Niphleim

Lost in thought, troubled in heart, the mortal woman wandered through the ancient glade. Her glade. She knew this place was alive, awake, and calling to her as a moth would be drawn to a flame. Like a butterfly to a blooming flower, fed from the flow of the stream, drawn by the whispers of moonlight's song spilling over her. Not a new feeling, not a new sound, the whispers she pushed into oblivion so as to not feel overwhelmed. Tonight, so very different. Tonight, without even knowing why, instead of fighting them, she closed her eyes and she followed. She let them carry her, like the flow of the shallow current around her ankles. Overwhelmed, she fell in the stream, but made no splash. Her hands had vanished beneath the surface, but took form as she lifted them as though the water from the stream filled the outline of her body and colored her in like a piece of art. She breathed in, scented the wildflowers on the wind. She breathed out, and dove into the shallow stream, feeling the cool water flowing through her veins as she lost her shape, and in losing it, she gained everything she had been missing. Springing forth from the stream, reborn as a water nymph, ready to share with the world her powers, stories, and love, once feared but now embraced, Niphleim remembered everything she had lost.