Emelda closed her eyes, and breathed in deep, displaying a kind of gentle, long suffering patience. This small gesture seemed to indicate to him that he'd misunderstood her completely.
“I claim no particular power to see into the future,” she said sagely. “But I have been watching the stars, and they tell me that the course which our people now follow is now one that can only lead us to destruction. There is no love to be found at the end of this road, nor salvation. But there is a path which may be taken that can reroute all of this, and succeed in redirecting us from our present course.”
Gylvan looked at her blankly, feeling equal parts skeptical and intrigued at such a suggestion.
“Yes?” he asked, impatient.
She breathed in deep yet again. “Gylvan,” she said patiently. “I look into your eyes and see that you are lonely. That your heart is pained. You believe that you are alone in the world, that fighting for your people will be the only role you ever know in life, and that because of our people's infertility, you will never know the fulfillment of a natural life- of child rearing, and passing on your essence to another generation. But you are incorrect in all these assumptions. There is someone out there who can change all of this. A woman, who I've seen among the stars, who can help you overcome your own limitations- as well as those of our people. A human woman...”
At this, Gylvan's eyes truly grew wide with astonishment. He sat back abruptly, disbelieving that which he was being told, and had to clutch at his side in pain, practically having forgotten about his injury.
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked. “Humans are nearly as bad as the kirin when it comes to threatening our people. Worse, actually, since they're the ones who forced us into hiding in the first place, and are the root cause for our disputes over territory. And now you're telling me of some... Some prophecy, telling me that I need to mate with a human to find happiness?”
“Like the kirin,” Emelda said calmly, “I think you will find that the humans are not as different from the wyvern as we like to imagine them.”
“And just how am I supposed to find this imaginary woman of yours?” he said, nearly outraged at this kind and feeble soul.
“All you must do is seek her out,” she said patiently. “That's all the further information I can give you. You will know, otherwise, when you find her.”
Gylvan, at this point, had heard enough.
“Alright,” he said, rising to his feet, and slipping back into his shirt. “I'm sorry, but I have no patience for this nonsense. I thank you for your service, Emelda, but there is too much work to be done to go around indulging in your wild fantasies. If it's all the same to you, I think I would like to be on my way.”
“Of course,” she said, retaining the same calm civility she'd exercised the entire time, even as Gylvan had lost all patience with her. The contrast in their demeanors made him feel incredibly guilty, which in turn left him even angrier about the situation. “I would advise you, however, not to close the door on your destiny. You may find that you have far more to lose in its pursuit than you do in avoiding it.”
“I'll try to keep that in mind,” he said, as he exited the door of her hut, trying his best to put the whole conversation behind him.
Emelda watched dreamily after him, concerned, but with a slight smile spread across her withered lips.
3
Gylvan was wandering through the forest, trying, more than anything, just to clear his head, when he first heard her angelic voice.
It stopped him in his tracks, and put him momentarily on guard- a side effect, he supposed, of having experienced such frequent ambushes from the kirin on so many occasions. As he continued to listen to the beautiful sound, however, the gentle humming of some folksy melody, he began to calm down. Yet his heart seemed to beat faster, sped up by the beauty to which he was bearing witness, drawing him closer and closer in its direction.
He followed the sound, creeping swiftly and silently through the woods in his wyvern state. The harmonious sound grew louder and louder, until gradually he found himself coming onto a clearing, through which the source of the music seemed to be located. He held his breath, and crept gently forward, peeking out into the space beyond.
Emelda's prophecy suddenly seemed to hold a great deal more significance in his mind...
There, sitting before him at the edge of a gently babbling stream, was a woman. And not just any woman- but the most beautiful woman he had ever before laid eyes on. Her frame was slender and comely, her body one which clearly attempted modesty, but which nonetheless carried an immeasurable attraction for him. Her flowing brunette locks cascaded around her shoulders as she worked, dipping her hands into the stream as she washed several articles of clothing in the gently streaming water. Her happiness with her duties, as indicated by the music issuing forth from between her lips, seemed to top off for Gylvan the vision of perfection now forming in his mind.
She moved swiftly and adeptly, cleansing article after article at a speed so fast that Gylvan feared she would be gone at any moment, and he would lose the opportunity to gaze at her effortless beauty. She seemed to be totally present in her work, content with her duties and oblivious to anything else that took place around her. She furthermore seemed completely at home in her element here, as much a part of the nature surrounding her as the trees or even the stream itself.
Gylvan continued to watch, until it appeared that the very last article of clothing had been cleaned. At this point a slight tinge of panic surged through his body, and he fought with the urge to expose himself to her, to make his presence known before she had the chance to depart.
