#mytwig

This story’s title is a homage to this post   by Amnesiaguy and Girl-poss, which indirectly inspired it.

Thistle’s ears ache each time the finger taps the glass. It’s a horribly large thing, nearly as tall as he is and as thick around as his waist, and its cruel long nail is decorated with flaking red enamel that Thistle can’t help but imagine as drying blood. He hasn’t seen Lion or Yarrow since they were all caught, after all …

Flick. His wings twitch involuntarily, painfully, and he whimpers. They weren’t kind when they caught him; his right forewing is crumpled, useless. If he escapes he’ll never fly again.

The finger pauses, resting on the wooden counter beside him. He’s trying not to think about the hand it’s attached to. The other fingers, and that vast, calloused palm.

The giant’s voice rumbles through Thistle’s bones; his eyeballs vibrate. It’s dizzying, nauseating, but perhaps that’s just the lack of oxygen getting to him. It’s nothing like a proper voice, anyway; Thistle’s people speak in delicate, high-pitched bursts, melodic in a way that these monsters will never understand. Their words bleed together like hot molasses.

“So what do we do with them?”

The other giant is further away, doing something off in the distance. Even if the first one wasn’t in the way Thistle wouldn’t be able to see; his eyes aren’t good for distances.

“Welllll,” Thistle shivers at the way they draw out the word. He could lose himself in that gravelly sound. “We can’t release it, can we? Not with that wing. A stray cat would get it.”

“I’m sure it’s fine! Look,” the hand closes around the glass and suddenly Thistle is free, head spinning as fresh air fills his lungs, “it’s just cosmetic, little dude’s still able to fly.”

The other giant starts to shout and Thistle leaps, wings spread, making good his escape—not that he knows where he’s going or how to navigate the vast and airy caverns they’d captured him in, which was precisely what got him caught, but—he falls, screaming. Bounces off the hard wood, twisting, trying to avoid landing on his bad wing. Fails.

He’s supposed to be strong. A warrior. Able to endure anything to defend his home; able to fight, no matter the threat. To shoulder any burden.

So he tries. He really does.

But the pain crushes him beneath its weight.

It’s soft and warm, and something’s stroking his side. Long, slow motions, the rough surface strangely pleasant against his smooth skin. He’s back in the nests, in the cozy little nook he shares with his creche-mates, and one of them must be there with him, mustn’t they? They must have rescued him.

Rescued from … from what? He can’t quite recall; his thoughts flow in thick, oily drops, too slippery to grasp. It must not matter. He really is thankful, though, so he shifts, spreading his legs in invitation. A normal enough reaction for a sprite.

But—the touch stops.

And his wing. The absence of it, full of strangely distant pain.

He opens his eyes and it’s so painfully bright, nothing like the soft darkness that fills the nests, broken only by the occasional unbound window and wandering glowworms. Even the smell is wrong, sharp and unnatural, burning his nose with every breath.

He sneezes and, looking up, sees the finger just above him. A different finger, its close-cropped nail bare; crooked in threat, ready to strike down, to crush him against the duck-patterned blanket! He cringes back but his body doesn’t move properly, like his joints are full of the same oil that’s baffling his thoughts, so he bares his teeth in threat and tries to growl.

It comes out as a tiny, broken mewl.

Still, the finger—the hand—pulls back, taking its stink of lavender and sour salt with it. Thistle doesn’t let himself miss it.

A face replaces it, well out of striking distance. Vast and grotesque, chapped lips and a curtain of greasy hair. Its eyes are predatory, pointed forwards like a hawk, and its nose is decorated by strange shiny metals. Thistle bristles, struggles to his feet and collapses painfully, and the face shows him its teeth.

He’s going to be eaten. This is just like the time a feral cat cornered him, except without any prospect of rescue. This is the giants’ domain, and if Lion and Yarrow are still alive—unlikely—they’ll have done the smart thing and fled as fast as they can.

Well. He’s had a good run, he supposes. Could have been longer, but we all die someday.

The finger nudges him.

Ash and Jo haven’t been talking much since The Accident. It’s mutual. The little sprite’s continuing presence hangs between them like a sore tooth. Easier to avoid talking about it, but every conversation seems to nudge up against it sooner or later, so it’s easier just not to talk.

It makes for good hatesex, though, when they’re both high enough to forget the big terrarium Ash bought to keep the sprite in, and the silly little warren of wooden planks and ropes and plants that she shoved into it to keep them occupied. To give them somewhere to live. Not that she’s sure what sort of enrichments sprites need, or what their homes are like, but …

She’s trying, and that has to count for something.

Sometimes, when she’s high out of her mind and Jo is hilted inside her, fucking her like they’re going to move out tomorrow, her head falls to the side and she sees the sprite watching from their terrarium, and she wonders what’s going through their head. What they think of the situation.

“You WHAT?!”, Ash yells.

“Dude, chill,” Jo doesn’t move from the sofa, “it was just whining a lot and I thought it’d help with the pain from its wing. Or whatever. It’s not a big deal.”

“The fuck it is! You can’t just give something a drug without knowing how it will react, it could have been fucking fatal!”

“It’s just weed, dude. It’s natural, mans’ just vibing. You should have some too, you’ll feel—”

Jo’s not wrong about that. Thistle’s draped over a branch in his enclosure, occasionally blinking his too-heavy eyelids and waving a little twig around. His wings are fully extended, limp and beautiful, except for the bundle of scar tissue on his shoulder, where his right forewing should be. It’s a miracle that the infection didn’t kill him before Ash found the right antibiotics.

There’s a gummy the size of Thistle’s head on the ground under him, covered in shiny little bitemarks.

“You—you absolute asshole!”

“Chillllll.”

