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Part of her thinks that the rot had taken root in when she was still curled in her mother's womb, like mildew settling upon the broken trunk of a sycamore tree and laying the foundation for the sickly vibrant fungi that would grow years later. Beautiful, perhaps, but in an earthy way that warned prettier, more delicate things to tread with caution.
The babe has a way of curling into itself, as if even in the supposed safety of its vessel, shame found a way to seep through its mother's pores. Or perhaps it is hereditary; a poison from the blood that had sustained her for all those months feeding like a parasite.
Whatever it is, Maddie feels it deep in her bones.
It itches along her stocky legs, patted down with coarse fur that make the river naiads and the flower nymphs shudder when she brushes too close. The shame of her being coils into the air she breathes, corrupted further by the whispers of the dryads.
Look at those horns. So small, but so tough, one would say. Another would titter: But aren't they such a strange tone? Doesn't match with her hair at all... such a shame. She could be so pretty.
Could be. Maddie turns over the words in her head, tucks the syllables under her tongue like holding them there will make the taste any less bitter. It never works. It just sticks like sticky tree sap, thick and sour and rendering her tongue useless.
If she could not be pretty, she could have at least been a poet. So many of her brothers and sisters find themselves in the inner court of Salo's revelry, charming the god with their honey-sweet words and agile fingers and puckered lips. When she was just but a fawn, Maddie spat all over his front during a revel. They said it was how they knew she would have no talent for the arts.
It is laughable, she thinks, that even in the bacchanalia that opens its arms to so many—no matter size, weight, gender or race—she stands out. Always too loud, too chipper; too eager, too concerned for her liver.
Don't be such a bore, Mads , her brothers and sisters would say.
Maddie is not a bore. She just wants to be something more.
But what good is a satyress? The other creatures of the forest already think of them too plain. Part human, part common animal. Nature had not even blessed them with the strange irises of their full-blooded counterparts.
Her brothers and sisters made up for this in their song and dance and cruel tricks that make their god snigger behind his goblet. But Maddie does not like the lightheadedness mulled wine gives her, nor can her stocky lands withstand hours of twirling 'round and 'round. She thinks herself partial to the mean trick here and there, but never matching the cruelty of her other peers.
Oh, what misery.
Compared to the fluttering, sweet-scented nymphs or the slick, glimmering selkies, she is coarse. Earthy. Unrefined. Like a wooden carving not sanded by the hands of a human artisan—still prickly with splinters.
Maddie tucks her fawn legs to her chest at the thought, balancing precariously on the rocks she had perched herself upon. The stubborn weeds that have made their place in the crevices where soil had clustered tickle the skin where the wild animal unfolds into pudgy human flesh. She reaches back to scratch it absentmindedly—catches herself, and then laments over the general inelegance of it all.
She sniffles.
Something shifts through the underbrush. Slow, but with meaning. The furred ears that had been pinned flat to her head of orange like citrus fruit twitched, catching the subtle difference between the forest breathing life into itself, and the movement of something with lungs to press air.
"Who goes there?" Maddie hastily wipes her eyes, grimacing as she feels the salt dry sticky on the skin around her lashes.
There is more movement. Her ears twitch again, recognising it slowly: heavy paws, rhythmic and purposeful. The weight to them suggests something heavy, something large .
A growl cuts through the night, rustling somewhere unseen.
The satyress squeaks, her legs unfolded and ready to prance away at the slightest hint of danger. Eyes glint at her from between the leaves, sharp and lupine. There should be no wolves in this forest. Why—
"Calm yourself, dear girl."
Her breath hitches as the lupine eyes pull back into the darkness, allowing the entrance of their mistress into the dappled moonlight glimmering through the tree canopy.
There, draped in the silvery light of the Sun's twin, stands the Goddess of the Hunt. Maiden of the Moon. Artemis , in the old tongues that Maddie can only read in her head so as to not humiliate herself by butchering the name of one of the Olympians on her goat tongue. But her common name—
"Lady Caitlyn!"
She makes to rise from the stones, to show some modicum of respect that Lord Salo always waved away, but the goddess raises a hand. Her eyes glint in the night—sharp as the blade sheathed at her thigh and blue as the edge of the sky that hangs overhead.
"At ease, my darling fawn," Caitlyn comes close, touching her fingers to Maddie's chin and tilting her face up. "Why have you wandered so far from your herd tonight?"
“I—I—”
Maddie has never been darling to anyone—let alone a goddess. She cannot help the bright flush that taints her freckled cheeks, nor can she move from her spot.
