From Chapter Four: Home and Hearth

Yet I watched and waited, enchanted by this powerful vision.  For a while all I was aware of were the sparkling stars, the distant glow of warm hearths, the feel of pine needles and rich earth beneath my fur, the splash of water, the glorious shards of falling moonlight, and crowning it all, the focal point, this astoundingly beautiful woman.  Then I became aware that my desires were too powerful for me to contain.  I realized that I had to make this woman mine, somehow, someday.

At length she rose from the pool and stretched out on a rock by the shore, letting the water form beads and drip from her glistening, cool body.  When she was dry, she stood and retrieved a white slip of a garment and slid it over her springy frame until it had settled snuggly around her.  She placed gilded sandals on her feet, and wove a laurel of holly into her hair, leaning over the water to glance at her own reflection as she dressed.

Your name!  My heart cried out, tell me your name!

Oh, that I might whisper it to myself, feel it thrumming through my veins, and kindle it, that it might thrill me and entice me forever!  Yet my appearance here would surely alarm and startle her.  I felt a twinge of shame, and yet the thrill and the sensation I wished never to end.  I would gladly suffer it to consume me.

I had faced many dangers and horrors head on and had been unshaken by all.  Why, then, did the figure of a woman cause me to tremble and shiver so?

I watched her walk down the shaded path until she was gone and the moment she vanished my spirit writhed in a torment of ecstacy.  It was all I could do to contain myself.  To not cry out for her to return to me, to still my desire to touch her and absorb all I could of her magnetism.

I undid my pack and spread my blanket out there in the cool shadows.  I felt feverish and consumed.  Try as I might I could not quelch the stirrings within me, desires that had come to me so strongly and unexpectedly.  Vaguely I felt myself grow shocked at the torrid, carnal images that flooded me and demand I yield to them.  

The thing that unsettled me the most was how quickly I had lost my willpower and how eager I had become to cast off every caution and fling myself headlong into the web such desires spun within me.  Here too, was the seed of fear, taking hold and sprouting within me.  I knew the feelings I had were unreasonable, laughable-- and yet I could not leave them alone.  I twisted and tossed all night in the lingering torment of the swollen passion.