Dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…dong…

Hanging in the sky like the milky white eye of Poseidon’s titan son, the full moon enshrined the park in an ephemeral glow. It caught in the low fog rising off the dew-glittered ground, winding through the trees and billowing over the concrete walking path in silver waves. Hand-painted clouds winked the silver dollar moon out of sight as they rolled casually across the night sky, heavy and dark with a burden of rain. The sapphire green grass shivered as the wind which bent the sails of the clouds dipped low to rake its fingers through their dampened blades. Along its way, passing a lone figure sitting atop a park bench, the zephyr paused to read the words in the book the woman held. Hungry for more, it flipped the page and received in turn a nod of thanks.

“Th’iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve,” she murmured at the last ringing of the bell, then, lifting her head, cried: “Lovers, to bed~! ‘Tis faerie time.”

Hair the color of a black opal, shifting with the moonlit shade, the woman could not have been older than her early to mid twenties. She moved with the very grace of the wind as she stood to her feet and balanced along the back of the wooden bench, pacing to its end and dropping down into the grass. Dressed in a pair of soft, grey tweed slacks, she was barefoot, but did not seem to mind the wintry mud squishing up between her toes, nor the vapors of mist that swirled between her knees. Her eyes, bright turquoise green, were trained upon the book she held, though she would know every word by heart and oft closed her eyes in thought as she meandered about with a hum or a murmured line. Thin, gossamer satin embraced her slender torso for a chemise, long sleeved and low necked, and though she shivered every so often, she seemed to pay little mind to the chill, sashaying her way back to the bench where she reclined once more.

“Mm, I just love Shakespeare in the park!” rang a clear, crystal laugh.

It wasn’t for a few minutes after the young woman had stretched herself out across the bench that she found cause to rise again, and when she did, it was with the sudden gusto of a dog that had scented its quarry. She had felt a little dribble of glamour trickle out of her like sand from an hourglass just then, some human’s unintentional siphoning of her energies. Leaks were not uncommon when she was in an extraordinarily good mood, but it drew her attention nevertheless; creative mortals were just to die for!

Craning her head backwards, she saw the delicate thread of gold, shimmering like sunlight before the ascetic glare of the moon banished it like a will-o’the-wisp. Breath held in anticipation, she deftly unwound herself from the wooden bench where before she had perched and, careful not to leave behind her cherished volume of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, began to make her way towards the source of her disturbance. She must have looked like a ghost, hardly seeming to touch the ground as the diaphanous fog blurred her figure below the flowing hem of her gauzy shirt. Her determination did not waver as she sailed through the sea of sliver, turquoise eyes held in fixed fascination on her destination.

The closer she came to the anointed locale, the stronger the creative energies became, warm and tasting of sweet fruits and ambrosia on her tongue. He was handsome, the man to whom they belonged, with chocolate brown hair she envisioned slipping through her fingers like silk. She could see in the lines on his forehead the way that his energies struggled, caught up and tangled like knots in the strings of a marionette—and she, the puppet master, her fingers itching to untangle them as she approached in silence and sidled up behind him.

“Having trouble?” she murmured, her voice the softest, sweetest honey tone she reserved for her mortals.

This one has his wits about him, she observed.

A flicker of a pout crossed her visage as he seemed to reprimand her for her interruption of his night. It wasn’t her fault that he had borrowed some of her energy and happened to be out during her favorite time of the night in her favorite part of the city—though perhaps she might have been a bit less obtuse about it. That aside, she was helpless but to pursue the essence that kept her alive, so he really shouldn’t blame her for being where she was at this moment.

“I meant,” she said, still in that lyrical tone and choosing to ignore his rudeness, “if you were having trouble with that, darling.”

In speaking, she raised one delicate hand and pointed at his notebook with deliberation, her other hand seeking to cup her cheek. The former action drew her own attention to his manuscript as she intended to draw his, her gaze landing on the quill, which lay like a splash of ink across the page. Arching one eyebrow, she let her hand fall and swept around to the front of the bench where she dropped into a crouch. Not since William and Thomas had she seen such a beautiful quill, its plume an emerald hue that complimented the turquoise of her eyes just so.

“May I?” she asked suddenly, holding her out expectantly for the object.

His honeyed tone drew her gaze, and she stifled the intake of oxygen forced by his charismatic smile. It was a nice smile, she decided, and she returned it with one of her own. This smile was a hundred years on three hundred more old, the very first smile she had smiled: sweet, beguiling, and full of whatever Thomas had seen fit to write about, filled with the tincture of mortal man’s weaknesses when it came to the fairer sex.

