Gneiss slammed her mug down on the table, and threw herself into her usual seat next to Feldspar. The male faery looked askance at his lover and kept his silence. It was barely past dawn and nobody was in a good mood.
"Good morning to you, too, Cherry Bomb," Daniella said.
For the first few weeks of living with the three faeries, the human woman had tried to get on Gneiss' good side. Eventually she'd given up and had given her a name as volatile as she was.
"It could be a good morning, Disruption," the faery shot back acidly. Daniella glared at her. She wasn't a fan of Gneiss' name for her and all the implications it carried. It wasn't her fault that she had been traded to the Lord of the Wood in exchange for someone else's debt. It wasn't her fault that the lord had given her a place to live in Gneiss, Feldspar and Nephrite's treehouse. None of it was her fault, but that didn't stop Gneiss from hating her for disrupting their lives anyway.
"She is trying, Gneiss," Feldspar offered. Daniella's eyes flicked from Gneiss to her handsome sub. He winced at his mistress' look of simmering anger, but didn't look away from her. He put a hand on her leg under the table and she softened a bit.
"She is still learning our ways," Nephrite added from the other side of the table, giving Daniella a sympathetic look. Unlike the other faeries, Nephrite had grown up elsewhere, and understood the growing pains of joining a new people.
"Well, I'm off anyway," Daniella said to no-one in particular. They had had this fight enough times that she didn't feel like repeating it again. She swigged the last of her tea and wrapped her sweet bread in cloth to bring with her. She checked that her sketchbook and pencils were in her bag, grabbed her water bottle, and headed for the door.
Just as the door closed behind her she heard Gneiss start in again. "She's a danger to us all..."
Daniella paused. She could hear Nephrite's indistinct, placating voice in response. She caught a few scattered words from Gneiss in reply, and her blood ran cold as she heard what she thought sounded like "water wraiths."
Daniella still woke up in a cold sweat several times a week from nightmares of her encounter with the terrifying creatures that lived in the stream bordering the wood. She could still feel the slimy, cold touch of the water wraith's hand on her skin and smell its rotten breath as it inhaled her scent. If it hadn't been for the Lord of the Wood, they would have killed her that night.
He had been so pissed at her. Daniella blushed as she remembered the spanking he had given her for disobeying him by wading into the river. Not to mention what had followed... that memory had woken her from sleep several times a week, too. When she woke remembering the touch of the lord's hands on her body and the incredible pleasure he had wrung out of her, it was need that kept her awake instead of terror.
Daniella made her way down the tree, re-running her many fights with Gneiss in her head. Gneiss had never said she was dangerous before. She had accused Daniella of being uncouth and irritating, of eating too much or not enough, of being a wet blanket and a prude. She had complained that Daniella wasted too much of Feldspar and Nephrite's time. She had griped that Daniella's scientific studies of their community was nonsense.
This was the first time one of Gneiss' complaints had conviction. Daniella turned the accusation over in her mind. Dangerous? She was dangerous? She slowly made her way down the tree by rope ladder, her mind churning. She didn't see how she posed a danger to anyone. If anything, the water wraiths had proved themselves dangerous, but that didn't seem to faze anyone.
She walked across the community, many of the redwood trees and their inhabitants familiar to her now. She nodded in greeting to a few faeries she passed and received their greetings in turn. The faery community didn't feel like home, but it wasn't so strange anymore either.
Something inside her had shifted the night the lord had saved her from the water wraiths. He had introduced her to a new and deviant side of herself. He understood her darkest desires, ones that she had never even admitted to herself. Daniella had tried to put their encounter out of her mind, but it was getting harder every day to pretend nothing had happened between them.
For his part, the lord seemed determined to forget it completely. Daniella had dropped hints that she was interested in seeing where things could go, but he was determined to keep things platonic. She was starting to wonder if the entire night and their intense connection had been a fever dream. But every now and then she would drop a "my lord" or do something bratty, and his eyes would go dark with wicked thoughts.
She followed a path of lichen northward toward the orchards where she had been working. On the way she paused to watch an iridescent rabbit collect its morning breakfast of dew-covered poesies. It hopped idly from flower to flower, pausing here and there to scratch its ear and sniff the breeze, unfazed by the human in its midst.
Daniella continued on, passing through the last of the redwoods and into the aspen grove. She had discovered the faeries' orchard several days before, nestled in part of the aspen grove. The orchard was a wild mix of fruits and climates. In one section there were peaches ripening in the full heat of summer. In another, juicy apples hung in crisp autumn air. The pop of orange mandarin oranges stood out in another section chilled by winter breezes. There were avocados, apricots, cherries, mangoes, bananas, and pears beside, each abounding in its own microclimate.
Daniella headed for the peaches and settled herself against one of the trees. She opened her notes from the day before and scanned them. The surreal magic of the faeries' home was interesting in a parlor-trick kind of way, but what fascinated her was the perfect ecological balance of the place.
The peaches were a perfect example. She had examined the trees for common pests and found that they affected only a small percentage of the peaches. Likewise, the squirrels of the wood took a small share of the crop, while birds and insectivores sated themselves on the pests. Daniella rarely saw any of the faeries tending to the crops and couldn't detect any source of water or pest control, but the harvest was substantial.
She settled down and took to sketching a scrub jay that was hopping around in a nearby tree. The bird's beautiful blue plumage shown with stunning silver and purple streaks in the sun. It neatly plucked a bug off one of the peaches and cocked its head at her intelligently. Daniella smiled in return and added a dangling worm to the beak of her bird drawing.
She lost herself in her meditative drawing, adding notes as she watched the wildlife come and go from the peach trees. She had just started in on a sketch of a ground squirrel when the Lord of the Wood's dark silhouette glided into her peripheral vision.
Daniella glanced up at him. He was looking better than he had a right to in a dark green tunic and ankle length pants. His wild black hair was adorned with a crown of wildflowers tucked over his delicately pointed ears. His bright green eyes sparkled with playful light, revealing a lighter side of him she had just started getting to know.
"Well don't you look like spring today," she teased.
The lord smiled and dropped down beside her. He leaned over to study her sketches, studiously keeping a bit of space between their bodies. Sitting next to him, not touching, was irritating. Ever since the night he had spanked her, he had been scrupulously platonic toward her. Daniella itched to lean against him, to feel his heat pressed against her.
"This hornet is quite good," he murmured as he gestured to a sketch of a yellow jacket feasting on the flesh of a rotting peach. "Have you dissected my wood thoroughly enough yet?"
Daniella quelled a tendril of want that surged through her as his breath brushed her cheek. Mastering her face, she smirked at his teasing. She had explained her degree in ecology to him, and her previous research, but it was baffling to him.
