Down By The Water

TW: drowning (no death)

Evening sunlight filtered through the tree cover. The sun's dying rays lit the forest in gold. Wind swayed the great bows, casting gently shifting shadows over the hidden path. A careful eye would pick out the signs; a mark in a tree there, a rock smoothed by the river tucked between two roots here.

Two such careful eyes twinkled under a dark crimson cloak. A surreptitious woman made her way carefully along the path, her gaze flitting between the path and scanning the forest for any sign of danger. She moved quickly, and carefully. One never knows what they might encounter, even in a corner of the woods like this. She knew that well.

Her instructions rang in her ears. At the head of the trail, her mentor had put her hands on the cloaked woman's shoulders and looked her in the eye. Her mistress had actually called her Adelaide. Things were serious. Folium Insolitum grows in the lakebed. Do not linger in the water. Do not linger by the lake. Be quick and quiet. There are many dangers, even in the shallows.

The path had snaked its way through the forest for several miles. Adelaide devoted all her attention to keeping track of it. She cast a nervous glance up, through the leaves, at the purple sky. She worried she wasn't going fast enough. Instinctively, her hand drifted to the amulet around her neck. It was an uncut shard of black crystal. The lake was close. It had to be.

Her mistress told her the lake was called Ismene, but she warned to Adelaide never to utter its name when it was close. Adelaide felt a shiver course through her body. What mysteries did it hold? What was so dangerous about Ismene? Even thinking the word was exciting, dangerous on its own.

When the water came into view, the thrill only built. The lake spread out before her; the trees grew densely packed around it; some so close their roots draped into the water. Adelaide gazed at the lake, mesmerized. She felt something strange, but she couldn't place it. There was just something in the air.

There was no hope of spotting Folium Insolitum now. The twilight sky offered its blanket of darkness to hide the lake's secrets, turning its waters pitch black. It dawned on Adelaide that she would have to go in. Her reaction was pure excitement. She felt electrified. Nervous, but eager. What was so dangerous about this lake? Her curiosity was overwhelming.

Adelaide didn't know how deep Folium Insolitum grew. She might have to swim to the very bottom. She was only torn for a moment. Lust for knowledge, danger, and thrill were powerful forces, even more so when combined. And besides, it was late summer, and the night was warm.

Adelaide found a suitable tree, not too close to the water and sheltered from the growing breeze. She hung her cloak on a low branch, followed by her corset and tunic. Her head snapped up as she thought she heard a someone, but decided it was just the wind rustling. Her old black boots went by the base of the tree, followed very carefully by her stockings. She'd just washed them.

Adelaide glanced back to the lake, then down to her thin white chemise. It would be easy enough to hike up so she could wade into the water, but what if she had to go deeper? She was ready to take the plunge. Adelaide slipped out of her shift and placed it beside the rest of her clothes. Even in the summer night, the air was chill against her bare skin. Without her clothes, Adelaide's exhilaration burned even stronger.

She picked her way down to the water, trying to stay on rocks and roots to avoid the mud. Not that it mattered much, in the end, the lake would wash it all away. As she approached, Adelaide suddenly froze. She was certain she had heard a voice this time. Mingling with the wind was a bubbling, giggling laughter.

Adelaide's piercing dark eyes scanned the shoreline, trying to spot this mysterious stranger. Then she heard it again. It sounded like it was right behind her. Right where she had just been standing. She whirled around and stared into the trees, but there was no one. Maybe the wind was playing tricks.

Her anxiety was growing fast. She felt exposed. Adelaide touched her charm again, feeling its power. It gave her strength. Reminded her of her lust for adventure and knowledge. She pushed on, finally reaching the water's edge.

The water was icy cold against her feet. Adelaide grimaced as her legs splashed through the shallows. Her eyes tried to penetrate the inky water, but it was fruitless. All she could see was the glimmering stars reflecting up at her. She could only feel along the gravel with her feet and hope.

As her body got used to the temperature, the lake began calling to her. The water started to feel good. Cleansing. Relaxing. She started drifting further and further from the shore. Adelaide told herself it was the smart thing to do. Folium Insolitum likely grew deeper. The cold water stung her thighs, then her stomach, as she sank deeper. [ She squirmed in the sudden chill, trying in vain to warm herself up. ]

Sinking up to the middle of her chest, Adelaide caught something out of the corner of her eye. A cluster of stars seemed to move. She saw the flash, but as her head swung around to look, the lights were gone. Her eyes narrowed as she tried desperately to see anything in the dark water. But the lake refused to expose itself to her, as she had to it.

