The Kindreds, Volume 1

The Eleventh, Pt. 2

And very beautiful. Her lips were full, her features elegant and sloping. Her hair looked as though it were still under the water, gently weaving around itself and floating away from her skin as though it was almost weightless. This stranger was one of the most beautiful people she had ever seen.

Sada screamed.

"Oh dear!" she cried. Then, remembering her manners, "Are you well...miss?" All the while, she was scrambling to cover herself. Her shift was probably translucent or close to it in the water. Sada wasn't sure what else to say as the woman just smiled. Her mesmeric eyes the color of the tide lit up.

"Hello, lovely," the woman said, her voice deep and magnetic. "What has you wandering in my springs?"

The stranger glided through the pond toward her as she spoke, moving as fluidly as the water around her. Sada took a step back at her nearness. She wore not even a slip! She must have been bathing as well.

"You have my apologies if I've intruded on you," Sada said, trying not to look at the woman's bare blue breasts poking out of the water.

The stranger noticed and smiled.

"You don't need to be so polite, darling. Haven't you ever met a Nymph before? We're not selfish with our bodies," she murmured. She had stopped nearing Sada and instead drifted in lazy circles around her. "We don't mind sharing, that is."

A Nymph! These were the people—the Spiritkin—that Kartinar and the Elves had mentioned. Both their conversation and Sada's current situation were beginning to take on more meaning than she would have liked. The blue woman's gaze dropped below the water to where Sada was desperately trying to cover herself with her petticoat which kept floating up to the surface. The current picked up again, making the fabric billow up, and the woman who called herself a Nymph giggled as the heat of embarrassment found Sada's cheeks.

"I wish not to be impolite," Sada managed to say. "I had not realized this spring was occupied."

"This entire glade is occupied," the Nymph said in that mesmerizing voice. "But feel free to be impolite anywhere in it. We never were ones for rules—and the ones who are will forgive you for breaking them."

She giggled again as she rose dripping out of the water to display her entire body. She looked like the full-bodied and half-covered women eating fruit in the paintings that decorated the king's dining halls. She wore no corset, but looked like one of the hourglasses the kitchen staff used as timers for their baking. Her long and unbraided hair, decorated with jewels of every color, did nothing to hide her full curves or her green nipples. The nakedness was more than Sada and her propriety could handle. She was of noble beginnings, for goodness' sake—only handmaidens could see women naked! Possibly close friends, but certainly not strangers. This was almost as uncouth as if it were a man before her. She quickly backed away from the woman, half-swimming and half-stumbling toward the shore.

"Thank you for allowing me to bathe in your spring. Unfortunately, I must return to my travels now," she said hastily.

She had never seen another person naked before; only a few of her maids had even seen her naked, and only to help her dress. Sada didn't know how to act without the buffer of clothing between them. She turned to swim away from the woman but as she did, she felt a soft hand encircle her wrist. Something sharp dug into her skin, and she thought it might be the point of long and jagged nails. The Nymph tugged softly, but it was enough to pull her easily back through the water.

"Where are you going, lovely? Don't you want to play with me?" she purred, and a finger trailed up Sada's spine.

She arched away from the touch with a stiff gasp and the Nymph giggled. The sound made panic seize Sada's chest. Her breath began to come in short gasps, then it left her altogether.