Page 24 of Cruel As A Tree

"I do not mind," Lorthion said from behind me, his voice coming from higher than normal and sounding a little more gravelly, but I was too distracted by the fact that the mermaidhad a towel wrapped around her like a toga and was walking up to me on two legs instead of a tail like she arrived in.

"That is way better than shifting into a werewolf," I said out loud.

The mermaid grinned as she strode up next to Susan. She stuck out her hand. I took it, feeling that her skin was hot against mine. "I'm Orcalia. This here is Dumpster Fire." She gestured with a thumb over her shoulder at the male merman who was now on two legs with a towel around his waist. He had hold of a rope and was pulling a large chest out of the water and onto the shore.

"Dumpster fire?" I could feel both of my eyebrows reaching for my hairline. I wasn’t sure if I hoped he picked that name for himself or not. If someone else gave it to him he was mean, but if he gave it to himself that made him a walking red flag.

"I'm Devonic," Devonic said. "I still don't know what Dumpster Fire means, but the fact that all the Mundanes make faces when they hear it can't be a good thing."

“I know what it means!” Orcalia grinned.

The chest was all the way on the shore now, and he dropped the rope, turning towards us and bowing deep from his waist. "Great Lord of the Forest, we come bearing gifts and tribute to aid the growth of your forest, and to bring news. One of the Seals has been shattered and the Dungeon begins to expand. We have word from a rescued Mundane that a Lycan was able to shift without the Blood Moon."

The smell of fish and seaweed wafted through the air, unmistakable as it wafted from the large chest.

"He's back!" Orcalia threw both her hands in the air. Then she kicked one leg up so high her shin almost hit her own face. "Heeeeeeeee's back!"

"Um," I said, taking a step back from her wild movements. I bumped into a tree, barely glancing at it out of the corner of my eye to see that there were now two new tree trunks on the shore.

"Orcalia, chill out a little,” Susan said. "She might have just escaped yesterday. You are way too intense for this moment."

"Don't mute my light, make your own brighter instead!” Orcalia wiggled her hips and stuck her arms both out to the sides, shaking them as if she had pom poms. "This is the perfect moment for that dance that Carey taught me."

"At least move away so you don't accidentally clobber me again," Susan said.

"C H A O S Chaos!" Orcalia chanted, moving her arms around wildly and kicking again. Even so, she moved a good distance away from us and began to dance. As she moved, her gestures became less cheerleadery and more sensual, with her hips curving, her ass shaking, and at one point she dropped down to her knees and flipped her hair back, giving a sultry look up behind me.

She wasn’t looking at me.

She was directing those sultry eyes at Lorthion.

I felt a spike of jealousy. He wasn't mine. I had in fact rejected and held him at arms' length, but that didn't stop the feeling from flooding into me, intense and irrational. I glanced over at him to see if he was staring at her.

He was a tree.

Or more specifically, an ent.

The two trunks I thought were trees were his legs, merging together into a single trunk to form the center of his towering body. Branches came out with long arms and fingers, and his head was adorned with a canopy of leaves. His face was made out of wood, generally about where a face should be on a giant.

I glanced back at Orcalia to see her twerking while looking back over her shoulder at him. It was impressive how shemanaged to get a full jiggle through her butt by really engaging her lower back muscles and letting her rump relax with the twitch. I didn’t know mermaids would be able to twerk. Then again, I didn’t even know there were mermaids until now. I hadn’t seen any at the school and the dramatic two tones of their skin coloring made them hard to miss.

I tore my eyes away from her gyrating rump to look back at Lorthion. He was still a giant tree creature, and wasn't looking at her. His gaze was out at the surface of the water.

"She'll calm down in a bit," Susan said quietly. “She is only recently considered an adult by her people and these tributes are considered one of the safer missions that one can take. She was like this last time we came to deliver a tribute. She thinks she is going to convince Lorthion to accept her as his Forest Lady even after he rejected her the first time."

He rejected her? Another one of my unconscious assumptions came crashing to a sudden stop. Part of me had thought that he was so intense about me because I was the first woman he'd ever seen. I hadn't met any other people in his forest, and getting over the wall was difficult to say the least. I only ended up in his forest at all because Veveron had directed me there, so it didn’t seem to me like he would be crawling in women who might appreciate his attention. Now my assumption was turned around. There was evidence that not only did he have other options, one of the options was coming on to him so hard that the edge of her towel was flipping up with her twerk.

I focused my eyes on Susan, noticing that Devonic behind her was staring at Orcalia with a look of utter longing on his face.

“You seem perturbed by her behavior,” Lorthion said, his voice rumbling. “I will ask for them not to send her again.”

“It doesn’t bother you?” I asked, watching him closely.

“She is exciteable and eager and this is a safe place for her to try out more extravagent behaviors,” Lorthion said. “Herattempts to attract me continue to fail and she will learn and move on.”

"What, you only like Mundanes?" I asked, raising an eyebrow up at him.

"Only like Mundanes?" Susan repeated, her tone incredulous. “How could he like any of us? He's a tree."

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