The hefted axe fell, cleanly splitting the log in twain with the eagerness of a princess opening her legs for a shining knight. One or two more before there’d be enough wood to last the full week. But a crackling fireplace was no replacement for the shared warmth of a maiden tangled in your sheets. Unfortunately, few travelers found the cottage during stormy, romantic nights.
You let the axe rest in the stump as you cleaned away the grime from your forehead. Unhooking the waterskin, your narrowed eyes followed a lone droplet emerging from the mouth. Empty. After returning the wooden cork you then brought a pair of fingers to your parch throat and dry, cracked lips. Well, relief and lake Nimue was a stone’s throw away.
Following the beckoning call of an extended soak in her pristine waters, you shed your clothes. Soon the morning sun reflected and gleamed against your naked and bronzed skin, highlighting every bleached cut and scratch that marked the feminine curves of your athletic physique. One of the marks, running along the side of your toned abdomen, still shone scarlet.
Although the fresh wound stung less than the clipping yours ears would’ve endured had an academy teacher discovered you used bow and arrow to hunt that stag. Accidentally staining the animal’s noble crown with your guts seemed the less chivalrous option between the two... You dug your toes defiantly into the sand. Only after emptying your mind of the hidebound nobility that kept Albion’s throne empty did you relax and wade into lake.
A refreshing shiver knotted your muscles when the waters reached your crotch before you had adjusted fully to the cold. You were certainly awake now if not before, banishing any dreams of fair maidens occupying your bed to the same recesses as the crumbling kingdom’s politics – in time for your full attention to focus on a bubbling patch of lake Nimue.
“Artha Pendragon, the bodement maketh nay mention of thy beauty.” Morning mist still flowed over Nimue, yet it couldn’t hide the radiance of the woman coalescing out of the water. Her lilting sing-song that spoke so strangely played together with a knowing smile. “Yet I wond'r if 't be true thy sagacity and prowess compareth. Fate shall beest the crucible.”
The lake around her was whipping into a frenzy, becoming increasingly darker with frantically coiling shadows underneath the surface. At first you mistook the tentacles breaking through the water as massive serpents, but the emerging body of the unearthly woman at their center revealed the truth as her humanoid waist transitioned into the monstrous mass.
“Abomination, thee bethink. Thy eye did wind me so. Oh, gentle queen of Albion fair, knoweth me as Vivianne. Mistress of the Mere.” Something within you pushed past your earlier assessment. Framed by the matching seaweed-like hair that clung wetly to her sides, her green-blue eyes seemed filled with genuine hurt. They shone with maturity that was belied by the noble and arched features of her face that were not much older than yours in age. When she found your gaze descending, Vivianne thrust out her chest and parted the locks of hair that had fallen over the swell of her breasts. “Doest thy s'rvant's visage thee prithee, gentle queen?”
“Bodement? You mean prophecy?” Morgana was the studious sister, but you could tease out the gist of what Vivianne drove at. “Am I to become the queen?” Knowing did not make the odd fey’s words seem any more likely.
“Pro-fe-cy... I bid thee nay fable, oh gentle queen.”