playing the music and grab his hair, just so I could be sure the monster I saw was real. I saw his penis, and it was impressively large, even while flaccid. When the phallus noticed I had been paying attention to it, blood swelled within, and it became more full and enticing to hold – or place between my lips. All of these thoughts came out in our music, and I watched specters of ourselves dance and copulate through smoky illusions along our walk through the orchard.
Fear clutched in my heart, and I recalled the stories about this creature.
Did you really seduce and turn all of those women undead?
I asked.
The music stopped and fell to the ground. The trees in the orchard grew dark, and the fruit dropped and fell, wilted, to the ground, splatting to the floor and letting maggots out beneath them. The colors turned ashen, and the man grew very, very sad. His teeth shrunk into his head, and the velvet coat that had covered his body shed, not to be replaced by any sort of style again. He became small and quiet. Reflective and nowhere near as boisterous as he had been only moments before. All for the memory of a myth about the great Night Hunter.
I have been lustful, violent, and possessive, the man declared. A warmth crept back into the landscape, and the environment began to assume a glow similar to the escaping lights on an apple grove at dusk. The colors were all saturated, and a deep sobriety provided a foundation on which the man and I walked. I reached over and cupped his penis, leaning in to kiss him on the arm. I held his hand, and we walked together through the orchard, the sun setting behind our path.
For a long while, the man and I walked in the forest. I saw his features shift between steadfast and confident, and melancholy and self-reflective. I thought about whether or not I could love him, and images of our sexuality flashed before my mind.
“It leads to a child,” he respond plainly – as though my thoughts were completely transparent to him.
“You would become impregnated by my seed and would carry a child from one realm into the other. The child will be gifted and troubled; such is the way that these things go. The process has been done before and will be done again in the future.”
He spoke in such a matter-of-fact tone that I wondered if there was any passion or intimacy left within him at all.
I let his hand fall to his side and held my own hand over my heart.
I wasn’t wearing any clothes; though, I did wear a cape that was dyed as rich as the night sky and had about as many shimmering lights. I felt the fabric with my bow hand. The texture was like that of a pool of ink; there was hardly anything there at all, and yet, it was thick and warm as anything I have ever been covered with.
The edges of the cloak fluttered around my feet as we walked, and I thought I sounded like the flapping wing of a bird. An owl sounded off to our left, and I saw that my companion had resumed the shape of the faun. I placed my hand on his broad, muscular shoulder and felt the hard body beneath him. He was steadfast in his direction and walked forward with a sense that, if he and I only kept walking through the orchard, we would arrive at somewhere significant, and it was his responsibility to lead the way toward that place, wherever it might be.
I felt the stirrings of desire within me once more and let my hand trace along the curves of his shoulder, as it led into his bicep and down toward the crotch of his arm. I brought a deep drought of oxygen into my lungs and felt the cool of the night air on my throat and in my lungs. He was now a fawn, and his hooves took bold steps forward, striking through the air in a determined stride, placing a hoof onto the ground, and then repeating the stride once again. He was so determined to move forward through the night that he did not even look my way; he only lowered his head, so that the two horns that sprouted from either side of his brow led the way through the