A Nymph in the Night

I was awoken by a loud thud.

I did what any normal person would do under the circumstances, of course, which was to bolt upright in bed and scan frantically around the room for unfolding disasters. There was a full moon out and pale blue light was streaming in through the balcony door of my studio apartment -- light enough to see by if I wasn't also blind as a bat. I fumbled around the bedstand for my glasses.

None of the major silhouettes of the room seemed to be out of place -- my computer, my floor lamp, my designated laundry chair. Near-sighted as I was, I could tell that much. Nothing appeared to be either sparking or on fire; this was also good. Maybe my upstairs neighbours had just dropped something heavy on the floor? It wouldn't be the first time. But then I heard a groan to my left and my blood ran cold.

A human groan, just a foot or two away from my bedside.

I froze, completely and utterly still -- too nervous even to breathe. A burglar? A serial killer?? My brain frantically scanned about for something in arm's reach to defend myself with. Pillows? A mechanical pencil? A spool of sisal twine? (What was that even still doing on my headboard, anyway?) Moving right, there were handful of plushies on the shelf beside my bed. Maybe if I threw them at the intruder's head, they'd be momentarily startled by the one that made noises whenever you squeezed it. And then shoot me or something, probably.

There was an old shinai I still had from my days in the college kendo club -- and which I'd jokingly referred to a few times as my intruder deterrent -- but it was currently propped up inside my closet and at least five times as far away from me as the burglar was. How helpful.

Why was everything near my bed so soft?

Seconds stretched until they felt like minutes. Had I even remembered to breathe in all this time? Would I ever breathe again? But then my fingers -- which I hadn't even consciously realized were moving -- brushed up against something smooth and cold and I realized I'd found my weapon.

A soup bowl! From last night's curry ramen, which shamefully hadn't made it all the way to the kitchen sink before bedtime. It was large and made of heavy blue ceramic; it would probably hurt a lot to get hit upside the head with it. Hopefully I wouldn't spill leftover broth all over my bedsheets in the process.

But before I could shout a warning or hurl crockery or even tell Alexa to turn on the lights, the vaguely human-shaped lump on my floor pulled itself upright and shouted with absolute indignation:

"Why is your floor such a mess!?"

"...p- pardon??"

"This!" she cried, holding up an electrical cord of some description. "Right here! Buried under t-shirts and last year's tax returns and god knows what -- This is a tripping hazard!"

"...I mean, I know it's there," I offered meekly. Though in fairness to her, there were cords snaked in a tangle all over that corner of the room. But what was I supposed to do? The power outlets in this apartment were all incredibly inconveniently located; did the landlord really expect me to set up my office in the closet?

...wait, why was I feeling sheepish about my household organizational skills to the woman who broke into my apartment?

And it was a woman -- no doubt about that now. And one with a... a really cute voice, if I'm honest.

God, was that why I was acting all flustered? Because my home invader sounded cute? Was I really as useless as that?

"Who are you and what the hell are you doing in my apartment?" I managed, reaching for my glasses again.

"What, never gotten a booty call before?"

"No. Also, I don't know you."

"But would you like to?" she teased, pulling herself upright again.

Oh, sure! I grumbled to myself. Y'know, provided you're not an axe murderer or something, which maybe you are if you're showing up at strangers' houses in the middle of the night. I glanced at my clock. 3:47. Goddddd.... What sort of sane explanation could there possibly be for any of this?

"I'd like you explain yourself," I said with as much calm authority as I could muster, finally slipping my glasses back onto my face. Goddamnit, she looked cute, too.

It was still too dark to make out everything, but my possibly-would-be-assailant seemed just barely over five feet tall, a bit heavy-set but in ways that I would find extremely attractive under normal circumstances. She seemed neither armed nor especially malicious-looking. Oddly at ease, really. In fact, between the tank top and short shorts, she really did seem more dressed for a booty call than a murder.

She had gorgeous freckles.

"Whoa, whoa, hold it!" I snapped as she began walking towards me. "Stay right where you are and answer my question!" I mean, you could still murder someone in a tank top and short shorts, after all.

"Okay, okay; simmer down, girl," she sighed, stopping in place and raising her hands above her head.