A nice smile, and a laugh as warm and golden as those brilliant eyes. If she should find this mortal in her company until he was old, she did not think she would mind at all. Whether or not she would, in fact, acquire or even demand his company was yet to be determined, but as his fingers brushed against hers, she felt again the inexorable pull of creativity, the live wire connection of inspiration from her body to his. The rough, hot touch of his hand wasn’t unpleasant either, and she found herself wishing he’d let it rest a little longer; that was, at least, until the silken feather of the quill landed in her smooth, cool palm.

“Ohh~” she let out a little coo, stroking the feather and holding it up to the light of the moon to watch the mother of pearl shards play on its rich plume. “Ah, and it’s even a real feather! How unusual. I haven’t seen a quill of such excellent style since I worked with William!” His warning on not stealing it brought a mischievous smile to her face, and she held the feathered end out to swish it teasingly against his nose. “And what a shame that would be—I’d have a pretty quill and a handsome man chasing me down.”

As if the fire in his eyes had spread to hers, when her gaze lifted to his it was as if embers burned hot and blue beneath the smoke of her lashes. It was a look that spoke much in the few words she could not say, but she bid her urges be silent a moment more, casting his form to the corner of her gaze. Lifting her hand up so that the pallid light of the moon spilled over her alabaster flesh, she let the loosened sleeve of her shirt pool to the crook of her elbow. The action revealed a mass of nondescript and nonsensical scribbles across her otherwise flawless arms. She searched, it would have seemed, in vain for a clear spot before flexing her palm and putting the tip of the quill to the sensitive flesh inside. With a shiver, she motioned as if she would draw or write something of great importance, careful not to break the quill, but when she pulled the instrument away, all that greeted her eyes was a mass of wasted ink. That done, she curled her fingers over the catastrophe she had managed to suffer into being and held the quill out to its proper owner, making sure that the way in which she held it would force their hands into contact again.

“I suppose you want to write, now,” she spoke in a low, sultry tone of voice that was only half a question, “don’t you?”

Their skin contact like the pleasant feeling of brushing your hand almost too near to a flame, she sat down beside him on the bench. Tempted though she was, she was all the same a practiced predator and she would not force any encounter other than the touch of their hands this once; and so, she left a comfortable gap between their hips on the bench, his legs laid straight before him, and hers folded neatly atop each other. She sat with perfect posture, her head inclined just so and her torso turned politely towards his as she awaited his response. His inquiry of her name brought a slow smile to her face, accompanied by a laugh like the sound of wind through a chime.

“Now that is a dangerous question. You can call me whatever you like, but I go by Lanthe Deòir most days. And your name?”

“Oh, please darling,” she laughed, as if enjoying a private joke, “I’m much more pleasant a guest than a succubus.”

That is a new one, though. Demon, I have been called. Succubus? I may have to take that, came the bemused thought thereafter.

While her thoughts strayed, her eyes were focused quite diligently on his notebook. As unobtrusively as possible, though she cared little whether he noticed her staring, she absorbed every detail of his work. She was fascinated as ever by the way his quill—the very one she had just held!—was able to form such neat and orderly letters, breathing life into the jointure of their energies by way of his hand. It left her feeling vaguely envious, but more importantly, it enticed her, an emerald held before a possessive dragon.

For a moment, she wondered if he knew what he was doing to her, then, blankly, decided that it didn’t really matter. Here he was, fresh, young, and handsome—oh now she did sound like a succubus, didn’t she?—and freely writing things for her with hardly more than a few brushes of fingertips here or there. Flirting with her or simply returning her advances, it mattered little to her so long as he wrote. What were human emotions to a fae? Nothing but playthings on a marionettes strings.

“Mrs. Deòir would have been Thomas’ wife,” she murmured quickly under her breath. Pending he had ever had eyes for anyone other than me. But, shaking the long-dead poet from her mind, she graced him with a smile and shook her head. “It’s a pleasure to meet you as well, Mr. Prometheae. Please, call me Lanthe. May I ask what you are writing?”

Saintilus’ account of how to deal with succubae had Lanthe smiling, though it held little mirth. She seemed to be contemplating something, a shadow of a cloud passing o’er the moon like a haze of smoke over the embers of her eyes. Cupping her cheek with the palm of her hand, she tapped her fingers lightly against the smooth, cold skin and watched the man until the cloud passed, at which point she shut her eyes, and the smile teasing her lips acquired at least the semblance of warmth and amusement.

“You speak as if you’ve done this before,” she observed. “Though you also speak with a black and white view of morality—a human view, if you will. Did you consider that supernatural creatures might have a supernatural set of morals? You think it is wrong for them to kill men for survival, but you see no problem in a wild animal hunting other animals to do the same, do you? Or, for that matter, to justify your own murder—a kill in self-defense.” Giving an exaggerated sigh, she shook her head. “No need to worry about that from me, however. What use would men be to me if I killed them? Besides, killing is such nasty business,” she lamented.

