Random stories

The subtle hint of pine needles and chocolate wafted from the palm of the forest elf's hand. Crossing the distance in a whirl of distorted light towards my distracted body, as I bent over the log, delimbing the branches for my fire.

"Speak your true name human"

I hadn't been planning this camping vacation, my fiance had broken things off the previous weekend. Well, ex-fiance I suppose she was now? So in the midst of heart ache following a terrible week of moving things into a new apartment and sending terrible poetry about loss and sadness via text. I had decided it would be best to get away, into nature and try to absorb some of the magic that nature had always offered me.

I had a regular spot, along a stream, by an old dilapidated beaver dam, where the mud could be formed into a clay type substance that held shape when formed and I'd built a small cook stove to use the previous summer. But as that favorite spot was tied so drastically to the heart break of camping with my now ex-fiance. I was drawn far further into the mountains than I had ever been before.

Sheltered in a small river valley, a gulley really. I'd found a small waterfall and the noise of the falling water was doing its best to drown the noise from my over thinking mind.

I'd just set up the tent and was getting the fire going, in the process of trimming a small free fallen tree of its limbs when I smelled the scent. I'd played in the ocean sprayed pines as a child, yet hadn't smelt them since moving across the country, ten years before. The chocolate mixed in was the same bakers chocolate my mother had always used in her cookies when I was a child. It was an uncontrolled thing, an unheard question, a need, an almost sexual response as I spoke without conscious thought, hewing away small gray branches from the dead fir tree.

"Cernunnos" I stopped abruptly, my hand axe in mid swing. The scent of pine and chocolate disappeared with the word.

"Cernunnos?" I mouthed silently. "What the fuck am I saying?" I turned my head and took in, for the first time that I was not alone on the small rise above the waterfalls pool.

She stood frozen, her slender frame cloaked in flowing white garments, golden haired with crown of intertwined reddish brown thorn branch, pointed ears and bright purple eyes. As our eyes met she knelt to one knee, her spotless clothing untarnished by the soil. Her head bowed slowly, her eyes downcast in reverence.

Figures began to emerge from behind her, all coming just short of her distance to me and kneeling and bowing in turn. Hundreds, men and women, all in the same flowing white garments. Her golden hair and pointed ears mirrored across the host now arrayed before me.

"Reborn in times of greatest need." The crowned woman seemed to sigh breathlessly.

I stood, axe falling to my side, my face wracked in confusion certainly. Had I just been stumbled upon by a group of larpers?

"Why do you not wear your antlers my Lord?" She said, to the ground, her eyes still focused intently on the moss and dirt beneath her but I understood it was a question directed at me.

"My what?"

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Submitted by Ihavebadreddit on Sat, Jun 17, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

The spell of the fae forced you to tell them your name. The fae looks at you with pure horror, while you look at them confused, because that was definitely not your name.