It’s said that, somewhere deep in the forest, lies a magical glade.

Which forest? That doesn’t matter, for the answer is all of them - and other wild places as well, although forests and jungles are by far the most common. If you are walking through any wilderness, alongside your lover - someone you truly love, who you might think of as your soulmate - you may, once in a lifetime, arrive at this glade. You can’t make a map of where it is, and while you may deliberately set out to find it, there is no guarantee that you will.

It doesn’t look too different from any other clearing. Perhaps a bit nicer, with soft grass and soil underfoot, comfortable logs or stones to sit on, and birds chirping nearby. For some there is a brook running through; for others there are fruit trees. However, at first, you wouldn’t notice anything unusual, aside, perhaps, from a compulsion to rest your feet.

Then, however, you would start to feel different. Your partner, who you are already fully in love with, will appear somehow even more desirable, more beautiful or handsome or otherwise attractive, and you will feel a compulsion to show this desire. From the heat in their gaze, it would be clear that they were feeling the same way. Naturally, you will be drawn to each other - to hug, to kiss, and as the feelings get stronger, to grope and strip and fuck each other. Your movements will get more and more frantic as you kiss deeper and deeper, removing clothes and moving hands and lips down from faces to chests to legs. Perhaps you’ll even start having sex, right then and there, on the grass or braced against a nearby rock or tree, or even half-submerged in water.

However, before you can climax - maybe even before you can start fucking, as you’re still in the middle of stripping and exploring each other - something will change. You’ll feel a wave of power wash over you, and the two of you will suddenly be frozen in place: a perfect statue of two lovers, deep in the throes of passion. It’s said that people are always locked into a place just shy of satisfaction - lips brushing but not fully locked, hands reaching for breasts or thighs but barely not making it, fingers or cocks or tongues caught mid-thrust into cunts or mouths or arseholes, never quite fully penetrating.

And there the two of you will stay, caught in this one moment, as hours turn to days turn to months. You won’t care. Your bodies won’t need for anything, being half-suspended in time: eyes won’t water, joints won’t cramp, you won’t hunger, or thirst, or need shelter, or to relieve yourselves. Your minds, too, will change. The presence of your lover, caught in your embrace just as you are in theirs, will always be at the forefront of your mind, their passion burning just as brightly as yours. Everything else will fade away, as indeed it had already begun to as the glade started working its magic on you. Duties and obligations, the desire for more pleasure than what you already have, the movement of creatures around and on you, and the passage of time itself - all will become irrelevant to your mind, as your focus is centred more and more on your lover. You’ll stop thinking in words, stop noticing the difference between night and day or the changing of the seasons, forget everything except that the person next to you and being held by you and within you, is the person who you love with all of your heart, and nothing else matters, not even your names. Frozen as the pair of you are, you’ll become part of the landscape - plants may start to creep up your bodies, insects will make their homes and spiders weave their nests on you, small birds and rodents may sleep in gaps between limbs or breasts for the night or the winter, and larger animals will carry on their lives around you, eating and sleeping and even mating themselves. For why would they pay any attention to something which is just as still as the stones? Stiller, even, as no change or harm will come to either of you: you won’t be pushed around or knocked over by anything; you won’t suffer from the cold or heat; you won’t so much as be grazed by the smallest robin perching on you. And so you will continue to simply exist, together with the person you love the most in the whole world.

And then, one day - who knows how long since you arrived here, as you certainly don’t any more - the Mistress of the glade will arrive.

Who is she? Again, it doesn’t matter, and nobody really knows or can agree. Some say she is Maeve, Queen of the Seelie Court of the fae, or Mab, her UnSeelie counterpart. Others say that both have dominion over this realm, and who you get changes depending on the time of year. Others insist that Titania is the one true queen of the fae, but many dismiss her as nonexistent, an invention of the Bard. Others say she is a goddess: Freya, perhaps, or Venus, or Ishtar, or Gaia, or some other goddess whose name is forgotten to all except her few subjects in this other realm you are on the threshold of. Others say she is a hamadryad, the spirit of the forest itself; still others say she is a being who defies any attempt to define her in human terms; and some say she is all of these entities and more. All you will ever know for sure is that she is the Mistress of this place, and that is how I will refer to her.

Coming across your still forms, she will take her time admiring you - looking you over from every angle, feeling and fondling the pair of you, perhaps in ways you would find intrusive if done to you or insulting if done to your partner under any other circumstances. But with your minds as distant as they are in this moment, her presence will barely even register. After she has taken her time examining you, she will wave her hand, and all the detritus that comes from being outside for so long will wash off: plants releasing their grip, cobwebs wafting away in the breeze, dirt crumbling to nothingness.

