she could quite convince herself to turn around and go home, a beautiful woman emerged from the dark hole in the roots. Cora perked up and gasped.
The woman was elegant and willowy, her skin an ephemeral white tinged faintly with green, flowers woven painstakingly into her long hair and the gauzy fabric of her clothing--or were they growing there? The flowers were the only truly opaque part of her outfit, so as the woman moved, they danced and flowed over her, offering tantalizing glimpses of her curves that had Cora's tail wagging for an entirely different reason.
"Wow, you're beautiful!" she blurted, dancing a couple of steps forward on her hooves before remembering her manners. "Oh, sorry, I mean--I'm Cora! Are you a dryad? You must be a dryad!"
The woman burst into a gentle, tinkling laughter that made Cora blush. "Yes, I am. My name is Agnos. I suppose, if we're making guesses, I'll guess that you're a satyr?"
"Yes," Cora said, her cheeks still flushed red with embarrassment. "I'm sorry, was that rude? I just didn't realize you'd be so pretty." Agnos laughed again, and Cora covered her face with her hands. "Oh, no, I'm making such a bad impression."
"Not at all! I'm very flattered," Agnos assured her. "Did you come here looking for me specifically, then?"
"I came about the advertisements? There was a notice saying you had a job for a satyr girl?"
Agnos' smile widened, like she had been hoping to hear that. "I do! Please, come on in."
"Hold on," Cora blurted, nudging her hoof into the dirt anxiously. "That is--I'd just like to know--what kind of job is it? Before I go inside?"
Agnos lifted one of her beautifully-sculpted green eyebrows and smiled. "Why, concerned that I'll chop you up and feed you to my garden?" she teased, and Cora blushed again. "No, no, it's alright. That's a very wise question to ask. It's very simple, actually--you'll just be watering a plant. I promise that you won't be harmed. And I'll show you the plant, first, before you agree."
Just watering some plants? That didn't sound so bad. "Alright. Show me," Cora said, and Agnos smiled and gestured for her to follow before descending into the hole in the tree, waving for Cora to follow her.
Cora stepped up behind her and hesitated for just a moment at the dark entrance to the dryad's lair. Then, gathering up her bravery, she forced herself to step forward.
The shadows closed in around her. She continued walking forward, her hooves leaving behind the loamy forest floor to ring out on sold wood instead. She reached out with one hand, expecting to find more wood under her fingertips, but she only met air.
And then, just as she was starting to get nervous, she took another step and stumbled abruptly into a softly-lit, comfortable sitting room.
"Oh!" she squeaked, catching her balance to stop herself from tumbling forward onto the lush carpet. Or was it moss? It was green and thick, and although it was roughly round--following the shape of the room--the edges weren't quite regular.
The room itself was entirely comprised of wood. Living wood, Cora would guess, because the smell of it was so very damp and nothing like the dried wood that many humans constructed their homes and buildings from. It didn't even look carved; the wood formed a smooth, curving shape, twining around them up towards the ceiling, as if the tree had been convinced to grow this little space inside of itself to accommodate the dryad.
Cora looked around, and found Agnos standing at a sideboard, pouring something steaming from a teapot into a small cup. "Tea?" the dryad asked. "I think it makes any discussion feel a little more civilized."
"Oh, yes, please!" Cora said, finding herself thirsty from her long walk. Agnos smiled and poured a second cup, adding a bit of sticky-looking amber liquid to it--honey, or just straight nectar? It seemed rude to ask; Cora simply accepted the cup as it was handed to her and took a sip. The tea was deliciously herbal, faintly sweet, smelling of flowers that she wasn't familiar with. "It's really good."
"Thank you! It's my own blend," Agnos said, smiling beautifully. "In fact, it incorporates some of the plants you'll be helping to grow."
"Mm." Cora took another sip of the tea, relishing the warmth of it. "Are they very hard to care for? I've never done any gardening."
"Your job will be very straightforward," Agnos assured her. "I've found that satyr girls are especially well-suited to the role, because the plant is so wild. Your domain is wilderness, after all, isn't it?"
"Oh, yes, I love wild plants," Cora said, smiling. "I'm a very good forager. Is gardening anything like foraging?"
Agnos let out a tinkling little laugh, like branches knocking together in the wind. It was a nice laugh, though, and Cora found she was much calmer--from the tea, maybe--and she didn't feel like Agnos was laughing at her. "No, it isn't very much like foraging, but I promise you'll be able to do it." She watched as Cora took finished the tea with another sip. She took back the empty cup, stacking it with her own on the sideboard, then gestured. "Come, I'll show you."
"Yes, alright," Cora agreed, and followed the statuesque dryad woman through a doorway formed of winding branches, deeper into the lair.
It was several minutes' walk through a variety of rooms--a kitchen, Cora thought, although there was of course no oven or other device that might make fire and threaten the tree; a sitting room that somehow was lit with sunlight, filtering down from above as if through tree leaves; a greenhouse stuffed so full of plants that it was impossible to tell where the light in there was coming from, which Cora assumed was their destination, but Agnos kept on walking through the greenhouse and into a small tunnel on the far end.
Here, the wood floor continued, but the wooden walls gave way to dirt. The floor sloped downwards slightly and turned, as if they were spiraling down into the earth.
"These are my root gardens," Agnos informed her, gesturing to branching tunnels and small, dimly-lit rooms formed out of the dirt. "Where I keep plants that prefer the dark, or that need the quiet." Cora peered in with interest and saw mushrooms in one room; in another, a mass of pale roots hung from the ceiling.
She became aware of a sound, as well, a distant sort of whimpering, like an animal begging for food. "Do you keep pets down here, too?" she asked, curious.
"Of a sort," Agnos said.
Cora nodded. They were getting closer to the whimpering noise. She had the thought that her mother would be very afraid about all of this, but she felt fine--very calm. There was a sort of surreality to the experience, but she couldn't convince herself that the dryad would harm her.
"Through here," Agnos said, gesturing to a wooden door and standing aside. Cora pushed it open and then stepped in, Agnos following behind her.
The first thing Cora noted, with a faint surprise, was that this was the room that the whimpering was coming from. The second thing she realized was that she was looking, not at an animal, but another satyr.
The young satyr woman in front of Cora was tied down in a pose that could only be described as compromising. She was entirely naked, lying on her back on a low table, her head hanging back so that she was staring at Cora upside-down. Her arms were tied down at her sides. Her hips were tilted up, her legs bound to her thighs and spread apart as if to present her exposed pussy for fucking, but that wouldn't be possible--there was already something in there. A plant? There was a plant growing out of her pussy?
Cora stared, and then took a step closer, trying to understand. The satyr girl in front of her moaned and wriggled, her pussy visibly clenching around the bulb growing out of it. It looked like someone had inserted a tulip bulb or maybe a potato into her, but the plant was definitely growing; it was sprouting little white tendrils at the top, just the beginnings of some small leaves.
"What..." Cora asked faintly, trying to wrap her brain around what she was seeing and how she should feel about it. She should be alarmed, shouldn't she? But she felt perfectly calm. Maybe a little...
The plant-stuffed girl moaned and wriggled again, tugging against the bindings--no, roots--that held her down, and Cora bit her lip and reached down to tug at her own skirt, feeling an answering spike of arousal in her guts as she watched the girl's pussy clench around the thick tuber.
"The plant is called Cave's Heart," Agnos purred in her ear. Cora squeaked, surprised, and her stub of a tail lifted as a little zing of pleasure went down her spine at the dryad's closeness. "It needs...certain conditions to grow happily."