There it was again. That laughter again drifting by on the wind. Light and playful. It sounded close. It sounded right behind her. Adelaide spun around, but the laughter was always just out of reach. She tried to think. Maybe it was just the reeds. The reeds were always playing tricks.

Something brushed against her leg. Scaley and warm. Adelaide screamed and kicked out, but her foot hit nothing but water. She wasn't alone. There was something else under the water. She had to get out. In the split second it took her to make up her mind, it was already too late.

Her kick left only one foot still planted on the sandy lakebed. Something wrapped around her ankle. Its grip was tighter than a shackle. She felt its strength as something like claws dug into her soft skin. Adelaide's cry was drowned in the splash as she was pulled off her feet and under.

Before she even realized what was happening, Adelaide was underwater. In the shock and confusion, she managed to get a foot on the ground and push off. For a moment, her face burst free of the water, and she gasped in a deep breath. Then another iron hand closed around her free leg, and she was dragged down.

Adelaide had bought herself enough time to be ready as the lake welcomed her back in. She managed to twist her body and get a look behind her. She almost released her breath as a cocktail of emotions flooded her. Terror. Surprise. Disbelief. Desire.

Between the two thin, sharp hands that held her firm, Adelaide saw a woman's face. A woman's chest. Rail thin and enchanting. Her hair was black and knotted, splaying out around her grinning face. A face that had never felt the sun, so pale it was almost blue. A single, muscular tail grew out of her torso. Her black, iridescent scales gleamed even in the dim light. Her eyes were the same color, glowing and black and shattering the illusion her upper half was anything close to human.

Adelaide knew she should struggle. Knew she should try and cling to something. Try and escape. But her eyes were locked. She would rather drown than take her eyes off the thing that dragged her down. It was worth her life to look upon her angular face, her small breasts, her glittering tail, her graceful fins. Adelaide knew nothing in the world could be as beautiful. She sank further into the creature's eyes than she did into the lake.

Desire. Lust. Love. Devotion. None of them were enough to capture the feeling that coursed through Adelaide's veins as she sank into those jet-black eyes. The naiad's white lips parted. She laughed. A bubbling, playful laugh. Her mouth was lined her sharp teeth. She looked up at Adelaide with a curious, gleeful smile.

Just as the naiad's body sucked her in, the naiad's voice filled her mind. Her words bubbled up from within Adelaide's head. Adelaide quivered at the feeling of the naiad so deep inside her. She felt her whole body relax as she gazed at the creature. Her heartbeat slowed. Her limbs hung drowsily. The air secure in her lungs would last a while.

"And what makes a pretty little thing like you come play in my waters?" she giggled. The answer came into Adelaide's head as called. Her mistress had sent her to bring home a few sprigs of Folium Insolitum. That laugh rang through her skull.

"Oh really? This pretty little thing came all this way for just a little grass?" The naiad's voice was so light and charming, like the easy laughter of a mountain spring. All the time, they never broke eye contact. Adelaide couldn't imagine ever voluntarily breaking it. She longed to drown in the black eyes forever. The naiad's sharp, thin hand crawled along Adelaide's ankle and up her calf.

"Aw, you want to stay, don't you?" the naiad laughed. "You think you'll be my bride?" The naiad bared her razor teeth again, sliding her long, slender tongue out to lick her lips as she grinned.

It was hopeless for Adelaide. The naiad was so deep inside her head. She could barely take it. The naiad felt her every thought, her every desire. And she played with them. Adelaide did want to stay. She did want to be the naiad's bride. She knew how desperate and pathetic those thoughts must have sounded to the naiad, but she just laughed playfully.

"Oh, don't be silly, you'd make a lovely little bride," she soothed. The naiad's long tail kept pulling them down. As she did, the naiad kept climbing up Adelaide's body. Her fingers dug into the soft skin just above Adelaide's knees.

"You'd be just perfect." The naiad unleashed her long, rough tongue and stroked it slowly up Adelaide's calf. Her legs were already tender from the naiad's fingers, and Adelaide squirmed at the touch. All the while, the naiad's piercing eyes penetrated her.

"You're a delectable little thing, aren't you? Oh, I'd savor you. I'd lick your little bones clean and smooth," the naiad grinned. Adelaide felt it up and down her body. She felt the naiad's teeth pressing into her flesh. Lightly, teasingly at first. Then deeper, and deeper. She felt the unspeakable pleasure of the naiad's tongue wrapping around her bones.