This is a goddess. This is the Commander of the Silver Sisters. This is the daughter of the Mother Goddess, and yet—
She loves her.
She knows this by the touch of the goddess's pale fingers to her lips; by the way Caitlyn smiles so fondly at her, as if she is the sweetest prize she has ever happened upon in all her eternities of hunting under her Moon.
There are Olympians whose affections are freely given to anything that so much as breathes in their general vicinity, but the affections of one such as the Moon Maiden are hard to come by.
What irony—and what stroke of incredible luck—that Maddie barely had to fight for it.
"I asked you a question, my fawn," the goddess says.
Maddie squeaks. Her voice is not unkind—not at all—but it is firm. Caitlyn has never liked when Maddie stifled her own voice. She says she likes to hear her speak, that she has a sweeter voice than even her twin brother.
"I—I—" But Maddie cannot help but stumble again, her tongue twisting in itself. The goddess is patient, waiting till she finds the words. "I... I wished to see you, my lady."
She had not, in fact, been waiting out in this clearing just to see her. She came here to mope, to wallow in her despair like the pitiful fawn she was—but Maddie feels, deep down, that she is always waiting for her goddess.
Such is the price of loving one whose veins flow with golden ichor, who has touched the heavens and proclaimed them too fanciful for her tastes. Maddie's own lifespan is not quite as fickle as those of mortals', but the passage of time to a goddess is on an entirely different plane. Even for a being who wanders the Earth more than she lounges in the sky, Caitlyn is swept away into hunts that sometimes last years in a mortal's perception—and Maddie is left here.
Waiting, waiting; always waiting.
"But I am here now," says the goddess, as if hearing her concerns. She brushes her thumb over Maddie's lips, and the poor satyress feels herself melt.
Maddie watches as she slips off her bow and quiver, setting them aside by Maddie's hooves. They are majestic things, forged from the hearth tended to by Lord Talis as a gift from Caitlyn's mother. The satyress has no aptitude for magic or enchantments, but she can feel the raw power of the hunt exuding from them anyway.
"I've brought this for you," Caitlyn tells her.
Maddie's eyes light up as she brings forth a delicate thing unlike her hard weapons from the folds of her chiton, a gasp spilling from her little mouth. Her ears twitch as Caitlyn steps forward, offering her a closer look at the blossoms she has weaved so masterfully into a chain. It is nothing like the intricate tapestries the goddess is capable of weaving on a loom, but to Maddie, it is a treasure.
"Oh, my lady," she whispers, daring to brush her fingers over the delicate petals. They are a dark, salmon pink, and so impossibly soft to the touch.
"I remembered that you are not fond of gaudy gifts," Caitlyn said, smiling. "What good fortune then, that we are like-minded individuals. May I?"
Maddie blinks cluelessly at her, but nods anyway. The hairs at the back of her head rise as Caitlyn steps close—so, so close; she can't help but let out a flustered bleat that makes the goddess giggle—to lay the blossoms upon her head like a crown.
"M—My lady!" she stutters, cheeks ablaze.
The goddess just smiles indulgently, stepping back to take in what a sight Maddie must make. The satyress presses her palms to her blushing cheeks, fidgeting nervously.
“Such a lovely girl,” Caitlyn sighs breathlessly, as if the sight of this simple thing has rendered her short of breath. "May we join you?"
The use of that certain pronoun does not escape Maddie. Her lips part, embarrassment temporarily forgotten, but the question at the tip of her tongue dies as the bushes rustle again.
The creatures that emerge are lithe and sharp-toothed. Caitlyn's beloved hunting dogs; fierce hounds blessed with longevity to be able to accompany their mistress on her hunts. In the moonlight, they do not seem as threatening as they were when they were lurking in the undergrowth, though Maddie cannot help but squeak as they sniff tentatively at her.
"Is it alright?" Caitlyn asks again. Maddie has never quite known a goddess to ask for permission as often as this one does.
Her heart unfurls like the petals of the spring blossoms atop her head. Cheeks pink, she dips her head in a meek nod, careful to not let her flower crown slip.
"Y—Yes," she says, heart aching with the sheer amount of adoration. "Of course, my lady."
She hears the shift of Caitlyn's chiton around her legs, brushing against the strong build of her thighs as she perches herself beside Maddie. The rocks are too strong to shift, even under the weight of a goddess as great in stature as her, but Maddie feels the air shift around Caitlyn, pressing against her like a lover's weight.
