The nymph was perfectly still when he took her face in his hands, staring back at him with those dark and reflective eyes like she was waiting for something. Perhaps it was expected that he would examine the product he’d purchased, but she looked at him with life sparking in her chest. Like a baby bird, imprinting with full trust. “Are you dissatisfied, Master?” she asked him. She did not understand the conflict that played across Kedrick’s features. It was impossible for her to. The little bloom had been sprouted for, and by, his blood. There was no room for conflict in her, if it was for him.<br/><br/>She was pliable to his investigations, dipping her head when he hooked his fingers over her antlers and spreading her slender digits wide when he examined her hand. There were no prints there. There were no prints anywhere on her. She was smooth, save the rough twine of her branching protrusions. When he traced her skin, she moved to meet his touch. She was cool, like autumn, until she reached him. Warmth, like spring and life and the familiar memories he’d fed her, in a trail beneath his fingertips. The nymph made a vague sound when he pulled her to his chest. No resistance, and she seemed immediately happy to be against him, pressing her cheek against his heartbeat when he held her. She could feel the swirling mire of his shifting thoughts, and wondered what demanded he refrain from any of them. This behavior, too, seemed to comfort him, though. She waited in his arms, the pearly slick of her coating dampening his shirt and jacket.<br/><br/>He told her to give herself a name. “Iris.” She replied without hesitation. “To be your inspiration.” She explained. A dawn creature, then, with the sighs of a retreating night. He took his jacket and hung it around her shoulders. Her lips parted, touching the edges of the fabric that cloaked her. Was it a gift? Iris smiled at him, and it was childishly simple. “Thank you.” She said, though she had not been concerned with her nudity. The gesture seemed to please her, though.<br/><br/>Iris sat back and folded her hands in her lap, brow furrowing when his questions came. “I am whatever you want me to be, Master.” She replied cautiously, as if the question had been a trick. “I am what you purchased and was grown for you.” She glanced back at the looming husk of fruit that still hung behind them. The drains in the room’s floor had taken the burden of the fruit’s excess, and their knees were pressed against the platform’s stone with only pink-shimmering puddles to intervene. She smiled again, like he ought to be very satisfied with that kind of answer. It was not an unreasonable thought.<br/><br/>Iris had not been privy to all the contract and meeting Kedrick had held with the gardeners that had tended to her reaching stems. She did not know what the legal bindings were, nor the proceedings that had classified her existence. The things Iris understood were the whispers from Kedrick’s blood and the essential nature of her species. She understood the contracts of magic and blood that twisted bonds and gave her breath.<br/><br/>“I am Iris, and I was grown for you. I carry your blood and not my own. I am yours as you see fit.” She parted his coat, exposing herself to him with some purpose. “My body is yours to do with as you like.” She traced her skin where he’d touched her, her own fingers across her collarbones and down the valley of her chest. “To put to use, or take, or change.” She inclined her head. “There is nothing you cannot do. There is nothing I will deny.” She let the jacket fall closed. “I will do whatever you ask.”<br/><br/>Iris reached up to grasp one of her own antlers. “These are yours to take and keep, so that I may always belong to you until I draw my last breath.” She said, and her big, dark eyes were searching the room for the blade he’d discarded. “Take them, and I am yours completely. Your will is mine. Your pleasure, your needs, whatever you desire.” She looked back at him with a deeply serious expression. “And you may do as you see fit in my failure.” Iris snapped a tiny twig from one branching antler then, wincing and gritting her teeth as she did so. It pulled away with a thin network of hyphae-like tendrils and a dribble of blood. The leaf at the twig’s tip wilted as if it had endured a freeze in as ingle moment. She held it out to him, the soft rise and fall of her chest, beneath his coat, more pronounced for the effort.<br/><br/>“Anything you want, Master, is my life’s intent to give.”