Örek wore a look of mistrust as he stepped onto the river bank. Besides that, he wore nothing at all, and lingered naked and dripping on the shore with water pooling about his feet. The air was thick and humid, and warm enough for him to stand bare and wet before the elements without feeling so much as a chill.
He was a towering, rosy skinned man, broad across the shoulders, thick of limb, and stocky. He was a wandering mercenary and was well muscled from hard living. But just as battle and hardship had made him strong, the spoils of countless wars had made him thick about the waist, and this made him all the more imposing to behold. His green eyes were wary and resolute, and he was clean shaven with closecropped blonde hair sitting atop his thick brow.
He shook his limbs and broad head, flinging away excess water and framing his brutal form in a momentary halo of crystal droplets. The rigorous movement was as much to keep warm as to dry himself—a holdover from his upbringing in the frigid north— but here in the heat of the forest the gesture was pointless. Nonetheless, Örek saw no reason to resist the whims of instinct.
Now that he was scrubbed clean, he took up his loincloth and cinched it about himself. He was no less ample between his legs than about the waist and at the shoulders, and the small strip of leather did little to contain him. Viewed from the side, he was as good as naked, but he didn't care. He'd fashion himself a new garment before returning to civilization.
For the moment, he was less concerned with modesty than with the sense of being watched that had been mounting over the last few days.
He'd entered the vast wood with Karkulian Tribesmen hard on his heels, and had succeeded in losing them in the overgrowth. But the attentions of the Tribesmen had been replaced by those of something else—something nameless and elusive, but that Örek's barbarian intuition assured him was there lurking just out of sight. It made no sound nor gave any sign of its presence, but the feeling of its eyes upon him was unmistakable.
He scanned the wall of trees that rose up before him opposite the riverbank. It was an impenetrable mass of plant life replete with hanging vines and interwoven branches. It was a wonder that the ground could sustain so dense a growth of trees, even in these humid climes, and the unnatural agglomeration of greenery only increased his mistrust of the sylvan maze.
This made the task before him all the more imposing, and he grimaced as he considered what he must do next—sleep.
He'd been travelling for days without rest—too wary of what lay just out of sight to let his guard down. But just as it had afforded him an opportunity to refresh himself, this river also offered a chance to rest his eyes in relative safety.
Before, he'd been surrounded on all sides by the press of the forest, and had been vulnerable to ambush. But here on the river bank, there was less chance of being taken unawares by his unseen watcher. So, he lay down in the sand, head resting on his rucksack and sword in hand, and let his eyes grow heavy with long awaited sleep.
As darkness descended, his head filled at first with visions of battle—conquests both lived and imagined, and he smiled a little as he let his reveries ease him into slumber. As he came closer to unconsciousness, his imaginings turned to conquests of a different kind, and his sleepy smile widened.
His mind's eye saw a procession of past lovers go by one at a time, each one marking a chapter in his storied life. Lean, hard muscled women of his native tribe warming him between furs in the yurts of his adolescence; well fed city girls with wide hips, thick thighs, and full breasts that bounced and rocked as they rode him; and sun-bronzed beauties from southern climes who would dip their heads between his legs as he took his ease in shady palm groves.
When sleep finally took him, he was thrusting into a fondly remembered tavern wench. Her dress was hiked up over her full, pale buttocks, and she rested her elbows on a table where tankards lay strewn about in puddles of spilled ale. Loose strands of red hair had fallen out from beneath her bonnet, and her face was turned back towards him, wearing a bewildered look of pleasure and abandon. The memory became a dream then, and all at once he could hear her moans and feel her thighs in his rough hands.
He was right there with her—feeling her and fucking her—and perhaps it was because of the vividness of his dream that he did not at first notice when
real
hands began roving over his sleeping form.
###
He awoke to the sound of giggling. High pitched and gleeful, it floated into his reverie and dissolved his tavern wench at the moment of climax. A wave of frustration and confusion washed over him, and Örek's eyes snapped open.
The moment they did, the giggling turned to startled cry, and the form that was hunched over him leaped back. Örek both felt and heard a soft
thwack
, and looked down to see his fully erect member slap against his stomach as the interloper's hand pulled away. It had been
fondling
him, he realized, and he wondered for a moment how much of the sensation of the past minutes had been dreamed and how much had been real.
All once the stupor of sleep lifted and Örek leaped to his feet.
At that, his visitor let out another cry, this time of glee more than surprise, and stepped back into a ray of sunlight.
It was a woman, but unlike any Örek had ever laid eyes on. She was small in stature and slight of build, with narrow shoulders and lean limbs. Her face was elfin and full of mischief, with deep, dark eyes set above dimpled cheeks that were split by a broad smile. Her hair was cropped short like his own, her ears pointed, and her neck thin and elegant. She was naked, save for tangles of greenery that wound about her hips and chest, and there were leaves in her tousled hair.
But the plant life that adorned her was no haphazard jumble of undergrowth. As he took her measure, Örek realized that the girl was wreathed in
living vines
that twisted and snaked about her, moving by their own power and weaving themselves into ever-changing patterns. And the leaves in her hair were as jewels, glimmering in the light and changing color from green to red and back again, as if with the seasons.