And once you are clean - cleaner, in fact, than when you arrived - she will speak a word of command, and your minds and bodies will release. You won’t be aware of her presence, despite her being no more than a few feet away at any time; nor will you remember the months you spent trapped or register that time has passed and the glade has changed around you at all. You will, however, be left with one thing from your time spent as statues: the love, and lust, and desperation you felt for that time will all remain; and, hornier than ever, the two of you will pick up right from where you left off, more frantic and insistent than before. If you had any clothes on, you will tear them to pieces; your kisses will be so full that you’ll almost faint; and each thrust of sex will be almost too strong to bear. And the Mistress will watch it all, drinking in the sight of these two mortals fucking like they never will again.

You’ll climax, of course, perhaps multiple times, so long has the pressure been building behind this dam in your minds and bodies. What happens next depends on the whims of the Mistress.

For some couples, this will be the end of their experience. They’ll pick themselves up, gather their clothes, now repaired, and leave the glade, without any awareness - for now - that there was any magical aspect to what just happened.

Others, the Mistress will freeze again, this time at the point of climax. Rather than drifting, their minds will be completely locked to this microsecond, as pleasure shoots through their brains again and again, cumming for as long as they remain frozen. The Mistress will move this new statue of hers, by some means or another, to her palace, and install it somewhere - perhaps in her chambers, perhaps in the gardens, or, if the couple is lucky, in the grand hall. There, they will be on show for all of the Mistress’ subjects - be they fae or elves or minor deities or some other being, nobody knows - to witness their passion. They will be used by any and all: maybe as a convenient place to hang some clothing or lean a sheet of paper on, or maybe for the subject’s own pleasure, being groped and spanked and cum on and even in.

However, if you are lucky, once you have cum, and as you are picking yourselves up, the Mistress will reveal herself to you. With a word and a kiss, she will enslave you, and take you to her palace, not as mere decoration, but as a new pair of servants. Your jobs will vary. One day, you’ll be maids or butlers, dressed in almost impossibly slutty outfits, trying to keep the palace looking nice but, more likely getting ogled and groped and having your brains fucked out by anyone who happens to be nearby. The next, you’ll be entertainers, dancing prettily at a banquet or just for a private show. You’ll be turned into horny puppies, mentally and perhaps physically as well, fucking each other all day long in corridors and at your Mistress’ feet; into perfectly submissive sex slaves who will do literally anything asked of them; or into furniture, serving as chairs or tables or footstools for everyone. And you’ll love every second of it, as will your lover carrying out the same jobs as you, even as you see each other get used by more people than you could possibly remember or even meet in your ordinary lives.

Eventually, the Mistress will tire of you, no matter how good a job you are doing. She is capricious, and will seek out something new. How soon this will happen is unclear: her realm is outside of time, and so it barely even makes sense to speak of “yesterday” and “tomorrow” while you are there. Perhaps you will cross paths with your parents, or children, or the legendary founder of your town, in their own youth, while you are there, so distorted is time - although you would not interact, or, indeed, truly know it was them. However, she is not unkind. When she decides to release the two of you, whether that is as soon as you have finished in the glade or after what might be years of faithful service, she will restore your possessions, release her hold on your minds, and allow you to walk out of the glade, back into the forest. Between being frozen in, and then outside of, time, you won’t even have aged a day.

When you will emerge is an interesting question. Most walk out minutes after they first entered the glade, as though only the time they spent acting mostly of their own accord counted. Some find themselves missing a few hours or days, and a rare few find they have skipped whole years. Even rarer are those who insist that they left a day or so before they entered, so convoluted is the flow of time around the Mistress’ domain. Or perhaps it’s not due to the strange nature of time here as much as an act of kindness on her part. Often, those who found themselves missing time find that their absence changed things for the better: angry relatives have cooled off, or they missed a disaster which would have injured or killed them. Those who skip years often find that they were assumed to have eloped, and their relationship is now set in stone without any debate that might have occurred. Those who gained time often find themselves setting up the events that sent them to the glade in the first place.

You won’t, initially, remember anything beyond the sex. Even the memory of that will dull ever so slightly, so that you’re not perpetually comparing every subsequent encounter to that one glorious instance. However, over time, your memories will return. You’ll both get flashes here and there of the time spent waiting for your Mistress, holding each other; of her toying with your bodies and watching you fuck; and of any time spent in her service. You’ll compare notes, each jogging the other’s recollection, and although you were surrounded by others throughout, it will always feel like your moment - the point when your relationship became as close as it ever could be; and you will treasure it. You won’t remember everything, though: if you did, it would be too different and too much for your minds to cope with. And besides, it is somehow even more exciting coming up with ideas yourselves, filling in the gaps of possibility. It will provide fuel for many a subsequent romantic night. And, of course, the two of you will be bonded forevermore by the knowledge that you are part of a select group: those who were chosen by the Mistress of the glade as her servants, to have their lives permanently tied together by her. It is said that those chosen by her will always be perfect for each other and live long, healthy, and happy lives, no matter what they encounter.

At least, that is what people say. But what do I know? I’m just a humble storyteller, who knows a good story when she sees one.

My name? Well, you can call me Missy.

I believe I might see you in the forest sometime soon.