Eyes burning and fists clenched so hard that her nails drew blood from her palms, she fled into the night, the devil's laughter echoing behind her.
She could remember his mocking laughter, after all of her invocations and sacrifices. "Why would I give you *anything,* foolish girl. I have owned your soul since the moment of your conception, by dint of the blood in your veins. *My blood,* in your veins..."
She would find a way to keep her soul from that laughing jackal, even if she had to give it away to even less certain forces...
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She had always hidden her hairy twisted legs under baggy boy's trousers or flowing peasant skirts, and her horns tucked into a towering hairstyle that looked completely out of place, and earned her much mocking from the townsfolk, but far better to be thought a moonstruck peasant girl who styled herself above her station than be seen as the descendent of fiends from hell itself...
And so it came as a shock to her when she awoke in the berryfields under the moonlight, having fallen asleep while gathering, to find herself surrounded by dancing figures playing strange pipes. They wore the horns on their heads openly, and their legs were as hairy and twisted as her own, with hooves clattering and thumping as they leapt and pranced about. Despite being of different blood, the satyrs were a friendly sort, so friendly indeed that she blushed to remember their crude words and gentle touches.
She was aware that when a girl fell asleep in the berryfields, sometimes she returned home with a gift growing inside of her, to the shame of her parents, but the gift she had received from the dancing fey did not grow in her belly, it was growing within her spirit, like a restless flock of birds fluttering around within her, waiting to burst free...