I laugh out loud. “Bored?”
She nods. “It’s way too much.”
“Completely over the top.”
“I want something… slower. Do you think we can find somewhere slower?”
“Probably.” I reluctantly get up, wishing we were already home so I could take her into the steam cave for a dip, then take her to bed in her cottage. But who knows how long it might take us to get back to the hallway?
Then I pull her to her feet and we both look around for the door.
“There,” I say, pointing to a door that was not there earlier.
We walk towards it and I’m just about to tug her through when she balks and plants her feet. “Wait.”
“What?”
She looks around at the lewd and lecherous Romans, and then nods her head and sighs. “I will never think of Rome the same way again.” Then she turns to me, rises up on her tiptoes, and kisses me on the mouth.
It’s a nice, long, slow kiss too. Something to be remembered. Because when we pull out of it, I’m still thinking about the way she tastes. I’m still thinking about the pressure of her lips. I’m still thinking about where exactly her hands are. How her one knee is between my legs. How her fingertips are curled into the fabric of my clothes.
She is giggling and breathless when I pull her through the next door and we find ourselves in the woods.
I am finally myself again, all the trappings of ancient Rome gone now. But I’m still lost in the memory of the palace kiss and the way I felt inside her.
“Birds,” Pie says.
And at the same time, I say, “Nymphs.”
“What?” She’s smiling when she turns to me, not understanding the danger.
“I can smell them.” Then I turn to her and take a step back.
“What’s wrong?”
“Pie… look down.”
She does and she takes her own step back too. But it does no good. The shocking thing isn’t a bug on the ground or a snake slithering too close. It’s… her.
“What the fuck?” She takes another step back. But the legs are too long, too gangly. She’s not used to being half deer, so she tumbles backwards onto her ass. And then she is crab-walking into a mud puddle, trying to get away from herself. “Holy shit! Holy shit!”
I kneel and take her hand. “Calm down. It’s fine.”
“Fine? Nothing about this is fine!”
I pull her up out of the mud and place both my hands on her shoulders so I can look her in the eye. Which is nice—being nearly eye level with her, that is. Because in normal life she is much shorter than me. “It’s no different than me having human legs in the other rooms. That’s all this is.”
She looks down at herself. “I don’t have pants on!”
There is no way to stop the laugh. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
She’s breathless again, but for wholly other reasons than sex. Her hand is over her heart. And that’s when she realizes she has no shirt on either. “Shit! I’m totally fucking naked!”
Her blonde hair is longer here. So long that it covers her breasts entirely. A few pieces are pulled back from her face with an intricate braid with flowers woven in. And every time she moves, there comes the familiar tiny jingle of spirit bells. She’s wearing a length of them wound around each wrist, and a longer strand, the bells alternating with small pink opals, around her neck.
She is the nymph I smelled upon arrival, so I relax.
But in that same moment I become immediately excited.
Because she’s not just any nymph. She is spectacular. Like someone has been breeding wood nymph chimeras for several eternities to get this one perfect specimen.
And this realization is what renders me speechless.
Pie is so stunned, taking in her new body, she just stands there, silent. Looking down at herself.
“You’re so… pretty.” I break the stillness. “I’m not just saying that. You might be the prettiest nymph I’ve ever seen, Pie Vita.”
“Nymph!” She exclaims this as she looks up at me.
It’s only then that I notice she has the eyes of a water-god. A dreamy blue that reminds me of clouds slowly floating by on a mid-summer day.
While I’m thinking this, her fingertips have suddenly found her horns. Pie gasps as she probes the gazelle-like spikes jutting out from the top of her head. “What the fuck is this? Holy shit!”
“It’s just the rooms,” I remind her. “You didn’t freak out when you were dressed like a prostitute in ancient Rome.”
“I didn’t have horns, Pell! I was still human in ancient Rome!”
I get it. She has every right to be shocked. But this is fake. It has to be fake because if it’s not fake, then… well. I don’t know. I need it to be fake just as much as she does, so I say, “Don’t you think you’re kind of overreacting?”