The Protest
By Ordos Tsceri
"We can't let them do this!" Emily protested. "It's one thing to clear a forest for lumber, unsavory though it is, but it's downright inexcusable what Vacamundo wants to do to this grove! Killing all these trees, destroying such wild beauty, just for a clearing for cows!"
What was left of the Arcadia Green Society nodded gravely. There weren't many. Emily Reynolds started the society six years ago, back in high school. At first there tons of volunteers; Emily was hot, passionate, and environmental volunteer work looked good on university applications. Bit by bit membership shrank as people went away from Arcadia, to become doctors, lawyers, mages, enchanters, businessmen and the like. One by one they forgot about the shrinking forests and glades they used to treasure back in Arcadia, until only five remained.
"The Council's on their side; they must have bough Elder Lyons and Kislev. They legally sold rights to the forest east of town on Tuesday." Valentine muttered. She was a kindred spirit of Emily's, together they had stayed in Arcadia pursing a correspondence course in druidism and environmental studies. Her deep brown eyes were deep and sorrowful, and her features were soft and wonderfully feminine. Her mahogany hair down around her generous breasts. It was an open secret that she had been in a relationship with Emily for well over a year now.
"I've been trying to get Lindy and Jake to help. They're trying to get some proposals for an alternative project here. The Council is more concerned about the town's economy than the forest, if we can offer a viable option that doesn't involve destroying this place, they should revoke Vacamundo's license to do business here." Tiffany said. She was always conservatively dressed, tonight in a simple brown sweater and loose trousers which concealed her lean figure and modest breasts. She wore her dark hair in a bun that kept it out of her glasses.
"Haven't they been saying they'd do that for weeks now?" Josh asked. He was the only guy left in the AGS. He was good looking, and fully admitted that he initially joined looking for chicks. Since then he'd grown passionate about Arcadia's forests and had lingered with the group long after it became evident that he had no chance what-so-ever with Emily.
"Well… it's our only option." Tiffany admitted.
"That's no option! Vacamundo is going to start clearing tomorrow!" Emily all but yelled. She was beautiful at the worst of times, but her anger made her positively radiant. She took a few deep breaths, trying to reclaim her temper. "The grove by Mirror Pond is over a hundred years old, and it is the only thing even resembling old-growth forest in a hundred miles. If Arcadia is ever going to heal from the deforestation the Britonians caused when they settled here three hundred years ago, it will need cores of mature woodland. Destroying this would set back the land's recovery by centuries. We. Can. Not. Let this happen."
Silence fell over the five of them, clustered together by the grove in question. One by one they snuck a glance at the towering oaks clustered together, just beyond a small clearing. The reflective, crystal Mirror Lake glistened beneath the star-light.
"I… may have a solution." Morgana whispered. She was a shy girl, usually quiet. She'd been with the group since the first meeting, and had always done her part in whatever protest or cleaning effort the AGS put together. She was always regarded as an odd person, even by her friends. Her eyes were just a bit too large, her features willowy and slender, and her long pale hair had just the slightest hints of green, hinting at her rumored faerie ancestry.
"What is it?" Tiffany asked.
"I said I may have it… I'm not sure they'll agree, but I think they will…" Morgana quietly replied. "If you really want to save this grove, meet me here tomorrow."
"They break ground at two in the afternoon." Emily cautioned.
"Then I'll be here at noon."
"As will I." Emily said.
"Only come if you're absolutely sure. If you're willing to make… acquiesces if we're to save this place as it is."
"I won't compromise with those Vacamundo bastards."
"Oh, not with them." Morgana whispered.
&&&
Vacamundo hired a local construction firm to clear the land east of Arcadia for their cattle ranch. By the time Morgana arrived just after noon Emily was already yelling across the glade at the demolition crew. Valentine and Josh were beside her, half offering moral support, half positioning themselves to stop her if she tried to charge one of the workers (it had happened before, and they both knew another misdemeanor assault charge was the last thing Emily and the AGS needed). Tiffany was trying to talk with foreman, but was getting nowhere.
Morgana wore the same pale, silk dress she had on last night, the green her hair more notable than ever before. She ran up to the group, clutching a crystal vial to her breast. Tiffany rushed back to the others, giving up on the foreman, as Morgana collapsed into Josh's arms.
"Are you okay? What happened?"
"I'll be fine," Morgana whispered. "I… I spoke to my grandmother. She's sihde, of the Seelie Court. I told her who you are and what you wanted to do, and she gave me this." She proffered the crystal vial, a glowing green fluid sloshed around within it. "Take a sip, each of you. It's from the Summer Font… Essence of Faerie. It will bind you to this place… I think I need to rest now." Morgana closed her too-large eyes as he breathing slowed and deepened, falling asleep in Josh's arms. He gently laid her down as the rest looked uneasily at the vial.
