A reunion with Willow

Lux couldn’t exactly say that the way back to the dryads’ grove is familiar to her, but she recognises the kinds of trees and plants she begins to see as she and Sylvia near their destination. The gradual change back from grim, grey vegetation to the verdure and brightness that first greeted her when she fell into this world does something to raise her spirits. Sylvia, too, seems a little more herself – more the caring and nurturing healer, that is, and less the imperious queen on a mission of war.

There’s no way for Lux to know they’re there until she sees a movement in the trees ahead, and then – as if they had come from nowhere at all – Willow and Juniper emerge into view. Somehow, Lux had expected them to look different, after all the time that’s passed; except that now that she thinks about it, it’s hardly been any time at all. Especially by dryad reckoning.

Willow hurries towards her, arms outstretched, relief and concern written plainly on her face. She barely seems to notice that Sylvia is there. “Lux,” she calls out, “I was so worried – ”

The half-formed words that Lux might have wanted to say in this moment die in her throat. Whatever energy carried her this far begins to evaporate. Her body suddenly feels too heavy to hold herself up. She stumbles, almost falls – and feels Willow’s arms around her, catching her, pulling her into an embrace. Her swollen breasts press against Willow’s smaller ones; her cheek against Willow’s cheek.

“My dear, sweet bird,” Willow whispers, “you came back to me…”

“Take care of her, daughter,” Lux hears Sylvia say. “Your sister and I have much to discuss. And you, small one. I have not forgotten your oath of service. To me, now.”

“Aww.” With a dejected groan, Minn squirms out from the midst of Lux and Willow’s embrace and flutters away.

Lux feels Willow’s hand take hold of hers and give it a comforting squeeze. With the dryad’s arm around her back to support her, she finds the strength to walk through the curtain of leaves, into the next clearing.

The soft babble of a gently flowing stream greets her ears before her eyes can make sense of the bright array of colours before them – blues and reds and yellows and violets, a lush array of flowers forming a dazzling carpet underfoot. Once again, as the branches fall into place behind them, they are enclosed and alone, as Willow leads her onward to the water’s edge.

They sit down on the bank of the stream, in each other’s arms, amid the flowers. That tired feeling in Lux’s bones has changed to something else, a kind of contentment. She wonders if she’s fallen asleep and is dreaming now. She wonders if that makes a difference in this realm.

“It broke my heart to think of you trapped in that terrible prison,” Willow whispers in her ear. “I can’t imagine what you went through. It’s over now. I’ve got you.”

“You’ve got me,” Lux mutters. “You had me all along, with your glamours and your charms. Didn’t you?”

Willow draws back. Lux sees that there are tears in her soft amber eyes. She says nothing for a little while. Then she asks, “Is that what you want, Lux? To do away with illusions?”

Lux has seen glimpses of Juniper’s and Sylvia’s hidden forms. Now she sees Willow’s. Skin of pale bark, limbs like branches, sinuous and leaf-laden. As if the shape of a beautiful woman had been merely a trick of the eye, glimpsed in the outline of a tree bending over a riverbank. But with the others, Lux never got the chance to look in their eyes. Willow’s eyes – are just the same as before, warm as sunlight, sweet as honey. All her glamour never disguised the windows to her soul.

“In your world,” Willow says, in a voice of whispering wind and bending branches, “things are…solid, yes? A tree is a tree. A woman is a woman. One of those can’t be both. But this isn’t your world. And I am both. And more.” She spreads her long arms wide. “Here, the essence and the form and the thing are all one.

“Does that sound complicated? You’re the one who’s complicated. You are body and spirit, blood and bone, earth and air and fire and water. A touch of brimstone. Alchemically mixed just right to make you, you. Whereas I – I am dryad, nothing else. Whatever forms I show you,” – and the glamour is back, Willow’s hauntingly beautiful face, her sensuous figure, as though they had never left – “all of it is me.

“Although,” she adds, “if you decide you’d like fuck me again later, I recommend a form that won’t give you splinters.”