"I'm not a girl," I pointed out. Maybe she'd broken into the wrong apartment? Was this a nightmare intended for someone else altogether? Or a wet dream? a part of me wondered. I blamed the adrenaline for that one.

She shrugged expressively. "Eh, we'll see about that. I'm Kalysta! And I'm here to make your life a whole lot crazier in the best sorts of ways."

"You're really not helping your case, you know."

I glanced towards the entrance of my apartment. Enough moonlight was glinting off the chain attached to my front door it to confirm it was still locked and there was no trail of destruction wrought through my possessions or any other signs of forced entry. But my balcony window was wide open and I distinctly remembered closing it before I went to bed -- the grass might be greening, but the chill of early spring still hung in the air.

But if that was the only means of entrance I could see, then....

"How...?" I paused and considered my words again, as though I couldn't quite swallow the implication of them. "How exactly did you climb in through a seventh story window? There isn't even a fire escape on this side of the building."

Kalysta grinned from ear to ear. "Wings, motherfucker!"

She flicked on the light switch.

....

....

Wings.

Framing her curvaceous figure on either side were a pair of brilliant red and purple butterfly wings, rimmed in black. Their silhouette was gently tapered in places and artfully ragged in others, like some giant diaphanous spider lily. They fluttered gently back and forth as she stood there, seemingly under their own power.

"Why so gobsmacked?" she quipped. "Never seen a real live fairy before?"

"I-"

"No, of course you haven't," she muttered, apparently to herself this time. "Fuckin' NIS control freaks, I swear to Hera. You'd think they'd be over this by now, but nooooo."

"That's uh... that's some very elaborate cosplay you have there," I managed eventually.

"It's not cosplay, you jerk." She rounded on me with a peevish smirk and stuck out her tongue. And then hopped lightly into the air and just... remained there. "See?"

Her feet were clearly several inches away from touching the floor again, but even gravity appeared to think it wise to give this madwoman a wide berth. She began drifting closer to me, wings beating a rapid pace behind her back as she did so.

Okay, that's it, I decided, flopping back into bed. I'm still dreaming. Goodnight!

"Oh, you're very much awake, sweetcheeks."

I stiffened slightly. But of course she would say that, I reminded myself. She's a figment of my imagination. She doesn't know she's a dream.

"Could a dream do this?" she asked, grabbing my blankets and throwing them off the bed in one motion. I began to yelp in protest, but had the breath abruptly knocked out of me as she flopped her prodigious butt down squarely onto my lower torso -- not as heavily as it looked like she should have weighed, but heavy enough. She leaned her face towards mine and grinned. "Feels pretty real, doesn't it?"

She had gorgeous freckles.

"I mean..." The weight of her body was tangible enough to feel slightly uncomfortable, even -- more palpable than any dream I'd ever experienced, at the very least....was the way she was wiggling her ass against me deliberate?

"Nice PJs," she quipped, tugging lightly on the bunny print flannel pants I was wearing.

"They're comfy..." I offered lamely, only to realize that I was staring directly down her cleavage. I tried to find somewhere else to stare instead.

"Oh, don't look away; I like it when cuties get distracted by my tits. I mean, they rock, don't they?"

She squeezed her breasts together between her arms, making her cleavage swell in fascinating ways and nearly threatening to make her spill out from her top altogether. It was as though she had the breasts of a woman twice her size -- all buxom and weighty and bountiful beyond her stature. I gulped audibly.

"God, you're adorable," she said, brushing a lock of hair away from her eyes. It was hot pink, tapering to a subdued rainbow of hues as it reached her scalp. The other half of her hair was a natural-looking auburn -- a tastefully asymmetric cut, very modern, very gay. She looked like someone you'd see leading a Pride parade.

I meant that in the most admiring sense possible, by the way. Lesbians were great! Like three-quarters of the people I followed on social media at this point were lesbians -- united as we were in our belief that girls were amazing and men had all the charm of a sack of stale potatoes which had discovered Opinions and deeply wanted to share them.

...although I suppose with the way this girl was blatantly coming onto me, she must have been at least least bi -- and had worryingly low standards, at that. Alternately, this was all an elaborate confidence game by a cat burglar con-artist stage magician with Hollywood-calibre animatronic costuming; still couldn't rule that one out.