Though the sexual element to his smile was not uncommon in her experience with men, it was not the lewd, leering simper of a chauvinist, nor the cocky, smart-assed smirk of a womanizer or a lover who knew for sure that he would be “tapping that” later that night. It caused a stirring in her that she hadn’t experienced before, and as he brushed his fingers across her lips, she sucked in a soft breath and had to fight the urge not to do something provocative. The strangest part was, perhaps, that she didn’t really feel a need or a desire to engage in any sexual intercourse with him—it wouldn’t be entirely unpleasant if such a thing were to happen, though.

I already like the sound of my name on his lips, purred that dark voice in the back of her mind, nevertheless.

At his forcing her to repeat her question, she merely raised an eyebrow and, refusing in stubborn silence, scooted closer the moment he made the way available. Partly from the cold, and partly from the delicious feeling she acquired from knowing that she drove men wild and became the center of their thoughts, she nestled in close to his side, fitting her petite form against the muscular cradle of his ribcage as if it had been made for her. The sudden surge of contact points between them had her shivering as she leaned across his chest to read the words he penned, though she was careful not to obstruct his writing. Not half as intimate an action as his touching her lips—she had found that the more intimate an action, the thinner the barriers between her glamour and a mortal’s soul became—but outdone in sheer surface area, their new position created a steady current between their bodies, warm and golden as the sun in a quickly darkening night, the atmosphere thick with building tension.

“We weren’t speaking of ‘lawful’ and ‘unlawful,’ though, now were we?” she reminded him with a small smile at his reasoning. “You know, one might even say that you invited your own disaster by engaging in such dalliances in the first place. But, alas, I digress. I never was much interested in moral systems.”

They fascinate me…I just don’t understand them.

His subsequent silence was of no consequence to her. She enjoyed when her mortals read aloud to her, yes, but she had eyes sufficient enough to read. Though cruel design had fated she could not create, at the very least it had not denied her the enjoyment of what was made by others. Her eyes caressed each shapely letter of the scripted handwriting, a fleeting—but sweet!—lover as she flitted along the page. Every so often, she would shiver as his mind failed him and he drew on her glamour—surely, he could feel it too? That deep, rich, wonderful…ohh. If not, what a pitiful existence, and she let him think that her quivering derived from the cold or from his absent-minded caresses (which, in part, it did).

In her position of so severe an incline across his torso, when Saintilus turned, Lanthe found her chest pressed to his. Lifting her gaze, she found her eyes caught in his stare and wondered vaguely if honey attracted fae for being sweet or for its color. The amber of his eyes was a very attractive hue. She drew herself slowly up his body, her nose tracing the silhouette of his torso and tickling against his as she came to a stop.

“Well,” she murmured, gazing up from beneath her lashes as her lips grazed his with every word, “I would have to follow you, of course.”

Pulled suddenly again Saintilus’ chest, Lanthe placed her own hands against his shoulders, hardly room for a single sheet of paper between their bodies. Like a spark to dry kindling or a field of oil, his kiss ignited an inferno of energy between her glamour and his soul. Her stomach tightened and her head whirled with the sudden influx of emotion. What had before been a mediated and steady pull in his general direction became an all-encompassing vacuum of need with his center of gravity at its center. She could only imagine what he had planned, and what that would do for the growing exchange of energy.

Checkmate, she smiled to herself, moving her lips against his with expert form. Oh, Saintilus, you’re mine now, darling.

Licking imploringly at the corner of his mouth to deepen his kiss, she reached up and fisted a hand in his hair. If he wanted a challenge, more than just a willing partner, he would find it. Though she existed primarily as a muse, sexual relationships were not uncommon between she and her mortals, and they often resulted in richer, more inspired works not long after. Many a man had been allured by the way they found themselves feeling around her, enticed by how “electric” their relationship was from the get-go. Absent from what emotional attachment this could bring, Lanthe was not bothered by their illusory fantasies, and though she wouldn’t miss it if he hadn’t decided to take her to bed, she certainly wasn’t going to say no on any account. She needed no emotional guidance, no promises of roses and rings in the morning, to indulge in this man.

As his aura finally acquiesced to hers, its sudden surge left her blood fizzing with unexpressed creative energy catered to his specific needs. She gave a soft coo in response, breathing out gently into the kiss as their breaths mixed. Her arms slid around his shoulders with no protest as he picked her up, and she nestled quite happily against his chest as they left the park behind.