Theo tugged at his crotch through his trousers as he stomped with unbridled purpose through the dark forest. Barely a fortnight had passed since the last time he set out on this same journey, and the itch was already almost unbearable.
From her lofty perch on one of highest branches of her favourite tree, Ivy heard him the imp before she saw him. She rolled over onto her stomach, lying flush with the tree’s gnarliest branch, and peered through their leaves. Ivy winced and held her breath in anticipation, only releasing her exhale when Theo crossed the threshold without trampling any of her fungi friends on the ground level.
The moment Theo stepped over that invisible line into Gort’s Glade, he felt it. The now-familiar tingle that promised a very special relief. He breathed in deep, planted his knobbly walking stick in the ground, and let our a preemptive sigh of satisfaction.
The first time, he came here by accident. The second time, he came with intent. This third time, he was going to come because he felt he had no choice.
“But you always have a choice, my dear Theolof,” Ivy said.
She let her dangling leg swing in slow, lazy circles while her gaze followed the imp making his way over the soft grass into the moonlit centre of her sacred ring.
“We knew he was never going to heed the warnings,” the tree whispered. “He is an imp, after all.”
Ivy blew air through her lips. The tree was never wrong, but it didn’t change how much it annoyed her when they were extra right. “He isn’t going to make a very attractive mushroom,” she moaned back at them.
“We can always feed him to that particularly cantankerous badger who lives in Muin’s Moor.” When the tree’s little giggle drifted past Ivy on the nighttime breeze, she couldn’t help laugh with them.
In the middle of the glade was a long forgotten altar borne of stone and earth. Well, that’s what the old town mothers called it. They also told stories of the fairy people who once thrived in these lands, some of whom were said to still lurk about, guarding what little remained of their ancestral homes. But Theo didn’t believe in such nonsense. Besides, even if fairies were real, they had no business telling Theo, a strong, proud imp, how to live his life on his own land.
Theo pulled the drawstring on his burlap trousers and let them fall in a bunch around his ankle, bearing the dark flesh on his lower half to the spectre-white moonlight. His erection, blood-heavy and aching, sprung forth without ceremony. He clasped the girth in his hand. The weight of it was comforting.
He wasn’t sure why this spot brought him such significant and immediate arousal, but he didn’t feel it necessary to question it.
Holding himself steady with his other hand leaned on the moss-covered rocky protrusion, he began to stroke the need from his cock. Gradually at first, with occasional hurried bursts of tugging only to return to the slow drag of his palm down the length of his shaft until he met the thatch of hair that framed him.
“We could try to stop him,” the tree offered, already knowing what Ivy would do with such such suggestion.
Ivy supposed they were right. She could say something. Make herself known to the imp, warn him of the consequences of spilling his offering on the altar for a third and final time.
But she also knew the impish wroth that all but destroyed her lineage. There was a mix of disdain and fear, and a hint of fanciful vengeance. But ultimately, it was her indecision that made the choice. Despite the centuries of neglect, the ring’s magic was still far stronger than the imp and Theo was already nearing his end.
Ivy’s lip curled as she watched the grotesque creature’s hand blurred over the stump clenched in its palm. It disgusted her, yet somehow she couldn’t look away.
“Your mouth will stay that way if you’re not careful,” the tree chided.
Ivy sucked her teeth at them. “Hush, or I’ll feed you to the cantankerous badger.”
This time, their laugh came from the base of their trunk. The sound was enough to distract Theo momentarily — his scrunched up eyes bulged open and he looked about the space. When he was satisfied that he was still alone, he set back to finish the job.
Ivy could see the strain in the imp’s forearm match the tension in his face. His breathing was coming in faster and harder grunt through his nose.
Theo double over on himself, rutting into the tunnel of his closed fist. The build-up was powerful, overwhelming even, until purple-green light burst behind his closed eyelids as moon-while pearls burst from his cock and landed on the earth at his feet.
“Here we go,” Ivy said with a smug smirk, rapping the tree’s trunk twice with her knuckle, then climbing expertly down their base.
Ivy’s footsteps were so soft that even if Theo wasn’t groaning in the aftermath of ecstasy, he wouldn’t have hear her. She was mere feet from him when he finally looked up and saw her standing there.
Theo’s stomach dropped and his complexion blanched impossible pale for an imp when he locked on the black-eyed gaze of the ghostly creature before him. Her long silver-pink hair billowed around her like a floating crown of liquid air; her cloud-like gown draped down her slight form like a sheet of pure goat’s milk. She was stunning and terrifying all at once.
It took Theo a lot longer than it should have to realize his cock, now limp and receding, was still in his palm, his trousers still in a bunch at his feet. When he finally did, he hurried to pull the burlap up and tie it back into place.
“You shouldn’t have come.”
The pallid beauty’s voice seemed soft, yet somehow thundered in Theo’s ribcage.
Shaken, he tried to take a step back. But he found that it was impossible. His feet were stuck, literally planted in the earth.
A wicked smiled played on the creature’s pink lips as she floated in, so close, until her nose nearly grazed his. He held her gaze as she grew, and grew, and grew until she towered over him.
“However wrongfully, you have completed the rite, Theolof,” she said, plucking him up off the ground and carrying him to the shadowy edge of the glade, where she dug a small hole in which she buried him up to his ankles. “Now this is where you will stay.”
Ivy drifted back up to her perch. From her seat, she cast her gaze around the ring, counting the mushroom caps to fall asleep.
Meanwhile, the last thing Theo would ever know was the overwhelming sound of hasty, grunting sniffles and a damp, velvety compress on the back of his neck.
