Prologue

The moon was a silver coin, large and bright in the sky, so bright that it cast sharp, dark shadows on the forest floor under the trees. It was surrounded by an aura of pale white mist that seemed to fall in rays toward the open ground below. Now and then, a lingering cool breeze passed the new leaves in the trees to hiss their song of darkness in their circle of shelter around the lake. The water therein lay still as glass for the breeze was not strong enough to move it as the creatures of the night crept in the forest making their own soft rustling music now and then to tell the tale of a successful hunt or escape.

The lady's delicate feet were bare, and they trod light as the breeze upon the luscious velveteen grass. Her legs were slim, and the breeze gently shaped the diaphanous shift she wore about them and her hips and small waist and breasts. Her arms were bare in the Grecian style, and her hair was bound up on her head to reveal the contours of her unadorned collarbone and graceful neck.

She came to the edge of the water and stopped to raise her arms above her head as if in homage to the moon and then lowered them again to gather the folds of her garment up from her feet and over her head. Her naked ivory form in the cool moonlight made her seem an exquisite statue on the edge of the water except that one toe tried its surface. At first, she withdrew it quickly, as if finding the water too cold, but then she set her whole foot in the water and slowly walked lightly in, loosing her dark hair as she moved so that it tumbled to meet her shoulders, breasts, back and waist. She shivered when the water reached up to caress her core and the nipples on her breasts answered pert and well defined. Her hair lifted on the surface of the water as she walked further in and finally covered to her shoulders before she dived under, moving her arms and legs to take her into the deep water. It made a wake around her of ripples when she surfaced and tread water, her hair swirling on the surface. Then she disappeared again into the water.

When she came up she was standing waist deep near the shore. Her hair curled and clung about her dripping form, entangling her slim fair body, wrapping around her arms like thin shadowy watersnakes. Again she raised her arms above her head and stretched to the moon that washed her in turn with its silver light.

She returned to the shore then and lay down on her discarded garment to let the breeze dry her flesh with his breath, splaying her moonlight smooth legs and stretching her slender arms out straight above her head to expose as much to the caress of the breeze as possible. Then on a second thought to the same end she raised up again, gathering her hair, spreading it out on the soft grass. She lay down again as before, feeling the breeze cooling across her belly and breasts, even between her legs and within the folds of her labia. She sighed deeply, comfortably, and began to hum softly watching the stars in the crystal dark sky until she fell into a light sleep, her alabaster form illuminated by the Lady Moon.

A nymph she was, a nymph of the wood, initiated into the natural world and the circle of life deeply and profoundly although some would call her myth and at the same time wish her real. She was a daughter of the moon and the water and the leaves of the trees in summer.

***

The hunter picked his way through the wood carefully, his Grecian bow slung over his left shoulder, the bowstring across his bare sculpted chest and his quiver of arrows at his narrow waist above strong lean legs. He was almost as handsome as she was beautiful, fair skin browned by the sun's braissure to honey gold for he spent much time outside in all weather. His wild gold hair was neatly clipped, framing his features. Silently he made his way.

He had been following her for some time, careful not to be seen as he watched her each night come to the shore of the lake, disrobe, and swim, and then take her ease on the grass. He had relished the rising of his loins and how his self denial magnified his desire to explore her, to possess her. By night he followed and observed, by day he saw to his tasks, thinking of his plans for her. He had thought of 1000 things he might do and every one of them as arousing as the next. He almost thought that the creating, the imagining, should go on forever, for he had time. But she did not. Or she would not once he came to her, with her, for her, in her, and she for him in the most inventive ways. She would thereafter crave his touch, his voice, his cock penetrating the soft, slick harbor between her legs.

With luck and will, he might even get a child inside her. His peers had done so to their paramours, even members of his own family had, and all had ridiculed his failure. So he was determined to take the hardest prey of all. His last had eluded him, for nymphs, as it is well known, are passing beauty and femininity, but cold and chaste. They fear the satyrs who roam these woods looking for convenient vessels for their puny but insatiable cocks. The satyrs are fools, however, who would bury themselves repeatedly, feverishly, in knotholes of trees, so voracious they are. He would not make the same errors again. He set his goal well higher than a tree, and he would have it.

He silently neared the edge of the forest on this moon-glorious night and stood in the dark shadows. There she was, as expected, lying on her garment on the thick grass, spread out and wet, invitingly vulnerable. He wondered in his almost triumph if the water would lubricate her passage enough for him to enter her straightaway without prelude while she slept. It was all it took for his cock to rise in anticipation making a tent of his thigh length hunting loincloth.

"Peace, my friend." He moved his lips but made no sound. "Presently you shall be satisfied."