Soon enough, however, he shortly found himself relieved to see that, with the clothes now washed, the woman was in no hurry to make a retreat from the scene. Instead, she laid out the washed clothing in the sunlit grass, draping out the sopping wet fabric so that it might dry out naturally beneath the rays of sunlight dripping down from above.
No sooner had he experienced the relief at her remaining, then, when an even greater feeling of elation took him over. Not only had she spread out her washed clothes across the grass, but now she was-
God, she was undressing...
Gylvan wrestled with a powerful urge, knowing that the right and proper thing to do at that moment was to turn away, to avert his gaze and leave her in privacy. Yet so great was his attraction to her, his sudden and unbearable infatuation, that he found himself wide-eyed, affixed to the spot at which he stood.
Slowly she pulled the fabric of her dress up over her head, its fabric conforming to the curves of her body as she at last withdrew it completely, her supple, firm young breasts bouncing out into the open as she promptly knelt back down toward the water. She submerged the fabric of the dress of the water in the stream, cleansing it as she had the other articles, then pulled it back up and wrung it out. She turned, placing it in its own spot on the grass, then rose back up to full height once more. She slid her hands beneath the fabric of her underwear, and began to dredge them down along her body, sliding them along her thighs, her knees, and down to around her ankles. Gylvan's mouth watered at the gentle dark triangle of her pubic hair, and at the gentle splaying of her milky white thighs as she crouched down toward the water, submerging her panties in the flowing stream as she had all else.
He wanted her more in that moment than he'd ever wanted anything in his entire life...
Setting the underwear aside in the grass as she'd done with everything else, and her washing now complete, she slowly lowered her body into the water, to enjoy its flowing currents as her laundry dried off nearby. Gylvan continued to remain transfixed as she submerged herself in the gently flowing stream, her limbs vanishing beneath the rippling surface, her flowing chestnut hair quickly becoming sleek with wetness, and her perfectly portioned breasts floating buoyantly on the the gentle, cascading surface of the water.
Gylvan stood by his original impression of humans- that they were generally no good for individ
uals such as himself. Yet the woman he now saw before him was not so much a human, he believed, but a fully fledged angel...
Continuing to move freely and happily amidst the element of nature, she seemed as if she'd been born there, like some beautiful aquatic creature he'd never laid eyes on before now. Repeatedly she blunged her beautiful head beneath the water, inundating her dark brown hair, emerging, and ringing it out yet again. She ran her delicate hands along her arms, across her breasts, splashing every single inch of her immaculate body to ensure she became completely clean.
After some time of this, she surprised him yet again, transitioning from the act of grooming to diving head first into the water, and beginning to swim.
Gylvan's eyes widened. Her curvaceous form wriggled along through the water like a fish, arms rotating through the waterline and propelling her along, her wet, glossy buttocks shifting into the air as she kicked her legs, and everything about her in that moment seeming genuinely perfect, beyond what words could describe.
As Gylvan watched her, the words of Emelda's prophecy couldn't be further from his mind. He was far too ensnared by the visceral beauty of this moment to give its broader implications any thought, too enraptured by the girl's sensuous form to give a thought to his own people.
It was, he believed, nothing short of love at first sight.
And suddenly, without even being aware of it, the girl was looking at him...
He started, alarmed, and taken completely off guard. He shook his head in confusion, then stepped back further into the bushes, realizing too late that he'd exposed too much of himself to this girl without even having realized it.
It was over now, he thought. There was no way a human female would catch sight of a fully grown wyvern dragon, standing and gawking at her from the edge of the forest, and not completely flip out in fear, thinking it only a matter of time before he swooped in and tore her body to pieces.
But she didn't scream. Or run naked out of the water for help.
She simply floated in the water, staring wide eyed at him, her mouth hanging slightly open.
It was a moment before he felt it was safe enough to come near once again.
Slowly he brought his body back out from among the shadows, making a cautious emergence through the trees to a spot in the clearing just prior to the water's edge.
Still, the girl didn't move, save for her gentle bobbing up and down on the surface of the water.
“Hello,” she said, her voice thin, not quite fearful, but uncertain.
Gylvan hesitated, unsure of just how far he could push his luck before sending her running, screaming in terror.
He came forward further still.
Still, the girl didn't move.
Gently, as cautiously as he could to avoid causing any kind of sudden alarm, he slipped his long, serpentine body into the water. From the corner of his eye, he caught her inhaling slightly, trying not to gasp as she watched him joining her. She seemed to be trying to resist her fear, to tell herself that this was nothing to be afraid of...
Once he was in the water with her, he moved slowly near her, his snout and eyes poking just above the water line in the fashion of a crocodile.
She didn't move a muscle, but her breathing seemed to grow slightly harder with every inch he came nearer.
