Your Nymph

Image "...Fantasy..." by eclipsy

Veera sits very still. Even the green dress that matches the forest around her and her bright red hair seem stiff, frozen. She is completely still, waiting for you. "Fey who stay still stay beautiful and alive," she told you once. How you managed to leave a nymph you'll never know, particularly one so jealous. Half a sneer is left on her face from when you told her, emphasized by her just barely nonhuman beauty. You got her mostly calmed down, convinced you'd be back, before you left, and now she is waiting. She sits, perfectly still in her way, thinking, listening to the news when the birds, squirrels, and wolfs bring it, and the image of her is burned into your memory. 

Once, you asked her where her spring was, and she seemed offended. She showed you some water within an arms length that you hadn't noticed before. You'd thought it was just a puddle. Those were the bad times. When you didn't think, didn't observe. She hated that about you.

There were happy times too. Times when she'd been so happy, she'd left her spot, and come to run with you, dancing for minutes at a time. You remember how soft that hair was, and how the dress felt green, like leaves in spring, still on the tree, velvety soft and yet very thin. Sometimes the two of you would even play games, sit for a meal and talk (over her red, bloody meat, and yours cooked but not much better) and very occasionally you made love.

The forest never got cold, and you felt as if the forest benefitted from being around her, keeping out the cold and staying spring and summer and sometimes, when she was in quite a mood, letting the earliest part of fall in. You felt that you benefitted from being around her as well, though you attributed that to a different source than your scientific thoughts on the forest. 

Veera is the one who introduced you to Kender, your hawk. You say "my hawk", as if you own him, because that's how humans are. All people are like that really. Just as true, you're Kender's human. The two of you are scouts for the military. Have been for about six years. You hardly know what nation it is anymore, you don't care, as long as you stay alive and stay paid and fed. You wonder sometimes, what you're doing it for. Certainly not the money, and you were fed and alive in the forest. 

When you go into camp, you hear the men talking about what they'll buy (if they don't piss it away gambling and drinking, you think snidely in your mind, trying to compensate for your own lack of satisfaction. Your logic tells you that someone ends up with the gambling money, and one man can't drink all that beer.) They say things like "buy my wife a new dress" or "get some land, settle down, and farm for the rest of my life" or even "buy my boy a new colt, teach him to ride so he can visit when he starts that apprenticeship with the blacksmith." 

"Your boy has an apprenticeship with a blacksmith?" They'd ask. "What in the world are you doing taking footman pay?"

"Aye, that's the joy of it," he'd laugh. "He will have an apprenticeship, once I win you lot's pay."

And so on. But you love a nymph. Her dress is better than any money can buy, better than any material a woman could wear. She's not interested in a child, and that means she won't have one, simple as that for a nymph. If you wanted to farm, she'd look at you like you were crazy. "What do you want that the forest can't give you?" She'd ask, in that sing-song scary voice she used when she got mad, and you'd see it in her eyes that she was trying very hard not to eat you. She did ask that, when you left. You did see that in her eyes. So you wonder, if it isn't the money, isn't it a good question? What you want that the forest can't give you? 

And then you cross the ridge, under the last tree for miles. And in front of you is a grand plain, spanning sixty miles. The wind pushes the tall grass around, and that movement distracts you for just a moment, and the mountain, sixty five miles away, is just hiding the sun, and your heart catches in your chest and for a just a fraction of a second, you admit to yourself that this is why you left. It's prettier than her. Plains and sunsets and mountains and...and freedom. 

Then the moment is gone and you finish scanning the plain and see them, little black dots, indistinct from one another at this range. You can't be expected to count with your eyes, so you tell your horse to hold still, drop to he ground, and aid your vision with your ear and hand pressed to the ground. You feel the army, count in your own way, knowing how to tell the distance and number using sight and feeling and chattering with Kender, who is perched in the top of the tree to confirm. 

It's a much larger number than they expect, and your heart races, your mind realizing that they desperately need you to report. You lead your horse back down the ridge, and when you're out of sight of the plains, you mount up and ride hard. Your thoughts drift to her, and in the danger, you resolve to head back to the forest she lets you share in earnest. The break has been nice, but you miss her, and you miss the forest, and so does Kender. You're coming. You hear her voice in your mind as soon as your resolve sets. Yes, you respond. Soon. She scowls inwardly and you can hear it, but you make no reply. She can wait. She's good at waiting. 

You ride the horse until it breaks, just outside camp. The army should be thirty miles away by now. You run to the general from the dead horse, and give your report, and your resignation. He's sad to see you go, but doesn't try to make you stay -- a scout can leave when he wants to, it's just better you tell him about it. You take a clipping of the horse's mane, so that she can give it peace, then buy a horse from another soldier for too much coin, but it's the best horse in camp now, and you'll need it for the road ahead. You pack provisions onto the horse and start the long journey back to the forest.

"The Nymph" Flash Fiction © Ben Clardy V

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

P.S. It's a bit long today. Sorry for that. I just got caught up in making it a bit multi-faceted and completing the story. About 1000 words for today. Back again tomorrow.