Author's Note: Sonata's fault, all Sonata's fault. Great, another chaptered AU I'm never going to be able to finish. This one's Greek Mythology based. Hopefully you'll have fun.
Each chapter, I'll give a quick rundown of who's playing each god or goddess. Only one in this installment: Chuu is playing Dionysus, God of wine, merriment, and ecstasy, whose creatures the Satyrs were. If you don't know what a Satyr is, imagine a really drunken, horny centaur, and you've got it.
Kurama let his slender wrists dangle on either side of the muscular bough he lay upon, cradled in the arms of this gnarly grandfather maple, which sighed pleasantly with the wind coming off the lake. Above and below Kurama's head were the crisscross of leaves dappling the sunlight: the short stoutness of the wild olive; stately white poplars; the mourning height of the spearheaded cypresses, which were often planted in mortal cemeteries; chestnuts with tender new leaves; resplendent pine; and fir, sacred to the Great God Pan. They all shivered with gossiping whispers and laughter when the gleeful breezes kissed them each in turn, Kurama smiling as he listened to the treesong, the flowersong, the animal- and birdsong, all resonating together in the joy of a day so clear after yesterday's showers.
A balmy spring day like this shouldn't be wasted, Kurama pondered, his arms stretching out and his toes arching in the shape of a crucified criminal. He sat up nimbly after that, disturbing the magnolia blossoms, wisteria and crocuses he'd woven into his long crimson hair, which shed petals as delicate as the features of his face, wafting down from his comfortable perch.
With a careless snicker, the forest nymph stood, clad only in loose green pants that matched his eyes, cut of Egyptian cotton in the Persian style and accentuated with a patch of fine black fur over the groin. His trousers were tied tightly in place by a silk sash, which had been blessed by a nymph mother to sparkle in a phantasmagoria of colors, never remaining one hue for long, a rainbow sash won by his dancing at the last festival. It turned a soft sky blue as he slid nimbly from the high branch, landing in a bed of moss that thickened to cushion him. He laughed for the joy of it, of being alive on a beautiful day on the bank of a lake that was covered in flowering lily pads, frequented by bleating frogs.
Kurama stepped up onto a burly cypress root feeding into the water, tilting his head down and hovering his palms upward in a gesture of obeisance, offering a quick prayer to the goddess of this crystalline lake. A jeweled fish curled up to the surface near Kurama, and then was gone with a shake of its glistening tail, an acknowledgement of the young forest nymph's politeness.
Kurama, a devilish smile on his impish face, went carousing away through the forest, looking for trouble.
"I'm saying, stealing the panpipe from The Great God Pan is easy and foolish. Besides, who knows what that old goat will do if he catches you. I don't want to have to rut with him, he smells like dirty leather," Shishiwakamaru sniffed, turning his head from Kurama in disdain.
"We wouldn't be caught," the grinning redhead giggled, plucking another tart wild grape from the vine of them that he and Shishiwakamaru were stripping. "And besides, rutting can't be that bad."
Shishiwakamaru frowned, looking oddly serious. "That's right, you haven't been caught yet, not even by the Satyrs." The water nymph turned his elfin face downward and smoothed back his hair in a gesture of nervousness. "Remember, Kurama: we live a damned existence. The lust gods use us for their fancy, and to god and mortal man and Satyr alike, we are hunted prey."
"Damned?" Kurama couldn't help himself. He chuckled aloud. "I think you're becoming drunk on these grapes, my friend." He popped another juicy fruit through his lips, sucking on it to draw out the flavor. "Who could be damned on such a beautiful day? We're hardly Sisyphus and his boulder, or Tantalus in his lake."
"We are," Shishiwakamaru insisted, gesturing around the green new-leaved trees of this new growth forest angrily, some of his usual superciliousness returning. "All of us. Forced to fly around and around the narrow cage we live in, like larks in a lady's chamber. Even the gods are cursed! But—"
"Satyrs!" Kurama and Shishiwakamaru tensed immediately, dainty heads jerking to stare at Jin, the wind sprite, who was clambering off the side of the massive fir he'd climbed to be on lookout. "Kurama! Shishi! Satyrs! And they've got darts!"
Kurama dropped his last handful of grapes, which fell to the ground and rolled, one crushed under his bare foot as he scurried into the forest. Shishi leapt into the stream that cut through this narrow clearing, really just an opening in the trees, skating away. He turned, running backward a few quick steps. "I'll catch up with you at the big cypress in the center of the village. Good luck!"
"Run!" Jin shouted, and then took to the air, weaving between the treetops so the blowguns wouldn't have a clean shot, all three of the nymphs racing in different directions. Now Kurama could hear the Satyr's horns and bullish calls in the woods behind them.
"Close," Kurama panted to himself, dipping and dodging over and under and around trees, roots, shrubs and the like, scrambling through the loam. "Too close! Jin didn't see them until too…"
At that moment, just as Kurama turned back to look at the trunks he'd just surpassed, begging them to close in behind him, hide him, something big moved out of the bushes to Kurama's right. Kurama had just enough time to realize that the ones behind were simply a diversion, intended to flush Kurama and the others forward into the real trap, before his world upended violently as something locked around his limbs.
"Well, well, well. What have we here?" Kurama heard. He struggled violently against the strong hemp and iron net that snarled around him, feeling like a rabbit in a trap that would soon have its neck broken, and then be skinned and boiled. Kurama's heart was pounding against his ribs.
"Stop struggling or I'll drug you," the Satyr snorted. Recognizing a real threat when he heard one, Kurama cringed, but stilled. He looked up to glare venomously at his captor, shying away from the bristly face that drew close. The man's horse parts trotted him near to Kurama while his man parts leaned down to stare, narrow-eyed, into Kurama's face.
"You're an appealing one, aren't you?" the Satyr said wonderingly. "Prettiest nymph I've ever seen. You'd give Narcissus himself a run for his money." He huffed, grinning, a hand reaching down to pull up his bagged prey by its weighted ends, stroking the skin of Kurama's smooth stomach crudely through the woven openings of the net. "I invoke the right of Chuu, God of wine and merriment. You, nymph, will be my amusement for the night."
Kurama found his body hitched over the Satyr's shoulder, bunched up in his prison, knowing that he could not request leave to return home until this time next day. He shivered pitifully as the Satyr dragged him off.