"What the hell just happened?" Josh asked.
"I… I think she just came from Faerie." Tiffany said, clearly shocked.
"I reiterate, what the hell just happened?"
"Faerie is… well, complicated. It's where faeries come from, some type of great conduit of living energy or some such. The mages and druids aren't really sure… but it's innately connected to the living world, forests especially. If… if Morgana is part faerie, and she procured a favor from a noble of the faerie courts… well, doing that would take it out of anybody."
"Will she be okay?" Emily asked.
Morgana made a strange noise in her sleep, half giggle, half burp, and oddly adorable.
"I think so," Tiffany said, "but I don't know what that stuff will do. It could be anything, and I don't think we'll be able to wake Morgana up any time soon."
They stared at the vial. It definitely had a light of its own.
"If… if faeries or fey creatures take an interest in living in a forest, it becomes protected under international law." Valentine muttered.
"But only if they actively live in it." Emily replied, remembering that lesson from their druidism correspondence course.
The four of them stared at the ominous vial for a moment, before their rumination was shattered by the sound of engines. The workmen had started up the heavy machinery, right on schedule.
Jason picked up the glass bottle. "Well, she thought this would help. Here goes nothing." He pulled off the stopper and took a swing of the stuff, before he could think better of it. It was surprisingly light, with a flavor reminiscent of fresh melon. A couple seconds after taking his sip Tiffany took the vial from his hands and took a sip. Valentine took a sip from the vial and handed it to Emily just as the change began to wash over Jason.
"Does anyone else feel… I don't know… weird?" he asked. On the last word his voice changed, ending the sentence in a feminine alto.
"What just happened?" he asked, alarmed at how he sounded.
"It's working!" Tiffany cried, "we're becoming faeries! Of one kind or another…"
"But why do I sound like a girl!?" Jason asked.
"Well, there aren't many faerie guys," Valerie giggled as a greenish hue began to spread across her face.
Jason was going to protest when his shirt suddenly became very tight, holding back growing orbs that swelled from his chest. He scrambled to take off his shirt, but it had grown too tight holding in his new boobs. He had to dig into the space between his growing cleavage to rip open his garment, allowing his new breasts to bob magnificently in the warm spring air. Free of their constraints, Jason's breasts began to flood his mind with strange sensations. He couldn't help but run his fingers over the soft mounds, shivering in delight as his thumb ran over his nipple.
Valerie and Tiffany threw off their suddenly intolerably restraining clothing as their subtler changes progressed. The fey nectar filled them with a strange sense of rightness, that this is how the world should be, and their clothes had no part in it. As this certainty possessed them, their skin continued its green shift, spreading over their limbs, breasts and heads as new spring growth spreads over a yellow winter field. Their breasts swelled, their curves became more accentuated, their bodies more toned.
Valerie felt her lips become fuller, more sensitive as glorious sensations shot through her breasts and womanhood. Without her full awareness she threw her arms around the stunned Emily, still holding the bottle, and joined her new lips with hers. Valerie's newly full breasts rubbed pleasurably against Emily's mounds. Their seeking tongues caressed, and Valerie felt as she'd never felt since her virgin nights.
Jason's transition wasn't as gentle. For a mere instant he stood as a fit young man with perfectly full, bountiful breasts, but that soon changed as he felt a bizarre, burning ticklish sensation engulf his hips. He stared down in shock as his waist narrowed and hips began to flair, filling out into the delightful child-bearing curves he'd long lusted over. They would have painfully ripped at his jeans had not Tiffany the foresight to unbutton his and pull them down as her own changes progressed.
She watched his hard-on shrink into his new womanly hips, planting a good-bye kiss on it before assumed its role as the feminine nub of her new womanhood. Tiffany decided to give this new clitoris a hello lick, and loving caressed it with a tongue as green as the darkest primordial forest.
Jason trembled in pleasure, falling to his knees but keeping his sex open in offering to Tiffany. She could feel her legs and arms reshaping, becoming more delicate and slender, as his hair billowed behind his back. She was vaguely aware of the final stages of Tiffany's transformation, as her lips became dark green and her hair flowed in a verdant mane studded by actual leaves and vines. Jason could feel her own follow suite as the final stages of the transformation washed over his head, banishing his once masculine features and reshaping them into delicate, perfect womanly beauty.
