Chapter 12: The Dryad
A melody of soft, bell like tunes lulled Noah in his sleep, draining him of his fatigue minute by minute as the melancholic aria swept across his body like a warm mildew wind. His body wreathed in what he could only imagine was an ocean of the finest down the world had to offer.
Slowly, Noah's mind began to waken after what he felt was hours of calm, dreamless sleep. A small blessing after the last two days he had. He was able to deal with it calmly initially, but seeing Liora in that state twice, one due to his own negligence was something he feared he would be having nightmares over.
But no, nothing. Not even a memory came to him. Which was either a good thing as it meant he could calmly deal with whatever came at him, no matter how terrible it was. Or a bad thing as it meant he was a borderline sociopath who struggled with empathizing. Which he did not believe himself to be.
The aria grew clearer the closer Noah drew to the waking world until finally he could hear it almost perfectly. The bell like melody strewn with soft chirpings of birds and buzzes of insects wings all perfectly pulled together to form an orchestral refrain, sapping away at his worries.
With his eyes soon coming to flicker open, Noah came to see the originator of the bell-like humming. Their face covered in a dark grey, bark textured masked shaped to the form of a woman's face. Framing her head were numerous leaves in the form of her hair with pink blossoms of the cherry blossom tree he had found himself falling asleep under dotted around and over her body.
"Who?" He muttered aloud, only now realizing that his singer had two curves on their chest. 'A woman?' it was then when the woman tilted her head down to Noah that he came to the secondary realization that this woman before him, wearing a grey bark mask and bark like skin layered with numerous thick and thin vines was letting him use her thighs as a pillow.
They weren't soft per se, but they certainly weren't hard. There was firmness to them that gave way to a pliable texture buried beneath a harder outer shell.
Noah's eyes soon came to meet with this woman's pure, dark pink eyes, lacking any sign of a pupil or iris as if she were wearing purely single coloured lenses that blended her sclera in with the rest of her orbs. The orbs themselves were surrounded by rough, natural looking carvings of a woman's eye lids and eyebrows but lacking the obvious detailing of hair apart from a small groove in the mask that tilted curiously as she looked down at him.
~You've awoken.~ The masks brows tilted up while the large, pure pink eyes disappeared behind barken eyelids. The woman's voice was soft, almost unnoticeable from how soft it was. Strangely enough, Noah noticed that her jaw didn't seem to move, not a single bit as she spoke even behind the mask.
"Uh, yeah. Who… are you? If you don't mind me asking," he tilted his head down to look over his body seeing various vines wrapped around his body, "and why are there roots tying me up?"
~I was worried that you may startle and fall when you laid eyes upon me. Most people do.~ A downtrodden tone came to her voice.
'Fall?' Noah reassessed his position, swivelling his head this way and that way, seeing branches and leaves around him but no green grass, in fact all he could see through the separations in the branches was pure, golden wheat. Just barely able to see the floor atop which he was laid, which itself was a dull grey bark much like what the woman's mask was crafted from.
"Why would I panic?" Why wasn't he panicking, that was the question. One doesn't just wake up, tied up, and not start panicking at least a little bit and yet here he was, as calm as ever.
~People have come to grow fear of me and my people.~
'Why would I fear her?' he questioned himself looking over her one last time, her bark skin and the interweaving vines lining her body, the way her faceless mask blended perfectly into the rest of her body. The long, light pastel pink, hair formed of many thousands of thin vines perhaps just a few times thicker than human hair, with various pink blossoms within them.
"O-oh. You're not human, are you?" a stupid question.
~No. That is why people fear me after all.~ Sadness overtook her pink hued eyes, which seemed to glow with a soft misty gloss. 'they fear I would devour them to sate my hunger.'
Noah racked his brain searching for whatever monster this girl may be, his first stop the useless book of monsters, but finding nothing of worth. So, he resorted to his second—and probably should be first choice—of his past worlds knowledge.
"You're a dryad, aren't you? Your species aren't exactly the flesh-eating sort." It was a gamble as she didn't seem to have the appropriate maw to tear at his skin. In fact, the mask seemed to lack any holes where the nostrils were nor did it seem there were any holes for the mouth. Was she breathing through her skin? Did she even need air? Or was she just getting all her nutrients from the tree she was anchored to.
The woman's eyes widened, her brows raising in surprise before falling to what he could amount to a giddy expression as her eyes slanted to slits, brow grooves slanted up. ~yes. I suppose that is what you diadras call us. We do not particularly consume flesh, as you said.~
"Diadras?" he questioned confusion to his voice.
~Ah,~ the woman's head jerked a little, 'I seem to have misplaced the word for a moment. Diadras, it means 'human' in my peoples language.'
"You have your own language?" perhaps he should be more concerned for his viney shackles and not be questioning the woman who was giving him a lap pillow about her peoples language.
~Indeed. Though it has been many a long year since I last spoke it with my people.~
Noah was about to ask why until he recalled how lonesome this tree stood within the field. Her grove was gone, leaving only her alone far from the other trees where other dryads may reside. He didn't need to ask why she didn't travel to the forest in search of her people. Dryads, if they were the same as they were back on his world, they were locked to a specific tree, and trees didn't move.
"Uh, right," Noah tried to move his arm, but was unable to. "Do you mind taking these vines off, I'm feeling a little cramped," he tried to move his arms but they were firmly locked at his sides.