I allowed my eyes to drift back down to her breasts again.

Even if I was awake, she still looked like a dream -- vibrant and vivacious and very barely contained by her own clothing. I wanted to touch her, to reach out and feel her softness and the weight of her in my palms, and for a brief, bitter moment, I wished it wouldn't feel skeevy to respond to her advances in kind. And it did, somehow -- it always had, like I couldn't express attraction without seeing myself as some bearded douchebag from a bad porno. I didn't want that. I wanted.... I wanted...

I wanted something incredibly selfish.

"Sweetie, it's okay to want things," she said gently. "It's okay to want this."

I tensed up. That was the second time now this woman had replied to something I hadn't even said out loud -- or was it the third? I tentatively looked her in the eyes and then, because I was apparently possessed by insanity this evening, very deliberately thought: Are you actually reading my mind?

"Yes, I am actually reading your mind," she said blandly, in the tone of someone reporting on a particularly dull piece of trivia.

I froze in place, eyes wide, and for a moment tried very, very hard to think about absolutely nothing at all.

She snickered. "Cute. But you do know that 'emptying your mind' just gives us fairies more room to move around in, right?"

Math problems! I needed to be doing math problems! That's what they did in science fiction to block telepaths, right? Drown out my thoughts out with quaternions and matrix multiplications and commutative rings and- Or was it humming a song to yourself? That sounded easier to do at 4 in the morning. I am the very model of a modern major gen-

Wait, if she can read my mind then that means she also heard me thinking about how to distract her from hearing what I'm thinking about and I need to be doing the opposite of that instead. But what if she know that I know that she knows that I know that she knows that I aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

My frantic reverie was snapped in half by riotous laughter.

"God, the look on your face right now," the fairy managed between snorts. "I can't- I can't-" She waved a hand frantically as if gasping for air and it took several moments more for her to be able to speak again.

"I can't read minds, silly," she gasped, wiping a tear from her eye. "But you might as well be shouting those thoughts across your soon-to-be-pretty face. I've done this a lot of times by now; you'd be surprised how predictable the response is. Well." She snickered again. "Mostly."

"...what's 'this'?" I asked timidly, after a moment. There was an implication there and I wasn't sure I liked it. I wasn't sure if the cat-like grin I got in response was intended to be encouraging or terrifying, either.

"Why, only giving you something you've wanted for more years than you've even known you've wanted it," she said.

I hesitated. Surely this wasn't actually about sex, was it? "...artistic recognition?"

"A swing and a miss."

"Financial security?"

"God, don't we all?"

"A... robotic catgirl maid?" I was babbling now -- whether from sleep-deprivation or because I was high on adrenaline, I couldn't tell anymore. But the girl just laughed.

"Oh, you're a fun one! Also, you're dodging the subject." She ran a finger down my chest. "I'm talking about your deepest, darkest, most privately guarded secret. I think you know the one."

She paused expectantly. I swallowed. Even if I knew what that was -- and to be clear, I did not -- there was no way that she could. And I definitely couldn't bring myself to say that sort of thing out loud to a stranger, no matter how insane all of this was already.

She grimaced slightly at my silence and then jabbed me in the ribs. "I'm talking about the fact that you're not a guy and you know it."

"That's nonsense."

"So's a fairy breaking into your apartment at 4 in the morning, but such is the world we live in. Here, my card."

She hoisted herself off the bed -- and also my torso, for which I was both grateful and vaguely saddened -- and then reached into her pocket and tossed a business card at my face. It had bright red lettering and smelled faintly of cinnamon.

Καλλίστη Ρασκόπουλου, Πράκ-

I frowned at her. "I... I can't read Greek."

"Hestia's Merciful Tits!" she cursed. "Did I grab the wrong ones again? I told them they overbooked us this week." She snatched the card back from me, took one look at it, and sighed deeply. "Let me share a universal truth with you, girl: whether run by gods or mortals, HR always suuuuucks."

I smiled awkwardly. "Maybe you should unionize?"

"Yeah, well I've been saying that for years now," she grumbled. "Anyway! New regs say I have to inform you of a bunch of stuff before we get to the fun part, so do me a favor and pretend this doesn't completely spoil the mood. Ahem."