It is always so overwhelming to sit next to someone so much greater than her—and to dare think that this goddess could love her.
But she does, a small voice in her mind calls meekly. She does. She would not lie to you.
Why is it so difficult to believe that tonight?
Maddie dips her head again in shame, wringing her hands on her lap. There is dirt tucked underneath her nails, she notices, grimacing at the realisation that she hadn't washed herself in the river before coming to mope.
The naiads always tell her that her misery is more often than not an extension of her perpetual state of filth. She is not as touched by nature as the other creatures of this forest are. The flowers she tries to braid into her hair tumble away when she gallops too much; the river water leaves her shivering rather than with a pearlescent sheen to her skin; and always the smell of goat to her legs, and the dirt underneath her fingers that can never quite be washed out.
She picks at them, frowning—then looks up when Caitlyn shifts beside her. Maddie tucks her hands back on her lap, sweaty palms sticking to the coarse fur of her thighs as she diverts her attention to her goddess lover.
"It is a lovely night," says Caitlyn, making light conversation as if it were something that the deities engaged in daily, rather than playing games that shatter the Fates' will. "Your Lord Salo is surely entangled in his revelries by now."
"The only goddess my heart follows is you, my lady," Maddie says meekly.
Caitlyn just hums a low tune, but Maddie catches the lilt of pleasure to it. A small smile tugs on her lips at the thought. Humble as she may be, the goddess never says no to her ego being stoked—especially by one such as her satyress lover.
She watches as Caitlyn tilts her face up, marble face illuminated by the constellations in the skies above. Maddie wonders if she would like her to narrate the satyrs' stories about them tonight. The Moon Maiden finds a strange sort of entertainment in hearing the stories they've made up, even though it is she who rides her chariot every night to trail her fingers over the tapestries embroidered through the evening sky.
"Will you tell me now?" Caitlyn asks.
Maddie's heart sings; an amateur poet's urge to narrate stories to her beloved overtaking her.
"About what, my lady?"
Caitlyn tilts her head, a single midnight blue curl falling over her eye when she looks at Maddie.
"About what is pressing upon your mind, my love."
...Oh.
So she had noticed. Maddie dips her head, cheeks blazing with embarrassment and shame. It is bad enough that her lady had caught her in such a sorry state—and now Maddie cannot even do the most basic thing and conceal her nasty doubts from a creature who should only see the perfection of her.
"Do not bow your head," Caitlyn says, voice firm. "I have torn the hearts out of wild creatures to feed to my dogs—and I have never felt the urge to treat one as tenderly as I do to yours. Have I not told you that you are my beloved, my treasure? Is it not expected that I make sure those I hold dear are well?"
"Of course, my lady," Maddie says, her voice small, her eyes salty.
"Then tell me," Caitlyn reaches out, her fingers cool on the coarse hairs of Maddie's knee. She strokes her leg tenderly, squeezing her fingers around the ugly knob of her joint. "What tears at your heart, my beautiful, graceful girl?"
The tears come unbidden now. Without Maddie's permission, but since when does her own body ever wait for her permission? The world does not stop for a simple satyress—and it most certainly will not glance to the simplest one of all. One who is not as blessed as her brothers and sisters; who sings no songs and dances to no beat; who cannot bear the loss of her own mind in these nights where her herd loses themselves in wine and revelry.
She tries to cry pretty, but the gasp that tears itself from her throat ruins it all.
"It is not a fault of yours, my lady," she sobs, wiping at her eyes like a child. "I have waited patiently, and have never thought of your absence as neglect. But, oh, my mind—it conjures the most horrid of thoughts."
"What kinds of thoughts?" Caitlyn frowns. Her hand has shifted, hovering over Maddie's face as if to wipe her eyes—but the satyress is already doing enough of that.
Oh, how could Maddie dare to tell her? This being of the heavens, mighty huntress of their forest, maiden of the moon; a glorious creature that has somehow deigned to love Maddie, of all the women that throw themselves at her feet.
Lady Caitlyn thinks of her as this sweet thing: blessed by the Earth and kissed by the Sun like some holy being. Maddie does not believe it herself, but it does not change the fact that Caitlyn does. That Caitlyn—despite all else—chooses again and again to love her.
But Maddie cannot love herself.
Not like this. Nothing so earthly, so unrefined.
She yearns for the sea instead. Salt-slick fur tucked warm around her arms. Eyes like the mouth of the abyss in Poseidon's abode. And the blue. All shades of them—so pretty and easy to lose herself in. Her lord's abode is all that is green and bright and filthy with soil.
