In the Grove of the Goddess

Meare looked around, nervously, then tapped at the wall again. She knew Gavin was still out here. He'd said the barn repairs would take all week, and she could see the lantern flickering in the gaps between the boards. It wasn't quite dark, and if his parents came around to the well for some reason, she was standing in the open like an idiot. But if she waited any longer, Gavin might finish up and turn in, and she'd never get him out of the house without someone hearing.

The barn door creaked open, finally, and Meare slipped inside without a second thought. "What took you so long?" she whispered.

"You shouldn't be here!" Gavin whispered back. His shirt was off, and it turned out flickering lantern light was perfect for admiring the solid muscles of his shoulders and chest, especially covered as they were in a faint sheen of sweat.

Indignation snapped Meare out of her lustful trance. "What do you mean I shouldn't be here? I told you three times that tonight's got to be the night!"

Gavin folded his arms, impressively and attractively. "I never agreed to that."

Meare groaned, trying for maximum emotion and minimum volume. "Gavin, there's no risk here. People ask the Mother's blessing all the time."

"But they do it the right way!"

She blinked. "Is this all because... I got the idea from a book?"

Gavin stayed stonefaced. "The Mother don't work out of books. Books are dead things, and she's a goddess of life. It ain't right."

Meare groaned again. "Gavin, all I got from the book was an idea. It's back in the workshop, it won't come anywhere near the grove."

"It's a bad way to begin, even so."

"It's not how this began!" Meare had to fight the urge to stomp her foot. "This began because I want bigger tits, and I started looking for information on how to ask the Mother for them, and the seer who passed through traded me a book for the best damn table I've ever made, and once I figured out how to read the fucking thing I got an idea out of it! And the idea is absolutely perfect for a goddess of life, so there's no reason to be such a mule about it."

Meare took a deep breath. Her heart was pounding. Tonight was the best possible time. Spring was at its height, the orchards had just reached full bloom, and if Gavin didn't agree to help her, it was off. Without him, she had nothing special to offer the goddess of the grove, and she'd be lucky if she was blessed with an extra inch of hair, much less the change she was asking for.

She liked her body, on the whole. She certainly liked the way Gavin looked at it, even before they'd been betrothed. She was on the tall side, and apprenticing in her father's workshop kept her in good shape. She was pretty enough, she thought, though Gavin called her beautiful with enough conviction to make her blush like a furnace. Dark hair and dark eyes, an upturned nose and a wide smile, all of it suited her just fine.

But her chest was as flat as a board. She was nineteen, a woman grown for years now, and only in the last year had she really admitted that her tits were never going to come in.

Gavin was quiet for a long moment after her outburst. "What's your idea?"

"Okay," Meare began, quickly enough to trip herself up on the words, "you know how when people ask the Mother for a blessing, they disrobe before they start?"

"Yes," he said slowly. "But that's because -"

"-she's a living goddess, yes. Sure. But she's also a fertility goddess. So maybe she's not really that offended by clothing of dead plants, or wool, especially since she bestowed those things on us to start with. Maybe... she just likes the view."

Gavin pondered that for a moment, while she tried not to bounce with impatience. Meare had been against marrying him at first, mostly because she'd thought he was an idiot. Once she got to know him, though, she'd realized that Gavin was quite the opposite. It was just that he took plenty of time to think things through. It meant he didn't miss much, but right now, the wait was infuriating.

"Do you mean," he said, a slow smile spreading over his face, "that our goddess is a pervert?"

"The book used another word," Meare said. "'Voyeur.'"

"A pervert," he said again. His tone was somewhere between amused and scandalized. "Then, what, your idea is..."

Meare nodded. "If she likes a show, I figure we can show her something that nobody else in the village would." She hesitated, but she'd come this far. "I want to go to the grove together, and fuck each other while we ask her to bless me with bigger tits."

She waited, holding her breath, while Gavin nodded slowly. There, she'd said it. If he didn't want to marry a woman so lustful, so disrespectful of the sacred grove, or just plain so vain as to ask for magical boobs, she was about to know it.

"If we leave through the window," Gavin said slowly, "the barn will hide us from town. We're nearly at the edge of the woods already."