She came quickly, and lay down for an instant panting before Tiffany offer her arm. Uncertainly, he grasped it. Tiffany helped her up, but the second Jason was on her new feet her mouth was met with Tiffany's, which was still dripping with the sweet nectar of Jason's new womanhood. Literally, the sticky fluid that clung to her lips seemed far more like the nectar of a fruit than any sexual juice.
Still uncertain in her new form, and having more trouble than she would have anticipated with balancing on her new center of gravity, Jason clung to Tiffany. When she broke the kiss, Tiffany was beaming.
"We're fey now! Dryads, maybe, or certainly nymphs! We can live here now! The forest will be protected!" Tiffany bubbled happily.
"Unless… they could argue that claiming to take residence, after the fact, wouldn't count…" the nervous Jason ventured.
"They might just push us out of the way…" Valerie uttered, still clinging to Emily, feeling her up.
"Let them try to move us!" Emily said, stomping her foot on the ground.
The groups attention was torn away from their changes by the bellow of a diesel motor. They turned to see the machine operators starting their bulldozers, flanked by local police in riot gear. Some were gazing amazingly at the group, but it seemed most hadn't been paying attention to the protesters.
"Can we beat riot-police?" Jason asked, nervously.
The heavy treads of the bulldozers began to lurch forward.
"No," Emily yelled, "No! They are NOT getting this forest!"
Emily pushed away Tiffany and rushed towards the edge of the clearing. She tore off the stopper and chugged the potion as she approached the forest's edge. The protests of her companions were only noise in the background. She emptied the vial into her, spilling some along her mouth that splattered down across her body.
The beauty of her precious forest enveloped her. It was magnificent in ways she had never been aware of before. There was a subtle, sublime magnificence to everything. The rustle of the leaves, the buzzing of the insects, the song of the birds, the feel of the roots growing through the earth, it was all too perfect.
Suddenly she stopped. It wasn't a conscious decision, her foot hit the ground and refused to move. But that wasn't entirely accurate; she could feel them move, just not in the way she knew. Everything felt so intense, the sun beating down upon her, the cool earth enveloping her, the wind breezing through her.
She realized she was growing. She looked down and saw thick gnarled roots erupting from her boots and burying themselves in the ground. The feeling was strange, unlike anything she had known before, but deeply fulfilling. This was right. This is how it should be.
Emily could feel the growth all over her. Her roots pushed deep, the bark that had engulfed her feet moved up, caressing and covering her body, her hair was twisting together into long strands that sprouted leaves, broadly soaking up the sun and filling Emily with warmth.
Her arms flung upward on their own accord, her hands turning inward and spreading her fingers as the smooth bark enveloped them. When the bark reached her hands they spread further, each finger growing towards the warmth of the sky and branching out. It felt more right than anything, almost as if her hands tickled as they broke apart and spread. The ticklish sensation intensified as the myriad branches and twigs her fingers had become simultaneously budded, the countless buds blooming into countless leaves that billowed above her head, comfortable in the spring sun's warmth.
Finally the transformation crept up to Emily's face, freezing her forever beneath a thin sheen of delicate bark. She was smiling wistfully towards the lake and the shocked operators by their machines. She knew she'd won.
She couldn't move. She could feel the twigs that had been her hair and head ruffle slightly in the breeze, but no muscle in her body would respond. That should have terrified her, the realization that she'd never budge from the spot she was rooted to now, but it left her oddly at peace.
To her immense surprise, she felt something stunningly erotic. Instinctually she sought to look down, only to remember she no longer could. Instead, she sought to feel, and realized that this new, wonderful sensation wasn't coming from her womanhood, or even her hard breasts, but from the flowing, leafy mantle of her former hair. Something delicate, curved but immensely powerful. It was joined by others that delightfully tickled her mind with pleasure.
Spending eternity looking upon this glade seemed like a very agreeable proposition indeed.
"Emily!" the nude Valentine cried, rushing towards the tree that had been her lover. The green nymph rushed after her lover and grasped her, tearing the loose linen clothes off her hard body. She wept, lowering her head to Emily's bark-covered breasts. She could still feel the warmth of her friend, she could still feel a faint heart-beat from below the bark of her breast.
"She did it," Tiffany said, Jason still clutching her, "she's a hamadryad. This place is now, irrefutably, the home of a sentient fey. They can't touch it!"
&&&
The driver of the first bulldozer, a man by the name of Rudolph, stopped his machine and stared at Emily. Then at the busty naked girl that was allover her. Then he looked at the foreman, Jack, who was riding with him to tell off the protesters. He was stunned, and couldn't tear his eyes off the girl and the tree.
