Nimue

We merged, just as I had with Medea. All of the empty places were filled.

In an instant, I was three inches shorter. My costume lengthened and flowed into an intricate gown and a long, priestess-like robe overtop of it, all done in varying hues of blue. Something heavy and metal rested against the skin of my chest, just beneath the collarbone, and something equally metal encircled each of my middle fingers. Beneath the skirt of my gown, I could feel my feet were bare.

I looked down at my arms through a curtain of golden hair to see the big, billowing sleeves of my robe, stitched with flowing, water-like gold designs near the hem. On my head, I felt a snug crown made of twining bits of metal, swirling and flowing together like the waves of a deep lake.

I reached up for my ears again, and found them just as pointed as Medea’s had been. My hands trailed down over the gown — silk — over the swell of this hero’s bust, over the hips that could have made Aphrodite jealous, and then came back up again so I could inspect the perfection of each nail and each finger.

She was beautiful. I didn’t need a mirror to tell. She possessed an unnatural, unearthly radiance that went beyond human. Looking at her, no one could mistake her for a simple, mortal woman. Looking at me with her power, her essence, inside of me, no one could mistake me for one, either.

She was a fairy. Lady of the Lake, Nimue.