Meare blinked. "You'll do it? Just like that?"

Disappointingly, Gavin threw his shirt back on, though he didn't move to lace it up.

"Meare," he said, "how long have we been betrothed?"

"Since harvest," she said, stepping into his warm, broad chest. "Half a year."

"And how many times," he continued, voice rumbling in his chest, "have we gotten to... enjoy each other?"

She furrowed her brow at him, mock confused.

He sighed. "How many times have we gotten to... fuck?"

Meare grinned. "Three times in the hayloft, four times behind the barn, and once each in the workshop and the pasture." She considered. "Does the time in the workshop count as two, if you ca-"

She yelped as Gavin interrupted by scooping her up into the air. "That," he said, "is not nearly often enough. Especially as we're not to actually marry until the harvest is in this fall."

"True," she said, grinning over his shoulder as he carried her over to the window. He paused on his way, and with a little whoosh blew out the lantern. "But I didn't realize you were so desperate that you'd risk the goddess' wrath just to get it in me." She made a rude gesture, down near his hips. "What, did your hand stop working?"

He slapped her ass smartly, twice, making her jump. "Seems like it works to me." Then he stuffed her through the window, and even after he'd joined her outside, they had to be quieter on the way to the woods. It was, Meare thought, a very unfair way of getting the last word.

Once they were under the trees, Gavin spoke up again. "I don't guess this is very likely to anger the goddess."

"Don't you?"

He shook his head, barely visible in the darkness of early night. "She's the Mother. She deals with fertility, like you said. I can't really see her getting touchy about sex."

Meare felt a new spring in her step. "Glad you agree."

"That doesn't mean I think this plan will work," Gavin continued. "I still can't quite believe she's a... whatever you said before."

"Ah," Meare said, elbowing him in the side. "So you're just here to get laid."

"I am," he agreed. "I like your chest just as it is."

"But wouldn't you like it better with a big, round pair of tits on top? I've heard the men talking in the fields. They talk about nothing else, practically, and they all seem to agree that bigger is better."

"Mmm," Gavin said. "More boys than men, most of those. Half don't know what they like yet, and the other half are embarrassed about what they like, because it isn't what they think they ought to. Hell, some of those who're loudest about girls and tits and snatch are saying it all to cover up how they feel about the lad next to them."

Meare gasped. "Oooh, the field hands are sticking it to each other? Who's doing it?"

Gavin put a hand over her mouth, drawing her in. "You are a little terror," he said. "I'm not telling."

"My own husband won't gossip with me," Meare moaned. "What kind of drab, dull existence is this poor housewife to have?"

He reached for her, but she dodged away, laughing.

"I'm henpecked already, and months away from being wed." Gavin was adorable when he pouted, like a big sweet puppy who's been denied a leg of lamb.

"Misery for us both," Meare agreed. "Why did we agree to this, dear?"

"The marriage bed."

"Ahhh, yes." She wove and fumbled over tree roots until she was beside him again. The path was narrow, here, and to walk side by side she had to slip under his arm and nestle up against him. "The marriage bed. Do you think it'll be worth it? Perhaps you'll get bored of me once you can have me every night."

Gavin chuckled. "Now, does that sound likely?"

Meare smirked, looking down the path towards the distant, hidden grove. "Not at all."

---

The closer they got to the grove, the more nervous Meare got. The book had been pretty clear, once she had deciphered the old, complicated words it used. Intangible beings like the Mother often craved interaction with the physical world, and especially with mortals. Things like music and burnt offerings were common gifts to them, things that they could experience in sound or smoke. Or in this case, Meare hoped, in sight.

She thought it was a good guess. The goddess was revered by the village, but her grove was quite a ways from it. Nobody went there often, out of a sense of respect, and few people really went there at all. There were all the old stories about blessings, and true enough there were a few people in the village who had actually received one. But everyone knew that for every Harrod, who now stood a head above Gavin when he'd once been a small, runty child, there were dozens of villagers who had sought a blessing and gone away disappointed.

