It had been a long time since deities ruled over dryads the way they had in Greece, but Jia and her parents hadn’t been around for that. Jia’s mother wasn’t even the slightest bit Greek, and her father was of Dutch descent, so she wasn’t sure that any of her ancestors had ever been close with the Greek gods.
Not that it mattered. Jia didn’t view the gods as deities. She just felt they were a superhuman race of humanoids who paraded around as deities to control other races. It was ridiculous in her mind, and involved a lot of control freakishness that irritated her, but she wasn’t going to tell that to someone who was descended from a so-called god.
Jia Li Adlar wasn’t thinking about such things. She was too focused on the voice of the man who had turned. The man who didn’t even seem a little upset that she had essentially spied on him. He even seem… amused instead.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of him.” She said honestly. The dryad still felt like she was in touchy territory. Just because he didn’t seem upset, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t. People who were upset could react in the most unsavory fashions, even trying to burn a dryad’s tree to a crisp…
His next statement caused the blood to drain from her face. “How…” She trailed off. How did he know? She hadn’t said anything about it to give it away, and his back had been turned when she had appeared from the tree. It’s not like there was a sound when she popped into and out of trees. It was a silent process.
Jia should run. She should just allow herself to melt into the tree whose bark pressed into her back, and she should get as far away from this mysterious man as she could. After all, he must be a stalker or something, right? He was outside someone’s window reciting poetry. Maybe he didn’t contain all of his faculties.
But damn, it! She was curious about him. He had such a nice voice, and he was quite attractive. There was a sort of wrongness about his face, but she attributed it to his eyes which were also so profoundly sad even when his facial expression didn’t merit it.
She groaned when he mentioned dancing, her cheeks gaining warmth as blood rushed to them. “Oh, jeeze… You must think I’m the complete dryad stereotype: spying on people because I’m drawn to beatuy and dancing with the trees. I certainly haven’t given you any reason to not think I may be that way, eavesdropping on you and such.” She shook her head. “You know what? It is a good night to dance, and that’s what I was just doing before I heard you speak. I’m really sorry about that. I feel awful. I didn’t expect to get caught, but that’s no excuse.”
Jia rubbed her temples, clearly embarrassed. It reminded her of those joke that were like, “Because I’m American” or “Because I’m Irish” or something. They had them for different species of humanoids, too, and for different regions of those ones. I like to spy on others… ‘cause I’m a dryad… She thought bleakly.