{Real talk, I had to try using the shower head as a toy to get an idea of what it would be like to be with a creature like this one. It was still kind of hard to decide how everything would go. First time I've written two female characters together...so...I hope it turned out ok. I'm glad to be done with this one, I'm ready to pick up momentum for this series with a different prompt!}
My first winter in the Wood wasn't too bad. I had enough wood for the stove stacked against the house, my larder and pantry were full, and all the leaks in the cottage had been plugged months ahead of time. The only thing I hadn't considered was bathing.
When the weather had been good, I'd simply gone down to the creek and bathed there, or warmed up some water for the cast iron tub on the porch. But once the ground grew hard and the creek iced over, expending the energy a spell required to keep the water warm wasn't very appealing. Then the snow came. It piled up in massive drifts where the trees were thin enough to allow the wind, and lay thick as a down blanket everywhere else.
Weeks of standing in a shallow tub by the stove with a soapy rag and a bucket of lukewarm water had broken down my spirit. It wasn't that I felt dirty, for I was quite thorough with my soapy rag, it was just the tension building up in my muscles.
Back in the castle, there'd been a warm bath with the simple summoning of a servant. I'd been able to call a footman to warm my bed when the night was long and especially dark. Now I slept alone. My encounters with the werewolf* had stopped when the leaves began to change. He didn't offer much explanation-or goodbye, for that matter-but I assumed his territory shifted with the season. So I was left without a warm body to slide between the sheets with me.
Maybe it was a weakness, brought on by too many years of pampering within the city walls, but I was desperate for a way to soothe my achy shoulders and relax the knots in my back. To this end, I'd been exploring.
It was too cold for a proper tromp through the trees, so I started with some simple scrying. A pendulum over a map of the continent-folded over so that only the Eastern half containing the ocean and the wood was showing-gave me a general idea of where to look. The crystal pulled insistently on the chain toward the north, so I began to search.
I moved the cottage to different areas, exploring in a radius I knew wouldn't exhaust me, and coming home covered in snow and wishing for a hot bath all the more. Two weeks of this sort of searching finally yielded what I was looking for; a hot spring.
Such a thing was nearly unheard of on this continent. There were rumors of them being quite common on the continent to the West, but if there were to be any closer to home, they would be in the Endless Wood. My hunch had been proven right. I only wished I had someone to be smug about it to.
I knew better than to just get in the water. It wasn't warm all on its own, something magical was definitely heating the water. I only had to find out how dangerous that something was, so I could weigh the risk.
The spring wasn't in much of a clearing; it sort of formed at the base of an old dead tree, filling in the ancient roots to create a pool, surrounded by the dead branches of the saplings that had been killed off by the heat over their roots. I set the cottage down as close as I could and began the slow process of forming a path in the waist deep snow between the back door and the area where the spring was.
I didn't get too close at first, spending the first eight days scoping it out from a crouched position in my pathway, just short of what I considered the perimeter of the pool. I saw no creature come to visit the pool. I also saw no creature leave the pool. On the ninth morning I came prepared to bathe.
After digging out the last of the path to the edge of the pool I was more ready than ever to get in and warm up. My toes were numb in my calf skin boots, and I'd nearly given up on the idea of feeling my fingers again. The shovel dropped easily out of my grasp, my clothes soon to follow.
I hissed as my frozen skin hit the steaming water. It probably wasn't that hot, but the stinging of blood warming in my extremities was excruciating. I welcomed it as the price for that same water rushing delightfully over my chilled thighs and up over my chest.
Never had I been so grateful for my small stature; the depth of the pool would be laughable to any full grown human man. It really only filled out the dips and hollows of the extensive root system the old giant had left behind. I found a knob to perch on, and my feet rested on wood soft from being submerged. If I leaned back, the water lapped up over my shoulders.
With a sigh, I relaxed muscles ratcheted up from weeks of shivering and shoveling snow. The water didn't have much of a smell, which was a good sign; if something dangerous like a wyrm was warming the water, it would give off a smell like sulfur. Maybe it had been created long ago by a lesser god, left as a remnant of a long ago cult swallowed up by the Wood.
I wanted to enjoy this so much, I wanted to let my guard down and just allow myself to take in the beauty of stillness among the trees. But even as my body was growing heavy in the water, releasing tension I wasn't even aware of, I was consulting books in the back of my mind.
The idea of a minor deity creating the steamy spring was very reassuring, but the more I thought about it, the less I was sure that there was such a god. I tried to recall if there was any kind of magic that could create a hot spring permanently without recharging. I'd never heard of one. My uneasiness picked up as I felt a current beneath the surface, brushing up my calf before disappearing.
I sat up, goosebumps prickling my shoulders with the chill of the air. I pulled my feet in a little closer, but felt no more movement in the water. I took a few deep breaths to calm my racing heart. Maybe the spring was heated by a salamander. They were mostly harmless, and maybe it was just swimming around my legs. If I were careful about where I stepped I should be fine.
Before I could feel content with that explanation I felt the strange current again, this time brushing my inner thigh, and the thought occurred to me that a salamander would've had to come out to eat, and I hadn't seen anything come out of the pool in the days I'd been observing. Again the current rushed over me, ruffling the hair between my legs with surprising force and dissipating up my belly.
I gasped, and found my breath caught in my throat. The warm water felt so good moving over my skin, and the touch on my pubis made me weak, my knees splaying out slightly before I pulled them back together. I still didn't know what was in the water, and I wasn't letting it into my body until I had visual contact.
To that end I began searching the water around me. It was clean, with a view to the bottom despite the steam. There was nothing there. Just my own legs reflecting back the weak winter sunlight. Still I watched, not daring to move and disturb the surface.
Time passed, and I held still. My muscles were no longer wound tight, but I felt I couldn't fully relax again until I figured this out. I didn't have to wait too long before the water moved again, taking on the vague shape of an arm as it brushed across my lap. Without a thought, I reached out and grabbed hold of the shape. It was like clear glass in the water; I couldn't really see it, but it was solid in my grasp and became slightly visible when it moved.
The arm didn't fight me after a few initial tugs. Instead, the surface of the water before me bowed up before taking the form of a head. There wasn't really a breaching of the surface, as if something had come out of the water. Instead it was as if the water had decided to form itself into the shape.
Two bright blue eyes blinked open, but the being didn't surface further than that. Of course, it was a naiad. I'd never heard of one inhabiting a hot spring, but there were many things still unknown about all the elemental beings. She must have been alone out here for a very long time.
"Who are you?" My scholar's mind was racing with ideas of interviewing her, of learning her origins. Granted, my writings would never leave the Wood, but what else was I to do with all my years in the Wood if not learn about its inhabitants?
The eyes looked away, flicking down to the water, long crystalline eyelashes brushing the surface. After a moment, the figure rose out of the water more, revealing a small upturned nose and a shapely mouth.
"Shouldn't I be asking you?" The voice was high and clear, though a bit warbled as most water elementals' voices.
I flushed a bit at the accusation. It was true. I was the trespasser here. This spring had been here far longer than I had.
"I'm the Witch of the Wood. It's my first winter, I was just looking for somewhere to relax." I let go of the wrist in my hand and shifted away toward the edge of the pool where my clothes and boots lay. "I'm very sorry for trespassing. I'll leave if-"
I felt a strong grip around my forearm. "No! No. Please, stay." I settled back into the water and the invisible grip left me. "I haven't had anyone to speak to in some time." The water shifted around me, currents curling around my legs, and the bright eyes came closer, settling beside me.