“God, I don’t know why I put up with you. It’s definitely not your personality, and, honestly? What do we even do together?”

“Welllll,” Jo twitches her skirt up, smirks, “I can think of, heh, nine good reasons.”

“… you know what, asshole? You might have a big dick but you don’t fucking know how to use it. The surgery doesn’t make it hard for me to come! You do!”

“Wha—babe, you don’t mean that!”

“Yes I fucking do, and I want you out.”

“… fine,” Jo scowls, “fuck this. I’ll go crash with Willow until you calm down.”

“OUT!”

Thistle watches the kind giant stumble in through her nest’s big moving wall, exhaling a cloud of smoke. Back when he was a warrior he saw giants do that pretty regularly, shuffling together and making giant-noises, but that smoke was always foul and acrid, and it hurt his head when he breathed in too much of it. Her smoke is much nicer. Sometimes it smells like fruit, or like the sweet-treats taste!

He nibbles on one while she collapses onto her sleeping-place, savoring the way it makes his thoughts fuzzy and soft, washing away his lingering aches and worries. Everything’s better when he’s like this.

The giant starts pulling her clothes off, layer after layer—so many clothes! Thistle can’t even imagine how awful it must feel to have to wear that much every single day; no wonder the giant prefers being naked when she’s in her nest. It’s strange watching her, seeing her; her body is almost like a sprite’s, just … larger. In a lot of ways. No one in the nests ever ate well enough to have thighs that jiggled or breasts that hung or a belly whose swell hinted so delightfully at the prospect of breeding, and even if they could have they wouldn’t. The extra weight would have ruined them, but giants don’t need to fly.

Thistle’s hands idly drift downwards, massaging his sheath’s opening; on her bed one of the giant’s hands is doing the same. Her other is holding the strange glowing rectangle that she always seems to be holding, these days; it makes giant-sounds, moans and gasps and sharp slaps and the strange, resonant squishes of vast flesh pressing against vast flesh. He wonders where the other giant has gone, the one who gave him his first mind-melting treat, but it doesn’t matter. Thistle thinks she seems so much happier alone.

He’s not sure how long it’s been when she shifts on the bed, hunting for the big cylinder full of domesticated bees, but at some point his knees quivered and quaked and now the only thing keeping him upright as he strokes himself is the cold glass.

Ash wasn’t really thinking about anything when she got home, just how exhausting customers always are and the latest nightmares filling the news and how she’s going to cover rent without Jo to split it with. She needs to find another roommate, she supposes, and finding the right person to split a studio apartment with is hard, even without her … pet? It’s the wrong word, but it’s close enough. Fucking hell.

A few hits off her vape and some quality time with her magic wand is exactly what she needs.

She’s starting to climb the mountain, dissolving into pleasure, when she notices that she feels watched. Which, she doesn’t mind exactly, anyone in the building across from her is welcome to a show. She’s spent too much time and effort getting her body right to keep it to herself, you know?

But there’s a difference between the vague awareness that someone could be watching and the immediate, bone-deep certainty that someone is. The knowledge that she didn’t check her apartment for intruders. And, fuck, she doesn’t think that she has a stalker right now, but who knows? Who can ever know for sure? Her warm, horny glow suddenly feels cold, vulnerable—she bolts upright, eyes wide. Checking the corners, the loft, the bathroom door. Ready to use her wand like a bat if she has to, and damn the consequences.

Nothing.

Thank god, there’s nothing.

She’s flushed with relief when her eyes finally settle on the terrarium across from her bed, and the little figure pressed against the glass, face and wings flushed, jutting cock smearing stick little pearls with each shaking thrust. Pausing as she stares at him, but only for the briefest moment.

Oh, gosh, she thinks, her thoughts sticky with weed and fast-returning arousal, why not give him a show?

Thistle keeps on losing time. One moment the giant is sitting up on her bed, and the next she’s stretched out on the soft-looking ground right in front of his enclosure, legs spread, head propped up on one of the pillows from her sleeping place. He can see everything, and, better, he can smell her, a rich blend of her body scents cut through with an unfamiliarly artificial glow. The rich, damp musk, the salty tang of old sweat blending with the fresh droplets beading on her skin, the scents filling the room—filling his mind—more with each passing minute …

The glass wall has warmed against him, though it’s still as hard as ever, and he imagines that it’s her. That he’s rutting into her, that he’s a giant too, taking her, making her shudder and moan with his hands and his mouth and his cock, filling her—

Her fingers find her clit and she moans and the sound fills Thistle, drowns out all of his thoughts and fantasies and there’s just his climax spurting on the glass and his body falling backwards, utterly spent, shuddering again and again as the sound echoes in his ears.

A short while after that, the giant comes too.

Ash has started talking the sprite out of his enclosure, from time to time. Not always. Only when she can focus on him, or when she’s doing something that’s relatively safe. She doesn’t trust him not to forget that he can’t fly, so stuff like riding around on her shoulder isn’t really an option, but … well, it’s nice having the little guy around.

And he’s certainly gotten very affectionate, ever since that one day. Very, very, affectionate.

As far as Ash can tell, no one knows whether sprites have a defined breeding season, but she really hopes that they do. He’s so eager, so insistent; she can’t imagine what it would be like to be in this sort of rut year-round.

… probably it would be fucking hot, if she’s honest with herself. It reminds her of girls going on progesterone for the first time, desperate to be touched and toyed with. It reminds her of what that was like, all those years ago.

And it’s so, so, satisfying to feel him squirming in the palm of her hand as she gently, carefully, strokes him with one of her fingers, or drags her tongue along his delicate body, loving the way it leaves him all slick and shivering. One of these days she’ll see what he makes of her pussy.

And maybe it’s a bit fucked up of her—the ethical implications!—but, look. He started it.