The Wildness Within

A Discovery in the Woods 1

Augus Each Uisge, predatory waterhorse, Unseelie fae, was bored.

He wasn't hungry - he'd hunted only two weeks before, finding a delectable young woman to drown in his lake, her blood like so much liquor upon his tongue that he'd felt drugged for several days after returning to his own human-form - and he had no clients on his schedule for at least a month. While many fae didn't have to work, especially waterhorses, Augus had found his vocation as dominant and sexual healer to the fae decades ago. Unusual, yes - but then, the fae overall tended to specialise in the unusual and the fantastic. They were, after all, fae.

But it was rare that his schedule cleared up enough that he had weeks of his own free time. Unlike his adopted brother Ash, he wasn't one to lie around and do nothing all day. He could read, yes. He could harvest herbs. He could dry foods and cook and create healing poultices, unguents and ointments, but he had done all of those things over the past week and a half. He would continue to do them as the weeks progressed.

Still, boredom had always been something that plagued him from time to time.

He wandered through the woods of Ethallas. These were the woods of his birth. The lake that was both his parent and his current shelter was cloistered within these trees. It was a forest lightly populated with fae; bordering on Seelie Courtlands - not an ideal place for an Unseelie waterhorse to live, but he was mostly left alone - and more often used for the richer fae to do their hunting, than anything else. There were times when he caught the thundering of hooves and the baying of hounds and he would rush back to his lake to avoid being the victim of a stray arrow.

It is a woodland of strange noises. Of screeches in the night. Howls that sounded like wolves, even though Augus had never come across wolf spoor in these particular woods. He'd hear strange cackling in the shadows and suspect fellow Unseelie fae, only to see nothing at all. Whatever the Ethallas woodland was - it was certainly eldritch. He suspected if he was more able to sense magic, he'd know this place as being filled with the stuff.

Yet very few fae gravitated towards this place.

Which was good, because he valued his privacy.

It was late autumn, he wandered deeper into the woods, wondering how far it stretched. Like many fae forests, it had a sense of being folded in on itself, far bigger on the inside than it would appear on any map. It played with physics, the senses, could entrap and enfold even fae into its being. Augus was careful as he followed a deer-path beyond sun-dappled shadows, further still. Here, the remnants of leaves on the deciduous trees were even more stunning in the mostly-dark. Vivid reds and crimsons, even violets and blues on the fae species.

He could use fae abilities to make his steps silent if he wished, but he thought it was more polite to let other fae know he was coming. He wanted no quarrel, and he was stalking into no one's territory to make a challenge. Not that he could, as underfae. He might be strong enough to protect his own territory - so far - but he was nothing more than fodder to higher class fae. For war, for sport, for whatever they wished.

He looked behind him, noticing the way the trees seemed to bend towards each other. Branches reaching across the path and tangling, blocking out the lacklustre autumn warmth. He shivered. He preferred to be within the depths like this. The open sky intimidated him. He was destined for dark, watery places. He loved the murk. The deeper he walked into the woods that would intimidate most others, the more his breathing relaxed, his muscles loosened.

The only problem was the cold, which clung to his green, collared shirt and his thin pants. The cold of the water was somehow never as bothersome. But the wind and breezes picking at his skin felt like little insects that wouldn't leave him alone. He even, absently, tried to swat a particularly sharp breeze away.