"Oh, you like that? What a cute little lover." The naiad's fingers seized Adelaide's hips. Her tongue felt its way up Adelaide's sensitive, trembling thighs. Her breath was almost gone, but her body burned with more desire for the naiad's tongue than for air.

"Why don't we play a little game?" the naiad cried excitedly, thrusting her head up to rest her chin on Adelaide's stomach. She rubbed her chest against Adelaide's thighs and coiled her tail tightly around her legs. Adelaide wasn't thinking in words anymore. All she did was crave. Desperate, drowning, cravings.

"If you can stay awake long enough for me to slake my thirst," the naiad punctuated her rules with a light nibble at Adelaide's body. She bucked her hips and squeezed her thighs at the tease of pain. "If you can stay awake, then I'll fetch your grass for you, and let you off my hook," she laughed.

Adelaide didn't care what would happen if she couldn't stay awake. In the naiad's words was a taste of what was coming, and her fears had been washed away long ago. All that was left was her roiling adoration of the naiad. Her tongue, her voice, her fingers, her tail, her water. She wanted all of them inside her. Filling her up. The naiad chuckled gleefully. She kissed Adelaide's stomach.

"Just stay awake now, just stay awake and let me play," she said. The naiad gave Adelaide a tight squeeze with her tail, before she worked her way back down to Adelaide's thighs. The naiad bit her soft thigh, hard enough to make Adelaide wriggle and squirm, and just barely not enough to draw blood. The naiad giggled.

One of her hands held her prey firm, while the other's claws stroked gently up Adelaide's outer thigh and along the curve of her cheek. They dug in a little as they cupped the fatty flesh and drifted up toward Adelaide's lower back. In a slow, leisurely arc, the naiad's claws turned and retraced their steps. Every little prick of pleasure threw Adelaide's body into movement. She thrust her hips forward, half trying to escape the claws, half trying to find more of the naiad's touch.

The naiad had just the thing. Her head rested between Adelaide's thighs, watching her prey's body beg for her. She could hear Adelaide's mind crying out for her too. It was so delicious. She licked all the way up Adelaide's inner thigh.

Adelaide was barely conscious. Even with the naiad's soothing, melting gaze, her breath was running out. She didn't even notice. All she thought about was the naiad's touch. The stings of pleasure and her need for more. As her reserve of air dwindled though, her body's survival instincts started to stir. A whisper of sharp fear grew in the back of her mind.

The naiad heard it, and she grinned as the tip of her tongue brushed against Adelaide's lips. She stroked her tongue along the length of her labia, pressing softly to part the lips. She took her time, up and down, finally tasting Adelaide's lust as it leaked into the water.

She listened as the whisper inside Adelaide grew louder. As it fought through the mist in Adelaide's mind and tried to scream over the crashing waves of desire. She grinned so eagerly. Her dexterous tongue slipped between Adelaide's lips and circled her clit. Adelaide was so desperately sensitive to her every touch.

The naiad listened closely as beneath the waves of pleasure, the knowledge that she was drowning started to mean something to Adelaide's cloudy, needy, spellbound brain. The naiad waited for the moment of realization. The shot of adrenaline into Adelaide's weakened limbs. The flash of horror. The spike of sensual awareness. Every inch of Adelaide's body turning on high. The unparalleled peak of embodiment, activating in an instant to do whatever it took to keep her alive. The naiad licked her lips. This was her favorite part.

The moment hit. Adelaide's eyes opened wider. The haze was wiped away for an instant. Her muscles surged with energy. The naiad felt Adelaide's strength pour into her legs, ready to kick with all her might to swim up. Adelaide's face was still flushed red, her eyes still dripped with attraction, her mind was still submerged in the naiad's touch; for the moment though, it was her survival instincts that commanded her body.

But the naiad was more than ready. As fight-or-flight fired in Adelaide and forced her back into action, the naiad buried her tongue inside. With a flick and a final, tight circle around Adelaide's clit, the naiad thrust the length of her tongue into Adelaide's starving cunt. If she stretched, her tongue was just over six inches long. The full thick, flexible length of it slithered in, probing Adelaide's walls in every direction all the way.