Maddie just wants something to lose herself in; something clean and smooth and salty.
But such horror, to utter such ungrateful words! She could never express it—not to her brothers and sisters of the revelry, and certainly not to her Caitlyn.
Caitlyn waits with a patience unbecoming of a goddess that could have everything at her fingertips. She finally reaches past the flimsy barriers of Maddie's dirt-stained hands to wipe the tears from her freckled face, seeming not to care about the salt that sticks to her celestial hands.
One of her hounds sniffs curiously at Maddie's twitching tail. She is too tangled in the silken web of her insecurities to be frightened.
"Will you tell me now?" Caitlyn asks when her sobs have subsided to pitiful sniffles. Her voice gentle but pained. "Forgive me, dearest—if only I could read your mind and lessen the burden."
"No," Maddie whimpers, wiping her salty-slick face. "No, I am grateful that you do not possess such an ability. I could not bear to have you share my burden—"
Caitlyn's cool fingers wrap around her wrist, squeezing firmly.
"Why not? Is this not the way of lovers? Your burden is mine."
"My burden is myself!" Maddie chokes out. "This—This hideous body that is half-mortal and half-goat. If only my maker had chosen to make me half of something that is beautiful!"
The goddess's brows draw together. Maddie sobs at the thought of her words displeasing her, but there is no taking them back now.
"Such nonsense you speak," Caitlyn chides, though her voice is impossibly no less gentle. "Have you not seen yourself?"
Maddie nearly wails, because she has . She has stared at her reflection in the pondwater with an intensity that could rival that prick Narcissus, only that she hates what she sees: the crook of her goat legs; the coarseness of her fur; the human pudge of her stomach.
How could Caitlyn ever love her?
But amidst her self-pity, she forgets that the gods do not take kindly to being questioned. With her dull grey eyes brimming with saltwater, Maddie does not see the tick of Caitlyn's jaw and the wrinkle between her brows that only comes by when she is truly upset with something.
A cowardly creature; she does not even look up when she feels the goddess take her hand, coaxing her onto her hooves. The hounds rustle against her legs, and she feels the crown of flowers shifting upon her head, and still she cries.
She does not know where Caitlyn leads her. Truth be told, she does not even care. Maddie is but a simple creature, a plain satyress, and she wants nothing more than her goddess's touch—and to be worthy enough of her.
"Stop crying," says Caitlyn.
Maddie listens like the gospel.
She sniffles, wiping her eyes. When the saltwater clears, she sees that Caitlyn has brought her to a different clearing with a small pond glimmering in the moonlight. The flies buzz about contently, orbiting around the goddess in greeting but keeping their distance. The frogs hidden in the tall wet grass croak a sad little song.
She is still looking around in confusion when Caitlyn pulls away, the steady weight of her hand falling from Maddie's palm. Panic half-rises in her throat.
"My lady...?" Maddie calls out, voice wobbling.
"Come here," says Caitlyn, beckoning.
Maddie goes as bade, stumbling clumsily on her hooves. The Moon Maiden is tall—fair of skin and strong in the muscle of her thighs and hips, but so irresistibly tall. Maddie follows her to the edge of the pond like a lovesick girl.
"My lady, what—"
"Hush now," the goddess chides softly. She beckons to the reflection on the water. "Look at how beautiful you are."
Maddie sniffles. She tries not to—by gods, she tries. She's already stared at the mirror of herself long enough tonight—but the word of a goddess is near law; Caitlyn's word to her is a scripture.
She tips her head down, blinking rapidly at her reflection. It takes a moment for the water to cease in its rippling, and the pond calms enough to be her mirror.
Maddie stares at herself, freckled face inlaid with a flush from how much she has cried in shame. The blossoms at her head rustle with the cold breeze that brushes over her unaffected furry legs, but the bare skin of her upper body shivers slightly at the temperature. Her breasts are bare, and so the rosy pink peaks of her nipples stiffen. Wide eyes the colour of a dull ocean stare back at her, rimmed red from her tears. Her lips are kissed pink and full, but tugged downwards in a pout that is only befitting of a petulant child.
Perhaps— Perhaps she is beautiful. But…
Maddie sniffles. "But I am still me."
"Is that not the beauty of it?" Caitlyn's voice is softer now, gentler. She reaches forward to cup Maddie's cheek—Maddie leans to it like a babe starved of affection. "You are you, and I have never loved another."
