It was the fire that decided it, burning like a beacon in the night. It was dangerous to be abroad so near the Wire Woods. Dangerous to be travelling alone. Demons weren’t even the worst things that might find Travis in the dark. So, hefting his pack further up, he hurried off towards the flames.

They burned from a small campsite in a hollow by the road. There were two others there. Travellers by their well-worn clothes. One was reclining, smoking a long-necked pipe carved with strange, elaborate designs, her cloak the colour of ash and thrown back, revealing the swell of generous breasts bound in a strap of cloth. Long blonde hair hung around her head, platinum gold faintly glowing in the firelight as she smoked her pipe.

The other was sitting on a log, head bowed, hood thrown up. A large pack was near his feet, marking him as a trader, but he sat just far enough from the flames Travis couldn’t make out his features.

Travis was sure he hadn’t made a sound, but as he neared, the woman looked his way and smiled.

“Hello there. Out late, aren’t we? Would you like to join us? The stew is nearly ready.”

Travis hesitated, but the invitation hung in the air, and his stomach gave a low growl. He shrugged and stepped into the firelight.

She nodded appreciatively and extended a delicate hand. “Willow.”

“Travis,” he said, giving her hand a shake. “The road makes-“

“Strange friends,” she finished. “Good to see another traveler out this far. We were worried we were alone out here.”

She nodded at the hooded figure, who muttered to himself.

“Is he alright?” Travis asked.

“Tired,” Willow said. “He’s journeyed quite far. Fortunately, he’s nearly there.”

“And you?”

She laughed. “I still have quite a way to go,” she said, taking another drag of her pipe.

“Are you a trader?”

She smiled wider, tilting her head, her hair sparkling in the firelight. “Something like that. I’m a collector of stories, in fact.”

“A bard?”

She waved her hand with the tiredness of one who has explained much many times. “No, no. Similar, but not quite. I do not gather songs, but stories. The little tales told in towns and villages. The sorts of things no one hears of outside their home. I take them and tell them, for all should experience such stories.” Her lip quirked as she glanced his way. “Shall I tell you one?”

“Oh, well…”

“Just to spend the time,” she said.

Travis shifted. A denial was on the tip of his tongue, but just as he was about to say no her cloak shifted, and he got another look at her shapely breasts. He flushed and quickly glanced back at her face, and the brightness of her eyes.

“O-okay.”

She smiled wider, and Travis felt a pleasant warmth seep through him. She put the pipe to her lips again and took a slow drag, then exhaled a stream of violet smoke.

“Once, in a village not far, yet not near, there lived a man. A man who yearned for more from life. He hadn’t a bad lot, his home fair, his people kind. Yet he wished to know more of the world, and so set out with a peddler’s pack and a dream.”

Travis listened intently as she spoke, leaning closer with her every word. He found himself staring into the flames of their campfire, watching them burn, and in the heart of those flames, he could almost see the scenes Willow described.

“But the young man felt a longing,” Willow continued. “A desire he couldn’t name. An emptiness within him the seemed to grow the further he came. Every wonder that he saw only made this longing more acute.

“And then, he came to a home deep in the woods, and met the woman who called it home.”

Travis could almost see the little house. The door opening, and the woman who waited within. She was lovely, with long silver hair and warm eyes. She wore a peasant’s garb but had curves that a holstaur would envy. The woman smiled, and Travis felt his mouth go dry and pants tight.

“She was lovely,” Willow continued, and he could almost hear the smile on her lips as she took another drag on her pipe. Breathed forth another gust of smoke. Smoke which seemed to wind around him like a fog…

“She invited him in,” Willow continued, her voice a soft croon. A sound that tingled through Travis from his head to his toes. “He accepted, for the night was dark and her home was warm. As was she.

“He found himself at peace. A peace he had never known in all his wanderings, and as he ate the dinner she prepared, he found himself growing warmer. Happier. More contented.”

Travis nodded, swept along the story as if in the tides of the Eastbrook, that stream that lay in the village he once called home. He did feel warm. Very warm. He shrugged off his jacket, letting it settle behind him.

“She sat with him long into the night,” Willow continued. “And as she did, she told him how lonely she was. A widow. That few came by, and she so longed for company. She sat near him, her voice whispering in his ear as he relaxed in a chair. Felt the tension ease from him. Relax him…”

Travis shivered at a ghostly whisper at his ear. But he didn’t turn from the flames. Those roaring flames. Those dancing sparks. He could fairly make out the woman in the tale. Her features soft as smoke. Her eyes the licking flames.

The fire was so warm. So very warm. Without thinking, Travis shrugged out of his shirt, the cool night air like a kiss on his sensitive skin. He felt Willow’s eyes on him. Her smirk making him blush. But before he could think on it she was speaking again, and he was pulled back into the world of her tale.