She straightened up, sighed again, and then proceeded in the most perfunctory tone possible:

"Kalysta Raskopoulou, Licensed Mortal Intercessory, M.A, MSW, A+ Certified, Licensed Massage Therapist, CEH, GSE..." She trailed off in an increasingly imperceptible mutter as she went on, such that I barely even caught:

"Agent of Eros??" I paused. "Like... the Greek god of fucking?"

The fairy snickered. "Well, I'm sure he'd like to think so."

"I-" Was this actually a sex thing? "Does that mean you- That is to say-" I ran my eyes up and down the length of my home invader again, her face caught in an impish grin and looking equal parts rainbowpunk and wet dream. "Does that mean you're here to-"

"To fuck you?"

I felt my face flush hot and my throat seize up and I just sat in place, too embarrassed to acknowledge my own statement or even nod assent. I would have wished my own bed sheets could reach up and swallow me whole if only that wouldn't also mean depriving myself of the sight of this incredible woman smiling down at me.

But she just chuckled lightly at my consternation and threw me a wink. "Patience, girl. We'll get to that eventually."

"You keep calling me that," I said pensively, "but do I really look like a girl to you?" I scratched self-consciously at the stubble on my face; ten years of shaving and I still hadn't figured out a way to banish it for good.

"Oh, you'd be surprised." She paused. "Well, you wouldn't be. But like... other people. Cis people."

"I'm cis people...."

"Sure thing, avgó. Now tell me: when was the last time you ever RP'd a guy?" She wandered over to the shelf by my computer as she said this and began idly toying with my Rubik's cube.

"Huh?"

"You do PnP stuff with some friends from your old guild every weekend. You have for years."

"...how do you know that?"

"Because I am very good at my job." She twirled the cube around in her fingers and then put it back down again. "Now answer the question."

I watched Kalysta's backside for a moment as she slowly made her way down my shelf of nerdy knickknacks; it was as pert as it was prodigious, squeezed snugly into black leather shorts that plunged deep between her cheeks, and framed on either side by gently fluttering wings. The way they swayed with every step was nearly hypnotic. Was it still unseemly of me to want her? To want to feel every inch of that magnificent body pressed against me? To have her look at me with those vibrant green eyes, full of teasing smugness and insistently take me?

"I... haven't," I answered eventually. "Like... ever."

"And why not?"

Because men were grody? Because men didn't get to wear ribbons in their hair? Because the cultural stereotypes baked into a being a male sellsword were deeply uncomfortable to me and I wanted nothing to do with them? "Because girls are great?"

"Ah, a woman after my own heart." She spun around and flashed finger guns at me.

"But that doesn't mean anything," I protested. "It's just a game. I'm sure Felix doesn't want to be a half-scorpion in real life either."

"Hey, no kinkshaming." She wagged a finger at me.

I rolled my eyes.

"But hey, you're right," she continued. "It's just a game -- something trivial and frivolous and that in no way reflects any part of our unspoken selves." She stared at me pointedly for a moment and then shrugged. "But I make a strict policy of not misgendering anyone, so if you're really, genuinely that invested in being a man, just say these five little words for me and I'll fly back out that window and be gone from your life for good -- I swear it."

Was that even something I wanted at this point?

"...what five words are those?" I asked tentatively.

Kalysta leaned forward and grinned at me with almost palpable gleam of self-satisfaction. "I love being a guy."

I...

I didn't know what I'd been expecting, but it wasn't that. I didn't even know how to respond to that. "...I mean, being a guy has a lot of advantages -- like, socially. You can-"

"I. Love. Being. A. Guy." she repeated, this time with exaggerated air quotes around every word.

I hesitated again. "I mean, it's... fine? I guess? It's how I was born? It is what it is?"

"Sweetheart," she said gently. "Would you believe the world is full of men who could say that from the bottom of their heart without a moment's hesitation? Absolutely overflowing with them, if you ask me. But it's fine -- take your time. I'll just go have a little peek in your closet while you mull it over." And with that, she leapt lightly across my apartment and reached for the doorknob.

I was on my feet before I even realized what I was doing. "Wait!"