How Juniper the dryad acquired her satyr
Sharp stones skittered down the draw as Tanozi trudged up, hooves slipping on the loose ground. The evening was cold and growing colder, but even as his breath froze in billowing clouds around his face, the satyr was too warm with wine to feel the chill. He sang the songs of autumn loudly and a bit off key until he lost his footing for the third time that evening. He scraped his hands where he caught his fall on an artfully arranged pile of stones beneath the twilight silhouetted branches of the oldest juniper tree he had ever seen. Tanozi giggled and swore in turns as his vision swam until the night’s chill breeze picked up again, rattling the boughs with a mournful sound. The singing and dancing of the procession he had somehow separated from sounded far away down the path he could not follow during the day, much less now in the darkened foothill scrub. No one shared in his singing and tears burned at the corners of his eyes as he realized that he was well and truly lost. He decided to double back and, if he could not find the procession again, he would find some place to spend the night more sheltered from the wind than the barren hillside. As soon as he stood, his stomach flopped and he heaved all over the roots and piled stones at the base of the tree until there was nothing left but bile. He rolled to a bit of clean ground just beyond the mess, distantly wondering if he would survive the night before he passed out.
Juniper had never been so insulted in all her very long life. She had been on her way back from clearing and piling the end of season deadwood when she felt the intrusion on her sacred grove and had returned to the great old tree to find the hairy half-sheep reeking of sweat and wine and tripping all over himself. He was clearly drunk, but despite manhandling her altar with his meaty hands, had not even offered a libation of whatever swill he was drunk on. The dryad was weighing the benefits of punishing him versus simply driving him away when she saw him rise, sway, and then vomit all over her altar and favorite tree. She was frozen in a combination of disbelief and toe-curling disgust as the satyr then had the gall to simply go to sleep right there. She waited for him to rise again, but soon he was snoring softly and scratching himself under his scanty loincloth. “Filthy,” she muttered and nudged him in the ribs with her toe. He moaned, more than a little lewdly, but did not wake.
Juniper took a moment to appraise him then, even less sure of what to do with him now that he had done something so unthinkably insulting. His haunches were well muscled at least and his man’s shoulders were broad and sun-bronzed appealingly. This, at least, made him a bit useful to Juniper, whose back still ached from the day’s labors. And the tree most suitable for the ritual was conveniently right there. She reached up, plucked a gray-blue berry, and crushed it between her fingers before slipping it between the plush, barely parted lips of the sleeping satyr. She leaned down to whisper into his ear, “I bind you, who unbidden breached this sacred stand. You shall not again depart nor my bidding refuse, until I deem your service done.” The wind dipped low and the branches ceased their creaking and the satyr’s song in the valley was silent at last as the night came on.
TTanozi groaned as he blinked his eyes open to the light of a cold mid-morning. His head pounded and the thin frost had melted in the sun but clung to the dappled shade where he lay. Surprisingly enough, he wasn’t bare. His ram half had been growing in the thick, coarse coat he sported in winter, but someone had draped a rug of woven grass sometime in the night. He was certainly cold enough to shiver, having spent the entire night leaching precious body heat into the ground, but he wasn’t dead either, though he certainly was hungover enough to feel like it. Sitting up with a groan, he squinted as he surveyed the immediate surroundings. Then he saw the altar, vaguely remembered the night before, and immediately felt like throwing up again. I’ve got to get out of here before whoever this belongs to come back, was his only thought as he got to his feet to bolt when he heard the voice of the dryad from where she sat nearby.
“You won’t get anywhere if you try to run,” she said, barely looking up from the basket she was weaving. “But I’m not above hobbling you if you decide to waste the energy.” Juniper hadn’t even finished speaking when Tanozi bounded down the slope and away, skidding on the loose ground. He ran until his ears throbbed with cold and his chest clenched tight with effort, but when he stopped, sure that he had put enough distance between himself and the vengeful spirit of the grove, he saw her smirking back at him from the same spot and himself only a few feet away from where he had started. She held up a length of handspun cordage with a narrow-eyed smile. “Stay there,” she commanded, and no amount of the terror in his heart could convince his limbs to move. He thrashed as she shoved him backward onto his rear, narrowly missing catching her arm with one of the spectacular curled horns that crowned his head. She caught it instead and dragged him backward until his legs splayed in the air, then slipped the makeshift hobble’s loops over each hoof and cinched it. He panted hard as he struggled, but she was stronger than she looked and held him until he had spent all the effort he could muster. The hobble cut his stride, and his flailing, to less than half and no matter how much he scraped at kicked at it, it would not budge. He glared. She giggled.
“I enspelled you while you were sleeping, stupid sheep boy. You’ll be working here until I’m satisfied.”
And, well, he was a satyr. He could hardly be blamed for the way his scanty loincloth had started to tent while she held his head to her chest. He could be blamed even less for for saying, “I bet I could satisfy you plenty,” with a lick of his lips and rose in his cheeks. Juniper’s lip curled as she looked down at her sprawling captive, then shoved him off her lap.
“Ugh,” she spat. Tanozi was more than a little pleased at the joke and even more at her reaction, though he couldn’t forget the danger he was in. After she’s brushed herself off, she shoved a stoppered gourd bottle of water at him as well as a crude brush. “You can start by scrubbing my altar. You’ll get food and more water when it’s clean.” Then she stormed off, leaving Tanozi to limp over and get to it.