Maddie's heart beats steadfast at those words; a pounding against her ribs that makes her very bones ache. Satyr bodies are not meant to hold so much —that is why they worship wine and revelry, where it all tumbles out come morning so they have space for more—but if loving her Moon Maiden means living with this ache, then so be it.
"I do not know how to convince myself that I can deserve you," she croaks out pitifully—but the hunger makes itself known now in the press of her fingers against Caitlyn's wrist, urging her to not pull away. "I want—I want..."
Oh, how she wants.
With the sweeping arm of an archer, Caitlyn pulls her close to her bosom. Her fingers are steady even as she grips the trembling satyress, as she would hold the string of her bow.
"If the Fates gave you a choice, which would you choose?" her goddess's voice is silken, silvery like moonlight. "To live eternity as something else? Or to live eternity as mine?"
Yours .
That is the answer, is it not? It comes to Maddie's mind without a moment of proper thought. She does not seek to change herself for the sake of vanity, but to be worthy of her goddess. To be a pretty thing worth standing by Caitlyn's side.
The Moon Maiden stares at her, watching the quiver of Maddie's lip. Without any word being spoken, Maddie knows that she understands.
"A huntress has no want for a shiny, smooth bauble that titters vanity and gossip to her ear," she says, brushing her knuckles over Maddie's cheek. “I yearn for the hunt. I yearn for you —a creature made to leap, to climb, to laugh so loud the birds scatter. The woods are vast. The heavens, even more so. I have lived a millennia in both and know what my heart desires. Would you deny me this?"
Immediately, Maddie shakes her head.
"No," she says, nearly frantic. "No—No! How could I—I am just—"
Caitlyn hushes her, cupping her cheeks in her calloused, gentle hands. Her eyes are so full of this sad, aching love that makes Maddie want to weep.
"Then do not deny me this," she whispers. "Do not deny me you ."
Maddie stares at this goddess—this divine thing moulded from a thought from the Queen of Olympus, wisdom made flesh—and wonders how Caitlyn could ever think she would ever deny her even something as common as herself.
It had not occurred to her that the Olympians could ever doubt themselves and what they were entitled to; for what were they if not greater than even the Titans who had once roamed the Earth?
"There is a field, not far from here," Caitlyn says suddenly, her voice lowering as if to share a secret. "The grass is so tall that if I were to believe I was mortal, I might think Olympus might never see me.
Maddie watches, heart stuttering in its cage as the goddess flashes a small, mischievous grin at her.
"Would you let me take you there?"
She swallows past the lump in her throat, fighting her confusion and adoration to retain any ability of speech.
"Why?"
"I cannot ask you to learn how to love yourself the way I do in just a single day," Caitlyn reaches forward, her breath audibly hitching as she brushes her fingers over Maddie's pouting mouth. It is a wisp of a motion, barely there. Maddie feels it linger anyway. "You must forgive a goddess for thinking that she could love you hard enough on this beautiful evening for you to forget all your doubts."
"Oh," Maddie blinks slowly, taken by the ocean blue of Caitlyn's eyes. When the words register in her mind, her face flushes red. " O—Oh! Oh, um, yes, well, that is very—hm! Yes, I would... I think I would like that."
Caitlyn smiles at her rambling, impossibly endeared.
"Truly?" she asks, as if there is any room for doubt. As if a goddess could ever be unsure.
But, oh —Maddie remembers now, how Caitlyn does doubt. What's more, she is even upset at the thought of Maddie not seeing her as she did. She deigns not only to love such a common satyress, but to sink to her knees and press her brow to hers for the sole sake of feeling her pain, sharing a burden that no other Olympian would sully themselves to share.
What else could Maddie give her in return but herself; the very thing that she has asked for?
If there is a place where she would be laid down upon the grass and woven love between her mouth and hers, Maddie would follow Caitlyn blindly. In the dark, blindfolded, ears twitching at the way the goddess's breath lulls and ebbs like the tide at shore. She would follow. She would listen.
And perhaps, somewhere in that dark field where the Moon Maiden teaches her to weave a tapestry of something kinder to herself, Maddie will learn to be content with the vessel she inhabits now.
For what is a blessing, if not to be beloved by a goddess?
Maddie swallows past the lump in her throat, staring into Caitlyn's eyes. This close, she can see. She loves her. For a satyress that has doubted nearly everything in her life, this is the one thing she is most certain of. And for that, Maddie would do anything for Caitlyn.
And so, for the first time in her life, the satyress dares to take the goddess's hand first.