And aside from the blessings, most of the religious business of the village was done elsewhere. Prayers were offered in homes or fields, the ceremonies at sowing and harvest happened on the village green, and even the summer offerings were made at the edge of the woods. If the seer's book was right, all that was at the far edge of what the Mother could really see. She could likely experience them, but faintly, at a remove. Only in the grove itself was she fully present.

Meare had thought for a while about making the usual offerings there. Part of the harvest, part of the slaughter, and part of the village's craft. But the more she dwelt on it, the more she decided that she had a better gift to give. And once she decided that, the only thing to do was to convince Gavin.

And now she had. But had she been right? Coming here, demanding the goddess bless her with something that motherhood might well give her anyway. If Gavin liked her chest as it was, was all of this just vanity? Maybe he'd like her less afterwards, and was simply keeping it to himself.

"Should I be doing this?" she blurted out.

Gavin considered. "Not if you don't want to."

"I want to," she said. "But I'm not sure I should want to."

"You're going to have to explain that one to me."

She faced him. "You said you like my chest as it is?"

"I did," he said, "and I do."

"Will you still like it... after?"

He smiled. It was dark, here, and she might have missed it, except she could hear it clearly in his voice. "Of course I will."

Meare thought she was blushing, a little, which she really had never done before somehow, some way, this big handsome farmer had gotten her to fall in love with him. "But which way do you want more?"

"Neither," he said.

Meare swatted his arm. "Come on. You have to prefer one over the other."

He raised his hands, mock defensive. "How can I? Both ways are you, and I love you however you look."

"That's very sweet," she said, "but not very helpful."

She considered. "Bigger tits means more to play with."

He shrugged. "That could be fun. But if you want this, you don't need to convince me. Just go and give it a shot."

Meare sighed. "That feels very selfish."

"It's not hurting anyone, so who cares if it's selfish?"

"Okay," she said. "Here it is."

"I'm waiting."

"Shut up. We're gonna do it. And if you don't want me to be bigger, you can speak up right now, and we'll just fuck here instead of in the grove."

Gavin didn't say a word.

Meare took a deep breath. "Okay. Clothes off, lover boy."

He waited while she stripped him, hands clumsy with nerves. He was hard already, and she wondered if he'd been getting more and more excited the whole time they had been walking down the path.

"I'm counting on you to last a while," she said, as Gavin began to unlace her shirt. If all went well, she'd need to find longer cords in the morning. She was so eager, so excited, that standing still for Gavin to slide down her breeches was almost impossible.

His finger dipped between her legs, and she gasped. He chuckled. "I think you might be the one struggling to last."

"Maybe..." She put her mouth to his ear. "But when I come, you can just keep on fucking me."

From the way his member jumped, she thought he liked the idea.

"Come on," she whispered. "Let's go and pray."

---

They walked, naked, into the grove. It was not large, but it was perhaps the most beautiful place Meare could imagine. The forest floor and the dirt path gave way to gently rounded stone, covered in a carpet of moss so thick that Meare felt like she was walking across every fine rug in the village, piled into one luxurious heap. The grove was very nearly enclosed by trees, small ones and large, of all different kinds, growing unnaturally close together until their trunks and limbs formed solid walls of bark and leaves. The canopy overhead was close as well, branches weaving between branches, every leaf on them huge and perfectly formed. No disease or insect could touch anything that grew here.

Despite the thick canopy, the grove was better lit than even the open field behind the barn. Somehow, the starlight grew as it filtered through the leaves, becoming something silvery-green, ethereal, enchanting. It seemed to have no source, casting no shadow and lighting every part of the grove equally. When Meare looked over at Gavin, he almost seemed to glow, as if the light shone from him just as much as it shone from every surface in the grove.

It was warm, as well, despite the cool spring night in the world outside. And all around them, there was a feeling of peace, and an ineffable quiet grace.

Meare had never been so nervous, or so aroused, in her entire life. The nervousness made her more excited, she thought, but the idea of having sex for an audience was strangely hot too. The goddess wasn't human, but she still had desires. If the book was right, those desires were not much different than what a human would feel.