The sudden, shocking penetration threw Adelaide into complete chaos. Everything came crashing down around her. The feeling of the naiad's expert tongue filling her completely was overwhelming. After so much teasing, so much building, so much fantasizing, it was all too much. No cock, no fingers, no pleasure Adelaide had ever felt in her life even came close. The naiad's tongue writhed inside her. It was like a living thing. It flicked and kissed and stroked and rubbed with perfect precision. The naiad tasted so deep inside her.

On top of the euphoria of the naiad's tongue fucking her, was the naiad's careful preparation. Adelaide was heightened like never before. All her senses were electrified, trying to pick up anything to help her escape, to survive. Like dilated eyes straining to see in the darkness suddenly burned as they are thrust into the brilliant daylight, her grasping sense were drowned in the unspeakable, tortuous ecstasy.

Adelaide tried to scream. She couldn't keep the pleasure bottled up anymore. Her last breath spilled out as she cried, and the naiad's waters flooded into her mouth. Finally, her whole body was truly filled with the naiad's caress. Her body shook uncontrollably.

Her survival instinct fought a last attempt to try and force her legs to kick free, but the naiad's tongue thrust in and out, lovingly massaging every inch of Adelaide's cunt. Adelaide's sex drive locked down every other bodily function. Her most primal drive of all seized control. Her legs instead gave their last strength clenching around the naiad's neck and forcing her deeper.

"Good girl," the naiad giggled into Adelaide's head, as the water rushed in beside it. "What a lovely little creature you are." Her tongue curled back, giving Adelaide's clit some more attention while the naiad prepared to finish things. She liked this strange intruder, she had fun playing with her, and secretly, she wanted her to win their game. She knew the poor girl didn't have a hope of staying conscious much longer.

The naiad's muscles tightened, poised for the perfect moment. Adelaide continued to moan helplessly in the water, starting to take the naiad into her lungs. All at once, the naiad sprang. Her fingers grabbed tight to Adelaide's overstimulated body, her claws pressed in, drowning Adelaide in even more sublime sensations. The naiad's tongue stroked down Adelaide's clit, pushing her to the edge. Finally, she pressed her face into Adelaide's pussy and thrust her tongue as hard and as deep as she possibly could.

She felt Adelaide's mind drain out completely. The naiad could hear the rapture as the deepest pleasure of Adelaide's life and the closest moment to death she could conceive of swirled together into an orgasm like nothing else. The closest thing Adelaide had to a thought was the ecstatic, delirious exaltation that if this was truly her last moment alive, that that feeling was worth dying for. The naiad kept her tongue buried inside Adelaide, sending aftershocks rippling through her as her tail began to kick.

Adelaide went limp in her arms and on the very edge of what could be called "awake." The orgasm was far too much for her, and the last pockets of oxygen in her body were burning out. But the naiad wasn't just born in the lake. She wasn't just of the lake. She was the lake. And the lake was her. In the blink of an eye, they were just below the surface.

The naiad worried Adelaide was too shocked to cough up the water she'd taken in. But the naiad was the lake, and she reached carefully into Adelaide's mouth and pulled her essence back out. With the aid of the water, the naiad lifted her up, and Adelaide's dazed and empty head rose out of the lake.

Air flooded her lungs and coursed through her body. Adelaide's eyes gazed up and water lapped at her cheeks, but she didn't notice. Every one of her senses was fried beyond use. She just floated in a sea of sensations so tangled up there was no sense to be made out of them.

The naiad carried her gently to the shore. She draped Adelaide's weak form on a wide, flat rock not far from her clothes.

"I'm really impressed you managed that. Sleep now, little thing, I'll get you your grass for you," the naiad whispered soothingly. Her hand stroked softly down Adelaide's arm. Parting with a kiss on Adelaide's hand, the naiad dove back into her depths. "Come back sometime, if you ever want to play again." The last thing Adelaide felt before she slipped out of consciousness was a playful, bubbly giggle on the wind.

When Adelaide awoke, she lay on a boulder, warmed by the setting sun. She had slept for at least a full day, and night was almost upon her. Adelaide sat bolt upright, and immediately regretted it. Although her body too had been warmed and dried by the sun, every inch of it ached down to the bone.

Adelaide stretched, trying to coax some good feeling back into her limbs, and her arm brushed something soft and wispy. She glanced down and saw beside her, a pile of Folium Insolitum nearly as big as she was. Adelaide laughed. She looked down at the lake, and she smiled.

She rubbed her hands along the sore muscles and remembered the naiad's touch. Remembered the naiad's final call, as if from a dream. Nothing would satisfy her again, not like the naiad. She'd be back one day, to play again.