The trials, in their strange and terrible ways, had woven Juraj and Ina together with threads of steel and starlight. The storms had tempered them, the temptations had purified them, and the visions of mortality had granted them a fierce, precious focus on the present. But for Ina, a new hunger was growing—a desire not just to exist within Juraj's world, but to understand it. She lived with a god, loved a god, but his origins, the source of his power, remained a beautiful, terrifying mystery.
One evening, as they sat on the cliffside watching the sun drown itself in the Adriatic, she gave voice to the longing. She leaned her head against his shoulder and said, softly, "Take me there."
He didn't need to ask where. He felt the question in her spirit, a pull towards the roots of his being. He looked down at her, his earth-dark eyes soft. "It is not a gentle place, ljubavi moja. It is wild. It remembers the taste of mammoth blood and the weight of glaciers."
"I'm not asking for gentle," she replied, her sea-blue eyes meeting his without flinching. "I'm asking for real. I want to see where you come from. I want to feel it."
A slow smile touched his lips, a smile of pride and profound love. "Then I will take you to the heart of the world."
Their destination was not an island, but the mainland: the Paklenica National Park, a place where the Velebit mountain range plunged into the sea in a fury of jagged grey stone and primordial forest. They left Korčula at dawn, and the journey itself felt like a passage through time. The modern world, with its cars and roads, seemed to thin and fray the closer they got to the park's entrance. When they finally stepped onto the hiking trail, it was like crossing a threshold.
The air changed first. It lost the salty tang of the coast and grew thick with the scent of pine resin, damp moss, and cold, running water. The light changed, filtered by a dense canopy of black pine and beech, creating a cathedral-like gloom shot through with spears of brilliant sunlight. The sounds changed—the distant roar of a waterfall was a constant bass note, underlaid by the whisper of the wind through a million needles and the crunch of their footsteps on ancient stone.
But most of all, the feeling changed.
Ina felt it as a pressure, a hum that was deeper and more ancient than anything she had felt in her lavender field. It was the same energy Juraj carried, but here it was undiluted, untamed. The very stones beneath her feet seemed to vibrate with a slow, patient consciousness. This was not land that was loved and tended; this was land that was old, land that had witnessed the birth of gods and would witness their fading.
Juraj walked beside her, and she saw him transform. On Korčula, he was powerful, but there was a softness to him, a domesticity born of his love for her. Here, he seemed to grow taller, his shoulders broader. He didn't just walk through the forest; the forest made way for him. He was not a visitor here; he was a king returning to his kingdom.
He led her away from the main trail, onto a path that was little more than a deer track, winding deeper into the gorges where the cliffs rose like the walls of a forgotten fortress. The deeper they went, the more potent the magic became.
"Listen," Juraj whispered, his voice barely audible over the rush of a nearby stream.
Ina strained her ears. At first, she heard only the wind. But then, she discerned it—a whisper, not in her ears, but in her mind. It was the sound of the trees. A great, gnarled black pine, its roots clawing into the cliff face, seemed to sigh a single, resonant word: "Juraj…"
She gasped, her eyes wide. A cluster of smooth, river-worn stones near the water's edge began to emit a low, melodic hum, a vibration she could feel in the soles of her feet. The stones were humming his name. The very earth was acknowledging its lord.
"They know you," she breathed, her voice filled with awe.
"They are me," he corrected gently, placing his hand on the trunk of the ancient pine. "And I am them. This is the wellspring. This is where the dream of spring first began."
He led her to a small, hidden clearing nestled at the base of the tallest cliff. A waterfall cascaded down the rock face in a misty veil, feeding a crystal-clear pool before continuing its journey down the gorge. The air was cool and damp, filled with the negative ions of the crashing water. The ground was a soft carpet of centuries of fallen needles and moss. It was a perfect, hidden sanctuary, pulsating with raw, untamed power.
Here, the presence of the other gods felt closer, like paintings on a veil just beyond sight. Ina could almost feel the weight of Perun's gaze in the thunder of the waterfall, the chill of Morana's breath in the mist, the deep, patient observation of Mokoš in the solid stone beneath her feet. Vida's essence was in the life-giving water, and Svetovid's multifaceted attention seemed to peer from the dappled light and shadow. They were watching. They were always watching.