The dryad looked over Noah's body, seeing his arms attempting to wriggle from her vines, ~oh yes. One moment.~ She lifted her grey vine wrapped arm, pointing the bottom of her palm to the shackles holding Noah down. Just seconds after she raised her hand did Noah feel a writhing sensation coming from all across his body as the vines loosened and began to squirm. The ends of them raising up and snaking through the air towards her out held hand. Piercing into it only to continue their squirming as the sound a wood grinding together filled the air. Only disappearing when the final vestige of her vines had entered her body.
"T-thanks." He said with a pale face, just imagining how it would feel having what looked like meters of vines burrowing into his body.
Stretching out his arms and legs, Noah swiftly rid himself of the lingering sensations of her vines from his body before slowly raising himself up and off her thighs. Turning on a dime to face the dryad, finally getting a good picture of her form.
It was strange to say the least. Were it the middle of the night and she were bathed in darkness he would easily mistake her for a regular human. Perhaps with a few unusualities to her. Like for instance her lower calves lacked the usual muscle definition. Instead being replace by trunks of grey bark ending with her feet that he would liken to stumps as well themselves.
Then came the rest of her body, the larger portions of which were formed from singular plates of the same wood that even seemed to define a pair of C-cup breasts that lacked any form of nipple or apparent softness. Her belly seeming to be the only acceptation as a few vines formed a swirling pattern that seemed to denote something of a belly button on her. The smaller parts, specifically her fingers and the joints across her entire body held the same collection of interweaving vines, some even holding a slight pinkish aura within them.
For some reason, Noah found an inexplicable blush raise to his cheeks when his eyes wandered to where a normal woman's genitals would be. A fact he was much to common with after having dealt with Liora the past two days.
Low and behold, there, nestled within the gap of her thighs were two small mons that pushed in a little to form a small upside down heart where Noah could see a few wisps of pinkish colouration coursing through the vines forming the majority of the outer portions of her crotch.
'She's a tree Noah. Get your head out of the gutter.'
The dryad tilted her head as Noah slapped his forehead. Her tilting down to let her pink orbs wander over her body. Wondering exactly what he'd seen on her to cause him to slap himself. 'Is there an issue with my body?' she asked lacking any form of irritation one may expect from a woman asking such a question to a face palming man.
Noah's head shot up, rapidly shaking, 'No, it's nothing. Just thinking something to myself." He crossed his legs burying his hands between them to push down the rising erection building in his pants. Now was just not the time for his hormones to go unchecked, even if there was a naked tree lady before him. Not that he could even do anything with a tree… Could he?
'She doesn't look that bad…' he contemplated onceing over her body once again. Though she certainly lacked the regular, human softness…
colouration…
texture…
face…
hair…
everything…
She wasn't hideous. No, quite the opposite, she held a foreign appeal to her, even if that appeal was borderline dendrophilia… scratch that, was dendrophilia. But for some reason Noah didn't seem to mind it that much. And because of that, and his pent-up hormones he could feel his pants growing tight.
'No! naughty boy! Down! Down!' he quickly screamed to his penis. But it wouldn't listen. 'Goddammit. Why do I have to be into monster girls…' he grumbled. A curse they were, and one he would seldom wish to throw to the wind.
~Are you alright?~
Noah jolted, nearly falling onto his back had he not quickly pulled his arms back, placing his hands upon the bark flooring centimetres away from the apparent edge where he could see the circle of grass and the outline of white and purple flowers. Infront of him, just barely a few feet away from him were the two pink orbs of the dryad girl who had crawled towards him while he was dealing with his inner dendrophile.
"Yeah, I'm fine." No, he wasn't, his pants were tight, and he was uncomfortable. Especially when such a strange set of eyes and a faceless face was staring at him. "Still thinking to myself," he diverted his head away from her while pulling a hand up to push down on the tent he was pitching.
The dryad tilted her head curiously, having caught sight of Noah's arm moving and followed it down to his crotch, lingering on the fabric mound, ~you are aroused?~ It came out as less of a question and more of a statement.
Noah grew a red blush, unable to look to the dryad as he put just a bit more force into his hand to push it down. "I, uh, I'm sorry."
The dryad shook her head, pushing herself to sit on her knees, her hands over her bark lap. ~It is alright. I am in fact honoured that you find this body arousing. Whenever I showed myself in the past I was treated with fear and hate. Few have found this body to their liking.~ She lifted up her arms showing off the wood of her body. ~You Diadras find those lacking in similarities to you, fearsome.~
Noah turned his eyes to her just in time to see her hands which he now was noticing lacked a digit, the pinkie it seemed, back onto her lap. Her head lowered to a pitiable degree. "I don't find you scary if that's what you mean," Noah sat up and scratched his cheek. "A little unusual, yes. But that's because its my first time seeing a dryad. I actually find you, uh, quite attractive." He awkwardly scratched his cheek.
The dryads eyes flew open, an expression of surprise filling them that soon shifted to a strange one as her leaves rustled and the vines in her joints began to move. Herself squirming at his compliment as she gained what he was guessing was a happy glint to her one tint eyes.
~Thank you. That is the first time someone has called me that.~ her eyes wandered back to his erection. ~May I have your seed?~ Was what came from her.
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