“She was so very lonely, she said,” Willow went on, her breathy voice seeping around him. The smoke of her pipe thickening the air. “And she so longed for company. For a good man to spend the days with her. The nights…”

Travis knew what she would look like. Her ample breasts and shapely hips. Full and womanly. Confident in her sexuality. He could trace her figure in the smoke that seeped from the flames. Fairly see it take her shape. See her move towards him. Every step a roll of the hips. More solid the closer she came to him.

“And he yearned for her,” Willow continued. “He wanted her more than anything he had ever known. He longed to be hers. To feel her. To know her touch. He couldn’t resist her. For little did he know, that she was a witch, and she had snared him in her grasp.”

Travis was breathing hard and heavy, but couldn’t look away from the woman of smoke. Smoke that seemed more solid than reality. More real than he.

“Why,” Willow said, and the smoke woman’s lips moved in time to Willow’s words. “Why, young traveller. You seem so lost. So confused. But do not worry. Your wandering is over. You have come home.”

“How,” Willow said, and Travis’s lips mimed those words without him even thinking. “How can I be home? My home is far away.”

“No,” the witch of the fire said. Or did Willow say it? Or did both. “No, you are home. For you are here, and with me.”

Travis sucked in a shuddering breath as the wispy woman lowered herself onto his lap. There was weight to her. Pressing him down. Her full breasts against his naked chest. Her lips near, and pressed against his own.

The kiss was deep. Adoring. Passionate. Travis moaned as she kissed him, this woman of dreams. As her arms moved around him, gathered him against her chest. His cock strained his pants, stroked by the rock of her hips.

He was breathing deeply. Deeper. Her hair wisps of smoke scented like incense. His head felt empty. Filled with the tale. With her. He stroked her, moaning softly, feeling hot and heavy and drunk with desire and confusion. But she seemed to know. Seemed to know just what he needed.

Her fingers undid the laces that separated them. Freed his manhood. He gasped as her fingers wrapped about him, stroked him, brought him to his fullest length.

His head was spinning. He found himself looking through the woman of smoke. Past her. To the other man at the fire, still hooded. And…and it seemed to him the man wasn’t muttering to himself. He was panting. Moaning. And… and there was another woman in his lap. Hair of transparent smoke as she buried the hooded man’s face in her full breasts, her expression wicked and amused. The man whimpering and moaning.

“I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you,” the hooded man gasped, moaning softly, so softly as he surrendered to the phantasm in his lap.

All this Travis saw. None of this Travis understood. For then, his beloved slid him inside of her, and he only knew joy.

“Ohhhh,” Travis moaned as his cock was wrapped in velvety softness. As her hips rocked, fucking him. Her hands on his cheeks, tilting back his head so she could kiss him. Kiss him hard. Kiss him with a passion he never knew. He’d never forget.

“And the poor young traveler at last understood,” Willow murmured, her voice seeming to come from right behind him. The gentle breath of smoke whispering around him, drowning him in incense. In love. In submission and sorcery. “He discovered that he had wandered long looking for her. To be hers. Her husband. Her love. He found at last what he had been seeking, and he was hers. Forever.”

Travis moaned, twitching as he came, surrendering to the spell. To the phantom of the tale. With every pulse of his cock he felt his grip on reality slip further. The real become fainter. He moaned again, and around him the world changed. No longer the hollow by the road, but a warm cottage with him in a chair. The woman of smoke no longer vague and transparent, but real. Passionate. Her breasts full and flushed. Her eyes bright and hungry. Her smile commanding and triumphant.

“My beloved,” she purred, fucking him anew.

“My love,” he moaned, and kissed her again. At peace. At rest.

At one with the story of his surrender.

---

James squinted against the darkness. A fire was burning by the side of the road. He hesitated, but the low moan of the wind seemed to carry across the massed darkness of the Wire Woods, promising much in the shadows of the world.

He shivered and hastened to the waiting flame.

A woman sat on a log before the flames, her cloak the colour of ash, thrown back to reveal full breasts and a generous figure. She smoked a long-stemmed pipe, her hair a platinum blonde that shone in the firelight. She tilted her head, her smile inviting.

“Hello there,” she said. “Won’t you join me by the fire? The night is dark, and my camp is warm. Come.”

James lingered in the dark, but after a moment stepped into the firelight. He glanced at one of the logs, and saw a peddler’s pack lying against it. He looked around, but couldn’t find the peddler himself.

The woman saw his glance and chuckled, shaking her head. “Taking a moment to relieve himself,” she said, nodding to the dark.

“Oh,” James said. “Will he mind if I join you?”

She shook her head. “Not at all,” she said, taking a drag on her carved pipe, her eyes shining with mirth. When she spoke, smoke drifted from her lips, smelling of sweet incense and burning wood. “The stew is nearly ready. How about a story to pass the time?”