But Ina was no longer afraid of their gaze. Standing in this place, feeling the profound connection between Juraj and the land, she felt a right to be here. Her love for him was her passport.
Juraj turned to her, his eyes blazing with the wild light of this place. The civilized veneer had completely fallen away. He was the Green Man, the Horned God, the untamed spirit of the wildwood.
"This is who I am, Ina," he said, his voice a raw rumble. "Without the clothes, without the pretense of walking among men. This is the truth of me."
He didn't kiss her with the tender reverence of the cottage. He claimed her mouth with a primal hunger that was as ancient as the stones around them. It was a kiss that tasted of pine and cold water and a ferocity that stole her breath. Her response was immediate and equally fierce. The genteel shyness of the lavender girl was burned away by the raw magic of the forest. She was a priestess meeting her god at his altar.
Their clothes fell away, not with the careful folds of the bedroom, but in a frantic, necessary shedding of the modern world. The cool, damp air kissed their skin, a shocking, exhilarating contrast to the heat building between them. He laid her back on the bed of moss, and the earth itself felt like it rose to meet her, cradling her, welcoming her.
Their lovemaking was not the soft, worshipful passion of before. It was a storm, a ritual, a convergence of elemental forces. It was the river meeting the sea, the root cracking the stone. He was not gentle, and she did not want gentleness. She wanted the wild god, the raw, unvarnished power of him. She met his thrusts with an arching of her back, her nails scoring the moss-covered ground, her cries swallowed by the roar of the waterfall.
It was a union that transcended the physical. As their bodies moved together in the ancient rhythm, their spirits merged with the spirit of the place. Ina felt the deep, slow pulse of the mountain in her blood, the fierce joy of the rushing water in her soul. She was no longer just a woman making love to a man; she was life itself coupling with the force of creation.
And the earth responded.
As Juraj moved within her, his power, amplified by the sacred site and unleashed by their passion, spilled out into the clearing. It was not a conscious act, but an involuntary, ecstatic reaction.
Where their joined bodies met the moss, a circle of impossible flowers sprang to life. Not the domestic lavender of her field, but rare, ghostly-white orchids, their petals delicate as moth wings, glowing with a faint bioluminescence. Fungi of a deep, vibrant orange and purple, shaped like fairy cups and elven shelves, pushed through the soil around them, releasing a spicy, intoxicating scent. A vine, heavy with berries that shone like black diamonds, twisted up from the ground to wrap tenderly around Ina's ankle, as if in blessing.
The very stones in the pool began to glow with a soft, internal light, their hum rising to a harmonious chord that resonated with their pounding hearts. The trees surrounding the clearing seemed to bend their branches inward, creating a living, breathing bower around the couple, their whispers becoming a chorus of approval, of celebration.
It was a testament. A divine proclamation written in living color and vibrant life. The god and the mortal were one, and their union was so potent, so right, that it could make the oldest, wildest place on earth burst into newfound, miraculous bloom.
High on Biokovo, the council watched. The vision in the scrying pool was not one of conflict or folly, but of pure, unadulterated power and passion.
Perun saw the storm of their joining and felt a strange, hollow ache in his chest where his thunder usually resided. His own power was one of dominance and fear. Theirs was one of creation and mutual surrender. He saw the way Juraj looked at Ina, not as a possession, but as a source of his own strength, and the Thunderer, for the first time in millennia, felt a pang of something that was not wrath, but loneliness.
Morana watched the life blooming around them, a direct defiance of her domain of decay. But the ice in her heart did not harden further. Instead, she felt a faint, almost forgotten warmth, the memory of a time before eternal winter, when the touch of another could make her feel… alive. She looked away, the vision too bright, too full of a joy she had long since sacrificed.
Vida wept silent, happy tears. The water in her sacred spring rippled in sympathy. This was the essence of her domain—life, connection, the beautiful, messy, glorious act of creation. It was more beautiful than any hymn, any prayer. It was truth.