"I… I don't think we're going to finish this job, boss," Rudolph ventured.
"N-no, I don't… I don't think we will." Jack replied.
Rudolph nodded. He wouldn't earn a full day's pay, but he'd get back home sooner. He looked back at the two protesters, and exercised his peculiar gift of making awkward moments far more awkward.
"Still, that's one hell of a sexy tree."
&&&
Epilogue: Five Years Later
Valentine ran her green tongue across the stamen flowering from Emily's crotch. It was spring, and her favorite of spring's many wonders was Emily's flowers. Without fail, as the winter chill faded, Emily would bloom. She always had quite a few flowers, but there was always one that blossom from the folds of her former womanhood that Valentine loved above all the others.
Emily's flowers were deep violet, with a splash of scarlet radiating from their center. As always, they were beautiful. Valentine savored their sweet flavor, a taste equal parts nectar and a glorious, more human flavor she could remember well. She could feel energy radiating from the tree that had been her friend as she continued. Her questing tongue deftly massaged the stalks of stamen and delved along her pistil. The scent of her old lover filled her, exciting and invigorating her. Shivers of pleasure ran through her womanhood, which began dripping a nectar of its own, as well as the blue and violet flowers that had sprouted from her hair. Finally, something peaked within Emily's magnificent flower and Valentine was hit by a blast of sticky, sweet nectar.
She pulled back from the tree-bound form of her lover smiling. She licked up what she could, savoring the flavor, as she scooped some up with her two index fingers. Staring into Emily's bark-covered eyes she brought her sticky fingers to two of her own flowers, one that had sprouted from her thigh and another that hung from the leafy mane that her hair had become. She thruster her sticky fingers into her own pistils and moaned in pleasure at the sensation.
In a few months, Valentine's flowers would fold in on themselves and grow fruits. Delicious, golden-green orbs sweeter than honey or sugar, or so she'd been told. As a dryad (or a nymph, they weren't really sure. It didn't really matter, distinctions amongst the faeries are ephemeral at best) she didn't really have to eat anything, and she much preferred her fruit would find its way into deer or creatures of the forest than eaten by herself. She'd plant a couple personally, like she did every year, so that the wonderful grove Emily made her stand in would become host to more trees. Besides, Valentine thought, Emily deserved to see her daughters.
There were already three along the edges of the clearing, leading the way along the forest's expanding borders. Each one came from fruit planted by Valentine after she ripened, and each one now appeared like a slender sapling, some seven feet tall and with a trunk the form of a woman in ecstasy. The eldest one had an opening along her womanhood which seemed to be growing deep, wet, and soft. A peculiar aroma wafted from it on windy days. Of course, Valentine and her sisters had investigated, and although the opening inviting and would leak delicious juice when teased with their loving tongues, they each had the distinct impression that their daughter was waiting for real cock, from a real flesh and blood human. They couldn't wait to see what would happen when some young man from the town finally tried her out.
Emily would be proud about that. The EGS had blossomed again after her stand. All manner of young people would come to the dryads' grove these days. Some sought knowledge of the natural balance and harmony of the forest, some simply came in pursuit of beauty, and some simply came to ogle Valentine and her sisters. Most returned with a deeper understanding of nature, more at peace with the world and themselves. A slowly growing number didn't return at all. There were dozens who would regularly come to the grove. A few had even become fey themselves, joining the grove on a more permanent basis.
As for Morgana, she'd embraced her Sidhe heritage. The EGS didn't see much of her these days, but word was she'd been founding new, similar groves in places across Arcadia.
Valentine leaned towards Emily's frozen face and placed her lips on the hard grooves hers had become.
She turned to the sound of giggling behind her. Tiff and July, as Jason had started to be called, were watching her from the pond. Valentine blushed despite herself. She gave Emily the tree one last peck and returned to her sisters.
The giggling had come from Kristie, who fluttered overhead. The woman had joined the grove permanently a little over a month ago, becoming a pixie. She fluttered around on gossamer wings, carefree and enjoying the blossoms of the grove, both those on the plants and on the people. The six inch tall girl landed on July's shoulder and playfully licked her ear, forcing the nymph to giggle as well.
"What's gotten into Kristie today?" Valerie asked as she joined her sisters in the pond.
"She finally convinced her boyfriend to join us. We'll have another pixie joining us by sundown." Tiffany offered.
Valerie nodded, "does he know there are no male pixies?"
"He'll find out soon enough!" Kristie all but sang, taking flight again to play in Emily's blossoms for a while.