Gavin cleared his throat, and Meare realized that they had been standing there, naked and silent, for several moments. "Oh goddess," she said, hurriedly, "I come here to beseech thee. I ask that you grant unto me a boon."

She hesitated, not sure if she should continue, or if she should wait for some kind of sign, or even what she ought to look for. But almost at once, she felt something change in the grove. She was being regarded, she knew, and turned at the same time Gavin did, both of them knowing somehow where the presence was.

It was an elm, old, with roots gnarled over the rocks like arthritic fingers on a cane. But its trunk was straight, and its leaves were as green and as numerous as any of the other trees. And from that tree, the very heart of the grove, the goddess watched them.

Meare knelt. She hadn't planned to, and didn't truly think about it even as she bent her knee. She just knew that it seemed right. The moss embraced her knee no less than it had her foot, and she thought that she could have stayed there, comfortably, for hours.

"I ask," she said, and then suddenly decided that what she had prepared was wrong. Despite what the elders said, despite what tradition said, this was not a formal place. The goddess didn't demand thees and thous, beseeches and obsequiances. She felt, without ever quite putting it into words, that in all those things was a pride and a self-absorbance that was all wrong for the place. It would be better by far to approach the goddess with humility, and honesty, and the simple desire to answer a gift with a gift.

Meare glanced to the side, where Gavin's firm, eager cock was right at eye level. Well, wasn't it just lucky that Meare had a gift she was so very eager to give.

"Goddess," she said, and she felt Gavin glance at her, curious about the change in tone. "Goddess, I come here with a selfish desire."

She felt no change from the presence in the grove. The same steady regard continued, without judgment.

"I'm not happy with my - with my breasts." She didn't know if the goddess objected to such obscene words as 'tits,' but she wasn't brave enough to test it. "I wish - goddess, I wish they were larger. Fuller, and more pleasingly shaped."

She lifted a hand, touched her chest, gesturing awkwardly at the tiny tits in question. Her thumb brushed a nipple, and she almost gasped in pleasure at the stimulation.

Had the presence changed? For a moment, Meare wondered if it had been the request. But no. The change had come at just the moment when she had touched herself.

Smiling now, confidence beginning to grow, Meare traced her fingertips up, slowly, deliberately. She circled the small, stiff nipple, teasing herself for just as long as she could bear, which was to say almost no time at all. Then she took hold of it, gently but firmly, and gave it a tweak.

Meare didn't try to hold back her moan, this time, and she knew for certain that she felt the presence change. It was focused, intent, fascinated. There was a power and a potency directed at her that should have been intimidating, should have made her feel small and afraid.

But somehow, it was just turning her on.

"And," Meare panted, as it grew harder and harder to remember what the plan had been, "and goddess, I bring to you a - a gift. An offering."

Gavin drew in a sharp breath as she took his proud, rigid member in her hand, and began to slowly, softly stroke it.

"An offering," she said, breathless, eager, "of pleasure."

And then she turned and drew her future husband into her mouth.

She had tried this two or three times before, and she thought she was starting to get the hang of it. At any rate, Gavin had liked it each time, but now it was different. Evidently he felt the power of the grove almost as much as she did, because he quickly began to groan and make quiet, manly sounds of pleasure that she had never heard before. She would have grinned, but that would have taken her lips away from his lovely cock.

The presence was there, unchanging - or perhaps it was growing even more focused and pleased. But Meare didn't feel her body changing yet. She knew she was being impatient. There was no reason to think the blessing would be instant, no reason to think it would even be quick. The grass in the field grew over a whole season, not a single day.

But Gavin wasn't going to last forever, and now that Meare had come out and told the goddess her desire, she would never have another chance. Tradition and the seer's book agreed on that point. Divinities did not change their minds.

Well, if this was Meare's one chance, she wasn't going to count on her mouth to impress the goddess. Perhaps it was even offensive to her, a being of fertility, to imagine wasting potent seed like that. So she drew back, let Gavin bob free, so stiff and ready she could have hung a rope swing from him.

She looked him in the eyes, saw the passion smoldering there, and smiled. She turned, still kneeling, and bent forward, sinking down to her elbows as she rested her forearms on the soft, enveloping moss.