Svetovid's four faces were still, all pretense of strategy gone. The warrior saw a bond stronger than any army. The lord saw a kingdom built of more than land. The seer saw a future that was no longer a tragedy, but a legend. The fertility god simply watched, enraptured, seeing the ultimate expression of his own purpose.
None of them spoke the word aloud. It was beneath them. It was a mortal frailty. But in the silent, ancient depths of their divine hearts, the emotion was there, undeniable and sharp.
Jealousy.
Not of the power, but of the connection. They had eternity, but they had it alone. They had worship, but they did not have this: a partner who could see the wild truth of them and not just not flinch, but revel in it. A love that was not a transaction of prayer and blessing, but a fierce, equal, life-giving fire.
Juraj had not just found a mortal to love. He had found a mirror for his soul, a catalyst for his power, a companion for his eternity. And as they watched the god and the mortal lie spent and entwined in a circle of magical flora, the humming stones their lullaby, the other gods were forced to acknowledge a profound and unsettling truth: the Spring God, in his seemingly foolish rebellion, had stumbled upon a paradise they had all, in their lofty solitude, forgotten how to dream of.
The silence that settled over the clearing was not empty, but full. It was thick with the scent of damp earth, blooming orchids, and their own mingled sweat. The roar of the waterfall was a distant, rhythmic heartbeat, and the hum of the stones had softened to a contented thrum, like a great cat purring. Ina lay curled against Juraj's side, her head on his shoulder, his arm a heavy, protective weight around her. The moss beneath them was impossibly soft, cradling their spent bodies.
The euphoria of their union still tingled on their skin, but a new awareness was creeping in. It was a pressure, a feeling of being not just watched, but seen on a fundamental level. It was the weight of ancient, focused attention. Ina could feel it like a change in atmospheric pressure—Perun's gaze was a static charge in the air, Morana's a chill that raised the fine hairs on her arms, Vida's a gentle, curious moisture, and Mokoš's a deep, grounding presence from the stone below. Svetovid's gaze was the most complex, a four-fold sensation that felt like being analyzed, appreciated, and strategized against all at once.
She shivered, pressing closer to Juraj. "They're still here," she whispered, her voice hushed in the sanctity of the space.
Juraj didn't tense. Instead, a slow, triumphant smile spread across his face. He turned his head, his soil-dark eyes gleaming in the dappled light. He wasn't looking at the sky or the cliffs, but into the middle distance, as if meeting the collective gaze of his kin directly.
"Let them watch," he murmured, his voice a low, confident rumble. "Let them see what they have forgotten. Let them see that love is not a weakness, but the source of all true power."
His lack of concern was contagious. Ina felt her own anxiety melt away, replaced by a strange, burgeoning sense of pride. This was their sanctuary, the proof of their bond. The gods were not invaders here; they were witnesses to a miracle they could not replicate.
She giggled softly, a blush warming her cheeks despite the cool air. "It feels… a little indecent," she admitted, "with such an audience."
"It is the most decent thing in the world," Juraj countered, his hand stroking her arm. "It is truth. And truth is never indecent."
As if in response to their conversation and the lingering, potent energy of their joining, the forest around them seemed to grow even more alive. The vine that had tenderly wrapped around Ina's ankle during their climax, a plant with leaves like emerald velvet and berries like captured night, twitched. It was no longer still.
Ina gasped as she felt it move. It was a slow, sinuous caress, slithering up her calf, the velvety leaves brushing against her skin with a sensation that was both alien and strangely pleasant. It was the forest itself, playful and responsive, wanting to partake in the celebration, to explore the mortal who had brought its lord such joy.
She giggled again, this time a sound of pure, startled delight. "Juraj… it's… tickling."
He propped himself up on an elbow, looking down the length of their bodies. His expression was a mixture of amusement and sudden, playful possessiveness. The vine continued its journey, creeping over her knee and along the sensitive skin of her inner thigh, its intent becoming unmistakably clear. It was seeking the very epicenter of the power it had felt, the source of the life that had made the orchids bloom.