It was time to put her out of this fear, he decided, when the two of them were separated by a few mere feet of water.
Slowly he rose, standing on his hind legs in the water, and began to transform before her eyes. His batlike wings receded back into his spine, the tail retreated, and the series of red scales across his body gave way to bronzed human flesh.
The girl's eyes widened at the sight of his naked body, standing before her in its present state- the bulging chest, the powerful muscles, the visibly erect penis swaying just beneath the water-line- yet she remained as glued to the spot as she'd been this entire time.
“Don't be afraid,” said Gylvan in a low, seductive whisper.
She shook her head gently from side to side. “I'm not,” she replied, barely getting out the words in her low, mesmerized voice.
He blinked at her, stunned. Here the two of them were, complete strangers, naked together in a stream, and she'd just seen him transform from a fire breathing dragon into a human being right before her very eyes. What kind of woman was this not to be afraid of such a spectacle?
“You aren't?” he said, clearly confused.
Again, she shook her head. “No,” she said. “I've seen you before. In a dream.”
“A... A dream?” he said, and only now did the prophecy of Emelda come flashing back into his consciousness.
She nodded. “Only... Up until now, I thought that was all it was... Just a dream... Maybe...” she paused, and looked away from him. Then she looked back at him quickly, as though she'd been trying to cleanse her palette, to gage how real this could all really be. But there he still was, standing before her, every bit as real as the hair on her head. “Maybe I believed it, sometimes, and maybe that's why I wasn't afraid. But... I never thought I would... Actually see you...”
He swallowed hard, trying to fight back his nerves. “My name is Gylvan,” he said, for lack of much else to continue on with.
“I'm Lyn,”' she said. “It's um... It's a pleasure to finally meet you.” She couldn't help but laugh as she said it, and Gylvan smiled in return. The absurdity of this all, of having been seen in her dreams and the two of them finally crossing paths, couldn't possibly be avoided. Yet upon hearing her name, and the more he looked at her, the more the same sense of familiarity crept over him as that which she seemed to be dealing with. Not that he could place where he'd known her, whether in a dream or in reality, but that she seemed so perfect, so right to fill a crucial role in his life of which he was previously unaware, that it now seemed nearly as though the two of them might have somehow been acquainted for years before in the past.
“It's a pleasure to meet you too, Lyn. I'm sorry, I... I didn't mean to startle you, or seem like I was spying. I just... Well, I heard your music, and... It drew me toward you. It was really, really lovely.”
She smiled. “Oh, well... Thank you... So... You're a... A-”
“A wyvern shifter, yes,” he said, nodding.
She raised an eyebrow. “A wyvern?”
He pursed his lips. He should have known this term would end up falling on deaf ears. “A dragon shifter, if you like. That's probably how you humans more commonly refer to us. But for our people, it's a pretty important distinction. There are the wyvern shifters, like myself, and the kirin shifters, which more closely resemble mammals than reptiles.”
Lyn gazed into the distance, seeming to understand this. “Okay,” she said, and something unfathomable seemed to take place behind her eyes, something he could tell was being left unsaid. She then quickly looked back up at him, and smiled, trying to diffuse the tension. “So um... Tell me about yourself,” she said, looking genial and friendly, taking this entire situation with a sense of aplomb that seemed almost unnatural given the circumstances.
The two of them began to talk, naked in the middle of the stream, with the warm afternoon sun shining its rays gently down onto them.
He told her about himself. About his position as a great warrior among the wyvern shifters, and about the struggles his people had had in maintaining their territory over the years. He told her about his family, about their culture and customs and traditions, and then he went on to ask about her as well.
Lyn said that her own life story was far less remarkable. She was just a poor village girl, average in a lot of ways, but something of a dreamer. Unlike many of those around her, who got married at a young age- sometimes as early as their teenage years- she had remained living beneath the roof of her parents, not totally sure of what she wanted from her life. She was one of the only women in her village who knew how to read and write, and such abilities had filled her with a sense of wonder about the world that few of those around her seemed to sh
are. She genuinely believed that there was more for her in this world than a short life of squalor and hardship, and that it was better to believe in herself and persevere toward her goals, than it was to resign herself to a life of marriage at this early stage of her existence, simply to have someone to provide for her in times of old age.
“My real goal,” she said, “if I could do anything I wanted to, would be to open up a school in our village. To teach people, and help them succeed in the world beyond what our tiny little village has to offer them. It's a bit of a pipe dream, I know, but still. I've always been passionate about the idea.”
Gylvan nodded, smiling at her, amazed at just how remarkable this woman was, how astonishing in every way, her ambition just as great as the beauty she possessed.
Winter is Coming: Complete Series: An Epic Tale of Love, Lust, Jealousy & Betrayal Page 17