Ina's breath hitched. The sensation was wildly inappropriate and utterly intoxicating. The blush on her cheeks deepened to a furious crimson. Her body, still humming with pleasure, was responding to this strange, botanical caress. Her legs parted a fraction, a reflexive, inviting gesture.
Just as the questing tip of the vine brushed against her most intimate, damp flesh, Juraj's hand shot out.
He didn't tear it away. It was a swift, gentle, but definitive swat, like a master chastising an over-affectionate but beloved hound.
"Oh, no," he chided, his voice a low, playful growl that was both for the vine and for their unseen audience. He carefully unwound the persistent plant from her leg, his touch firm. "This place is mine only."
The vine seemed to shiver, then retracted slowly, coiling itself back into a respectful circle near her feet, its leaves drooping slightly in chastened disappointment.
The moment hung in the air, charged with a new kind of magic—one of intimacy, humor, and fierce, joyful possession. It was a declaration, louder than any shout at the sky. He was not just protecting her from storms or other men; he was claiming her, playfully and absolutely, from the very world he ruled.
Ina burst into laughter, the sound echoing brightly in the clearing, a counterpoint to the waterfall's roar. She looked up at him, her sea-blue eyes sparkling with tears of mirth and adoration. "You're jealous of a vine!"
He leaned over her, his dark hair falling around his face, his expression one of mock severity that couldn't hide the love blazing in his eyes. "I am the god of what grows," he stated, as if it were the most obvious truth in the world. "And you, Ina Marović, are my most sacred, most treasured harvest. I will not share a single petal."
He lowered his head and kissed her, not with the primal hunger of before, but with a slow, deep, smiling kiss that tasted of laughter and absolute, unshakeable belonging.
In that moment, the watching gods felt the shift more acutely than any display of power. This was not just passion; it was joy. A shared, private, utterly secure joy that created a universe of two, a universe from which they were utterly excluded.
Perun turned away from the scrying pool first, the ghost of a unfamiliar and uncomfortable emotion twisting in his gut. He had consorts, nymphs who trembled at his approach. He had never had a woman laugh in his arms while he playfully defended his territorial rights against the vegetation.
Morana simply vanished, her form dissolving into a wisp of freezing mist. The scene was too warm. It threatened to thaw something inside her that had been frozen for eons, and the pain of that potential thaw was worse than any eternal cold.
Vida smiled, a true, gentle smile. She dipped her fingers in her spring and sent a tiny, benevolent current of water to feed the roots of the orchids in the clearing, a silent blessing.
Mokoš, the earth mother, felt the deep rightness of it. The god was tending his garden. The garden was nourishing the god. The cycle was complete, and it was beautiful.
Svetovid's four faces finally broke their stillness. The warrior shook his head in bemusement. The lord sighed, a sound of genuine, unadulterated envy. The seer saw the unassailable strength of such a bond. The fertility god simply groaned, a sound of pure, aching want.
None of them said a word. But the silence on the mountain was no longer one of judgment or strategizing. It was the silence of five eternal beings confronted with a simple, profound truth they had lost: that the greatest power was not in ruling the world, but in sharing it with one other soul.
Back in the clearing, Juraj and Ina lay together as the afternoon light began to slant through the trees, painting the magical flowers in hues of gold and orange. The vine remained politely at her feet. The gods, though their presence lingered, felt distant now, their scrutiny softened into something akin to resigned, and perhaps even wistful, observation.
Ina traced the line of Juraj's jaw. "Do you think they'll ever leave us alone?"
Juraj captured her finger and kissed it. "It doesn't matter," he said, his voice sure and calm. "They can watch all they like. They can send storms and temptations and visions. But this…" He gestured to the circle of flowers, to their entwined bodies, to the laughter still hanging in the air. "This is ours. And it is a fortress they cannot breach."
He was right. As they drifted into a contented sleep in the heart of the ancient forest, the gods continued to watch, not as wardens or judges, but as exiles peering through a window into a warm, brightly lit room, wondering what it must be like inside.